The Spy

Klimkov raised his hand and flung the revolver at the spy. Then he caught up his overcoat, and ran off. Two feeble shouts overtook him:

"Ow, ow!"

CHAPTER XXX

The shrieks stuck to Yevsey, to the back of his neck, like leeches. They filled him with insane horror, and drove him on, on, and on. Behind him a crowd of people were gathering, it seemed to him, noiselessly, their feet never touching the ground. They ran after him stretching out scores of long clutching hands, which reached his neck, and touched his hair. They played with him, mocked him, disappearing and reappearing. He took cabs, rode for a while, jumped out, ran along the streets, and rode again. For the crowd was near him all the time unseen, yet so much the more horrible.

He felt more at ease when he saw before him the dark patterned wall of bare boughs, which stretched to meet him. He dived into the thicket of trees, and walked in between them, strangely moving his hands behind his back, as if to draw the trees together more compactly behind him. He descended into a ravine, seated himself on the cold soil, and rose again. Then he walked the length of the ravine, breathing heavily, perspiring, drunk with fear. Soon he saw an opening between the trees. He listened carefully, noiselessly advanced a few steps further, and looked. In front of him stretched the earthwork of a railroad, beyond which rose more trees. These were small and far-between. Through the network of their branches shone the grey roof of a building.

He walked back quickly up the channel of the ravine, to where the woods were thicker and darker.

"They'll catch me," the cold assurance pushed him on. "They'll catch me – they must be looking for me already – they're running."

A soft ringing sound strayed through the woods. It came from anear, and shook the thin branches, which swayed in the dusk of the ravine, filling the air with their rustle. Under his feet crackled thin ice, which covered the grey dried-out little pits of the bed of a stream with white skin.

Klimkov sat down, bent over, and put a piece of ice in his mouth. The next instant he jumped to his feet, and clambered up the steep slope of the ravine. Here he removed his belt and suspenders, and began to tie them together, at the same time carefully examining the branches over his head.

"I don't have to take my overcoat off," he reflected without self-pity. "The heavier, the quicker."

He was in a hurry, his fingers trembled, and his shoulders involuntarily rose, as if to conceal his neck. In his head a timorous thought kept knocking.

"I won't have time. I'll be too late."

A train passed along the edge of the woods. The trees hummed in displeasure, and the ground quivered. The white vapor threaded its way between the branches. It stole through the air, and melted away, as though to get a look at this man, and then disappear from his eyes.

Titmice came flying and whistling boldly. They gleamed in the dark nets of the branches, and their quick bustle hastened the movements of Yevsey's cold and disobedient fingers.

He made a slipknot in the strap, threw it over a branch, and tugged at it. It was firm. Then, just as hurriedly, he began to make a slipknot in his suspenders, which he had twisted into a braid. When everything was ready, he heaved a sigh.

"Now I ought to say my prayers."

But no prayer came to him. He thought for a few seconds. The words flashed up, but were instantly extinguished, without forming themselves into a prayer.

"Rayisa knew my fate," he recalled unexpectedly.

Thrusting his head into the noose, he said quietly, simply, and without a quiver in his breast:

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – "

He pushed the ground with his feet, and jumped into the air, doubling his legs under him. There was a painful tug at his ears, a strange inward blow hit his head, and stunned him. He fell. His entire body struck the hard earth, turned over, and rolled down the declivity. His arms caught in the roots of trees, his head knocked against trunks. He lost consciousness.

When he recovered his senses, he found himself sitting at the bottom of the ravine, the torn suspenders dangling over his breast. His trousers were burst, his scratched, blood-stained knees looked through the cloth pitifully. His body was a mass of pain, especially his neck; and the cold seemed to be flaying his skin. Throwing himself on his back Yevsey looked up the incline. There under a white birch branch the strap swung in the air like a thin serpent, and lured him to itself.

"I can't," he said to himself in despair. "I can't – nothing – I don't know how."

He began to cry fine tears of impotence and insult. He lay with his back on the ground, and through his tears saw over him the one-toned dim sky, streaked by the dry designs of the dark branches.

He lay for a long time muffled in his overcoat, suffering from cold and pain. Without his willing it, his strange senseless life passed before him like a chain of smoke-dark rings. It passed by him impetuously. It trampled pitilessly upon his half-dead soul, crushing it finally with heavy blows, which prevented one spark of hope from glimmering in his heart. It pressed him to the ground.

A dismal chord hummed and trembled brokenly in his breast. Its lugubrious song spread through his bones. His little dry body, quivering with a sickly tremor, shrivelled up in the cold of the twilight into a shelterless heap, pressed itself more and more closely to the ground, so firm and so powerful.

Trains passed the woods several times, filling it with a creaking and rumbling, with clouds of steam and rays of light. The rays glided by the trunks of the trees, as if feeling them, as if in search of somebody there. Then they hastily disappeared, quick, trembling, and cold.

When they found Yevsey and touched him, he raised himself to his feet with difficulty, and plunged into the obscurity of the woods in pursuit of them. He stopped at the edge, and leaned against a tree, waiting and listening to the distant angry hum of the city. It was already evening, the sky had grown purple. Over the city quietly flared a dim red. The lights were being kindled to meet the night.

From a distance sprang up a howling noise and a drone. The rails began to sing and ring. A train was passing over them, its red eyes twinkling in the twilight. And the dusk quickly sailed after it, growing ever thicker and darker. Yevsey went to the roadbed as fast as he could, sank on his knees, then laid his side across the road, with his back to the train, and his neck upon the rail. He enveloped his head closely in the skirts of his overcoat.

For some seconds it was pleasant to feel the burning contact of the iron. It appeased the pain in his neck, but the rail trembled and sang louder, more alarmingly. It filled his whole body with an aching groan. The earth, too, now quivered with a fine tremor, as if swimming away from under his body and pushing him from itself.

The train rolled heavily and slowly, but the clang of its couplings, the even raps of the wheels upon the joinings of the rails were already deafening. Its snorting breath pushed Klimkov in the back. Everything round about him and with him shook in tempestuous agitation, and tore him from the ground.

He could wait no longer. He jumped to his feet, ran along the rails, and shouted in a high screech:

"I am guilty – I will – everything – I will, I will!"

Along the smoothly polished metal of the rails darted reddish rays of light, outstripping Klimkov. They glared more and more fiercely. Now glowing strips to each side of him ran impetuously into the distance, directing his course.

"I will – " he yelled, waving his hands.

Something hard and wide struck his back. He fell across the sleepers between the red cords of rail, and the harsh iron rumble crushed his feeble screams.