Leonid Andreyev

“ To Vasily Kashirin, who was condemned to death by hanging, everything now seemed like children’s playthings: his cell, the door with the peephole, the strokes of the wound-up clock, the carefully molded fortress, and especially that mechanical puppet with the gun who stamped his feet in the corridor, and the others who, frightening him, peeped into his cell through the little window and handed him the food in silence. And that which he was experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him. ”

“ She tried to justify herself for the fact that she, who was so young, so insignificant, who had done so little, and who was not at all a heroine, was yet to undergo the same honorable and beautiful death by which real heroes and martyrs had died before her. With unshakable faith in human kindness, in their compassion, in their love, she pictured to herself how people were now agitated on her account, how they suffered, how they pitied her, and she felt so ashamed that she blushed, as if, by dying upon the scaffold, she had committed some tremendous, awkward blunder. ”

“ The convoys like gray silhouettes surrounded each carriage; the horseshoes struck noisily against the ground, or plashed upon the melting snow.
When Werner bent down, about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme whispered to him:
“There is somebody else going along with you.”
Werner was surprised.
“Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes! Another one? Who is he?”
The gendarme was silent. Indeed, in a dark corner a small, motionless but living figure pressed close to the side of the carriage. By the reflection of the lantern Werner noticed the flash of an open eye. ”

“ Thus, for a man who goes up in an airship, the filth and litter of the narrow streets disappear and that which was ugly becomes beautiful.
Unconsciously Werner stepped over to the table and leaned his right hand on it. Proud and commanding by nature, he had never before assumed such a proud, free, commanding pose, had never turned his head and never looked as he did now,—for he had never yet been as free and dominant as he was here in the prison, with but a few hours from execution and death. ”

“ He felt sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; but that was a cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may have felt at times.
Werner understood that the execution was not merely death, that it was something different,—but he resolved to face it calmly, as something not to be considered; to live until the end as if nothing had happened and as if nothing could happen. Only in this way could he express his greatest contempt for capital punishment and preserve his last freedom of the spirit which could not be torn away from him. ”

“ In his night-clothes, with his beard disheveled by his restless movements, with his angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any other angry old man who suffered with insomnia and shortness of breath. It was as if the death which people were preparing for him, had made him bare, had torn away from him the magnificence and splendor which had surrounded him—and it was hard to believe that it was he who had so much power, that his body was but an ordinary plain human body that must have perished terribly in the flame and roar of a monstrous explosion. ”

“ Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered:
“Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we—eh? Shall we try?”
“No, don’t do it,” Werner replied, also in a whisper. “We shall drink it to the bitter end.”
“Why not? It’s livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes me, and you don’t even know how the thing is done. It’s just as if you don’t die at all.”
“No, you shouldn’t do it,” said Werner, and turned to Yanson. “Why don’t you smoke, friend?” ”

“ Musya recalled three of her comrades who had been hanged but a short time before, and their faces seemed bright and happy and near to her—nearer than those in life. Thus does a man think with joy in the morning of the house of his friends where he is to go in the evening, and a greeting rises to his smiling lips.
Musya became very tired from walking. She lay down cautiously on the cot and continued to dream with slightly closed eyes. The clock-bell rang unceasingly, stirring the mute silence, and bright, singing images floated calmly before her. ”

“ Dreams even more violent than his thoughts appeared—new dreams, solid, heavy, like wooden painted blocks. And it was no longer like a current, but like an endless fall to an endless depth, a whirling flight through the whole visible world of colors.
When Tsiganok was free he had worn only a pair of dashing mustaches, but in the prison a short, black, bristly beard grew on his face and it made him look fearsome, insane. At times Tsiganok really lost his senses and whirled absurdly about in the cell, still tapping upon the rough, plastered walls nervously. And he drank water like a horse. ”

“ Who is man? We may only conjecture. What constitutes his joy or his sorrow? We may guess only by his acts, which are oft-times enigmatic; by his laughter and by his tears, which are often entirely incomprehensible to us. And if we, Russians, who live so closely together in constant misery, understand one another so poorly that we mercilessly put to death those who should be pitied or even rewarded, and reward those who should be punished by contempt and anger—how much more difficult is it for you Americans, to understand distant Russia? ”

“ As in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly, powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently.
They descended the steps of the station.
“Are we to walk?” asked some one almost cheerily.
“It isn’t far now,” answered another, also cheerily.
Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along a rough, wet and soft spring road. From the forest, from the snow, a fresh, strong breath of air was wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes sinking into the snow, and involuntarily the hands of the comrades clung to each other. ”

“ And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless.
“And I, Musechka,” said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, “must I go alone? We lived together, and now—”
“Tanechka, dearest—”
But Tsiganok took her part heatedly. Holding her by the hand, as though fearing that some one would take her away from him, he said quickly, in a business-like manner, to Tanya:
“Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You are a pure soul—you can go alone wherever you please! But I—I can’t! A murderer!... Understand? I can’t go alone! Where are you going, you murderer? they will ask me. ”

“ But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue. By nature rather a mathematician than a poet, he had not known until now any inspiration, any ecstasy and at times he felt like a madman, looking for the squaring of a circle in pools of human blood. The enemy against whom he struggled every day could not inspire him with respect. ”

“ Ivan!”
“I must not be hanged,” answered Yanson, in a dull voice, and his lower jaw again drooped.
“You should not have committed murder. You would not be hanged then,” answered the chief warden, a young but very important-looking man with medals on his chest. “You committed murder, yet you do not want to be hanged?”
“He wants to kill human beings without paying for it. Fool! fool!” said another.
“I don’t want to be hanged,” said Yanson.
“Well, my friend, you may want it or not, that’s your affair,” replied the chief warden indifferently. ”

“ The judges pitied Sergey Golovin; her they despised.
Her neighbor, known only by the name of Werner, sat also motionless, in a somewhat affected pose, his hands folded between his knees. If a face may be said to look like a false door, this unknown man closed his face like an iron door and bolted it with an iron lock. He stared motionlessly at the dirty wooden floor, and it was impossible to tell whether he was calm or whether he was intensely agitated, whether he was thinking of something, or whether he was listening to the testimony of the detectives as presented to the court. ”

“ He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an undertone as he led him away from the courtroom:
“You are a fool, young man!”
“Why must I be hanged?” repeated Yanson stubbornly.
“They’ll swing you up so quickly that you’ll have no time to kick.”
“Keep still!” cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could not refrain from adding:
“A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang for that!” ”

“ Alone,” said Yanson.
Werner’s head also began to feel dizzy. And at times it seemed that they were going to some festival; strange to say, almost all those who went to the scaffold experienced the same sensation and mingled with sorrow and fear there was a vague joy as they anticipated the extraordinary thing that was soon to befall them. Reality was intoxicated with madness and Death, united with Life, brought forth apparitions. ”

“ At the trial the nearness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself. For an instant he imagined he saw real people; they were sitting and trying him, speaking like human beings, listening, apparently understanding him. But as he mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old woman in the black little kerchief was only an artificial, mechanical puppet, of the kind that can say “pa-pa,” “ma-ma,” but somewhat better constructed. ”

“ With that wonderful clarity of the spirit which in rare moments comes over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived both life and death, and he was awed by the splendor of the unprecedented spectacle. ”

“ Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.
And he did everything well: he was an excellent sailor, an expert shot with the revolver. He was as faithful in friendship as in love, and a fanatic believer in the “word of honor.” His comrades laughed at him, saying that if the most notorious spy told him upon his word of honor that he was not a spy, Sergey would believe him and would shake hands with him as with any comrade. ”

“ The man who was nearest to the judges called himself Sergey Golovin, the son of a retired colonel, himself an ex-officer. He was still a very young, light-haired, broad-shouldered man, so strong that neither the prison nor the expectation of inevitable death could remove the color from his cheeks and the expression of youthful, happy frankness from his blue eyes. He kept energetically tugging at his bushy, small beard, to which he had not become accustomed, and continually blinking, kept looking out of the window. ”

“ He can no longer go where he pleases, but he is led where others please. He can no longer choose the place he likes, but he is placed in a stone cage, and locked up like a thing. He can no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. ”

“ After that, into that chaos of bright, yet incomplete images which oppressed Tsiganok by their impetuosity, a new image came—how good it would be to become a hangman in a red shirt. He pictured to himself vividly a square crowded with people, a high scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt walking about upon the scaffold with an ax. The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from the ax, and everything was so gay and bright that even the man whose head was soon to be chopped off was smiling. And behind the crowd, wagons and the heads of horses could be seen—the peasants had come from the village ”

“ If there was no actual rebellion they never fired at those who had been condemned to death. And Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, would curse and spit. His brain thus racked on a monstrously sharp blade between life and death was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay.
When they entered the cell at midnight to lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. ”

“ After the sentence the condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, and all the morning, until eleven o’clock, when his parents came, Sergey Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly. Sometimes he would stop abruptly, would breathe deeply and then exhale like a man who has been too long under water. ”

“ He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their heaps of frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered graves, the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the buzzing telegraph wires, and the conversation of other people. What the fields and telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew, and the conversation of the people were disquieting, full of rumors about murders and robberies and arson. And one night he heard in the neighboring village the little church bell ringing faintly and helplessly, and the crackling of the flames of a fire. ”

“ One day the chief warden, accompanied by a soldier, entered his cell. He looked askance at the floor and said gruffly:
“Look! How dirty he has made it!”
Tsiganok retorted quickly:
“You’ve made the whole world dirty, you fat-face, and yet I haven’t said anything to you. What brings you here?”
The warden, speaking as gruffly as before, asked him whether he would act as executioner. Tsiganok burst out laughing, showing his teeth.
“You can’t find any one else? That’s good! Go ahead, hang! Ha! ha! ha! The necks are there, the rope is there, but there is nobody to string it up. By God! ”