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Random Scribd Documents
 Only a few moments passed before the sage realised that the
knowledge of the horrible is not the horrible, and that the sight of
death is not death. And he felt that in the eyes of the Infinite
wisdom and folly are the same, for the Infinite knows them not. And
the boundaries between knowledge and ignorance, between truth
and falsehood, between top and bottom, faded and his shapeless
thought was suspended in emptiness. Then he grasped his grey
head in his hands and cried out insanely: “I cannot think! I cannot
think!”
Thus it was that under the cool gaze of Lazarus, the man
miraculously raised from the dead, all that serves to affirm life, its
sense and its joys, perished. And people began to say it was
dangerous to allow him to see the Emperor; that it were better to kill
him and bury him secretly, and swear he had disappeared. Swords
were sharpened and youths devoted to the welfare of the people
announced their readiness to become assassins, when Augustus
upset the cruel plans by demanding that Lazarus appear before him.
Even though Lazarus could not be kept away, it was felt that the
heavy impression conveyed by his face might be somewhat
softened. With that end in view expert painters, barbers and artists
were secured who worked the whole night on Lazarus’ head. His
beard was trimmed and curled. The disagreeable and deadly
bluishness of his hands and face was covered up with paint; his
hands were whitened, his cheeks rouged. The disgusting wrinkles of
suffering that ridged his old face were patched up and painted, and
on the smooth surface, wrinkles of good-nature and laughter, and of
pleasant, good-humoured cheeriness, were laid on artistically with
fine brushes.
Lazarus submitted indifferently to all they did with him, and soon
was transformed into a stout, nice-looking old man, for all the world
a quiet and good-humoured grandfather of numerous grandchildren.
He looked as though the smile with which he told funny stories had
not left his lips, as though a quiet tenderness still lay hidden in the
corner of his eyes. But the wedding-dress they did not dare to take
off; and they could not change his eyes—the dark, terrible eyes from
out of which stared the incomprehensible There.

VI

L
azarus was untouched by the magnificence of the imperial
apartments. He remained stolidly indifferent, as though he saw
no contrast between his ruined house at the edge of the desert
and the solid, beautiful palace of stone. Under his feet the hard
marble of the floor took on the semblance of the moving sands of
the desert, and to his eyes the throngs of gaily dressed, haughty
men were as unreal as the emptiness of the air. They looked not into
his face as he passed by, fearing to come under the awful bane of
his eyes; but when the sound of his heavy steps announced that he
had passed, heads were lifted, and eyes examined with timid
curiosity the figure of the corpulent, tall, slightly stooping old man,
as he slowly passed into the heart of the imperial palace. If death
itself had appeared men would not have feared it so much; for
hitherto death had been known to the dead only, and life to the
living only, and between these two there had been no bridge. But
this strange being knew death, and that knowledge of his was felt to
be mysterious and cursed. “He will kill our great, divine Augustus,”
men cried with horror, and they hurled curses after him. Slowly and
stolidly he passed them by, penetrating ever deeper into the palace.
Caesar knew already who Lazarus was, and was prepared to meet
him. He was a courageous man; he felt his power was invincible,
and in the fateful encounter with the man “wonderfully raised from
the dead” he refused to lean on other men’s weak help. Man to man,
face to face, he met Lazarus.
“Do not fix your gaze on me, Lazarus,” he commanded. “I have
heard that your head is like the head of Medusa, and turns into
stone all upon whom you look. But I should like to have a close look
at you, and to talk to you before I turn into stone,” he added in a
spirit of playfulness that concealed his real misgivings.
 Approaching him, he examined closely Lazarus’ face and his
strange festive clothes. Though his eyes were sharp and keen, he
was deceived by the skilful counterfeit.
“Well, your appearance is not terrible, venerable sir. But all the
worse for men, when the terrible takes on such a venerable and
pleasant appearance. Now let us talk.”
Augustus sat down, and as much by glance as by words began the
discussion. “Why did you not salute me when you entered?”
Lazarus answered indifferently: “I did not know it was necessary.”
“You are a Christian?”
“No.”
Augustus nodded approvingly. “That is good. I do not like the
Christians. They shake the tree of life, forbidding it to bear fruit, and
they scatter to the wind its fragrant blossoms. But who are you?”
With some effort Lazarus answered: “I was dead.”
“I heard about that. But who are you now?”
Lazarus’ answer came slowly. Finally he said again, listlessly and
indistinctly: “I was dead.”
“Listen to me, stranger,” said the Emperor sharply, giving
expression to what had been in his mind before. “My empire is an
empire of the living; my people are a people of the living and not of
the dead. You are superfluous here. I do not know who you are, I do
not know what you have seen There, but if you lie, I hate your lies,
and if you tell the truth, I hate your truth. In my heart I feel the
pulse of life; in my hands I feel power, and my proud thoughts, like
eagles, fly through space. Behind my back, under the protection of
my authority, under the shadow of the laws I have created, men live
and labour and rejoice. Do you hear this divine harmony of life? Do
you hear the war cry that men hurl into the face of the future,
challenging it to strife?”
Augustus extended his arms reverently and solemnly cried out:
“Blessed art thou, Great Divine Life!”
But Lazarus was silent, and the Emperor continued more severely:
“You are not wanted here. Pitiful remnant, half devoured of death,
you fill men with distress and aversion to life. Like a caterpillar on
the fields, you are gnawing away at the full seed of joy, exuding the
slime of despair and sorrow. Your truth is like a rusted sword in the
hands of a night assassin, and I shall condemn you to death as an
assassin. But first I want to look into your eyes. Mayhap only
cowards fear them, and brave men are spurred on to struggle and
victory. Then will you merit not death but a reward. Look at me,
Lazarus.”
At first it seemed to divine Augustus as if a friend were looking at
him, so soft, so alluring, so gently fascinating was the gaze of
Lazarus. It promised not horror but quiet rest, and the Infinite dwelt
there as a fond mistress, a compassionate sister, a mother. And ever
stronger grew its gentle embrace, until he felt, as it were, the breath
of a mouth hungry for kisses... Then it seemed as if iron bones
protruded in a ravenous grip, and closed upon him in an iron band;
and cold nails touched his heart, and slowly, slowly sank into it.
“It pains me,” said divine Augustus, growing pale; “but look,
Lazarus, look!”
Ponderous gates, shutting off eternity, appeared to be slowly
swinging open, and through the growing aperture poured in, coldly
and calmly, the awful horror of the Infinite. Boundless Emptiness
and Boundless Gloom entered like two shadows, extinguishing the
sun, removing the ground from under the feet, and the cover from
over the head. And the pain in his icy heart ceased.
“Look at me, look at me, Lazarus!” commanded Augustus,
staggering...
 Time ceased and the beginning of things came perilously near to
the end. The throne of Augustus, so recently erected, fell to pieces,
and emptiness took the place of the throne and of Augustus. Rome
fell silently into ruins. A new city rose in its place, and it too was
erased by emptiness. Like phantom giants, cities, kingdoms, and
countries swiftly fell and disappeared into emptiness—swallowed up
in the black maw of the Infinite...
“Cease,” commanded the Emperor. Already the accent of
indifference was in his voice. His arms hung powerless, and his eagle
eyes flashed and were dimmed again, struggling against
overwhelming darkness.
“You have killed me, Lazarus,” he said drowsily.
These words of despair saved him. He thought of the people,
whose shield he was destined to be, and a sharp, redeeming pang
pierced his dull heart. He thought of them doomed to perish, and he
was filled with anguish. First they seemed bright shadows in the
gloom of the Infinite.—How terrible! Then they appeared as fragile
vessels with life-agitated blood, and hearts that knew both sorrow
and great joy.—And he thought of them with tenderness.
And so thinking and feeling, inclining the scales now to the side of
life, now to the side of death, he slowly returned to life, to find in its
suffering and joy a refuge from the gloom, emptiness and fear of the
Infinite.
“No, you did not kill me, Lazarus,” said he firmly. “But I will kill
you. Go!”
Evening came and divine Augustus partook of food and drink with
great joy. But there were moments when his raised arm would
remain suspended in the air, and the light of his shining, eager eyes
was dimmed. It seemed as if an icy wave of horror washed against
his feet. He was vanquished but not killed, and coldly awaited his
doom, like a black shadow. His nights were haunted by horror, but
the bright days still brought him the joys, as well as the sorrows, of
life.
Next day, by order of the Emperor, they burned out Lazarus’ eyes
with hot irons and sent him home. Even Augustus dared not kill him.

Lazarus returned to the desert and the desert received him with
the breath of the hissing wind and the ardour of the glowing sun.
Again he sat on the stone with matted beard uplifted; and two black
holes, where the eyes had once been, looked dull and horrible at the
sky. In the distance the Holy City surged and roared restlessly, but
near him all was deserted and still. No one approached the place
where Lazarus, miraculously raised from the dead, passed his last
days, for his neighbours had long since abandoned their homes. His
cursed knowledge, driven by the hot irons from his eyes deep into
the brain, lay there in ambush; as if from ambush it might spring out
upon men with a thousand unseen eyes. No one dared to look at
Lazarus.
And in the evening, when the sun, swollen crimson and growing
larger, bent its way toward the west, blind Lazarus slowly groped
after it. He stumbled against stones and fell; corpulent and feeble,
he rose heavily and walked on; and against the red curtain of sunset
his dark form and outstretched arms gave him the semblance of a
cross.
It happened once that he went and never returned. Thus ended
the second life of Lazarus, who for three days had been in the
mysterious thraldom of death and then was miraculously raised from
the dead.
 THE REVOLUTIONIST
BY MICHAÏL P. ARTZYBASHEV

G
abriel Andersen, the teacher, walked to the edge of the school
garden, where he paused, undecided what to do. Off in the
distance, two miles away, the woods hung like bluish lace
over a field of pure snow. It was a brilliant day. A hundred tints
glistened on the white ground and the iron bars of the garden
railing. There was a lightness and transparency in the air that only
the days of early spring possess. Gabriel Andersen turned his steps
toward the fringe of blue lace for a tramp in the woods.
“Another spring in my life,” he said, breathing deep and peering up
at the heavens through his spectacles. Andersen was rather given to
sentimental poetising. He walked with his hands folded behind him,
dangling his cane.
He had gone but a few paces when he noticed a group of soldiers
and horses on the road beyond the garden rail. Their drab uniforms
stood out dully against the white of the snow, but their swords and
horses’ coats tossed back the light. Their bowed cavalry legs moved
awkwardly on the snow. Andersen wondered what they were doing
there. Suddenly the nature of their business flashed upon him. It
was an ugly errand they were upon, an instinct rather that his
reason told him. Something unusual and terrible was to happen. And
the same instinct told him he must conceal himself from the soldiers.
He turned to the left quickly, dropped on his knees, and crawled on
the soft, thawing, crackling snow to a low haystack, from behind
which, by craning his neck, he could watch what the soldiers were
doing.
There were twelve of them, one a stocky young officer in a grey
cloak caught in prettily at the waist by a silver belt. His face was so
red that even at that distance Andersen caught the odd, whitish
gleam of his light protruding moustache and eyebrows against the
vivid colour of his skin. The broken tones of his raucous voice
reached distinctly to where the teacher, listening intently, lay hidden.
“I know what I am about. I don’t need anybody’s advice,” the
officer cried. He clapped his arms akimbo and looked down at some
one among the group of bustling soldiers. “I’ll show you how to be a
rebel, you damned skunk.”
Andersen’s heart beat fast. “Good heavens!” he thought. “Is it
possible?” His head grew chill as if struck by a cold wave.
“Officer,” a quiet, restrained, yet distinct voice came from among
the soldiers, “you have no right—It’s for the court to decide—you
aren’t a judge—it’s plain murder, not—” “Silence!” thundered the
officer, his voice choking with rage. “I’ll give you a court. Ivanov, go
ahead.”
He put the spurs to his horse and rode away. Gabriel Andersen
mechanically observed how carefully the horse picked its way,
placing its feet daintily as if for the steps of a minuet. Its ears were
pricked to catch every sound. There was momentary bustle and
excitement among the soldiers. Then they dispersed in different
directions, leaving three persons in black behind, two tall men and
one very short and frail. Andersen could see the hair of the short
one’s head. It was very light. And he saw his rosy ears sticking out
on each side.
Now he fully understood what was to happen. But it was a thing
so out of the ordinary, so horrible, that he fancied he was dreaming.
 “It’s so bright, so beautiful—the snow, the field, the woods, the
sky. The breath of spring is upon everything. Yet people are going to
be killed. How can it be? Impossible!” So his thoughts ran in
confusion. He had the sensation of a man suddenly gone insane,
who finds he sees, hears and feels what he is not accustomed to,
and ought not hear, see and feel.
The three men in black stood next to one another hard by the
railing, two quite close together, the short one some distance away.
“Officer!” one of them cried in a desperate voice—Andersen could
not see which it was—“God sees us! Officer!”
Eight soldiers dismounted quickly, their spurs and sabres catching
awkwardly. Evidently they were in a hurry, as if doing a thief’s job.
Several seconds passed in silence until the soldiers placed
themselves in a row a few feet from the black figures and levelled
their guns. In doing so one soldier knocked his cap from his head.
He picked it up and put it on again without brushing off the wet
snow.
The officer’s mount still kept dancing on one spot with his ears
pricked, while the other horses, also with sharp ears erect to catch
every sound, stood motionless looking at the men in black, their long
wise heads inclined to one side.
“Spare the boy at least!” another voice suddenly pierced the air.
“Why kill a child, damn you! What has the child done?”
“Ivanov, do what I told you to do,” thundered the officer, drowning
the other voice. His face turned as scarlet as a piece of red flannel.
There followed a scene savage and repulsive in its gruesomeness.
The short figure in black, with the light hair and the rosy ears,
uttered a wild shriek in a shrill child’s tones and reeled to one side.
Instantly it was caught up by two or three soldiers. But the boy
began to struggle, and two more soldiers ran up.
 “Ow-ow-ow-ow!” the boy cried. “Let me go, let me go! Ow-ow!”
His shrill voice cut the air like the yell of a stuck porkling not quite
done to death. Suddenly he grew quiet. Some one must have struck
him. An unexpected, oppressive silence ensued. The boy was being
pushed forward. Then there came a deafening report. Andersen
started back all in a tremble. He saw distinctly, yet vaguely as in a
dream, the dropping of two dark bodies, the flash of pale sparks,
and a light smoke rising in the clean, bright atmosphere. He saw the
soldiers hastily mounting their horses without even glancing at the
bodies. He saw them galloping along the muddy road, their arms
clanking, their horses’ hoofs clattering.
He saw all this, himself now standing in the middle of the road,
not knowing when and why he had jumped from behind the
haystack. He was deathly pale. His face was covered with dank
sweat, his body was aquiver. A physical sadness smote and tortured
him. He could not make out the nature of the feeling. It was akin to
extreme sickness, though far more nauseating and terrible.
After the soldiers had disappeared beyond the bend toward the
woods, people came hurrying to the spot of the shooting, though till
then not a soul had been in sight.
The bodies lay at the roadside on the other side of the railing,
where the snow was clean, brittle and untrampled and glistened
cheerfully in the bright atmosphere. There were three dead bodies,
two men and a boy. The boy lay with his long soft neck stretched on
the snow. The face of the man next to the boy was invisible. He had
fallen face downward in a pool of blood. The third was a big man
with a black beard and huge, muscular arms. He lay stretched out to
the full length of his big body, his arms extended over a large area
of blood-stained snow.
The three men who had been shot lay black against the white
snow, motionless. From afar no one could have told the terror that
was in their immobility as they lay there at the edge of the narrow
road crowded with people.
That night Gabriel Andersen in his little room in the schoolhouse
did not write poems as usual. He stood at the window and looked at
the distant pale disk of the moon in the misty blue sky, and thought.
And his thoughts were confused, gloomy, and heavy as if a cloud
had descended upon his brain.
Indistinctly outlined in the dull moonlight he saw the dark railing,
the trees, the empty garden. It seemed to him that he beheld them
—the three men who had been shot, two grown up, one a child.
They were lying there now at the roadside, in the empty, silent field,
looking at the far-off cold moon with their dead, white eyes as he
with his living eyes.
“The time will come some day,” he thought, “when the killing of
people by others will be an utter impossibility. The time will come
when even the soldiers and officers who killed these three men will
realise what they have done and will understand that what they
killed them for is just as necessary, important, and dear to them—to
the officers and soldiers—as to those whom they killed.”
“Yes,” he said aloud and solemnly, his eyes moistening, “that time
will come. They will understand.” And the pale disk of the moon was
blotted out by the moisture in his eyes.
A large pity pierced his heart for the three victims whose eyes
looked at the moon, sad and unseeing. A feeling of rage cut him as
with a sharp knife and took possession of him.
But Gabriel Andersen quieted his heart, whispering softly, “They
know not what they do.” And this old and ready phrase gave him the
strength to stifle his rage and indignation.

II
T
he day was as bright and white, but the spring was already
advanced. The wet soil smelt of spring. Clear cold water ran
everywhere from under the loose, thawing snow. The
branches of the trees were springy and elastic. For miles and miles
around, the country opened up in clear azure stretches.
Yet the clearness and the joy of the spring day were not in the
village. They were somewhere outside the village, where there were
no people—in the fields, the woods and the mountains. In the village
the air was stifling, heavy and terrible as in a nightmare.
Gabriel Andersen stood in the road near a crowd of dark, sad,
absent-minded people and craned his neck to see the preparations
for the flogging of seven peasants.
They stood in the thawing snow, and Gabriel Andersen could not
persuade himself that they were people whom he had long known
and understood. By that which was about to happen to them, the
shameful, terrible, ineradicable thing that was to happen to them,
they were separated from all the rest of the world, and so were
unable to feel what he, Gabriel Andersen, felt, just as he was unable
to feel what they felt. Round them were the soldiers, confidently and
beautifully mounted on high upon their large steeds, who tossed
their wise heads and turned their dappled wooden faces slowly from
side to side, looking contemptuously at him, Gabriel Andersen, who
was soon to behold this horror, this disgrace, and would do nothing,
would not dare to do anything. So it seemed to Gabriel Andersen;
and a sense of cold, intolerable shame gripped him as between two
clamps of ice through which he could see everything without being
able to move, cry out or utter a groan.
They took the first peasant. Gabriel Andersen saw his strange,
imploring, hopeless look. His lips moved, but no sound was heard,
and his eyes wandered. There was a bright gleam in them as in the
eyes of a madman. His mind, it was evident, was no longer able to
comprehend what was happening.
 And so terrible was that face, at once full of reason and of
madness, that Andersen felt relieved when they put him face
downward on the snow and, instead of the fiery eyes, he saw his
bare back glistening—a senseless, shameful, horrible sight.
The large, red-faced soldier in a red cap pushed toward him,
looked down at his body with seeming delight, and then cried in a
clear voice:
“Well, let her go, with God’s blessing!”
Andersen seemed not to see the soldiers, the sky, the horses or
the crowd. He did not feel the cold, the terror or the shame. He did
not hear the swish of the knout in the air or the savage howl of pain
and despair. He only saw the bare back of a man’s body swelling up
and covered over evenly with white and purple stripes. Gradually the
bare back lost the semblance of human flesh. The blood oozed and
squirted, forming patches, drops and rivulets, which ran down on
the white, thawing snow.
Terror gripped the soul of Gabriel Andersen as he thought of the
moment when the man would rise and face all the people who had
seen his body bared out in the open and reduced to a bloody pulp.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw four soldiers in
uniform and red hats forcing another man down on the snow, his
back bared just as shamefully, terribly and absurdly—a ludicrously
tragic sight.
Then came the third, the fourth, and so on, to the end.
And Gabriel Andersen stood on the wet, thawing snow, craning his
neck, trembling and stuttering, though he did not say a word. Dank
sweat poured from his body. A sense of shame permeated his whole
being. It was a humiliating feeling, having to escape being noticed
so that they should not catch him and lay him there on the snow
and strip him bare—him, Gabriel Andersen.
 The soldiers pressed and crowded, the horses tossed their heads,
the knout swished in the air, and the bare, shamed human flesh
swelled up, tore, ran over with blood, and curled like a snake. Oaths,
wild shrieks rained upon the village through the clean white air of
that spring day.
Andersen now saw five men’s faces at the steps of the town hall,
the faces of those men who had already undergone their shame. He
quickly turned his eyes away. After seeing this a man must die, he
thought.

III

T
here were seventeen of them, fifteen soldiers, a subaltern and
a young beardless officer. The officer lay in front of the fire
looking intently into the flames. The soldiers were tinkering
with the firearms in the wagon.
Their grey figures moved about quietly on the black thawing
ground, and occasionally stumbled across the logs sticking out from
the blazing fire.
Gabriel Andersen, wearing an overcoat and carrying his cane
behind his back, approached them. The subaltern, a stout fellow
with a moustache, jumped up, turned from the fire, and looked at
him.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked excitedly. From his
tone it was evident that the soldiers feared everybody in that district,
through which they went scattering death, destruction and torture.
“Officer,” he said, “there is a man here I don’t know.”
The officer looked at Andersen without speaking.
“Officer,” said Andersen in a thin, strained voice, “my name is
Michelson. I am a business man here, and I am going to the village
on business. I was afraid I might be mistaken for some one else—
you know.”
“Then what are you nosing about here for?” the officer said
angrily, and turned away.
“A business man,” sneered a soldier. “He ought to be searched,
this business man ought, so as not to be knocking about at night. A
good one in the jaw is what he needs.”
“He’s a suspicious character, officer,” said the subaltern. “Don’t you
think we’d better arrest him, what?”
“Don’t,” answered the officer lazily. “I’m sick of them, damn ‘em.”
Gabriel Andersen stood there without saying anything. His eyes
flashed strangely in the dark by the firelight. And it was strange to
see his short, substantial, clean, neat figure in the field at night
among the soldiers, with his overcoat and cane and glasses
glistening in the firelight.
The soldiers left him and walked away. Gabriel Andersen remained
standing for a while. Then he turned and left, rapidly disappearing in
the darkness.
The night was drawing to a close. The air turned chilly, and the
tops of the bushes defined themselves more clearly in the dark.
Gabriel Andersen went again to the military post. But this time he
hid, crouching low as he made his way under the cover of the
bushes. Behind him people moved about quietly and carefully,
bending the bushes, silent as shadows. Next to Gabriel, on his right,
walked a tall man with a revolver in his hand.
The figure of a soldier on the hill outlined itself strangely,
unexpectedly, not where they had been looking for it. It was faintly
illumined by the gleam from the dying fire. Gabriel Andersen
recognised the soldier. It was the one who had proposed that he
should be searched. Nothing stirred in Andersen’s heart. His face
was cold and motionless, as of a man who is asleep. Round the fire
the soldiers lay stretched out sleeping, all except the subaltern, who
sat with his head drooping over his knees.
The tall thin man on Andersen’s right raised the revolver and
pulled the trigger. A momentary blinding flash, a deafening report.
Andersen saw the guard lift his hands and then sit down on the
ground clasping his bosom. From all directions short, crackling
sparks flashed up which combined into one riving roar. The subaltern
jumped up and dropped straight into the fire. Grey soldiers’ figures
moved about in all directions like apparitions, throwing up their
hands and falling and writhing on the black earth. The young officer
ran past Andersen, fluttering his hands like some strange, frightened
bird. Andersen, as if he were thinking of something else, raised his
cane. With all his strength he hit the officer on the head, each blow
descending with a dull, ugly thud. The officer reeled in a circle,
struck a bush, and sat down after the second blow, covering his
head with both hands, as children do. Some one ran up and
discharged a revolver as if from Andersen’s own hand. The officer
sank together in a heap and lunged with great force head foremost
on the ground. His legs twitched for a while, then he curled up
quietly.
The shots ceased. Black men with white faces, ghostly grey in the
dark, moved about the dead bodies of the soldiers, taking away their
arms and ammunition.
Andersen watched all this with a cold, attentive stare. When all
was over, he went up, took hold of the burned subaltern’s legs, and
tried to remove the body from the fire. But it was too heavy for him,
and he let it go.

IV

A
ndersen sat motionless on the steps of the town hall, and
thought. He thought of how he, Gabriel Andersen, with his
spectacles, cane, overcoat and poems, had lied and betrayed
fifteen men. He thought it was terrible, yet there was neither pity,
shame nor regret in his heart. Were he to be set free, he knew that
he, Gabriel Andersen, with the spectacles and poems, would go
straightway and do it again. He tried to examine himself, to see what
was going on inside his soul. But his thoughts were heavy and
confused. For some reason it was more painful for him to think of
the three men lying on the snow, looking at the pale disk of the far-
off moon with their dead, unseeing eyes, than of the murdered
officer whom he had struck two dry, ugly blows on the head. Of his
own death he did not think. It seemed to him that he had done with
everything long, long ago. Something had died, had gone out and
left him empty, and he must not think about it.
And when they grabbed him by the shoulder and he rose, and
they quickly led him through the garden where the cabbages raised
their dry heads, he could not formulate a single thought.
He was conducted to the road and placed at the railing with his
back to one of the iron bars. He fixed his spectacles, put his hands
behind him, and stood there with his neat, stocky body, his head
slightly inclined to one side.
At the last moment he looked in front of him and saw rifle barrels
pointing at his head, chest and stomach, and pale faces with
trembling lips. He distinctly saw how one barrel levelled at his
forehead suddenly dropped.
Something strange and incomprehensible, as if no longer of this
world, no longer earthly, passed through Andersen’s mind. He
straightened himself to the full height of his short body and threw
back his head in simple pride. A strange indistinct sense of
cleanness, strength and pride filled his soul, and everything—the sun
and the sky and the people and the field and death—seemed to him
insignificant, remote and useless.
The bullets hit him in the chest, in the left eye, in the stomach,
went through his clean coat buttoned all the way up. His glasses
shivered into bits. He uttered a shriek, circled round, and fell with his
face against one of the iron bars, his one remaining eye wide open.
He clawed the ground with his outstretched hands as if trying to
support himself.
The officer, who had turned green, rushed toward him, and
senselessly thrust the revolver against his neck, and fired twice.
Andersen stretched out on the ground.
The soldiers left quickly. But Andersen remained pressed flat to
the ground. The index finger of his left hand continued to quiver for
about ten seconds.
 THE OUTRAGE—A TRUE STORY
BY ALEKSANDR I. KUPRIN

I
t was five o’clock on a July afternoon. The heat was terrible. The
whole of the huge stone-built town breathed out heat like a
glowing furnace. The glare of the white-walled house was
insufferable. The asphalt pavements grew soft and burned the feet.
The shadows of the acacias spread over the cobbled road, pitiful and
weary. They too seemed hot. The sea, pale in the sunlight, lay heavy
and immobile as one dead. Over the streets hung a white dust.
In the foyer of one of the private theatres a small committee of
local barristers who had undertaken to conduct the cases of those
who had suffered in the last pogrom against the Jews was reaching
the end of its daily task. There were nineteen of them, all juniors,
young, progressive and conscientious men. The sitting was without
formality, and white suits of duck, flannel and alpaca were in the
majority. They sat anywhere, at little marble tables, and the
chairman stood in front of an empty counter where chocolates were
sold in the winter.
The barristers were quite exhausted by the heat which poured in
through the windows, with the dazzling sunlight and the noise of the
streets. The proceedings went lazily and with a certain irritation.
A tall young man with a fair moustache and thin hair was in the
chair. He was dreaming voluptuously how he would be off in an
instant on his new-bought bicycle to the bungalow. He would
undress quickly, and without waiting to cool, still bathed in sweat,
would fling himself into the clear, cold, sweet-smelling sea. His whole
body was enervated and tense, thrilled by the thought. Impatiently
moving the papers before him, he spoke in a drowsy voice.
 “So, Joseph Moritzovich will conduct the case of Rubinchik...
Perhaps there is still a statement to be made on the order of the
day?”
His youngest colleague, a short, stout Karaite, very black and
lively, said in a whisper so that every one could hear: “On the order
of the day, the best thing would be iced kvas...”
The chairman gave him a stern side-glance, but could not restrain
a smile. He sighed and put both his hands on the table to raise
himself and declare the meeting closed, when the doorkeeper, who
stood at the entrance to the theatre, suddenly moved forward and
said: “There are seven people outside, sir. They want to come in.”
The chairman looked impatiently round the company.
“What is to be done, gentlemen?”
Voices were heard.
“Next time. Basta!”
“Let ‘em put it in writing.”
“If they’ll get it over quickly... Decide it at once.”
“Let ‘em go to the devil. Phew! It’s like boiling pitch.”
“Let them in.” The chairman gave a sign with his head, annoyed.
“Then bring me a Vichy, please. But it must be cold.”
The porter opened the door and called down the corridor: “Come
in. They say you may.”
Then seven of the most surprising and unexpected individuals filed
into the foyer. First appeared a full-grown, confident man in a smart
suit, of the colour of dry sea-sand, in a magnificent pink shirt with
white stripes and a crimson rose in his buttonhole. From the front
his head looked like an upright bean, from the side like a horizontal
bean. His face was adorned with a strong, bushy, martial moustache.
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