Through Russia Part 49

"Are all the rest of our men gone?" inquired the foreman of the newcomers.

"Yes," replied one of them, a tall man with a drooping moustache and no beard.

"Well, 'shun evil, and good will result.'"

"Aye, and we likewise wish to depart."

"But a task ought not to be left unfinished. At dinner-time I sent Olesha to say that none of those fellows had better be released from work; but released they have been, and now the result is apparent!

Presently, when they have drunk a little more of their poison, they will fire the barraque."

Every time that the first of the two carpenters inhaled the smoke of my cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a young fellow as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head upon his breast as soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.

Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But suddenly I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong accents which came from the very centre of the tumult:

"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I should like to know?"

"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning to me, he added more loudly:

"I say this of such fellows--that a tavern... But what a noise those roisterers are making, to be sure!"

The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:

"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize him!"

While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:

"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"

"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from the ex-soldier--whereupon the old man remarked to me in an undertone:

"It would seem that a fight is brewing."

Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I heard the old man say softly to his companions:

"He too is gone, thank G.o.d!"

Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd of men.

Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be carrying or dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently a woman's voice screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised mingled shouts of "Throw him in! Give him a thrashing!" and "Drag him along!"

The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd, straighten himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl himself at the crowd again. As he did so the young fellow in the red shirt raised a gigantic arm, and there followed the sound of a m.u.f.fled, grisly blow. Staggering backwards, Silantiev slid silently into the water, and lay there at my feet.

"That's right!" was the comment of someone.

For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way.

As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.

Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot where, half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head and breast resting against the stepping-stones.

"You have killed him!" next I shouted--not because I believed the statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten into sobriety the men who were impeding me.

Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:

"Surely not?"

As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he pa.s.sed me by with a braggart, resentful shout of:

"Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said that I was a nuisance to the whole country?"

And someone else shouted:

"Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"

"Bring a light," was the cry of a third.

Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again, and, dipping his hands into the water, said gravely:

"You have killed him. He is dead."

At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I stood watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs, and turned them this way and that, and made them stir as though they were striving to divest themselves of the shabby old boots, I realised with all my being that the hands which were resting in mine were the hands of a corpse. And, true enough, when I released them they slapped down upon the surface like wet dish-cloths.

Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to observe what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words rang out these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent, in subdued, uneasy tones, cries of:

"Who was it first struck him?"

"This will lose us our jobs."

"It was the soldier that first started the racket."

"Yes, that is true."

"Let us go and denounce him."

As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:

"I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a quarrel."

"To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."

"It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."

"The soldier ought to--"

A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:

"Good Lord! Always something happens to us!"

As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon the stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight, nothing was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a strange emptiness was present, save that the clamour of the bystanders aroused me to a certain longing to outshout them all, to send forth my voice into the night like the voice of a brazen trumpet.