V
Already the city knew that the Governor was to be killed. They had heard it at dawn of the day after the shooting. None spoke of it openly, but all felt it; as though while the living lay in their uneasy sleep, the dead were stretched out quietly in careful order … shoulder to shoulder, in the engine-room, a dark shape had floated over the city, shadowing it with its wings. And the people spoke of the assassination of the Governor as a foregone conclusion—an irrevocable fact. Some accepted it at once; others, more conservative, not till later. Some took it carelessly for granted as a thing that concerned them but slightly; like an eclipse, only visible in another hemisphere, and hardly interesting the inhabitants of this one. Others, a small minority, rose and agitated the question whether the Governor deserved this fearful sentence—whether the death of one single individual, no matter how dangerous, could have any effect while the general conditions of the living were unchanged. Opinions differed, but even the most heated arguments were impersonal, as though the question were not a possibility of the future, but already an accomplished fact which no discussion might alter.
Among the better educated the arguments took a broader theoretical stand, and the Governor’s personality was forgotten, as though he were already dead. The debate proved that the Governor had more friends than enemies, and many even of those who believed ethically in political assassination found excuses for him. Had a vote been taken in the city, probably an overwhelming majority, on various practical or theoretical grounds, would have cast then ballot against the death—or as some called it, the “execution”!
But the women, generally so merciful and timid at the sight of blood, showed in this case a surprising grimness—a pitiless spite. Nearly all demanded his death—the most hideous death! Reasoning had no power over them; they held their opinions stubbornly, with a certain brute force. A woman might be convinced by evening that the assassination was unnecessary, but next morning she would awake firm in her original conviction; as though she had slept off the effects of the argument overnight!
Bewilderment and confusion reigned supreme. A disinterested listener, hearing their talk, could not have gathered whether the Governor should be killed or not, and might have asked, in amazement: “But where did you get the idea that he must die? … And who is to kill him?” … But there would be no answer. Soon, however, he would see, as all the others did, that the Governor must be killed—that his death was imperative! … yet he would have known as little as all the rest from what source this knowledge came. Everyone—friend or foe of the Governor—partisan or prosecutor—all gave themselves up to the one unswerving thought of his death. Ideas differed, and words differed, but the feeling was the same: a mighty, all-pervading conviction, strong and immutable as death itself!
Born in the dark, itself a part of the unfathomable darkness, it reigned triumphant and menacing … and all in vain men sought to illuminate it with the feeble light of then intelligence. As though the hoary withered law, “A death for a death,” had waked from its torpid sleep, opened its glazed eyes, gazed on the slaughtered children, the men and the women, and had stretched its remorseless arm over the head of their slayer. And the people, thinking and unthinking, inclined themselves to this law, and avoided the sinner. He was at the mercy of any death that might come. And from all sides—from dark corners, from fields, woods and hollows—they pressed about him: reeling, limping, dull and abject—not even interested!
So it might have been in those far-distant times while still there were prophets among men; when thoughts and words were scarcer, and this same hoary Law, that punished death with death, was young. When the beasts made friends with man, and the lightning was his brother! In those strange days of old, the guilty must pay for death in kind. The bee stung him, the ox gored him, the overhanging stone awaited his coming to fall and crush his defenceless head; disease gnawed him, as the jackal gnaws the carrion; arrows turned in their flight, only to strike his black heart or his downcast eyes; and rivers changed their course only to wash the sands from beneath his feet—even the majestic ocean dashed its tattered waves on high and threatened him with its roar—till he fled to the desert. A thousand deaths—thousand graves! The desert buried him under her soft sands; she wept and smiled, and over him her winds blew, whistling. And the sun itself—that life-giver—seared his dead brain with careless laugh, and softly beamed on the creatures that swarmed in the hollows of his miserable eyes. The heavy masses of the hills lay upon his breast, and in their eternal silences they buried the secret of his expiation! … But that was long ago, when this great Law was young—a stripling that punished death with death—and seldom in those days did his cold, keen eyes swerve in the performance of his duty! …
Within the town discussion soon died out, poisoned by its own unripeness. One must either accept the assassination as a sacred fact and meet all argument as the women did with the one incontrovertible phrase: “What right had he to murder children?” or else be reduced to helpless contradictions, to vacillation, to shifting grounds—as a drunken group might gravely exchange their hats, yet get no farther on their homeward way!
Speculation wearied them finally, so they stopped talking; and nothing on the surface reminded one of that fatal day. But amid the silence and the calm grew a great cloud of grim suspense. All waited—those who were indifferent to the catastrophe and its consequences, those who looked eagerly forward to the execution, and those who were uneasy about it—all! … all waited for the inevitable, with the same vast, breathless suspense! Had the Governor died of a fever in these days, or from an accident, none would have taken it for mere chance, but behind the given reason would have found a primary cause—invisible, unacknowledged.
Among the masses, as the foreboding grew, their thoughts turned often to the Kawatnaja lane. The lane itself was still and calm, as was the city; and the swarming spies peered vainly for any signs of new uprising or criminal attempts. Here, as elsewhere, they heard rumours of the assassination of the Governor, but could never discover their source. All spoke of it, but in such an uncertain, even foolish way, that one could find no key to their talk.
“Some mighty man—oh, a very mighty man, who could never possibly fail!—would undoubtedly kill the Governor one of these days!” That was all one could make of it.
The secret agent, Grigorjeff, overheard some such gossip one day as he sat in a low gin-shop pretending to be drunk. Two workmen, who had already been drinking rather freely, sat at the next table, their heads together. Clumsily clinking their glasses, they talked in suppressed murmurs. “They’ll kill him with a bomb!” said the first, evidently well informed. “What! with a bomb!” said the other, amazed.
“Certainly, with a bomb—what else?” reiterated the other. He puffed at his cigarette, blew the smoke in his companion’s face, and added sternly: “It will blow him to a thousand little bits!”
“They said it would be on the ninth day.”
“No,” said the other, with a frown which expressed the highest degree of scornful negation. “Why the ninth day? That’s superstition—that idea of the ninth day! They’ll simply kill him early in the morning—that’s all!”
“When?”
Shielding his face with his outspread hand, he lurched suddenly forward and hissed into his companion’s ear: “Next Sunday week!”
Silently they stared into each other’s grim, bleary eyes, both swaying to and fro. Then the first lifted a threatening finger and said, with impressive secrecy:
“Do you understand?”
“They’ll never miss him … no! They’re not that kind.”
“No,” said the other, with lowering brows. “How could we miss? The pack is stacked. … We hold four aces.”
“A whole handful of trumps—” added the other.—“You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course I understand!”
“Then, if you understand, we’ll drink to it. Aren’t you afraid of me now, Wanja?”
They whispered for some time, blinking and nodding, and upsetting the empty bottles in their eagerness. … That same night they were arrested, yet nothing suspicious was found upon them, and the preliminary examination showed that they did not know the slightest thing, and had only repeated vague rumours.
“But how did you happen to know the very day … that Sunday!” asked the angry officer who was conducting the examination.
“Can’t say,” said the man, somewhat cowed—he had been three days without drinking or smoking—“I was drunk!”
“I’d like to send you all to—” fumed the lieutenant—but he did not finish his remark.
Even the ones who were sober were no better. They spoke freely of the Governor in the workshops and on the streets, raged at him, and exulted at his approaching death—yet never anything definite—and soon they stopped talking and waited patiently. Now and again passing labourers exchanged comments.—“He drove by again yesterday without any guard.”
“He’s walking into the trap himself!” And they went about their work. Bat next day a whisper ran through the shops:
“Yesterday he drove down the lane!”
“Let him drive!”
They counted each day of his life … their number seemed too great! … Twice the rumour of his death was started. It spread suddenly in the Kawatnaja lane, and immediately grew to certainty in the factories. It was impossible to say how it arose but, scattered in little groups, they told each other the details of the murder: the street, the hour, the number of the murderers—the weapon! Some could have sworn they heard the explosion. And all stood there, pale, determined; outwardly neither glad nor sorry: till at last word came that it was a false alarm. Then they separated, just as calmly, and without disappointment—as though it were not worth while to be excited over an affair that was postponed but for a few days at most … or perhaps a few hours—or even minutes!
Both in the city and in the Kawatnaja lane the women were the harshest, most unrelenting judges. They produced no evidence, they gave no verdict—they simply bided their time! And on then waiting, they laid the coals of their unshakable belief; the whole burden of their unhappy lives; and the hideousness of their depraved, hungry, smothered thoughts. They had in their daily lives one special adversary that the men did not know … the oven!—the ever-hungry, open-mouthed oven; more awful than the glowing fires of hell! From morning till night, throughout their days, and every day, it held them in its sway; eating their soul, casting out from their brains all thought, save that which concerned itself.
The men knew nothing of this. When a woman waked at dawn and saw the stove—the oven door half open—it worked on her fancy like a ghost; gave her a sickening sense of disgust and fear, and dull, brutish terror!
Robbed of her thoughts, she hardly knew what had robbed her; and in her confusion humbly offered up her soul again each day before this altar; black, deadly misery wrapping her as in a veil. And thus the women in the Kawatnaja lane became so fierce and hard! They beat their children—beat them nearly to death!—quarrelled amongst themselves, and with their husbands, and their mouths streamed with abuse, complaints and wantonness.
In those three terrible weeks of famine, when for days no fires were made—then at last, the women rested … that strange, calm rest of the dying whose pains have ceased some moments before the end! Their thoughts, freed for an instant from those iron bands, fastened with all their passion and power to the vision of a new life … as though this strike were not about the monthly wages of the men, but about a full and glad release of their eternal bonds. And in those heavy days when they buried their little children … dead from exhaustion! … and numb with pain, weariness and hunger—bewailed them with bloody tears—the women grew kind and gentle as never before! They were convinced that such horrors could not have been sent without a purpose—that some vast reward must follow their sufferings.
So when on the 17th of August the Governor stepped out before them, into the Square shimmering in the sunlight, they took him for the dear Lord Himself—with his grey beard. … And he said:
“You must go back to your work! I cannot talk to you till you have gone back to your work.”
Then: “I will see what I can do for you. Get to work and I shall write to Petersburg!”
Then: “Your employers are not robbers, but honourable men, and I forbid you to speak so of them. And if you are not back at your work by tomorrow, I shall lock up the shops and send you all to the workhouse!”
Then: “It is your own fault that the children died! Take up your work again!”
Then: “If you act like this, and do not disperse, I’ll have you driven off!” …
Then followed a chaos of howls; babies crying; the whine of bullets; pushing; and a wild flight! They do not know themselves where they are fleeing to—they fall! Up again and on—children and home are lost! … Then suddenly again, in the twinkling of an eye, there sits the cursed oven!—stupid, insatiable, with its everlasting open mouth! … And the same old round begins again from which they thought to have torn themselves forever; and to which they have returned … forever!
Perhaps the idea of the Governor’s assassination emanated from the women’s brains. The well-worn words in which man had been wont to clothe his hatred for man no longer sufficed them. Loathing! Contempt! Rage!—it transcended all these … it was a feeling of calm, unqualified condemnation … If the axe in the headsman’s hands could feel, it might have this emotion—that cool, sharp, shining, steady blade! The women waited quietly; without wavering and without doubts.
And while they wait they take their fill of the good, fresh air—the same air that the Governor breathes! … They are like children. If a door chances to slam, or someone runs clattering down the lane, they rush out—bareheaded and excited. … “Is he dead yet?”
“No—it was only Ssenjka running to the shop for vodka.”
And so it goes till another knock comes, or a sudden rush of feet, to break the deadly silence of the street.
When the Governor drives by they peer at him eagerly from behind the curtains; and when he has passed, go back to their ovens again. It did not surprise them that the Governor, who had always been followed by guards, suddenly appeared without an escort … the headsman’s axe, if it could feel, would not be astonished at the sight of a bare throat! It was quite in the order of things that the throat should be bare.
They sat and spun their gruesome threads—these grey, dismal women with their grey, dismal lives—and it was they who awakened that hoary old Law that punished death with death.
Their sorrow for their dead was suppressed and torpid; it was only a part of their great general pain, and they gulped it down as the great, briny ocean would swallow one small briny tear. But on Friday of the third week after the deluge of blood, Nastassja Saasnova, whose little girl (Tanja, only seven) had been killed, went suddenly mad! For three weeks she had worked over her oven like all the rest; had quarrelled with her neighbours, had beaten her other children—and all at once, without any warning, she went insane.
It began in the morning. Her hand trembled, and she broke a cup; then it all came over her with a sickening shock, and she forgot what she was about, ran from one thing to another, and repeated foolishly. “О God, what am I doing?” … Then finally she was quite silent! And dumb, with stealthy tread, she slid from corner to corner, taking things up and putting them down—moving them from place to place—and even, in the beginning of her madness, hardly able to tear herself away from the stove. The children were in the garden flying their kites, and when little Petjka ran in for a piece of bread he found his mother stealthily hiding all sorts of things in the oven—a pair of shoes, an old coat, and his cap! At first the boy laughed, but when he caught sight of his mother’s face he ran shrieking into the street. “A—a—ai!” he screamed as he ran, and set the lane in wild alarm.
The women gathered and began to whimper over her like frightened dogs. But she only widened her circles, breaking through their detaining arms; gasped for air and mumbled to herself. Piece by piece she jerked off her rags till, stripped to the waist, her lean and haggard body, with its withered, dangling breasts, showed yellow against the wall. Then with a long and hideous wail she repeated, over and over: “I can’t! Oh, my dear, I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—I can’t!” and ran out into the street, the others following.
Then the whole lane was transformed for one instant into a single shrill howl; it was impossible to tell who was crazy and who was not. The panic subsided when the men ran out from the shops, bound the maniac hand and foot, and poured a bucket of water over her. She lay there in a puddle by the roadside, her naked bosom pressed to the earth, her fists and the blue, mottled arms stretched stiffly forward.
She had turned her face to the side, and her eyes were wild and glaring; her wet grey hair was pressed close to her head, making it seem pitifully small; her whole body was shaken with convulsive jerks. Out from the factory ran her husband, in a fright. He had not washed his sooty face, his shirt was shiny with oil and grime, and a burned finger on his left hand was tied up with a greasy rag.
“Nastja!” he called, bending over her, stern and harsh. “What do you mean? What is the matter with you?” She turned her dumb glassy stare at him and shuddered. He saw the purple bloodshot arms they had so pitilessly bound; loosened the ropes and smoothed her naked yellow shoulder. … Then came the police! …
When the crowd dispersed two men among them neither went back to the factory nor stayed in the lane: but they went their way slowly to the city. They walked along keeping step; silent and pondering. At the outlet of the Kawatnaja lane they parted.
“What a scene!” said one. “Are you going my way?”
“No!” said the other curtly, and strode along. He had a young tanned throat, and under his cap a shock of curly yellow hair.