The Spy

Touching Yevsey's hand with his dank yellow hand, he thrust a piece of paper into his grasp, and walked away.

Yakov Zarubin leaped up to Yevsey.

"How much?"

"Twenty-five rubles," said Klimkov, unfolding the bill with reluctant fingers.

"How many people were there?"

"Seven."

"Seven? Ugh!"

Zarubin raised his eyes to the ceiling, and mumbled:

"Twice, no three times, seven is twenty-one. Four into seven – three and a half per person."

He whistled softly, and looking around announced:

"Sasha got a hundred and fifty, and his bill of expenses in the affair was sixty-three rubles. They do us fools. Well, what now, Yevsey? Give us a treat. For joy!"

"Come," said Klimkov, looking askance at the money. He could not make up his mind to put it in his pocket.

CHAPTER XXIII

On the way Zarubin said in a business-like way:

"After all your people seem to have been trash."

"Why?" asked Klimkov offended. He sighed, and said in a lower voice. "Not trash a bit."

"They gave little for them, very little. Ugh! I know how such things are done. You can't fool me, no, indeed. Krasavin once caught a single revolutionist, and he got a hundred rubles. Do you hear? And they sent him another hundred from St. Petersburg. Solovyov got seventy-five for an illegal lady. You see? And Maklakov, Ugh! Of course he catches advocates, professors, writers, who have a special price. They are not dangerous, but I suppose it must be hard to catch them."

Zarubin spoke without cease. Klimkov was satisfied with his tattle, which kept him from thinking of the oppressive something that lay in his breast like a cold stone.

The two youths entered a public house. Zarubin in the confident voice of a habitué asked the tall, thin, one-eyed housekeeper:

"Is Lydia well? And Kapa? There, Yevsey, you will get acquainted with Kapa. She's a girl, I tell you, a monster! She'll teach you what you wouldn't learn in a hundred years without her. Well, give us lemonade and cognac. First of all, Yevsey, we must take a bit of cognac with lemonade. That's a sort of champagne. It lifts you up into the air at once. All right?"

"All the same to me."

The house, apparently, was an expensive one. The windows were hung with sumptuous curtains. The furniture seemed unusual to Yevsey, the prettily dressed girls, proud and inaccessible. All this distracted him. He squeezed himself into a corner, stepping aside to let the girls pass, who went by him as if they did not notice him. Their clothes grazed his legs. The half-dressed bodies, painted and already sweaty, lazily floated by in oppressive heaps. Their eyes set in pencilled lids turned in their orbits. The eyes were all large, though dead and uniform, notwithstanding their various colors.

"Students?" asked a reddish girl of her companion, a stout brunette with a high bare bosom and a blue ribbon about her neck. The one who whispered in her ear made a grimace at Yevsey. He turned away from her, and asked Zarubin in annoyance:

"Do they know who we are?"

"Yes, of course. That's why they take only half the price for entrance, and discount twenty-five per cent. from the bill."

Yevsey emptied two beakers of the sparkling beverage. Though it did not make him merrier, everything around him, nevertheless, assumed a more uniform, less irritating aspect. Two girls seated themselves at their table, Lydia and Kapitolina, the one tall and strong, the other broad and heavy. Lydia's head was absurdly small in proportion to her body; her forehead, too, was small, her chin was sharp and prominent, her mouth round, her teeth, little and fine, like those of a fish, and her eyes dark and cunning. Kapitolina seemed put together from a number of balls of various sizes. Her protruding eyes were also like balls, and dull as a blind person's.

Little black Zarubin was restless as a fly. He smelt of everything, turned his head from side to side, moved his legs up and down, back and forth, sent his thin dark hands flying over the table to seize everything and feel everything. Yevsey suddenly began to feel a heavy dull irritation rising in him against Zarubin.

"The skunk!" he thought. "He brought me a monster for my money, and chose a pretty one for himself."

But Yevsey knew that his annoyance at Zarubin had a deeper-seated cause than this. He filled a large glass of cognac, swallowed it, and opened his burned mouth and rolled his eyes.

"Capital!" shouted Yakov.

The girls laughed, and for a minute Yevsey was deaf and blind, as if he had fallen fast asleep.

"This Lydia, Yevsey, my true friend, is a wise girl, oh, so wise!" Zarubin pulled Yevsey's sleeve to rouse him. "Whenever I merit the attention of the officials, I will take her away from here, will marry her, and will establish her in my business. Yes, Lydia darling? Ugh!"

"We'll see," replied the girl, languidly, looking sidewise at his oily eyes.

"Why are you silent, friend Yevsey?" asked Kapitolina, slapping Yevsey's shoulder with her heavy hand.

"She addresses everybody by the first name," Yakov remarked.

"All the same to me," said Yevsey, without looking at the girl, and moving away from her. "Only tell her that I don't like her, and she should go away."

For a few seconds all kept silence.

"To the devil with you!" said Kapitolina, thickly and calmly. Propping herself on the table with her hands, she slowly lifted her heavy body from the chair. Yevsey was annoyed because she was not offended. He looked at her, and said:

"A species of elephant."

"How impolite!" shouted Lydia compassionately.

"Ugh! Yes, Yevsey. That's impolite, brother. Kapitolina Nikolayevna is an excellent girl. All connoisseurs value her."

"To me it's all the same," said Yevsey. "I want beer."

"Hey, there, beer!" shouted Zarubin. "Kapa dear, be so kind as to see we get beer."

The stout girl turned, and left scraping her feet. Zarubin bending over to Yevsey began insinuatingly and didactically:

"You see, Yevsey, of course this is an establishment of such a kind, and so on, but still the girls are human beings like you and me. Why should you insult them uselessly? Ugh! They're not all here of their own accord."

"Stop!" said Klimkov.

He wanted everything around him to be quiet. He wanted the girls to cease floating in the air, like melancholy drifts of spring clouds torn by the wind. He wanted the shaven pianist with the dark blue face, like that of a drowned person, to stop rapping his fingers on the yellow teeth of the piano, which resembled the jaw of a huge monster, a monster that roared and shrieked loud laughter. He wanted the curtains of the windows to cease flapping so strangely, as if someone's unseen and spiteful hand were pulling at them from the street. Olga dressed in white should station herself at the door. Then he would rise, walk around the room, and would strike everybody in the face with all his might. Let Olga see that they were all repulsive to him, and that she wasn't right, and understood nothing.

The complaining words of Zarubin settled themselves obstinately in his ears:

"We came here to make merry, but you at once begin a scandal."

Yevsey, his whole body swaying, gave a dull glance into Yakov's face, and suddenly said to himself with cold precision: