The Spy

Yakov spoke quickly, and his eyes smiled joyously at everything he saw. He stopped in front of the shop-windows, and examined their contents with the gaze of a man to whom all articles are pleasant, and everything is interesting.

"Look, what a dress! Ha! If you were to put such a thing on our Olya, she'd get tangled up in it. Books – that little one there, yellow, you see it? I've read it. 'Primitive Man.' Interesting. Read it, and you'll see how people grew up. Books are very interesting. They at once open up to you all the cunning of life. Those thick books are awkward to read. By the time you get to the middle you forget what happened at the beginning, and at the end you forget the beginning also. The devil take them! Why don't they write shorter books?"

The next minute he pointed out a gun, and cried ecstatically:

"Revolvers, eh? Just like toys."

Giving himself over to Yakov's mood, Yevsey looked at the various articles with the wandering look of empty eyes, and smiled, astounded, as if for the first time seeing the pretty, alluring multitude of brilliant materials and vari-colored books, the blinding gleam of colors and metals. He was pleased to hear the young voice still in the state of change; the rapid talk steeped in the joy of life was agreeable to him. It lightly penetrated the dark void of Klimkov's soul, and allowed him to forget himself for a moment.

"You're a jolly fellow," he said approvingly.

"Very. I learned to dance from the Cossacks. A score of Cossacks are stationed in our factory. Did you hear that the men in our factory wanted to rise? You didn't? How's that? The newspapers wrote about it. Yes, so I learned to dance from the Cossacks. Wait, you'll see. Nobody can beat me."

"Why did they want to rise?" asked Yevsey, provoked by the simplicity with which Yakov spoke of a revolt.

"Why? They wrong us workingmen. What, then, are we to do?"

"And you would have done it, too?"

"What? Rebel? Of course. What else? Our people are good, they're solid."

"And how about the Cossacks?"

"The Cossacks? So, so. They are people, too. At first they thought they would officer it over us, but then they said, 'Comrades, give us leaflets.'"

Yakov suddenly broke off and looked into Yevsey's face. For a minute he walked in silence with knit brows.

The mention of the leaflets recalled his duty to Yevsey. He wrinkled his forehead painfully. Wishing to push something away from himself and his cousin, he said quietly:

"I read those leaflets."

"Well?" asked Yakov, slackening his gait.

"I don't understand them. What are they for?"

"You read some more."

"I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Just so."

"They're not interesting to you?"

"No, they're not."

For a while they walked in silence. Yakov sniffed meditatively, and gave a hasty look into his cousin's face. Yevsey felt he had not succeeded in shoving away the unpleasant and dangerous theme.

"These leaflets are a precious matter. It's necessary for us to read them. All the slaves of labor ought to read them," Yakov began heartily, but in a modulated voice. "We, cousin, are slaves, chained to everlasting work. They have made us captives of capitalists, and we live poor in body and in soul. Isn't it so? Now the leaflets eat at our chains, the way rust eats iron, and they liberate our human minds."

Klimkov walked more quickly. He did not want to hear the smooth talk. The desire even darted through his mind to say:

"Don't speak to me about such things, please."

But Yakov himself interrupted his speech.

"There's the zoo!"

They drank a bottle of beer in the bar-room, and listened to the playing of a military band.

"Good?" Yakov asked, nudging Yevsey's side with his elbow. On the cessation of the playing Yakov sighed. "That was Faust they played. An opera. I saw it three times. Beautiful, very! The story is stupid, but the music is good. And the songs, too. Come, let's look at the monkeys."

On the way to the monkey-house he told Yevsey the story of Faust and the devil Mephistopheles. He even attempted to sing something, but not succeeding he burst out laughing. "I can't," he declared. "It's hard. Besides I've forgotten it. Do you know – the singer who plays the devil gets a thousand rubles every time he sings. The devil take him, let him get ten thousand rubles, because it's good. When it's good, I don't grudge anybody anything. I'd give my life, – there, take it, eat! Isn't it so?"

"Yes," replied Yevsey, looking around.

Yakov's account of the opera, the pretty women's faces, the laughter and talk of the crowds of people in holiday attire, and over all the spring sky bathed in sunlight – all this intoxicated Klimkov and expanded his heart.

"What a young fellow he is!" he thought in amazement, as he looked at Yakov. "So brave! And he knows everything. Yet he's the same age I am."

Now it seemed to Yevsey that his cousin was leading him somewhere far off, and was quickly opening up before him a long row of little doors, behind each of which the sound and the light grew pleasanter and pleasanter. He looked around, absorbing the new impressions, and at times opening his eyes wide in anxiety. It seemed to him that the familiar face of a spy was darting about in the crowd.

The two youths stood before the monkey cage. Yakov with a kind smile in his eyes said:

"I love these wise animals. In fact I love every living thing. Just look! Wherein are they less than human beings? Isn't it so? Eyes, chins, how bright all their features are, eh? Their hands – " He suddenly broke off to listen to something. "Wait a minute, there go our folks." He disappeared, and in a minute returned leading a girl and a young man up to Yevsey. The young man wore a sleeveless jacket. Yakov cried out joyously:

"You said you weren't coming here, you deceivers. Well, all right. This is my cousin Yevsey Klimkov. I told you about him. This is Olya – Olga Konstantinova, and this is Aleksey Stepanovich Makarov."

Klimkov bowed clumsily and silently pressed the hands of his new acquaintances.

"There, he's going to 'noose' me in," he thought. "It's better for me to go away."

But he did not go away, though he looked around again, fearful lest he see one of the spies. He saw none, however.

"He's not a very free sort of a fellow," said Yakov to the girl. "He's not a pair to me, sinner that I am. He's a quiet fellow."

"You needn't feel constrained with us. We are simple people," said Olga.

She was taller than Yevsey by an entire head, and her size was heightened by her luxuriant glossy hair, which she wore combed high. Her grey-blue eyes smiled serenely in a pale oval face.

The expression of the man in the sleeveless jacket was intelligent and kind. His eyes were screwed up and his ears large. His motions were slow. In walking he moved his apparently powerful body with a peculiar sort of unconcern.

"Are we going to wander about here long, like unrepentant sinners?" he asked in a soft bass.

"What else should we do?" asked Yakov.

"Let's sit down somewhere."