The Spy

"Why are you afraid?"

"You know."

"What do I know?"

"You, too, are wronged, not by one master. I saw you cry. You were not crying then because you had been drinking. I understand. I understand much. Only I do not understand everything together. I see everything separately in its tiniest details, but side by side with them something different, not even resembling them. I understand this, too. But what is it all for? One thing is at variance with the other, and they do not go together. There is one kind of life and another besides."

"What are you talking about?" Rayisa asked in amazement.

"That's true."

For several moments they looked at each other in silence. The boy's heart beat quickly. His cheeks grew red with embarrassment.

"Well, now, go," said Rayisa quietly arising. "Go, or else he will ask you why you stayed away so long. Don't tell him you were with me. You won't, will you?"

Yevsey walked away filled with the tender sound of the singing voice, and warmed by the sympathetic look. The woman's words rang in his memory enveloping his heart in quiet joy.

That day was strangely long. Over the roofs of the houses and the Circle hung a grey cloud. The day, weary and dull, seemed to have become entangled in its grey mass, and, like the cloud, to have halted over the city. After dinner two customers entered the shop, one a stooping lean man with a pretty, grizzled mustache, the other a man with a red beard and spectacles. Both pottered about among the books long and minutely. The lean man kept whistling softly through his quivering mustache, while the red-bearded man spoke with the master.

Yevsey knew beforehand just what the master would say and how he would say it. The boy was bored. He was impatient for the evening to come, and he tried to relieve the tedium by listening to the words of the old man Raspopov, and verifying his conjectures while he arranged in a row the books the customers had selected.

"You are buying these books for a library?" the old man inquired affably.

"For the library of the Teachers' Association," replied the red-bearded man. "Why?"

"Now he'll praise them up," thought Yevsey, and he was not mistaken.

"You show extremely good judgment in your choice. It is pleasant to see a correct estimate of books."

"Pleasant?"

"Now he'll smile," thought Yevsey.

"Yes, indeed," said the old man, smiling graciously. "You get used to these books, so that you get to love them. You see they aren't dead wood, but products of the mind. So when a customer also respects books, it is pleasant. Our average customer is a comical fellow. He comes and asks, 'Have you any interesting books?' It's all the same to him. He seeks amusement, play, but no benefit. But occasionally someone will suddenly ask for a prohibited book."

"How's that? Prohibited?" asked the man screwing up his small eyes.

"Prohibited from libraries – published abroad, or secretly in Russia."

"Are such books for sale?"

"Now he will speak real low." Again Yevsey was not mistaken.

Fixing his glasses upon the face of the red-bearded man, the master lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

"Why not? Sometimes you buy a whole library, and you come across everything there, everything."

"Have you such books now?"

"Several."

"Let me see them, please."

"Only I must ask you not to say anything about them. You see it's not for the sake of profit, but as a courtesy. One likes to do favors now and then."

The stooping man stopped whistling, adjusted his spectacles, and looked attentively at the old man.

To-day the master was utterly loathsome to Yevsey, who kept looking at him with cold, gloomy malice. And now when Raspopov went over to the corner of the shop to show the red-bearded man some books there, the boy suddenly and quite involuntarily said in a whisper to the stooping customer:

"Don't buy those books."

Yevsey trembled with fright the moment he had spoken. The man raised his glasses, and peered into the boy's face with his bright eyes.

"Why?"

With a great effort Yevsey answered after a pause:

"I don't know."

The customer readjusted his glasses, moved away from him, and began to whistle louder, looking sidewise at the old man. Then he raised his hand, which made him straighter and taller, stroked his grey mustache, and without haste walked up to his companion, from whom he took the book. He looked it over, and dropped it on the table. Yevsey followed his movements expecting some calamity to befall himself. But the stooping man merely touched his companion's arm, and said simply and calmly:

"Well, let's go."

"But the books?" exclaimed the other.

"Let's go. I won't buy any books here."

The red-bearded man looked at him, then at the master, his small eyes winking rapidly. Then he walked to the door, and out into the street.

"You don't want the books?" demanded Raspopov.

Yevsey realized by his tone that the old man was surprised.

"I don't," answered the customer, his eyes fixed upon the face of the master.

Raspopov shrank. He went to his chair, and suddenly said with a wave of his hand in an unnaturally loud voice, which was new to Yevsey:

"As you please, of course. Still – excuse me, I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" asked the stooping man, smiling.

"You looked through the books for two hours or more, agreed on a price, and suddenly – why?" cried the old man in excitement.

"Well, because I recollected your disgusting face. You haven't given up the ghost yet? What a pity!"

The stooping man pronounced his words slowly, not loud, and precisely. He left the shop deliberately, with a heavy tread.

For a minute the old man looked after him, then tore himself from where he was standing, and advanced upon Yevsey with short steps.