The Spy

He struck his chest so severe a blow with his fist that he began to cough. Then he dropped on his chair, and laughed quietly.

"Why don't they bring the whiskey?" growled Sasha, throwing the stump of his cigarette on the floor.

"Yevsey, go tell – " Piotr began quickly, but at that instant there was a knock at the door. "Are you drinking again?" Piotr asked smiling.

Sasha stretched out his hand for the bottle.

"Not yet, but I will be in a second."

"It's bad for you with your sickness."

"Whiskey is bad for healthy people, too. Whiskey and the imagination. You, for instance, will soon be an idiot."

"I won't. Don't be uneasy."

"You will. I know mathematics. I see you are a blockhead."

"Everyone has his own mathematics," replied Piotr, disgruntled.

"Shut up!" said Sasha, slowly sipping the glass of whiskey and smelling a piece of bread. Having drained the first glass, he immediately filled another for himself.

"To-day," he began, bending his head and resting his hands on his knees, "I spoke to the general again. I made a proposition to him. I said, 'Now give me means, and I'll unearth people. I will open a literary club, and trap the very best scamps for you, all of them.' He puffed his cheeks, and stuck out his belly and said – the jackass! – 'I know better what has to be done, and how it has to be done.' He knows everything. But he doesn't know that his mistress danced naked before Von Rutzen, or that his daughter had an abortion performed." He drained the second glass of whiskey, and filled the third. "Everybody's a blackguard and a skunk. It's impossible to live! Once Moses ordered 23,000 syphilitics to be killed. At that time there weren't many people, mark you. If I had the power I would destroy a million."

"Yourself first?" suggested Piotr smiling.

Sasha sniffed without answering, as if in a delirium.

"All those liberals, generals, revolutionists, dissolute women – I'd make a large pyre of them and burn them. I would drench the earth with blood, manure it with the ashes of the corpses. There would be a rich crop. Satiated muzhiks would elect satiated officials. Man is an animal, and he needs rich pastures, fertile fields. The cities ought to be destroyed, and everything superficial, everything that hinders me and you from living simply as the sheep and roosters – to the devil with it all!"

His viscid rank-smelling words fairly glued themselves to Yevsey's heart. It was difficult and dangerous to listen to them.

"Suddenly they will summon me and ask me what he said. Maybe he's speaking on purpose to trap me. Then they'll seize me." He trembled and moved uneasily in his chair. "May I go?" he requested of Piotr quietly.

"Where?"

"To my room."

"Oh, yes, go on."

"Got frightened, the donkey!" remarked Sasha without lifting his head.

"Go on, go on," repeated Piotr.

Klimkov undressed noiselessly without making a light. He groped for the bed in the dark, and rolled himself up closely in the cold, damp sheet. He wanted to see nothing, to hear nothing, he wanted to squeeze himself into a little unnoticeable lump. The snuffled words of Sasha clung in his memory. Yevsey thought he smelt his odor and saw the red band on the yellow forehead. As a matter of fact the irritated exclamations came in to him through the door.

"I am a muzhik myself, I know what's necessary."

Without wishing to do so Yevsey listened intently. He racked his brain to recall the person of whom this sick man so full of rancor reminded him, though he actually dreaded lest he should remember.

It was dark and cold. Behind the black panes rocked the dull reflections of the light, disappearing and reappearing. A thin scraping sound was audible. The wind-swept rain knocked upon the panes in heavy drops.

"Shall I enter a monastery?" Klimkov mused mournfully, and suddenly he remembered God, whose name he had seldom heard in his life in the city. He had not thought of Him the whole time. In his heart always full of fear and insult there had been no place for hope in the mercy of Heaven. But now it unexpectedly appeared, and suffused his breast with warmth, extinguishing his heavy, dull despair. He jumped from bed, kneeled on the floor, and firmly pressed his hands to his bosom. He turned his face to the dark corner of the room, closed his eyes, and waited without uttering words, listening to the beating of his heart. But he was exceedingly tired. The cold pricked his skin with thousands of sharp needles. He shivered, and lay down again in bed, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIV

When Yevsey awoke he saw that in the corner to which he had directed his mute prayer there were no ikons, but two pictures on the wall, one representing a hunter with a green feather in his hat kissing a stout girl, the other a fair-haired woman with naked bosom, holding a flower in her hand.

He sighed as he looked around his room without interest. When he had washed and dressed he seated himself at the window. The middle of the street upon which he looked, the pavements, and the houses were all dirty. The horses plodded along shaking their heads, damp drivers sat on the box-seats, also shaking as if they had come unscrewed. The people as always were hurrying somewhere. To-day, when splashed with mud, they seemed less dangerous than usual.

Yevsey was hungry. But he did not know whether he had the right to ask for tea and bread, and remained motionless as a stone until he heard a knock on the wall, upon which he went to the door of Piotr's room.

"Have you had tea yet?" asked the spy, who was still lying in bed.

"No."

"Ask for it."

Piotr stuck his bare feet out of the bed, and looked at his fingers as he stretched them.

"We'll drink tea, and then you'll go with me," he said yawning. "I'll show you a man, and you will follow him. You must go wherever he goes, you understand? Note the time he enters a house and how long he stays there. If he leaves the house, or meets another man on the way, notice the appearance of that man and then – well, you won't understand everything at the very first." Piotr looked at Klimkov, whistled quietly, and turning aside continued lazily, "Last night Sasha babbled about various things here – he upbraided everybody – don't think of saying anything about it. Take care. He's a sick man, and drinks, but he's a power. You can't hurt him, but he'll eat you up alive. Remember that. Why, brother, he was a student once himself, and he knows their business down to a 't.' He was even put in prison for political offence. And now he gets a hundred rubles a month, and not only Filip Filippovich but even the general calls on him for advice. Yes, indeed." Piotr drew his flabby face, crumpled with sleep, in a frown, his grey eyes lowered with dissatisfaction. He dressed while he spoke in a bored, grumbling voice. "Our work is not a joke. If you catch people by their throats in a trice, then of course – but first you must tramp about a hundred versts for each one, and sometimes more. You must know where each man was at a given time, with whom he was, in fact, you have to know everything – everything."

The evening before, notwithstanding the agitations of the day; Klimkov had found Piotr an interesting, clever person. Now, however, seeing that he spoke with an effort, that he moved about reluctantly, and that everything dropped from his hands, Yevsey felt bolder in his presence.

"Must we walk the streets the whole day long?" he plucked up the courage to ask.

"Sometimes you have a night outing, too, in the cold, thirty degrees Centigrade. A very evil demon invented our profession."

"And when they all will have been caught?"

"Who?"

"The unfaithful ones, the enemies."

"Say revolutionists, or political offenders. You and I won't catch everyone of them. They all seem to be born twins."

At tea Piotr opened his book. On looking into it, he suddenly grew animated. He jumped from his chair, quickly laid out the cards, and began to calculate – "One thousand two hundred and sixteenth deal. I have three of spades, seven of hearts, ace of diamonds."

Before leaving the house he put on a black overcoat and an imitation sheepskin cap, and stuck a portfolio in his hand, making himself look like an official.

"Don't walk alongside me on the street," he said sternly, "and don't speak to me. I will enter a certain house; you go into the dvornik's lodging, tell him you have to wait for Timofeyev. I'll soon – "

Fearing he would lose Piotr in the crowd Yevsey walked behind him without removing his eyes from his figure. But all of a sudden Piotr disappeared. Klimkov was at a loss. He rushed forward, then stopped, and pressed himself against a lamp-post. Opposite him rose a large house with gratings over the dark windows of the first story. Through the narrow entrance he saw a bleak gloomy yard paved with large stones. Klimkov was afraid to enter. He looked all around him uneasily shifting from one foot to the other.

A man with a reddish little beard now walked out with hasty steps. He wore a sort of sleeveless jacket and a cap with a visor pulled down on his forehead. He winked his grey eyes at Yevsey, and said in a low tone:

"Come here. Why didn't you go to the dvornik?"

"I lost you," Yevsey admitted.