The Spy

"Monstrosities! You understand nothing. You can't understand the significance of the business. Monstrosities!"

In answer some smiled deprecatingly, others maintained sullen silence.

"For forty rubles a month you can't be expected to understand very much," one would sometimes mutter.

"You ought to be wiped off the face of the earth," shrieked Sasha.

Klimkov began to dislike Sasha more and more, strengthened in his ill-will by the fact that nobody else cared for the diseased man.

Many of the spies were actually sick from the constant dread of attacks and death. Fear drove some, as it had Yelizar Titov, into an insane asylum.

"I was playing in the club yesterday," said Piotr, in a disconcerted tone, "when I felt something pressing on the nape of my neck and a cold shiver running up and down my back-bone. I looked around. There in the corner stood a tall man looking at me as if he were measuring me inch by inch. I could not play. I rose from the table, and I saw him move. I backed out, and ran down the stairs into the yard and out into the street. I took a cab, sat in it sidewise, and looked back. Suddenly the man appeared from somewhere in front of me, and crossed the street under the horse's very nose. Maybe it wasn't he. But in such a case you can't think. How I yelled! He stopped, and I jumped out of the cab, and off I went at a gallop, the cabman after me. Well, how I did run, the devil take it!"

"Such things happen," said Grokhotov, smiling. "I once hid myself for a similar reason in the yard. But it was still more horrible there, so I climbed up to a roof, and sat there behind the chimney until daybreak. A man must guard himself against another man. Such is the law of nature."

Krasavin once entered pale and sweating with staring eyes.

"They were following me," he announced gloomily, pressing his temples.

"Who?"

"They."

Solovyov endeavored to calm him.

"Lots of people walk the streets, Gavrilo. What's that to you?"

"I could tell by the way they walked they were after me."

For more than two weeks Yevsey did not see Krasavin.

The spies treated Klimkov good-naturedly, and their occasional laughter at his expense did not offend him, for when he was grieved over his mistakes, they comforted him:

"You'll get used to the work."

He was puzzled as to when the spies did their work, and tried to unriddle the problem. They seemed to pass the greater part of their time in the cafés, sending novices and such insignificant fellows as himself out for observations.

He knew that besides all the spies with whom he was acquainted there were still others, desperate, fearless men, who mingled with the revolutionists, and were known by the name of provocators. There were only a few such men, but these few did most of the work, and directed it entirely. The authorities prized them very highly, while the street spies, envious of them, were unanimous in their dislike of the provocators because of their haughtiness.

Once in the street Grokhotov pointed out a provocator to Yevsey.

"Look, Klimkov, quick!"

A tall sturdy man was walking along the pavement. His fair hair combed back fell down beautifully from under his hat to his shoulders. His face was large and handsome, his mustache luxuriant. His soberly clad person produced the impression of that of an important, well-fed gentleman of the nobility.

"You see what a fellow?" said Grokhotov with pride. "Fine, isn't he? Our guard. He delivered up twenty men of the bomb. He helped them make the bombs himself. They wanted to blow up a minister. He taught them, then delivered them up. Clever piece of business, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Yevsey, amazed at the man's stately appearance so unlike that of the busy, bustling street spies.

"That's the kind they are, the real ones," said Grokhotov. "Why, he would do for a minister; he has the face and figure for it. And we – what are we? Poverty-stricken dependents upon a hungry nobleman."

Yevsey sighed. The magnificent spy aroused his envy.

Ready to serve anybody and everybody for a good look or a kind word, he ran about the city obediently, searched, questioned, and informed. If he succeeded in pleasing, he rejoiced sincerely, and grew in his own estimation. He worked much, made himself very tired, and had no time to think.

Maklakov, reserved and serious, seemed better and purer to Yevsey than any person he had met up to that time. He always wanted to ask him about something, and tell him about himself – such an attractive and engaging face did this young spy have.

Once Yevsey actually put a question to him:

"Timofey Vesilyevich, how much do the revolutionists receive a month?"

A light shadow passed over Maklakov's bright eyes.

"You are talking nonsense," he answered, not in a loud voice, but angrily.

The days passed quickly, in a constant stir, one just like the other. At times Yevsey felt they would file on in the same way far into the future – vari-colored, boisterous, filled with the talks now become familiar to him and with the running about to which he had already grown accustomed. This thought enfolded his heart in cold tedium, his body in enfeebling languor. Everything within and without became empty. Klimkov seemed to be sliding down into a bottomless pit.

CHAPTER XVI

In the middle of the winter everything suddenly trembled and shook. People anxiously opened their eyes, gesticulated, disputed furiously, and swore. As though severely wounded and blinded by a blow, they all stampeded to one place.

It began in this way. One evening on reaching the Department of Safety to hand in a hurried report of his investigations, Klimkov found something unusual and incomprehensible in the place. The officials, agents, and clerks appeared to have put on new faces. All seemed strangely unlike themselves. They wore an air of astonishment and rejoicing. They spoke now in very low tones and mysteriously, now aloud and angrily. There was a senseless running from room to room, a listening to one another's words, a suspicious screwing-up of anxious eyes, a shaking of heads and sighing, a sudden cessation of talk, and an equally sudden burst of disputing. A whirlwind of fear and perplexity swept the room in broad circles. Playing with the people's impotence it drove them about like dust, first blowing them into a pile, then scattering them on all sides. Klimkov stationed in a corner looked with vacant eyes upon this state of consternation, and listened to the conversation with strained attention.

He saw Melnikov with his powerful neck bent and his head stuck forward place his hairy hands on different persons' shoulders and demand in his low hollow voice:

"Why did the people do it?"

"What of it? The people must live. Hundreds were killed, eh? Wounded!" shouted Solovyov.

From somewhere came the repulsive voice of Sasha, cutting the ear.

"The priest ought to have been caught. That before everything else. The idiots!"

Krasavin walked about with his hands folded behind his back, biting his lips and rolling his eyes in every direction.

Quiet Viekov took up his stand beside Yevsey, and picked at the buttons of his vest.

"So this is the point we've reached," he said. "My God! Bloodshed! What do you think, eh?"

"What happened?" Yevsey asked.

Viekov looked around warily, took Klimkov by the hand, and whispered:

"This morning the people in St. Petersburg with a priest and sacred banners marched to the Czar Emperor. You understand? But they were not admitted. The soldiers were stationed about, and blood was spilled."

A handsome staid gentleman, Leontyev, ran past them, glanced back at Viekov through his pince nez, and asked:

"Where is Filip Filippovich?"