The Seven Who Were Hanged | Page 9

madness by the whip, would rear,
as if possessed by a demon; the sled would sway, almost overturn,
striking against poles, and Yanson, letting the reins go, would half sing,
half exclaim abrupt, meaningless phrases in Esthonian. But more often
he would not sing, but with his teeth gritted together in an onrush of
unspeakable rage, suffering and delight, he would drive silently on as
though blind. He would not notice those who passed him, he would not
call to them to look out, he would not slacken his mad pace, either at
the turns of the road or on the long slopes of the mountain roads. How
it happened at such times that he crushed no one, how he himself was
never dashed to death in one of these mad rides, was inexplicable.
He would have been driven from this place, as he had been driven from

other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and
thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he
received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was illiterate,
and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter remained
unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring him
tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with a certain
savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to make love to the
cook, but he was not successful, and was rudely rejected and ridiculed.
He was short in stature, his face was freckled, and his small, sleepy
eyes were somewhat of an indefinite color. Yanson took his failure
indifferently, and never again bothered the cook.
But while Yanson spoke but little, he was listening to something all the
time. He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with
their heaps of frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered
graves, the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the buzzing telegraph
wires, and the conversation of other people. What the fields and
telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew, and the conversation of
the people were disquieting, full of rumors about murders and robberies
and arson. And one night he heard in the neighboring village the little
church bell ringing faintly and helplessly, and the crackling of the
flames of a fire. Some vagabonds had plundered a rich farm, had killed
the master and his wife, and had set fire to the house.
And on their farm, too, they lived in fear; the dogs were loose, not only
at night, but also during the day, and the master slept with a gun by his
side. He wished to give such a gun to Yanson, only it was an old one
with one barrel. But Yanson turned the gun about in his hand, shook his
head and declined it. His master did not understand the reason and
scolded him, but the reason was that Yanson had more faith in the
power of his Finnish knife than in the rusty gun.
"It would kill me," he said, looking at his master sleepily with his
glassy eyes, and the master waved his hand in despair.
"You fool! Think of having to live with such workmen!"
And this same Ivan Yanson, who distrusted a gun, one winter evening,

when the other workmen had been sent away to the station, committed
a very complicated attempt at robbery, murder and rape. He did it in a
surprisingly simple manner. He locked the cook in the kitchen, lazily,
with the air of a man who is longing to sleep, walked over to his master
from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his
knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about,
screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife,
began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the
money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time,
and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in
order to violate her. But as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the
mistress proved stronger than he, and not only did not allow him to
harm her, but almost choked him into unconsciousness. Then the
master on the floor turned, the cook thundered upon the door with the
oven-fork, breaking it open, and Yanson ran away into the fields. He
was caught an hour later, kneeling down behind the corner of the barn,
striking one match after another, which would not ignite, in an attempt
to set the place on fire.
A few days later the master died of blood poisoning, and Yanson, when
his turn among other robbers and murderers came, was tried and
condemned to death. In court he was