Leonid Andreev read the story of the seven hanged men. Leonid AndreevStory of the Seven Hanged Men

Leonid Andreev

The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men

1. At one o'clock, Your Excellency

Since the minister was a very obese man, prone to apoplexy, he was warned with all sorts of precautions, avoiding causing dangerous excitement, that a very serious assassination attempt was being prepared on him. Seeing that the minister received the news calmly and even with a smile, they also gave details: the assassination attempt should take place the next day, in the morning, when he leaves with a report; several terrorists, already betrayed by the provocateur and now under the vigilant supervision of detectives, must gather with bombs and revolvers at one in the afternoon at the entrance and wait for him to leave. This is where they get caught.

- Wait, - the minister was surprised, - how do they know that I will go at one in the afternoon with a report, when I myself found out about it only the third day?

The head of security vaguely spread his hands:

“Precisely at one o’clock, Your Excellency.

Half astonished, half approving of the actions of the police, who arranged everything so well, the minister shook his head and smiled gloomily with his thick dark lips; and with the same smile, humbly, not wanting to interfere with the police in the future, he quickly packed up and left for the night in someone else's hospitable palace. Also taken away were his wife and two children from the dangerous house near which the bomb-throwers would gather tomorrow.

While the lights were burning in a strange palace and friendly familiar faces were bowing, smiling and indignant, the dignitary experienced a feeling of pleasant excitement - as if he had already been given or was about to be given a large and unexpected reward. But the people dispersed, the lights went out, and through the mirrored glass on the ceiling and walls fell the lacy and ghostly light of electric lamps; outside the house, with its pictures, statues, and the silence that came in from the street, itself quiet and indefinite, it aroused an anxious thought about the futility of locks, guards, and walls. And then at night, in the silence and loneliness of someone else's bedroom, the dignitary became unbearably frightened.

He had something with the kidneys, and with every strong excitement, his face, legs and arms were filled with water and swelled, and from this he seemed to become even larger, even thicker and more massive. And now, towering like a mountain of swollen meat above the crushed springs of the bed, with the anguish of a sick person, he felt his swollen, as if someone else's face, and persistently thought about the cruel fate that people prepared for him. He remembered, one by one, all the recent terrible cases when people of his dignitary and even higher position were bombed, and the bombs tore the body to shreds, splattered the brain on the dirty brick walls, knocked the teeth out of the sockets. And from these Memories, his own fat sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed already a stranger, already experiencing the fiery force of the explosion; and it seemed as if the arms at the shoulder were separated from the body, the teeth fell out, the brain was divided into particles, the legs went numb and lay obediently, fingers up, like those of a dead person. He stirred vigorously, breathed loudly, coughed, so as not to resemble a dead person in any way, surrounded himself with the living noise of ringing springs, a rustling blanket; and to show that he was completely alive, not a bit dead and far from death, like any other person, he boomed loudly and abruptly in the silence and loneliness of the bedroom:

- Well done! Well done! Well done!

It was he who praised the detectives, the police and the soldiers, all those who guard his life and so timely, so cleverly prevented the murder. But moving, but praising, but grinning with a violent wry smile to express his mockery of the stupid failed terrorists, he still did not believe in his salvation, in the fact that life would suddenly, immediately, not leave him. Death, which people planned for him and which was only in their thoughts, in their intentions, as if already stood there, and will stand, and will not leave until they are seized, the bombs are taken away from them and they are put in a strong prison . Over there, in that corner, she stands and does not leave - she cannot leave, like an obedient soldier, put on guard by someone's will and order.

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” - the said phrase sounded, shimmered in all voices: now cheerfully mocking, now angry, now stubborn and stupid. It was as if a hundred wound-up gramophones were placed in the bedroom, and all of them, one after another, with the idiotic diligence of a machine, shouted out the words ordered to them:

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency.”

And this "tomorrow's hour of the day", which until recently was no different from the others, was only a calm movement of the arrow on the dial of a gold watch, suddenly acquired an ominous persuasiveness, jumped out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched out like a huge black pillar, all his life cutting in two. As if neither before nor after him there were any other clocks, and he was the only one, insolent and self-important, who had the right to some kind of special existence.

- Well? What do you need? – through clenched teeth, the minister angrily asked.

Shouted gramophones:

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” And the black pillar grinned and bowed.

Gritting his teeth, the minister raised himself up in bed and sat down, leaning his face on his palms - positively he could not sleep on this disgusting night.

And with terrifying brightness, pressing his plump, perfumed hands over his face, he imagined how he would get up tomorrow morning, knowing nothing, then drinking coffee, knowing nothing, then dressing in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorman who brought the fur coat, nor the footman who brought the coffee, would know that it is absolutely pointless to drink coffee, put on a fur coat, when in a few moments all this: both the fur coat, and his body, and the coffee that is in it, will be destroyed by explosion, taken by death. Here the porter opens the glass door ... And it is he, the dear, kind, affectionate porter, who has blue soldier's eyes and medals to his full chest, himself, with his own hands, opens the terrible door - he opens it, because he knows nothing. Everyone smiles because they don't know anything.

- Wow! he suddenly said loudly and slowly removed his hands from his face.

And, looking into the darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, intense gaze, he just as slowly stretched out his hand, felt for the horn and lit the light. Then he got up and, without putting on his shoes, walked barefoot on the carpet to someone else's unfamiliar bedroom, found another horn from a wall lamp and lit it. It became light and pleasant, and only the agitated bed with the blanket that had fallen to the floor spoke of some kind of horror that had not quite passed yet.

In his nightclothes, with his beard disheveled from restless movements, with angry eyes, the dignitary looked like any other angry old man who has insomnia and severe shortness of breath. It was as if the death that people were preparing for him had laid bare him, tore him away from the splendor and impressive splendor that surrounded him - and it was hard to believe that he had so much power, that this body of his, such an ordinary, simple human body, should have been to die terribly, in the fire and the roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing and not feeling the cold, he sat down in the first chair he came across, propping up his disheveled beard with his hand, and intently, in deep and calm thoughtfulness, stared with his eyes at the unfamiliar stucco ceiling.

So here's the thing! So that's why he was so scared and so excited! So that's why she stands in the corner and doesn't leave and can't leave!

- Fools! he said contemptuously and weightily.

- Fools! he repeated louder and slightly turned his head towards the door so that those to whom it refers could hear. And this applied to those whom he recently called good fellows and who, in excess of zeal, told him in detail about the impending assassination attempt.

“Well, of course,” he thought deeply, with a suddenly strengthened and fluid thought, “after all, now that they told me, I know and I’m scared, but then I wouldn’t know anything and calmly drink coffee. Well, and then, of course, this death - but am I so afraid of death? My kidneys hurt, and someday I'll die, but I'm not afraid, because I don't know anything. And these fools said: at one o'clock, Your Excellency. And they thought, fools, that I would rejoice, but instead she stood in the corner and did not leave. Doesn't go away because that's my thought. And it is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it; and it would be quite impossible to live if a person could quite accurately and definitely know the day and hour when he would die. And these fools warn: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency!"

It became so easy and pleasant, as if someone had told him that he was completely immortal and would never die. And, again feeling strong and intelligent among this herd of fools, who so senselessly and impudently break into the mystery of the future, he thought about the bliss of ignorance with the heavy thoughts of an old, sick, experienced person. Nothing living, neither man nor beast, is given to know the day and hour of his death. Here he was ill recently, and the doctors told him that he would die, that the last orders had to be made - but he did not believe them and really remained alive. And in his youth it was like this: he got confused in life and decided to commit suicide; and prepared a revolver, and wrote letters, and even fixed the hour of the day of suicide - and just before the end he suddenly changed his mind. And always, at the very last moment, something can change, an unexpected accident can appear, and therefore no one can say for himself when he will die.

)

Leonid Andreev The Story of the Seven Hanged Men

Since the minister was a very obese man, prone to apoplexy, he was warned with all sorts of precautions, avoiding causing dangerous excitement, that a very serious assassination attempt was being prepared on him. Seeing that the minister received the news calmly and even with a smile, they also gave details: the assassination attempt should take place the next day, in the morning, when he leaves with a report; several terrorists, already betrayed by the provocateur and now under the vigilant supervision of detectives, must gather with bombs and revolvers at one in the afternoon at the entrance and wait for him to leave. This is where they get caught.

- Wait, - the minister was surprised, - how do they know that I will go at one in the afternoon with a report, when I myself found out about it only the third day?

The head of security vaguely spread his hands:

“Precisely at one o’clock, Your Excellency.

Half astonished, half approving of the actions of the police, who arranged everything so well, the minister shook his head and smiled gloomily with his thick dark lips; and with the same smile, humbly, not wanting to interfere with the police in the future, he quickly packed up and left for the night in someone else's hospitable palace. Also taken away were his wife and two children from the dangerous house near which the bomb-throwers would gather tomorrow.

While the lights were burning in a strange palace and friendly familiar faces were bowing, smiling and indignant, the dignitary experienced a feeling of pleasant excitement - as if he had already been given or was about to be given a large and unexpected reward. But the people dispersed, the lights went out, and through the mirrored glass on the ceiling and walls fell the lacy and ghostly light of electric lamps; outside the house, with its pictures, statues, and the silence that came in from the street, itself quiet and indefinite, it aroused an anxious thought about the futility of locks, guards, and walls. And then at night, in the silence and loneliness of someone else's bedroom, the dignitary became unbearably frightened.

He had something with the kidneys, and with every strong excitement, his face, legs and arms were filled with water and swelled, and from this he seemed to become even larger, even thicker and more massive. And now, towering like a mountain of swollen meat above the crushed springs of the bed, with the anguish of a sick person, he felt his swollen, as if someone else's face, and persistently thought about the cruel fate that people prepared for him. He remembered, one by one, all the recent terrible cases when people of his dignitary and even higher position were bombed, and the bombs tore the body to shreds, splattered the brain on the dirty brick walls, knocked the teeth out of the sockets. And from these Memories, his own fat sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed already a stranger, already experiencing the fiery force of the explosion; and it seemed as if the arms at the shoulder were separated from the body, the teeth fell out, the brain was divided into particles, the legs went numb and lay obediently, fingers up, like those of a dead person. He stirred vigorously, breathed loudly, coughed, so as not to resemble a dead person in any way, surrounded himself with the living noise of ringing springs, a rustling blanket; and to show that he was completely alive, not a bit dead and far from death, like any other person, he boomed loudly and abruptly in the silence and loneliness of the bedroom:

- Well done! Well done! Well done!

It was he who praised the detectives, the police and the soldiers, all those who guard his life and so timely, so cleverly prevented the murder. But moving, but praising, but grinning with a violent wry smile to express his mockery of the stupid failed terrorists, he still did not believe in his salvation, in the fact that life would suddenly, immediately, not leave him. Death, which people planned for him and which was only in their thoughts, in their intentions, as if already stood there, and will stand, and will not leave until they are seized, the bombs are taken away from them and they are put in a strong prison . Over there, in that corner, she stands and does not leave - she cannot leave, like an obedient soldier, put on guard by someone's will and order.

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” - the said phrase sounded, shimmered in all voices: now cheerfully mocking, now angry, now stubborn and stupid. It was as if a hundred wound-up gramophones were placed in the bedroom, and all of them, one after another, with the idiotic diligence of a machine, shouted out the words ordered to them:

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency.”

And this "tomorrow's hour of the day", which until recently was no different from the others, was only a calm movement of the arrow on the dial of a gold watch, suddenly acquired an ominous persuasiveness, jumped out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched out like a huge black pillar, all his life cutting in two. As if neither before nor after him there were any other clocks, and he was the only one, insolent and self-important, who had the right to some kind of special existence.

- Well? What do you need? – through clenched teeth, the minister angrily asked.

Shouted gramophones:

“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” And the black pillar grinned and bowed.

Gritting his teeth, the minister raised himself up in bed and sat down, leaning his face on his palms - positively he could not sleep on this disgusting night.

And with terrifying brightness, pressing his plump, perfumed hands over his face, he imagined how he would get up tomorrow morning, knowing nothing, then drinking coffee, knowing nothing, then dressing in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorman who brought the fur coat, nor the footman who brought the coffee, would know that it is absolutely pointless to drink coffee, put on a fur coat, when in a few moments all this: both the fur coat, and his body, and the coffee that is in it, will be destroyed by explosion, taken by death. Here the porter opens the glass door ... And it is he, the dear, kind, affectionate porter, who has blue soldier's eyes and medals to his full chest, himself, with his own hands, opens the terrible door - he opens it, because he knows nothing. Everyone smiles because they don't know anything.

- Wow! he suddenly said loudly and slowly removed his hands from his face.

And, looking into the darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, intense gaze, he just as slowly stretched out his hand, felt for the horn and lit the light. Then he got up and, without putting on his shoes, walked barefoot on the carpet to someone else's unfamiliar bedroom, found another horn from a wall lamp and lit it. It became light and pleasant, and only the agitated bed with the blanket that had fallen to the floor spoke of some kind of horror that had not quite passed yet.

In his nightclothes, with his beard disheveled from restless movements, with angry eyes, the dignitary looked like any other angry old man who has insomnia and severe shortness of breath. It was as if the death that people were preparing for him had laid bare him, tore him away from the splendor and impressive splendor that surrounded him - and it was hard to believe that he had so much power, that this body of his, such an ordinary, simple human body, should have been to die terribly, in the fire and the roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing and not feeling the cold, he sat down in the first chair he came across, propping up his disheveled beard with his hand, and intently, in deep and calm thoughtfulness, stared with his eyes at the unfamiliar stucco ceiling.

So here's the thing! So that's why he was so scared and so excited! So that's why she stands in the corner and doesn't leave and can't leave!

- Fools! he said contemptuously and weightily.

- Fools! he repeated louder and slightly turned his head towards the door so that those to whom it refers could hear. And this applied to those whom he recently called good fellows and who, in excess of zeal, told him in detail about the impending assassination attempt.

“Well, of course,” he thought deeply, with a suddenly strengthened and fluid thought, “after all, now that they told me, I know and I’m scared, but then I wouldn’t know anything and calmly drink coffee. Well, and then, of course, this death - but am I so afraid of death? My kidneys hurt, and someday I'll die, but I'm not afraid, because I don't know anything. And these fools said: at one o'clock, Your Excellency. And they thought, fools, that I would rejoice, but instead she stood in the corner and did not leave. Doesn't go away because that's my thought. And it is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it; and it would be quite impossible to live if a person could quite accurately and definitely know the day and hour when he would die. And these fools warn: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency!"

It became so easy and pleasant, as if someone had told him that he was completely immortal and would never die. And, again feeling strong and intelligent among this herd of fools, who so senselessly and impudently break into the mystery of the future, he thought about the bliss of ignorance with the heavy thoughts of an old, sick, experienced person. Nothing living, neither man nor beast, is given to know the day and hour of his death. Here he was ill recently, and the doctors told him that he would die, that the last orders had to be made - but he did not believe them and really remained alive. And in his youth it was like this: he got confused in life and decided to commit suicide; and prepared a revolver, and wrote letters, and even fixed the hour of the day of suicide - and just before the end he suddenly changed his mind. And always, at the very last moment, something can change, an unexpected accident can appear, and therefore no one can say for himself when he will die.

"At one o'clock, Your Excellency," these amiable donkeys told him, and although they said it only because death was averted, the mere knowledge of its possible hour filled him with horror. It is quite possible that someday he will be killed, but tomorrow it will not be - tomorrow it will not be - and he can sleep peacefully, like an immortal. Fools, they did not know what a great law they had broken from their place, what a hole they had opened when they said with that idiotic courtesy of theirs: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency."

- No, not at one o'clock, Your Excellency, but who knows when. It is not known when. What?

“Nothing,” silence answered. - Nothing.

- No, you're talking about something.

- Nothing, nothing. I say: tomorrow at one o'clock.

And with a sudden, sharp anguish in his heart, he realized that he would have no sleep, no peace, no joy until this accursed, black hour snatched from the dial had passed. Only the shadow of knowledge about what no living creature should know stood there in the corner, and it was enough to eclipse the light and overtake a person with impenetrable darkness of horror. Once disturbed, the fear of death spread over the body, penetrated into the bones, pulled a pale head from every pore of the body.

He was no longer afraid of tomorrow's killers - they disappeared, were forgotten, mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and phenomena surrounding him. human life, - but something sudden and inevitable: an apoplexy, a rupture of the heart, some kind of thin stupid aorta that suddenly cannot withstand the pressure of blood and bursts like a tightly stretched glove on plump fingers.

And the short, thick neck seemed terrible, and it was unbearable to look at the swollen short fingers, to feel how short they were, how they were full of deadly moisture. And if earlier, in the dark, he had to move in order not to look like a dead man, now, in this bright, coldly hostile, terrible light, it seemed terrible, impossible to move in order to get a cigarette - to call someone. Nerves tensed. And each nerve seemed like a rearing curved wire, on the top of which was a small head with eyes madly staring in horror, a convulsively gaping, gasping, silent mouth. I can not breathe.

And suddenly, in the darkness, among the dust and cobwebs, an electric bell came to life somewhere under the ceiling. The small metal tongue convulsively, in horror, beat against the edge of the ringing cup, fell silent - and again trembled in continuous horror and ringing. It was His Excellency calling from his room.

People were running. Here and there, in the chandeliers and along the wall, individual bulbs flashed - there were not enough of them for light, but enough to make shadows appear. Everywhere they appeared: stood in the corners, stretched along the ceiling; quiveringly clinging to each elevation, they lay down against the walls; and it was difficult to understand where all those countless ugly, silent shadows, the mute souls of mute things had been before.

It turned out just like the police said. Four terrorists, three men and one woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance, the fifth was found and arrested in a safe house, of which she was the mistress. At the same time they captured a lot of dynamite, half-loaded bombs and weapons. All those arrested were very young: the eldest of the men was twenty-eight years old, the youngest of the women only nineteen. They were tried in the same fortress where they were imprisoned after their arrest, they were judged quickly and dully, as was done in that merciless time.

At the trial, all five were calm, but very serious and very thoughtful: their contempt for the judges was so great that no one wanted to emphasize their courage with an extra smile or a feigned expression of fun. They were exactly as calm as needed in order to protect their souls and its great mortal gloom from someone else's, evil and hostile gaze. Sometimes they refused to answer questions, sometimes they answered - briefly, simply and accurately, as if they answered not the judges, but the statisticians to fill in some special tables. Three, one woman and two men, gave their real names, two refused to give them and remained unknown to the judges. And to everything that happened at the trial, they revealed that softened, through the haze, curiosity, which is characteristic of people who are either very seriously ill, or captured by one huge, all-consuming thought. They glanced quickly, caught on the fly some word that was more interesting than the others, and again continued to think, from the same place where the thoughts had stopped.

The first to be placed from the judges was one of those who named themselves - Sergei Golovin, the son of a retired colonel, himself a former officer. He was still quite a young, blond, broad-shouldered youth, so healthy that neither prison nor the expectation of imminent death could erase the color from his cheeks and the expression of young, happy naivete from his blue eyes. All the time he vigorously plucked his shaggy blond beard, to which he was not yet accustomed, and relentlessly, screwing up his eyes and blinking, looked out the window.

This happened at the end of winter, when, amid snowstorms and dull frosty days, the nearby spring sent, as a forerunner, a clear, warm sunny day, or even just one hour, but such a spring, so greedily young and sparkling that the sparrows in the street went crazy with joy and the people seemed to be drunk. And now, through the upper dusty window, which had not been wiped since last summer, a very strange and beautiful sky was visible: at first glance it seemed milky-gray, smoky, and when you look longer, blue began to appear in it, it began to turn blue deeper, everything brighter, more limitless. And the fact that it did not open all at once, but chastely hid in the haze of transparent clouds, made it sweet, like the girl you love; and Sergei Golovin looked up at the sky, plucked at his beard, screwed up first one eye, then the other, with long fluffy eyelashes, and pondered something intensely. Once he even moved his fingers quickly and naively grimaced with some kind of joy, but he looked around and went out like a spark that was stepped on with his foot. And almost instantly through the color of the cheeks, almost without a transition to pallor, an earthy, deathly blue appeared; and fluffy hair, tearing out of its nest with pain, clenched, as in a vise, in fingers that turned white at the tip. But the joy of life and spring was stronger - and in a few minutes the former, young, naive face was drawn to the spring sky.

There, too, in the sky, a young pale girl, unknown, nicknamed Musya, was looking. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older in her severity, in the blackness of her straight and proud eyes. Only a very thin, delicate neck and the same thin girlish hands spoke of her age, and even that elusive thing that is youth itself and that sounded so clear in her voice, pure, harmonious, tuned flawlessly, like an expensive instrument, in every simple word , an exclamation that reveals its musical content. She was very pale, but not a deathly pallor, but that special hot whiteness, when a huge, strong fire seems to be kindled inside a person, and the body glows transparently, like fine Sevres porcelain. She sat almost motionless and only occasionally, with an imperceptible movement of her fingers, felt for a deepened strip on the middle finger of her right hand, a trace of some recently removed ring. And she looked at the sky without caress and joyful memories, only because in the whole dirty government hall this blue piece of sky was the most beautiful, pure and truthful - it did not extort anything from her eyes.

The judges felt sorry for Sergei Golovin, but they hated her.

Also not moving, in a somewhat stiff pose, with his hands folded between his knees, sat her neighbor, an unknown person, nicknamed Werner. If a person can be locked like a deaf door, then the unknown person locked his face like an iron door, and an iron lock hung on it. He looked motionlessly down at the dirty plank floor, and it was impossible to understand whether he was calm or worried endlessly, thinking about something or listening to what the detectives were showing before the court. He was not tall; facial features were delicate and noble. Delicate and beautiful so much that it resembled a moonlit night somewhere in the south, on the seashore, where there are cypresses and black shadows from them, at the same time he awakened a feeling of enormous calm strength, irresistible firmness, cold and impudent courage. The very politeness with which he gave short and precise answers seemed dangerous in his lips, in his half-bow; and if on all the others the prisoner's dressing gown seemed an absurd buffoonery, then on him it was not visible at all - the dress was so alien to a person. And although other terrorists were found with bombs and infernal machines, and Werner only had a black revolver, the judges for some reason considered him the main one and addressed him with some respect, just as briefly and businesslike.

Following him, Vasily Kashirin, all consisted of one continuous, unbearable horror of death and the same desperate desire to restrain this horror and not show it to the judges. From the very morning, as soon as they were taken to court, he began to choke from the rapid beating of his heart; Sweat stood out in drops on his forehead all the time, his hands were just as sweaty and cold, and a cold sweaty shirt stuck to his body, binding his movements. With a supernatural effort of will, he forced his fingers not to tremble, his voice to be firm and distinct, his eyes calm. He saw nothing around him, voices were brought to him as if from a fog, and into the same fog he sent his desperate efforts - to answer firmly, to answer loudly. But, having answered, he immediately forgot both the question and his answer, and again silently and terribly struggled. And death stood out so clearly in him that the judges avoided looking at him, and it was difficult to determine his age, like that of a corpse that had already begun to decompose. According to his passport, he was only twenty-three years old. Once or twice Werner gently touched his knee with his hand, and each time he answered with one word:

- Nothing.

The worst thing for him was when he suddenly had an unbearable desire to scream - without words, an animal desperate cry. Then he softly touched Werner, who, without raising his eyes, answered him quietly:

- Nothing, Vasya. Will be over soon.

And, embracing everyone with a motherly caring eye, the fifth terrorist, Tanya Kovalchuk, languished in anxiety. She never had children, she was still very young and red-cheeked, like Sergei Golovin, but she seemed like a mother to all these people: so caring, so infinitely loving were her looks, smile, fears. She did not pay any attention to the court, as if it were something completely extraneous, and only listened to how others answered: whether her voice was trembling, whether she was afraid, whether to give water.

She could not look at Vasya from melancholy and only quietly wringed her plump fingers; she looked at Musya and Werner with pride and respect, and made a serious and concentrated face, while Sergei Golovin tried to convey her smile.

“Darling, look at the sky. Look, look, my dear, she thought of Golovin. - And Vasya? What is it, my God, my God... What am I to do with it? To say something - you will do even worse: suddenly cry?

And How quiet pond at dawn, reflecting every passing cloud, she reflected on her plump, sweet, kind face every quick feeling, every thought of those four. She did not think at all that she would also be tried and also hanged - she was deeply indifferent. It was in her apartment that a warehouse of bombs and dynamite was opened; and, oddly enough, it was she who met the police with shots and wounded one detective in the head.

The trial ended at eight o'clock, when it was already dark. Gradually, the blue sky faded before the eyes of Musya and Sergei Golovin, but it did not turn pink, did not smile softly, as on summer evenings, but clouded, turned gray, suddenly became cold and wintry. Golovin sighed, stretched himself, looked out the window a couple more times, but there was already the cold darkness of the night; and, continuing to pinch his beard, he began to look with childish curiosity at the judges, soldiers with guns, smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. Musya, when the sky went out, calmly, without lowering her eyes to the ground, led them to a corner, where a cobweb was quietly swaying under the imperceptible pressure of the oven heating; and so it remained until the announcement of the verdict.

After the verdict, after saying goodbye to the defenders in tailcoats and avoiding their helplessly bewildered, plaintive and guilty eyes, the accused collided for a minute at the door and exchanged short phrases.

- Nothing, Vasya. It will all be over soon,” Werner said.

- Yes, I, brother, nothing, - Kashirin answered loudly, calmly and even as if cheerfully.

Indeed, his face turned slightly pink and no longer seemed like the face of a decaying corpse.

“Damn them, they hung them after all,” Golovin swore naively.

"That's to be expected," Werner replied calmly.

“Tomorrow the final verdict will be announced, and we will be put in jail together,” Kovalchuk said, consolingly. - Until the execution, we will sit together.

Musya was silent. Then she resolutely moved forward.

3. I don't need to hang

Two weeks before the terrorists were tried, the same military district court, but only in a different composition, tried and sentenced Ivan Janson, a peasant, to death by hanging.

This Ivan Yanson was a farmhand for a wealthy farmer and did not differ in any way from other similar bobyl workers. He was an Estonian by birth, from Wesenberg, and gradually, over the course of several years, moving from one farm to another, he moved closer to the capital itself. He spoke Russian very poorly, and since his master was a Russian, by the name of Lazarev, and there were no Estonians nearby, Janson was silent for almost all two years. Apparently, in general, he was not inclined to talkativeness, and was silent not only with people, but also with animals: silently watered the horse, silently harnessed it, slowly and lazily moving around it with small, uncertain steps, and when the horse, dissatisfied with silence , began to act up and flirt, silently beat her with a whip. He beat her cruelly, with cold and evil persistence, and if this happened at a time when he was in a serious state of hangover, he reached a frenzy. Then the lash of a whip and the frightened, fractional, full of pain, clatter of hooves on the plank floor of the shed reached the house. For the fact that Janson beat the horse, the owner beat him himself, but could not correct him, and so he left him. Once or twice a month, Janson got drunk, and this usually happened on those days when he took the owner to the big railway station where was the buffet. Having dropped off the owner, he drove off half a verst from the station and there, tying up the sleigh and horse in the snow on the side of the road, he waited for the train to depart. The sleigh stood sideways, almost lying, the horse went belly-deep into the snowdrift with splayed legs and occasionally pulled its muzzle down to lick the soft fluffy snow, and Yanson was reclining in an uncomfortable position on the sleigh and seemed to be dozing. The untied earmuffs of his shabby fur cap hung down helplessly, like the ears of a setter dog, and it was damp under his small reddish nose.

Then Janson returned to the station and quickly got drunk.

Back to the farm, all ten miles, he rushed at a gallop. The beaten, terrified horse galloped with all four legs like a madman, the sleigh rolled, leaned over, beat against the poles, and Janson, lowering the reins and almost flying out of the sleigh every minute, either sang or shouted something in Estonian jerky, blind phrases. And more often he didn’t even sing, but silently, tightly clenching his teeth from the influx of unknown rage, suffering and delight, he rushed forward and was like a blind man: he didn’t see oncoming people, he didn’t shout, he didn’t slow down his frantic pace either on turns or on descents. How he hadn't crushed someone, how he hadn't crashed to death on one of those wild trips, remained incomprehensible.

He should have been expelled long ago, just as they were expelled from other places, but he was cheap and other workers were no better, and so he remained for two years. There were no events in Janson's life. Once he received a letter in Estonian, but since he himself was illiterate, and others did not know Estonian, the letter remained unread; and with a kind of wild, savage indifference, as if not realizing that the letter carried news from his homeland, Yanson threw it into the manure. Yanson also tried to court the cook, apparently languishing for a woman, but he had no success and was rudely rejected and ridiculed: he was short, puny, his face had freckled, flabby and sleepy bottle-colored, dirty eyes. And Janson met his failure with indifference and did not pester the cook anymore.

But, saying little, Janson was listening to something all the time. He also listened to the dull snowy field, with mounds of hardened manure, resembling a row of small graves covered with snow, and gentle blue distances, and humming telegraph poles, and people's conversations. What the field and telegraph poles told him, only he knew, and people's conversations were disturbing, full of rumors about murders, robberies, and arson. And it was heard one night how, in the neighboring village, a small bell, similar to a bell, rattled helplessly and helplessly on a pick, and the flame of a fire crackled: then some visitors robbed a rich farm, killed his owner and wife, and set fire to the house.

And on their farm they lived anxiously: not only at night, but also during the day, dogs were let loose, and the owner laid a gun near him at night. He wanted to give Yanson the same gun, but only a single-barreled and old one, but he turned the gun over in his hands, shook his head, and for some reason refused. The owner did not understand the reason for the refusal and scolded Janson, and the reason was that Janson believed more in the power of his Finnish knife than in this old rusty thing.

“She will kill me myself,” said Janson, looking sleepily at the owner with glassy eyes.

And the owner waved his hand in despair:

- Well, you are a fool, Ivan. Here and live with such workers.

And this same Ivan Yanson, who did not trust a gun, on one winter evening, when another worker was sent to the station, made a very complicated attempt on armed robbery, on the murder and rape of a woman. He did this somehow surprisingly simply: he locked the cook in the kitchen, lazily, with the air of a man who is dying to sleep, came up behind the owner and quickly, time after time, stabbed him in the back with a knife. The owner fell unconscious, the hostess tossed about and screamed, and Yanson, baring his teeth, brandishing a knife, began to open chests and chests of drawers. He took out the money, and then, for the first time, he saw the mistress for the first time and, unexpectedly for himself, rushed to her to rape her. But since he missed the knife at the same time, the mistress turned out to be stronger and not only did not allow herself to be raped, but almost strangled him. And then the owner stirred on the floor, the cook rattled with her tong, knocking down the kitchen door, and Janson ran into the field. They seized him an hour later, when he, squatting around the corner of the barn, and lighting one after the other extinguished matches, made an attempted arson.

A few days later, the owner died of blood poisoning, and Janson, when his turn came along with other robbers and murderers, was tried and sentenced to death. At the trial, he was the same as always: small, frail, freckled, with glassy sleepy eyes. It was as if he did not quite understand the meaning of what was happening and was completely indifferent in appearance: blinking his white eyelashes, stupidly, without curiosity, looked around the unfamiliar important hall and picked his nose with a hard, hardened, unbending finger. Only those who saw him on Sundays in the kirk could guess that he had dressed up a little: he put a dirty-red knitted scarf around his neck and dipped his hair here and there; and where the hair was soaked, it darkened and lay smoothly, while on the other side it stuck out in light and rare swirls - like straws on a lean, hail-beaten field.

When the sentence was announced: to death by hanging, Janson suddenly became agitated. He blushed deeply and began to tie and untie his scarf, as if he were strangling him. Then he stupidly waved his hands and said, turning to the judge who did not read the sentence, and pointing his finger at the one who read:

She said that I should be hanged.

- What is she like? - thickly, in a bass voice, asked the chairman, who was reading the verdict.

Everyone smiled, hiding their smiles under their mustaches and in the papers, and Yanson pointed his index finger at the chairman and answered angrily, frowningly:

Janson again turned his eyes to the silent, restrainedly smiling judge, in whom he felt a friend and a person completely uninvolved in the sentence, and repeated:

She said that I should be hanged. I don't need to hang.

- Remove the accused.

But Yanson managed to repeat convincingly and weightily:

- I don't need to be hung.

He was so absurd with his small, angry face, to which he tried in vain to attach importance, with his outstretched finger, that even the escort soldier, breaking the rules, said to him in an undertone, leading him out of the hall:

“Well, you are a fool, boy.

“I don’t need to be hanged,” Janson repeated stubbornly.

- They will hang up for my respect, you won’t have time to jump.

“Perhaps they will pardon?” - said the first soldier, who felt sorry for Janson.

- How! Such pardon ... Well, bude, we talked.

But Janson was already silent. And again they put him in that cell in which he had already been sitting for a month and to which he managed to get used, as he got used to everything: to beatings, to vodka, to a dull snowy field dotted with round hillocks, like a cemetery. And now he even felt happy when he saw his bed, his window with bars, and they gave him food - he had not eaten anything since morning. The only unpleasant thing was what happened at the trial, but he could not think about it, he did not know how. And death by hanging did not represent at all.

Although Janson was sentenced to death, there were many like him, and he was not considered an important criminal in prison. Therefore, they spoke to him without fear and without respect, as with anyone else who does not face death. They certainly did not consider his death to be death. The warden, having learned about the verdict, said to him admonishingly:

- What, brother? Here they hung it!

“And when will they hang me?” Janson asked incredulously.

The warden considered.

“Well, brother, you’ll have to wait. Until the party is knocked down. And then for one, and even for this, and it’s not worth trying. It needs a lift.

- Well, when? Janson asked insistently.

He was not at all offended that it was not even worth hanging him alone, and he did not believe this, he considered it an excuse to postpone the execution, and then completely cancel it. And it became joyful: a vague and terrible moment, which you can’t think about, moved away somewhere into the distance, became fabulous and incredible, like any death.

- When when! - the warder got angry, a dull and gloomy old man. - It's not for you to hang a dog: you took it behind the barn, once, and it's ready. And that's what you want, fool!

- I do not want! Janson suddenly wrinkled his face cheerfully. - It was she who said that I should be hanged, but I don’t want to!

And, perhaps, for the first time in his life, he laughed: a creaky, absurd, but terribly cheerful and joyful laugh. As if a goose screamed: ha-ha-ha! The warder looked at him in surprise, then frowned severely: this absurd gaiety of a man who was to be executed offended the prison and the execution itself and made them something very strange. And suddenly, for one moment, for the shortest moment, to the old warden, who had spent his whole life in prison, recognizing its rules as if for the laws of nature, she and his whole life seemed to be something like a madhouse, and he, the warden, is the biggest lunatic.

- Ugh, fuck you! he spat. - Why are you showing your teeth, this is not a tavern for you!

“But I don’t want to—ha-ha-ha!” Janson laughed.

– Satan! said the warden, feeling the need to cross himself.

Least of all was this man with a small, flabby face like Satan, but there was something in his goose cackle that destroyed the sanctity and strength of the prison. If he laughed a little longer, the walls would collapse putridly, and the sodden bars would fall, and the warder himself would lead the prisoners out of the gate: please, gentlemen, walk around the city for yourself - or maybe someone wants to go to the village? Satan!

But Janson had already stopped laughing and was only screwing up his eyes slyly.

- Well, that's it! - said the warden with a vague threat and left, looking around.

All that evening Janson was calm and even cheerful. He repeated to himself the phrase he had said: I don't need to be hanged, and it was so persuasive, wise, and irrefutable that there was no need to worry about anything. He had long forgotten about his crime and only sometimes regretted that he had not been able to rape the mistress. And soon forgot about it.

Every morning Janson asked when he would be hanged, and every morning the warder angrily answered:

You can do it, Satan. Sit! - and left quickly, until Janson had time to laugh.

And from these monotonously repeated words and from the fact that every day began, passed and ended like the most ordinary day, Janson was irrevocably convinced that there would be no execution. Very quickly he began to forget about the court and spent whole days lying on his bed, vaguely and joyfully dreaming about the dull snowy fields with their bumps, about the station buffet, about something even more distant and bright. In prison he was well fed, and somehow very quickly, in a few days, he gained weight and began to put on airs a little.

“Now she would love me anyway,” he once thought of the hostess. “Now I am fat, no worse than the owner.”

And I really wanted to drink vodka - to drink and quickly, quickly ride a horse.

When the terrorists were arrested, the news of this reached the prison: and to Janson's usual question, the warder suddenly, unexpectedly and wildly, answered:

- Now soon.

He looked at him calmly and said importantly:

- Now soon. I think so, in a week.

Yanson turned pale and, as if falling asleep completely, so dim was the look of his glassy eyes, asked:

- Are you kidding?

“I couldn’t wait, but you’re joking. We don't have jokes. It’s you who like to joke, but jokes are not supposed to be with us, ”the warden said with dignity and left.

By the evening of that day, Janson had lost weight. His stretched, temporarily smoothed skin suddenly gathered into many small wrinkles, in some places even seemed to sag. The eyes became completely sleepy, and all movements became so slow and sluggish, as if every turn of the head, the movement of the fingers, the step of the foot was such a complex and cumbersome undertaking, which before that one had to think over for a very long time. At night he lay down on his bunk, but did not close his eyes, and so, sleepy, they remained open until morning.

– Aha! said the warden with pleasure when he saw him the next day. - Here you, my dear, not a tavern.

With a feeling of pleasant satisfaction, like a scientist whose experiment has once again been a success, he carefully and carefully examined the condemned man from head to toe: now everything will go as it should. Satan has been put to shame, the sanctity of prison and execution has been restored, and condescendingly, even sincerely pitying, the old man inquired:

Who will you see or not?

- Why see each other?

- Well, sorry. Mother, for example, or brother.

“I don’t need to be hanged,” Janson said quietly and looked askance at the warden. - I do not want.

The warder looked and silently waved his hand.

By evening, Janson had somewhat calmed down. The day was so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky shone so habitually, footsteps and someone’s businesslike conversation sounded so usual in the corridor, so ordinary, natural, and usually smelled of cabbage soup from sauerkraut, that he again ceased to believe in execution. But by nightfall it was terrible. Previously, Janson had felt the night simply as darkness, as a special dark time when one needed to sleep, but now he felt its mysterious and formidable essence. In order not to believe in death, you need to see and hear the ordinary around you: steps, voices, light, cabbage soup from sauerkraut, and now everything was unusual, and this silence, and this darkness, and in themselves were already like death.

And the longer the night went on, the worse it got. With the naivete of a savage or a child who considers everything possible, Janson wanted to shout to the sun: shine! And he asked, he begged for the sun to shine, but the night steadily dragged its black clock over the earth, and there was no power that could stop its course. And this impossibility, for the first time so clearly presented to Yanson's weak brain, filled him with horror: not yet daring to feel it clearly, he already realized the inevitability of imminent death and with a dead foot stepped onto the first step of the scaffold.

The day calmed him again, and the night frightened him again, and so it was until that night, when he both realized and felt that death was inevitable and would come in three days, at dawn, when the sun would rise.

He never thought about what death was, and death had no image for him - but now he felt clearly, saw, felt that she had entered the cell and was looking for him, rummaging around with her hands. And, escaping, he began to run around the cell.

But the cell was so small that it seemed to have obtuse rather than sharp corners, and everyone was pushing him to the middle. And there's nothing to hide behind. And the door is locked. And light. Several times he silently hit his body against the walls, once he hit the door - muffled and empty. He bumped into something and fell face down, and then he felt that she was grabbing him. And, lying on his stomach, sticking to the floor, hiding his face in his dark, dirty asphalt, Janson screamed in horror. He lay and screamed at the top of his voice until they came. And when they had already lifted him from the floor, and put him on a bunk, and poured cold water on his head, Yanson still did not dare to open his tightly closed eyes. He opens one, sees a bright empty corner or someone's boot in the void, and starts screaming again.

But the cold water began to act. It also helped that the guard on duty, the same old man, hit Yanson on the head with medicine several times. And this feeling of life really banished death, and Janson opened his eyes, and the rest of the night, with a clouded brain, slept soundly. He lay on his back, with his mouth open, and snored loudly; and between the loosely closed eyelids, a flat and dead eye without a pupil was white.

And then everything in the world, both day and night, and steps, and voices, and sauerkraut cabbage soup, became a complete horror for him, plunged him into a state of wild, incomparable amazement. His weak thought could not connect these two ideas, so monstrously contradicting one another: usually a bright day, the smell and taste of cabbage - and the fact that in two days, in a day he should die. He did not think anything, he did not even count the hours, but simply stood in mute horror before this contradiction, which tore his brain in two; and he became evenly pale, neither whiter nor redder, and in appearance he seemed calm. He just didn’t eat anything and completely stopped sleeping: either he sat on a stool all night, tucking his legs timidly under him, or quietly, stealthily and looking around sleepily, walked around the cell. His mouth was half-open all the time, as if from incessant great astonishment; and, before picking up any most ordinary object, he looked at it for a long time and stupidly and took it incredulously.

And when he became like that, both the guards and the soldier, who was watching him through the window, stopped paying attention to him. It was a state common to convicts, similar, in the opinion of the warder, who had never experienced it, to that which happens to cattle when they are stunned by a blow to the forehead with a butt.

“Now he is deaf, now he won’t feel anything until his death,” the warden said, peering at him with experienced eyes. Ivan, do you hear? Eh, Ivan?

“I don’t need to be hanged,” Janson replied dully, and again his lower jaw dropped.

“And if you hadn’t killed, you wouldn’t have been hanged,” the senior warder said instructively, still a young but very important man in orders. - And then you killed him, but you don’t want to hang yourself.

- He wanted to kill a man for free. Stupid, stupid, but cunning.

“I don't want to,” Janson said.

“Well, dear, don’t want it, it’s up to you,” the elder said indifferently. - It would be better than talking nonsense, he disposed of the property - everything is something.

- He has nothing. One shirt and ports. Yes, here's another fur hat - a dandy!

So time passed until Thursday. And on Thursday, at twelve o'clock at night, a lot of people entered Janson's cell, and some gentleman with shoulder straps said:

- Well, get ready. Must go.

Janson, still moving slowly and listlessly, put on everything he had and tied a dirty red scarf around him. Looking at how he was dressing, a gentleman in uniform, smoking a cigarette, said to someone:

- And what a warm day it is today. Quite spring.

Yanson's eyes were stuck together, he was completely asleep and tossed and turned so slowly and tightly that the warder shouted:

- Well, well, come on. Asleep!

Suddenly Janson stopped.

"I don't want to," he said languidly.

They took him by the arms and led him, and he meekly walked, shrugging his shoulders. In the yard, the moist spring air immediately blew him, and it became wet under his nose; despite the night, the thaw became even stronger, and from somewhere frequent, cheerful drops fell loudly on the stone. And while waiting, while the gendarmes were climbing into the black carriage without lamps, rattling their sabers and bending over, Janson lazily moved his finger under his wet nose and straightened his badly tied scarf.

4. We Orlovskys

By the same presence of the military district court that tried Janson, a peasant from the Oryol province, Yelets district, Mikhail Golubets, nicknamed Mishka Tsyganok, he is Tatar, was sentenced to death by hanging. His last crime, established for sure, was the murder of three people and armed robbery; and then his dark past went into the mysterious depths. There were vague hints of his participation in a whole series of other robberies and murders, his blood and dark drunken revelry were felt behind. With complete frankness, quite sincerely, he called himself a robber and treated with irony those who fashionably called themselves "expropriators." About the last crime, where denial did not lead to anything, he spoke in detail and willingly, but when asked about the past, he only bared his teeth and whistled:

- Look for the wind in the field!

When they pestered him with questions, Tsyganok assumed a serious and dignified air.

“All of us, Oryol, broken heads,” he said sedately and judiciously. “Eagle and Kromy are the first thieves. Karachev and Livny are marvelous to all thieves. And Yelets is the father of all thieves. What is there to interpret!

He was nicknamed a gypsy for his appearance and thieves' skills. He was oddly black-haired, thin, with yellow spots on his sharp Tatar cheekbones; somehow turned the whites of his eyes like a horse and was always in a hurry somewhere. His gaze was short, but terribly direct and full of curiosity, and the thing that he glanced at briefly seemed to be losing something, giving him a part of itself and becoming something else. The cigarette he glanced at was just as unpleasant and difficult to take, as if it had already been in someone else's mouth. Some eternal restless sat in it and then twisted it like a tourniquet, then scattered it in a wide sheaf of writhing sparks. And he drank water almost in buckets, like a horse.

To all the questions in court, he, jumping up quickly, answered briefly, firmly, and even, as it were, with pleasure:

Sometimes emphasized:

- Ver-r-but!

And quite unexpectedly, when it was about something else, he jumped up and asked the chairman:

- Allow me to whistle!

- What is this for? he was surprised.

- And as they show that I gave a sign to my comrades, then here it is. Very interesting.

Slightly perplexed, the chairman agreed. The gypsy quickly put four fingers into his mouth, two from each hand, rolled out his eyes fiercely - and the dead air of the courtroom was cut through by a real, wild, robber whistle, from which stunned horses spin and sit on their hind legs and involuntarily pale a human face. And the mortal anguish of the one who is being killed, and the wild joy of the killer, and the formidable warning, and the call and darkness of the rainy autumn night, and loneliness - everything was in this piercing and neither human nor animal cry.

The chairman shouted something, then waved his hand at Tsyganok, who obediently fell silent. And, like an artist who victoriously performed a difficult but always successful aria, he sat down, wiped his wet fingers on his dressing gown and looked smugly at those present.

- That's a robber! one of the judges said, rubbing his ear.

But the other, with a broad Russian beard and Tatar eyes, like those of a Gypsy, looked dreamily somewhere over the Gypsy, smiled and objected:

- It's really interesting.

And with a calm heart, without pity and without the slightest remorse, the judges sentenced Gypsy to death.

- Right! - Tsyganok said when the verdict was read. - In an open field yes crossbar. Right!

And, turning to the escort, valiantly threw:

- Well, let's go, or something, sour wool. Yes, hold the gun tight - I'll take it away!

The soldier looked sternly, apprehensively at him, exchanged glances with his comrade, and felt the lock of the gun. The other did the same. And all the way to the prison, the soldiers did not exactly walk, but flew through the air - so, absorbed by the criminal, they did not feel either the ground under their feet, or time, or themselves.

Before the execution, Mishka Gypsy, like Janson, had to spend seventeen days in prison. And all seventeen days flew by for him as quickly as one - as one unquenchable thought of escape, of will and of life. The restless man who possessed the Gypsy and now squeezed by walls and bars and a dead window through which nothing could be seen turned all his fury inward and burned the Gypsy's thought like coal scattered on the boards. As if in a drunken stupor, bright, but unfinished images swarmed, collided and confused, rushed past in an unstoppable dazzling whirlwind, and all rushed towards one thing - to escape, to freedom, to life. Then, flaring his nostrils like a horse, Tsyganok sniffed the air for whole hours - it seemed to him that he smelled of hemp and fire smoke, colorless and caustic burning; then he turned like a top around the cell, quickly feeling the walls, tapping with his finger, trying on, staring at the ceiling, sawing through the bars. With his restlessness, he exhausted the soldier who was watching him through the peephole, and already several times, in despair, the soldier threatened to shoot; The gypsy objected rudely and mockingly, and the matter ended peacefully only because the altercation soon turned into simple, muzhik, unoffensive abuse, in which shooting seemed absurd and impossible.

Tsyganok slept soundly through his nights, almost without moving, in an unchanging but living immobility, like a temporarily inactive spring. But, jumping up, he immediately began to turn, think, feel. His hands were constantly dry and hot, but sometimes his heart suddenly turned cold: it was as if a piece of non-melting ice was placed in his chest, from which a small dry shiver ran all over his body. The already dark, at that moment Tsyganok turned black, took on a shade of bluish cast iron. And he developed a strange habit: as if he had eaten something excessively and unbearably sweet, he constantly licked his lips, smacked his lips and, with a hiss, through his teeth, spat on the floor running saliva. And he did not finish the words: thoughts ran so fast that the tongue did not have time to catch up with them.

One afternoon, accompanied by an escort, a senior warden came to him. He glanced sideways at the spat-stained floor and sullenly said:

- Look messed up!

The gypsy quickly objected:

- You, fat muzzle, have polluted the whole earth, and I have nothing to do with you. Why did you come?

Still gloomily, the overseer offered him to become an executioner. The gypsy bared his teeth and laughed.

- Ai is not located? Deftly! Hang it up, go, ha ha! And there is a neck, and there is a rope, but there is no one to hang it. Oh God, clever!

- You will stay alive.

- Well, still: I’m not dead, I’ll hang you something. Said fool!

- So how? You don't care, this way or that way.

- And how do you hang? Probably quietly strangle!

“No, with music,” snapped the warden.

- What a fool. Of course, with music. Like this! And he sang something outrageous.

“You’ve made up your mind, my dear,” said the warden. - Well, then, speak plainly.

The gypsy grinned:

- What an ambulance! Come back one more time and I'll tell you.

And in the chaos of bright, but unfinished images that oppressed the Gypsy with their swiftness, a new one burst: how good it is to be an executioner in a red shirt. He vividly imagined a square flooded with people, a high platform, and how he, a Gypsy, in a red shirt, walks along it with an hatchet. The sun illuminates the heads, gleams merrily on the hatchet, and everything is so merry and rich that even the one whose head is being chopped off is also smiling. And behind the people carts and muzzles of horses are visible - then the peasants drove from the village; and then you can see the field.

- W-ah! Tsyganok smacked, licking his lips and spitting out the saliva that came running.

And suddenly, like a fur hat, they pulled it down to his very mouth: it became dark and stuffy, and his heart became a piece of non-melting ice, sending a small dry shiver.

A couple more times the warden came in, and, baring his teeth, Tsyganok said:

- What a speedy one. Come in one more time.

And finally, briefly, through the window, the warder shouted:

- Spoiled his happiness, crow! Found another!

- Well, to hell with you, hang yourself! Gypsy snapped. And he stopped dreaming about butchery.

But in the end, the closer to the execution, the swiftness of the torn images became unbearable. The gypsy already wanted to stop, spread his legs and stop, but the swirling stream carried him away, and there was nothing to grab onto: everything was floating around. And the dream had already become restless: new, convex, heavy, like wooden, painted chocks, dreams appeared, even more impetuous than thoughts. It was no longer a stream, but an endless fall from an endless mountain, a whirling flight through the entire apparently colorful world. In the wild, Tsyganok wore only a rather dandy mustache, and in prison he grew a short, black, prickly beard, and this made him look terrible and crazy. At times, Tsyganok really forgot himself and circled around the cell completely senselessly, but he still felt the rough plastered walls. And he drank water like a horse.

One evening, when the fire was lit, Tsyganok knelt down on all fours in the middle of the cell and howled with a trembling wolf howl. He was somehow especially serious at this, and howled as if he were doing an important and necessary task. He drew in a full chest of air and slowly let it out in a long, trembling howl; and attentively, closing his eyes, listened to how it came out. And the very trembling in his voice seemed somewhat deliberate; and he did not shout stupidly, but carefully deduced each note in this bestial cry, full of unspeakable horror and sorrow.

Then he immediately broke off the howl and for several minutes, without getting up from all fours, was silent. Suddenly, softly, into the ground, he muttered:

- Darlings, dear ones ... Dear ones, dear ones, have pity ... Dear ones! .. Dear ones! ..

And, too, seemed to listen to how it came out. Say the word and listen.

Then he jumped up - and for an hour, without taking a breath, cursed in a swearing way.

- Wow, such-and-such, there-ta-ta-ta! he yelled, rolling his bloodshot eyes. - Hang up like that, or else ... Oh, such and such ...

And a soldier, white as chalk, crying from anguish, from horror, poked at the door with the muzzle of a gun and shouted helplessly:

- I'll shoot! By God, I'll shoot! Do you hear!

But he did not dare to shoot: in those sentenced to death, if there was no real rebellion, they never shot. And Tsyganok gritted his teeth, scolded and spat - his human brain, placed on the monstrously sharp line between life and death, fell apart like a lump of dry and weathered clay.

When they came to the cell at night to take Gypsy to execution, he began to fuss and seemed to come to life. It became even sweeter in the mouth, and saliva was collected uncontrollably, but the cheeks turned a little pink, and the former, slightly wild slyness sparkled in the eyes. Dressing, he asked the official:

- Who will hang something? New? Come on, I haven't hit my hand yet.

“You have nothing to worry about,” the official replied dryly.

- How not to worry, your honor, they will hang me, not you. At least you don’t regret some state-owned soap for a leash.

“Okay, okay, please shut up.

“And then he ate all the soap here,” Tsyganok pointed to the warden, “look how shiny his face is.

– Shut up!

- Don't be sorry!

The gypsy laughed, but his mouth grew sweeter, and suddenly, strangely, his legs began to go numb. Nevertheless, when he went out into the yard, he managed to shout:

- The carriage of the Count of Bengal!

5. Kiss - and be silent

The verdict against the five terrorists was announced in its final form and confirmed on the same day. The condemned were not told when the execution would take place, but from the way it was usually done they knew that they would be hanged that same night or, at the latest, the next. And when they were offered to see their relatives the next day, that is, Thursday, they realized that the execution would be on Friday at dawn.

Tanya Kovalchuk had no close relatives, and those that were were somewhere in the wilderness, in Little Russia, and they hardly even knew about the trial and the upcoming execution; Musya and Werner, as unknown, were not supposed to have relatives at all, and only two, Sergei Golovin and Vasily Kashirin, were to meet with their parents. And both of them thought about this meeting with horror and longing, but did not dare to refuse the old people the last conversation, the last kiss.

Sergey Golovin was especially tormented by the upcoming meeting. He loved his father and mother very much, had only recently seen them and was now horrified - what it would be like. The execution itself, in all its monstrous unusualness, in its madness that strikes the brain, seemed easier to the imagination and seemed not so terrible as these few minutes, short and incomprehensible, standing as if outside of time, as if outside of life itself. How to look, what to think, what to say - his human brain refused to understand. The simplest and most common: to take the hand, to kiss it, to say: “Hello, father,” seemed incomprehensibly terrible in its monstrous, inhuman, insane deceit.

After the verdict, the convicts were not put together, as Kovalchuk suggested, but each was left in his solitary confinement; and all morning, until eleven o'clock, when his parents came, Sergei Golovin paced furiously about the cell, plucking his beard, grimacing pitifully and grumbling something. Sometimes he stopped all the way, took a deep breath and puffed, like a man who has been under water for too long. But he was so healthy, the young life was so firmly seated in him that even in these moments of the most severe suffering, the blood played under the skin and stained his cheeks, and his eyes were light and naive blue.

Everything happened, however, much better than Sergey expected.

The first to enter the room where the meeting took place was Sergei's father, a retired colonel, Nikolai Sergeevich Golovin. He was all even white, face, beard, hair and hands, as if a snow statue had been dressed in a human dress; and all the same there was a frock coat, old but well-cleaned, smelling of gasoline, with brand new transverse epaulettes; and he entered firmly, grandly, with strong, distinct steps. He held out his white dry hand and said loudly:

- Hello, Sergey!

Behind him, his mother walked slowly and smiled strangely. But she also shook hands and repeated loudly:

- Hello, Serezhenka!

She kissed her on the lips and silently sat down. She didn’t rush, she didn’t cry, she didn’t scream, she didn’t do something terrible, which Sergey expected, but she kissed her and silently sat down. She even straightened her black silk dress with trembling hands.

Sergei did not know that all the previous night, having closed himself in his office, the colonel, with the exertion of all his strength, was considering this ritual. “Not to aggravate, but to lighten the last minute, we must our son,” the colonel firmly decided and carefully weighed every possible phrase of tomorrow's conversation, every movement. But sometimes he got confused, lost what he managed to cook, and wept bitterly in the corner of the oilcloth sofa. And in the morning he explained to his wife how to behave on a date.

- The main thing is a kiss - and be silent! he taught. - Then you can talk, a little later, and when you kiss, then be silent. Don't talk right after the kiss, you know? - otherwise you will not say what you should.

“I understand, Nikolai Sergeevich,” the mother answered, crying.

“And don't cry. God save you from crying! Yes, you will kill him if you cry, old woman!

“Why are you crying yourself?”

- You will cry! Don't cry, do you hear?

- All right, Nikolai Sergeevich.

On the cab he wanted to repeat the instruction once more, but forgot. And so they rode silently, bent over, both gray-haired and old, and thought, and the city roared merrily: it was Shrovetide week and the streets were noisy and crowded.

Sat down. The Colonel stood in a prepared position, placing his right hand over the side of his coat. Sergei sat for a moment, met his mother's wrinkled face closely, and jumped up.

“Sit down, Seryozhenka,” the mother asked.

"Sit down, Sergei," his father confirmed.

They were silent. The mother smiled strangely.

- How we worked for you, Seryozhenka.

"That's right, Mommy...

The Colonel said firmly:

- We had to do this, Sergey, so that you would not think that your parents left you.

They were silent again. It was scary to say the word, as if every word in the language had lost its meaning and meant only one thing: death. Sergei looked at his father's clean coat, smelling of gasoline, and thought: “Now the orderly is gone, which means he cleaned it himself. How did I not notice before when he cleans his coat? It must be in the morning." And suddenly asked:

- How is your sister? Healthy?

“Ninochka doesn’t know anything,” her mother hastily answered.

But the colonel stopped her sternly:

- Why lie? The girl read in the newspapers. Let Sergei know that everyone… those close to him… at that time… thought and…

He could not continue further and stopped. Suddenly, the mother's face somehow immediately crumpled, blurred, swayed, became wet and wild. The faded eyes stared madly, the breathing became faster and shorter and louder.

“Se… Ser… Se… Se…” she kept repeating without moving her lips. - Se...

- Mommy!

The colonel stepped forward and, shaking all over, with every fold of his coat, every wrinkle of his face, not understanding how terrible he himself was in his deathly whiteness, in his tortured, desperate hardness, spoke to his wife:

- Shut up! Don't torture him! Don't torment! Don't torment! Him to die! Don't torment!

Frightened, she was already silent, and he still shook his clenched fists in front of his chest with restraint and kept repeating:

- Do not torment!

Then he stepped back, put a trembling hand over the side of his coat, and loudly, with an expression of heightened calmness, asked with white lips:

“Tomorrow morning,” Sergey answered with the same white lips.

The mother looked down, chewed her lips and seemed not to hear anything. And, continuing to chew, she seemed to drop simple and strange words:

- Ninochka told me to kiss you, Serezhenka.

“Kiss her for me,” Sergei said.

- Good. The Khvostovs also bow to you.

- What Tails? Oh yes!

The Colonel interrupted:

- Well, we must go. Get up, mother, you must.

Together they raised the weakened mother.

- Sorry! the colonel ordered. - Cross over.

She did everything she was told. But as she made the sign of the cross and kissed her son with a short kiss, she shook her head and repeated senselessly:

- No, it's not. No not like this. No no. How can I then? How can I say? No not like this.

- Farewell, Sergei! - said the father.

They shook hands and kissed hard but briefly.

“You…” Sergei began.

- Well? the father asked curtly.

- No not like this. No no. How can I say? said the mother, shaking her head. She had already sat up again and was swaying all over.

“You…” Sergei began again.

Suddenly his face wrinkled pitifully, childishly, and his eyes immediately flooded with tears. Through their sparkling facet, he saw closely the white face of his father with the same eyes.

“You, father, are a noble man.

- What you! What you! the colonel got scared.

And suddenly, as if broken, he fell headlong on his son's shoulder. He was once taller than Sergei, but now he has become short, and his fluffy, dry head lay like a little white lump on his son's shoulder. And both silently kissed eagerly: Sergei - fluffy white hair, and he - a prisoner's dressing gown.

They looked around: the mother stood and, throwing her head back, looked with anger, almost with hatred.

- What are you, mother? shouted the Colonel.

- And I? she said, shaking her head with insane expressiveness. You are kissing, and I? Men, right? And I? And I?

- Mommy! - Sergei rushed to her.

There was something about which it is impossible and it is not necessary to tell.

The colonel's last words were:

- I bless you for death, Seryozha. Die bravely like an officer.

And they left. Somehow they left. Were, stood, talked - and suddenly left. Mother was sitting here, father was standing here - and suddenly somehow they left. Returning to the cell, Sergei lay down on a bunk, facing the wall, to hide from the soldiers, and wept for a long time. Then he got tired of crying and fell asleep soundly.

Only his mother came to Vasily Kashirin - his father, a wealthy merchant, did not want to come. Vasily met the old woman, pacing the room, shivering from the cold, although it was warm and even hot. And the conversation was short, heavy.

“You shouldn’t have come, mother.” Just torture yourself and me.

- Why are you doing this, Vasya! Why did you do that! God!

The old woman began to cry, wiping herself with the ends of a black woolen handkerchief. And with the habit that he and his brothers had of yelling at their mother, who did not understand anything, he stopped and, shivering from the cold, spoke angrily:

- Here you go! So I knew! After all, you don’t understand anything, mother! Nothing!

- Well, well, well. What are you cold?

“It’s cold…” Vassily cut him off and walked again, askance, looking angrily at his mother.

- Maybe you caught a cold?

“Ah, mother, what a cold it is when…”

And waved his hand dismissively. The old woman wanted to say: “But ours ordered to put pancakes on Monday,” but she was frightened and began to wail:

- I told him: after all, son, go, give forgiveness. No, rested, old goat ...

- Well, to hell with him! What a father he is! As he was a bastard all his life, he remained.

- Vasenka, this is about the father! The old woman drew herself up reproachfully.

- About the father.

- About my own father!

What a father he is to me.

It was wild and ridiculous. Death stood ahead, and then something small, empty, unnecessary grew up, and the words crackled like an empty shell of nuts under the foot. And, almost crying - from anguish, from that eternal misunderstanding that stood like a wall all his life between him and those close to him and now, at the last dying hour, wildly goggled his little stupid eyes, Vasily shouted:

- Yes, you understand that they will hang me! Hang! Do you understand or not? Hang!

“And you wouldn’t touch people, you wouldn’t be ...” the old woman shouted.

- God! Yes, what is it! After all, this does not happen even with animals. Am I your son or not?

He cried and sat down in a corner. The old woman in her corner also wept. Powerless even for a moment to merge in a feeling of love and oppose it to the horror of impending death, they cried cold tears of loneliness that did not warm their hearts. Mother said:

- You're talking about whether I'm your mother or not, you reproach. And during these days I completely turned gray, I became an old woman. And you say you reproach.

- All right, all right, mother. Sorry. You need to go. Kiss the brothers there.

“Am I not a mother? Am I not sorry?

Finally left. She cried bitterly, wiping herself with the tips of her handkerchief, she did not see the road. And the farther away from the prison, the hotter the tears flowed. I went back to the prison, then got lost wildly in the city where I was born, grew up, grew old. I wandered into some deserted garden with several old, broken trees and sat down on a wet, thawed bench. And suddenly I realized: tomorrow they will hang him.

The old woman jumped up, wanted to run, but suddenly her head was spinning, and she fell. The icy path was wet, it was slippery, and the old woman could not get up in any way: she spun, rose on her elbows and knees, and again fell on her side. The black handkerchief slipped from his head, revealing a bald spot at the back of his head among dirty gray hair; and for some reason it seemed to her that she was feasting at a wedding: they were marrying her son, and she drank wine and became very tipsy.

- I can not. By God, I can't! she refused, shaking her head, and crawled along the icy wet crust, and everyone poured wine for her, everyone poured it.

And her heart was already hurting from drunken laughter, from treats, from a wild dance - and everyone poured wine for her. All lily.

6. The clock is running

In the fortress, where the convicted terrorists were imprisoned, there was a bell tower with an old clock. Every hour, every half hour, every quarter-hour, something viscous, something sad, slowly melting in the height, like the distant and plaintive call of migratory birds, called forth. During the day, this strange and sad music was lost in the noise of the city, a large and crowded street that passed near the fortress. Trams honked, horses choked, swaying cars screamed far ahead; Peasant Maslenitsa drivers from the outskirts of the city came to Shrove Tuesday, and the bells on the necks of their short horses filled the air with buzzing. And the conversation stood: a little drunken, cheerful Shrovetide dialect; and so the young spring thaw went to dissonance, muddy puddles on the panel, suddenly blackened trees of the square. A warm wind was blowing from the sea in wide, damp gusts: it seemed as if one could see with one’s eyes how, in a friendly flight, tiny, fresh particles of air were carried away into the boundless free distance and laughed as they flew.

At night, the street was quiet in the lonely light of large electric suns. And then a huge fortress, in the flat walls of which there was not a single light, went into darkness and silence, separating itself from the ever-living, moving city with a line of silence, immobility and darkness. And then the chime of the clock was heard; alien to the earth, slowly and sadly, a strange melody was born and died out in the height. It was born again, deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and quietly - it broke off - it rang again. Like large, transparent, glassy drops, hours and minutes fell from an unknown height into a metal, softly ringing bowl. Or migratory birds flew.

In the cells, where the convicts were sitting one at a time, only this one ringing was brought day and night. Through the roof, through the thickness of the stone walls, he penetrated, shaking the silence, - he left imperceptibly, in order to come again, just as imperceptibly. Sometimes they forgot about him and did not hear him; sometimes they waited for it in desperation, living from ringing to ringing, no longer trusting the silence. The prison was intended only for important criminals, the rules in it were special, harsh, hard and tough, like the corner of a fortress wall; and if there is nobility in cruelty, then the deaf, dead, solemnly mute silence was noble, catching rustles and easy breath.

And in this solemn silence, shaken by the sad ringing of the escaping minutes, separated from all living things, five people, two women and three men, awaited the onset of night, dawn and execution, and each prepared for it in his own way.

7. There is no death

As in her whole life Tanya Kovalchuk thought only of others and never of herself, so now she suffered only for others and yearned greatly. She imagined death insofar as it was to come, as something painful, for Seryozha Golovin, for Mysia, for others - she, as it were, did not touch her at all.

And, rewarding herself for her forced firmness in court, she wept for hours on end, as old women who knew much grief can weep, or young women, but very compassionate, very kind people. And the suggestion that Seryozha might not have tobacco, and Werner might be deprived of his usual strong tea, and this, in addition to the fact that they must die, tormented her, perhaps, no less than the very thought of execution . Execution is something inevitable and even extraneous, which is not worth thinking about, and if a person in prison, and even before execution, does not have tobacco, this is completely unbearable. She remembered, went over the sweet details of living together and froze with fear, imagining Sergei's meeting with his parents.

And she pitied Musya with particular pity. For a long time it seemed to her that Musya loved Werner, and although this was completely untrue, she still dreamed for both of them of something good and bright. When free, Musya wore a silver ring, which depicted a skull, a bone, and a crown of thorns around them; and often, with pain, Tanya Kovalchuk looked at this ring as a symbol of doom, and then jokingly, now seriously begged Musya to take it off.

“Give it to me,” she pleaded.

- No, Tanechka, I won’t give it. And you will soon have another ring on your finger.

For some reason, in turn, they thought of her that she would certainly and soon have to get married, and this offended her - she did not want any husband. And, remembering these half-joking conversations between her and Musya and the fact that Musya was now really doomed, she choked with tears, with motherly pity. And every time the clock struck, she raised her tear-stained face and listened to how they were receiving this lingering, insistent call of death there, in those cells.

And Musya was happy.

Putting her hands behind her back in a large, oversized, prisoner's robe, which makes her strangely like a man, like a teenage boy dressed in someone else's dress, she walked steadily and tirelessly. The sleeves of her dressing-gown were long, and she turned them down, and thin, almost childish, emaciated hands came out of the wide holes, like the stalks of a flower from the hole of a rough, dirty jug. The thin white neck was woolly and rubbed by a hard cloth, and occasionally, with a movement of both hands, Musya freed her throat and carefully felt with her finger the place where the irritated skin turned red and raw.

Musya walked - and justified herself before people, agitated and blushing. And she justified herself by saying that her young, insignificant, who had done so little and was not at all a heroine, would be subjected to the same honorable and beautiful death that real heroes and martyrs died before her. With an unshakable faith in human kindness, in sympathy, in love, she imagined how people were now worried because of her, how they were tormented, how they were sorry - and she was ashamed to the blush. As if, dying on the gallows, she committed some kind of enormous awkwardness.

At the last meeting, she had already asked her protector to get her poison, but she suddenly remembered: what if he and others think that it is she from panache or cowardice, and instead of dying modestly and imperceptibly, make even more noise? And hastily added:

– No, however, it is not necessary.

And now she wanted only one thing: to explain to people and prove to them for sure that she was not a heroine, that dying was not at all scary and that they would not feel sorry for her and would not care. Explain to them that it is not at all to blame for the fact that she, a young, insignificant person, is being subjected to such a death and making so much noise because of her.

As a person who is really accused, Musya was looking for excuses, trying to find at least something that would exalt her sacrifice, would give her real value. I reasoned:

- Of course, I'm young and could live a long time. But…

And, like a candle fading in the brilliance of the rising sun, youth and life seemed dull and dark before that great and radiant one that should illuminate her modest head. There is no excuse.

But, perhaps, that special thing that she wears in her soul - boundless love, boundless readiness for a feat, boundless neglect of herself? After all, it is really not her fault that she was not allowed to do everything that she could and wanted to do - they killed her on the threshold of the temple, at the foot of the altar.

But if this is so, if a person is valuable not only for what he did, but also for what he wanted to do, then ... then she is worthy of a martyr's crown.

“Really? Musya thinks shyly. - Am I worthy? Worthy of people crying about me, worrying about me, so small and insignificant?

And unspeakable joy embraces her. There is no doubt, no hesitation, she is accepted into the bosom, she rightfully enters the ranks of those bright ones who through the bonfire, tortures and executions go to the high sky for centuries. Clear peace and calm and boundless, quietly shining happiness. As if she had already departed from the earth and approached the unknown sun of truth and life, and hovered incorporeally in its light.

“And that is death. What kind of death is this? Musya thinks blissfully.

And if scientists, philosophers and executioners from all over the world gathered in her cell, laid out books, scalpels, axes and nooses in front of her and began to prove that death exists, that a person dies and is killed, that there is no immortality, they would only surprise her. How can there be no immortality when it is already immortal? What other immortality, what other death can we talk about, when even now it is dead and immortal, alive in death, as it was alive in life?

And if a coffin with her own decomposing body were brought into her cell, filling it with stench, and said:

- Look! It's you!

She would look and say:

- Not. It's not me.

And when they began to convince her, frightening her with the sinister appearance of Decomposition, that it was she—she! Musya would answer with a smile:

- Not. You think it's me, but it's not me. I'm the one you're talking to, how can I be that?

But you will die and become this.

No, I won't die.

- You will be executed. Here is the loop.

“They will execute me, but I will not die. How can I die when already now I am immortal?

And scientists, philosophers and executioners would have retreated, saying with a shudder:

- Don't touch this place. This place is holy.

What else was Musya thinking about? She thought about many things - for the thread of life was not interrupted for her by death and weaved calmly and evenly. I thought about my comrades - and about those distant ones who are experiencing their execution with anguish and pain, and about those loved ones who will ascend the scaffold together. Vasily wondered what he was so afraid of - he was always very brave and could even joke with death. So, on Tuesday morning, when they put explosive shells on their belts with Vasily, which in a few hours were supposed to blow them up, Tanya Kovalchuk's hands were trembling with excitement and she had to be removed, and Vasily joked, clowned around, fidgeted, was so careless even that Werner strictly said:

“There is no need to be familiar with death.

What was he afraid of now? But this incomprehensible fear was so alien to Musya's soul that she soon stopped thinking about it and looking for the reason - she suddenly desperately wanted to see Seryozha Golovin and laugh with him about something. I thought - and even more desperately wanted to see Werner and convince him of something. And, imagining that Werner was walking beside her with his clear, measured gait, driving his heels into the ground, Musya said to him:

- No, Werner, my dear, it's all nonsense, it doesn't matter at all whether you killed NN or not. You are smart, but you are playing your own chess: take one piece, take another, then you win. The important thing here, Werner, is that we ourselves are ready to die. Understand? What do these gentlemen think? That there is nothing worse than death. They themselves invented death, they themselves are afraid of it and they frighten us. I would even like to go out alone in front of a whole regiment of soldiers and start shooting at them with a Browning. Let me be alone, and there are thousands of them, and I will not kill anyone. It's important that there are thousands of them. When thousands kill one, it means that this one has won. It's true, Werner, my dear.

But even this was so clear that I didn't want to prove it any further, Werner now understood himself, I guess. Or maybe she just didn’t want her thoughts to dwell on one thing - like a lightly soaring bird, which sees boundless horizons, which has access to all the space, all the depth, all the joy of caressing and tender blue. The clock rang incessantly, shaking the deaf silence; and thoughts poured into this harmonious, remotely beautiful sound and also began to ring; and smoothly sliding images became music. As if on a quiet dark night, Musya was driving somewhere along a wide and level road, and soft springs swayed, and bells rang. All anxieties and worries departed, the tired body dissolved in the darkness, and the joyfully-tired thought calmly created bright images, reveled in their colors and quiet peace. Musya recalled her three comrades, who had recently been hanged, and their faces were clear, and joyful, and close - closer than those already in life. So in the morning a man thinks joyfully about the house of his friends, where he will enter in the evening with greetings on his laughing lips.

Musya was very tired of walking. She lay down carefully on the bunk and continued to dream with lightly closed eyes. The clock rang incessantly, shaking the mute silence, and in their ringing shores bright singing images floated quietly. Musya thought:

“Is this death? My God, how beautiful she is! Or is it life? I do not know. I will watch and listen."

For a long time, from the first days of imprisonment, her hearing began to fantasize. Very musical, he was aggravated by the silence, and against the background of her meager grains of reality, with her steps of sentries in the corridor, the ringing of the clock, the rustle of the wind on the iron roof, the creak of the lantern, he created entire musical pictures. At first, Musya was afraid of them, driving them away from herself, like painful hallucinations, then she realized that she herself was healthy and there was no illness here, and she began to surrender to them calmly.

And now - suddenly, quite clearly and distinctly, she heard the sounds of military music. In amazement, she opened her eyes, raised her head - it was night outside the window, and the clock was ringing. “Again, then!” She thought calmly and closed her eyes. And as soon as I closed it, the music started playing again. You can clearly hear how soldiers, a whole regiment, come out from behind the corner of the building, on the right, and pass by the window. Feet evenly beat the beat on the frozen ground: one-two! one-two! - you can even hear how sometimes the leather on the boot creaks, suddenly slips and someone's leg immediately straightens. And the music is closer: a completely unfamiliar, but very loud and cheerful celebratory march. Obviously, there is some kind of holiday in the fortress.

Here the orchestra came up to the window, and the whole chamber was full of cheerful, rhythmic, unanimously discordant sounds. One trumpet, large, copper, sharply out of tune, sometimes late, sometimes running ahead funny - Musya sees a soldier with this pipe, his diligent physiognomy, and laughs.

Everything is removed. Steps freeze: one-two! one-two! From afar, the music is even more beautiful and more fun. Once or twice, loudly and falsely joyfully, the trumpet cries out in a copper voice, and everything goes out. And again on the bell tower the clock is called, slowly, sadly, barely shaking the silence.

"Gone!" Musya thinks with a slight sadness. She is sorry for the departed sounds, so cheerful and funny; I even feel sorry for the departed soldiers, because these diligent, with copper pipes, with creaking boots, are completely different, not at all those whom she would like to shoot from a Browning.

- Well, more! she asks kindly. And more are coming. They bend over it, surround it with a transparent cloud and lift it up to where migratory birds fly and scream like heralds. Right, left, up and down - they shout like heralds. They call, they announce, they announce far away about their flight. They flap their wings wide, and the darkness holds them, just as the light holds them; and on the bulging breasts, cutting through the air, a shining city shines from below in blue. The heart is beating more and more evenly, Musya's breathing is calmer and quieter. She falls asleep. The face is tired and pale; there are circles under the eyes, and so thin are the girl's emaciated hands, - and a smile on her lips. Tomorrow, when the sun rises, this human face will be distorted by an inhuman grimace, the brain will fill with thick blood, and glazed eyes will crawl out of their sockets - but today she sleeps quietly and smiles in her great immortality.

Musa fell asleep.

And in prison there is a life of its own, deaf and sensitive, blind and vigilant, like eternal anxiety itself. They go somewhere. Somewhere they whisper. Somewhere a gun clanged. It looks like someone yelled. Or maybe no one was screaming - it just seemed to be from the silence.

Here the window in the door silently fell off - a dark mustachioed face is shown in the dark hole. He stares at Musya for a long time and in surprise - and disappears silently, as it appeared.

The chimes ring and sing - for a long time, painfully. It is as if the tired hours are crawling up a high mountain towards midnight, and the climb is getting harder and harder. They break off, slide, fly down with a groan - and again painfully crawl towards their black top.

They go somewhere. Somewhere they whisper. And they are already harnessing their horses to black carriages without lanterns.

Sergei Golovin never thought of death as something extraneous and completely unrelated to him. He was a strong, healthy, cheerful young man, endowed with that calm and clear cheerfulness, in which every bad thought or feeling harmful to life quickly and without a trace disappears in the body. As quickly all cuts, wounds and injections healed in him, so everything painful, hurting the soul, was immediately pushed out and left. And in every business or even fun, whether it was a photograph, a bicycle or preparation for a terrorist act, he brought the same calm and cheerful seriousness: everything in life is fun, everything in life is important, everything must be done well.

And he did everything well: he was superbly controlled with a sail, he shot perfectly from a revolver; he was strong in friendship as well as in love, and fanatically believed in the word of honour. His own people laughed at him that if a detective, a mug, a notorious spy gives him his word of honor that he is not a detective, Sergey will believe him and shake his hand in a comradely manner. There was one drawback: he was sure that he sang well, while he had not the slightest hearing, he sang disgustingly and out of tune even in revolutionary songs; and offended when they laughed.

“Either you are all donkeys, or I am a donkey,” he said seriously and offendedly. And just as seriously, after thinking, everyone decided:

But for this shortcoming, as sometimes happens with good people, he was loved, perhaps even more than for his dignity.

He was not so afraid of death and did not think about it so much that on the fateful morning, before leaving Tanya Kovalchuk's apartment, he had breakfast alone, properly, with appetite: he drank two glasses of tea, half diluted with milk, and ate a whole five-kopeck bun. Then he looked sadly at Werner's untouched bread and said:

- Why don't you eat? Eat, you need to eat.

- I do not want.

- Well, I'll eat. Okay?

- Well, you have an appetite, Seryozha.

Instead of answering, Sergei, with his mouth full, sang in a hollow and out of tune:

Hostile whirlwinds blow over us...

After the arrest, he was sad: it was done badly, they failed, but he thought: “Now there is another thing that needs to be done well - to die,” and he cheered up. And oddly enough, from the very second morning in the fortress he began to do gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of some German Muller, which he was fond of: he undressed naked and, to the alarming surprise of the watching sentry, carefully did all the prescribed eighteen exercises. And the fact that the sentry observed and, apparently, was surprised, was pleasant to him, as a propagandist of the Muller system; and although he knew that he would not receive an answer, he nevertheless said to the eye sticking out in the window:

- Well, brother, strengthens. If only you could bring what you need into your regiment, ”he shouted persuasively and meekly so as not to frighten him, not suspecting that the soldier considered him simply crazy.

The fear of death began to appear to him gradually and somehow in shocks: as if someone would take it from below, with all his might, push his heart with his fist. More painful than scary. Then the feeling will be forgotten - and after a few hours it will appear again, and each time it becomes longer and stronger. And it is already clearly beginning to take on the cloudy outlines of some great and even unbearable fear.

“Am I afraid? Sergey thought with surprise. "That's more nonsense!"

It was not he who was afraid - his young, strong, strong body was afraid, which could not be deceived either by the gymnastics of the German Müller or by cold rubdowns. And the stronger, the fresher it became after the cold water, the sharper and more unbearable the sensations of instant fear became. And it was precisely in those moments when he felt a special upsurge of cheerfulness and strength in the morning, after sound sleep and physical exercises, that this sharp, as if alien fear appeared. He noticed this and thought:

“Stupid, brother Sergei. To make it die easier, it must be weakened, not strengthened. Stupid!

And he gave up gymnastics and rubdowns. And to the soldier in explanation and in justification he shouted:

- Don't look at what I threw. The thing, brother, is good. Only for those who hang, it is not good, but for all others it is very good.

And indeed, it seemed to be easier. I also tried to eat less in order to weaken even more, but, despite the lack of clean air and exercise, my appetite was very large, it was difficult to control it, I ate everything that was brought. Then he began to do this: before he started eating, he poured half of the hot water into the tub; and it seemed to help: there was a dull drowsiness, languor.

- I'll show you! - he threatened the body, and with sadness, gently ran his hand over the flaccid, limp muscles.

But soon the body got used to this mode, and the fear of death appeared again, although not so sharp, not so fiery, but even more tedious, similar to nausea. “This is because they are dragging on for a long time,” Sergey thought, “it would be nice to sleep through all this time, before the execution,” and he tried to sleep as long as possible. At first he succeeded, but then, whether because he overslept, or for another reason, insomnia appeared. And with her came sharp, vigilant thoughts, and with them longing for life.

“Am I afraid of her, the devil? he thought about death. - I feel sorry for my life. A magnificent thing, no matter what the pessimists say. What if the pessimist is hanged? Oh, sorry for life, very sorry. Why did my beard grow? Didn't grow, didn't grow, and then suddenly grew. And why?"

He shook his head sadly and sighed with long, heavy sighs. Silence - and a long, deep sigh; again a short silence - and again an even longer, heavy sigh.

So it was before the trial and until the last terrible meeting with the old people. When he woke up in a cell with a clear consciousness that everything was over with life, that there were only a few hours of waiting in the void and death ahead, it became somehow strange. It was as if he had been stripped of everything, somehow unusually stripped - not only had his clothes been removed from him, but the sun, air, noise and light, deeds and speeches had been torn from him. There is no death yet, but there is no longer life either, but there is something new, amazingly incomprehensible, and either completely devoid of meaning, or having meaning, but so deep, mysterious and inhuman that it is impossible to open it.

- Fu-you, damn it! Sergey was painfully surprised. – Yes, what is it? Yes, where am I? I… what am I?

He looked at himself, attentively, with interest, starting from the large prisoner's shoes, ending with the stomach, on which the dressing gown protruded. He walked around the cell, spreading his arms and continuing to look at himself like a woman in a new dress that is too long for her. He turned his head - he turned. And this, somewhat terrible for some reason, is he, Sergei Golovin, and this will not happen. And everything got weird.

I tried to walk around the cell - it's strange that he walks. I tried to sit - it's strange that he sits. He tried to drink water - it is strange that he drinks, that he swallows, that he holds a mug, that there are fingers, and these fingers are trembling. He choked, coughed and, coughing, thought: "How strange it is, I'm coughing."

“What am I, crazy, or something, I’m going! Sergei thought, growing cold. “That was still not enough for the devil to take them!”

He rubbed his forehead with his hand, but even that was strange. And then, without breathing, for what seemed like hours he froze in immobility, extinguishing every thought, holding his loud breath, avoiding every movement - for every thought was madness, every movement was madness. Time was gone, as if it had turned into space, transparent, airless, into a huge square on which everything, both the earth, and life, and people; and all this is visible at a glance, all the way to the very end, to the mysterious cliff - death. And the torment was not in the fact that death was visible, but in the fact that both life and death were immediately visible. With a sacrilegious hand the veil was drawn back, hiding the secret of life and the secret of death from time immemorial, and they ceased to be a secret, but they did not become understandable, like the truth inscribed in an unknown language. There were no such concepts in his human brain, there were no words in his human language that could cover what he saw. And the words: “I'm scared” sounded in him only because there was no other word, there was not and could not be a concept corresponding to this new, inhuman state. So it would be with a person if, while remaining within the limits of human understanding, experience and feelings, he suddenly saw God Himself - he saw and did not understand, even if he knew that this is called God, and shuddered with unheard-of torments of unheard-of misunderstanding.

Here's Muller! he suddenly said loudly, with extraordinary persuasiveness, and shook his head. And with that unexpected change in feeling, which the human soul is so capable of, he laughed merrily and sincerely. Oh, Muller! Oh, my dear Müller! Oh, my beautiful German! And yet - you are right, Müller, and I, brother Müller, am an ass.

He quickly walked around the cell several times and, to the new, greatest surprise of the soldier watching through the peephole, he quickly undressed naked and cheerfully, with extreme diligence, did all eighteen exercises; he stretched and stretched his young, somewhat thinner body, squatted, inhaled and exhaled air, standing on his toes, threw out his legs and arms. And after each exercise he said with pleasure:

- That's it! This is the real thing, brother Muller!

His cheeks flushed, droplets of hot, pleasant sweat came out of his pores, and his heart was beating hard and evenly.

- The point is, Muller, - Sergey reasoned, sticking out his chest so that the ribs under the thin stretched skin were clearly outlined, - the point is, Muller, that there is also the nineteenth exercise - hanging by the neck in a fixed position. And this is called punishment. Do you understand, Mueller? They take a living person, say, Sergei Golovin, swaddle him like a doll, and hang him by the neck until he dies. It's stupid, Muller, but there's nothing to be done - you have to.

He leaned over to his right side and repeated:

“We have to, brother Muller.

9. Terrible loneliness

Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergei and Musya by several empty cells, but so lonely as if he existed alone in the whole universe, the unfortunate Vasily Kashirin ended his life in horror and longing.

Sweaty, with a wet shirt stuck to his body, his formerly curly hair flowing, he convulsively and hopelessly rushed around the cell, like a man who has an unbearable toothache. He sat down, ran again, pressed his forehead against the wall, stopped and looked for something with his eyes - as if he was looking for medicine. He changed so much that it was as if he had two different faces, and the former, young one had gone somewhere, and in its place was a new, terrible one, which had come from the darkness.

The fear of death came to him immediately and took possession of him completely and powerfully. Even in the morning, going to an obvious death, he was familiar with her, and by evening, imprisoned in solitary confinement, he was swirled and overwhelmed by a wave of frenzied fear. While he himself, by his own will, went to danger and death, while he held his death, even if it was terrible in appearance, in his own hands, it was even easy and fun for him: in a sense of boundless freedom, a bold and firm assertion of his bold and fearless Will drowned without a trace small, wrinkled, like an old woman's scary. Girded with an infernal machine, he himself, as it were, turned into an infernal machine, included the cruel mind of dynamite, appropriated its fiery, deadly power. And as he walked down the street, among bustling, everyday people preoccupied with their own affairs, hurriedly fleeing from cab horses and trams, he seemed to himself an alien from another, unknown world, where they know neither death nor fear. And suddenly, at once, a sharp, wild, stunning change. He no longer goes where he wants, but they take him where they want. He no longer chooses a place, but they put him in a stone cage and lock him up like a thing. He can no longer choose freely: life or death, like all people, but he will certainly and inevitably be put to death. In an instant, being the embodiment of will, life and strength, he becomes a pitiful image of the only impotence in the world, turns into an animal waiting for slaughter, into a deaf and mute thing that can be rearranged, burned, broken. Whatever he says, they will not listen to his words, and if he starts shouting, they will shut his mouth with a rag, and if he himself moves his legs, they will take him away and hang him; and if he resists, flounders, lies down on the ground, they will overpower him, lift him up, tie him up and bring him bound to the gallows. And the fact that people like him will perform this mechanical work on him gives them a new, unusual and sinister look: either ghosts, something pretending to appear only on purpose, or mechanical dolls on a spring: they take, grab, lead, hang, pull by the legs. They cut the rope, lay it down, carry it, bury it.

And from the very first day of prison, people and life turned for him into an incomprehensibly terrible world of ghosts and mechanical puppets. Almost mad with horror, he tried to imagine that people have a language and speak, and could not - they seemed dumb; I tried to remember their speech, the meaning of the words they use during intercourse, but could not. The mouths open, something sounds, then they disperse, moving their legs, and there is nothing.

This is how a person would feel if at night, when he was alone in the house, all things came to life, moved and acquired unlimited power over him, a person. Suddenly they would judge him: a wardrobe, a chair, a desk and a sofa. He would shout and rush about, beg, call for help, and they would say something in their own way among themselves, then they would take him to hang: a cupboard, a chair, a desk and a sofa. And look at this other things.

And everything began to seem like a toy to Vasily Kashirin, who was sentenced to death by hanging: his cell, the door with a peephole, the sound of a wound clock, a neatly sculpted fortress, and especially that mechanical doll with a gun that knocks its feet along the corridor, and those others who, frightening, look at him through the window and silently serve food. And what he experienced was not the horror of death; rather, he even wanted death: in all its eternal mystery and incomprehensibility, it was more accessible to the mind than this wildly and fantastically transformed world. Moreover, it was as if death was completely annihilated in this crazy world of ghosts and dolls, it lost its great and mysterious meaning, it also became something mechanical and only for this reason terrible. They take, grab, lead, hang, pull by the legs. They cut the rope, lay it down, carry it, bury it.

Man has disappeared from the world.

At the trial, the closeness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself, and again, for a moment, he saw people: they were sitting and judging him and saying something in human language, listening and seeming to understand. But already on a date with his mother, he, with the horror of a man who is beginning to go crazy and understands this, felt vividly that this old woman in a black headscarf is just a skillfully made mechanical doll, like those who say: “pa-pa”, "Mom", but only better made. He tried to talk to her, while he himself, shuddering, thought:

"God! Yes, it's a doll. Mother doll. And here is that doll of a soldier, and there, at home, the father’s doll, and here is the doll of Vasily Kashirin.

It seemed that a little more and he would hear somewhere the crack of a mechanism, the creak of unlubricated wheels. When the mother began to cry, for a moment something human flashed again, but at her first words it disappeared, and it became curious and terrifying to watch that water was flowing from the eyes of the doll.

Then, in his cell, when the horror became unbearable, Vasily Kashirin tried to pray. From all that, under the guise of religion, his youthful life in his father's merchant's house was surrounded, there was only one nasty, bitter and irritating aftertaste, and there was no faith. But sometime, perhaps in his early childhood, he heard three words, and they struck him with quivering excitement and then remained fanned all his life. quiet poetry. These words were: "Joy to all who mourn."

It happened that in difficult moments he would whisper to himself, without prayer, without a definite consciousness: “Joy to all who grieve” - and suddenly it would become easier and you would want to go to someone dear and complain quietly:

- Our life ... but is it life! Oh, my dear, is this life!

And then suddenly it will become funny, and you will want to curl your hair, throw out your knee, substitute your chest for someone's blows: hit it!

He did not tell anyone, even his closest comrades, about his “joy to all who mourn,” and even he himself did not seem to know about it - it hid so deeply in his soul. And he remembered not often, with caution.

And now, when the horror of an insoluble mystery that appeared with his own eyes covered him with his head, like water in a flood on a coastal vine, he wanted to pray. He wanted to kneel, but he felt ashamed in front of the soldier, and, folding his arms at his chest, he quietly whispered:

- Joy to all who mourn!

And with anguish, pronouncing touchingly, he repeated:

- Joy to all who mourn, come to me, support Vaska Kashirin.

A long time ago, when he was in his first year at the university and was still mumbling, before meeting Werner and joining society, he called himself boastfully and pitifully "Vaska Kashirin" - now for some reason he wanted to be called the same. But the words sounded dead and unresponsive:

- Joy to all who mourn!

Something stirred. It was as if someone’s quiet and mournful image floated in the distance and quietly faded away, not illuminating the darkness of death. The clock on the bell tower was beating. He rattled with something, with a saber, or maybe with a gun, a soldier in the corridor and for a long time, with transitions, yawned.

- Joy to all who mourn! And you are silent! And you don't want to say anything to Vaska Kashirin?

He smiled sweetly and waited. But it was empty both in the soul and around. And the quiet and mournful image did not return. I recalled needlessly and painfully burning wax candles, a priest in a cassock, an icon painted on the wall, and how the father, bending and unbending, prays and bows, and he himself looks frowningly, whether Vaska is praying, whether he is engaged in pampering. And it became even more terrible than before the prayer.

Everything is gone.

The madness crept in. Consciousness went out like an extinguished scattered fire, it became cold, like the corpse of a person who had just died, whose heart was still warm, and his legs and arms were already stiff. Once again, flashing bloodily, the fading thought said that he, Vaska Kashirin, could go crazy here, experience torments for which there is no name, reach such a limit of pain and suffering that no living creature has ever reached; that he can beat his head against the wall, gouge out his eyes with his finger, say and shout whatever he pleases, assure with tears that he can no longer bear it - and nothing. There will be nothing.

And nothing happened. The legs, which have their own consciousness and their own life, continued to walk and carry a trembling wet body. Hands, which have their own consciousness, tried in vain to close the dressing gown diverging on the chest and warm the trembling wet body. The body was trembling and cold. The eyes were looking. And it was almost calm.

But there was another moment of wild horror. This is when the people came in. He did not even think what it meant - it was time to go to the execution, but he simply saw people and was frightened, almost childishly.

- I won't! I won't! - he whispered inaudibly with dead lips and quietly moved back into the depths of the cell, as in childhood, when his father raised his hand.

- Must go.

They say they walk around, they serve something. He closed his eyes, swayed, and began to gather heavily. It must be that consciousness began to return: he suddenly asked the official for a cigarette. And he graciously opened a silver cigarette case with a decadent design.

10. Walls are falling

The unknown, nicknamed Werner, was a man tired of life and struggle. There was a time when he loved life very much, enjoyed the theater, literature, communication with people; endowed with an excellent memory and a strong will, he studied to perfection several European languages, could freely impersonate a German, a Frenchman or an Englishman. In German, he usually spoke with a Bavarian accent, but he could, if desired, speak like a real, born Berliner. He liked to dress well, had excellent manners, and one of his brethren, without the risk of being recognized, dared to appear at high-society balls.

But for a long time, invisible to his comrades, a dark contempt for people had matured in his soul; and there was despair, and heavy, almost deadly fatigue. By nature, more of a mathematician than a poet, he still did not know inspiration and ecstasy, and for minutes he felt like a madman who is looking for the square of a circle in pools of human blood. The enemy with whom he fought daily could not inspire him with respect for himself; it was a frequent web of stupidity, betrayal and lies, dirty spitting, vile deceptions. The last thing that seemed to forever destroy the desire to live in him was the murder of a provocateur, committed by him on behalf of the organization. He killed calmly, and when he saw this dead, deceitful, but now calm and yet pitiful human face, he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his work. Not that he felt repentance, but simply suddenly ceased to value himself, became for himself uninteresting, unimportant, boring and outsider. But from the organization, as a man of a single, unsplit will, he did not leave and outwardly remained the same - only something cold and terrible lay in his eyes. And he didn't say anything to anyone.

He also had another rare property: as there are people who have never known a headache, so he did not know what fear is. And when others were afraid, he treated it without condemnation, but also without special sympathy, as a fairly common disease, which, however, he himself never fell ill. He felt sorry for his comrades, especially Vasya Kashirin; but it was a cold, almost official pity, to which, probably, some of the judges were not alien.

Werner understood that execution is not just death, but something else, but in any case he decided to meet it calmly, as something extraneous: to live to the end as if nothing had happened and would not happen. Only in this way could he express the highest contempt for the execution and preserve the last, inalienable freedom of the spirit. And at the trial - and this, perhaps, even his comrades, who knew his cold fearlessness and arrogance well, would not have believed - he thought not about death and not about life: he concentratedly, with the deepest and calmest attentiveness, played a difficult game of chess. An excellent chess player, he started this game from the first day of his imprisonment and continued unceasingly. And the sentence that condemned him to death by hanging did not move a single piece on the invisible board.

Even the fact that he apparently would not have to finish the party did not stop him; and the morning of the last day that remained to him on earth, he began by correcting one yesterday's not entirely successful move. Clenching his lowered hands between his knees, he sat motionless for a long time; then he got up and began to walk, thinking. His gait was special: he leaned forward somewhat upper part body and firmly and clearly hit the ground with his heels - even on dry ground, his steps left a deep and noticeable mark. Quietly, with one breath, he whistled an uncomplicated Italian Aryan - it helped to think.

But this time things went wrong for some reason. With an unpleasant feeling that he had made some big, even gross mistake, he went back several times and checked the game almost from the beginning. There was no mistake, but the feeling of a perfect mistake not only did not go away, but became stronger and more annoying. And suddenly an unexpected and offensive thought came: is it not a mistake that by playing chess he wants to divert his attention from the execution and protect himself from that fear of death, which is supposedly inevitable for the condemned?

- No, why not! he replied coldly and calmly closed the invisible board. And with the same concentrated attentiveness with which he played, as if answering a strict exam, he tried to give an account of the horror and hopelessness of his situation: after examining the cell, trying not to miss anything, he counted the hours that remained until the execution, drew himself an approximate and fairly accurate picture execution itself and shrugged his shoulders.

- Well? - he answered someone with a half-question. - That's all. Where is the fear?

There really was no fear. And not only was there no fear, but something seemed to be growing opposite to it - a feeling of vague, but huge and bold joy. And the mistake, still not found, no longer caused any annoyance or irritation, and also spoke loudly about something good and unexpected, as if he considered dead a close dear friend, and this friend turned out to be alive and unharmed and laughs.

Werner shrugged his shoulders again and felt his own pulse: his heart was beating rapidly, but firmly and evenly, with a special ringing force. Once again, carefully, like a novice who first came to prison, looked around the walls, the locks, the chair screwed to the floor and thought:

“Why is it so easy, joyful and free for me? It's free. I'll think about tomorrow's execution - and it's as if it doesn't exist. I look at the walls - as if there are no walls. And so freely, as if I was not in prison, but just got out of some kind of prison in which I had been sitting all my life. What is it?"

Hands began to tremble - an unprecedented phenomenon for Werner. The thought was beating more and more violently. It was as if fiery tongues flashed in my head - a fire wanted to break out and illuminate widely the still night, still dark distance. And then he made his way out, and the widely lit distance shone.

The cloudy fatigue that tormented Werner for two years disappeared. recent years, and the dead, cold, heavy snake with closed eyes and a deathly closed mouth fell away from the heart - in the face of death, beautiful youth returned, playing. And it was more than a wonderful youth. With that amazing enlightenment of the spirit, which in rare moments overshadows a person and raises him to highest peaks contemplation, Werner suddenly saw both life and death and was amazed at the magnificence of an unprecedented spectacle. It was as if he was walking along the highest mountain range, narrow as a knife blade, and on one side he saw life, and on the other he saw death, like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas merging on the horizon into one boundless wide expanse.

- What is it! What a divine sight! he said slowly, rising involuntarily and straightening up, as if in the presence of a higher being. And, destroying walls, space and time with the swiftness of an all-penetrating gaze, he looked broadly somewhere into the depths of the life he was leaving.

And a new life appeared. He did not try, as before, to capture in words what he saw, and there were no such words in the still poor, still meager human language. That small, dirty and evil thing that aroused in him contempt for people and sometimes even aroused disgust at the sight of a human face disappeared completely: so for a man who climbed hot-air balloon the rubbish and dirt of the cramped streets of an abandoned town disappear, and the ugly becomes beauty.

With an unconscious movement, Werner stepped towards the table and leaned on it with his right hand. Proud and imperious by nature, he had never taken such a proud, free and imperious pose, had never turned his neck like that, had not looked like that - for he had never been free and powerful, as he was here, in prison, at a distance of several hours from execution. and death.

And people appeared new, in a new way they seemed sweet and charming to his enlightened gaze. Soaring over time, he saw clearly how young humanity was, only yesterday howling like a beast in the forests; and what seemed terrible in people, unforgivable and disgusting, suddenly became sweet - how sweet in a child is his inability to walk with the gait of an adult, his incoherent babble, shining with sparks of genius, his ridiculous blunders, mistakes and cruel bruises.

- You are my dear! Werner suddenly smiled unexpectedly and immediately lost all the impressiveness of his pose, again became a prisoner, who is both cramped and uncomfortable locked up, and a little bored from the annoying inquisitive eye sticking out in the plane of the door. And strangely, almost suddenly he forgot what he had just seen so prominently and clearly; and even stranger, he didn't even try to remember. He simply sat more comfortably, without the usual dryness in the position of the body, and with a strange, not Wernerian, weak and tender smile, looked around the walls and bars. Another thing happened that had never happened to Werner: he suddenly burst into tears.

- My dear comrades! he whispered and wept bitterly. - My dear comrades!

By what secret paths did he come from a feeling of proud and boundless freedom to this tender and passionate pity? He didn't know and didn't think about it. And whether he felt sorry for them, his dear comrades, or something else, still higher and more passionate, his tears concealed in themselves - his suddenly resurrected, green heart did not know this either. Wept and whispered:

- My dear comrades! Dear you, my comrades!

In this bitterly crying and smiling man through tears, no one would recognize the cold and arrogant, tired and impudent Werner - neither the judges, nor his comrades, nor himself.

11. They are being driven

Before the convicts were seated in their carriages, all five of them were gathered in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, similar to an office where they no longer work, or an empty waiting room. And let them talk to each other.

But only Tanya Kovalchuk immediately took advantage of the permission. The rest silently and firmly shook hands, cold as ice and hot as fire, and silently, trying not to look at each other, crowded together in an awkward scattered group. Now that they were together, they seemed ashamed of what each of them had experienced in solitude; and they were afraid to look, so as not to see and not to show that new, special, slightly shameful thing that everyone felt or suspected for himself.

But once, twice, they looked, smiled, and immediately felt at ease and simply, as before: no change had occurred, and if something had happened, it fell so evenly on everyone that it became imperceptible to each individual. Everyone spoke and moved strangely: impetuously, in jerks, or too slowly, or too quickly; sometimes they choked on words and repeated them many times, but sometimes they did not finish the sentence they had begun or considered it said - they did not notice this. Everyone squinted and curiously, not recognizing, examined ordinary things, like people who walked around in glasses and suddenly took them off; they all frequently and sharply turned back, as if all the time someone was calling out to them from behind and showing them something. But they did not notice this either. Musya and Tanya Kovalchuk's cheeks and ears burned; Sergey was at first somewhat pale, but soon recovered and became the same as always.

And only Vasily was noticed. Even among them, he was unusual and terrible. Werner stirred up and said quietly to Musa with gentle anxiety:

- What is it, Musechka? Is he the one, huh? What? Need to go to him.

Vasily looked at Werner from somewhere far away, as if not recognizing, and lowered his eyes.

- Vasya, what's wrong with your hair, huh? What are you? Nothing, brother, nothing, nothing, it's over now. Gotta hold on, gotta, gotta.

Vasily was silent. And when it began to seem that he would not say anything at all, a deaf, belated, terribly distant answer came: this is how the grave could answer many calls:

- Yes, I'm fine. I'm holding on.

And repeated.

- I'm holding on.

Werner was delighted.

- Exactly. Well done. Well well.

But he met a dark, heavy, fixed gaze from the deepest distance and thought with instant anguish; "Where is he looking from? Where is he talking from? And with deep tenderness, as they say only to the grave, he said:

Vasya, are you listening? I very love you.

“And I love you very much,” the tongue replied, tossing and turning heavily.

Suddenly, Musya took Werner by the hand and, expressing surprise, strenuously, like an actress on stage, said:

Werner, what's wrong with you? Did you say love? You never said to anyone: I love you. And why are you all so ... light and soft? And what?

And, like an actor, also expressing intensely what he felt, Werner firmly squeezed Musin's hand:

Yes, I love it very much now. Don't tell others, don't, ashamed, but I love you very much.

Their eyes met and flared up brightly, and everything went out all around: just like in the instantaneous brilliance of lightning all other fires go out, and the yellow, heavy flame itself casts a shadow on the ground.

“Yes,” Musya said. Yes, Werner.

“Yes,” he replied. - Yes, Musya, yes!

Something was understood and affirmed by them unshakably. And, shining with his eyes, Werner stirred again and quickly stepped towards Sergei.

- Seryozha!

But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. In delight, almost crying from maternal pride, she frantically tugged at Sergei's sleeve.

Werner, listen! I'm crying about him here, I'm killing myself, and he's doing gymnastics!

- According to Mueller? Werner smiled.

Sergei frowned in embarrassment.

“You shouldn’t be laughing, Werner. I finally made sure...

Everyone laughed. In communication with each other, drawing strength and strength, they gradually became the same as before, but did not notice this either, they thought that they were all the same. Suddenly Werner broke off his laughter and said to Sergei with extreme seriousness:

- You're right, Seryozha. You are absolutely right.

- No, you understand, - Golovin was delighted. “Of course we…

But then they offered to go. And they were so kind that they were allowed to sit in pairs as they wished. And in general they were very, even to the point of being excessively kind: either they tried to show their human attitude, or to show that they were not here at all, but everything was done by itself. But they were pale.

“You, Musya, are with him,” Werner pointed to Vasily, who was standing motionless.

“I understand,” Musya nodded her head. - And you?

- I? Tanya is with Sergey, you are with Vasya... I am alone. It's okay, I can do it, you know.

When they went out into the yard, the damp darkness softly but warmly and strongly struck in the face, in the eyes, took the breath away, suddenly cleansing and gently permeated the whole shuddering body. It was hard to believe that it was amazing - just a spring wind, a warm, wet wind. And the real, amazing spring night smelled of melting snow - boundless expanse, drips rang. Troublesomely and often, catching up with each other, fast droplets fell and unanimously minted a sonorous song; but suddenly one loses her voice, and everything gets confused in a cheerful splash, in a hasty confusion. And then a large, austere drop will hit firmly, and again the hurried spring song is clearly and loudly minted. And over the city, on top of the fortress roofs, stood a pale glow from electric lights.

- U-ah! - Sergei Golovin sighed widely and held his breath, as if regretting letting such fresh and beautiful air out of his lungs.

- How long has the weather been like this? Werner inquired. - Quite spring.

“Only the second day,” was the warning and polite reply. - And then more and more frost.

One after another, the dark carriages gently rolled up, took away two by two, and left into the darkness, to where the lantern swayed under the gate. The escorts surrounded each carriage in gray silhouettes, and the horseshoes of their horses clunked loudly or sloshed through the wet snow.

When Werner, bent over, was about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme said vaguely:

- There's another one with you.

Werner was surprised:

Where? Where is he going? Oh yes! One more? Who is this?

The soldier was silent. Indeed, in the corner of the carriage, in the darkness, something small, motionless, but alive was pressed against him - an open eye flashed under the oblique beam from the lantern. Sitting down, Werner kicked his knee.

- Sorry, comrade.

He didn't answer. And only when the carriage started moving, he suddenly asked in broken Russian, stammering:

- Who you are?

- I'm Werner, sentenced to hanging for the attempt on NN. And you?

I am Janson. I don't need to hang.

They were on their way to face a great unsolved mystery in two hours, to go from life to death, and they got to know each other. Life and death went on simultaneously on two planes, and to the end, to the most ridiculous and absurd trifles, life remained life.

- What did you do, Janson?

- I cut the owner with a knife. Stole money.

- You're scared? Werner asked.

- I do not want.

They fell silent. Werner found the Estonian's hand again and pressed it tightly between his dry and hot palms. She lay motionless, like a plank, but Janson no longer tried to take it away.

The carriage was cramped and stuffy, smelling of soldiers' cloth, mustiness, dung and leather from wet boots. The young gendarme, who was sitting opposite Werner, hotly breathed on him a mixed smell of onions and cheap tobacco. But sharp and fresh air made its way through some cracks, and from this, in the small, stuffy, moving box, spring was felt even more strongly than outside. The carriage turned now to the right, now to the left, now as if turning back; sometimes it seemed as if they had been spinning for some reason in one place for whole hours. At first, bluish electric light filtered through the lowered thick curtains in the windows; then suddenly, after one turn, it got dark, and only from this could one guess that they had turned into the back streets and were approaching the S-sky railway station. Sometimes, during sharp turns, Werner's living bent knee beat friendly against the same living bent knee of the gendarme, and it was hard to believe in the execution.

– Where are we going? Janson suddenly asked.

He was slightly dizzy from the long spinning in the dark box, and slightly nauseous.

Werner answered and tightened his grip on the Estonian's hand. I wanted to say something especially friendly, affectionate to this little sleepy man, and already he loved him like no one else in life.

- Cute! You seem uncomfortable to sit. Move over here to me.

Janson paused and answered:

- Oh, thanks. I feel good. Will they hang you too?

- Too! Werner answered unexpectedly gaily, almost with a laugh, and waved his hand in a particularly careless and light manner. It was as if they were talking about some kind of absurd and absurd joke that nice, but terribly funny people want to play on them.

- Do you have a wife? Janson asked.

- There is not. What a wife! I am alone.

- I'm alone too. One, - Janson amended, thinking.

And Werner's head began to spin. And it seemed for a moment that they were going to some kind of holiday; Strangely enough, almost everyone on the way to the execution felt the same and, along with melancholy and horror, vaguely rejoiced at the extraordinary thing that was about to happen. Reality reveled in madness, and death, combined with life, gave birth to ghosts. It is very possible that flags fluttered on the houses.

- Here we come! Werner said curiously and cheerfully when the carriage stopped and jumped out easily. But with Yanson the matter dragged on: silently and somehow very sluggishly he resisted and did not want to go out. He grabs the handle - the gendarme will unclench his powerless fingers and pull his hand away; he grabs a corner, a door, a high wheel - and immediately, with a slight effort on the part of the gendarme, he lets go. Silent Yanson did not even grab, but rather drowsily stuck to every object - and tore it off easily and effortlessly. Finally got up.

There were no flags. At night the station was dark, empty and lifeless; passenger trains were no longer running, and for the train that was silently waiting for these passengers on the way, there was no need for bright lights or fuss. And suddenly Werner became bored. Not scary, not dreary, but boring with a huge, viscous, languishing boredom, from which you want to get away somewhere, lie down, close your eyes tightly. Werner stretched and yawned for a long time. Yanson also stretched and quickly, several times in a row, yawned.

If only sooner! Werner said wearily.

Janson was silent and shivered.

When, on a deserted platform cordoned off by soldiers, the convicts were moving towards the dimly lit carriages, Werner found himself next to Sergei Golovin; and he, pointing somewhere to the side with his hand, began to speak, and only the word "lantern" was clearly audible, and the ending was drowned in a long and tired yawn.

- What do you say? Werner asked, also answering with a yawn.

- Flashlight. The lamp in the lantern smokes,” said Sergei.

Werner looked around: indeed, the lamp in the lantern was smoking heavily, and the top of the glass had already turned black.

- Yes, he smokes.

And suddenly he thought: “But what does it matter to me that the lamp smokes when ...” Sergey, obviously, thought the same thing: he quickly looked at Werner and turned away. But they both stopped yawning.

Everyone walked to the carriages on their own, and only Yanson had to be led under the arms: at first he rested his feet and seemed to glue the soles to the boards of the platform, then he bent his knees and hung in the hands of the gendarmes, his legs dragged like those of a very drunk man, and his socks scraped wood. And they shoved him through the door for a long time, but silently.

Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, vaguely copying the movements of his comrades - he did everything as they did. But as he climbed onto the platform in the carriage, he stumbled, and the gendarme took him by the elbow to support him—Vasily shook and shouted piercingly, pulling his hand away:

- Vasya, what's wrong with you? Werner rushed over to him.

Vasily was silent and shaking heavily. The embarrassed and even distressed gendarme explained:

“I wanted to support them, but they…

“Come on, Vasya, I will support you,” Werner said and wanted to take his hand. But Vasily pulled his hand away again and shouted even louder:

- Vasya, it's me, Werner.

- I know. Dont touch me. I myself.

And, continuing to shake, he entered the car and sat down in the corner. Leaning towards Musa, Werner quietly asked her, pointing with his eyes at Vasily:

- Well, how?

“Bad,” Musya answered just as quietly. - He's already dead. Werner, tell me, is there death?

“I don’t know, Musya, but I don’t think so,” Werner answered seriously and thoughtfully.

- I thought so. And he? I was exhausted with him in the carriage, as if I were riding with a dead man.

“I don’t know, Musya. Maybe for some, death is. For now, and then not at all. There was death for me, but now it is gone.

Musya's somewhat pale cheeks flared up:

Was there, Werner? Was?

- Was. Now there is no. As for you.

There was a noise at the door of the car. Loudly clattering with his heels, breathing loudly and spitting, Mishka Tsyganok entered. He darted his eyes and stopped stubbornly.

- There are no places here, gendarme! he shouted to the weary, angrily looking gendarme. “Give it to me so that it’s free, otherwise I won’t go, hang it here on the lantern.” They gave me a carriage too, you sons of bitches—is that a carriage? Damn offal, not a carriage!

But suddenly he bent his head, stretched out his neck, and thus went forward to the others. From the disheveled frame of his hair and beard, his black eyes looked wild and sharp, with a somewhat insane expression.

- BUT! Lord! he drawled. - That's it. Hello barin.

He shook Werner's hand and sat down opposite him. And, leaning close, he winked with one eye and quickly passed his hand over his neck.

- Too? BUT?

- Too! Werner smiled.

- Is it really everyone?

- Wow! - Gypsy grinned and quickly felt everyone with his eyes, for a moment he stopped on Musa and Janson. And winked at Werner again:

- Minister?

- Minister. And you?

- I, sir, on another matter. Where are we to the minister! I, the gentleman, the robber, that's who I am. Murderer. It's okay, sir, make room, it was not by your own will that you wormed your way into the company. There is enough space for everyone in the world.

He wildly, from under his tousled hair, looked around at everyone with one swift, incredulous look. But everyone looked at him silently and seriously, and even with visible participation. He bared his teeth and quickly patted Werner's knee several times.

- Yes, sir! As the song says: do not make noise, mother, green oak forest.

“Why do you call me master when we are all…

“True,” Tsyganok agreed with pleasure. - What a gentleman you are when you hang next to me! That’s who the gentleman is, ”he jabbed his finger at the silent gendarme. “Eh, but your entot is no worse than ours,” he pointed with his eyes at Vasily. - Master, and master, are you afraid, huh?

"Nothing," the twitchy tongue replied.

- Well, there's nothing there. Don't be ashamed, there's nothing to be ashamed of. This dog only wags his tail and bares his teeth, how they are leading him to hang, and you are a man. And who's this one, dumbass? Is this one not yours?

He quickly jumped his eyes and incessantly, with a hiss, spat out the incoming sweet saliva. Yanson, huddled motionless in the corner, slightly moved the wings of his shabby fur cap, but made no answer. Werner answered for him:

- Killed the owner.

- God! Gypsy was surprised. - And how they allow people to cut!

For a long time now, sideways, Tsyganok had been gazing at Musa, and now, quickly turning around, stared sharply and directly at her.

- A young lady, a young lady! What are you! And her cheeks are rosy, and she laughs. Look, she's really laughing, - he grabbed Werner's knee with tenacious, like iron fingers. - Look, look!

Blushing, with a somewhat embarrassed smile, Musya also looked into his sharp, somewhat insane, hard and wildly questioning eyes.

Everyone was silent.

The wheels rattled in a fractional and businesslike manner, the small wagons jumped along the narrow rails and diligently ran. Here, at the rounding or at the crossing, a locomotive whistled fluidly and diligently - the driver was afraid to crush someone. And it was absurd to think that so much of the usual human accuracy, diligence, and efficiency is brought into the hanging of people, that the most insane thing on earth is done with such a simple, reasonable look. Carriages were running, people were sitting in them, as they always sit, and they were driving, as they usually drive; and then there will be a stop, as always - "the train stops for five minutes."

And then death will come - eternity - great mystery.

12. They were brought

The wagons ran diligently.

For several years in a row, Sergei Golovin lived with his family in the country along this very road, often traveled day and night and knew it well. And if you close your eyes, you might think that now he was returning home - he was late in the city with friends and was returning with the last train.

"Now soon," he said, opening his eyes and looking out the dark, barred window that said nothing.

No one moved, no one answered, and only Tsyganok quickly, over and over again, spat out sweet saliva. And he began to run his eyes around the car, feeling the windows, doors, soldiers.

“It’s cold,” said Vasily Kashirin with tight, as if really frozen lips; and this word came out from him like this: ho-a-dna.

Tanya Kovalchuk fussed.

- On a scarf, tie around your neck. The scarf is very warm.

- Neck? Sergey suddenly asked and was frightened of the question.

But since everyone thought the same thing, no one heard him - as if no one had said anything or everyone had said the same word at once.

“Nothing, Vasya, tie it up, tie it up, it will be warmer,” Werner advised, then turned to Janson and gently asked:

"Darling, you're not cold, are you?"

“Werner, maybe he wants to smoke. Comrade, perhaps you want to smoke? Musya asked. - We have.

“Give him a cigarette, Seryozha,” Werner rejoiced.

But Sergei was already taking out a cigarette. And everyone looked with love as Janson's fingers took the cigarette, as the match burned and blue smoke came out of Janson's mouth.

“Well, thank you,” Janson said. - Good.

- How strange! Sergey said.

- What's strange? Werner turned around. - What's strange?

- Yes, a cigarette.

He held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, between ordinary living fingers and looked at her pale, with surprise, even as if in horror. And everyone stared with their eyes at a thin tube, from the end of which smoke ran like a spinning blue ribbon, carried aside by breathing, and darkened, gathering, ashes. Extinguished.

“Got out,” Tanya said.

- Yes, it's gone.

- Well, to hell! Werner said, frowning and looking uneasily at Janson, whose hand with the cigarette hung as if dead. Suddenly Tsyganok turned quickly, close, face to face, leaned over to Werner and, turning the squirrels like a horse, whispered:

- Master, what if the escorts were ... huh? Try?

“No need,” Werner replied in the same whisper. - Drink it all the way.

- And for cha? In a fight, it's all the more fun, huh? I told him, he told me, and he himself did not notice how it was decided. It's like he didn't die.

“No, don’t,” Werner said, and turned to Janson: “My dear, why don’t you smoke?”

Suddenly, Yanson's flabby face wrinkled pitifully: as if someone had immediately pulled the thread that set the wrinkles in motion, and they all warped. And, as if through a dream, Janson whimpered, without tears, in a dry, almost feigned voice:

- I don't want to smoke. Ag-ha! Ag-ha! Ag-ha! I don't need to hang. Ag-ha, ag-ha, ag-ha!

They fussed around him. Tanya Kovalchuk, crying profusely, stroked his sleeve and adjusted the hanging wings of his shabby cap:

- You are my dear! Dear, don't cry, but you are my dear! Yes, you are my unfortunate!

Musa looked away. The gypsy caught her eye and grinned.

- The eccentric of his nobility! He drinks tea, but his belly is cold,” he said with a short laugh. But his own face had turned blue-black, like cast iron, and big yellow teeth were chattering.

Suddenly the wagons trembled and clearly slowed down. Everyone, except Yanson and Kashirin, got up and just as quickly sat down again.

- Station! Sergey said.

It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the car at once: it became so difficult to breathe. The grown heart was bursting his chest, became across the throat, rushed about madly - screamed in horror in his blood-full voice. And the eyes looked down at the trembling floor, and the ears listened to how the wheels spun more and more slowly - slid - spun again - and suddenly they stopped.

The train stopped.

Here came the dream. Not that it was very scary, but ghostly, unconscious and somehow alien: the dreamer himself remained on the sidelines, and only his ghost moved incorporeally, spoke silently, suffered without suffering. In a dream they got out of the car, split into pairs, sniffed especially fresh, forest, spring air. In a dream, Janson stupidly and powerlessly resisted, and they silently dragged him out of the car.

They went down the stairs.

- Is it on foot? someone asked almost cheerfully.

"It's not far," someone else answered, just as cheerfully.

Then a large, black, silent crowd walked in the middle of the forest along a poorly rolled, wet and soft spring road. Fresh, strong air permeated from the forest, from the snow; the foot slipped, sometimes fell into the snow, and the hands involuntarily clutched at the comrade; and, breathing loudly, it was difficult, along the whole snow, the escorts moved along the sides. A voice said angrily:

The roads couldn't be cleared. Tumbling here in the snow.

Someone made excuses:

“Cleaned, your honor. Rostepel only, nothing can be done.

Consciousness returned, but incompletely, fragments, strange pieces. Then suddenly the thought was businesslike confirmed:

“Indeed, they couldn’t clear the roads.”

Then everything faded away again, and only one sense of smell remained: an unbearably bright smell of air, forest, melting snow; then everything became unusually clear - both the forest, and the night, and the road, and the fact that they were going to be hanged this very minute. Fragments flickered restrained, in a whisper, conversation:

- Four soon.

- He said we leave early.

- Dawn at five.

- Well, yes, at five. This is what was needed...

In the dark, in a clearing, they stopped. At some distance, behind the sparse winter-transparent trees, two lanterns silently moved: there were gallows.

“I lost my galosh,” Sergei Golovin said.

- Well? Werner didn't understand.

- I lost my galosh. Coldly.

- Where is Vasily?

- I do not know. Vaughn is standing.

Vassily stood dark and motionless.

- Where is Musya?

- I'm here. Is that you, Werner?

They began to look around, avoiding looking in the direction where the lanterns continued to move silently and terribly clearly. To the left, the naked forest seemed to be thinning out, something large, white, flat, peeped through. And there was a damp wind.

“The sea,” said Sergei Golovin, sniffing and gasping for air. - There is a sea.

Musya answered loudly:

- My love, wide as the sea!

What are you, Musya?

- My love, wide as the sea, cannot contain the life of the shore.

“My love, as wide as the sea,” Sergey repeated thoughtfully, obeying the sound of the voice and the words.

- My love, wide as the sea ... - Werner repeated and suddenly he was surprised: - Muska! How young you are!

Suddenly, close, at Werner's very ear, came the hot, gasping whisper of Gypsy:

- Barin, and barin. Forest, huh? Lord, what is this! And what is it, where are the lanterns, a hanger, or what? What is it, huh?

Werner glanced: the gypsy boy was tormented by death languor.

- We must say goodbye ... - said Tanya Kovalchuk.

Janson was lying on the snow, and people were busy with something near him. Suddenly there was a sharp smell of ammonia.

- Well, what is it, doctor? Are you soon? someone asked impatiently.

“Nothing, just a faint. Rub his ears with snow. He's already leaving, you can read.

The light of a secret flashlight fell on the paper and white hands without gloves. Both of them trembled a little; and the voice trembled:

Everyone also refused the priest. Gypsy said:

- Bude, dad, break the fool; you will forgive me, and they will hang me. Go, where did you come from.

And the dark broad silhouette silently and quickly moved away and disappeared. Apparently, the dawn was coming: the snow turned white, the figures of people darkened, and the forest became rarer, sadder and simpler.

“Gentlemen, we must go in twos. In pairs, become as you wish, but I only ask you to hurry.

Werner pointed to Janson, who was already on his feet, supported by two gendarmes:

- I'm with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go forward.

- Good.

- Are we with you, Musechka? Kovalchuk asked. - Well, let's kiss.

They kissed quickly. The gypsy kissed her hard, so that her teeth could be felt; Janson softly and sluggishly, with his mouth half open, though he didn't seem to understand what he was doing. When Sergei Golovin and Kashirin had already moved a few steps away, Kashirin suddenly stopped and said loudly and distinctly, but in a completely alien, unfamiliar voice:

- Farewell, comrades!

- Farewell, comrade! they shouted at him.

Gone. It became quiet. The lanterns behind the trees stopped motionless. They waited for a cry, a voice, some kind of noise—but it was quiet there, just as it was here, and the lanterns shone motionlessly yellow.

- Oh my god! someone croaked wildly. They looked around: it was Tsyganok toiling in deathly languor. - Hang up!

They turned away and it was quiet again. The gypsy toiled, grabbing air with his hands:

– How is it so! Lord, huh? I'm alone, right? It's more fun in company. Lord! What is this?

He grabbed Werner's hand with clenching and disintegrating, as if playing fingers:

- Barin, dear, at least you are with me, huh? Do me a favor, don't refuse!

Werner, suffering, replied:

- I can't, honey. I'm with him.

- Oh, my God! One, that is. How is it? God!

Musya stepped forward and said quietly:

- Come with me.

The gypsy staggered back and wildly turned the squirrels at her:

- With you?

- Look you. What a little one! Aren't you afraid? And then I'm better alone. What is there!

- No I'm not afraid.

The gypsy grinned.

- Look you! And I'm a robber. Are you not squeamish? And it's better not to. I won't be angry with you.

Musya was silent, and in the faint illumination of the dawn her face seemed pale and mysterious. Then suddenly she quickly went up to Gypsy and, throwing her hands behind his neck, kissed him hard on the lips. He took her by the shoulders with his fingers, pushed her away from him, shook her - and, kissing her loudly, kissed her lips, nose, eyes.

Suddenly, the nearest soldier somehow swayed and unclenched his hands, releasing his gun. But he did not bend down to pick it up, but stood motionless for a moment, turned sharply and, like a blind man, walked into the forest through solid snow.

- Where are you going? another whispered fearfully. - Stop!

But he still silently and laboriously climbed through the deep snow; must have bumped into something, waved his arms and fell face down. And so he remained lying.

- Raise the gun, sour wool! And then I will rise! - Gypsy said menacingly. – You don’t know the service!

The lanterns flickered again. It was the turn of Werner and Janson.

- Farewell, barin! Tsyganok said loudly. - We will know each other in the next world, you will see when, do not turn away. Yes, when you bring some water to drink - it will be hot for me there.

- Goodbye.

"I don't want to," Janson said languidly.

But Werner took him by the hand, and the Estonian walked a few steps himself; then it was clear that he stopped and fell into the snow. They bent over him, lifted him up and carried him, and he weakly floundered in the arms that carried him. Why didn't he scream? Probably forgot that he has a voice.

And again the yellowing lanterns stopped motionless.

“And I, then, Musechka, alone,” Tanya Kovalchuk said sadly. - We lived together, and now ...

- Tanechka, dear ...

But Tsyganok warmly stood up. Holding Musya by the hand, as if afraid of what else they might take away, he spoke quickly and businesslike:

- Oh, young lady! You alone can, you are a pure soul, you can go wherever you want, alone you can. Understood? But not me. Like a robber... understand? Impossible for me alone. Where, they say, are you climbing, murderer? I've been stealing horses, by God! And with her I'm like--like with a baby, you know. I did not get that?

- Understood. Well, go ahead. Let me kiss you again, Musiechka.

“Kiss, kiss,” Tsyganok said encouragingly to the women. - It's your business, you need to say goodbye.

Musya and Tsyganok moved on. The woman walked cautiously, slipping and, out of habit, holding up her skirts; and firmly by the arm, guarding and feeling the way with his foot, the man led her to death.

The lights stopped. It was quiet and empty around Tanya Kovalchuk. The soldiers were silent, all gray in the colorless and quiet light of the beginning of the day.

“I’m alone,” Tanya suddenly spoke and sighed. - Seryozha died, both Werner and Vasya died. Only me. Soldiers, but soldiers, I'm the only one. One…

The sun was rising over the sea.

They put the bodies in a box. Then they took it. With outstretched necks, with madly bulging eyes, with a swollen blue tongue, which, like an unknown terrible flower, protruded among lips irrigated with bloody foam, the corpses floated back, along the same road along which they themselves, alive, had come here. And the spring snow was just as soft and fragrant, and the spring air was just as fresh and strong. And the wet, worn-out galosh lost by Sergey blackened in the snow.

This is how people greeted the rising sun.

1. At one o'clock, Your Excellency

2. To death by hanging

3. I don't need to hang

4. We Orlovskys

5. Kiss - and be silent

6. The clock is running

7. There is no death

8. There is death, there is life

9. Terrible loneliness

10. Walls are falling

11. They are being driven

12. They were brought

Leonid Andreev

The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men

Dedicated to Leo Tolstoy

"one. AT ONE PM, YOUR EXCELLENCY"

Since the minister was a very obese man, prone to apoplexy, with all sorts of precautions, avoiding causing dangerous excitement, he was warned that a very serious assassination attempt was being prepared on him. Seeing that the minister received the news calmly and even with a smile, they also gave details: the assassination attempt should take place the next day, in the morning, when he leaves with a report; several terrorists, already betrayed by the provocateur and now under the vigilant supervision of detectives, must gather with bombs and revolvers at one in the afternoon at the entrance and wait for him to leave. This is where they get caught.

Wait, - the minister was surprised, - how do they know that I will go at one in the afternoon with a report, when I myself found out about it only the third day?

The head of security vaguely spread his hands.

Precisely at one o'clock, Your Excellency.

Half astonished, half approving of the actions of the police, who arranged everything so well, the minister shook his head and smiled gloomily with his thick dark lips; and with the same smile, humbly, not wanting to interfere with the police in the future, he quickly packed up and left for the night in someone else's hospitable palace. Also taken away were his wife and two children from the dangerous house near which the bomb-throwers would gather tomorrow.

While the lights were burning in a strange palace and friendly familiar faces bowed, smiled and were indignant, the dignitary experienced a feeling of pleasant excitement - as if he had already been given or was about to be given a large and unexpected reward. But the people dispersed, the lights went out, and through the mirrored glass on the ceiling and walls fell the lacy and ghostly light of electric lamps; outside the house, with its pictures, statues, and the silence that entered from the street, itself quiet and indefinite, it aroused an anxious thought about the futility of locks, guards, and walls. And then at night, in the silence and loneliness of someone else's bedroom, the dignitary became unbearably frightened.

He had something with the kidneys, and with every strong excitement, his face, legs and arms swelled with water and swelled, and from this he seemed to become even larger, even thicker and more massive. And now, towering like a mountain of swollen meat above the crushed springs of the bed, with the anguish of a sick person, he felt his swollen, as if someone else's face, and he thought about the cruel fate that people were preparing for him. He remembered, one by one, all the recent terrible cases when people of his dignitary and even higher position were bombed, and the bombs tore the body to shreds, splattered the brain on the dirty brick walls, knocked the teeth out of the nests. And from these Memories, his own fat sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed already a stranger, already experiencing the fiery force of the explosion; and it seemed as if the arms at the shoulder were separated from the body, the teeth fell out, the brain was divided into particles, the legs went numb and lay obediently, fingers up, like those of a dead person. He stirred vigorously, breathed loudly, coughed, so as not to resemble a dead person in any way, surrounded himself with the living noise of ringing springs, a rustling blanket; and to show that he is completely alive, not a bit dead and far from death, like any other person, he boomed loudly and abruptly in the silence and loneliness of the bedroom:

Well done! Well done! Well done!

It was he who praised the detectives, the police and the soldiers, all those who guard his life and so timely, so cleverly prevented the murder. But moving, but praising, but grinning with a violent wry smile to express his mockery of the stupid failed terrorists, he still did not believe in his salvation, in the fact that life would suddenly, immediately, not leave him. The death that people conceived for him and which was only in their thoughts, in their intentions, as if already stood there, and will stand, and will not leave until they are seized, the bombs are taken away from them and they are put in a strong prison . Over there in that corner she stands and does not leave - she cannot leave, like an obedient soldier, put on guard by someone's will and order.

At one o'clock, Your Excellency! - the said phrase sounded, shimmered in all voices: now cheerfully mocking, then angry, then stubborn and stupid. It was as if a hundred wound-up gramophones were placed in the bedroom, and all of them, one after another, with the idiotic diligence of a machine, shouted out the words ordered to them:

At one o'clock, Your Excellency.

And this tomorrow? hour of the day?, which until recently was no different from the others, was only a calm movement of the arrow on the dial of a gold watch, suddenly acquired an ominous persuasiveness, jumped out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched out like a huge black pillar, all his life cutting in two. As if neither before nor after him there were any other clocks, and he was the only one, insolent and self-important, who had the right to some kind of special existence.

Well? What do you need? - Through gritted teeth, the minister angrily asked.

Shouted gramophones:

At one o'clock, Your Excellency! And the black pillar grinned and bowed.

Gritting his teeth, the Minister raised himself on the bed and sat down, leaning his face on his palms - positively he could not sleep on this disgusting night.

And with terrifying brightness, pressing his plump, perfumed hands over his face, he imagined how he would get up tomorrow morning, knowing nothing, then drinking coffee, knowing nothing, then dressing in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorman who brought the fur coat, nor the footman who brought the coffee, would know that it is absolutely pointless to drink coffee, put on a fur coat, when in a few moments all this: both the fur coat, and his body, and the coffee that is in it, will be destroyed by explosion, taken by death. Here the porter opens the glass door ... And it is he, the dear, kind, affectionate porter, who has blue soldier's eyes and orders to the full chest, himself, with his own hands, opens the terrible door - he opens it, because he knows nothing. Everyone smiles because they don't know anything.

Wow! - suddenly he said loudly and slowly moved his hands away from his face.

And, looking into the darkness, far in front of him, with a fixed, intense gaze, he just as slowly stretched out his hand, felt for the horn and lit the light. Then he got up and, without putting on his shoes, with his bare feet on the carpet went around the strange unfamiliar bedroom, found another horn from a wall lamp and lit it. It became light and pleasant, and only the agitated bed with a blanket that had fallen to the floor spoke of some kind of horror that had not quite passed yet.

In his nightclothes, with his beard disheveled from restless movements, with angry eyes, the dignitary looked like any other angry old man who has insomnia and severe shortness of breath. It was as if the death that people were preparing for him had laid bare him, tore him away from the splendor and impressive magnificence that surrounded him - and it was hard to believe that he had so much power, that this body of his, such an ordinary, simple human body, should have been to die terribly, in the fire and the roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing and not feeling the cold, he sat down in the first chair he came across, propped up his disheveled beard with his hand, and intently, in deep and calm thoughtfulness, stared with his eyes at the unfamiliar stucco ceiling.

So here's the thing! So that's why he was so scared and so excited! So that's why she stands in the corner and doesn't leave and can't leave!

Fools! he said contemptuously and weightily.

Fools! he repeated louder and slightly turned his head towards the door so that those to whom it refers could hear. And this applied to those whom he recently called good fellows and who, in excess of zeal, told him in detail about the impending assassination attempt.

Well, of course, - he thought deeply, suddenly strengthened and smooth thought, - after all, now that they told me, I know and I'm scared, but then I wouldn't know anything and calmly drink coffee. Well, and then, of course, this death - but am I so afraid of death? My kidneys hurt, and someday I'll die, but I'm not afraid, because I don't know anything. And these fools said: at one o'clock, Your Excellency. And they thought, fools, that I would rejoice, but instead she stood in the corner and did not leave. Doesn't go away because that's my thought. And it is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it; and it would be quite impossible to live if a person could quite accurately and definitely know the day and hour when he would die. And these fools warn: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency!?"

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Leonid Andreev
The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men
Dedicated to Leo Tolstoy
"one. AT ONE PM, YOUR EXCELLENCY"
Since the minister was a very obese man, prone to apoplexy, with all sorts of precautions, avoiding causing dangerous excitement, he was warned that a very serious assassination attempt was being prepared on him. Seeing that the minister received the news calmly and even with a smile, they also gave details: the assassination attempt should take place the next day, in the morning, when he leaves with a report; several terrorists, already betrayed by the provocateur and now under the vigilant supervision of detectives, must gather with bombs and revolvers at one in the afternoon at the entrance and wait for him to leave. This is where they get caught.
- Wait, - the minister was surprised, - how do they know that I will go at one in the afternoon with a report, when I myself found out about it only the third day?
The head of security vaguely spread his hands.
“Precisely at one o’clock, Your Excellency.
Half astonished, half approving of the actions of the police, who arranged everything so well, the minister shook his head and smiled gloomily with his thick dark lips; and with the same smile, humbly, not wanting to interfere with the police in the future, he quickly packed up and left for the night in someone else's hospitable palace. Also taken away were his wife and two children from the dangerous house near which the bomb-throwers would gather tomorrow.
While the lights were burning in a strange palace and friendly familiar faces bowed, smiled and were indignant, the dignitary experienced a feeling of pleasant excitement - as if he had already been given or was about to be given a large and unexpected reward. But the people dispersed, the lights went out, and through the mirrored glass on the ceiling and walls fell the lacy and ghostly light of electric lamps; outside the house, with its pictures, statues, and the silence that entered from the street, itself quiet and indefinite, it aroused an anxious thought about the futility of locks, guards, and walls. And then at night, in the silence and loneliness of someone else's bedroom, the dignitary became unbearably frightened.
He had something with the kidneys, and with every strong excitement, his face, legs and arms swelled with water and swelled, and from this he seemed to become even larger, even thicker and more massive. And now, towering like a mountain of swollen meat above the crushed springs of the bed, with the anguish of a sick person, he felt his swollen, as if someone else's face, and he thought about the cruel fate that people were preparing for him. He remembered, one by one, all the recent terrible cases when people of his dignitary and even higher position were bombed, and the bombs tore the body to shreds, splattered the brain on the dirty brick walls, knocked the teeth out of the nests. And from these Memories, his own fat sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed already a stranger, already experiencing the fiery force of the explosion; and it seemed as if the arms at the shoulder were separated from the body, the teeth fell out, the brain was divided into particles, the legs went numb and lay obediently, fingers up, like those of a dead person. He stirred vigorously, breathed loudly, coughed, so as not to resemble a dead person in any way, surrounded himself with the living noise of ringing springs, a rustling blanket; and to show that he was completely alive, not a bit dead and far from death, like any other person, he boomed loudly and abruptly in the silence and loneliness of the bedroom:
- Well done! Well done! Well done!
It was he who praised the detectives, the police and the soldiers, all those who guard his life and so timely, so cleverly prevented the murder. But moving, but praising, but grinning with a violent wry smile to express his mockery of the stupid failed terrorists, he still did not believe in his salvation, in the fact that life would suddenly, immediately, not leave him. The death that people conceived for him and which was only in their thoughts, in their intentions, as if already stood there, and will stand, and will not leave until they are seized, the bombs are taken away from them and they are put in a strong prison . Over there, in that corner, she stands and does not leave - she cannot leave, like an obedient soldier, put on guard by someone's will and order.
“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” - the said phrase sounded, shimmered in all voices: now cheerfully mocking, now angry, now stubborn and stupid. It was as if a hundred wound-up gramophones were placed in the bedroom, and all of them, one after another, with the idiotic diligence of a machine, shouted out the words ordered to them:
“At one o’clock, Your Excellency.”
And this tomorrow? hour of the day?, which until recently was no different from the others, was only a calm movement of the arrow on the dial of a gold watch, suddenly acquired an ominous persuasiveness, jumped out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched out like a huge black pillar, all his life cutting in two. As if neither before nor after him there were any other clocks, and he was the only one, insolent and self-important, who had the right to some kind of special existence.
- Well? What do you need? – through clenched teeth, the minister angrily asked.
Shouted gramophones:
“At one o’clock, Your Excellency!” And the black pillar grinned and bowed.
Gritting his teeth, the minister raised himself up in bed and sat down, leaning his face on his palms - positively he could not sleep on this disgusting night.
And with terrifying brightness, pressing his plump, perfumed hands over his face, he imagined how he would get up tomorrow morning, knowing nothing, then drinking coffee, knowing nothing, then dressing in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorman who brought the fur coat, nor the footman who brought the coffee, would know that it is absolutely pointless to drink coffee, put on a fur coat, when in a few moments all this: both the fur coat, and his body, and the coffee that is in it, will be destroyed by explosion, taken by death. Here the porter opens the glass door ... And it is he, the dear, kind, affectionate porter, who has blue soldier's eyes and medals to his full chest, himself, with his own hands, opens the terrible door - he opens it, because he knows nothing. Everyone smiles because they don't know anything.
- Wow! he suddenly said loudly and slowly removed his hands from his face.
And, looking into the darkness, far in front of him, with a fixed, intense gaze, he just as slowly stretched out his hand, felt for the horn and lit the light. Then he got up and, without putting on his shoes, with his bare feet on the carpet went around the strange unfamiliar bedroom, found another horn from a wall lamp and lit it. It became light and pleasant, and only the agitated bed with a blanket that had fallen to the floor spoke of some kind of horror that had not quite passed yet.
In his nightclothes, with his beard disheveled from restless movements, with angry eyes, the dignitary looked like any other angry old man who has insomnia and severe shortness of breath. It was as if the death that people were preparing for him had laid bare him, tore him away from the splendor and impressive splendor that surrounded him - and it was hard to believe that he had so much power, that this body of his, such an ordinary, simple human body, should have been to die terribly, in the fire and the roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing and not feeling the cold, he sat down in the first chair he came across, propped up his disheveled beard with his hand, and intently, in deep and calm thoughtfulness, stared with his eyes at the unfamiliar stucco ceiling.
So here's the thing! So that's why he was so scared and so excited! So that's why she stands in the corner and doesn't leave and can't leave!
- Fools! he said contemptuously and weightily.
- Fools! he repeated louder and slightly turned his head towards the door so that those to whom it refers could hear. And this applied to those whom he recently called good fellows and who, in excess of zeal, told him in detail about the impending assassination attempt.
“Well, of course,” he thought deeply, with a suddenly strengthened and smooth thought, “after all, now that they told me, I know and I’m scared, but then I wouldn’t know anything and calmly would drink coffee. Well, and then, of course, this death - but am I so afraid of death? My kidneys hurt, and someday I'll die, but I'm not afraid, because I don't know anything. And these fools said: at one o'clock, Your Excellency. And they thought, fools, that I would rejoice, but instead she stood in the corner and did not leave. Doesn't go away because that's my thought. And it is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it; and it would be quite impossible to live if a person could quite accurately and definitely know the day and hour when he would die. And these fools warn: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency!?"
It became so easy and pleasant, as if someone had told him that he was completely immortal and would never die. And, once again feeling strong and intelligent among this herd of fools that so senselessly and brazenly break into the mystery of the future, he thought about the bliss of ignorance with the heavy thoughts of an old, sick, experienced person. Nothing living, neither man nor beast, is given to know the day and hour of his death. Here he was recently ill, and the doctors told him that he would die, that the last orders had to be made - but he did not believe them and really remained alive. And in his youth it was like this: he got confused in life and decided to commit suicide; and prepared a revolver, and wrote letters, and even fixed the hour of the day of suicide - and just before the end he suddenly changed his mind. And always, at the very last moment, something can change, an unexpected accident can appear, and therefore no one can say for himself when he will die.
"At one o'clock, Your Excellency?" these amiable donkeys told him, and although they said it only because death was averted, the mere knowledge of its possible hour filled him with horror. It is quite possible that someday he will be killed, but tomorrow it will not be - tomorrow it will not be - and he can sleep peacefully, like an immortal. Fools, they did not know what a great law they had broken from their place, what a hole they had opened when they said with that idiotic courtesy of theirs: "At one o'clock, Your Excellency?"
- No, not at one o'clock, Your Excellency, but who knows when. It is not known when. What?
“Nothing,” silence answered. - Nothing.
- No, you're talking about something.
- Nothing, nothing. I say: tomorrow at one o'clock.
And with a sudden, sharp anguish in his heart, he realized that he would not have any sleep, or peace, or joy, until this damned, black, snatched hour had passed. Only the shadow of knowledge about what no living creature should know about stood there in the corner, and it was enough to outshine the light and drive an impenetrable darkness of horror over a person. Once disturbed, the fear of death spread over the body, penetrated into the bones, pulled a pale head from every pore of the body.
He was no longer afraid of tomorrow's killers - they disappeared, were forgotten, mixed with a crowd of hostile faces and phenomena surrounding his human life - but of something sudden and inevitable: an apoplexy, a rupture of the heart, some kind of thin stupid aorta, which suddenly will not withstand the pressure of blood and will burst like a tightly stretched glove on plump fingers.
And the short, thick neck seemed terrible, and it was unbearable to look at the swollen short fingers, to feel how short they were, how they were full of deadly moisture. And if earlier, in the dark, he had to move in order not to look like a dead man, now, in this bright, coldly hostile, terrible light, it seemed terrible, impossible to move in order to get a cigarette - to call someone. Nerves tensed. And each nerve seemed like a rearing curved wire, on the top of which was a small head with eyes madly staring in horror, a convulsively gaping, gasping, silent mouth. I can not breathe.
And suddenly, in the darkness, among the dust and cobwebs, an electric bell came to life somewhere under the ceiling. The small metal tongue convulsively, in horror, beat against the edge of the ringing cup, fell silent - and again trembled in continuous horror and ringing. It was His Excellency calling from his room.
People were running. Here and there, in the chandeliers and along the wall, individual bulbs flashed - there were not enough of them for light, but enough to make shadows appear. Everywhere they appeared: stood in the corners, stretched along the ceiling; quiveringly clinging to each elevation, they lay down against the walls; and it was difficult to understand where all those countless ugly, silent shadows, the mute souls of mute things had been before.
A thick, trembling voice was saying something loudly. Then they demanded a doctor by phone: the dignitary was ill. His Excellency's wife was also summoned.
"2. TO THE DEATH PENALTY BY HANGING"
It turned out just like the police said. Four terrorists, three men and one woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance, the fifth was found and arrested in a safe house, of which she was the owner. At the same time they captured a lot of dynamite, half-loaded bombs and weapons. All those arrested were very young: the eldest of the men was twenty-eight years old, the youngest of the women only nineteen. They were tried in the same fortress where they were imprisoned after their arrest, they were judged quickly and dully, as was done in that merciless time.
At the trial, all five were calm, but very serious and very thoughtful: their contempt for the judges was so great that no one wanted to emphasize their courage with an extra smile or a feigned expression of fun. They were exactly as calm as needed in order to protect their souls and its great mortal gloom from someone else's, evil and hostile gaze. Sometimes they refused to answer questions, sometimes they answered - briefly, simply and accurately, as if they answered not the judges, but the statisticians to fill in some special tables. Three, one woman and two men, gave their real names, two refused to give them and remained unknown to the judges. And to everything that happened at the trial, they revealed that softened, through the haze, curiosity, which is characteristic of people who are either very seriously ill, or captured by one huge, all-consuming thought. They glanced quickly, caught on the fly some word that was more interesting than the others, and again continued to think, from the same place where the thoughts had stopped.
The first to be placed from the judges was one of those who named themselves - Sergei Golovin, the son of a retired colonel, himself a former officer. He was still quite a young, blond, broad-shouldered youth, so healthy that neither prison nor the expectation of imminent death could erase the color from his cheeks and the expression of young, happy naivety from his blue eyes. All the time he vigorously plucked his shaggy blond beard, to which he was not yet accustomed, and relentlessly, screwing up his eyes and blinking, looked out the window.
This happened at the end of winter, when, amid snowstorms and dull frosty days, the nearby spring sent, as a forerunner, a clear, warm sunny day, or even just one hour, but such a spring, so greedily young and sparkling that the sparrows in the street went crazy with joy and the people seemed to be drunk. And now, through the upper dusty window, which had not been wiped since last summer, a very strange and beautiful sky was visible: at first glance it seemed milky-gray, smoky, and when you look longer, blue began to appear in it, it began to turn blue deeper, everything brighter, more limitless. And the fact that it did not open all at once, but chastely hid in the haze of transparent clouds, made it sweet, like the girl you love; and Sergei Golovin looked up at the sky, plucked at his beard, screwed up first one eye, then the other, with long fluffy eyelashes, and pondered something intensely. Once he even moved his fingers quickly and naively grimaced with some kind of joy, but he looked around and went out like a spark that was stepped on with his foot. And almost instantly, through the color of the cheeks, almost without turning into pallor, an earthy, deathly blue appeared; and fluffy hair, tearing out of the nest with pain, clenched, as in a vise, in fingers that turned white at the tip. But the joy of life and spring was stronger - and in a few minutes the former, young, naive face was drawn to the spring sky.
There, too, in the sky, a young pale girl, unknown, nicknamed Musya, was looking. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older in her severity, in the blackness of her straight and proud eyes. Only a very thin, delicate neck and the same thin girlish hands spoke of her age, and even that elusive thing that is youth itself and that sounded so clear in her voice, pure, harmonious, tuned flawlessly, like an expensive instrument, in every simple word , an exclamation that reveals its musical content. She was very pale, but not a deathly pallor, but that special hot whiteness, when a huge, strong fire seems to be kindled inside a person, and the body glows transparently, like fine Sevres porcelain. She sat almost motionless and only occasionally, with an imperceptible movement of her fingers, felt a deepened strip on the middle finger of her right hand, a trace of some recently removed ring. And she looked at the sky without caress and joyful memories, only because in the whole dirty government hall this blue piece of sky was the most beautiful, pure and truthful - it did not extort anything from her eyes.
The judges felt sorry for Sergei Golovin, but they hated her.
Also not moving, in a somewhat stiff pose, with his hands folded between his knees, sat her neighbor, an unknown, nicknamed Werner. If a person can be locked like a deaf door, then the unknown person locked his face like an iron door, and an iron lock hung on it. He looked motionlessly down at the dirty plank floor, and it was impossible to understand whether he was calm or worried endlessly, thinking about something or listening to what the detectives were showing before the court. He was not tall; facial features were delicate and noble. Delicate and beautiful so much that it resembled a moonlit night somewhere in the south, on the seashore, where there are cypresses and black shadows from them, at the same time he awakened a feeling of enormous calm strength, irresistible hardness, cold and impudent courage. The very politeness with which he gave short and precise answers seemed dangerous in his lips, in his half-bow; and if on all the others the prisoner's dressing gown seemed an absurd buffoonery, then on him it was not visible at all - the dress was so alien to a person. And although other terrorists were found with bombs and infernal machines, and Werner only had a black revolver, the judges for some reason considered him the main one and addressed him with some respect, just as briefly and businesslike.
Following him, Vasily Kashirin, all consisted of one continuous, unbearable horror of death and the same desperate desire to restrain this horror and not show it to the judges.

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