|
.
.
1
.
.
.
.
'
.
1
:
:
:
*
*
*
[
.
IT
U
.
.
*
.
ވެ
N.
*
**
-
.
"
!.
•i
.
ޕީ.
!
.
.
.
50
1
i
:
p
hi
-
FO..
]
Ji
.
(
.
*
*
..
...
...
.
.
.
.
..
..
.
*
i!
[
I
!
ތުވެ
i
)
.
N
.
is
4.
.
..
1
I•..
4
:
*
r
..
.
336
:
2
I
.
ne.
,
,
,
"
)
.
.
1
..
*
!
!
•
..
!
16
.
R
..
.
:
.
.
!
H
*
T
1
.
-
5 . 1
L U
IX..
3
.
(
.
.
.
.
.:..
*
.
40
1
|
.: .
.
!
.
.
'
1
|
1
.
i
.
E
L
.
*
l
.
'
il.
)
.
1
)
lh
'
cs.
,
,,
•
C
.
.
.
·
.
41.
•
".
.
.
.
11
'
)
1
|
.
.
.
INY
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
S
T
*
.
.
.
H
.
*
;
*
*
*
**
,
:
.
..
.
.
.
*IT
..!
.
"
"
:
.
.
.
“
)
1
)
th
+
.
.
.!
1
.
•
Y
..)
A 1,098,460
.
i.
)
.
!
\
\
.
.
.
.
·
.
FI
1
11.
4
·
-
.
-
..
.
.
O
.
.
H
F
.
،
·
•
*
*
*
*
*
**
=
4
LS
.....E
ES•.އާ
محمد ع بد

مه
متنا
عالمی اداره
ومن
:یر
یه عده اید
به او
م نوبة
،
|
|
يا سيد
مممممممممممم
م 1812
نننننن
باميللننننين
دند
I TTIIIIIIIIIIIII
F
IIIIIIIIIIانتال
SCIENTIA
.
ARTES
BIT .IIIIIIIIII
11
:
[
|
LIBRARY VERITAS
ا
II
VE MICHIGAN
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!للناد
UNIVERSITY OF MIA
I I
-نییینننننییییییییینننننلسه، می
!
. . .
. . من
، میسیس
!
تر
بد
د
ن
. ۲
ا
.
!
;
.
وه
لن
جاده
انتقاد اتلانتكتكتكتبه
،
شيلات
هههه
والتيIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!
لمنعة محطة مص
و
{
:
TIIIIIIIIIIIIIع
مخيم الانتهاء من السائسنس فیلامنا من مستوطنون عمل مسلسل سلسالسطلانها
اسم
اد
.:
..::
.
.. ..
991.78
Аз ,
E353

:
.
NA
.
.
SY
M
.
.
1
*
.
111
T
I
.
*
.
1
nd
A
AT
WEB
.
.
1+
.
W
.
.
WYS
AV
II
11
!
.
.
ES#
3
WO
ST
.
wy
O
PEN
2
I
.
.
IN
!
.
.
W
UTS
Uit
.
.
www
1
1
.
.
:
.
:
:
.
#.
ILU*
CARI
.
1
.
!
2
9
1.
tort
LAN
o
.
1
.
.
AVAA
.
.
.
My
11
A
WI
il
"
M
.
18
w
S
E
X
.
IL
T
U
.
.
.
KS
.
Sr.
S
.
5.11
1.1 WIB
.
.
.
.
:-
.
...
.
.
4
.
...
.
.
:
.
.
A
S
NOVO
VI
.
...
.
*
m
we
C
l
.
.
.
S
.
S
.
!
DR.
.
LY
|
//
/
WWW
...
LEONID ANDREYEV.
UNIE
Courtesy of The New York Times

THE SEVEN
WHO WERE HANGED.
A STORY
BY
LEONID ANDREYEV.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
HERMAN BERNSTEIN.
NEW YORK:
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
57 ROSE STREET.
Vinderdaate
Library GRAD
PG
34-52
1909
Buhr
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
All Rights Reserved.
Copyrighted in Great Britain.
The Seven Who Were Hangea.
Undergraduate
Library
DEDICATION
To Count Leo N. Tolstoy
This Book is Dedicated
by
Leonid Andreyev
The Translation of this story
Is Also Respectfully
Inscribed to
Count Leo N. Tolstoy
by
Herman Bernstein
77
?
FOREWORD
Leonid Andreyev, who was born in Oryol,
in 1871, is the most popular, and next to
Tolstoy, the most gifted writer in Russia
to-day. Andreyev has written many im-
portant stories and dramas, the best known
among which are “Red Laughter," "Life of
Man,” “To the Stars,” “The Life of Vasily
Fiveisky," "Eliazar," "Black Masks," and
“The Story of the Seven Who Were
Hanged.”
In “Red Laughter” he depicted the hor-
rors of war as few men had ever before done
it. He dipped his pen into the blood of
Russia and wrote the tragedy of the Man-
churian war.
In his "Life of Man" Andreyev produced
has been ranked by European critics with
some of the greatest dramatic masterpieces.
5
Foreword
The story of "The Seven Who Were
Hanged” is thus far his most important
achievement. The keen psychological in-
sight and the masterly simplicity with which
Andreyev has penetrated and depicted each
of the tragedies of the seven who were
hanged place him in the same class as an
artist with Russia's greatest masters of
fiction, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy.
I consider myself fortunate to be able to
present to the English-reading public this
remarkable work, which has already pro-
duced a profound impression in Europe and
which, I believe, is destined for a long time
to come to play an important part in open-
ing the eyes of the world to the horrors per-
petrated in Russia and to the violence and
iniquity of the destruction of human life,
whatever the error or the crime.
New York. HERMAN BERNSTEIN.
Fac-Simile of Leonid Andreyev's Letter to
Herman Bernstein,
Concerning the Story of “The Seven Who Were Hanged."
'i8 октября 1908 т.
• я очень радъ, много уваха вмый г.Бернштейнъ
(ето "Разсказъ о семи повѣденныхъ • будутъ чи тіть
на англійскомъ языкѣ. Несчастье всѣхъ насъ въ том,
что мы очень дало или совсѣмъ даже ничего не знаехъ
другъ о другѣ • ни о душѣ, ни о жизни, ни о страданіях
ни о привычкахъ , наклонностяхъ и стремленіяхъ, и ху.
дох вственная литература, которой я имѣю честь слухи т.
тѣмъ и дорога инв, что благороднѣйшей задачей своер
ставить уничтожиніе, границъ и разстояній.
Какъ въ, жесткую скорлупу, заключенъ каждый
человѣкъ въ свою оболочку изъ тѣла , платья и хизни.
Кто онъ ? • объ этомъ мы только догадываемся.; въ чемъ.
его радость и печаль? • объ этомъ Еы только гадаемъ
то его поступкамъ, часто загадочныхъ , по его смѣху и
слезакъ , часто совершенно намъ не понятникъ. и если
хы , русскiв , хивя въ тѣснотѣ и постоянной обидѣ, такъ
плохо понимаемъ друг друга ,что КЕЗнимъ безжалостно :
тамъ , гдѣ надо только халѣть или даже награњД4ть , и
награхдаемъ въ тѣхъ случаяхъ, когда нужно хорать про
(1)
эрѣні өмъ и гнѣвомъ. • то насколько же, труднѣе .B8-
шикъ, соотечественник виъ понять далежую Россива по-
халуй не иенѣе, трудно , чѣмъ намъ, русскимъ, понять дв-
декую Америку, о которой въ эности мы, мечтаехъ, и”надъ
которою такъ "лубоко , задумываемся"възрѣло мъ возраа хъ
Еврейскіе погроны и голодъ; парламентъ и
"казни грабежи и величайшее. геройство; "черная во кня?
и Левъ Толстой, • каков" смѣшеніе лицѣ и' понятій, кд •
«кой обильный и источникъ- для всяческиъ"нейоразумѣ-
ній.. Правда хизни “испуганно молчитъ , и громко кри,
читъ , ея наглая- лохь , вызыдая не отвязные и мучитель •
ные вопросы: кому , сочувствовать? кому вѣрить? кого
любить?
Въ разсказѣ o •Свии повѣшенныхъ я попы-
тался дать искренні й и безпристрастных отвѣтъ” на нѣ.
которые изъ этихъ, вопросовъ.
Насколько сдержанно и мягко отнесся" я, къ
правящей к казняцей* Россіи, об этомъ лучше всего го
Вори ты с
CC Кая: цензура, допустившая книгу: къ
обрасцен і свидѣтельство достаточно е , если «спомнить,
сколько“ книгъ, брошюръ и газетъ на шло вѣчный пок ой
въ мирной сваи полицейскихъ участковъ, поднялось къ
терпѣливому небуг съ’ дымомъ и пламенемъя кострв.
Но я и, не стремился, впрочемъ , къ осудено,
правительства , сдава объ умѣ и добредѣтөляхъ - котораго)
проникла далеко за предѣлы нашего , несчастнаго_оте
(qйстра. Скромное и стыдливое не въ мѣру своихъ досто
инствъ, оно истренне хотѣло бы уклониться и отъ этой
чести, но , къ сохалѣнію, съободная печать Америки и Ев-
роль не пощадила его скромности и дала достаточно яр
кую картину славной kѣятельности его. Можетъ быть;
здѣсь я и не прави: очень возмохно ,что много често
ные люди Америки вѣрятъ въ чистоту намѣрвній русска-
гаправительства . но это вопросъ столь сложный,что,
нуждается въ спеціально разработкѣ, для которой не-
обходимо и время и душевное сtокойствіе. Но нѣтъ
спокойной души въ Россіи.
Моей задачей было: указать аа ухасъ и яв
допустимость смертной казни » при всякихъ услові яхъ,
Великъ ужасъ казни , когда она достигаетъ людей мухва •
твенныхъ и честныхъ , виновыхъ лишь въ избыткѣ любви
и чувства • справедливости • здѣсъ возмущается совѣ»
сть. Но еде ужаснѣе веревка, когда она захлестывает
Кахется это: съ меньшей скорбью истрадані екъ я ско-
}{усѣ, нехели на удавленіе этихъ этихъ темныхъ, скор-
бныхъ главою и сврдцехъ тѣ і йцъ - Янсъна и Цыгаака,
Дахе послѣда ему, безударху укасу неотвратимо надвига•
ющейся смерти могутъ противоставить: Вернеръ - свой
просв іщенный укъ и закаленную волю , Хуся • свою чис •
тоту и безгрѣшность..?...а чѣиъ могутъ отозваться
слабые и грѣшные , какъ не без ури і виъ, какъ не глубочай-
дъ потрясені екъ эс хъ 40 сновъ своей человѣческой •
Души? А @хнъ то, на бивши руку на революці датарахъ, и вѣ
паютъ вперь по всей Руси: гдѣ по одному, гдѣ сразу по
десятку „Играющіе дѣти натыкаются на плохо за рытые
групы и собравшійся народъ съ ужасомъ смотритъ на
торчащіе изъ-подъ земли лапти; прокуроры, присутству •
рщ е при казняхъ , сходятъ съ ума и отвозятся въ боль-
яицу , а ихъ все , вѣшаютъ , все вѣшаютъ...
я глубоко , благодаренъ Вамъ ,г.Бернштейнъ,
за трудъ , который Вы взяли на себя переводомъ этой
сенальной повѣсти. Зная чутко,0ть американскаго на .
рода, когда то послав шаго черезъ океанъ корабли съ
хлѣб омъ для гою дающей Россіи , я увѣренъ ,что и здѣсь
вои соотечественники ,въ своей злой игорькой долѣ,
встрѣтятъ пониманіе и сочувствіе.И если моя правди-
вая повѣсть о семи изъ тысячъ повѣшенныхъ поможетъ
разрушиться хоть одной перегородкѣ, отдѣляющей народъ
огъ народа ,человѣка отъ человѣка , душу отъ души - я,
поя себя счастливыхъ.
ко, от ещи" 15
dos Curfaces
Ваммельсу, Финляндія.
INTRODUCTION
[Translation of the Foregoing Letter]
I am very glad that “The Story of the
Seven Who Were Hanged" will be read in
English. The misfortune of us all is that
we know so little, even nothing, about one
another-neither about the soul, nor the life,
the sufferings, the habits, the inclinations,
the aspirations of one another. Literature,
which I have the honor to serve, is dear to
me just because the noblest task it sets be-
fore itself is that of wiping out boundaries
and distances.
As in a hard shell, every human being is
enclosed in a cover of body, dress, and life.
Who is man? We may only conjecture.
What constitutes his joy or his sorrow? We
may guess only by his acts, which are oft-
times enigmatic; by his laughter and by his
11
12
Introduction
|
tears, which are often entirely incomprehen-
sible to us. And if we, Russians, who live
so closely together in constant misery, under-
stand one another so poorly that we merci-
lessly put to death those who should be pitied
or even rewarded, and reward those who
should be punished by contempt and anger
-how much more difficult is it for you
Americans, to understand distant Russia ?
But then, it is just as difficult for us Rus-
sians to understand distant America, of
which we dream in our youth and over which
we ponder so deeply in our years of maturity.
The Jewish massacres and famine; a
Parliament and executions; pillage and the
greatest heroism; “The Black Hundred,"
and Leo Tolstoy-what a mixture of figures
and conceptions, what a fruitful source for
all kinds of misunderstandings! The truth
of life stands aghast in silence, and its
brazen falsehood is loudly shouting, utter-
ing pressing, painful questions: “With
whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall I
trust? Whom shall I love?"
In the story of “The Seven Who Were
Introduction
13
Hanged" I attempted to give a sincere and
unprejudiced answer to some of these ques-
tions.
That I have treated ruling and slaughter-
ing Russia with restraint and mildness may
best be gathered from the fact that the Rus-
sian censor has permitted my book to circu-
late. This is sufficient evidence when we re-
call how many books, brochures and newspa-
pers have found eternal rest in the peaceful
shade of the police stations, where they have
risen to the patient sky in the smoke and
flame of bonfires.
But I did not attempt to condemn the
Government, the fame of whose wisdom and
virtues has already spread far beyond the
boundaries of our unfortunate fatherland.
Modest and bashful far beyond all measure
of her virtues, Russia would sincerely wish
to forego this honor, but unfortunately the
free press of America and Europe has not
spared her modesty, and has given a suffic-
iently clear picture of her glorious activities.
Perhaps I am wrong in this: it is possible
that many honest people in America believe
14
Introduction
in the purity of the Russian Government's
intentions—but this question is of such im-
portance that it requires a special treatment,
for which it is necessary to have both time
and calm of soul. But there is no calm soul
in Russia.
My task was to point out the horror and
the iniquity of capital punishment under any
circumstances. The horror of capital pun-
ishment is great when it falls to the lot of
courageous and honest people whose only
righteousness-in such instances, conscience
revolts. But the rope is still more horrible
when it forms the noose around the necks of
weak and ignorant people. And however
strange it may appear, I look with a lesser
grief and suffering upon the execution of
the revolutionists, such as Werner and Mus-
ya, than upon the strangling of ignorant
murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like
Yanson and Tsiganok. Even the last mad
horror of inevitably approaching execution
Werner can offset by his enlightened mind
Introduction
15
and his iron will, and Musya, by her purity
and her innocence. * * *
But how are the weak and the sinful to
face it if not in madness, with the most vio-
lent shock to the very foundation of their
souls? And these people, now that the Gov-
ernment has steadied its hands through its
experience with the revolutionists, are being
hanged throughout Russia-in some places
dren at play come upon badly buried bodies,
and the crowds which gather look with hor-
ror upon the peasants' boots that are stick-
ing out of the ground; prosecutors who have
witnessed these executions are becoming in-
sane and are taken away to hospitals—while
the people are being hanged—being hanged.
! I am deeply grateful to you for the task
you have undertaken in translating this sad
story. Knowing the sensitiveness of the
American people, who at one time sent
TA
TTYY
· famine-stricken Russia, I am convinced that
in this case our people in their misery and
bitterness will also find understanding and
16
Introduction
sympathy. And if my truthful story about
seven of the thousands who were hanged will
help toward destroying at least one of the
barriers which separate one nation from an-
other, one human being from another, one
soul from another soul, I shall consider my-
self happy.
Respectfully yours,
LEONID ANDREYEV.
THE SEVEN WHO WERE
HANGED
CHAPTER I
AT ONE O'CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY!
.
As the Minister was a very stout man, in-
clined to apoplexy, they feared to arouse in
him any dangerous excitement, and it was
with every possible precaution that they in-
formed him that a very serious attempt upon
his life had been planned. When they saw
that he received the news calmly, even with a
smile, they gave him, also, the details. The
attempt was to be made on the following day
at the time that he was to start out with his
official report; several men, terrorists, whose
18
The Seven
plans had already been betrayed by a provo-
cateur, and who were now under the vigilant
surveillance of detectives, were to meet at
one o'clock in the afternoon in front of his
house, and, armed with bombs and revolvers,
were to wait till he came out. There the
"Wait!" muttered the Minister, perplexed.
"How did they know that I was to leave
the house at one o'clock in the afternoon
with my report, when I myself learned of it
only the day before yesterday?"
The Chief of the Guards stretched out his
arms with a shrug.
"Exactly at one o'clock in the afternoon,
your Excellency,” he said.
Half surprised, half commending the
work of the police, who had managed every-
thing skilfully, the Minister shook his head,
a morose smile upon his thick, dark lips, and
still smiling obediently, and not desiring to
interfere with the plans of the police, he
hastily made ready, and went out to pass
the night in some one else's hospitable palace,
His wife and his two children were also re-
Who Were Hanged
moved from the dangerous house, before
which the bomb-throwers were to gather
upon the following day.
While the lights were burning in the
palace, and courteous, familiar faces were
bowing to him, smiling and expressing their
concern, the dignitary experienced a sensa-
tion of pleasant excitement-he felt as if he
had already received, or was soon to receive,
some great and unexpected reward. But
the people went away, the lights were ex-
tinguished, and through the mirrors, the
lace-like and fantastic reflection of the elec-
tric lamps on the street, quivered across the
ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in
the house, with its paintings, its statues and
its silence, the light-itself silent and indefi-
nite-awakened painful thoughts in him as
to the vanity of bolts and guards and walls.
And then, in the dead of night, in the silence
and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensa-
tion of unbearable fear swept over the digni-
tary.
He had some kidney trouble, and when-
ever he grew strongly agitated, his face, his
20
hands and his feet became swollen. Now,
rising like a mountain of bloated flesh above
the taut springs of the bed, he felt, with the
anguish of a sick man, his swollen face, which
seemed to him to belong to some one else.
Unceasingly he kept thinking of the cruel
fate which people were preparing for him.
He recalled, one after another, all the recent
horrible instances of bombs that had been
thrown at men of even greater eminence than
himself; he recalled how the bombs had torn
bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over
dirty brick walls, had knocked teeth from
their roots. And influenced by these medita-
tions, it seemed to him that his own stout,
sickly body, outspread on the bed, was al-
ready experiencing the fiery shock of the
explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his
arms being severed from the shoulders, his
teeth knocked out, his brains scattered into
particles, his feet growing numb, lying
quietly, their toes upward, like those of a
dead man. He stirred with an effort,
breathed loudly and coughed in order not to
seem to himself to resemble a corpse in any
Who Were Hanged 21
way. He encouraged himself with the live
noise of the grating springs, of the rustling
blanket; and to assure himself that he was
actually alive and not dead, he uttered in a
bass voice, loudly and abruptly, in the si-
lence and solitude of the bedroom:
"Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi! (Good
boys)!”
He was praising the detectives, the police,
and the soldiers—all those who guarded his
life, and who so opportunely and so cleverly
had averted the assassination. But even
his protectors, even though he forced an un-
natural smile, in order to express his con-
tempt for the foolish, unsuccessful terror-
ists, he nevertheless did not believe in his
safety, he was not sure that his life would
not leave him suddenly, at once. Death,
which people had devised for him, and which
was only in their minds, in their intention,
seemed to him to be already standing there
in the room. It seemed to him that Death
would remain standing there, and would not
go away until those people had been cap-
22
The Seven
tured, until the bombs had been taken from
them, until they had been placed in a strong
prison. There Death was standing in the
corner, and would not go away—it could not
go away, even as an obedient sentinel sta-
tioned on guard by a superior's will and
order.
"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Ex-
cellency!” this phrase kept ringing, changing
its tone continually: now it was cheerfully
mocking, now angry, now dull and obsti-
nate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up
gramophones had been placed in his room,
and all of them, one after another, were
shouting with idiotic repetition the words
they had been made to shout:
“At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Ex-
cellency!"
And suddenly, this one o'clock in the after-
noon to-morrow, which but a short while ago
was not in any way different from other
hours, which was only a quiet movement of
the hand along the dial of his gold watch,
assumed an ominous finality, sprang out of
the dial, began to live separately, stretched
Who Were Hanged 23
itself into an enormously huge black pole
which cut all life in two. It seemed as if no
other hours had existed before it and no
other hours would exist after it as if this
hour alone, insolent and presumptuous, had
a right to a certain peculiar existence.
"Well, what do you want?" asked the
Minister angrily, muttering between his
teeth.
The gramophone shouted:
“At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Ex-
cellency!” and the black pole smiled and
bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister
rose in his bed to a sitting posture, leaning
his face on the palms of his hands-he posi-
tively could not sleep on that dreadful night.
Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed
palms, he pictured to himself with horrify-
ing clearness how on the following morning,
not knowing anything of the plot against
his life, he would have risen, would have
drunk his coffee, not knowing anything, and
then would have put on his coat in the hall-
way. And neither he, nor the doorkeeper
who would have handed him his fur coat, nor
24
The Seven
TI
the lackey who would have brought him the
coffee, would have known that it was utterly
useless to drink coffee, and to put on the
coat, since a few instants later, ererything-
the fur coat and his body and the coffee
within it—would be destroyed by an explo-
sion, would be seized by death. The door-
keeper would have opened the glass
door. ... He, the amiable, kind, gen-
tle doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of
a soldier, and with medals across his breast-
he himself with his own hands would have
opened the terrible door, opened it because
he knew nothing. Everybody would have
smiled because they did not know anything.
“Oho!” he suddenly said aloud, and
slowly removed his hands from his face.
Peering into the darkness, far ahead of him,
with a fixed, strained look, he outstretched
his hand just as slowly, felt the button on
the wall and pressed it. Then he arose, and
without putting on his slippers, walked in
his bare feet over the rug in the strange, un-
farniliar bedroom, found the button of an-
Who Were Hanged 25
became light and pleasant, and only the dis-
arranged bed with the blanket, which had
slipped off to the floor, spoke of the horror,
not altogether past.
In his night-clothes, with his beard dis-
heveled by his restless movements, with his
angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any
other angry old man who suffered with in-
somnia and shortness of breath. It was as
if the death which people were preparing for
him, had made him bare, had torn away from
him the magnificence and splendor which had
surrounded him and it was hard to believe
that it was he who had so much power, that
his body was but an ordinary plain human
body that must have perished terribly in the
flame and roar of a monstrous explosion.
Without dressing himself and not feeling the
cold, he sat down in the first armchair he
found, stroking his disheveled beard, and
fixed his eyes in deep, calm thoughtfulness
upon the unfamiliar plaster figures of the
ceiling.
So that was the trouble! That was why
he had trembled in fear and had become so
26
The Seven
agitated! That was why Death seemed to
stand in the corner and would not go away,
could not go away!
"Fools!” he said emphatically, with con-
tempt.
"Fools!” he repeated more loudly, and
turned his head slightly toward the door that
those to whom he was referring might hear
it. He was referring to those whom he had
praised but a moment before, who in the ex-
cess of their zeal had told him of the plot
against his life.
"Of course," he thought deeply, an easy,
convincing idea arising in his mind. "Now
that they have told me, I know, and feel
terrified, but if I had not been told, I would
not have known anything and would have
drunk my coffee calmly. After that Death
would have come--but then, am I so afraid
of Death? Here have I been suffering with
kidney trouble, and I must surely die from
it some day, and yet I am not afraid-be-
cause I do not know anything. And those
fools told me: 'At one o'clock in the after-
noon, your Excellency!' and they thought I
Who Were Hanged 27
would be glad. But instead of that Death
stationed itself in the corner and would not
go away. It would not go away because it
was my thought. It is not death that is ter-
rible, but the knowledge of it: it would be
utterly impossible to live if a man could
know exactly and definitely the day and hour
of his death. And the fools cautioned me:
‘At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excel-
lency!! »
He began to feel light-hearted and cheer-
ful, as if some one had told him that he was
immortal, that he would never die. And, feel-
ing himself again strong and wise amidst
the herd of fools who had so stupidly and
impudently broken into the mystery of the
future, he began to think of the bliss of
ignorance, and his thoughts were the pain-
ful thoughts of an old, sick man who had
gone through endless experience. It was
not given to any living being-man or beast
—to know the day and hour of death. Here
had he been ill not long ago and the physi-
cians told him that he must expect the end,
that he should make his final arrangements
28
The Seven
....
..
........
but he had not believed them and he re-
mained alive. In his youth he had become
entangled in an affair and had resolved to
end his life; he had even loaded the revolver,
had written his letters, and had fixed upon
the hour for suicide-but before the very
end he had suddenly changed his mind. It
would always be thus—at the very last mo-
ment something would change, an unex-
pected accident would befall-no one could
tell when he would die.
"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Ex-
cellency!” those kind asses had said to him,
and although they had told him of it only
that death might be averted, the mere knowl-
edge of its possibility at a certain hour again
filled him with horror. It was probable that
some day he should be assassinated, but it
would not happen to-morrow-it would not
happen to-morrow-and he could sleep un-
disturbed, as if he were really immortal.
Fools—they did not know what a great law
they had dislodged, what an abyss they had
opened, when they said in their idiotic kind-
Who Were Hanged
29
ness: “At one o'clock in the afternoon, your
Excellency!"
"No, not at one o'clock in the afternoon,
your Excellency, but no one knows when.
No one knows when! What?”
“Nothing," answered Silence, “nothing."
“But you did say something."
"Nothing, nonsense. I say: to-morrow,
at one o'clock in the afternoon!”
There was a sudden, acute pain in his
heart--and he understood that he would have
neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that
accursed black hour standing out of the dial
should have passed. Only the shadow of the
knowledge of something which no living be-
ing could know stood there in the corner, and
that was enough to darken the world and
envelop him with the impenetrable gloom of
horror. The once disturbed fear of death
diffused through his body, penetrated into
his bones.
He no longer feared the murderers of the
next day—they had vanished, they had been
forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd
of hostile faces and incidents which sur-
30
The Seven
rounded his life. He now feared something
sudden and inevitable--an apoplectic stroke,
heart failure, some foolish thin little vessel
which might suddenly fail to withstand the
pressure of the blood and might burst like
a tight glove upon swollen fingers.
His short, thick neck seemed terrible to
him. It became unbearable for him to look
upon his short, swollen fingers to feel how
short they were and how they were filled
with the moisture of death. And if before,
when it was dark, he had had to stir in order
not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright,
cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so filled
with horror that he could not move in order
to get a cigarette or to ring for some one.
His nerves were giving way. Each one of
them seemed as if it were a bent wire, at
the top of which there was a small head with
mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a con-
vulsively gaping, speechless mouth. He
could not draw his breath.
Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust
and cobwebs somewhere upon the ceiling, an
Who Were Hanged
31
lic tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept strik-
ing the edge of the ringing cap, became si-
lent—and again quivered in an unceasing,
frightened din. His Excellency was ring-
ing his bell in his own room.
People began to run. Here and there, in
the shadows upon the walls, lamps flared up
—there were not enough of them to give
light, but there were enough to cast shadows.
The shadows appeared everywhere; they
rose in the corners, they stretched across
the ceiling; tremulously clinging to each and
every elevation, they covered the walls. And
it was hard to understand where all these
innumerable, deformed silent shadows-
voiceless souls of voiceless objects—had been
before.
A deep, trembling voice said something
loudly. Then the doctor was hastily sum-
moned by telephone; the dignitary was col-
also called.
CHAPTER II
CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED
EVERYTHING befell as the police had fore-
told. Four terrorists, three men and a
chines and revolvers, were seized at the very
entrance of the house, and another woman
was later found and arrested in the house
where the conspiracy had been hatched.
She was its mistress. At the same time a
great deal of dynamite and half finished
bomb explosives were seized. All those ar-
rested were very young; the eldest of the
men was twenty-eight years old, the younger
of the women was only nineteen. They were
tried in the same fortress in which they were
imprisoned after the arrest; they were tried
swiftly and secretly, as was done during that
unmerciful time.
1
32
Who Were Hanged 33
MT
DLL
At the trial all of them were calm, but
very serious and thoughtful. Their con-
tempt for the judges was so intense that
none of them wished to emphasize his dar-
ing by even a superfluous smile or by a
feigned expression of cheerfulness. Each
was simply as calm as was necessary to
hedge in his soul, from curious, evil and
inimical eyes, the great gloom that precedes
death.
Sometimes they refused to answer ques-
tions; sometimes they answered, briefly,
simply and precisely, as though they were
answering not the judge, but statisticians,
for the purpose of supplying information
for particular special tables. Three of
them, one woman and two men, gave their
real names, while two others refused and
thus remained unknown to the judges.
They manifested for all that was going
on at the trial a certain curiosity, softened,
as though through a haze, such as is peculiar
to persons who are very ill or are carried
away by some great, all-absorbing idea.
They glanced up occasionally, caught some
YA
1
34
The Seven
word in the air more interesting than the
others, and then resumed the thought from
which their attention had been distracted.
The man who was nearest to the judges
called himself Sergey Golovin, the son of a
retired colonel, himself an ex-officer. He was
still a very young, light-haired, broad-shoul-
dered man, so strong that neither the prison
nor the expectation of inevitable death could
remove the color from his cheeks and the ex-
pression of youthful, happy frankness from
his blue eyes. He kept energetically tug-
ging at his bushy, small beard, to which he
had not become accustomed, and continually
blinking, kept looking out of the window.
It was toward the end of winter, when
amidst the snowstorms and the gloomy,
frosty days, the approaching spring sent as
a forerunner a clear, warm, sunny day, or
but an hour, yet so full of spring, so eagerly
young and beaming that sparrows on the
streets lost their wits for joy, and people
seemed almost as intoxicated. And now the
strange and beautiful sky could be seen
through an upper window which was dust-
Who Were Hanged
35
covered and unwashed since the last sum-
mer. At first sight the sky seemed to be
milky-gray-smoke-colored—but when you
looked longer the dark blue color began to
penetrate through the shade, grew into an
ever deeper blue—ever brighter, ever more
intense. And the fact that it did not re-
veal itself all at once, but hid itself chastely
in the smoke of transparent clouds, made it
as charming as the girl you love. And
Sergey Golovin looked at the sky, tugged
at his beard, blinked now one eye, now the
other, with its long, curved lashes, earnestly
pondering over something. Once he began
to move his fingers rapidly and thought-
lessly, knitted his brow in some joy, but then
he glanced about and his joy died out like a
spark which is stepped upon. Almost in-
stantly an earthen, deathly blue, without
first changing into pallor, showed through
the color of his cheeks. He clutched his
downy hair, tore their roots painfully with
his fingers, whose tips had turned white.
But the joy of life and spring was stronger,
36
The Seven
SA
and a few minutes later his frank young face
was again yearning toward the spring sky.
The young, pale girl, known only by the
name of Musya, was also looking in the same
direction, at the sky. She was younger than
Golovin, but she seemed older in her gravity
and in the darkness of her open, proud eyes.
Only her very thin, slender neck, and her
delicate girlish hands spoke of her youth;
but in addition there was that ineffable some-
thing, which is youth itself, and which
sounded so distinctly in her clear, melodious
voice, tuned irreproachably like a precious
instrument, every simple word, every excla-
mation giving evidence of its musical timbre.
She was very pale, but it was not a deathly
pallor, but that peculiar warm whiteness of
a person within whom, as it were, a great,
strong fire is burning, whose body glows
transparently like fine Sèvres porcelain.
She sat almost motionless, and only at times
she touched with an imperceptible movement
of her fingers the circular mark on the
middle finger of her right hand, the mark of
a ring which had been recently removed.
Who Were Hanged 37
r
.
?91:.-
N
.
....;"
..
.
...
..
WA
VICHY
She gazed at the sky without caressing kind-,
ness or joyous recollectionsshe looked at
it simply because in all the filthy, official hall
the blue bit of sky was the most beautiful,
the purest, the most truthful object, and the
only one that did not try to search hidden
depths in her eyes.
The judges pitied Sergey Golovin; her
they despised. ****
Her neighbor, known only by the name of
Werner, sat also motionless, in a somewhat
affected pose, his hands folded between his
knees. If a face may be said to look like
a false door, this unknown man closed his
face like an iron door and bolted it with an
iron lock. He stared motionlessly at the
dirty wooden floor, and it was impossible to
tell whether he was calm or whether he was
intensely agitated, whether he was thinking
of something, or whether he was listening to
the testimony of the detectives as presented
to the court. He was not tall in stature.
His features were refined and delicate.
Tender and handsome, so that he reminded
you of a moonlit night in the South near the
38
The Seven
seashore, where the cypress trees throw their
dark shadows, he at the same time gave the
impression of tremendous, calm power, of in-
vincible firmness, of cold and audacious cour-
age. The very politeness with which he
gave brief and precise answers seemed dan-
gerous, on his lips, in his half bow. And if
the prison garb looked upon the others like
the ridiculous costume of a buffoon, upon
him it was not noticeable, so foreign was it
to his personality. And although the other
terrorists had been seized with bombs and
infernal machines upon them, and Werner
had had but a black revolver, the judges for
some reason regarded him as the leader of
the others and treated him with a certain
deference, although succinctly and in a busi-
ness-like manner.
The next man, Vasily. Kashirin, was torn
between a terrible, dominating fear of death
and a desperate desire to restrain the fear
and not betray it to the judges. From
early morning, from the time they had been
led into court, he had been suffocating from
an intolerable palpitation of his heart. Per-
.::.
U
.:-
Who Were S
.
Hanged 39
spiration came out in drops all along his
forehead; his hands were also perspiring and
cold, and his cold, sweat-covered shirt clung
to his body, interfering with the freedom of
his movements. With a supernatural effort
of will-power he forced his fingers not to
tremble, his voice to be firm and distinct,
his eyes to be calm. He saw nothing about
him; the voices came to him as through a
mist, and it was to this mist that he made
his desperate efforts to answer firmly, to
answer loudly. But having answered, he
immediately forgot question as well as an-
swer, and was again struggling with him-
self silently and terribly. Death was dis-
closed in him so clearly that the judges
avoided looking at him. It was hard to
define his age, as is the case with a corpse
which has begun to decompose. According
to his passport, he was only twenty-three
years old. Once or twice Werner quietly
touched his knee with his hand, and each
time Kashirin spoke shortly:
“Never mind!”
The most terrible sensation was when he
40
The Seven
L
1
ince
n timedias
in
?"
i7 MSKI
was suddenly seized with an insufferable de-
sire to cry out, without words, the desperate
cry of a beast. He touched Werner quickly,
and Werner, without lifting his eyes, said
softly:
"Never mind, Vasya. It will soon be
over.”
And embracing them all with a motherly,
anxious look, the fifth terrorist, Tanya
Kovalchuk, was faint with alarm. She had
never had any children; she was still young
and red-cheeked, just as Sergey Golovin, but
she seemed as a mother to all of them: so full
of anxiety, of boundless love were her looks,
her smiles, her sighs. She paid not the
slightest attention to the trial, regarding it
as though it were something entirely irrele-
vant, and she listened only to the manner
in which the others were answering the quesa
tions, to hear whether the voice was trem-
bling, whether there was fear, whether it was
necessary to give water to any one.
She could not look at Vasya in her anguish
and only wrung her fingers silently. At
Musya and Werner she gazed proudly and
11
Who Were Hanged
respectfully, and she assumed a serious and
concentrated expression, and then tried to
transfer her smile to Sergey Golovin.
"The dear boy is looking at the sky.
Golovin.
“And Vasya! What is it? My God, my
God! What am I to do with him? If I
should speak to him I might make it still
worse. He might suddenly start to cry.”-
So like a calm pond at dawn, reflecting
every hastening, passing cloud, she reflected
upon her full, gentle, kind face every swift
sensation, every thought of the other four.
She did not give a single thought to the fact
that she, too, was upon trial, that she, too,
would be hanged; she was entirely indifferent
to it. It was in her house that the bombs
and the dynamite had been discovered, and,
strange though it may seem, it was she who
had met the police with pistol-shots and had
wounded one of the detectives in the head.
• The trial ended at about eight o'clock,
when it had become dark. Before Musya's
and Golovin's eyes the sky, which had been
42
The Seven
IT
LI
turning ever bluer, was gradually losing its
tint, but it did not turn rosy, did not smile
softly as in summer evenings, but became
muddy, gray, and suddenly grew cold, win-
try. Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched him-
self, glanced again twice at the window, but
the cold darkness of the night alone was
there; then continuing to tug at his short
beard, he began to examine with childish
curiosity the judges, the soldiers with their
muskets, and he smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk.
When the sky had darkened Musya calmly,
without lowering her eyes to the ground,
turned them to the corner where a small
cobweb was quivering from the impercept-
ible radiations of the steam heat, and thus
she remained until the sentence was pro-
nounced.
After the verdict, having bidden good-by
to their frock-coated lawyers, and evading
each other's helplessly confused, pitying and
guilty eyes, the convicted terrorists crowded
in the doorway for a moment and exchanged
brief words.
YTY
-
:.
Who Were Hanged 43
.
..
!
*
**
“Never mind, Vasya. Everything will be
over soon,” said Werner.
"I am all right, brother,” Kashirin replied
loudly, calmly and even somewhat cheer-
fully. And indeed, his face had turned
slightly rosy, and no longer looked like that
of a decomposing corpse.
“The devil take them; they've hanged us,”
Golovin cursed quaintly.
“That was to be expected,” replied
Werner calmly.
"To-morrow the sentence will be pro-
nounced in its final form and we shall all be
placed together," said Tanya Kovalchuk
consolingly. “Until the execution we shall
all be together.”
Musya was silent. Then she resolutely
moved forward.
Legendary
CHAPTER III
WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?
Two weeks before the terrorists had been
tried the same military district court, with a
different set of judges, had tried and con-
demned to death by hanging Ivan Yanson, a'
peasant.
Ivan Yanson was a workman for a well-
to-do farmer, in no way different from other
workmen. He was an Esthonian by birth,
from Vezenberg, and in the course of several
years, passing from one farm to another, he
had come close to the capital. He spoke
Russian very poorly, and as his master was
a Russian, by name Lazarev, and as there
were no Esthonians in the neighborhood,
Yanson had practically remained silent for
almost two years. In general, he was ap-
parently not inclined to talk, and was silent
44
Who Were Hanged
45
TS
11
not only with human beings, but even with
animals. He would water the horse in si-
lence, harness it in silence, moving about it,
slowly and lazily, with short, irresolute steps,
and when the horse, annoyed by his manner,
would begin to frolic, to become capricious,
he would beat it in silence with a heavy whip.
He would beat it cruelly, with stolid, angry
persistency, and when this happened at a
time when he was suffering from the after
effects of a carouse, he would work himself
into à frenzy. At such times the crack of
..
IDOL
the frightened, painful pounding of the
horse's hoofs upon the board floor of the
barn. For beating the horse his master
would beat Yanson, but then, finding that he
could not be reformed, paid no more atten-
tion to him.
Once or twice a month Yanson became in-
toxicated, usually on those days when he took
his master to the large railroad station, where
there was a refreshment bar. After leaving
his master at the station, he would drive off
about half a verst away, and there, stalling
46
The Seven
5
AN
W
Ose.
171
the sled and the horse in the snow on the side
of the road, he would wait until the train
had gone. The sled would stand sideways,
almost overturned, the horse standing with
widely spread legs up to his belly in a snow-
bank, from time to time lowering his head
to lick the soft, downy snow, while Yanson
would recline in an awkward position in the
sled as if dozing away. The unfastened ear-
lappets of his worn fur cap would hang down
like the ears of a setter, and the moist sweat
would stand under his little reddish nose.
Soon he would return to the station, and
would quickly become intoxicated.
On his way back to the farm, the whole
ten versts, he would drive at a fast gallop.
The little horse, driven to madness by the
whip, would rear, as if possessed by a demon;
the sled would sway, almost overturn, strik-
ing against poles, and Yanson, letting the
reins go, would half sing, half exclaim ab-
rupt, meaningless phrases in Esthonian.
But more often he would not sing, but with
his teeth gritted together in an onrush of
unspeakable rage, suffering and delight, he
DO
Who Were Hanged
47
would drive silently on as though blind. He
would not notice those who passed him, he
would not call to them to look out, he would
not slacken his mad pace, either at the turns
of the road or on the long slopes of the
mountain roads. How it happened at such
times that he crushed no one, how he him-
these mad rides, was inexplicable.
He would have been driven from this
place, as he had been driven from other
places, but he was cheap and other workmen
were not better, and thus he remained there
two years. His life was uneventful. One
day he received a letter, written in Esthon-
ian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as
the others did not understand Esthonian, the
letter remained unread; and as if not under-
standing that the letter might bring him tid-
ings from his native home, he flung it into
the manure with a certain savage, grim in-
difference. At one time Yanson tried to
cessful, and was rudely rejected and ridi-
culed. He was short in stature, his face was
48
The Seven
W-CO
Isa-
freckled, and his small, sleepy eyes were
somewhat of an indefinite color. Yanson
took his failure indifferently, and never
again bothered the cook.
But while Yanson spoke but little, he was
listening to something all the time. He
heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered
fields, with their heaps of frozen manure re-
sembling rows of small, snow-covered graves,
the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the
buzzing telegraph wires, and the conversa-
tion of other people. What the fields and
telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew,
and the conversation of the people were dis-
quieting, full of rumors about murders and
robberies and arson. And one night he
heard in the neighboring village the little
church bell ringing faintly and helplessly,
and the crackling of the flames of a fire.
Some vagabonds had plundered a rich farm,
had killed the master and his wife, and had
... set fire to the house.
And on their farm, too, they lived in fear;
the dogs were loose, not only at night, but
also during the day, and the master slept
Who Were Hanged
. 49
with a gun by his side. He wished to give
such a gun to Yanson, only it was an old
one with one barrel. But Yanson turned
the gun about in his hand, shook his head
and declined it. His master did not under-
IICI!
reason was that Yanson had more faith in
the power of his Finnish knife than in the
rusty gun.
"It would kill me,” he said, looking at
his master sleepily with his glassy eyes, and
the master waved his hand in despair.
"You fool! Think of having to live with
such workmen!”
And this same Ivan Yanson, who dis-
trusted a gun, one winter evening, when the
other workmen had been sent away to the
station, committed a very complicated at
tempt at robbery, murder and rape. He
did it in a surprisingly simple manner. He
locked the cook in the kitchen, lazily, with
the air of a man who is longing to sleep,
walked over to his master from behind and
swiftly stabbed him several times in the back
with his knife. The master fell unconscious,
50
The Seven
and the mistress began to run about, scream-
ing, while Yanson, showing his teeth and
brandishing his knife, began to ransack the
trunks and the chests of drawers. He found
the money he sought, and then, as if notic-
ing the mistress for the first time, and as
though unexpectedly even to himself, he
rushed upon her in order to violate her. But
as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the
mistress proved stronger than he, and not
only did not allow him to harm her, but
almost choked him into unconsciousness.
Then the master on the floor turned, the cook
thundered upon the door with the oven-fork,
breaking it open, and Yanson ran away into
the fields. He was caught an hour later,
kneeling down behind the corner of the barn,
striking one match after another, which
would not ignite, in an attempt to set the
place on fire.
A few days later the master died of blood
poisoning, and Yanson, when his turn among
other robbers and murderers came, was tried
and condemned to death. In court he was
the same as always; a little man, freckled,
Place not io match
Who Were Hanged
51
with sleepy, glassy eyes. It seemed as if
he did not understand in the least the mean-
ing of what was going on about him; he
appeared to be entirely indifferent. He
blinked his white eyelashes, stupidly, without
curiosity; examined the sombre, unfamiliar
courtroom, and picked his nose with his hard,
shriveled, unbending finger. Only those who
had seen him on Sundays at church would
have known that he had made an attempt
to adorn himself. He wore on his neck a
knitted, muddy-red shawl, and in places had
dampened the hair of his head. Where the
hair was wet it lay dark and smooth, while
on the other side it stuck up in light and
sparse tufts, like straws upon a hail-beaten,
wasted meadow.
When the sentence was pronounced-
death by hanging-Yanson suddenly became
agitated. He reddened deeply and began to
tie and untie the shawl about his neck as
though it were choking him. Then he waved
his arms stupidly and said, turning to the
judge who had not read the sentence, and
52
The Seven
pointing with his finger at the judge who
read it:
"He said that I should be hanged.”
“Who do you mean?” asked the presiding
judge, who had pronounced the sentence in
a deep, bass voice. Every one smiled; some
tried to hide their smiles behind their mus-
taches and their papers. Yanson pointed his
index finger at the presiding judge and an-
swered angrily, looking at him askance:
“You!"
“Well?"
Yanson again turned his eyes to the judge
who had been silent, restraining a smile,
whom he felt to be a friend, a man who had
nothing to do with the sentence, and re-
peated:
"He said I should be hanged. Why must
I be hanged?”
"Take the prisoner away."
But Yanson succeeded in repeating once
more, convincingly and weightily:
“Why must I be hanged ?”
He looked so absurd, with his small, angry
face, with his outstretched finger, that even
Who Were Hanged
53
the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule,
said to him in an undertone as he led him
away from the courtroom:
“You are a fool, young man!”
"Why must I be hanged?” repeated Yan-
son stubbornly.
“They'll swing you up so quickly that
you'll have no time to kick."
"Keep still!” cried the other convoy an-
grily. But he himself could not refrain from
adding:
"A robber, too! · Why did you take a
human life, you fool? You must hang for
that!”
“They might pardon him," said the first
soldier, who began to feel sorry for Yanson.
"Oh, yes! They'll pardon people like him,
will they? Well, we've talked enough."
But Yanson had become silent again.
He was again placed in the cell in which
he had already sat for a month and to which
he had grown accustomed, just as he had be-
come accustomed to everything: to blows, to
vodka, to the dismal, snow-covered fields,
with their snow-heaps resembling graves.
The Seven
And now he even began to feel cheerful when
he saw his bed, the familiar window with
the grating, and when he was given some-
thing to eat he had not eaten anything since
morning. He had an unpleasant recollection
of what had taken place in the court, but of
that he could not think-he was unable to
recall it. And death by hanging he could
not picture to himself at all.
Although Yanson had been condemned to
death, there were many others similarly sen-
tenced, and he was not regarded as an im-
portant criminal. They spoke to him ac-
cordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just
as they would speak to prisoners who were
not to be executed. The warden, on learn-
ing of the verdict, said to him:
"Well, my friend, they've hanged you!”
“When are they going to hang me?" asked
Yanson distrustfully. The warden medi-
tated a moment.
"Well, you'll have to wait until they can
get together a whole party. It isn't worth
bothering for one man, especially for a man
Who Were Hanged 55
CO
like you. It is necessary to work up the
right spirit.”
"And when will that be?” persisted Yan-
son. He was not at all offended that it was
not worth while to hang him alone. He did
not believe it, but considered it as an excuse
for postponing the execution, preparatory to
revoking it altogether. And he was seized
with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of
which it was so painful to think, retreated
far into the distance, becoming fictitious and
improbable, as death always seems.
"When? When?” cried the warden, a
dull, morose old man, growing angry. “It
isn't like hanging a dog, which you take be-
hind the barn—and it is done in no time. I
suppose you would like to be hanged like
that, you fool!”
"I don't want to be hanged," and suddenly
Yanson frowned strangely. “He said that
I should be hanged, but I don't want it.""
And perhaps for the first time in his life
he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and
joyous laughter. It sounded like the cack-
ling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The warden
i...
::-
-.
56
The Seven
locked at him in astonishment, then knit his
brow sternly. This strange gayety of a man
who was to be executed was an offence to
the prison, as well as to the very executioner;
it made them appear absurd. And suddenly,
for the briefest instant, it appeared to the
old warden, who had passed all his life in
the prison, and who looked upon its laws as
the laws of nature, that the prison and all
the life within it was something like an insane
asylum, in which he, the warden, was the
chief lunatic.
"Pshaw! The devil take you!” and he
spat aside. “Why are you giggling here?
This is no dramshop!"
“And I don't want to be hanged-ga-
"Satan!” muttered the inspector, feeling
the need of making the sign of the cross.
This little man, with his small, wizened
face-he resembled least of all the devil
but there was that in his silly giggling which
destroyed the sanctity and the strength of
the prison. If he laughed longer, it seemed
to the warden as if the walls might fall
Who Were Hanged
ITTY
asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if
the warden himself might lead the prisoners
to the gates, bowing and saying: "Take a
walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some
of you would like to go to the village?”.
“Satan!"
But Yanson had stopped laughing, and
was now winking cunningly.
"You had better look out!" said the
warden, with an indefinite threat, and he
walked away, glancing back of him.
Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout
the evening. He repeated to himself, “I
shall not be hanged," and it seemed to him so
convincing, so wise, so irrefutable, that it was
unnecessary to feel uneasy. He had long
forgotten about his crime, only sometimes he
regretted that he had not been successful in
attacking his master's wife. But he soon
forgot that, too.
Every morning Yanson asked when he
was to be hanged, and every morning the
warden answered him angrily:
“Take your time, you devil! Wait!" and
T
77
58
The Seven
he would walk off quickly before Yanson
could begin to laugh.
And from these monotonously repeated
words, and from the fact that each day came,
passed and ended as every ordinary day had
passed, Yanson became convinced that there
would be no execution. He began to lose all
memory of the trial, and would roll about
all day long on his cot, vaguely and happily
dreaming about the white melancholy fields,
with their snow-mounds, about the refresh-
ment bar at the railroad station, and about
other things still more vague and bright.
He was well fed in the prison, and somehow
he began to grow stout rapidly and to as-
sume airs.
"Now she would have liked me," he
thought of his master's wife. "Now I am
stout--not worse-looking than the master.”
But he longed for a drink of vodka, to
drink and to take a ride on horseback, to ride
fast, madly.
When the terrorists were arrested the news
of it reached the prison. And in answer to
Who Were Hanged
59
Yanson's usual question, the warden said
eagerly and unexpectedly:
"It won't be long now!"
He looked at Yanson calmly with an air
of importance and repeated:
"It won't be long now. I suppose in
about a week.”
Yanson turned pale, and as though falling
asleep, so turbid was the look in his glassy
eyes, asked:
"Are you joking?”
"First you could not wait, and now you
think I am joking. We are not allowed to
joke here. You like to joke, but we are not
allowed to," said the warden with dignity as
he went away.
Toward evening of that day Yanson had
already grown thinner. His skin, which had
stretched out and had become smooth for a
time, was suddenly covered with a multitude
of small wrinkles, and in places it seemed
even to hang down. His eyes became sleepy,
and all his motions were now so slow and
languid as though each turn of the head, each
move of the fingers, each step of the foot
SP
60
The Seven
TY
- VL
7
were a complicated and cumbersome under-
taking which required very careful delibera-
tion. At night he lay on his cot, but did not
close his eyes, and thus, heavy with sleep,
they remained open until morning.
“Aha!” said the warden with satisfaction,
seeing him on the following day. “This is
no dramshop for you, my dear!”
With a feeling of pleasant gratification,
like a scientist whose experiment had proved
successful again, he examined the condemned
man closely and carefully from head to foot.
Now everything would go along as neces-
sary. Satan was disgraced, the sacredness
of the prison and the execution was re-estab-
lished, and the old man inquired condescend-
ingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity:
"Do you want to meet somebody or not?”
“What for?"
“Well, to say good-by! Have you no
mother, for instance, or a brother?”
"I must not be hanged,” said Yanson soft-
ly, and looked askance at the warden. “I
don't want to be hanged."
mind
-
Who Were Hanged
61
hand in silence.
Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat
calmer.
The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy
winter sky looked so ordinary, the footsteps
of people and their conversation on matters
of the sour soup of cabbage was so ordinary,
customary and natural that he again ceased
believing in the execution. But the night be-
came terrible to him. Before this Yanson
had felt the night simply as darkness, as an
especially dark time, when it was necessary
to go to sleep, but now he began to be aware
of its mysterious and uncanny nature. In
order not to believe in death, it was neces-
sary to hear and see and feel ordinary things
about him, footsteps, voices, light, the soup
of sour cabbage. But in the dark everything
was unnatural; the silence and the darkness
were in themselves something like death."
And the longer the night dragged the
more dreadful it became. With the ignore
ant innocence of a child or a savage, who be
noce
62
The Seven
u
hy, arising forcourse. And thi power that
IN
lieve everything possible, Yanson felt like
crying to the sun: “Shine!” He begged, he
implored that the sun should shine, but the
night drew its long, dark hours remorselessly
over the earth, and there was no power that
could hasten its course. And this impossibil-
ity, arising for the first time before the weak
consciousness of Yanson, filled him with ter-
ror. Still not daring to realize it clearly, he
already felt the inevitability of approaching
death, and felt himself making the first step
upon the gallows, with benumbed feet.,
Day quieted him, but night again filled
him with fear, and so it was until one night
when he realized fully that death was inevit-
able, that it would come in three days at
dawn with the sunrise.
He had never thought of what death was,
and it had no image to him but now
he realized clearly, he saw, he felt that it had
entered his cell and was looking for him,
groping about with its hands. And to save
himself, he began to run wildly about the
room.
But the cell was so small that it seemed
Who Were Hanged
63
that its corners were not sharp but dull, and
that all of them were pushing him into the
center of the room. And there was nothing
behind which to hide. And the door was
locked. And it was dark. Several times he
struck his body against the walls, making no,
sound, and once he struck against the door-
it gave forth a dull, empty sound. He
face, and then he felt that it was going to
seize him. Lying on his stomach, holding to
the floor, hiding his face in the dark, dirty
and cried at the top of his voice until some
one came. And when he was lifted from the
floor and seated upon the cot, and cold water
was poured over his head, he still did not dare
open his tightly closed eyes. He opened one
eye, and noticing some one's boot in one of
the corners of the room, he commenced cry-
ing again.
But the cold water began to produce its
effect in bringing him to his senses. To helps
the effect, the warden on duty, the same old
man, administered medicine to Yanson in the
64
The Seven
form of several blows upon the head. And
this sensation of life returning to him really
drove the fear of death away. Yanson
opened his eyes, and then, his mind utterly
confused, he slept soundly for the remainder
of the night. He lay on his back, with mouth
open, and snored loudly, and between his
lashes, which were not tightly closed, his flat,
dead eyes, which were upturned so that the
pupil did not show, could be seen.
Later, everything in the world-day and
night, footsteps, voices, the soup of sour cab-
bage, produced in him a continuous terror,
plunging him into a state of savage uncom-
prehending astonishment. His weak mind
was unable to combine these two things
which so monstrously contradicted each
other-the bright day, the odor and taste of
cabbage and the fact that two days later
he must die. He did not think of anything.
He did not even count the hours, but simply
stood in mute stupefaction before this con-
tradiction which torehis brain in two. And he
became evenly pale, neither white nor red-
der in parts, and appeared to be calm. Only
Who Were Hanged
65
he ate nothing and ceased sleeping alto-
gether. He sat all night long on a stool, his
legs crossed under him, in fright. Or he
walked about in his cell, quietly, stealthily,
and sleepily looking about him on all sides.
His mouth was half-open all the time, as
though from incessant astonishment, and be-
fore taking the most ordinary thing into his
hands, he would examine it stupidly for a
long time, and would take it distrustfully.
When he became thus, the wardens as well
as the sentinel who watched him through the
little window, ceased paying further atten-
tion to him. This was the customary condi-
tion of prisoners, and reminded the wardens
of cattle being led to slaughter after a stag-
gering blow.
"Now he is stunned, now he will feel noth-
ing until his very death,” said the warden,
looking at him with experienced eyes.
“Ivan! Do you hear? Ivan!"
“I must not be hanged," answered Yan-
son, in a dull voice, and his lower jaw again
drooped.
"You should not have committed murder.
C
66
The Seven
You would not be hanged then," answered
the chief warden, a young but very im-
portant-looking man with medals on his
chest. “You committed murder, yet you do
not want to be hanged?”
"He wants to kill human beings without
“I don't want to be hanged,” said Yan-
son.
“Well, my friend, you may want it or not,
that's your affair,” replied the chief warden
indifferently. "Instead of talking nonsense,
you had better arrange your affairs. You
still have something."
"He has nothing. One shirt and a suit of
clothes. And a fur cap! A sport!”
Thus time passed until Thursday. And
on Thursday, at midnight a number of peo-
ple entered Yanson's cell, and one man, with
shoulder-straps, said:
"Well, get ready. We must go."
Yanson, moving slowly and drowsily as
before, put on everything he had and tied his
muddy-red muffler about his neck. The man
with shoulder-straps, smoking a cigarette,
.
.
.
Who Were Hanged 67
said to some one while watching Yanson
dress:
“What a warm day this will be. Real
spring."
Yanson's small eyes were closing; he
seemed to be falling asleep, and he moved so
slowly and stifily that the warden cried to
him:
"Hey, there! Quicker! Have you fallen
asleep?"
Suddenly Yanson stopped.
“I don't want to be hanged,” said he.
He was taken by the arms and led away,
and began to stride obediently, raising his
shoulders. Outside he found himself in the
moist, spring air, and beads of sweat stood
under his little nose. Notwithstanding that
it was night, it was thawing very strongly
and drops of water were dripping upon the
stones. And waiting while the soldiers,
clanking their sabres and bending their
heads, were stepping into the unlighted black
carriage, Yanson lazily moved his finger un-
der his moist nose and adjusted the badly
tied muffler about his neck.
YYY
9
CHAPTER IV
WE COME FROM ORYOL
THE same council-chamber of the military
district court which had condemned Yanson
had also condemned to death a peasant of
the Government of Oryol, of the District of
Yeletzk, Mikhail Golubets, nicknamed
Tsiganok, also Tatarin. His latest crime,
proven beyond question, had been the mur-
der of three people and armed robbery. Be-
hind that, his dark past disappeared in a
depth of mystery. There were vague rumors
that he had participated in a series of other
murders and robberies, and in his path there
was felt to be a dark trail of blood, fire, and
drunken debauchery. He called himself
murderer with utter frankness and sincerity,
and scornfully regarded those who, accord-
ing to the latest fashion, styled themselves
Who Were Hanged
69
"expropriators.” Of his last crime, since it
was useless for him to deny anything, he
spoke freely and in detail, but in answer to
questions about his past, he merely gritted
his teeth, whistled, and said:
"Search for the wind of the fields!"
When he was annoyed in cross-examina-
tion, Tsiganok asumed a serious and digni-
fied air:
"All of us from Oryol are thoroughbreds,"
he would say gravely and deliberately.
“Oryol and Kroma are the homes of first-
class thieves. Karachev and Livna are the
breeding-places of thieves. And Yeletz—is
the parent of all thieves. Now-what else
is there to say?"
He was nicknamed Tsiganok (gypsy) be-
cause of his appearance and his thievish man-
ner. He was black-haired, lean, with yel-
low spots on his prominent, "Tartar-like
cheek-bones. His glance was swift, brief,
but fearfully direct and searching, and the
thing upon which he looked for a moment
seemed to lose something, seemed to deliver
up to him a part of itself, and to become
come
70
The Seven
something else. It was just as unpleasant
and repugnant to take a cigarette at which
he looked, as though it had already been in
his mouth. There was a certain constant
restlessness in him, now twisting him like a
rag, now throwing him about like a body of
coiling live wires. And he drank water al-
To all questions during the trial he an-
swered shortly, firmly, jumping up quickly,
and at times he seemed to answer even with
pleasure.
“Correct!” he would say.
Sometimes he emphasized it.
“Cor-r-rect!”
At one time, suddenly, when they were
speaking of something that would hardly
have seemed to suggest it, he jumped to his
feet and asked the presiding judge:
“Will you allow me to whistle?”
“What for?” asked the judge, surprised.
“They said that I gave the signal to my
comrades. I would like to show you how.
It is very interesting.”
The judge consented, somewhat wonder.
n
Who Were Hanged 171
>
as
ingly. Tsiganok quickly placed four fingers
in his mouth, two fingers of each hand, rolled
his eyes fiercely—and then the dead air of
the courtroom was suddenly rent by a real,
wild, murderer's whistle—at which fright-
ened horses leap and rear on their hind legs
and human faces involuntarily blanch. The
mortal anguish of him who is to be as-
sassinated, the wild joy of the murderer, the
dreadful warning, the call, the gloom and
loneliness of a stormy autumn night—all this
rang in his piercing shriek, which was neither
human nor beastly.
The presiding officer shouted -- then
waved his arm at Tsiganok, and Tsiganok
obediently became silent. And, like an artist
who had triumphantly performed a difficult
aria, he sat down, wiped his wet fingers upon
his coat, and surveyed those present with an
air of satisfaction.
"What a robber!” said one of the judges,
rubbing his ear.
Another one, however, with a wild Rus-
sian beard, but with the eyes of a Tartar,
like those of Tsiganok, gazed pensively
72
The Seven
above Tsiganok's head, then smiled and re-
marked:
"It is indeed interesting.”
With light hearts, without mercy, without
the slightest pangs of conscience, the judges
brought out against Tsiganok a verdict of
death.
“Correct!” said Tsiganok, when the ver-
dict was pronounced. “In the open field and
on a cross-beam! Correct!”
And turning to the convoy, he hurled with
bravado:
"Well, are we not going? Come on, you
sour-coat. And hold your gun-I might
take it away from you!"
The soldier looked at him sternly, with
fear, exchanged glances with his comrade,
and felt the lock of his gun. The other did
the same. And all the way to the prison the
soldiers felt that they were not walking but
flying through the air--as if hypnotized by
the prisoner, they felt neither the ground
beneath their feet, nor the passage of time,
nor themselves.
Mishka Tsiganok, like Yanson, had had
Who Were Hanged
73
Airtel
Wirinin 19721
"
i
.
VA
***
*..' "*"*.**.
vier ''
to spend seventeen days in prison before his
execution. And all seventeen days passed
as though they were one day-they were
bound up in one inextinguishable thought of
escape, of freedom, of life. The restlessness
of Tsiganok, which was now repressed by the
walls and the bars and the dead window
through which nothing could be seen, turned
all its fury upon himself and burned his soul
like coals scattered upon boards. As though
he were in a drunken vapor, bright but in-
complete images swarmed upon him, failing
and then becoming confused, and then again
rushing through his mind in an unrestrain-
able blinding whirlwind and all were bent
toward escape, toward liberty, toward life.
With his nostrils expanded, like those of a
horse, Tsiganok smelt the air for hours long
-it seemed to him that he could smell the
odor of hemp, of the smoke of fire-the
colorless and biting smell of burning. Now
he whirled about in the room like a top,
touching the walls, tapping them nervously
with his fingers from time to time, taking
aim, boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing
974
The Seven
the prison bars. By his restlessness, he had
tired out the soldiers who watched him
through the little window, and who, several
times, in despair, had threatened to shoot.
Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and de-
risively, and the quarrel would end peaceful-
ly because the dispute would soon turn into
boorish, unoffending abuse, after which
shooting would have seemed absurd and im-
possible.
Tsiganok slept during the nights soundly,
without stirring, in unchanging yet live mo-
tionlessness, like a wire spring in temporary
inactivity. But as soon as he arose, he imme-
diately commenced to walk, to plan, to grope
about. His hands were always dry and hot,
but his heart at times would suddenly grow
cold, as if a cake of unmelting ice had been
placed upon his chest, sending a slight, dry
shiver through his whole body. At such
times, Tsiganok, always dark in complexion,
would turn black, assuming the shade of
bluish cast-iron.' And he acquired a curious
habit; as though he had eaten too much of
something sickeningly sweet, he kept licking
Who Were Hanged
75
his lips, smacking them, and would spit on
the floor, hissingly, through his teeth. When
he spoke, he did not finish his words, so
rapidly did his thoughts run that his tongue
was unable to compass them.
One day the chief warden, accompanied by
a soldier, entered his cell. He looked askance
at the floor and said gruffly:
“Look! How dirty he has made it!”
Tsiganok retorted quickly:
"You've made the whole world dirty, you
fat-face, and yet I haven't said anything to
you. What brings you here?”
The warden, speaking as gruffly as before,
asked him whether he would act as execu-
tioner. Tsiganok burst out laughing, show-
ing his teeth.
"You can't find any one else? That's
good! Go ahead, hang! Ha! ha! ha! The
necks are there, the rope is there, but there
is nobody to string it up. By God! that's
good!”
"You'll save your neck if you do it."
“Of course I couldn't hang them if I
were dead. Well said, you fool!”
76
The Seven
ame
“Well, what do you say? Is it all the same
to you?”
"And how do you hang them here? I sup-
pose they're choked on the sly.”
“No, with music," snarled the warden.
“Well, what a fool! Of course it can be
done with music. This way!” and he began
to sing, with a bold and daring swing.
"You have lost your wits, my friend,”
said the warden. “What do you say? Speak
sensibly.”
Tsiganok grinned.
“How eager you are! Come another time
and I'll tell you."
After that, into that chaos of bright, yet
incomplete images which oppressed Tsiga-
nok by their impetuosity, a new image came
-how good it would be to become a hang-
man in a red shirt. He pictured to himself
vividly a square crowded with people, a high
scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt
walking about upon the scaffold with an ax.
The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from
the ax, and everything was so gay and bright
that even the man whose head was soon to
YT
11
Who Were Hanged
1777
be chopped off was smiling. And be-
hind the crowd, wagons and the heads of
horses could be seen—the peasants had come
from the village; and beyond them, further,
he could see the village itself.
"Ts-akh!”
Tsiganok smacked his lips, licking them,
and spat. And suddenly he felt as though a
fur cap had been pushed over his head to his
very mouth-it became black and stifling,
and his heart again became like a cake of
through his whole body.
The warden came in twice again, and
Tsiganok, showing his teeth, said:
"How eager you are! Come in again!”
Finally one day the warden shouted
through the casement window as he passed
rapidly:
"You've let your chance slip by, you fool!
We've found somebody else.”
“The devil take you! Hang yourself!"
snarled Tsiganok, and he stopped dreaming
of the execution.
But toward the end, the nearer he ap-
178
The Seven
proached the time, the weight of the frag-
ments of his broken images became unbear-
able. Tsiganok now felt like standing still,
like spreading his legs and standing-but a
whirling current of thoughts carried him
away and there was nothing at which he
could clutch-everything about him swam.
And his sleep also became uneasy. Dreams
even more violent than his thoughts appeared
-new dreams, solid, heavy, like wooden
painted blocks. And it was no longer like
a current, but like an endless fall to an end-
less depth, a whirling flight through the
whole visible world of colors.
When Tsiganok was free he had worn
only a pair of dashing mustaches, but in
the prison a short, black, bristly beard grew
on his face and it made him look fearsome,
insane. At times Tsiganok really lost his
senses and whirled absurdly about in the cell,
still tapping upon the rough, plastered walls
nervously. And he drank water like a horse.
At times toward evening when they lit
the lamp, Tsiganok would stand on all fours
in the middle of his cell and would howl the
UUTI
Who Were Hanged : 79
quivering howl of a wolf. He was peculiar-
ly serious while doing it, and would howl as
though he were performing an important
and indispensable act. He would fill his
chest with air and then exhale it. slowly in
a prolonged tremulous howl, and, cocking
his eyes, would listen intently as the sound
issued forth. And the very quiver in his
voice seemed in a manner intentional. He
did not scream wildly, but drew out each
note carefully in that mournful wail full of
untold sorrow and terror.
Then he would suddenly break off howl-
ing and for several minutes would remain
silent, still standing on all fours. Then sud-
denly he would mutter softly, staring at the
ground:
“My darlings, my sweethearts! ...
My darlings, my sweethearts! have pity.
... My darlings! ... My sweet-
hearts!”
And it seemed again as if he were listen-
ing intently to his own voice. As he said
each word he would listen.
80
The Seven
Then he would jump up and for a whole
hour would curse continually.
He cursed picturesquely, shouting and
rolling his blood-shot eyes.
"If you hang me-hang me!” and he
would burst out cursing again.
And the sentinel, in the meantime white
as chalk, weeping with pain and fright,
would knock at the door with the butt-end
of the gun and cry helplessly:
"I'll fire! I'll kill you as sure as I live!
Do you hear?”
But he dared not shoot. If there was no
actual rebellion they never fired at those
who had been condemned to death. And
Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, would curse
and spit. His brain thus racked on a mon-
strously sharp blade between life and death
was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay.
lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to
bustle about and seemed to have recovered
his spirits. Again he had that sweet taste
in his mouth, and his saliva collected
abundantly, but his cheeks turned rosy and
Who Were Hanged 81
in his eyes began to glisten his former some-
what savage slyness. Dressing himself he
asked the official:
"Who is going to do the hanging? A new
man? I suppose he hasn't learned his job
yet.”
“You needn't worry about it,” answered
the official dryly.
"I can't help worrying, your Honor. I
am going to be hanged, not you. At least
don't be stingy with the government's soap
on the noose.”
“All right, all right! Keep quiet!”
“This man here has eaten all your soap,”
said Tsiganok, pointing to the warden. “See
how his face shines.”
“Silence!”
“Don't be stingy!”
And Tsiganok burst out laughing. But
he began to feel that it was getting ever
sweeter in his mouth, and suddenly his legs
began to feel strangely numb. Still, on com-
ing out into the yard, he managed to ex-
claim:
· "The carriage of the Count of Bengal!”
CHAPTER V
KISS—AND SAY NOTHING
THE verdict concerning the five terrorists
was pronounced finally and confirmed upon
the same day. The condemned were not
told when the execution would take place,
but they knew from the usual procedure that
they would be hanged the same night, or, at
the very latest, upon the following night.
And when it was proposed to them that they
meet their relatives upon the following
Thursday they understood that the execu-
tion would take place on Friday at dawn.
and those whom she had were somewhere in
the wilderness in Little Russia and it was
not likely that they even knew of the trial
or of the coming execution. Musya and
Werner, as unidentified people, were not
MY
LLL
82
Who Were Hanged
83
TA
.
.
Erne.
**.'
..
supposed to have relatives, and only two,
Sergey Golovin and Vasily Kashirin, were
to meet their parents. Both of them looked
upon that meeting with terror and anguish,
yet they dared not refuse the old people the
last word, the last kiss.
Sergey Golovin was particularly tortured
by the thought of the coming meeting. He
dearly loved his father and mother; he had
seen them but a short while before, and now
he was in a state of terror as to what would
happen when they came to see him. The
execution itself, in all its monstrous horror,
in its brain-stunning madness, he could
imagine more easily, and it seemed less ter-
rible than these other few moments of
meeting, brief and unsatisfactory, which
seemed to reach beyond time, beyond life
itself. How to look, what to think, what
to say, his mind could not determine. The
most simple and ordinary act, to take his
father by the hand, to kiss him, and to say,
“How do you do, father?” seemed to him
unspeakably horrible in its monstrous, in-
human, absurd deceitfulness,
84
The Seven
* After the sentence the condemned were
not placed together in one cell, as Tanya
Kovalchuk had supposed they would be,
but each was put in solitary confinement,
and all the morning, until eleven o'clock,
when his parents came, Sergey Golovin
paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard,
frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly.
Sometimes he would stop abruptly, would
breathe deeply and then exhale like a man
who has been too long under water. But he
was so healthy, his young life was so strong
within him, that even in the moments of most
painful suffering his blood played under his
skin, reddening his cheeks, and his blue eyes
shone brightly and frankly.
But everything was far different from
what he had anticipated.
Nikolay Sergeyevich Golovin, Sergey's
father, a retired colonel, was the first to enter
the room where the meeting took place. He
was all white-his face, his beard, his hair,
and his hands—as if he were a snow statue
attired in man's clothes. He had on the
same old but well-cleaned coat, smelling of
Who Were Hanged 85
benzine, with new shoulder-straps crosswise,
that he had always worn, and he entered
firmly, with an air of stateliness, with strong
and steady steps. He stretched out his
white, thin hand and said loudly:
"How do you do, Sergey?"
Behind him Sergey's mother entered with
short steps, smiling strangely. But she also
pressed his hands and repeated loudly:
"How do you do, Seryozhenka?”
She kissed him on the lips and sat down
silently. She did not rush over to him; she
did not burst into tears; she did not break
into a sob; she did not do any of the terrible
kissed him and silently sat down. And with
her trembling hands she even adjusted her
black silk dress.
Sergey did not know that the colonel, hav-
ing locked himself all the previous night in
his little study, had deliberated upon this
ritual with all his power. “We must not
aggravate, but ease the last moments of our
son,” resolved the colonel firmly, and he care-
fully weighed every possible phase of the
ULL
86
The Seven
conversation, every act and movement that
might take place on the following day. But
somehow he became confused, forgetting
what he had prepared, and he wept bitterly
in the corner of the oilcloth-covered couch.
In the morning he explained to his wife how
she should behave at the meeting.
“The main thing is, kiss—and say
nothing!” he taught her. “Later you may
speak-after a while-but when you kiss
him, be silent. Don't speak right after the
kiss, do you understand? Or you will say
what you should not say."
“I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich," an-
swered the mother, weeping.
“And you must not weep. For God's
sake, do not weep! You will kill him if
you weep, old woman!”
“Why do you weep?”
“With women one cannot help weeping.
But you must not weep, do you hear?”
“Very well, Nikolay Sergeyevich.”
Riding in the drozhky, he had intended
to school her in the instructions again, but
he forgot. And so they rode in silence, bent,
ATT
Who Were Hanged
87
yere
YA
both gray and old, and they were lost in
thought, while the city was gay and noisy.
It was Shrovetide, and the streets were
crowded.
They sat down. Then the colonel stood
up, assumed a studied pose, placing his right
hand upon the border of his coat. Sergey
sat for an instant, looked closely upon the
wrinkled face of his mother and then jumped
up.
"Be seated, Seryozhenka," begged the
mother.
"Sit down, Sergey," repeated the father.
They became silent. The mother smiled.
"How we have petitioned for you, Seryo-
zhenka! Father "
"You should not have done that, moth-
er- "
The colonel spoke firmly:
“We had to do it, Sergey, so that you
should not think your parents had forsaken
you.”
They became silent again. It was terrible
for them to utter even a word, as though
each word in the language had lost its in-
ny
88
The Seven
dividual meaning and meant but one thing-
Death. Sergey looked at his father's coat,
which smelt of benzine, and thought: “They
have no servant now, consequently he must
have cleaned it himself. How is it that I
never before noticed when he cleaned his
coat? I suppose he does it in the morning."
Suddenly he asked:
"And how is sister? Is she well?”
“Ninochka does not know anything," the
mother answered hastily.
The colonel interrupted her sternly:
“Why should you tell a falsehood? The
child read it in the newspapers. Let Sergey
know that everybody>that those who are i
dearest to him--were thinking of him-at
this time—and— ”
He could not say any more and stopped.
Suddenly the mother's face contracted, then
it spread out, became agitated, wet and wild-
looking. Her discolored eyes stared blindly,
and her breathing became more frequent,
and briefer, louder.
"Se — Se — Se-Ser— " she repeated
without moving her lips. “Ser—
Who Were Hanged 89
"Dear mother!”
The colonel strode forward, and all quiv-
ering in every fold of his coat, in every
wrinkle of his face, not understanding how
terrible he himself looked in his death-like
whiteness, in his heroic, desperate firmness.
He said to his wife:
"Be silent! Don't torture him! Don't tor-
ture him! He has to die! Don't torture
him!"
Frightened, she had already become silent,
but he still shook his clenched fists before
him and repeated:
"Don't torture him!”
Then he stepped back, placed his trem-
bling hands behind his back, and loudly, with
an expression of forced calm, asked with pale
lips:
"When?"
“To-morrow morning,” answered Sergey,
his lips also pale.
The mother looked at the ground, chewing
her lips, as if she did not hear anything.
And continuing to chew, she uttered these
Asw
90
The Seven
simple words, strangely, as though they
dropped like lead:
“Ninochka told me to kiss you, Seryo-
zhenka."
“Kiss her for me,” said Sergey.
“Very well. The Khvostovs send you
their regards.”
“Which Khvostovs? Oh, yes!”
The colonel interrupted:
“Well, we must go. Get up, mother; we
must go.” The two men lifted the weakened
old woman.
“Bid him good-by!" ordered the colonel.
“Make the sign of the cross."
She did everything as she was told. But
as she made the sign of the cross, and kissed
her son a brief kiss, she shook her head and
murmured weakly:
"No, it isn't the right way! It is not the
right way! What will I say? How will I
say it? No, it is not the right way!"
“Good-by, Sergey!" said the father. They
shook hands, and kissed each other quickly
but heartily.
“You- ” began Sergey.
Who Were Hanged 91
TYY
“Well?” asked the father abruptly.
"No, no! It is not the right way! How
shall I say it?” repeated the mother weakly,
nodding her head. She had sat down again
and was rocking herself back and forth.
"You- ” Sergey began again. Sud-
denly his face wrinkled pitiably, childishly,
and his eyes filled with tears immediately.
Through the sparkling gleams of his tears
he looked closely into the white face of his
father, whose eyes had also filled.
“You, father, are a noble man!"
"What is that? What are you saying?”
said the colonel, surprised. And then sud-
denly, as if broken in two, he fell with his
head upon his son's shoulder. He had been
taller than Sergey, but now he became short,
and his dry, downy head lay like a white ball
upon his son's shoulder. And they kissed
silently and passionately: Sergey kissed the
silvery white hair, and the old man kissed the
prisoner's garb.
“And I ?” suddenly said a loud voice.
They looked around. Sergey's mother
92
The Seven
.
-4
was standing, her head thrown back, look-
ing at them angrily, almost with contempt.
“What is it, mother?” cried the colonel.
"And I?” she said, shaking her head with
insane intensity. “You kiss—and I? You
men! Yes? And I? And I?"
“Mother!" Sergey rushed over to her.
What took place then it is unnecessary
and impossible to describe....
The last words of the colonel were:
"I give you my blessing for your death,
Seryozha. Die bravely, like an officer."
And they went away. Somehow they
went away. They had been there, they had
stood, they had spoken—and suddenly they
had gone. Here sat his mother, there stood
his father-and suddenly somehow they had
gone away. Returning to the cell, Sergey
lay down on the cot, his face turned toward
the wall, in order to hide it from the soldiers,
and he wept for a long time. Then, ex-
hausted by his tears, he slept soundly.
-
.
.
.
.
...
To Vasily Kashirin only his mother came.
His father, who was a wealthy tradesman,
Who Were Hanged
93
did not want to come. Vasily met the old
woman, as he was pacing up and down the
room, trembling with cold, although it was
warm, even hot. And the conversation was
brief, painful.
"It wasn't worth coming, mother. You'll
conver
tion was
· "Why did you do it, Vasya? Why did
you do it? Oh, Lord!” The old woman
burst out weeping, wiping her face with the
ends of her black, woolen kerchief. And
with the habit which he and his brothers had
always had of crying at their mother, who
did not understand anything, he stopped,
and, shuddering as with cold, spoke angrily:
“There! You see! I knew it! You un-
derstand nothing, mother! Nothing!”
“Well-well-all right! Do you feel
cold?”
“Cold!" Vasily answered bluntly, and
again began to pace the room, looking at his
mother askance, as if annoyed.
"Perhaps you have caught cold?”
"Oh, mother what is a cold, when "
and he waved his hand helplessly.
94
The Seven
The old woman was about to say: "And
your father ordered wheat cakes beginning
with Monday,” but she was frightened, and
said:
"I told him: 'It is your son, you should go,
give him your blessing.' No, the old beast
persisted— ”
....."Let him go to the devil! What sort of
father has he been to me? He has been a
scoundrel all his life, and remains a scoun-
drel!”
“Vasenka! Do you speak of your father
like this?” said the old woman reproachfully,
straightening herself.
“About my father!",
“About your own father?”
“He is no father to me!”
It was strange and absurd. Before him
was the thought of death, while here some-
thing small, empty and trivial arose, and his
words cracked like the shells of nuts under
foot. And almost crying with sorrow-be-
cause of the eternal misunderstanding which
all his life long had stood like a wall between
him and those nearest to him, and which even
Who Were Hanged
95
now, in the last hour before death, peered at
him stupidly and strangely through small,
"Don't you understand that I am to be
hanged soon? Hanged! Do you understand
it? Hanged!"
"You shouldn't have harmed anybody and
nobody would— ” cried the old woman.
"My God! What is this? Even beasts
do not act like this! Am I not your son?”
He began to cry, and seated himself in a
corner. The old womari also burst out cry-
ing in her corner. Powerless, even for an
instant, to blend in a feeling of love and to
offset by it the horror of impending death,
they wept their cold tears of loneliness
which did not warm their hearts. The mother
said:
"You ask whether I am a mother to you?
You reproach me! And I have grown com-
pletely gray during these days. I have be-
come an old woman. And yet you say-you
reproach me!”
"Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive
96
The Seven
me. It is time for you to go. Kiss my
brothers for me."
"Am I not your mother? Do I not feel
sorry?”
At last she went away. She wept bitterly,
wiping her face with the edges of her ker-
chief, and she did not see the road. And the
farther she got from the prison the more bit-
terly she wept. She retraced her steps to
the prison, and then she strangely lost her
way in the city in which she had been born,
in which she lived to her old age. She strolled
into a deserted little garden with a few old,
gnarled trees, and she seated herself upon a
wet bench, from which the snow had melted. :
And suddenly she understood. He was to
be hanged upon the morrow!
The old woman jumped up, about to run,
but suddenly her head began to swim ter-
ribly and she fell to the ground. The icy
path was wet and slippery, and she could not
rise. She turned about, lifted herself on her
elbows and knelt, then fell back on her side.
The black kerchief had slipped down, baring
upon the back of her head a bald spot amid
Who Were Hanged
97
her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it
seemed to her that she was feasting at a wed-
ding, that her son was getting married, and
she had been drinking wine and had become
intoxicated.
"I can't! My God! I can't!” she cried,
as though declining something. Swaying
her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen
crust, and all the time it seemed to her that
they were pouring out more wine for her,
more wine!
And her heart had already begun to pain
her from her intoxicated laughter, from the
rejoicing, from the wild dancing—and they
kept on pouring more wine for her-pouring
more wine!
CHAPTER VI
THE HOURS ARE RUSHING
On the fortress where the condemned ter-
rorists were imprisoned there was a steeple
with an old-fashioned clock upon it. At
every hour, at every half-hour, and at every
quarter-hour the clock rang out in long-
drawn, mournful chimes, slowly melting high
in the air, like the distant and plaintive call
of migrating birds. In the daytime, this
strange and sad music was lost in the noise of
the city, of the wide and crowded street which
passed near the fortress. The cars buzzed
along, the hoofs of the horses beat upon the
pavements, the rocking automobiles honked
in the distance, peasant izvozchiks had come
especially from the outskirts of the city for
the Shrovetide season and the tinkling of
the bells upon the necks of their little horses
filled the air. The prattle of voices—an in-
toxicated, merry Shrovetide prattle of voices
98
Who Were Hanged
99
arose everywhere. And in the midst of these
various noises there was the young thawing
spring, the muddy pools on the meadows,
the trees of the squares which had suddenly
become black. From the sea a warm breeze
was blowing in broad, moist gusts. It was
almost as if one could have seen the tiny
fresh particles of air carried away, merged
into the free, endless expanse of the atmos-
phere-could have heard them laughing in
their flight.
At night the street grew quiet in the lonely
light of the large, electric sun. And then,
the enormous fortress, within whose walls
there was not a single light, passed into
darkness and silence, separating itself from
the ever living, stirring city by a wall of si-
lence, motionlessness and darkness. Then it
was that the strokes of the clock became au-
dible. A strange melody, foreign to earth,
was slowly and mournfully born and died
out up in the heights. It was born again;
deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and
softly—it broke off—and rang again. Like
large, transparent, glassy drops, hours and
100
The Seven
minutes descended from an unknown height
into a metallic, softly resounding bell.
This was the only sound that reached the
cells, by day and night, where the condemned
1
the roof, through the thickness of the stone
walls, it penetrated, stirring the silence-it
passed unnoticed, to return again, also un-
noticed. Sometimes they awaited it in de-
spair, living from one sound to the next,
trusting the silence no longer. Only im-
portant criminals were sent to this prison.
There were special rules there, stern, grim
and severe, like the corner of the fortress
wall, and if there be nobility in cruelty, then
the dull, dead, solemnly mute silence, which
caught the slightest rustle and breathing,
was noble.
And in this solemn silence, broken by the
mournful tolling of the departing minutes,
separated from all that lives, five human be-
ings, two women and three men, waited for
| the advent of night, of dawn and the execu-
• tion, and all of them prepared for it, each
: in his or her own way.
CHAPTER VII
THERE IS NO DEATH
Just as Tanya Kovalchuk had thought all
her life only of others and never of herself,
so now she suffered and grieved painfully,
but only for her comrades. She pictured
death, only as awaiting them, as something
tormenting only to Sergey Golovin, to
Musya, to the others--as for herself, it did
not concern her.
As a recompense for her firmness and re-
straint in the courtroom she wept for long
hours, as old women who have experienced
great misery, or as very sympathetic and
kind-hearted young people know how to
weep. And the fear that perhaps Seryozha
was without tobacco or Werner without the
strong tea to which he was accustomed, in
addition to the fact that they were to die,
101
102
The Seven
caused her no less pain than the idea of the
execution itself. Death was something in-
evitable and even unimportant, of which it
was not worth while to think; but for a man
in prison, before his execution, to be left
without tobacco—that was altogether un-
bearable. She recalled and went over in her
mind all the pleasant details of their life to-
gether, and then she grew faint with fear
when she pictured to herself the meeting be-
*** She felt particularly sorry for Musya. It
had long seemed to her that Musya loved
Werner, and although this was not a fact,
she still dreamed of something good and
bright for both of them. When she had been
free, Musya had worn a silver ring, on which
was the design of a skull, bones, and a crown
of thorns about them. Tanya Kovalchuk had
often looked upon the ring as a symbol of
doom, and she would ask Musya, now in jest,
now in earnest, to remove the ring.
“Make me a present of it,” she had
begged.
“No, Tanechka, I will not give it to you.
Who Were Hanged
103
1 LAD
upon your finger.”
For some reason or other they all in turn
had thought that she would doubtless soon
marry, and this had offended her she
wanted no husband. And recalling these
half-jesting conversations with Musya, and
the fact that now Musya was actually con-
demned to death, she choked with tears in
her maternal pity. And each time the clock
struck she raised her tear-stained face and
listened how were they in the other cells
receiving this drawn-out, persistent call of
death?
But Musya was happy.
With her hands folded behind her back,
dressed in a prisoner's garb which was much
too large for her, and which made her look
very much like a man-like a stripling
her cell evenly and tirelessly. The sleeves of
the coat were too long for her, and she turned
them up, and her thin, almost childish, emaci-
ated hands peeped out of the wide holes like :
a beautiful flower out of a coarse earthen
104
The Seven
jug. The rough material of the coat rubbed
her thin white neck, and sometimes Musya
would free her throat with both hands and
would cautiously feel the spot where the irri-
tated skin was red and smarted...
Musya paced the cell, and, blushing in agi-
tation, she imagined that she was justifying
herself before the people. She tried to
justify herself for the fact that she, who
was so young, so insignificant, who had done
so little, and who was not at all a heroine,
was yet to undergo the same honorable and
beautiful death by which real heroes and
martyrs had died before her. With un-
shakable faith in human kindness, in their
compassion, in their love, she pictured to her-
self how people were now agitated on her
account, how they suffered, how they pitied
her, and she felt so ashamed that she
blushed, as if, by dying upon the scaffold,
she had committed some tremendous, awk-
ward blunder.
At the last meeting with their counsel she
had asked him to bring her poison, but sud-
denly she had changed her mind. What if
Who Were Hanged
105
he and the others, she thought, should con-
sider that she was doing it merely to become
conspicuous, or out of cowardice, that in-
stead of dying modestly and unnoticed, she
was attempting to glorify herself. And she
added hastily:
“No, it isn't necessary."
And now she desired but one thing—to
be able to explain to people, to prove to them
so that they should have not the slightest
doubt that she was not at all a heroine,
that it was not terrible to die, that they
should not feel sorry for her, nor trouble
themselves about her. She wished to be able
to explain to them that she was not at all
to blame that she, who was so young and
so insignificant, was to undergo such a
martyr's death, and that so much trouble
should be made on her account.
Like a person who is actually accused of
a crime, Musya sought justification. She
endeavored to find something that would at
least make her sacrifice more...momentous,
which might give it real value. She reas-
oned:
***
.
.......
.
..
.2
106
The Seven
"Of course, I am young and could have
lived for a long time. But
And as a candle darkens in the glare of
the rising sun, so her youth and her life
seemed dull and dark compared to that great
above her simple head. There was no justi-
fication.
But perhaps that peculiar something
which she bore in her soul-boundless love,
boundless eagerness to do great deeds, her
boundless contempt for herself-was a justi-
fication in itself. She felt that she was
really not to blame that she was hindered
from doing the things she could have done,
which she had wished to do—that she had
been smitten upon the threshold of the
temple, at the foot of the altar.
But if that were so, if a person is appreci-
ated not only for what he has done, but also
for what he had intended to do then-then
i she was worthy of the crown of the martyr!
"Is it possible that I am worthy of it? That
I deserve that people should weep for me,
Who Were Hanged 107
should be agitated over my fate, over such a
little and insignificant girl?”
And she was seized with sudden joy.
There were no doubts, no hesitations-she
was received into their midst—she entered
justified the ranks of those noble people who
always ascend to heaven through fires, tor-
tures and executions. Bright peace and
tranquillity and endless, calmly radiant
happiness! It was as if she had already de-
parted from earth and was nearing the un-
known sun of truth and life, and was in-
corporeally soaring in its light.
"And that is—Death? That is not
Death!” thought Musya blissfully.
And if scientists, philosophers and hang-
men from the world over should come to
her cell, spreading before her books, scalpels,
axes and nooses, and were to attempt to
prove to her that Death existed, that a
human being dies and is killed, that there
is no immortality, they would only surprise
her. How could there be no deathlessness,
since she was already deathless? Of what
other deathlessness, of what other death,
108
The Seven
could there be a question, since she was
Talready dead and immortal, alive in death,
as she had been dead in life?
And if a coffin were brought into her cell
with her own decomposing body in it, and
she were told:
"Look! That is you!”
She would look and would answer:
"No, it is not I.”
And if they should attempt to convince
her, frightening her by the ominous sight
of her own decomposed body, that it was she
-she, Musya, would answer with a smile:
I am the one you-are-speaking to; how can
I be the other one?”
"But you will die and become like that."
“No, I will not die.”
“You will be executed. Here is the
noose.”
"I will be executed, but I will not die.
How can I die, when I am already-now-
immortal?”
And the scientists and philosophers and
Who Were Hanged
109
TO
hangmen would retreat, speaking with a
shudder:
"Do not touch this place. It is holy.”
What else was Musya thinking about?
She was thinking of many things, for to her
the thread of life was not broken by Death,
but kept winding along calmly and evenly.
She thought of her comrades, of those who
were far away, and who in pain and sorrow
were living through the execution together
with them, and of those near by who were
to mount the scaffold with her. She was
surprised at Vasily—that he should have
been so disturbed-he, who had always been
so brave, and who had jested with Death.
Thus, only on Tuesday morning, when all
together they had attached explosive pro-
jectiles to their belts, which several hours
later were to tear them into pieces, Tanya
Kovalchuk's hands had trembled with nerv-
ousness, and it had become necessary to put
her aside, while Vasily jested, made merry,
turned about, and was even so reckless that
Werner had said sternly:
110
The Seven
"You must not be too familiar with
Death.”
comprehensible fear was so foreign to
Musya's soul that she ceased searching for
the cause of it—and suddenly she was seized
with a desperate desire to see Seryozha Golo-
vin, to laugh with him. She meditated a
little while, and then an even more desperate
desire came over her to see Werner and to
convince him of something. And imagining
to herself that Werner was in the next cell,
driving his heels into the ground with his
distinct, measured steps, Musya spoke, as if
addressing him:
"No, Werner, my dear; it is all nonsense;
it isn't at all important whether or not you
are killed. You are a sensible man, but you
seem to be playing chess, and that by taking
one figure after another the game is won.
The important thing, Werner, is that we
ourselves are ready to die. Do you under-
stand? What do those people think? That
there is nothing more terrible than death.
They themselves have invented Death, they
...
-
VNN
Who Were Hanged
are themselves afraid of it, and they try to
frighten us with it. I should like to do this,
I should like to go out alone before a whole
regiment of soldiers and fire upon them with
a revolver. It would not matter that I would
be alone, while they would be thousands, or
that I might not kill any of them. It is that
which is important that they are thousands,
When thousands kill one, it means that the
one has conquered. That is true, Werner,
my dear. . . ."
But this, too, became so clear to her that
she did not feel like arguing further-
Werner must understand it himself. Per-
haps her mind simply did not want to stop at
one thought-just as a bird that soars with
ease, which sees endless horizons, and to
which all space, all the depth, all the joy of
the soft and caressing azure are accessible.
The bell of the clock rang unceasingly, dis-
turbing the deep silence. And into this har-
monious, remote, beautiful sound the
thoughts of the people flowed, and also be-
gan to ring for her; and the smoothly glid-
ing images turned into music. It was just
112
The Seven
U
as if, on a quiet, dark night, Musya was rid-
iny along a broad, even road, while the easy
springs of the carriage rocked her and the
little bells tinkled. All alarm and agitation
had passed, the fatigued body had dissolved
in the darkness, and her joyously wearied
fancy calmly created bright images, carried
away by their color and their peaceful tran-
quillity. Musya recalled three of her com-
rades who had been hanged but a short time
before, and their faces seemed bright and
happy and near to her—nearer than those in
life. Thus does a man think with joy in the
morning of the house of his friends where
he is to go in the evening, and a greeting
rises to his smiling lips.
Musya became very tired from walking.
She lay down cautiously on the cot and con-
tinued to dream with slightly closed eyes.
The clock-bell rang unceasingly, stirring the
mute silence, and bright, singing images
floated calmly before her. Musya thought:
"Is it possible that this is Death? My
God! How beautiful it is! Or is it Life?
Who Were Hanged 113
I do not know. I do not know. I will look
and listen.”
Her hearing had long given way to her
imagination-from the first moment of her
imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical,
her ear had become keen in the silence, and
on this background of silence, out of the
meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the
guards in the corridors, the ringing of the
clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron
roof, the creaking of the lantern-it created
complete musical pictures. At first Musya
was afraid of them, brushed them away from
her as if they were the hallucinations of a
sickly mind. But later she understood that
she herself was well, and that this was no
derangement of any kind—and she gave her-
self up to the dreams calmly,
And now, suddenly, she seemed to hear
clearly and distinctly the sounds of military
music. In astonishment, she opened her
was black night, and the clock was striking
“Again,” she thought calmly, and closed her
eyes. And as soon as she did so the music
114
The Seven
:
resounded anew. She could hear distinctly
how the soldiers, a whole regiment, were
ress, on the right, and now they were pass-
ing her window. Their feet beat time with
measured steps upon the frozen ground:
One-two! One-two! She could even hear
at times the leather of the boots creaking,
how suddenly some one's foot slipped and
immediately recovered its steps. And the
music came ever nearer-it was an entirely
unfamiliar but a very loud and spirited holi-
day march. Evidently there was some sort
of celebration in the fortress.
Now the band came up alongside of her
window and the cell was filled with merry,
rhythmic, harmoniously blended sounds.
One large brass trumpet brayed harshly out
of tune, now too late, now comically running
ahead-Musya could almost see the little sol-
dier playing it, a great expression of earnest-
ness on his face—and she laughed.
Then everything moved away. The foot-
steps died out-One-two! One-two! At a
distance the music sounded still more beauti-
Who Were Hanged 115
1
ful and cheerful. The trumpet resounded
now and then with its merry, loud brass
voice, out of tune,-and then everything
died away. And the clock on the tower
struck again, slowly, mournfully, hardly stir-
ring the silence.
"They are gone!" thought Musya, with a
feeling of slight sadness. She felt sorry for
the departing sounds, which had been so
cheerful and so comical. She was even sorry
for the departed little soldiers, because those
busy soldiers, with their brass trumpets and
their creaking boots, were of an entirely dif-
ferent sort, not at all like those at whom she
had felt like firing a revolver.
“Come again!” she begged tenderly. And
more came. The figures bent over her, they
surrounded her in a transparent cloud and
lifted her up, where the migrating birds were
soaring and screaming, like heralds. On the
right of her, on the left, above and below her
--they screamed like heralds. They called,
they announced from afar their flight.
They flapped their wide wings and the dark-
ness supported them, even as the light had
116
The Seven
1
supported them. And on their convex
breasts, cleaving the air asunder, the city far
below reflected a blue light. Musya's heart
beat ever more evenly, her breathing grew
ever more calm and quiet. She was falling
asleep. Her face looked fatigued and pale.
Beneath her eyes were dark circles, her girl-
ish, emaciated hands seemed so thin,--but
upon her lips was a smile. To-morrow, with
the rise of the sun, this human face would be
distorted with an inhuman grimace, her brain
would be covered with thick blood, and her
eyes would bulge from their sockets and look
glassy,“but now she slept quietly and
smiled in her great immortality.
Musya fell asleep.
TY
and sensitive, blind and sharp-sighted, like
eternal alarm itself. Somewhere people
were walking. Somewhere people were
whispering. A gun clanked. It seemed as
if some one shouted. Perhaps no one shouted
at all—perhaps it merely seemed so in the
silence.
The little casement window in the door
Who Were Hanged 117
91
opened noiselessly. A dark, mustached face
appeared in the black hole. For a long time
it stared at Musya in astonishmentmand
then disappeared as noiselessly as it had
appeared.
The bells rang and sang, for a long time,
painfully. It seemed as if the tired Hours
were climbing up a high mountain toward
midnight, and that it was becoming ever
harder and harder to ascend. They fall,
they slip, they slide down with a groan-and
then again, they climb painfully toward the
black height.
Somewhere people were walking. Some-
where people were whispering. And they
were already harnessing the horses to the
black carriages without lanterns.
LU
CHAPTER VIII
SERGEY GOLOVIN never thought of death,
as though it were something not to be con-
sidered, something that did not concern him
in the least. He was a strong, healthy,
clear joy of living which causes every evil
thought and feeling that might injure life
to disappear from the organism without
leaving any trace. Just as all cuts, wounds
and stings on his body healed rapidly, so all
that weighed upon his soul and wounded it
immediately rose to the surface and disap-
peared. And he brought into every work,
even into his enjoyments, the same calm and
optimistic seriousness,-it mattered not
whether he was occupied with photography,
with bicycling or with preparations for a ter-
TY
118
Who Were Hanged 119
roristic act. Everything in life was joyous,
everything in life was important, everything
should be done well.
And he did everything well: he was an ex-
cellent sailor, an expert shot with the revol-
ver. He was as faithful in friendship as in
love, and a fanatic believer in the "word of
honor." His comrades laughed at him, say-
ing that if the most notorious spy told him
upon his word of honor that he was not a
spy, Sergey would believe him and would
shake hands with him as with any comrade.
He had one fault, he was convinced that he
could sing well, whereas in fact he had no
ear for music and even sang the revolution-
ary songs out of tune, and felt offended when
his friends laughed at him.
"Either you are all asses, or I am an ass,”
he would declare seriously and even angrily.
And all his friends as seriously declared:
“You are an ass. We can tell by your
voice.”
But, as is sometimes the case with good
people, he was perhaps liked more for this
little foible than for his good qualities.
1.
11
120
The Seven
He feared death so little and thought of it
so little that on the fatal morning, before
imit
... was the only one who had breakfasted prop-
erly, with an appetite. He drank two
glasses of tea with milk, and a whole five-
copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced at
Werner's untouched bread and said:
"Why don't you eat? Eat. We must
brace up."
-- "I don't feel like eating.”
"Then I'll eat it. May I?”
"You have a fine appetite, Seryozha.”
Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth
full, began to sing in a dull voice, out of
tune:
"Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us
AW
..."
After the arrest he at first grew sad; the
work had not been done well, they had
failed; but then he thought: "There is some-
thing else now that must be done well—and
that is, to die,” and he cheered up again.
And however strange it may seem, begin-
ning with the second morning in the fortress,
Who Were Hanged 121
he commenced devoting himself to gymnas-
tics according to the unusually rational sys-
tem of a certain German named Müller,
which absorbed his interest. He undressed
himself completely and, to the alarm and
astonishment of the guard who watched him,
he carefully went through all the pre-
scribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the
guard watched him and was apparently as-
tonished, pleased him as a propagandist of
the Müller system; and although he knew
that he would get no answer he nevertheless
spoke to the eye staring in the little window:
“It's a good system, my friend, it braces
you up. It should be introduced in your
regiment,” he shouted convincingly and
kindly, so as not to frighten the soldier, not
suspecting that the guard considered him a
harmless lunatic.
The fear of death came over him gradu-
ally. It was as if somebody were striking
his heart a powerful blow with the fist from
below. This sensation was rather painful
than terrible. Then the sensation was for-
gotten, but it returned again a few hours
.-122
The Seven
later, and each time it grew more intense
and of longer duration, and thus it began
to assume vague outlines of some great, even
unbearable fear.
"Is it possible that I am afraid?” thought
Sergey in astonishment. “What nonsense!”
It was not he who was afraid, -it was his
young, sound, strong body, which could not
be deceived either by the exercises prescribed
by the Müller system, or by the cold rub-
downs. On the contrary, the stronger and
the fresher his body became after the cold
water, the keener and the more unbearable
became the sensations of his recurrent fear.
And just at those moments when, during his
freedom, he had felt a special influx of the
joy and power of life,-in the mornings
after he had slept soundly and gone through
his physical exercises,-now there appeared
this deadening fear which was so foreign to
his nature. He noticed this and thought:
historii "It is foolish, Sergey! To die more
easily, you should weaken the body and
not strengthen it. It is foolish!”
So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-
-
WA
Who Were Hanged 123
downs. To the soldier he shouted, as if to
explain and justify himself:
"Never mind that I have stopped. It's a
good thing, my friend,—but not for those
who are to be hanged. But it's very good
for all others."
And, indeed, he began to feel somewhat
better. He tried also to eat less, so as to
grow still weaker, but notwithstanding the
lack of pure air and exercises, his appetite
was very good, it was difficult for him to
control it, and he ate everything that was
brought to him. Then he began to manage
differently-before starting to eat he would
pour out half into the pail, and this seemed
to work. A dull drowsiness and faintness
came over him.
"I'll show you what I can do!” he threat-
ened his body, and at the same time sadly,
yet tenderly he felt his flabby, softened mus-
cles with his hand.
Soon, however, his body grew accustomed
to this régime as well, and the fear of death
appeared again-not so keen, nor so burn-
ing, but more disgusting, somewhat akin to
ас
124
The Seven
are
a nauseating sensation. “It's because they
are dragging it out so long," thought Ser-
gey. “It would be a good idea to sleep all
the time till the day of the execution,” and
he tried to sleep as much as possible. At
first he succeeded, but later, either because
he had slept too much, or for some other rea-
son, insomnia appeared. And with it came
eager, penetrating thoughts and a longing
for life.
"I am not afraid of this devil!” he thought
of Death. “I simply feel sorry for my life.
It is a splendid thing, no matter what the
pessimists say about it. What if they were
to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel sorry for
life, very sorry! And why does my beard
grow now? It didn't grow before, but sud-
denly it grows—why?”
He shook his head mournfully, heaving
long, painful sighs. Silence—then a sigh;
then a brief silence again-followed by a
longer, deeper sigh.
Thus it went on until the trial and the
terrible meeting with his parents. When he
awoke in his cell the next day he realized
Who Were Hanged 125
clearly that everything between him and life
was ended, that there were only a few empty
hours of waiting and then death would come,
--and a strange sensation took possession of
him. He felt as though he had been
stripped, stripped entirely,—as if not only
his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of
wrested from him. Death was not there as/
yet, but life was there no longer,—there was
something new, something astonishing, in-
explicable, not entirely reasonable and yet
not altogether without meaning, something
so deep and mysterious and supernatural
that it was impossible to understand. .
"Fie, you devil!” wondered Sergey, pain-
fully. "What is this? Where am I? -
who am I?”
He examined himself attentively, with in-
terest, beginning with his large prison slip-
pers, ending with his stomach where his coat
protruded. He paced the cell, spreading
out his arms and continuing to survey him-
self like a woman in a new dress which is too
long for her. He tried to turn his head, and
126
The Seven
it turned.
And this strange, terrible, un-
soon he would be no more!
Everything became strange.
He tried to walk across the cell--and it
seemed strange to him that he could walk.
to him that he could sit. He tried to drink
some water and it seemed strange to him
that he could drink, that he could swallow,
that he could hold the cup, that he had fin-
gers and that those fingers were trembling.
He choked, began to cough and while cough-
ing, thought: “How strange it is that I am
coughing."
“Am I losing my reason?” thought Ser-
gey, growing cold. “Am I coming to that,
too? The devil take them!”
He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and
this also seemed strange to him. And then
he remained breathless, motionless, petrified
for hours, suppressing every thought, all
loud breathing, all motion,-for every
thought seemed to him but madness, every
motion-madness. Time was no more; it
no
II
Who Were Hanged
127
appeared transformed into space, airless and
transparent, into an enormous square upon
which all were there the earth and life and
people. He saw all that at one glance, all
to the very end, to the mysterious abyss-
Death. And he was tortured not by the fact
that Death was visible, but that both Life
and Death were visible at the same time. The
curtain which through eternity has hidden
the mystery of life and the mystery of death
was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and
the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet
they remained incomprehensible, like the
Truth written in a foreign tongue. There
were no conceptions in his human mind, no
words in his human language that could de-
fine what he saw. And the words "I am
afraid” were uttered by him only because
there were no other words, because no other
conceptions existed, nor could other concep-
tions exist which would grasp this new, un-
human condition. Thus would it be with a
man if, while remaining within the bounds of
human reason, experience and feelings, he
were suddenly to see God Himself. He
128
The Seven
would see Him but would not understand,
even though he knew that it was God, and
he would tremble with inconceivable suffer-
ings of incomprehension.
“There is Müller for you!" he suddenly
uttered loudly, with extreme conviction, and
shook his head. And with that unexpected
break in his feelings, of which the human
17
cheerfully.
"Oh, Müller! My dear Müller! Oh, you
splendid German! After all you are right,
Müller, and I am an ass!"
He paced the cell quickly several times
and to the great astonishment of the soldier
who was watching him through the peep-
hole, he quickly undressed himself and cheer-
fully went through all the eighteen exercises
with the greatest care. He stretched and
expanded his young, somewhat emaciated
body, sat down for a moment, drew deep
breaths of air and exhaled it, stood up on
tip-toe, stretched his arms and his feet. And
after each exercise he announced, with sat-
isfaction:
Who Were Hanged 129
“That's it! That's the real way, Müller!”
His cheeks flushed; drops of warm, pleasant
perspiration came from the pores of his body,
and his heart beat soundly and evenly.
"The fact is, Müller,” philosophized Ser-
gey, expanding his chest so that the ribs
under his thin, tight skin were outlined
clearly,"the fact is, that there is a nine-
teenth exercise-to hang by the neck mo-
tionless. That is called execution. Do you
understand, Müller? They take a live man,
let us say Sergey Golovin, they swaddle him
as a doll and they hang him by the neck un-
til he is dead. It is a foolish exercise, Mül-
ler, but it can't be helped,—we have to do
it.”
He bent over on the right side and re-
peated:
“We have to do it, Müller."
CHAPTER IX
DREADFUL SOLITUDE
UNDER the same ringing of the clock, sep-
arated from Sergey and Musya by only a
few empty cells, but yet so painfully deso-
late and alone in the whole world as though
no other soul existed, poor Vasily Kashirin
was passing the last hours of his life in terror
and in anguish.
Perspiring, his moist shirt clinging to his
body, his once curly hair disheveled, he
ror
hopelessly, like a man suffering from an un-
bearable physical torture. He would sit
down for awhile, then start to run again, he
would press his forehead against the wall,
stop and seek something with his eyes—as if
looking for some medicine. His expression
changed as though he had two different
130
Who Were Hanged 131
faces. The former, the young face, had dis-
appeared somewhere, and a new one, a ter-
rible fáce that had seemed to have come out
of the darkness, had taken its place.
The fear of death had come upon him all
at once and taken possession of him com-
pletely and forcibly. In the morning, while
facing almost certain death, he had been
care-free and had scorned it, but toward
evening when he was placed in a cell in soli-
tary confinement, he was whirled and carried
away by a wave of mad fear. So long as he
went of his own free will to face danger
and death, so long as he had death, even
though it seemed terrible, in his own
hands, he felt at ease. He was even
cheerful; in the sensation of boundless free-
dom, of brave and firm conviction of his
fearless will, his little, shrunken, womanish
fear was drowned, leaving no trace. With
an infernal machine at his girdle, he made
the cruel force of dynamite his own, also its
fiery death-bearing power. And as he
walked along the street, amidst the bustling,
plain people, who were occupied with their
132
The Seven
U
affairs, who were hurriedly avoiding the dan-
gers from the horses of carriages and cars,
he seemed to himself as a stranger from an-
other, unknown world, where neither death
nor fear was known.
And suddenly this harsh, wild, stupefying
change. He can no longer go where he
pleases, but he is led where others please.
He can no longer choose the place he likes,
is placed in a stone cage, and locked
up like a thing. He can no longer choose
freely, like all people, between life and death,
but he will surely and inevitably be put to
death. The incarnation of will-power, life
and strength an instant before, he has now
become a wretched image of the most pitiful
weakness in the world. He has been trans-
formed into an animal waiting to be slaugh-
tered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken
from place to place, burnt and broken. It
matters not what he might say, nobody
would listen to his words, and if he endeav-
ored to shout, they would stop his mouth
with a rag. Whether he can walk alone or
not, they will take him away and hang him.
Who Were Hanged
133
lie down on the ground—they will overpower
him, lift him, bind him and carry him, bound,
to the gallows. And the fact that this ma-
chine-like work will be performed over him
by human beings like himself, lent to them
a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect-
they seemed to him like ghosts that came to
him for this one purpose, or like automatic
puppets on springs. They would seize him,
take him, carry him, hang him, pull him by
the feet. They would cut the rope, take
him down, carry him off and bury him.
From the first day of his imprisonment
the people and life seemed to him to have
turned into an incomprehensibly terrible
world of phantoms and automatic puppets.
Almost maddened with fear, he attempted to
picture to himself that human beings had
could not-they seemed to him to be mute.
He tried to recall their speech, the meaning
of the words that people used in their rela-
tions with one another-but he could not.
Their mouths seemed to open, some sounds
134
The Seven

As we
were heard; then they moved their feet and
disappeared. And nothing more...
Thus would a man feel if he were at night
alone in his house and suddenly all objects
were to come to life, start to move and over-
power him. And suddenly they would all
begin to judge him: the cupboard, the chair,
the writing-table and the divan. He would
cry and toss about, entreating, calling for
help, while they would speak among them-
selves in their own language, and then would
lead him to the scaffold,—they, the cupboard,
the chair, the writing-table and the divan.
And the other objects would look on.
To Vasily Kashirin, who was condemned
to death by hanging, everything now seemed
like children's playthings: his cell, the door
with the peephole, the strokes of the wound-
up clock, the carefully molded fortress, and
especially that mechanical puppet with the
gun who stamped his feet in the corridor, and
the others who, frightening him, peeped into
his cell through the little window and handed
him the food in silence. And that which he
was experiencing was not the fear of death;
2.S
YT
Who Were Hanged
135
death was now rather welcome to him. Death
with all its eternal mysteriousness and in-
comprehensibility was more acceptable to his
reason than this strangely and fantastically
changed world. What is more, death seemed
to have been destroyed completely in this
insane world of phantoms and puppets, hav-
ing lost its great and enigmatic significance,
becoming something mechanical and only for
that reason terrible. He would be seized,
taken, led, hanged, pulled by the feet, the
rope would be cut, he would be taken down,
carried off and buried.
And the man would have disappeared
from the world.
At the trial the nearness of his comrades
brought Kashirin to himself. For an in-
stant he imagined he saw real people; they
were sitting and trying him, speaking like
human beings, listening, apparently under-
standing him. But as he mentally rehearsed
the meeting with his mother he clearly felt
with the terror of a man who is beginning to
lose his reason and who realizes it, that this
old woman in the black little kerchief was
136
The Seven
only an artificial, mechanical puppet, of the
kind that can say “pa-pa," tíma-ma," but
somewhat better constructed. He tried to
speak to her, while thinking at the same time
with a shudder:
“O Lord! That is a puppet. A mother
doll. And there is a soldier-puppet, and
there, at home, is a father-puppet, and this
is the puppet of Vasily Kashirin.”
Y
7
So
he would hear somewhere the creaking of
the mechanism, the screeching of unoiled
wheels. When his mother began to cry,
something human again flashed for an in-
stant, but at the very first words it disap-
peared again, and it was interesting and ter-
rible to see that water was flowing from the
eyes of the doll.
Then, in his cell, when the terror had be-
come unbearable, Vasily Kashirin attempted
to pray. Of all that had surrounded his
the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter
and irritating sediment remained; but faith
there was none. But once, perhaps in his
Who Were Hanged 137
earliest childhood, he had heard a few words
which had filled him with palpitating emo-
tion and which remained during all his life
enwrapped with tender poetry. These words
were:
“The joy of all the afflicted ..."
It had happened, during painful periods
in his life, that he whispered to himself, not
in prayer, without being definitely conscious
of it, these words: “The joy of all the af-
flicted”-and suddenly he would feel re-
lieved and a desire would come over him to
go to some dear friend and question gently:
"Our life—is this life? Eh, my dearest,
is this life?”
And then suddenly it would appear laugh-
able to him and he would feel like mussing
up his hair, putting forth his knee and
thrusting out his chest as though to receive
heavy blows; saying: "Here, strike!”
He did not tell anybody, not even his
nearest comrades, about his "joy of all the
afflicted” and it was as though he himself did
not know about it,--so deeply was it hid-
VIN
138
The Seven
den in his soul. He recalled it but rarely
and cautiously.
Now when the terror of the insoluble mys-
tery, which appeared so plainly before him,
enveloped him completely, even as the water
in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the
shore,-a desire came upon him to pray. He
felt like kneeling, but he was ashamed of
the soldier and, folding his arms on his chest,
he whispered softly:
"The joy of all the afflicted!”
And he repeated tenderly, in anguish:
“Joy of all the afflicted, come to me, help
Vaska Kashirin.”
Long ago, while he was yet in his first
term at the university and used to go off on
a spree sometimes, before he had made the
acquaintance of Werner and before he had
entered the organization, he used then to
call himself half-boastingly, half-pityingly,
“Vaska Kashirin,”—and now for some rea-
son or other he suddenly felt like calling him-
self by the same name again. But the words
had a dead and toneless sound.
The joy of all the afflicted!”
Who Were Hanged
189
Something stirred. It was as though
some one's calm and mournful image had
flashed up in the distance and died out
quietly, without illuminating the deathly
gloom. The wound-up clock in the steeple
struck. The soldier in the corridor made a
noise with his gun or with his saber and he
yawned, slowly, at intervals.
“Joy of all the afflicted! You are silent!
Will you not say anything to Vaska Kashi-
rin?"
He smiled patiently and waited. All was
empty within his soul and about him. And
the calm, mournful image did not reappear.
He recalled, painfully and unnecessarily,
wax candles burning; the priest in his vest-
ments; the ikon painted on the wall. He re-
called his father, bending and stretching him-
self, praying and bowing to the ground,
while looking sidewise to see whether Vaska
was praying, or whether he was planning
some mischief. And a feeling of still greater
terror came over Vasily than before the
prayer.
Everything now disappeared.
140
The Seven
Madness came crawling painfully. His
consciousnesss was dying out like an extin-
guishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse
of a man who had just died, whose heart is
still warm but whose hands and feet had al-
reason flared up as red as blood again and
said that he, Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps
become insane here, suffer pains for which
there is no name, reach a degree of anguish
and suffering that had never been expe-
rienced by a single living being; that he
might beat his head against the wall, pick
his eyes out with his fingers, speak and shout
whatever he pleased, that he might plead
with tears that he could endure it no longer,
-and nothing would happen. Nothing
could happen.
And nothing happened. His feet, which
had a consciousness and life of their own,
continued to walk and to carry his trembling,
moist body. His hands, which had a con-
sciousness of their own, endeavored in vain
to fasten the coat which was open at his
chest and to warm his trembling, moist body.
Who Were Hanged 141
His body quivered with cold. His eyes
stared. And this was calm itself embodied.
But there was one more moment of wild
terror. That was when people entered his
cell. He did not even imagine that this visit
meant that it was time to go to the execution;
he simply saw the people and was frightened
like a child.
"I will not do it! I will not do it!” he
whispered inaudibly with his livid lips and
silently retreated to the depth of the cell,
even as in childhood he shrank when his
father lifted his hand.
“We must start."
The people were speaking, walking
around him, handing him something. He
closed his eyes, he shook a little,--and be-
gan to dress himself slowly. His conscious-
ness must have returned to him, for he sud-
denly asked the official for a cigarette. And
the official generously opened his silver ciga-
rette-case upon which was a chased figure in
the style of the decadents.
CHAPTER X
THE WALLS ARE FALLING
THE unidentified man, who called himself
Werner, was tired of life and struggle.
There was a time when he loved life very
dearly, when he enjoyed the theater, litera-
ture and social intercourse. Endowed with
an excellent memory and a firm will, he had
mastered several European languages and
could easily pass for a German, a French-
man or an Englishman. He usually spoke
German with a Bavarian accent, but when he
felt like it, he could speak like a born Ber-
liner. He was fond of dress, his manners
were excellent and he alone, of all the mem-
bers of the organization, dared attend the
balls given in high society, without running
the risk of being recognized as an outsider.
But for a long time, altogether unno-
142
Who Were Hanged. 143
ticed by his comrades, there had ripened in
his soul a dark contempt for mankind; con-
tempt mingled with despair and painful, al-
most deadly fatigue. By nature rather a
mathematician than a poet, he had not known
until now any inspiration, any ecstasy and
at times he felt like a madman, looking for
the squaring of a circle in pools of human
blood. The enemy against whom he strug-
gled every day could not inspire him with
respect. It was a dense net of stupidity,
treachery and falsehood, vile insults and base
deceptions. The last incident which seemed
to have destroyed in him forever the desire
to live, was the murder of the provocateur
which he had committed by order of the or-
ganization. He had killed him in cold blood,
calm, and after all pitiful, human face, he
suddenly ceased to respect himself and his
work. Not that he was seized with a feeling
of repentance, but he simply stopped appre-
ciating himself. He became uninteresting
to himself, unimportant, a dull stranger.
But being a man of strong, unbroken will-
144
The Seven
rny
VIII
power, he did not leave the organization.
He remained outwardly the same as before,
only there was something cold, yet painful
in his eyes. He never spoke to anyone of
this. .
He possessed another rare quality: just
rie
..
.
.
.
headaches, so Werner had never known fear.
When other people were afraid, he looked
upon them without censure but also with-
out any particular compassion, just as upon
a rather contagious illness from which, how-
ever, he himself had never suffered. He felt
sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya
Kashirin; but that was a cold, almost official
pity, which even some of the judges may
have felt at times.
Werner understood that the execution was
not merely death, that it was something dif-
ferent,--but he resolved to face it calmly, as
something not to be considered; to live until
the end as if nothing had happened and as
if nothing could happen. Only in this way
could he express his greatest contempt for
capital punishment and preserve his last
Who Were Hanged
145
freedom of the spirit which could not be torn
away from him. At the trial—and even his
comrades who knew well his cold, haughty
fearlessness would perhaps not have believed
this,-he thought neither of death nor of
life, but concentrated his attention deeply
and coolly upon a difficult chess game which
he was playing. A superior chess player,
he had started this game on the first day of
his imprisonment and continued it uninter-
ruptedly. Even the sentence condemning
him to death by hanging did not remove a
single figure from his imaginary chessboard.
Even the knowledge that he would not be
able to finish this game, did not stop him;
and the morning of the last day that he was
to remain on earth he started by correcting
a not altogether successful move he had made
on the previous day. Clasping his lowered
hands between his knees, he sat for a long
time motionless, then he rose and began to
walk, meditating. His walk was peculiar:
he leaned the upper part of his body slightly
forward and stamped the ground with his
heels firmly and distinctly. His steps
146
The Seven
usually left deep, plain imprints even on dry
YT
a simple Italian melody, which helped his
meditation.
But this time for some reason or other the
thing did not work well. With an unpleas-
ant feeling that he had made some important,
even grave blunder, he went back several
times and examined the game almost from
the beginning. He found no blunder, yet
the feeling about a blunder committed not
only failed to leave him, but even grew ever
more intense and unpleasant. Suddenly an
unexpected and offensive thought came into
his mind: Did the blunder perhaps consist
in his playing chess simply because he
wanted to distract his attention from the
execution and thus shield himself against the
fear of death which is apparently inevitable
in every person condemned to death?
“No. What for?” he answered coldly and
closed calmly his imaginary chessboard.
-----And with the same concentration with which
he had played chess, he tried to give himself
an account of the horror and the helplessness
Who Were Hanged
147
of his situation. As though he were going
through a strict examination, he looked over
the cell, trying not to let anything escape.
He counted the hours that remained until
the execution, made for himself an approxi-
mate and quite exact picture of the execution
itself and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well?” he said to some one half-question-
ingly. "Here it is. Where is the fear?”
Indeed there was no fear. Not only was
it not there, but something entirely different,
the reverse of fear, developed a sensation
of confused, but enormous and savage joy.
And the error, which he had not yet discov- .
ered, no longer called forth in him vexation
or irritation, it seemed to speak loudly of
something good and unexpected, as though
he had believed a dear friend of his to be
dead, and that friend turned out to be alive,
safe and sound and laughing.
Werner again shrugged his shoulders and
felt his pulse,-his heart was beating faster
than usual, but soundly and evenly, with a
specially ringing throb. He looked about
once more, attentively, like a novice for the
148
The Seven
...
-
!
-
.
first time in prison,-examined the walls, the
bolts, the chair which was screwed to the
floor, and thought:
* “Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and
free? Yes, so free? I think of the execution
to-morrow—and I feel as though it is not
there. I look at the walls—and I feel as
though they are not here, either. And I feel
so free, as though I were not in prison, but
had just come out of some prison where I
had spent all my life. What does this mean?”
His hands began to tremble--something
Werner had not experienced before. His
thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It
was as if tongues of fire had flashed up in
his mind, and the fire wanted to burst forth
and illumine the distance which was still dark
as night. Now the light pierced through and
the widely illuminated distance began to
shine.
The fatigue that had tormented Werner
during the last two years had disappeared;
the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed
eyes and mouth clinched in death, had fallen
away from his breast. Before the face of
Who Were Hanged
149
-
death, beautiful Youth came back to him
physically. Indeed, it was more than beau-
tiful Youth. With that wonderful clarity
of the spirit which in rare moments comes
over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks
of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived
both life and death, and he was awed by the
splendor of the unprecedented spectacle. It
seemed to him that he was walking along the
highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow
like the blade of a knife, and on one side he
saw Life, on the other side-Death-like
two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blend-
ing in one boundless, broad surface at the
horizon.
“What is this? What a divine spectacle!”
he said slowly, rising involuntarily and
straightening himself, as if in the presence
of a supreme being. And destroying the
walls, space and time with the impetuosity of
his all-penetrating look, he cast a wide glance
somewhere into the depth of the life he was
to forsake.
And life appeared to him in a new light.
He did not strive, as before, to clothe in
150
The Seven
(words that which he had seen; nor were there
such words in the still poor, meager human
language. That small, cynical and evil feel-
ing which had called forth in him a contempt
for mankind and at times even an aversion
for the sight of a human face, had disap-
peared completely. Thus, for a man who
goes up in an airship, the filth and litter of
the narrow streets disappear and that which
was ugly becomes beautiful.
Unconsciously Werner stepped over to
the table and leaned his right hand on it.
Proud and commanding by nature, he had
SA
commanding pose, had never turned his head
and never looked as he did now,-for he had
never yet been as free and dominant as he
was here in the prison, with but a few hours
from execution and death.
Now men seemed new to him,--they ap-
peared amiable and charming to his clari-
fied vision. Soaring over time, he saw
clearly how young mankind was, that but
yesterday it had been howling like a beast in
the forests; and that which had seemed to
Who Were Hanged
151
him terrible in human beings, unpardonable
and repulsive, suddenly became very dear to
him, like the inability of a child to walk as
grown people do, like a child's unconnected
lisping, flashing with sparks of genius; like
.
.
bruises.
"My dear people!” Werner suddenly
smiled and at once lost all that was imposing
in his pose; he again became a prisoner who
finds his cell narrow and uncomfortable un-
der lock, and he was tired of the annoying,
searching eye staring at him through the
peephole in the door. And, strange to say,
almost instantly he forgot all that he had
seen a little while before so clearly and dis-
tinctly; and, what is still stranger, he did
not even make an effort to recall it. He
simply sat down as comfortably as possible,
without the usual stiffness of his body, and
surveyed the walls and the bars with a faint
and gentle, strange, un-Werner-like smile.
Still another new thing happened to Werner,
-something that had never happened to him
before: he suddenly started to weep.
152
The Seven
"My dear comrades!” he whispered, cry-
ing bitterly. “My dear comrades!”
By what mysterious ways did he change
from the feeling of proud and boundless
freedom to this tender and passionate com-
passion? He did not know, nor did he think
of it. Did he pity his dear comrades, or did
his tears conceal something else, a still
loftier and more passionate feeling ?-His
suddenly revived and rejuvenated heart did
not know this either. He wept and whis-
pered:
“My dear comrades! My dear, dear com-
rades!”
In this man, who was bitterly weeping
and smiling through tears, no one could have
recognized the cold and haughty, weary, yet
daring Werner-neither the judges, nor the
comrades, nor even he himself.
Dr
CHAPTER XI
ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD
BEFORE placing the condemned people in
coaches, all five were brought together in a
large cold room with a vaulted ceiling,
worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-
room. They were now permitted to speak
to one another.
Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at
once of the permission. The others firmly
and silently shook each other's hands, which
were as cold as ice and as hot as fire,-and
silently, trying not to look at each other,
they crowded together in an awkward, ab-
sent-minded group. Now that they were to-
gether, they felt somewhat ashamed of what
each of them had experienced when alone;
and they were afraid to look, so as not to
153
TY
154
The Seven
notice or to show that new, peculiar, some-
what shameful sensation that each of them
felt or suspected the others of feeling
But after a short silence they glanced at
each other, smiled and immediately began to
feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No
change seemed to have occurred, and if it
of them that it could not be discerned in any
one separately. All spoke and moved about
strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast
or too slowly. Sometimes they seemed to
choke with their words and repeated them a
number of times; sometimes they did not fin-
ish a phrase they had started, or thought they
had finished—they did not notice it. · They
all blinked their eyes and examined ordinary
objects curiously, not recognizing them, like
people who had worn eye-glasses and had
suddenly taken them off; and all of them fre-
quently turned around abruptly, as though
some one behind them was calling them all
the time and showing them something. But
they did not notice this, either. Musya's and
Tanya Kovalchuk's cheeks and ears were
Who Were Hanged 155
burning; Sergey was at first somewhat pale, .
but he soon recovered and looked as he al-
ways did.
Only Vasily attracted everybody's atten-
and terrible. Werner became agitated and
said to Musya in a low voice, with tender
anxiety:
“What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it
possible that he — What? I must go to
him.”
Vasily looked at Werner from the dis-
tance, as though not recognizing him, and
he lowered his eyes.
“Vasya, what have you done with your
hair? What is the matter with you? Never
mind, my dear, never mind, it will soon be
over. We must keep up, we must, we must."
Vasily was silent. But when it seemed
that he would no longer say anything, a dull,
belated, terribly remote answer came-like
an answer from the grave:
"I'm all right. I hold my own.”
Then he repeated:
"I hold mv own.”
156
The Seven
Werner was delighted.
"That's the way, that's the way. Good
boy. That's the way."
But his eyes met Vasily's dark, wearied
glance fixed upon him from the distance and
he thought with instant sorrow: “From
where is he looking? From where is he
speaking ?" and with profound tenderness,
with which people address a grave, he said:
“Vasya, do you hear? I love you very
much.”
"So do I love you very much,” answered
the tongue, moving with difficulty.
Suddenly Musya took Werner by the
hand and with an expression of surprise, she
said like an actress on the stage, with meas-
ured emphasis:
"Werner, what is this? You said, 'I love?
You never before said 'I love' to anybody.
And why are you all somtender and se-
rene? Why?”
“Why?"
And like an actor, also accentuating what
he felt, Werner pressed Musya's hand
firmly:
Mer
Who Were Hanged 157
"Yes, now I love very much. Don't tell
it to the others, it isn't necessary, I feel
somewhat ashamed, but I love deeply."
Their eyes met and flashed up brightly,
and everything about them seemed to have
plunged in darkness. It is thus that in the
flash of lightning all other lights are in-
stantly darkened and the heavy yellow flame
casts a shadow upon earth.
“Yes,” said Musya, “yes, Werner.”
“Yes,” he answered, "yes, Musya, yes."
They understood each other and some-
thing was firmly settled between them at this
moment. And his eyes glistening, Werner
again became agitated and quickly stepped
over to Sergey.
"Seryozha!"
But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. Almost
crying with maternal pride, she tugged Ser-
gey frantically by the sleeve.
"Listen, Werner! I am crying here for
him, I am wearing myself to death, and he
is occupying himself with gymnastics!"
"According to the Müller system?” smiled
Werner.
158
The Seven
9.
Sergey knit his brow confusedly.
"You needn't laugh, Werner. I have con-
vinced myself conclusively- "
All began to laugh. Drawing strength
and courage from one another, they gradu-
ally regained their poise-became the same
as they used to be. They did not notice this,
however, and thought that they had never
changed at all. Suddenly Werner inter-
rupted their laughter and said to Sergey
very earnestly:
"You are right, Seryozha. You are per-
fectly right.”
“No, but you must understand,” said
Golovin gladly. “Of course, we-
But at this point they were asked to start.
And their jailers were so kind as to permit
them to ride in pairs, as they pleased. Alto-
gether the jailers were extremely kind; even
too kind. It was as if they tried partly to
show themselves humane and partly to show
that they were not there at all, but that
everything was being done as by machinery.
But they were all pale.
Who Were Hanged
159
“Musya, you go with him.” Werner
pointed at Vasily, who stood motionless.
"I understand,” Musya nodded. “And
you?"
“I? Tanya will go with Sergey, you go
with Vasya. ... I will go alone. That
doesn't matter, I can do it, you know.”
When they went out in the yard, the moist,
soft darkness rushed warmly and strongly
against their faces, their eyes, taking their
breath away, then suddenly it penetrated
their bodies tenderly and refreshingly. It
fect was produced simply by the spring wind,
the warm, moist wind. And the really won-
derful spring night was filled with the odor
of melting snow, and through the boundless
space the noise of drops resounded. Hastily
and frequently, as though trying to over-
take one another, little drops were falling,
striking in unison a ringing tune. Suddenly
one of them would strike out of tune and all
was mingled in a merry splash in hasty con-
fusion. Then a large, heavy drop would
strike firmly and again the fast, spring
160
The Seven
melody resounded distinctly. And over the
city, above the roofs of the fortress, hung a
pale redness in the sky reflected by the elec-
tric lights.
“U-ach!” Sergey Golovin heaved a deep
sigh and held his breath, as though he re-
gretted to exhale from his lungs the fine,
fresh air.
“How long have you had such weather?”
inquired Werner. “It's real spring."
“It's only the second day," was the polite
answer. “Before that we had mostly frosty
weather.”
The dark carriages rolled over noiselessly
one after another, took them in by twos,
started off into the darkness—there where
the lantern was shaking at the gate. The
convoys like gray silhouettes surrounded
each carriage; the horseshoes struck noisily
against the ground, or plashed upon the
melting snow.
When Werner bent down, about to climb
into the carriage, the gendarme whispered to
him:
Who Were Hanged 161
“There is somebody else going along with
you."
Werner was surprised.
"Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes!
Another one? Who is he?”
The gendarme was silent. Indeed, in a
dark corner a small, motionless but living
figure pressed close to the side of the car-
riage. By the reflection of the lantern Wer-
ner noticed the flash of an open eye. Seating
himself, Werner pushed his foot against the
other man's knee.
"Excuse me, comrade.”
The man made no reply. It was only.
when the carriage started, that he suddenly
asked in broken Russian, speaking with dif-
ficulty:
"Who are you?”
"I am Werner, condemned to hanging f
the attempt upon N-, And you?”
“I am Yanson. They must not hang me.”'
They were riding thus in order to appear
two hours later face to face before the inex-
plicable great mystery, in order to pass from
Life to Death and they were introducing
TY
162
The Seven
li
Pi
each other. Life and Death moved simul-
taneously, and until the very end Life re-
mained life, to the most ridiculous and in-
sipid trifles.
** “What have you done, Yanson?”
"I killed my master with a knife. I stole
money." **
It seemed from the tone of his voice that
Yanson was falling asleep. Werner found
his flabby hand in the darkness and pressed
it. Yanson withdrew it drowsily.
“Are you afraid?” asked Werner.
“I don't want to be hanged.”
They became silent. Werner again found
the Esthonian's hand and pressed it firmly
between his dry, burning palms. Yanson's
hand lay motionless, like a board, but he
made no longer any effort to withdraw it.
It was close and suffocating in the car-
riage. The air was filled with the smell of
soldiers' clothes, mustiness, and the leather
of wet boots. The young gendarme who sat
opposite Werner breathed warmly upon him,
and in his breath there was the odor of onions
and cheap tobacco. But some brisk, fresh
Who Were Hanged 163
air came in through certain clefts, and be-
cause of this, spring was felt even more in-
tensely in this small, stifling, moving box,
than outside. The carriage kept turning
now. to the right, now to the left, now it
seemed to turn back. At times it seemed as
and the same spot for hours for some reason
or other. At first a bluish electric light pene-
trated through the lowered, heavy window
shades; then suddenly, after a certain turn it
grew dark, and only by this could they guess
that they had turned into deserted streets in
the outskirts of the city and that they were
nearing the S. railroad station. Sometimes
during sharp turns, Werner's live, bent knee
would strike against the live, bent knee of
the gendarme, and it was hard to believe
that the execution was approaching.
“Where are we going?" Yanson asked
continuous turning of the dark box and he
felt slightly sick at his stomach.
Werner answered and pressed the Estho-
nian's hand more firmly. He felt like saying
164
The Seven
something especially kind and caressing to
this little, sleepy man, and he already loved
him as he had never loved anyone in his
life.
"You don't seem to sit comfortably, my
dear man. Move over here, to me.”
Yanson was silent for awhile, then he re-
plied:
"Well, thank you. I'm sitting all right.
Are they going to hang you too?”
"Yes,” answered Werner, almost laugh-
ing with unexpected jollity, and he waved
his hand easily and freely, as though he were
speaking of some absurd and trifling joke
which kind but terribly comical people
wanted to play on him.
"Have you a wife?” asked Yanson.
"No. I have no wife. I am single.”
. "I am also alone. Alone," said Yanson.
Werner's head also began to feel dizzy.
And at times it seemed that they were go-
ing to some festival; strange to say, almost
all those who went to the scaffold expe-
rienced the same sensation and mingled with
sorrow and fear there was a vague joy as
..
...
.
Who Were Hanged
165
they anticipated the extraordinary thing that .
was soon to befall them. Reality was intoxi-
cated with madness and Death, united with
Life, brought forth apparitions. It seemed
the houses.
"We have arrived!” said Werner gayly
when the carriage stopped, and he jumped
out easily. But with Yanson it was a rather
1
resisted and would not come out. He seized
the knob. The gendarme opened the weak
fingers and pulled his hand away. Then
Yanson seized the corner of the carriage, the
door, the high wheel, but immediately let it
go upon the slightest effort on the part of
the gendarme. He did not exactly seize
these things; he rather cleaved to each object
sleepily and silently, and was torn away
easily, without any effort. Finally he got
up.
There were no flags. The railroad station
was dark, deserted and lifeless; the passen-
ger trains were not running any longer,
and the train which was silently waiting for
.
166
The Seven
these passengers on the way needed no
bright light, no commotion. Suddenly Wer-
ner began to feel weary. It was not fear,
nor anguish, but a feeling of enormous, pain-
ful, tormenting weariness which makes one
feel like going off somewhere, lying down
SON
stretched himself and yawned slowly. Yan-
son also stretched himself and quickly
yawned several times.
"I wish they'd be quicker about it,” said
Werner wearily. Yanson was silent, shrink-
ing together.
When the condemned moved along the
deserted platform which was surrounded by
soldiers, to the dimly lighted cars, Werner
found himself near Sergey Golovin; Sergey,
pointing with his hand somewhere aside, be-
gan to say something, but only the word
"lantern” was heard distinctly, and the rest
was drowned in slow and weary yawning.
"What did you say?" asked Werner, also
yawning
"The lantern. The lamp in the lantern is
Who Were Hanged
167
around. Indeed, the lamp in the lantern was
smoking very much, and the glass had al-
ready turned black on top.
“Yes, it is smoking."
Suddenly he thought:“What have I to do
with the smoking of the lamp, since "
Sergey apparently thought the same, as
he glanced quickly at Werner and turned
away. But both stopped yawning.
They all went to the cars themselves, only
Yanson had to be led by the arms. At first
he stamped his feet and his boots seemed to
stick to the boards of the platform. Then he
bent his knees and fell into the arms of the
gendarmes, his feet dangled like those of a
very intoxicated man, and the tips of the
boots scraped against the wood. It took a
long time until he was silently pushed
through the door.
Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, un-
consciously imitating the movements of his
comrades—he did everything as they did.
But on boarding the platform of the car, he
stumbled, and a gendarme took him by the
elbow to support him. Vasily shuddered
168
The Seven
and screamed shrilly, drawing back his arm:
“Ai!”
“What is it, Vasya?" Werner rushed over
to him. Vasily was silent, trembling in every
limb. The confused and even offended gen-
darme explained:
"I wanted to keep him from falling, and
hem ”
“Come, Vasya, let me hold you,” said
Werner, about to take him by the arm. But
Vasily drew back his arm again and cried
more loudly than before:
“Ai!”
“Vasya, it is I, Werner.”
"I know. Don't touch me. I'll go my-
self.”
And continuing to tremble he entered the
car himself and seated himself in a corner.
Bending over to Musya, Werner asked her
softly, pointing with his eyes at Vasily:
"How about him?”!
"Bad,” answered Musya, also in a soft
voice. “He is dead already. Werner, tell
me, is there such a thing as death?"
Who Were Hanged 169
"I don't know, Musya, but I think that
there is no such thing,” replied Werner se-
riously and thoughtfully.
“That's what I have thought. But he? I
was tortured with him in the carriage-it
was like riding with a corpse."
“I don't know, Musya. Perhaps there is
such a thing as death for some people.
Meanwhile, perhaps, but later there will be
no death. For me death also existed before,
but now it exists no longer.”
Musya's somewhat paled cheeks flushed as
she asked:
"It did exist, Werner? It did?"
“It did. But not now any longer. Just
the same as with you.”
A noise was heard in the doorway of the
car. Mishka Tsiganok entered, stamping
noisily with his heels, breathing loudly and
spitting. He cast a swift glance and stopped
са
"No room here, gendarme!” he shouted to
the tired gendarme who looked at him
angrily. “You make it so that I am com-
170
The Seven
me here on the lamp-post. What a carriage
they gave me, dogs! Is that a carriage?
It's the devil's belly, not a carriage!”
But suddenly he bent down his head,
stretched out his neck and thus went for-
ward to the others. Out of the disheveled
frame of hair and beard his black eyes looked
wildly and sharply with an almost insane ex-
pression.
“Ah, gentlemen!” he drawled out. “So
that's what it is. Hello, master!"
He thrust his hand to Werner and sat
down opposite him. And bending closely
over to him, he winked one eye and quickly
passed his hand over his throat.
"You, too? What?”
“Yes!” smiled Werner.
“Are all of us to be hanged?"
“All.”
“Oho!” Tsiganok grinned, showing his
teeth, and quickly felt everybody with his
eyes, stopping for an instant longer on
Musya and Yanson. Then he winked again
to Werner.
. “The Minister?"
Who Were Hanged
171
“Yes, the Minister. And you?”
"I am here for something else, master.
People like me don't deal with ministers. I
am a murderer, master, that's what I am.
An ordinary murderer. Never mind, mas-
ter, move away a little, I haven't come into
your company of my own will. There will
be room enough for all of us in the other
world.”
He surveyed them all with one swift, sus-
picious, wild glance from under his dis-
heveled hair. But all looked at him silently
and seriously, even with apparent interest.
He grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly
clapped Werner on the knee several times.
“That's the way, master! How does the
song run? “Don't rustle, 0 green little
mother forest. ..."
"Why do you call me ‘master,' since we
are all going— "
"Correct," Tsiganok agreed with satisfac-
tion. “What kind of master are you, if you
are going to hang right beside me? There
is a master for you”; and he pointed with his
finger at the silent gendarme. "Eh, that fel-
172
The Seven
low there is not worse than our kind”; he
pointed 'with his eyes at Vasily. “Master!
Eh there, master! You're afraid, aren't
you?”
"No," answered the heavy tongue.
"Never mind that 'No.' Don't be
ashamed; there's nothing to be ashamed of.
Only a dog wags his tail and snarls when
he is taken to be hanged, but you are a man.
Who is that dope? He isn't one of you, is
he?”
He darted his glance rapidly about, and
hissing, kept spitting continuously. Yanson,
curled up into a motionless bundle, pressed
closely into the corner. The flaps of his out-
worn fur cap stirred, but he maintained si-
lence. Werner answered for him:
"He killed his employer.”
"O Lord!” wondered Tsiganok. “Why
are such people allowed to kill ?”
For some time Tsiganok had been look-
ing sideways at Musya; now turning quick-
ly, he stared at her sharply, straight into her
“Young lady, young lady! What about
173
T
S.
you? Her cheeks are rosy and she is laugh-
ing. Look, she is really laughing," he said,
clasping Werner's knee with his clutching,
iron-like fingers. “Look, look!"
Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya
also gazed straight into his sharp and wildly
searching eyes.
The wheels rattled fast and noisily. The
small cars kept hopping along the narrow
rails. Now at a curve or at a crossing the
small engine whistled shrilly and carefully
the engineer was afraid lest he might run
over somebody. It was strange to think that
so much humane painstaking care and exer-
tion was being introduced into the business
of hanging people; that the most insane deed
on earth was being committed with such an
air of simplicity and reasonableness. The
cars were running, and human beings sat in
them as people always do, and they rode as
people usually ride; and then there would be
a halt, as usual.
“The train will stop for five minutes."
And there death would be waiting-eter-
nity--the great mystery.
CHAPTER XII
THEY ARE HANGED
.
V
THE little cars ran on carefully.
Sergey Golovin at one time had lived for
several years with his relatives at their coun-
try-house, along this very road. He had
traveled upon it by day as well as by night,
and he knew it well. He closed his eyes,
Sid thought that he might now simply be
returning home that he had stayed out late
in the city with acquaintances, and was now
coming back on the last train.
“We will soon be there,” he said, opening
his eyes and looking out of the grated, mute
window.
Nobody stirred, nobody answered; only
Tsiganok spat quickly several times and his
eyes ran over the car, as though feeling the
windows, the doors, the soldiers.
W
1974
Who Were Hanged 175
"It's cold,” said Vasily Kashirin, his lips
closed tightly, as though really frozen; and
his words sounded strangely.
Tanya Kovalchuk began to bustle about.
"Here's a handkerchief. Tie it about
your neck. It's a very warm one." : "
"Around the neck?” Sergey asked sud-
denly, startled by his own question. But as
the same thing occurred to all of them, no
one seemed to hear him. It was as if noth-
ing had been said, or as if they had all said
the same thing at the same time.
"Never mind, Vasya, tie it about your
neck. It will be warmer,” Werner advised
him. Then he turned to Yanson and asked
gently:
“And you, friend, are you cold?”
“Werner, perhaps he wants to smoke.
Comrade, perhaps you would like to smoke?"
asked Musya. “We have something to
smoke."
“I do.”
"Give him a cigarette, Seryozha,” said
Werner delightedly. But Sergey was al-
ready getting out a cigarette. All looked
SOIT
176
on with friendliness, watching how Yanson's
fingers took the cigarette, how the match
flared, and then how the blue smoke issued
from Yanson's mouth.
“Thanks,” said Yanson; “it's good.”
1 "How strange!” said Sergey.
“What is strange?" Werner turned
around. “What is strange?"
“I mean—the cigarette."
Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary
pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even
with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon
the little tube, from the end of which zmoke
was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted
aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gath-
ering, turning black. The light went out.
“The light's out,” said Tanya.
“Yes, the light's out."
"Let it go,” said Werner, frowning, look-
ing uneasily at Yanson, whose hand, hold-
ing the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if
dead. Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly,
bent over to Werner, close to him, face to
29Y
Who Were Hanged
177
face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like
a horse, whispered:
“Master, how about the convoys? Sup-
pose wemeh? Shall we try?”
“No, don't do it,” Werner replied, also
in a whisper. "We shall drink it to the bit-
ter end.”
“Why not? It's livelier in a fight! Eh?
I strike him, he strikes me, and you don't
even know how the thing is done. It's just
as if you don't die at all.”
"No, you shouldn't do it," said Werner,
and turned to Yanson. “Why don't you
smoke, friend?”
Suddenly Yanson’s wizened face became
wofully wrinkled, as if somebody had pulled
strings which set all the wrinkles in motion.
And, as in a dream, he began to whimper,
without tears, in a dry, strained voice:
"I don't want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha!
Why should I be hanged? Aha! aha! aha!"
They began to bustle about him. Tanya
Kovalchuk, weeping freely, petted him on
the arm, and adjusted the drooping earlaps
of his worn fur cap.
178
The Seven
1
“My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear!
Poor, unfortunate little fellow!”
Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught
her glance and grinned, showing his teeth.
“What a queer fellow! He drinks tea,
and yet feels cold,” he said, with an abrupt
laugh. But suddenly his own face became
bluish-black, like cast-iron, and his large
yellow teeth flashed.
Suddenly the little cars trembled and
slackened their speed. All, except Yanson
and Kashirin, rose and sat down again
quickly.
"Here is the station," said Sergey.
It seemed to them as if all the air had
been suddenly pumped out of the car, it be-
came so difficult to breathe. The heart grew
larger, making the chest almost burst, beat-
ing in the throat, tossing about madly-
shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice.
And the eyes looked upon the quivering
floor, and the ears heard how the wheels were
turning ever more slowly—the wheels
slipped and turned again, and then sud-
denly—they stopped.
Who Were Hanged 179
The train had halted.
Then a dream set in. It.was not terrible,
rather fantastic, unfamiliar to the memory,
strange. The dreamer himself seemed to re-
main aside, only his bodiless apparition
moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked
noiselessly, suffered without suffering. As
in a dream, they walked out of the car,
formed into parties of two, inhaled the pe-
culiarly fresh spring air of the forest. As
in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly, power-
lessly, and was dragged out of the car si-
lently.
They descended the steps of the station.
"Are we to walk?” asked some one almost
cheerily.
"It isn't far now," answered another, also
cheerily.
Then they walked in a large, black, silent
crowd amid the forest, along a rough, wet.
and soft spring road. From the forest, from
the snow, a fresh, strong breath of air was
wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes sinking
into the snow, and involuntarily the hands
of the comrades clung to each other. And
180
The Seven
the convoys, breathing with difficulty,
walked over the untouched snow on each
side of the road. Some one said in an angry
voice:
“Why didn't they clear the road? Did
they want us to turn somersaults in the
snow?"
Some one else apologized guiltily.
“We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is
thawing and it can't be helped.”
Consciousness of what they were doing re-
turned to the prisoners, but not completely,
-in fragments, in strange parts. Now,
suddenly, their minds practically admitted:
“It is indeed impossible to clear the road.”
Then again everything died out, and only
their sense of smell remained: the unbear-
ably fresh smell of the forest and of the
melting snow. And everything became un-
usually clear to the consciousness: the forest,
the night, the road and the fact that soon
they would be hanged. Their conversation,
restrained to whispers, flashed in fragments.
"It is almost four o'clock.”
“I said we started too early."
Who Were Hanged
181
The sun dawns at five.”
“Of course, at five. We should have "
They stopped in a meadow, in the dark-
ness. A little distance away, beyond the
bare trees, two small lanterns moved silently.
There were the gallows.
“I lost one of my rubbers,” said Sergey
Golovin.
"Really?” asked Werner, not understand-
ing what he said.
"I lost a rubber. It's cold.”
“Where's Vasily?!
"I don't know. There he is.”
Vasily stood, gloomy, motionless.
"And where is Musya?”
"Here I am. Is that you, Werner?”
They began to look about, avoiding the
direction of the gallows, where the lanterns
continued to move about silently with ter-
rible suggestiveness. On the left, the bare
forest seemed to be growing thinner, and
something large and white and flat was vis-
ible. A damp wind issued from it.
“The sea,” said Sergey Golovin, inhaling
182
The Seven
IOSA
L
.
Yn
the air with nose and mouth. “The sea is
there!"
Musya answered sonorously:
“My love which is as broad as the sea!"
“What is that, Musya?!!
“The banks of life cannot hold my love,
which is as broad as the sea.”
“My love which is as broad as the sea,”
echoed Sergey, thoughtfully, carried away
by the sound of her voice and by her words.
"My love which is as broad as the sea,”
repeated Werner, and suddenly he spoke
wonderingly, cheerfully:
“Musya, how young you are!"
Suddenly Tsiganok whispered warmly,
out of breath, right into Werner's ear:
"Master! master! There's the forest!
My God! what's that? There-where the
lanterns arenare those the gallows? What
does it mean?”
Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was
writhing in agony before his death.
“We must bid each other good-by,” said
Tanya Kovalchuk.
"Wait, they have yet to read the sen-
Who Were Hanged . 183
tence,” answered Werner. “Where is Yan-
son?”
Yanson was lying on the snow, and about
him people were busying themselves. There
was a smell of ammonia in the air.
"Well, what is it, doctor? Will you be
through soon?” some one asked impatiently.
“It's nothing. He has simply fainted.
Rub his ears with snow! He is coming to
himself already! You may read the sen-
tence!”
The light of the dark lantern flashed upon
the paper and on the white, gloveless hands
holding it. Both the paper and the hands
quivered slightly, and the voice also quiv-
ered:
"Gentlemen, perhaps it is not necessary
to read the sentence to you. You know it
already. What do you say?"
"Don't read it," Werner answered for
them all, and the little lantern was soon ex-
tinguished.
The services of the priest were also de-..
clined by them all. Tsiganok said:
“Stop your fooling, father—you will for-
184
The Seven
in
give me, but they will hang me. Go to-
where you came from.”
And the dark, broad silhouette of the
priest moved back silently and quickly and
disappeared. Day was breaking: the snow
turned whiter, the figures of the people be-
came more distinct, and the forest-thinner,
more melancholy.
"Gentlemen, you must go in pairs. Take
your places in pairs as you wish, but I ask
you to hurry up."
Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now
standing, supported by two gendarmes.
"I will go with him. And you, Seryozha,
take Vasily. Go ahead.”
“Very well.”
“You and I go together, Musechka, shall
we not?” asked Tanya Kovalchuk. “Come,
let us kiss each other good-by.”
They kissed one another quickly. Tsiga-
nok kissed firmly, so that they felt his teeth;
Yanson softly, drowsily, with his mouth half
open-and it seemed that he did not under-
stand what he was doing.
When Sergey Golovin and Kashirin had
was now
Who Were Hanged 185
gone a few steps, Kashirin suddenly stopped
and said loudly and distinctly:
“Good-by, comrades.”
“Good-by, comrade,” they shouted in an-
swer.
They went off. It grew quiet. The
lanterns beyond the trees became motion-
less. They awaited an outcry, a voice, some :
kind of noise—but it was just as quiet there
as it was among them and the yellow lan-
terns were motionless.
“Oh, my God!” some one cried hoarsely
and wildly. They looked about. It was
Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought
of death. “They are hanging!"
They turned away from him, and again it**
became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing,
catching at the air with his hands.
"How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go
alone? It's livelier to die together. Gentle-
men, what does it mean?”
He seized Werner by the hand, his fingers
clutching and then relaxing.
“Dear master, at least you come with me?
Eh? Do me the favor? Don't refuse."
186
The Seven
Werner answered painfully:
"I can't, my dear fellow. I am going with
him.”
“Oh, my God! Must I go alone, then?
My God! How is it to be?”
Musya stepped forward and said softly:
“You may go with me.”
Tsiganok stepped back and rolled the
whites of his eyes wildly.
"With you!"
“Yes.”
"Just think of her! What a little girl!
And you're not afraid? If you are, I would
rather go alone!”
“No, I am not afraid.”
Tsiganok grinned.
“Just think of her! But do you know
that I am a murderer? Don't you despise
me? You had better not do it. I shan't be
Nangry at you."
Musya was silent, and in the faint light of
dawn her face was pale and enigmatic.
Then suddenly she walked over to Tsiganob
quickly, and, throwing her arms about his
neck, kissed him firmly upon his lips. He
11
Who Were Hanged
187
took her by the shoulders with his fingers,
held her away from himself, then shook her,
and, with loud smacks, kissed her on the
lips, on the nose, on the eyes.
“Come!”
Suddenly the soldier standing nearest
them staggered forward, and opening his
hands, let his gun drop. He did not stoop
down to regain it, but stood for an instant
motionless, turned abruptly and, like a blind
man, walked toward the forest over the un-
touched snow.
“Where are you going?” called out an-
other soldier in fright. “Halt!”
But the man continued walking through
the deep snow silently and with difficulty.
Then he must have stumbled over something,
for he waved his arms and fell face down-
ward. And there he remained lying on the
snow.
“Pick up the gun, you sour-faced gray-
coat, or I'll pick it up,” said Tsiganok
sternly to the other soldier. “You don't
know your business!”
The little lanterns began to move about
WITOW.
188
The Seven
busily again. Now it was the turn of Werner
and Yanson.
“Good-by, master!" called Tsiganok loud-
world, you'll see! Don't turn away from me.
When you see me, bring me some water to
drink-it will be hot there for me!"
"I don't want to be hanged!” said Yanson
drowsily.
Werner took him by the hand, and then
the Esthonian walked a few steps alone.
But later they saw him stop and fall down
in the snow. Soldiers bent over him, lifted
him up and carried him on, and he struggled
faintly in their arms. Why did he not cry?
He must have forgotten even that he had
à voice.
And again the little yellow lanterns be-
came motionless.
“And I, Musechka," said Tanya Koval-
chuk mournfully, “must I go alone? We
lived together, and nowm "
**"Tanechka, dearest--"
But Tsiganok took her part heatedly.
lapit
-.-
Who Were Hanged
189
Holding her by the hand, as though fearing
that some one would take her away from
him, he said quickly, in a business-like man-
ner, to Tanya:
"Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You
are a pure soul-you can go alone wherever
you please! But I-I can't! A mur-
derer! ... Understand? I can't go
alone! Where are you going, you mur-
derer? they will ask me. Why, I even stole
horses, by God! But with her it is just as if
- just as if I were with an infant, under-
stand? Do you understand me?"
"I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once
more, Musechka.”
“Kiss! Kiss each other!” urged Tsiganok.
“That's a woman's job! You must bid each
other a hearty good-by!”
Musya and Tsiganok moved forward.
Musya walked cautiously, slipping, and by
force of habit raising her skirts slightly.
And the man led her to death firmly, holding
her arm carefully and feeling the ground.
with his foot.
The lights stopped moving. It was quiet
190 The Seven Who Were Hanged
and lonely around Tanya Kovalchuk. The
soldiers were silent, all gray in the soft,
colorless light of daybreak.
“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk
suddenly. “Seryozha is dead, Werner is
dead-and Vasya, too. I am alone! Sol-
diers! soldiers! I am alone, alone "
The sun was rising over the sea.
The bodies were placed in a box. Then
they were taken away. With stretched necks,
with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen
tongues, looking like some unknown, ter-
rible flowers between the lips, which were
covered with bloody foam—the bodies were
hurried back along the same road by which
they had come-alive. And the spring snow
was just as soft and fresh; the spring air
was just as strong and fragrant. And on
the snow lay Sergey's black rubber-shoe,
wet, trampled under foot.
Thus did men greet the rising sun.
W.
.
..
..
.
.
..!4
.
.
.
..
"
M
4
*
THE END
OGILVIE'S POPULAR COPYRIGHT LINE
The Kreutzer Sonata
AND OTHER STORIES
By COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
Translated from the Russian.
O O O
Bound in Cloth, Handsomely Stamped in Colors
0 0 0
Tolstoy--the great mind--the master of literature-is among
those immortals who are placed on the pedestal of everlasting
fame because of his power and his insight into human nature
into human character. He is capable of understanding and
writing in a way, which, for a writer of less experience and in,
tellect, would be impossible. He is the maker of a new era in
literature—from his mind issue the thoughts of many, expressed
in the voice of a genius.
THE KREUTZER SONATA is one of his books which has a world.
wide reputation, is, in fact, the one that made him famous, and
one which everyone of mature years should read.
The closing words of the book show the nature of the moral
co be deduced: “Yes, that is what I have done, that is my ex-
perience. We must understand the real meaning of the words
of the Gospel-Matthew V, 28—that whosoever looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery;' and these
words relate to the wife, to the sister, and not only to the wife
of another. but especially to one's own wife.”
The moral lesson to be learned is plainly visible and its sa
lution is the solution of the “higher mind."
OOO
SENT BY MAIL, POSTAGE PAID, FOR $1.00
0 0 0
You can buy this at any bookstore or direct from us
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY
57 Rose Street, New York
OGILVIE'S POPULAR COPYRIGHT LINE
Resurrection
BY COUNT LEO TOLSTOI,
Author of "The Kreutzer Sonata," "The Forged Coupon," Etc.
OOO
“Not in Strength is God, but in Truth.” Such is the motto
of Resurrection, and, like every other naked truth, Resurrec-
tion was driven from place to place in its search of shelter. In
it Tolstoi gathers the vices of society and throws them into the
face of the world. It depicts the ocean of life rocked by storm
and lulled to sleep and ease by a master hand. In the splash
of every wave is heard the story of human emotions, misery, dis-
enchantment, suffering, crime, and life, that is true even in art.
Nekhludov, the central figure, is a powerful, unfathomable
stroke of artistic genius. He is not always a herohe is a man
hence heir to weakness and temptation. Passion runs wild
in him. The beast, the flesh, triumph over the spirit. In wine,
women, and corruption he forgets the victim of his crime, and
were it not for an almost improbable coincidence, his soul, his
conscience would never awaken. But he becomes a new man;
and it is the telling of this which gives Resurrection its power.
Attractively bound in cloth. 530 pages. Illustrated.
PRICE, $1,00 PER COPY, POSTPAID.
Ask for the OGILVIE Edition.
OOO
You can buy this book at any bookstore or direct from us.
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY
57 Rose Street, New York

-:-
1
.
..
.
.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00035 6645
....
.
I
. -.-.
TITE
.
A
1
.
!
-
*
-
19
•
-
'.
+.
-
.
.
-
•
ini
.
.
.
-
-
-
. 19
-
5
1.
.
AL
.
+
-
1
-
"
B
U

事
​。
不是一
​-
{
老
​"",
不多​,
AL
中
​重要事
​主
​書​,
1
,
--
多重主
​算​,
,
有一年里
​實在不是一
​其中
​-
事​,
本
​臺
​基本事​,
,
本书有​:
:::
,
人事​、
¥1,
,
學成果​。
日本
​-
重
​以
​?
以
​,
-
事​,
*
?
無
​.
-
書香
​* _!」其實是非
​本
​-
-
it
車兩
​事實事主
​1. 學​:
特鲁鲁
​量​,看看
​-
-
-
要
​-
。
-
鲁一鲁
​-
-
一一一一一
​-
-
量​,是一本 ​非
​-
一青
​-
-
重重​。。畫書
​「
-
-
-
-
-
印
​一
​-
AI
真鲁​,
-
-
-
-
-
INFINA
}
R
--
部结露
​*
*
重重
​-
。
事
​毒手
​AI,
事事
​-
車-
​-
444
一
​一​,事事-
​一一一一
​。
d
二手
​事
​-
-
-
,
是非​,
114
4
FEEL
-
一事
​-
重重重重​,
-
-
-
--
鲁
​了
​1441
,
1
中時才中
​---
中
​-
If
-
建
​-
事件
​1
「
是
​,
星
​鲁鲁鲁​,鲁鲁自重​!
理事​,重量
​自動車
​學鲁
​