The Spy

When Yevsey was busying himself around the oven, a hunch-backed man entered, removed his straw hat in silence, and fanned his face with it.

"It's close, even though it's autumn already," he said in a beautiful chest voice.

"Aha, you here!" said the Smokestack.

They began to converse in low tones while standing at the window. Yevsey realizing that they were speaking about him strained his ears to catch what they were saying. But he could not distinguish any words.

The three then seated themselves at the table, and the Smokestack began to pour the tea. Yevsey from time to time stole a look at the guest. His face, shaven like the Smokestack's, was bluish with a huge thin-lipped mouth and dark eyes sunk in two hollows under a high smooth forehead. His head, bald to the crown, was angular and large. He kept drumming quietly on the table with his long fingers.

"Well, read," said the Smokestack.

"From the beginning?"

"Yes."

The hunch-back pulled out a package of papers from his coat-pocket and opened it. "I'll skip the titles. This is the way I've done it." He coughed, and half closing his eyes began to read. "'We people known to nobody and already arrived at a ripe age now fall slavishly at your feet with this distressing statement of grievances, which wells from the very depths of our hearts, our hearts shattered by life but not robbed of sacred faith in the grace and wisdom of Your Majesty.' Well, is it good?"

"Continue," said the Smokestack.

"'For you are the father of the Russian people, the source of good counsel, and the only power on earth capable – '"

"Better say, 'the only power on earth endowed with authority,'" suggested the Smokestack.

"Wait, wait. 'The only power capable of restoring and maintaining order, justice – ' Here we must put in a third word for the sake of symmetry, but I don't know what word."

"Be more careful in your choice of words," said the Smokestack, sternly but not aloud. "Remember that they convey a different meaning to every man."

The hunchback looked at him, and adjusted his glasses.

"Yes, that will come later. 'Great Russia is falling into ruin. Evil is rampant in our country and horror prevails. People are oppressed by want. The heart has become perverted with envy. The patient and gentle Russian is perishing, and a heartless tribe ferocious with greed is being born, a race of wolves, cruel animals of prey. Faith is dissolved, and outside her fortress the people stand perturbed. Persons of depraved minds aim at the defenseless, take them captive with satanic shrewdness, and entice them onto the road of crime against all thy laws, Master of our lives.'"

"'Master?' That's for a bishop," grumbled the Smokestack.

"Don't you like it?"

"No, we must make it different."

"How?"

"We must tell him directly that a general revolt against life is stirring among the people, and that 'therefore Thou, who art called by God – '"

The hunchback shook his head disapprovingly.

"We may point out. We have no right to advise."

"Who is our enemy, and what is his name? Atheist, Socialist, and Revolutionist, a trinity. The destroyer of the family, the robber of our children, the fore-runner of the anti-Christ."

"You and I don't believe in the anti-Christ," said the hunchback quietly.

"That doesn't matter. We are speaking of the masses. They believe in the anti-Christ. And we must point out the root of the main evil where we see it. In the doctrine of destruction – "

"He knows it himself."

"How should he? Who would tell him the truth? Nobody cast the noose of insanity around his children. And on what are their teachings based? On general poverty and discontent with poverty. And we ought to say to him straight out, 'Thou art the father, and thou art rich. Then give the riches thou hast accumulated to thy people. Thus thou wilt cut off the root of the evil, and everything will have been saved by thy hand.'"

The hunchback drew up his shoulders, and spread his mouth into a wide, thin crack.

"They'll send us to the mines for that."

Then he looked into Yevsey's face and at the master.

Klimkov listened to the reading and the conversation as to a fairytale, and felt that all the words entered his head and fixed themselves forever in his memory. With parted lips and popping eyes he looked now at one, now at the other, and did not drop his gaze even when the dark look of the hunchback fastened upon his face. He was fascinated by the proceedings.

"Anyway," said the hunchback, "this is inconvenient."

"What is it, Klimkov?" asked the Smokestack glumly.

Yevsey's throat grew dry, and he did not answer at once.

"I am listening."

Suddenly he realized by their faces that they did not believe him, that they were afraid of him. He rose from the table, and said, getting his words mixed:

"I won't say anything to a soul – I need it myself. Please let me listen – why, I myself said to you, Kapiton Ivanovich, that things ought to be different."

"You see?" said the Smokestack crossly, pointing at Yevsey. "You see, Anton, what does it mean? Still a boy, a little boy, yet, he, too, says things should be different. That's where they get their strength from."

"Yes, yes," said the hunchback.

Yevsey grew timid, and dropped back on his chair. The Smokestack, moving his eyelids, bent toward him.

"I will tell you – we are writing a letter to the Czar. We ask him to take more rigorous measures against those who are under supervision for political infidelity. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Those people," the hunchback began to say clearly and slowly, "are agents of foreign governments, chiefly of England. They receive huge salaries for stirring up the Russian people to revolt and for weakening the power of the government. The Englishmen do it so that we should not take India from them."

They spoke to Yevsey by turns. When one had finished, the other took up the word. He listened attentively trying to remember their strange, eloquent flow of language. Finally, however, he tired from the unusual exertion of his brain. It seemed to him he would soon understand something huge, which would illuminate the whole of life and all people, their entire misfortune and their malicious irritation. It was inexpressibly pleasant for him to recognize that two wise men spoke to him as to an adult, and he was powerfully gripped by a feeling of gratitude and respect for these men, poorly dressed and so preoccupied with deliberations upon the construction of a new life. But now, his head grown heavy, as if filled with lead, he involuntarily closed his eyes, oppressed by a painful sensation of fullness in his breast.

"Go, lie down and sleep," said the Smokestack.

Klimkov rose obediently, undressed, and lay down on the sofa.

The autumn night breathed warm fragrant moisture into the window. Thousands and thousands of bright stars quivered in the dark sky, flying up higher and higher. The fire of the lamp flickered, and likewise tore itself upward. The two men bending toward each other read and spoke gravely and quietly. Everything round about was mysterious, awe-inspiring. It lifted Yevsey upward pleasantly, to something new, to something good.

CHAPTER XII

When Yevsey had been living with Kapiton Ivanovich only a few days, he began to feel he was of some consequence. Formerly he had talked quietly and respectfully with the gendarmes who served in the chancery. Now, however, he called the old man Butenko to him in a stern voice, in order to administer a rebuke.