XI

There began a flustered, crazy bustle. Everyone got up and started to scurry about the pavilion, pushing, shouting, stumbling over fallen chairs. The ladies with trembling hands were hastily putting on their hats. To make things worse, someone had ordered the electric lights to be switched off. Hysterical women’s cries rang out in the darkness.

It was about five o’clock. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky had brightened visibly, its grey, monotonous hue heralding a rainy day. In the dismal twilight of daybreak, which had so unexpectedly succeeded the brightness of electricity, the general confusion seemed still more terrible and depressing, almost unreal. The human figures looked like ghosts from a weird, nightmarish fairy-tale. The faces, crumpled after a sleepless night, were horrible. The supper table, stained with wine and littered with plates, glasses, bottles, suggested some monstrous feast broken off all of a sudden.

The hurry-scurry round the carriages was even uglier; frightened horses snorted and reared, starting away from the bridle; wheels caught in wheels, and axles snapped; engineers called their drivers who were wrangling furiously among themselves. The general effect was that of the dazing havoc wrought by a big night fire. There was a scream – someone had been run over, or perhaps crushed to death.

Bobrov could not find Mitrofan. Once or twice he thought he heard his driver calling back to him from the thick of the tangle of vehicles. But it was quite impossible to get there, for the jam grew worse every moment.

Suddenly a huge paraffin torch flared up in the darkness, high above the crowd. There were shouts of “Out of the way! Stand back, ladies and gentlemen! Out of the way!” An irresistible human wave, driven by an impetuous pressure, swept Bobrov away, almost knocking him down, and wedged him between the rear of one cab and the pole of another. From there he saw a wide roadway form quickly between the vehicles, and saw Kvashnin drive along it in his troika. The flame of the torch wavering above the troika cast a lurid, blood-red light on Kvashnin’s bulky figure.

Mad with pain, fear, and fury, and crushed on all sides, the crowd was howling round the troika. Bobrov felt his temples throb. For an instant it seemed to him that the rider was not Kvashnin, but some blood-stained, monstrous and terrible deity like those Oriental idols under whose carriages fanatics, wild with ecstasy, would fling themselves during religious processions. And he trembled with impotent rage.

After Kvashnin drove past, the crush diminished somewhat, and, turning, Bobrov saw that the pole butting into his back was that of his own phaeton. Mitrofan stood by the box, kindling a torch.

“Quick, to the mill Mitrofan!” he shouted, climbing in. “We’ve got to be there in ten minutes, d’you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mitrofan sullenly.

He walked round the phaeton in order to get on to the box from the right, as befitted a respectable driver, and picked up the reins.

“Only don’t blame me if we kill the horses, master,” he added, half-turning.

“Oh, I don’t care!”

Cautiously and with great difficulty, Mitrofan wound his way out of the huddle of horses and carriages. Reaching the narrow forest road, he gave the restive horses a free rein; they pulled hard, and a headlong race began. The phaeton bounced on the long roots stretching across the bumpy road, and careened to left land right, so that both driver and passenger had to balance themselves.

The red flame of the torch was tossing and roaring, and the long, grotesque shadows of trees were tossing round the phaeton with it. It seemed as if a crowd of tall, thin, blurred ghosts were rushing along beside the phaeton in a ludicrous dance. Sometimes the ghosts would overtake the horses, growing to colossal sizes as they did so, and then drop on the ground and, shrinking rapidly as the phaeton rushed on, vanish in the dark behind Bobrov; then they would dart into the thicket for a few seconds, only to jump back into view hard by the phaeton, or they would run together in serried ranks, swaying and starting, as if whispering among themselves. Several times the boughs of the dense brushwood fringing the road reached out like thin hands to lash Mitrofan and Bobrov across the face.

They drove out of the forest. The horses splashed across a puddle, in which the crimson flame of the torch jumped and broke into furrows, and suddenly they pulled the phaeton at a smart gallop to the top of a steep hillock. A black, dreary field spread out ahead.

“Hurry, Mitrofan, or we’ll never make it!” cried Bobrov impatiently, although the phaeton was racing on at breakneck speed. Mitrofan grumbled in his booming voice and lashed Fairway who was galloping alongside. The driver wondered what had come over his master who was so fond of his horses and had always spared them.

On the horizon, the glow of a tremendous fire cast its wavering reflection on the clouds trailing across the sky. As Bobrov looked up at the flashing sky, a triumphant feeling of malicious joy stirred in his heart. Andreas’ insolent, cruel toast had at once opened his eyes to the cause of Nina’s cold reserve throughout the evening, her mother’s indignation during the mazurka, and Svezhevsky’s intimacy with Kvashnin; he recalled all the rumours and gossip he had heard at the mill about Kvashnin courting Nina. “Serves him right, the red-headed monster,” he whispered, seething with hatred and so deeply humiliated that his mouth felt dry. “If only I could meet him face to face now I’d spoil his smugness for him, the filthy old buyer of young flesh, the dirty, fat bag crammed with gold. I’d leave a nice stamp on his copper forehead!”

All that he had drunk had failed to intoxicate him, but it had brought about an extraordinary surge of energy, an impatient and morbid lust for action. He was shivering violently, his teeth were chattering, his brain was working rapidly and chaotically as in a fever. He unwittingly talked aloud, groaned, or laughed jerkily while his fists clenched of themselves.

“You must be ill, master. Hadn’t we better go home?” Mitrofan said timidly.

Bobrov flew into a rage.

“Shut up, you fool!” he cried hoarsely. “Drive on!”

Before long they saw from a hilltop the whole mill wrapped in a milky-pink smoke. The timber storage grounds beyond it were blazing like an enormous bonfire. A multitude of small black human figures were scurrying about against the bright background of the fire. You could hear from afar the dry timber crackling in the flames. The round towers of the hot-blast stoves and blast-furnaces would stand out vividly for a moment and then merge with the dark again. The red glow of the fire cast a terrible shine on the brown water of the big square pond. The high dam of the pond was completely covered by the black mass of a huge crowd that seemed to be seething as it moved slowly forward. And a strange roar, vague and sinister, as of a distant sea, came from the formidable human mass compressed in that narrow space.

“Where the hell are you driving, you fathead! Can’t you see the people, you son of a bitch?” The shout came from the road ahead; the next moment a tall bearded man appeared on the road, as if he had darted up from under the horses’ hooves; his hatless head was bandaged all over with white rags.

“Drive on, Mitrofan!” cried Bobrov.

“They’ve set fire to it, master,” he heard Mitrofan’s trembling voice.

The next instant came the whistling of a rock hurled from behind, and Bobrov felt a sharp pain a little above his right temple. He touched it, and as he took his hand away it was sticky with warm blood.

The phaeton sped on. The glow grew brighter. The horses’ long shadows ran from one side of the road to the other. At times it seemed to Bobrov as if he were racing down a steep slope and about to hurtle into a precipice, phaeton and all. He had lost all ability to take his bearings and could not recognize the places they passed. Suddenly the horses stood still.

“Well, Mitrofan, why did you stop?” he cried irritably.

“How can I drive on with people ahead?” Mitrofan retorted with sullen anger.

Hard as he peered into the grey twilight of early dawn, Bobrov could see nothing but a black uneven wall, with the sky flaming above it.

“What people are you talking about, damn you?” Bobrov got down and walked round the horses, which were white with lather.

As soon as he had walked a few paces from the horses he realized that what he had taken for a black wall was a large, dense crowd of workmen that had flooded the road and was moving slowly on in silence. Bobrov walked mechanically some fifty paces behind the workmen and then turned back to find Mitrofan and get to the mill by some other way. But Mitrofan and the horses were gone. Bobrov could not make out whether Mitrofan had driven off to look for him or he himself had wandered away. He started to call the driver, but got no response. Then he decided to catch up with the workmen he had just left, and he ran back in what he thought was the same direction. But, strangely enough, the workmen seemed to have vanished into thin air, and instead of them Bobrov bumped into a low wooden fence.

There was no end to that fence either on the right or on the left. Bobrov clambered over it and began to walk up a long, steep hill overgrown with dense, tall weeds. Cold sweat was streaming down his face, and his tongue felt as dry and stiff as a piece of wood; each breath of air he drew caused a sharp pain in his chest; the blood was throbbing violently against the top of his head; his bruised temple hurt unbearably.

The ascent seemed endless, and he was gripped with dull despair. Still he climbed on, falling down again and again, bruising his knees and clutching at prickly shrubs. Sometimes he fancied he was in one of his feverish, morbid dreams. The panic, the long wandering on the road, the endless climb – they were all as painful and absurd, as unexpected and terrible, as those nightmares of his.

At last the acclivity ended, and Bobrov knew at once it was the railway embankment. From up there the photographer had taken pictures of the group of engineers and workmen during the religious service the day before. He sat down on a sleeper, completely exhausted, and the next instant something strange happened to him: his feet became painfully weak, he felt a sickening, painful irritation in his chest and abdomen, and his forehead and cheeks went cold. Then everything turned before his eyes and rushed away somewhere, into unfathomable depths.

He came to in half an hour or so. There was an unusual, frightful stillness below, at the foot of the embankment, where the giant mill had been working day and night with an unceasing din. He scrambled to his feet and walked towards the blast-furnaces. His head felt so heavy that he could hardly hold it up; his injured temple caused him a frightful pain at every step. Touching the wound, he again felt the warm stickiness of blood on his fingers. There was blood also on his lips and in his mouth: he could taste its salty, metallic flavour. He had not yet recovered full consciousness, and the effort to recall and grasp the meaning of what had happened caused him a terrible headache. His soul was brimming over with a deep sadness and a desperate, pointless anger.

Morning was visibly near. Everything was grey, cold, and moist – the earth, the sky, the meagre yellow grass, the shapeless heaps of stone piled up on either side of the road. Bobrov was roaming aimlessly among the deserted buildings of the mill, talking aloud to himself as people sometimes do after a severe mental shock. He was trying to pull together his straggling thoughts and bring some order into them.

“Well, tell me, please, what I am to do. Tell me for God’s sake,” he whispered passionately to some outsider who seemed to be lurking in him. “Oh, how hard it is! How painful! How unbearably painful! I think I’ll kill myself. I can’t stand this torture.”

But the outsider replied from the depths of his soul, speaking aloud too, and with rude mockery, “Oh, no, you won’t kill yourself. Why pretend? You’re much too fond of living to kill yourself. You’re too feeble in spirit to do that. You’re too much afraid of physical pain. You reflect too much.”

“So what am I to do? What?” Bobrov whispered again, wringing his hands. “She’s so delicate, so pure – my Nina! She was the only one I had on earth. And all of a sudden – oh, how revolting! – to sell her youth, her virgin body!”

“Stop posing. What’s the good of those pompous words from old melodramas?” said the other ironically. “If you hate Kvashnin so much, go and kill him.”

“I will!” Bobrov shrieked, stopping and thrusting up his fists in fury. “I will! Let him no longer infect honest people with his foul breath! I’ll kill him!”

But the other remarked with venomous mockery, “No, you won’t. You know very well you won’t. You lack both the resolve and the strength to do it. By tomorrow you’ll be reasonable and weak again.”

There were lucid moments in this dreadful state of internal crisis, moments when Bobrov wondered what was wrong with him, and how he had come to be where he was, and what he was to do. And he had to do something – something big and important – but he forgot what, and grimaced with pain as he tried to remember. During one of those lucid moments he found himself standing on the edge of the stokers’ pit. He at once recalled with extraordinary vividness his recent conversation with the doctor on that very spot.

There was not a single stoker below; they were all gone. The boilers had long been cold. Only in the two furnaces on the extreme right and left was the coal still smouldering with a faint glow. A crazy idea flashed across Bobrov’s mind. He squatted, then lowered his feet into the pit, propping himself on his hands, and jumped down.

A shovel stuck out of a heap of coal. He grabbed it and started hurriedly to feed coal into both stokeholes. A minute or two later white flames were roaring in the furnaces, and the water was gurgling in the boiler. Bobrov went on feeding shovelful after shovelful of coal; as he did so he smiled slyly, nodding at someone invisible, and giving senseless exclamations. The morbid, terrible idea of vengeance, which had occurred to him on the road, was tightening its grip on his mind. As he looked at the huge humming body of the boiler lit by fiery flashes, it seemed to him more and more alive and hateful.

No one stood in his way. The water was dwindling fast in the gauge. The gurgle in the boiler and the roar in the furnaces were growing more and more powerful and menacing.

But the unwonted toil soon wore out Bobrov. The veins in his temples were pulsating at a feverish speed, and the blood trickled down his cheek. The access of wild energy was spent, and the outsider in him was saying in a loud, mocking voice:

“Well it needs only one more move to make! But you won’t make it. No, you won’t. Why, the whole thing is so ridiculous that tomorrow you won’t dare to confess having wanted to blow up the steam boilers.”

* * *

The sun – a large blur – had risen above the horizon when Bobrov walked into the mill hospital.

Dr. Goldberg had a moment ago stopped dressing the wounds of injured and maimed people and was washing his hands over a brass wash-stand. His assistant stood beside him, holding a towel ready. On seeing Bobrov the doctor started.

“What’s the matter with you, Andrei Ilyich? You’re a terrible sight,” he said, frightened.

Bobrov did look ghastly. The gore showed in black spots on his pale face, smudged with coal dust. His wet clothes hung in shreds from his arms and knees; his tousled hair fell over his forehead.

“Speak up, man, for God’s sake! What happened?” said Dr. Goldberg, wiping his hands hastily and walking up to Bobrov.

“Oh, it’s nothing at all,” groaned Bobrov. “For goodness’ sake, give me some morphia, doctor. Some morphia, quick, or I’ll go mad! I’m suffering terribly!”

Dr. Goldberg took Bobrov by the arm, hurriedly led him away into another room, and carefully shut the door behind him.

“Listen,” he said, “I can guess what’s tormenting you. Believe me, I’m very sorry for you, and I’m willing to help you. But, my dear man” – ’his voice sounded tearful – ”my dear Andrei Ilyich, couldn’t you do without it somehow? Just remember what an effort it cost you to get over that nasty habit! It’ll be awful if I give you an injection now: you’ll never – do you understand? – you’ll never be able to give it up again.”

Bobrov slumped face downwards on the broad oilskin-draped sofa.

“I don’t care,” he muttered through clenched teeth, shivering from head to foot. “I don’t give a damn, doctor. I can’t bear it any more.”

Dr. Goldberg sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and took a syringe out of a medicine chest. Five minutes later Bobrov was sound asleep on the sofa. A happy smile played on his pale face, grown emaciated overnight. Dr. Goldberg was carefully washing the wound on the sleeper’s head.

1896