Best Russian Short Stories

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Forgive me. What I have said is probably wild and incoherent. But I
am somewhat agitated. Forgive me. I continue. We thieves by profession
know better than any one else how these pogroms were organised. We
wander everywhere: into public houses, markets, tea-shops,
doss-houses, public places, the harbour. We can swear before God and
man and posterity that we have seen how the police organise the
massacres, without shame and almost without concealment. We know them
all by face, in uniform or disguise. They invited many of us to take
part; but there was none so vile among us as to give even the outward
consent that fear might have extorted.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"You know, of course, how the various strata of Russian society behave
towards the police? It is not even respected by those who avail
themselves of its dark services. But we despise and hate it three, ten
times more--not because many of us have been tortured in the detective
departments, which are just chambers of horror, beaten almost to
death, beaten with whips of ox-hide and of rubber in order to extort a
confession or to make us betray a comrade. Yes, we hate them for that
too. But we thieves, all of us who have been in prison, have a mad
passion for freedom. Therefore we despise our gaolers with all the
hatred that a human heart can feel. I will speak for myself. I have
been tortured three times by police detectives till I was half dead.
My lungs and liver have been shattered. In the mornings I spit blood
until I can breathe no more. But if I were told that I will be spared
a fourth flogging only by shaking hands with a chief of the detective
police, I would refuse to do it!

"And then the newspapers say that we took from these hands
Judas-money, dripping with human blood. No, gentlemen, it is a slander
which stabs our very soul, and inflicts insufferable pain. Not money,
nor threats, nor promises will suffice to make us mercenary murderers
of our brethren, nor accomplices with them."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Never ... No ... No ... ," his comrades standing behind him began to
murmur.

"I will say more," the thief continued. "Many of us protected the
victims during this pogrom. Our friend, called Sesoi the Great--you
have just seen him, gentlemen--was then lodging with a Jewish
braid-maker on the Moldavanka. With a poker in his hands he defended
his landlord from a great horde of assassins. It is true, Sesoi the
Great is a man of enormous physical strength, and this is well known
to many of the inhabitants of the Moldavanka. But you must agree,
gentlemen, that in these moments Sesoi the Great looked straight into
the face of death. Our comrade Martin the Miner--this gentleman here"
--the orator pointed to a pale, bearded man with beautiful eyes who
was holding himself in the background--"saved an old Jewess, whom he
had never seen before, who was being pursued by a crowd of these
_canaille_. They broke his head with a crowbar for his pains, smashed
his arm in two places and splintered a rib. He is only just out of
hospital. That is the way our most ardent and determined members
acted. The others trembled for anger and wept for their own impotence.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"None of us will forget the horrors of those bloody days and bloody
nights lit up by the glare of fires, those sobbing women, those little
children's bodies torn to pieces and left lying in the street. But for
all that not one of us thinks that the police and the mob are the real
origin of the evil. These tiny, stupid, loathsome vermin are only a
senseless fist that is governed by a vile, calculating mind, moved by
a diabolical will.

"Yes, gentlemen," the orator continued, "we thieves have nevertheless
merited your legal contempt. But when you, noble gentlemen, need the
help of clever, brave, obedient men at the barricades, men who will be
ready to meet death with a song and a jest on their lips for the most
glorious word in the world--Freedom--will you cast us off then and
order us away because of an inveterate revulsion? Damn it all, the
first victim in the French Revolution was a prostitute. She jumped up
on to a barricade, with her skirt caught elegantly up into her hand
and called out: 'Which of you soldiers will dare to shoot a woman?'
Yes, by God." The orator exclaimed aloud and brought down his fist on
to the marble table top: "They killed her, but her action was
magnificent, and the beauty of her words immortal.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"If you should drive us away on the great day, we will turn to you and
say: 'You spotless Cherubim--if human thoughts had the power to wound,
kill, and rob man of honour and property, then which of you innocent
doves would not deserve the knout and imprisonment for life?' Then we
will go away from you and build our own gay, sporting, desperate
thieves' barricade, and will die with such united songs on our lips
that you will envy us, you who are whiter than snow!

"But I have been once more carried away. Forgive me. I am at the end.
You now see, gentlemen, what feelings the newspaper slanders have
excited in us. Believe in our sincerity and do what you can to remove
the filthy stain which has so unjustly been cast upon us. I have
finished."

He went away from the table and joined his comrades. The barristers
were whispering in an undertone, very much as the magistrates of the
bench at sessions. Then the chairman rose.

"We trust you absolutely, and we will make every effort to clear your
association of this most grievous charge. At the same time my
colleagues have authorised me, gentlemen, to convey to you their deep
respect for your passionate feelings as citizens. And for my own part
I ask the leader of the deputation for permission to shake him by the
hand."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

The two men, both tall and serious, held each other's hands in a
strong, masculine grip.

The barristers were leaving the theatre; but four of them hung back a
little beside the clothes rack in the hall. Isaac Abramovich could not
find his new, smart grey hat anywhere. In its place on the wooden peg
hung a cloth cap jauntily flattened in on either side.

"Yasha!" The stern voice of the orator was suddenly heard from the
other side of the door. "Yasha! It's the last time I'll speak to you,
curse you! ... Do you hear?" The heavy door opened wide. The gentleman
in the sandy suit entered. In his hands he held Isaac Abramovich's
hat; on his face was a well-bred smile.

"Gentlemen, for Heaven's sake forgive us--an odd little
misunderstanding. One of our comrades exchanged his hat by accident...
Oh, it is yours! A thousand pardons. Doorkeeper! Why don't you keep an
eye on things, my good fellow, eh? Just give me that cap, there. Once
more, I ask you to forgive me, gentlemen."

With a pleasant bow and the same well-bred smile he made his way
quickly into the street.

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