The Spy

Sasha shouted:

"Klimkov!"

Yevsey extended his arm before him, and walked faster. His legs bent under him. He heard Krasavin say:

"Gone, apparently. You ought not to shout family names."

"I beg you not to teach me. I'll soon destroy all family names and similar stupidities."

"It's you that I'm going to destroy," Yevsey made the mental threat, gnashing his teeth until they pained him.

But when he had left the gate behind him, he was seized by the debilitating consciousness of his impotence and nothingness. It was a long time since he had experienced these feelings with such crushing distinctness. He was frightened by their load, and succumbed to their pressure.

"Maybe it will still be warded off," he tried to embolden himself. "Maybe he won't succeed."

But Yevsey did not believe his own thoughts. Without a will of his own he regarded everybody else as equally devoid of will, and he knew that Sasha could easily compel all whom he wanted to compel to submit to his domination.

CHAPTER XXVII

The next day Yevsey resolved not to leave the house for a long time. He lay in bed looking at the ceiling. The leaden face of Sasha with the dim eyes and the band of red pimples on the forehead floated before him. To-day this face recalled his childhood and the sinister disk of the moon in the mist over the marsh.

As he lay there, empty, languid, and cold, he gave himself over to grief at his shattered dreams, the dreams that Sasha so easily crushed. His hatred of the spy deepening, he felt himself capable of biting him with his teeth, of gouging out his eyes.

It occurred to him that some of his comrades might come to fetch him, and he hurriedly left the house, and ran down several streets. Tiring almost immediately he stopped and waited for a car. People passed by in a continuous stream. He scented something new in them to-day, and did violence to himself in examining them closely. Soon he realized that this new thing was the old fear so well known to him. It was the old dread and perplexity. People looked around distrustfully, suspiciously, no longer with the kind expression their eyes had recently worn. Their voices sounded lower, and betrayed anger, resentment, sorrow. Their talk was of the horrible.

Two persons stationed themselves near Yevsey. One of them, a stout shaven man, asked of the other, who had a large black beard:

"How many were killed?"

"Five. Sixteen wounded."

"Did the Cossacks shoot?"

"Yes. A boy was killed, a student at the high school." Yevsey looked at them, and inquired drily:

"What for?"

The man with the black beard shrugged his shoulders, and answered reluctantly in a low voice:

"They say the Cossacks were drunk."

"Sasha arranged that," thought Yevsey.

"And on the Spassky Bridge the mob beat a student, and threw him into the river," announced the shaven man, drawing a deep breath.

"What for?" Yevsey asked again.

"I don't know. Some sort of patriots."

The black-bearded man explained:

"Since this morning tramps waving tri-colored flags and carrying portraits of the Czar have been marching the streets and beating the decently clad people."

"Sasha!" Yevsey repeated to himself.

"They say it was organized by the police and the Department of Safety."

"Of course!" burst from Klimkov. But the next instant he compressed his lips tightly, and glanced sidewise at the black-bearded man. He resolved to go away. But just then the car came along, and as the two men prepared to board it, he thought:

"I must get on, too, or else they'll guess I'm a spy. What would they think of a man who waited for a car with them, and then didn't take it?"

The passengers in the car seemed calmer to Yevsey than the pedestrians on the street.

"After all it's some sort of concealment, though only behind glass," was his explanation of the difference, as he listened to the animated conversation in the car.

A tall man with a bony face said plaintively, spreading his hands:

"I, too, love and respect the Czar; I'm heartily thankful to him for the manifesto. I'm ready to shout 'Hurrah' as much as you please; and offer up prayers of gratitude. But to smash windows from patriotism and break bones – what's that?"

"Such barbarism, beastliness in our age!" said a stout lady. "Oh, those people, how horribly cruel they are!"

From a corner came a firm assured voice:

"All the work of the police, no doubt of it!"

"But what for?"

All were silent for a minute.

"I know," thought Klimkov.

From the corner came the same assured voice:

"They're preparing a counter-revolution in Russian fashion. You just take a close look at those in command of the patriotic demonstrators – disguised police, agents of the Department of Safety."

Yevsey heard these words with joy, and furtively regarded the young face. It was dry and clean, with a cartilaginous nose, a small mustache, and a tuft of light hair on a determined chin. The youth sat leaning against the back of his seat in a corner of the car, one leg crossed over the other. He looked at the passengers in the car with a wise glance from his blue eyes, and spoke like a man who masters his words and thoughts and believes in their effectiveness.

Dressed in a short warm jacket and tall boots, he resembled a workingman, but his white hands and the thin horizontal lines on his forehead betrayed him.

"Disguised," thought Yevsey. "Well, let him be disguised. What difference does it make to me?"

He began to follow the loud firm talk of the fair-haired youth with the greatest attention, looking at his wise, transparent blue eyes and agreeing with him. But suddenly he shuddered, seized with a sharp premonition. On the platform of the car, at the conductor's side, he saw through the window a pair of narrow drooping shoulders, and the back of a black protruding head. The car jolted, and the familiar figure swayed.

"Yakov Zarubin!"

Klimkov utterly dismayed turned his look again upon the blue-eyed youth. He had removed his hat, and he smoothed his wavy hair as he said:

"As long as our administration has the soldiers in its hands, the police, and the spies, it will not yield the people and society their rights without a fight, without bloodshed. We must remember that."