Part 3

He began saying something, hesitated and continued irresolutely, drawling his words.

»Listen, Liuba.... It's quite true! ... It's all such nonsense! But, if you wish it, then we can put out the light? Yes, put out the light, please, Liuba.«

»What?« The girl's eyes opened wide in bewilderment.

»I mean,« he continued hurriedly, »that you are a woman and I am ... certainly I was in the wrong.... Don't think it was compassion, Liuba. No, really it wasn't. Really not, Liuba. I ... but turn out the light, Liuba.«

With an agitated smile he put out his hands to her in the clumsy caressing way of a man who has never had to do with women. And this is what he saw: she clenched her fists with a slow effort and raised them to her chin and became, as it were, one immense gasp contained in her swelling bosom, her eyes huge and staring with horror and anguish and inexpressible contempt.

»What is the matter, Liuba?« he asked, shattered. And with a cold horror, without unclasping her fingers, almost inaudibly she exclaimed:

»Oh, you brute! My God, what a brute you are!«

Crimson with the shame of the reproof, and outraged in that he had himself committed outrage, he stamped furiously on the floor and hurled abuse in rough curt words at those wide staring eyes with their unfathomable terror and pain.

»You prostitute, you! You refuse! Silence! Silence!«

But she still quietly shook her head and repeated:

»My God! My God! What a brute you are.«

»Silence, you slut! You're drunk. You've gone mad! Do you think I need your filthy body? Do you think it's for such as you that I've kept myself? Sluts like you ought to be flogged!« And he lifted his hand as though to box her ears, but did not touch her.

»My God! My God!«

»And they even pity you! You ought to be extirpated, all this abomination and vice! Those who go with you, too--all that rabble! And you dare to think me anything of that sort!«

He roughly took her by the hand and flung her on the chair.

»Oh, you fine man! Fine? Fine, are you?« She laughed in a transport of delight.

»Fine? Yes. All my life! Honourable! Pure! But you? What are you, you harlot, you miserable beast?«

»A fine man!« The delight of it was intoxicating her.

»Yes, fine. After tomorrow I shall be going to my death, for mankind, for you ... and you? You'll be sleeping with my executioners. Call your officers in here! I'll fling you at their feet and tell them, 'Take your carrion!' Call them in!«

Liuba slowly rose to her feet, and when, in a tempest of emotion, with proud distended nostrils, he looked at her, he was met by a look as proud and even more disdainful. Even pity shone in the arrogant eyes of the prostitute; she had mounted miraculously a step of the invisible throne and thence, with a cold and stern attention, gazed down on something at her feet--something petty, clamorous, pitiable. She no longer smiled; there was no trace of excitement; her eyes involuntarily seemed to look for the little step on which she was standing, so conscious was she of the new height from which she looked down on all things beneath her.

»What are you?« he repeated, without moving away, as vehement as ever, but already subdued by that calm, haughty gaze.

Then, with an ominous air of conviction, behind which lay a vista of millions of crushed lives and oceans of bitter tears and the unchecked fiery course of rebellion's cry for justice, she asked sternly:

»What right have you to be fine when I am so common?«

»What?« he did not understand at once, but instantly felt a dread of the gulf that yawned in all its blackness at his very feet.

»I have been waiting for you for a long time.«

»You--waiting for me?«

»Yes, I have been waiting for a fine man. For five years I have been waiting--perhaps longer. All those who came admitted they were brutes--and brutes they were. My author first said he was fine, but then admitted he was a brute, too. I don't want that sort.«

»What, then--what do you want?«

»I want you, my darling,--you. Yes, just such as you.« She scrutinized him carefully and quietly from head to foot and affirmatively nodded her head. »Yes--thank you for coming.«

Then he who feared nothing, trembled.

»What do you want with me?« he asked, stepping back.

»It had to be a fine man, my dear, a really fine man. Those other drivellers--its no good striking them--you only dirty your hands. But now that I have struck you--why, I can kiss my own hand! Little hand, you have hit a fine man!« She smiled, and did in fact three times stroke and kiss her right hand.

He looked at her wildly, and his usually deliberate thoughts coursed with the speed of desperation. There was approaching, like a black cloud, a Thing, terrible and irreparable as death.

»What--what did you say?«

»I said it's shameful to be fine. Didn't you know that?«

»I never--« he muttered, and sat down, deeply confused and no longer fully conscious of her.

»Then learn it now.«

She spoke calmly, and only the swelling of her half-bared bosom betrayed how profound the emotion was that lay suppressed behind that myriad cry.

»Do you realise it now?«

»What?« He was recovering himself.

»Do you realise it, I say?«

»Have patience!«

»I am patient, my dear. I have waited five years. Why shouldn't I be patient for another five minutes?«

She sat back comfortably on the chair, as though in anticipation of a rare pleasure, and crossed her naked arms and closed her eyes.

»You say it's shameful to be fine?«

»Yes, my pet, shameful.«

»But--what you say is....« He stopped short in terror.

» ... is so! Are you afraid? Never mind, never mind--it's only at first that it's frightening.«

»But afterwards?«

»You are going to stay with me and learn what comes afterwards.«

He did not understand.

»How can I stay?«

The girl, in her turn, was startled.

»Can you go anywhere now, after this? Look, dear, don't be deceitful. You're not a scoundrel like the others. You are really fine, and you will stay. It wasn't for nothing I waited for you.«

»You've gone mad!« he exclaimed sharply.

She looked up at him sternly, and even threatened him with her finger.

»That's not fine. Don't speak like that. When a truth comes to you, bow down humbly before it and do not say: 'You have gone mad.' That's what my author says, 'you've gone mad!' But you be honourable!«

»And what if I don't stay?« he asked with a wan smile, his lips distorted and pale.

»You will,« she said with conviction. »Where can you go now? You have nowhere to go. You are honourable. I saw it the moment you kissed my hand. A fool, I thought, but honourable. You are not offended that I mistook you for a fool? It was your own fault. Well--why did you offer me your innocence? You thought: I will give her my innocence and she will renounce it. Oh, you fool! You fool! At first I was even offended. Why, I thought, he doesn't even consider me a human being! And then I saw that this, too, came from this fineness of yours. And this was your calculation: I pay her my innocence, and in return I shall be even purer than before and receive it back like a new shilling that hasn't been in circulation. I give it to the beggar and it will come back to me.... No, my dear, that game is not coming off!«

»N--not coming off?«

»N--no, dear,« she drawled, »for I am not a fool. I've seen enough of these tradespeople. They pile up millions and then give a pound to a church and imagine they have righted themselves. No, dear, you must build me an entire church. You must give me the most precious thing you have, your innocence. Perhaps you are only giving up your innocence because it has become useless to you, because it has tarnished. Are you getting married?«

»No.«

»Supposing you had a bride awaiting you tomorrow with flowers and embraces and love, then would you give away your innocence, or not?«

»I don't know,« he said reflectively.

»This is what I mean. I should have said: Take my life, but leave me my honour. You would give away the cheaper of the two. But, no--you must give me the dearest thing of all, the thing without which you cannot live--that and nothing else!«

»But why should I give it away? Why?«

»Why? Only that it may not be shameful to you.«

»But, Liuba!« he exclaimed in bewilderment. »Listen! You yourself are....«

»Fine, you were going to say? I've heard that too from my author, more than once. But, my dear, that is not the truth. I'm just an ordinary girl, and you will stay and then you will know it.«

»I will not stay,« he cried aloud, between his teeth.

»Don't shriek, my dear. Shrieks avail nothing against the truth--I know that for myself.« And then in a whisper, looking straight in his eyes, she added: »For God, too, is fine!«

»Well, and then?«

»There's no more to be said. Think it out for yourself, and I'll stop talking. It's only five years since I went to church. That's the truth.«

Truth? What truth? What was this unexplored terror, that he had never met before either in the face of death or in life itself? Truth?

Square-cheeked, hard-headed, conscious only of the conflict in his soul, he sat there resting his head on his hands and slowly turning his eyes as though from one extreme of life to the other. And life was collapsing--as a badly glued chest, rained upon in the autumn, falls into unrecognisable fragments of what had been so beautiful. He remembered the good fellows with whom he had lived his life and worked in a marvellous union of joy and sorrow--and they seemed strange to him and their life incomprehensible and their work senseless. It was as though someone with mighty fingers had taken hold of his soul and snapped it in two, as one snaps a stick across one's knee, and flung the fragments far apart. It was only a few hours since he left _there_--and all his life seemed to have been spent _here_, in front of this half-naked woman, listening to the distant music and the jingling of spurs; and that it would always be so. And he did not know which side to turn, up or down, but only that he was opposed, tormentingly opposed, to all that had that day become part of his very life and soul. Shameful to be fine....

He recalled the books which had taught him how to live, and he smiled bitterly. Books! There before him was one book, sitting with bare shoulders, closed eyes, an expression of beatitude on a pale distracted face, waiting patiently to be read to the end. Shameful to be fine....

And, all at once, with unbearable pain, grief-stricken, affrighted, he realized once and for all that that life was done with, that it had already become impossible for him to be fine!

He had only lived in that he was fine, it had been his only joy, and his only weapon in the battle of life and death.

All this was gone. Nothing was left. The Dark! Whether he stayed there or returned to his own people ... now, for him, his comrades were no more.

Why had he come to this accursed house! Better had he remained on the street, surrendered to the police, gone to prison where it was possible and even not disgraceful to be fine. And now it was too late even for prison.

»Are you crying?« the girl asked, perturbed.

»No,« he answered curtly. »I never cry.«

»And no need, dearie; we women can weep; you needn't. If you wept, too, who would there be to give an answer to God?«

She was his? This woman was his?

»Liuba,« he cried in anguish, »what can I do? What can I do?«

»Stay with me. You can stay with me, for now you are mine.«

»And They?«

The girl frowned.

»What sort of people are They?«

»Men! Men!« he exclaimed in a frenzy. »Men with whom I used to work. It was _not_ for myself--no, _not_ for self-satisfaction that I bore all this, that I was getting ready to carry out this assassination!«

»Don't talk to me about those people,« she said sternly, though her lips trembled. »Don't mention them to me or I shall quarrel with you again. You hear me?«

»But what are you?« he asked amazed.

»I?--perhaps a cur! And all of us curs! But dearie, be careful! You've been able to take shelter behind us, and so be it. But do not try to hide from Truth; you will never elude her. If you must love mankind, then pity our sorry brotherhood.«

She was sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, in an attitude of blissful repose, foolishly happy, almost beside herself. She moved her head from side to side, her eyes half closed in a daydream, spoke slowly, almost chanting her words.

»My own! My love! We will drink together! We will weep together. Oh, how delightful it will be to weep with you, dear one. I would so weep all my life. He has stayed with me. He has not gone away. When I saw him today, in the glass, it burst upon me at once: This is he!--my betrothed!--my darling! And I do not know who you are, brother or bridegroom of mine. But oh, so closely kin, so much desired....«

He, too, remembered that black dumb pair in the gilded mirror,--and the passing thought: as at a funeral. And all at once the whole thing became so intolerably painful, seemed so wild a nightmare, that he ground his teeth in his grief. His thoughts travelled farther back; he remembered his treasured revolver in his pocket, the two days of constant flight, the plain door that had no handle, and how he looked for a bell, and how a fat lackey who had not yet got his coat on straight had come out in a dirty printed linen shirt, and how he had entered with the proprietress into that white hall and seen those three strange girls.

And with it all a feeling of growing freedom came over him and at last he grasped that he was, as he had ever been, free--absolutely free--that he could go wherever he liked.

Sternly now he surveyed that strange room, severely, with the conviction of a man aroused for an instant from a debauch, seeing himself in foreign surroundings and condemning what he sees.

»What is all this? How idiotic! What a senseless nightmare!«

But--the music was still playing on. But--the woman was still sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, smiling, unable to speak, almost fainting under the load of a happiness beyond sense and experience. But--this was not a dream!

»What is all this? Is this--Truth?«

»Truth, my darling! You and I inseparable!«

This was Truth? Truth--those crumpled petticoats hanging on the wall in their bare disorder? Truth--that carpet on which thousands of drunken men had scuffled in spasms of hideous passion? Truth--this stale, moist fragrance, loathesomely cleaving to the face? Truth--that music and the jingling spurs? Truth--that woman with her pale and harassed face and smile of pitiful bliss?

Again he rested his heavy head on his hands, looking askance with the eyes of a wolf at bay; and his thoughts ran on without connection.

So she was Truth!... That meant that tomorrow and the day after he would not go, and everyone would know why he had not gone, that he had stayed with a girl, drinking; and they would call him traitor and coward and rascal. Some would intercede for him--would guess ... no, better not count on that, better see it all as it was! All over then? Was this the end? Into the dark--thus--into the dark? And what lay beyond? He did not know. In the dark? Probably some new horror. But then as yet he did not understand their ways. How strange that one had to learn to be common! And from whom? From her? No, she was no use. She didn't know anything. He would find out for himself. One had to become really common oneself in order to.... Yes, he would wreck something that was great! And then? And then, some day he would come back to her, or where they were drinking, or into a prison, and he would say: »Now I am not ashamed, now I am not guilty in any respect in your eyes. Now I am one like you, besmirched, fallen, unhappy!« Or he would go into the open street and say: »Look at me, what I am! I had everything--intellect, honour, dignity--stranger still, immortality. And all this I flung at the feet of a whore. I renounced it all because she was common!« What would they say? They would gape, and be astounded, and say, »What a fool!« Yes--yes, a fool! Was he guilty because he was fine? Let her--let everyone--try to be fine! »Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.« But that was just what he had done, all that he had. But this was Christ--in whom he did not believe.... Or perhaps.... »He who loses his soul«--not his life, but his soul.... That was what he was contemplating. Perhaps ... did Christ himself sin with the sinners, commit adultery, get drunk? No, he only forgave those who did, and even loved them. Well, so did he love and forgive and pity her. Then, why sacrifice himself? For she was not of the faith. Nor he. Nor was this Christ; but something else, something more dreadful.

»Oh, this is dreadful, Liuba!«

»Dreadful, darling? Yes, it is dreadful to see Truth.«

Truth--again she named it! But what made it dreadful? Why should he dread what he so desired? No--no--there was nothing to fear. There, in the open, in front of all those gaping mouths, would he not be the highest of them all? Though naked and dirty and ragged--and his face would be horrible then--he who had lost abandoned himself, would he not be the terrible proclaimer of justice eternal, to which God himself must submit--otherwise he were not God?

»There is nothing dreadful about it, Liuba.«

»Yes, darling, there is. You are not afraid, and that is well. But do not provoke it. There is no need to do that.«

»So that is it--that is my end! It is not what I expected--not what I expected for the end of my young and beautiful life. My God, but this is senseless! I must have gone mad! Still it is not too late ... not too late ... I can still escape.«

»My darling,« the woman was murmuring, her hands still clasped behind her head.

He glanced at her and frowned. Her eyes were blissfully closed; a happy, unthinking smile upon her lips expressed an unquenchable thirst, an insatiable hunger, as though she had just tasted something and was preparing for more.

He looked down on her and frowned--on her thin soft arms, on the dark hollows of her armpits; and he got up without any haste. With a last effort to save something precious--life or reason, or the good old Truth--without any flurry, but solemnly, he began dressing himself. He could not find his collar.

»Tell me, have you seen my collar?«

»Where are you going?« The woman looked round. Her hands fell away from her head, and the whole of her strained forward towards him.

»I am going away.«

»You are going away?« she repeated, dragging the words. »You are going? Where?«

He smiled derisively.

»As if I had nowhere to go! I am going to my comrades.«

»To the fine folk? Have you cheated me?«

»Yes. To the fine folk.« Again the same smile. He had finished dressing, he was feeling his pockets.

»Give me my pocket-book.«

She handed it to him.

»And my watch.«

She gave it to him. They had been lying together on the little table.

»Goodbye.«

»Are you frightened?«

The question was quiet and simple. He looked up. There stood a woman, tall and shapely, with thin, almost child-like arms, a pale smile, and blanched lips, asking: »Are you frightened?«

How strangely she could change! Sometimes forceful and even terrible, she was now pathetic and more like a girl than a woman. But all this was of no account. He stepped toward the door.

»But I thought you were going to stay....«

»What?«

»The key's in your pocket--for my sake.«

The lock was already creaking.

»Very well, then! Go ... go to your comrades and....«

It was then, at the last moment, when he had nothing to do but to open the door and go out and seek his comrades and end a noble life with a heroic death--it was then he committed the wild, incomprehensible act that ruined his life. It may have been a frenzy that sometimes unaccountably seizes hold of the strongest and calmest minds; or it may have been actually that, through the drunken scraping of a fiddle somewhere in that bawdy house, through the sorcery of the downcast eyes of a prostitute, he discovered a last new terrible truth of life, a truth of his own, which none other could see and understand. Whichever it were--insanity or revelation, lies or truth, this new understanding of his--he accepted it manfully and unconditionally, with that inflexible spirit which had drawn his previous life along one straight, fiery line, directing its flight like the feathers on an arrow.

He passed his hand slowly, very slowly, over his hard, bristly skull, and, without even shutting the door, simply returned and sat in his former place on the bed. His broad cheekbones, his paleness, made him look more than ever a foreigner.

»What's the matter? Have you forgotten something?«

The girl was astonished. She no longer expected anything.

»No.«

»What is it? Why don't you go?«

Quietly, with the expression of a stone on which life has engraved one last commandment, grim and new, he answered:

»I do not wish to be fine.«

She still waited, not daring to believe, suddenly shrinking from what she had so much sought and yearned for. She knelt down. He smiled gently, and in the same new and impressive manner stood over her and placed his hand on her head and repeated:

»I do not want to be fine.«

The woman busied herself swiftly in her joy. She undressed him like a child, unlaced his boots, fumbling at the knots, stroked his head, his knees, and never so much as smiled--so full was her heart. Then she looked up into his face and was afraid.

»How pale you are! Drink something now--at once! Are you feeling ill, Peter?«

»My name is Alexis.«

»Never mind that. Here, let me give you some in a glass. Well, take care then; don't choke yourself! If you're not used to it, it's not so easy as out of a glass.«

She opened her mouth, seeing him drink with slow, sceptical gulps. He coughed.

»Never mind! You'll be a good drinker, I can see that! Oh, how happy I am!«

With an animal cry she leapt on him, and began smothering him with short, vigorous kisses, to which he had no time to respond. It was funny--she was a stranger, yet kissed so hard! He held her firmly for a moment, held her immovable, and was silent awhile, himself motionless--held her as though he too felt the strength of quiescence, the strength of a woman, as his own strength. And the woman, joyously, obediently, became limp in his arms.

»So be it!« he said, with an imperceptible sigh.

The woman bestirred herself anew, burning in the savagery of her joy as in a fire. Her movements filled the room, as if she were not one but a score of half-witted women who spoke, stirred, went to and fro, kissed him. She plied him with cognac, and drank more herself. Then a sudden recollection seized her; she clasped her hands.

»But the revolver--we forgot that! Give it to me--quick, quick! I must take it to the office.«

»Why?«

»Oh, I'm scared of the thing! Would it go off at once?«

He smiled, and repeated:

»Would it go off at once? Yes, it would. At once!«

He took out his revolver, and, deliberately weighing in his hand that silent and obedient weapon, gave it to the girl. He also handed her the cartridge clips.

»Take them!«

When he was left alone and without the revolver he had carried so many years, the half open door letting in the sound of strange voices and the clink of spurs, he felt the whole weight of the great burden he had taken on his shoulders. He walked silently across the room in the direction where They were to be found, and said one word:

»Well?«

A chill came over him as he crossed his arms, facing Them; and that one little word held many meanings--a last farewell--some obscure challenge, some irrevocable evil resolution to fight everyone, even his own comrades--a little, a very little, sense of reproach.

He was still standing there when Liuba ran in, excitedly calling to him from the door.