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From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor
of which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches
round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands.
Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they
were all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing
discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not
because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they
were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean
blue coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine
straight nose would have been handsome had it not been for his
thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes.
Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were
singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads
his white arm with the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally
to spread out his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping
down and he always carefully rolled it up again with his left
hand, as if it were most important that the sinewy white arm he
was flourishing should be bare. In the midst of the song cries
were heard, and fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The
tall lad waved his arm.
"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's
a fight, lads!" And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went
out to the porch.
The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the leadership
of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, had
brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this
had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring
smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing
it to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too
and a fight in the porch had resulted.
The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and
when the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from
the tavern keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.
Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against
the publican with his chest.
The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in
the face and cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"
At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his
bruised face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police!
Murder!... They've killed a man, lads!"
"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death- killed!..."
screamed a woman coming out of a gate close by.
A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.
"Haven't you robbed people enough- taking their last
shirts?" said a voice addressing the publican. "What
have you killed a man for, you thief?"
The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes
from the publican to the smith and back again as if considering
whom he ought to fight now.
"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican.
"Bind him, lads!"
"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the
publican, pushing away the men advancing on him, and snatching
his cap from his head he flung it on the ground.
As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance,
the workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.
"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter
to the captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery
is not permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican,
picking up his cap.
"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican
and the tall young fellow repeated one after the other, and they
moved up the street together.
The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands
and others followed behind, talking and shouting.
At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with
closed shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score
of thin, worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and
long tattered coats.
"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman,
with frowning brows and a straggly beard, was saying.
"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit
of us. He's been misleading us all the week and now that he's
brought us to this pass he's made off."
On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the
moving crowd.
"Where are all the folks going?"
"Why, to the police, of course!"
"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And
what did you think? Look what folks are saying."
Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage
of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.
The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe,
waved his bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting
general attention to himself. It was around him that the people
chiefly crowded, expecting answers from him to the questions that
occupied all their minds.
"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government
is there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the
tall youth, with a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks
there's no government! How can one do without government? Or else
there would be plenty who'd rob us."
"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd.
"Will they give up Moscow like this? They told you that for
fun, and you believed it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the
march? Let him in, indeed! That's what the government is for.
You'd better listen to what people are saying," said some
of the mob pointing to the tall youth.
By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered
round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.
"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!"
cried voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.
The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August
31 When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but
at the demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him,
he began in a rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the
beginning.
"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness,"
he read ("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with
a triumphant smile on his lips and a frown on his brow), "to
consult with him to act, and to aid the army to exterminate these
scoundrels. We too will take part..." the reader went on,
and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth victoriously,
"he's going to clear up the whole affair for you...."),
"in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the
devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will
do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels."
The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence.
The tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one
had understood the last part. In particular, the words "I
will come back to dinner," evidently displeased both reader
and audience. The people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and
this was too simple and needlessly comprehensible- it was what
any one of them might have said and therefore was what an ukase
emanating from the highest authority should not say.
They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved
his lips and swayed from side to side.
"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes,
ask him indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the
rear of the crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general
attention turned to the police superintendent's trap which drove
into the square attended by two mounted dragoons.
The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count
Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with
that matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment
in his pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his
coachman to stop.
"What people are these?" he shouted to the men,
who were moving singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.
"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving
no answer.
"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze
coat, "your honor, in accord with the proclamation of his
highest excellency the count, they desire to serve, not sparing
their lives, and it is not any kind of riot, but as his highest
excellence said..."
"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will
be issued concerning you," said the superintendent of police.
"Go on!" he ordered his coachman.
The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what
the superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.
The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with
a scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses
increased their speed.
"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!"
shouted the tall youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him
answer us! Keep him!" shouted different people and the people
dashed in pursuit of the trap.
Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly
the crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.
"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and
left us to perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the
crowd were heard saying more and more frequently.
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