Part 7 (1/2)
”Let him go to the devil! What sort of father has he been to me? He has been a scoundrel all his life, and remains a scoundrel!”
”Vasenka! Do you speak of your father like this?” said the old woman reproachfully, straightening herself.
”About my father!”
”About your own father?”
”He is no father to me!”
It was strange and absurd. Before him was the thought of death, while here something small, empty and trivial arose, and his words cracked like the sh.e.l.ls of nuts under foot. And almost crying with sorrow--because of the eternal misunderstanding which all his life long had stood like a wall between him and those nearest to him, and which even now, in the last hour before death, peered at him stupidly and strangely through small, widely opened eyes--Vasily exclaimed:
”Don't you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you understand it? Hanged!”
”You shouldn't have harmed anybody and n.o.body would--” cried the old woman.
”My G.o.d! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your son?”
He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner. The old woman also burst out crying in her corner. Powerless, even for an instant, to blend in a feeling of love and to offset by it the horror of impending death, they wept their cold tears of loneliness which did not warm their hearts. The mother said:
”You ask whether I am a mother to you? You reproach me! And I have grown completely gray during these days. I have become an old woman. And yet you say--you reproach me!”
”Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go.
Kiss my brothers for me.”
”Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?”
At last she went away. She wept bitterly, wiping her face with the edges of her kerchief, and she did not see the road. And the farther she got from the prison the more bitterly she wept. She retraced her steps to the prison, and then she strangely lost her way in the city in which she had been born, in which she lived to her old age. She strolled into a deserted little garden with a few old, gnarled trees, and she seated herself upon a wet bench, from which the snow had melted.
And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow!
The old woman jumped up, about to run, but suddenly her head began to swim terribly and she fell to the ground. The icy path was wet and slippery, and she could not rise. She turned about, lifted herself on her elbows and knelt, then fell back on her side. The black kerchief had slipped down, baring upon the back of her head a bald spot amid her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it seemed to her that she was feasting at a wedding, that her son was getting married, and she had been drinking wine and had become intoxicated.
”I can't! My G.o.d! I can't!” she cried, as though declining something.
Swaying her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen crust, and all the time it seemed to her that they were pouring out more wine for her, more wine!
And her heart had already begun to pain her from her intoxicated laughter, from the rejoicing, from the wild dancing--and they kept on pouring more wine for her--pouring more wine!
CHAPTER VI THE HOURS ARE RUs.h.i.+NG
On the fortress where the condemned terrorists were imprisoned there was a steeple with an old-fas.h.i.+oned clock upon it. At every hour, at every half-hour, and at every quarter-hour the clock rang out in long-drawn, mournful chimes, slowly melting high in the air, like the distant and plaintive call of migrating birds. In the daytime, this strange and sad music was lost in the noise of the city, of the wide and crowded street which pa.s.sed near the fortress. The cars buzzed along, the hoofs of the horses beat upon the pavements, the rocking automobiles honked in the distance, peasant izvozchiks had come especially from the outskirts of the city for the Shrovetide season and the tinkling of the bells upon the necks of their little horses filled the air. The prattle of voices--an intoxicated, merry Shrovetide prattle of voices arose everywhere. And in the midst of these various noises there was the young thawing spring, the muddy pools on the meadows, the trees of the squares which had suddenly become black. From the sea a warm breeze was blowing in broad, moist gusts. It was almost as if one could have seen the tiny fresh particles of air carried away, merged into the free, endless expanse of the atmosphere--could have heard them laughing in their flight.
At night the street grew quiet in the lonely light of the large, electric sun. And then, the enormous fortress, within whose walls there was not a single light, pa.s.sed into darkness and silence, separating itself from the ever living, stirring city by a wall of silence, motionlessness and darkness. Then it was that the strokes of the clock became audible. A strange melody, foreign to earth, was slowly and mournfully born and died out up in the heights. It was born again; deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and softly--it broke off--and rang again. Like large, transparent, gla.s.sy drops, hours and minutes descended from an unknown height into a metallic, softly resounding bell.
This was the only sound that reached the cells, by day and night, where the condemned remained in solitary confinement. Through the roof, through the thickness of the stone walls, it penetrated, stirring the silence--it pa.s.sed unnoticed, to return again, also unnoticed. Sometimes they awaited it in despair, living from one sound to the next, trusting the silence no longer. Only important criminals were sent to this prison. There were special rules there, stern, grim and severe, like the corner of the fortress wall, and if there be n.o.bility in cruelty, then the dull, dead, solemnly mute silence, which caught the slightest rustle and breathing, was n.o.ble.
And in this solemn silence, broken by the mournful tolling of the departing minutes, separated from all that lives, five human beings, two women and three men, waited for the advent of night, of dawn and the execution, and all of them prepared for it, each in his or her own way.