The Seven Who Were Hanged | Page 4

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