The Spy

"My life is in this package. I have written about myself – my story – who I am, and why. I want him to read it – he loves people."

Taking Yevsey's shoulder in a vigorous clutch the spy shook him, and commanded:

"You go and give it to him, into his own hands – go, tell him that one – " Maklakov broke off, and continued after a pause – "tell him that a certain agent of the Department of Safety sent him these papers, and begs him most humbly – tell him that way, 'begs him most humbly' to read them. I'll wait here for you, on the street. Go. But look out, don't tell him I'm here. If he asks, say I've escaped, went to Argentine. Repeat what I've told you."

"Went to Argentine."

"And don't forget, 'begs most humbly.'"

"No, I won't."

"Go on, quick!"

Giving Klimkov a gentle shove on the back he escorted him to the door of the house, walked away, and stopped to observe him.

Yevsey agitated and seized with a fine tremor, lost consciousness of his own personality crushed by the commanding words of Maklakov. He pushed the electric button, and felt ready to crawl through the door in the desire to hide himself from the spy as quickly as possible. He struck it with his knee, and it opened. A dark figure loomed in the light, a voice asked testily:

"What do you want?"

"The writer, Mr. Mironov – him personally. I have been told to deliver a package into his own hands. Please, quick!" said Yevsey, involuntarily imitating the rapid and incoherent talk of Maklakov. Everything became confused in his brain. But the words of the spy lay there, white and cold as dead bones. And when a somewhat dull voice reached him, "What can I do for you, young man?" Yevsey said in an apathetic voice, like an automaton, "A certain agent of the Department of Safety sent you these papers, and begs you most humbly to read them. He has gone off to Argentine." The strange name embarrassed Yevsey, and he added in a lower voice, "Argentine, which is in America."

"Yes, but where are the papers?"

The voice sounded kind. Yevsey raised his head, and recognized the soldierly face with the reddish mustache. He pulled the package from his pocket, and handed it to him.

"Sit down."

Klimkov seated himself, keeping his head bowed. The sound of the tearing of the wrapping made him start. Without raising his head, he looked at the writer warily from under lowered lids. Mironov stood before him regarding the package, his mustache quivering.

"You say he's gone off?"

"Yes."

"And you yourself are also an agent?"

"Yes," said Yevsey quietly, and thought, "Now, he'll scold me."

"Your face seems familiar to me."

Yevsey tried not to look at him. But he felt the writer was smiling.

"Yes, I suppose it is familiar to you," said Yevsey sighing.

"Have you, too, been tracking me?"

"Once. You saw me from the window. You came out into the street, and gave me a letter."

"Yes, yes. I remember. The devil! So that was you? Well, excuse me, my dear man. I think I must have offended you, eh?"

Yevsey rose from the chair, looked into his laughing face incredulously, and glanced around.

"That's nothing," he said.

He felt unbearably awkward as he listened to the somewhat rude yet kindly voice. He was afraid that after all the writer would abuse him and drive him out.

"There, you see how strangely we meet this time, eh?"

"Nothing else?" asked Yevsey confused.

"Nothing else. But I believe you are tired. Sit down. Rest."

"I must be going."

"Very well. As you please. Well, thank you. Good-by."

He extended his large hand with reddish wool on the fingers. Yevsey touched it cautiously.

"Permit me also to tell you my life," he requested unexpectedly to himself. The instant he had distinctly uttered these words, he thought, "This is the very man to whom I ought to speak, if Timofey Vasilyevich himself, such a wise person and better than everybody, respects him." Recalling Maklakov, Yevsey looked at the window, and for a moment grew anxious.

"No matter," he said to himself. "It's not the first time he's had to freeze."

"Well, why not? Tell me, if you want to. Won't you take off your overcoat? And perhaps you will have a glass of tea. It's cold."

Yevsey wanted to smile, but he restrained himself. In a few minutes, his eyes half closed, he told the writer monotonously and minutely about the village, about Yakov, and about the blacksmith. He spoke in the same voice in which he reported his observations in the Department of Safety.

The writer, whom Yevsey observed from under his lashes, was sitting on a broad, heavy taborette, his elbows on the table, over which he bent, twirling his mustache with a quick movement of his fingers. His eyes gazed sharply and seriously into the distance above Klimkov's head.

"He doesn't hear me," thought Yevsey, and raised his voice a little, continuing to examine the room without himself being observed, and jealously watching the face of the author.

The room was dark and gloomy. The shelves crammed with books, which increased the thickness of the walls, apparently kept out the sounds of the street. Between the shelves the glass of the windows glistened dully, pasted over with the cold darkness of the night, and the white narrow stain of the door obtruded itself on the eye. In the middle of the room was a table, whose covering of grey cloth seemed to lend a dark grey tone to everything around it.

Yevsey was ensconced in a corner of a chair covered with a smooth skin. For some reason he propped his head hard against its high back, then slid down a little. The flames of the candles disturbed him; the yellow tongues slowly inclining toward each other, seemed to be holding a conversation. They trembled, and straightened themselves out, struggling upward. Back of the author over the sofa, hung a large portrait, from which a yellow face with a sharp little beard looked out sternly.

The author began to twirl his mustache more slowly, but his look as before travelled beyond the confines of the room. All this disturbed Yevsey, breaking the thread of his recollections. He be-thought himself of closing his eyes. When he did so, and darkness closely enveloped him, he sighed lightly. Suddenly he beheld himself divided in two – the man who had lived, and the other being who was able to tell about the first as about a stranger. His speech flowed on more easily, his voice grew stronger, and the events of his life drew themselves connectedly one after the other, unrolling easily like a ball of grey thread. They freed the little feeble soul from the dirty and cumbersome rags of its experiences. It was pleasant to Yevsey to tell about himself. He listened to his own voice with quiet astonishment. He spoke truthfully, and clearly saw that he had not been guilty of anything, for he had lived all his days not as he had wanted to, but as he had been compelled to do; and he had been compelled to do what was unpleasant and unnecessary to him. Filled with a sense of sincere self-pity, he was almost ready to weep and to fall in love with himself.

Whenever the author asked him a question, which Yevsey did not understand, he would say without opening his eyes, sternly and quietly:

"Wait, I'm telling it in order."

He spoke without wearying, but when he came to the moment of his meeting with Maklakov, he suddenly stopped as before a pit. He opened his eyes, and saw at the window the dull look of the autumn morning, the cold grey depth of the sky. Heaving a deep sigh, he straightened himself up. He felt washed within, unusually light, unpleasantly empty. His heart was ready submissively to receive new orders, fresh violence.

The author rose noisily from his seat, tall and strong. He pressed his hands together, cracking his fingers disagreeably.

"What do you think of doing now?" he asked, as he turned to the window without looking at Klimkov.

Yevsey also rose, and repeated with assurance what he had told Maklakov.

"As soon as the new life is arranged, I'll quietly go into some business – I'll go to another city – I've saved about one hundred and fifty rubles."

The author turned to him slowly.

"So?" he said. "You have no other desire whatsoever?"

Klimkov thought, and answered:

"No."

"And you believe in the new life? You think it will arrange itself?"

"Of course. How else? If all the people want it. Why won't it arrange itself?"

"I'm not saying anything."

Mironov keeping silent turned to the window again, and straightened out his mustache with both hands. Yevsey stood motionless, awaiting something and listening to the emptiness in his breast.

"Tell me," said the writer softly and slowly, "aren't you sorry for those people, that girl, your cousin, and his comrade?"

Klimkov bowed his head, and drew the skirts of his coat together.

"You found out that they were right, didn't you?"

"At first I was sorry for them. I must have been ashamed, I suppose. But now I'm not sorry any more."

"No? Why not?"

Klimkov did not answer at once. At the end of a few moments he said:

"Well, they are good people, and they attained to what they wanted."

"And didn't it occur to you that you were in a bad business?"

Yevsey sighed.

"Why, I don't like it. I do what I'm told to do."

The author stepped up to him, then turned aside. Klimkov saw the door through which he had entered, saw it because the author's glance was turned to it.

"I ought to go," he thought.

"Do you want to ask me anything?" inquired the author.

"No, I am going."

"Good-by." And the host moved to let him pass. Yevsey walking on tip-toe went into the ante-chamber, where he began to put on his overcoat. From the door of the room he heard a question:

"Listen, why did you tell me about yourself?"

Squeezing his hat in his hands Yevsey thought, and answered:

"Just so. Timofey Vasilyevich respects you very much, the one who sent me."

The writer smiled.

"Aha! Is that all?"

"Why did I tell him?" Klimkov suddenly wondered. Blinking his eyes, he looked fixedly into the author's face.

"Well, good-by," said the host, rubbing his hands. He moved away from his visitor.

Yevsey nodded to him politely.

"Good-by."

When he came out of the house, he looked around, and immediately observed the black figure of a man at the end of the street in the grey twilight of the morning. The man was quietly striding along the pavement holding his head bent.

"He's waiting," Klimkov thought. He shrank back. "He'll scold me. He'll say it was too long."

The spy must have heard the resonant sound of steps on the frozen paving in the stillness of the morning. He raised his head, and fairly ran to meet Yevsey.

"Did you give it to him? Yes?"

"I did."

"Why were you so long? Did he speak to you? What did he ask?"

Maklakov shivered. His cheeks were blue, his nose red. He seized the lapels of Yevsey's overcoat, and instantly released him, blew on his fingers, as if he had burned them, and began to tramp his feet on the ground. Thus, chilled through and through, and pitiful, he was not awe-inspiring.

"I, too, told him all my life," Yevsey declared aloud. It was pleasant to tell Maklakov about it.

"Well, didn't he ask about me?"

"He asked whether you had gone away."

"What did you say?"

"I said you had."

"Yes. Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"Well, let's go. I'm frozen, brother." Maklakov darted forward, thrusting his hands in his overcoat pockets, and hunching his back. "So you told him your life?"

"The whole of it, completely, to the very moment of my last meeting with you," answered Yevsey, again experiencing a pleasant sensation, which raised him to the same level as the spy whom he respected.

"What did he say to you then?"

For some reason confused and embarrassed Klimkov waited before he replied.

"He didn't say anything."

Maklakov stopped, seized him by the sleeve, and asked in a stern though quiet tone:

"Did you give him my papers?"

"Search me, Timofey Vasilyevich," Yevsey cried sincerely.

"I won't," said Maklakov, after reflecting. "Well, now good-by. I'll disappear this very day. Take my advice. I'm giving it, because I pity you. Get out of this service and be quick about it. It's not for you, you know it yourself. Go away now. Now is the time to leave. You see what days these are. The dead are coming to life, people trust one another, they can forgive much in a period like this; they can forgive everything, I think. And above all, avoid Sasha. He's sick and insane. He's made you deliver up your cousin, he – he ought to be killed, like a mangy dog. Well, good-by, brother." He seized Yevsey's hand in his cold fingers, and pressed it firmly. "So you gave him my papers?" he asked once more. "You're sure of it, are you?"

"I did – by God! The moment I caught sight of him I at once remembered him."

"All right. I believe you. Don't speak about me there for a few days, I beg you."

"I'm not going there. On the twentieth I'll call for my salary."

"Tell them then. By that time I'll be far away. Good-by."

He turned the corner quickly. Yevsey looked after him, thinking suspiciously:

"He's going off. Probably he did something against the authorities, and got frightened. How he looks, just as if he had gotten a beating."

He grew sorry for himself at the thought that he would never again see Maklakov. Nevertheless, it was agreeable to recall how weak, chilled through, and troubled the spy had looked, the spy who had always borne himself so calmly and firmly.

"He spoke boldly even with the officers of the Department of Safety, spoke to them as if he were their equal. But apparently he was all the time afraid of the author who was under surveillance. And here am I, a little man," thought Yevsey, as he strode down the street, "a little man, afraid of everybody, yet the author didn't frighten me. I was drinking tea at his house, while Maklakov was shivering on the street." Klimkov content with himself smiled. "He couldn't say anything, the author couldn't." Yevsey was suddenly seized with a mingled feeling of sadness and insult. He slackened his pace, and sank into reflections as to why this was. He sought the cause of the grief that unexpectedly rose within him.

"Why did I speak to him?" he thought again on the way. "Instead, I should have told it that time to Olga."

The city awoke, and Yevsey wanted to sleep. He felt uneasiness, discomfort in his breast again. His heart was like a little room from which all the furniture has been removed, and which is left bare and empty, with green stains of dampness on the torn wall-paper, showing the dumb patterns made by the chinks in the plastering.

He wanted to sleep, but it was pleasant to stroll the streets, and he walked homeward with reluctant steps.