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The Seven who were Hanged

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THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED

A STORY BY LEONID ANDREYEV



AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE RUSSIAN BT HERMAN BERNSTEIN.






DEDICATION


To Count Leo N. Tolstoy This Book is Dedicated, by Leonid Andreyev

The Translation of this Story Is Also Respectfully Inscribed to Count
Leo N. Tolstoy by Herman Bernstein



FOREWORD

Leonid Andreyev, who was born in Oryol, in 1871, is the most popular,
and next to Tolstoy, the most gifted writer in Russia to-day. Andreyev
has written many important stories and dramas, the best known among
which are "Red Laughter," "Life of Man," "To the Stars," "The Life of
Vasily Fiveisky," "Eliazar," "Black Masks," and "The Story of the
Seven Who Were Hanged."

In "Red Laughter" he depicted the horrors of war as few men had ever
before done it. He dipped his pen into the blood of Russia and wrote
the tragedy of the Manchurian war.

In his "Life of Man" Andreyev produced a great, imaginative "morality"
play which has been ranked by European critics with some of the
greatest dramatic masterpieces.

The story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" is thus far his most
important achievement. The keen psychological insight and the masterly
simplicity with which Andreyev has penetrated and depicted each of the
tragedies of the seven who were hanged place him in the same class as
an artist with Russia's greatest masters of fiction, Dostoyevsky,
Turgenev and Tolstoy.

I consider myself fortunate to be able to present to the
English-reading public this remarkable work, which has already
produced a profound impression in Europe and which, I believe, is
destined for a long time to come to play an important part in opening
the eyes of the world to the horrors perpetrated in Russia and to the
violence and iniquity of the destruction of human life, whatever the
error or the crime.

New York. HERMAN BERNSTEIN.



INTRODUCTION


[Translation of the Foregoing Letter in Russian]

I am very glad that "The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged" will be
read in English. The misfortune of us all is that we know so little,
even nothing, about one another-neither about the soul, nor the life,
the sufferings, the habits, the inclinations, the aspirations of one
another. Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me
just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping
out boundaries and distances.

As in a hard shell, every human being is enclosed in a cover of body,
dress, and life. Who is man? We may only conjecture. What constitutes
his joy or his sorrow? We may guess only by his acts, which are
oft-times enigmatic; by his laughter and by his tears, which are often
entirely incomprehensible to us. And if we, Russians, who live so
closely together in constant misery, understand one another so poorly
that we mercilessly put to death those who should be pitied or even
rewarded, and reward those who should be punished by contempt and
anger -how much more difficult is it for you Americans, to understand
distant Russia? But then, it is just as difficult for us Russians to
understand distant America, of which we dream in our youth and over
which we ponder so deeply in our years of maturity.

The Jewish massacres and famine; a Parliament and executions; pillage
and the greatest heroism; "The Black Hundred," and Leo Tolstoy-what a
mixture of figures and conceptions, what a fruitful source for all
kinds of misunderstandings! The truth of life stands aghast in
silence, and its brazen falsehood is loudly shouting, uttering
pressing, painful questions: "With whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall
I trust? Whom shall I love?"

In the story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" I attempted to give a
sincere and unprejudiced answer to some of these questions.

That I have treated ruling and slaughtering Russia with restraint and
mildness may best be gathered from the fact that the Russian censor
has permitted my book to circulate. This is sufficient evidence when
we recall how many books, brochures and newspapers have found eternal
rest in the peaceful shade of the police stations, where they have
risen to the patient sky in the smoke and flame of bonfires.

But I did not attempt to condemn the Government, the fame of whose
wisdom and virtues has already spread far beyond the boundaries of our
unfortunate fatherland. Modest and bashful far beyond all measure of
her virtues, Russia would sincerely wish to forego this honor, but
unfortunately the free press of America and Europe has not spared her
modesty, and has given a sufficiently clear picture of her glorious
activities. Perhaps I am wrong in this: it is possible that many
honest people in America believe in the purity of the Russian
Government's intentions--but this question is of such importance that
it requires a special treatment, for which it is necessary to have
both time and calm of soul. But there is no calm soul in Russia.

My task was to point out the horror and the iniquity of capital
punishment under any circumstances. The horror of capital punishment
is great when it falls to the lot of courageous and honest people
whose only guilt is their excess of love and the sense of
righteousness-in such instances, conscience revolts. But the rope is
still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak
and ignorant people. And however strange it may appear, I look with a
lesser grief and suffering upon the execution of the revolutionists,
such as Werner and Musya, than upon the strangling of ignorant
murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like Yanson and Tsiganok. Even
the last mad horror of inevitably approaching execution Werner can
offset by his enlightened mind and his iron will, and Musya, by her
purity and her innocence. * * *

But how are the weak and the sinful to face it if not in madness, with
the most violent shock to the very foundation of their souls? And
these people, now that the Government has steadied its hands through
its experience with the revolutionists, are being hanged throughout
Russia-in some places one at a time, in others, ten at once. Children
at play come upon badly buried bodies, and the crowds which gather
look with horror upon the peasants' boots that are sticking out of the
ground; prosecutors who have witnessed these executions are becoming
insane and are taken away to hospitals-while the people are being
hanged-being hanged.

I am deeply grateful to you for the task you have undertaken in
translating this sad story. Knowing the sensitiveness of the American
people, who at one time sent across the ocean, steamers full of bread
for famine-stricken Russia, I am convinced that in this case our
people in their misery and bitterness will also find understanding and
sympathy. And if my truthful story about seven of the thousands who
were hanged will help toward destroying at least one of the barriers
which separate one nation from another, one human being from another,
one soul from another soul, I shall consider myself happy.

Respectfully yours,
LEONID ANDREYEV.



THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED



CHAPTER I
AT ONE O'CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY!


As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they
feared to arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with
every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious
attempt upon his life had been planned. When they saw that he received
the news calmly, even with a smile, they gave him, also, the details.
The attempt was to be made on the following day at the time that he
was to start out with his official report; several men, terrorists,
plans had already been betrayed by a provocateur, and who were now
under the vigilant surveillance of detectives, were to meet at one
o'clock in the afternoon in front of his house, and, armed with bombs
and revolvers, were to wait till he came out. There the terrorists
were to be trapped.

"Wait!" muttered the Minister, perplexed. "How did they know that I
was to leave the house at one o'clock in the afternoon with my report,
when I myself learned of it only the day before yesterday?"

The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug.

"Exactly at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency," he said.

Half surprised, half commending the work of the police, who had
managed everything skilfully, the Minister shook his head, a morose
smile upon his thick, dark lips, and still smiling obediently, and not
desiring to interfere with the plans of the police, he hastily made
ready, and went out to pass the night in some one else's hospitable
palace. His wife and his two children were also removed from the
dangerous house, before which the bomb-throwers were to gather upon
the following day.

While the lights were burning in the palace, and courteous, familiar
faces were bowing to him, smiling and expressing their concern, the
dignitary experienced a sensation of pleasant excitement-he felt as if
he had already received, or was soon to receive, some great and
unexpected reward. But the people went away, the lights were
extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and fantastic
reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the
ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its
paintings, its statues and its silence, the light-itself silent and
indefinite-awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts
and guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence
and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear
swept over the dignitary.

He had some kidney trouble, and whenever he grew strongly agitated,
his face, his hands and his feet became swollen. Now, rising like a
mountain of bloated flesh above the taut springs of the bed, he felt,
with the anguish of a sick man, his swollen face, which seemed to him
to belong to some one else. Unceasingly he kept thinking of the cruel
fate which people were preparing for him. He recalled, one after
another, all the recent horrible instances of bombs that had been
thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled how
the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty
brick walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by
these meditations, it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body,
outspread on the bed, was already experiencing the fiery shock of the
explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his arms being severed from
the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his brains scattered into
particles, his feet growing numb, lying quietly, their toes upward,
like those of a dead man. He stirred with an effort, breathed loudly
and coughed in order not to seem to himself to resemble a corpse in
any way. He encouraged himself with the live noise of the grating
springs, of the rustling blanket; and to assure himself that he was
actually alive and not dead, he uttered in a bass voice, loudly and
abruptly, in the silence and solitude of the bedroom:

"Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi! (Good boys)!"

He was praising the detectives, the police, and the soldiers-all those
who guarded his life, and who so opportunely and so cleverly had
averted the assassination. But even though he stirred, even though he
praised his protectors, even though he forced an unnatural smile, in
order to express his contempt for the foolish, unsuccessful
terrorists, he nevertheless did not believe in his safety, he was not
sure that his life would not leave him suddenly, at once. Death, which
people had devised for him, and which was only in their minds, in
their intention, seemed to him to be already standing there in the
room. It seemed to him that Death would remain standing there, and
would not go away until those people had been captured, until the
bombs had been taken from them, until they had been placed in a strong
prison. There Death was standing in the corner, and would not go
away-it could not go away, even as an obedient sentinel stationed on
guard by a superior's will and order.

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" this phrase kept
ringing, changing its tone continually: now it was cheerfully mocking,
now angry, now dull and obstinate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up
gramophones had been placed in his room, and all of them, one after
another, were shouting with idiotic repetition the words they had been
made to shout:

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!"

And suddenly, this one o'clock in the afternoon to-morrow, which but a
short while ago was not in any way different from other hours, which
was only a quiet movement of the hand along the dial of his gold
watch, assumed an ominous finality, sprang out of the dial, began to
live separately, stretched itself into an enormously huge black pole
which cut all life in two. It seemed as if no other hours had existed
before it and no other hours would exist after it-as if this hour
alone, insolent and presumptuous, had a right to a certain peculiar
existence.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the Minister angrily, muttering
between his teeth.

The gramophone shouted:

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" and the black pole
smiled and bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed to
a sitting posture, leaning his face on the palms of his hands-he
positively could not sleep on that dreadful night.

Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed palms, he pictured to
himself with horrifying clearness how on the following morning, not
knowing anything of the plot against his life, he would have risen,
would have drunk his coffee, not knowing anything, and then would have
put on his coat in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorkeeper who
would have handed him his fur coat, nor the lackey who would have
brought him the coffee, would have known that it was utterly useless
to drink coffee, and to put on the coat, since a few instants later,
everything- the fur coat and his body and the coffee within it-would
be destroyed by an explosion, would be seized by death. The doorkeeper
would have opened the glass door. ... He, the amiable, kind, gentle
doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals
across his breast- he himself with his own hands would have opened the
terrible door, opened it because he knew nothing. Everybody would have
smiled because they did not know anything. "Oho!" he suddenly said
aloud, and slowly removed his hands from his face. Peering into the
darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, strained look, he
outstretched his hand just as slowly, felt the button on the wall and
pressed it. Then he arose, and without putting on his slippers, walked
in his bare feet over the rug in the strange, unfamiliar bedroom,
found the button of another lamp upon the wall and pressed it. It
became light and pleasant, and only the disarranged bed with the
blanket, which had slipped off to the floor, spoke of the horror, not
altogether past.

In his night-clothes, with his beard disheveled by his restless
movements, with his angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any other
angry old man who suffered with insomnia and shortness of breath. It
was as if the death which people were preparing for him, had made him
bare, had torn away from him the magnificence and splendor which had
surrounded him-and it was hard to believe that it was he who had so
much power, that his body was but an ordinary plain human body that
must have perished terribly in the flame and roar of a monstrous
explosion. Without dressing himself and not feeling the cold, he sat
down in the first armchair he found, stroking his disheveled beard,
and fixed his eyes in deep, calm thoughtfulness upon the unfamiliar
plaster figures of the ceiling.

So that was the trouble! That was why he had trembled in fear and had
become so agitated! That was why Death seemed to stand in the corner
and would not go away, could not go away!

"Fools!" he said emphatically, with contempt.

"Fools!" he repeated more loudly, and turned his head slightly toward
the door that those to whom he was referring might hear it. He was
referring to those whom he had praised hut a moment before, who in the
excess of their zeal had told him of the plot against his life.

"Of course," he thought deeply, an easy, convincing idea arising in
his mind. "Now that they have told me, I know, and feel terrified, but
if I had not been told, I would not have known anything and would have
drunk my coffee calmly. After that Death would have come-but then, am
I so afraid of Death? Here have I been suffering with kidney trouble,
and I must surely die from it some day, and yet I am not
afraid-because I do not know anything. And those fools told me: 'At
one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!' and they thought I
would be glad. But instead of that Death stationed itself in the
corner and would not go away. It would not go away because it was my
thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it: it
would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and
definitely the day and hour of his death. And the fools cautioned me:
'At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!' "

He began to feel light-hearted and cheerful, as if some one had told
him that he was immortal, that he would never die. And, feeling
himself again strong and wise amidst the herd of fools who had so
stupidly and impudently broken into the mystery of the future, he
began to think of the bliss of ignorance, and his thoughts were the
painful thoughts of an old, sick man who had gone through endless
experience. It was not given to any living being-man or beast -to know
the day and hour of death. Here had he been ill not long ago and the
physicians told him that he must expect the end, that he should make
his final arrangements-but he had not believed them and he remained
alive. In his youth he had become entangled in an affair and had
resolved to end his life; he had even loaded the revolver, had
"written his letters, and had fixed upon 'the hour for suicide-but
before the very end he had suddenly changed his mind. It would always
be thus-at the very last moment something would change, an unexpected
accident would befall-no one could tell when he would die.

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" those kind asses
had said to him, and although they had told him of it only that death
might he averted, the mere knowledge of its possibility at a certain
hour again filled him with horror. It was probable that some day he
should be assassinated, but it would not happen to-morrow-it would not
happen to-morrow-and he could sleep undisturbed, as if he were really
immortal. Fools-they did not know what a great law they had dislodged,
what an abyss they had opened, when they said in their idiotic
kindness: "At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!"

"No, not at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency, but no one
knows when. No one knows when! What?"

"Nothing," answered Silence, "nothing."

"But you did say something."

"Nothing, nonsense. I say: to-morrow, at one o'clock in the
afternoon!"

There was a sudden, acute pain in his heart-and he understood that he
would have neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that accursed black
hour standing out of the dial should have passed. Only the shadow of
the knowledge of something which no living being could know stood
there in the corner, and that was enough to darken the world and
envelop him with the impenetrable gloom of horror. The once disturbed
fear of death diffused through his body, penetrated into his bones.

He no longer feared the murderers of the next day-they had vanished,
they had been forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd of hostile
faces and incidents which surrounded his life. He now feared something
sudden and inevitable-an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some
foolish thin little vessel which might suddenly fail to withstand the
pressure of the blood and might burst like a tight glove upon swollen
fingers.

His short, thick neck seemed terrible to him. It became unbearable for
him to look upon his short, swollen ringers-to feel how short they
were and how they were filled with the moisture of death. And if
before, when it was dark, he had had to stir in order not to resemble
a corpse, now in the bright, cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so
filled with horror that he could not move in order to get a cigarette
or to ring for some one. His nerves were giving way. Each one of them
seemed as if it were a bent wire, at the top of which there was a
small head with mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a convulsively
gaping, speechless mouth. He could not draw his breath.

Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust and cobwebs somewhere upon
the ceiling, an electric bell came to life. The small, metallic
tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing
cap, became silent-and again quivered in an unceasing, frightened din.
His Excellency was ringing his bell in his own room.

People began to run. Here and there, in the shadows upon the walls,
lamps flared up -there were not enough of them to give light, but
there were enough to cast shadows. The shadows appeared everywhere;
they rose in the corners, they stretched across the ceiling;
tremulously clinging to each and every elevation, they covered the
walls. And it was hard to understand where all these innumerable,
deformed silent shadows- voiceless souls of voiceless objects-had been
before.

A deep, trembling voice said something loudly. Then the doctor was
hastily summoned by telephone; the dignitary was collapsing. The wife
of his Excellency was also called.



CHAPTER II
CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED


Everything befell as the police had foretold. Four terrorists, three
men and a woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers,
were seized at the very entrance of the house, and another woman was
later found and arrested in the house where the conspiracy had been
hatched. She was its mistress. At the same time a great deal of
dynamite and half finished bomb explosives were seized. All those
arrested were very young; the eldest of the men was twenty-eight years
old, the younger of the women was only nineteen. They were tried in
the same fortress in which they were imprisoned after the arrest; they
were tried swiftly and secretly, as was done during that unmerciful
time.

At the trial all of them were calm, but very serious and thoughtful.
Their contempt for the judges was so intense that none of them wished
to emphasize his daring by even a superfluous smile or by a feigned
expression of cheerfulness. Each was simply as calm as was necessary
to hedge in his soul, from curious, evil and inimical eyes, the great
gloom that precedes death.

Sometimes they refused to answer questions; sometimes they answered,
briefly, simply and precisely, as though they were answering not the
judge, but statisticians, for the purpose of supplying information for
particular special tables. Three of them, one woman and two men, gave
their real names, while two others refused and thus remained unknown
to the judges.

They manifested for all that was going on at the trial a certain
curiosity, softened, as though through a haze, such as is peculiar to
persons who are very ill or are carried away by some great,
all-absorbing idea. They glanced up occasionally, caught some word in
the air more interesting than the others, and then resumed the thought
from which their attention had been distracted.

The man who was nearest to the judges called himself Sergey Golovin,
the son of a retired colonel, himself tin ex-officer. He was still a
very young, light-haired, broad-shouldered man, so strong that neither
the prison nor the expectation of inevitable death could remove the
color from his cheeks and the expression of youthful, happy frankness
from his blue eyes. He kept energetically tugging at his bushy, small
beard, to which he had not become accustomed, and continually
blinking, kept looking out of the window.

It was toward the end of winter, when amidst the snowstorms and the
gloomy, frosty days, the approaching spring sent as a forerunner a
clear, warm, sunny day, or but an hour, yet so full of spring, so
eagerly young and beaming that sparrows on the streets lost their wits
for joy, and people seemed almost as intoxicated. And now the strange
and beautiful sky could be seen through an upper window which was
dust-covered and unwashed since the last summer. At first sight the
sky seemed to be milky-gray-smoke-colored-but when you looked longer
the dark blue color began to penetrate through the shade, grew into an
ever deeper blue-ever brighter, ever more intense. And the fact that
it did not reveal itself all at once, but hid itself chastely in the
smoke of transparent clouds, made it as charming as the girl you love.
And Sergey Golovin looked at the sky, tugged at his beard, blinked now
one eye, now the other, with its long, curved lashes, earnestly
pondering over something. Once he began to move his fingers rapidly
and thoughtlessly, knitted his brow in some joy, but then he glanced
about and his joy died out like a spark which is stepped upon. Almost
instantly an earthen, deathly blue, without first changing into
pallor, showed through the color of his cheeks. He clutched his downy
hair, tore their roots painfully with his fingers, whose tips had
turned white. But the joy of life and spring was stronger, and a few
minutes later his frank young face was again yearning toward the
spring sky. The young, pale girl, known only by the name of Musya, was
also looking in the same direction, at the sky. She was younger than
Golovin, but she seemed older in her gravity and in the darkness of
her open, proud eyes. Only her very thin, slender neck, and her
delicate girlish hands spoke of her youth; but in addition there was
that ineffable something, which is youth itself, and which
sounded so distinctly in her clear, melodious voice, tuned
irreproachably like a precious instrument, every simple word, every
exclamation giving evidence of its musical timbre. She was very pale,
but it was not a deathly pallor, but that peculiar warm whiteness of a
person within whom, as it were, a great, strong fire is burning, whose
body glows transparently like fine Sevres porcelain. She sat almost
motionless, and only at times she touched with an imperceptible
movement of her fingers the circular mark on the middle finger of her
right hand, the mark of a ring which had. been recently removed.

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