“In a moment we shall be driving past your house,” said M’sieur Pierre very softly.
Roman began fidgeting on the box and twisting around to Cincinnatus, cried:
“In a moment we shall be driving past your house,” and at once he turned away again, bouncing up and down, like a pleased urchin.
Cincinnatus did not want to look, but still he looked. Marthe was sitting in the branches of the barren apple tree waving a handkerchief, while in the garden next door, among sunflowers and hollyhocks, a scarecrow in a crushed top hat was waving its sleeve. The wall of the house, especially at the spots where leafy shadows had once played, had peeled strangely, and part of the roof—But they had driven past.
“Really, there is something heartless about you,” said M’sieur Pierre with a sigh and impatiently stuck his cane into the back of the driver, who rose slightly and, with frenzied lashings of his whip, achieved a miracle: the nag broke into a gallop.
Now they were driving along the boulevard. The agitation in the city continued to mount. The motley façades of the houses swayed and flapped, as they were hastily decorated with welcoming posters. One small house was especially well decked out: its door opened quickly, a youth came out, and his entire family followed to see him off—this day he had reached execution-attending age; mother was smiling through her tears, granny was thrusting a sandwich into his knapsack, kid brother was handing him his staff. The ancient stone bridges arching above the streets (once such a boon to pedestrians, but now used only by gawkers and street supervisors) were already teeming with photographers. M’sieur Pierre kept tipping his hat. Dandies on their shiny clockwork cycles passed the carriage and craned their necks. A person in Turkish trousers came running out of a café with a pail of confetti, but, missing, sent his varicolored blizzard into the face of a cropped fellow who had just come running from the opposite sidewalk with a bienvenue platter of “bread and salt.”
All that remained of the statue of Captain Somnus was the legs up to the hips, surrounded by roses—it too must have been struck by lightning. Somewhere ahead a brass band was scorching away at the march “Golubchik.” White clouds moved jerkily across the whole sky—I think the same ones pass over and over again, I think there are only three kinds, I think it is all stage-setting, with a suspicious green tinge…
“Now, now, come on, no foolishness,” said M’sieur Pierre. “Don’t you dare start fainting. It’s unworthy of a man.”
And now they had arrived. There were as yet relatively few spectators, but they continued to flow in endlessly. In the center of the plaza—no, not quite in the center, that precisely was the dreadful part—rose the vermilion platform of the scaffold. The old electrically powered municipal hearse stood modestly at a slight distance. A combined brigade of telegraphers and firemen was maintaining order. The band was apparently playing with all its might, since the conductor, a one-legged cripple, was waving furiously; now, however, not a sound was audible.
M’sieur Pierre, raising his plump shoulders, climbed gracefully out of the carriage and immediately turned, wishing to assist Cincinnatus, but Cincinnatus got out from the other side. There was some booing.
Rodrig and Roman hopped off the box; all three pressed around Cincinnatus.
“By myself,” said Cincinnatus.
It was about twenty paces to the scaffold, and, in order that no one might touch him, Cincinnatus was compelled to trot. Somewhere in the crowd a dog barked. Upon reaching the crimson steps, Cincinnatus stopped. M’sieur Pierre took him by the elbow.
“By myself,” said Cincinnatus.
He mounted the platform, where the block was, that is, a smooth, sloping slab of polished oak, of sufficient size so that one could easily lie on it with outspread arms. M’sieur Pierre climbed up also. The public buzzed.
While they were fussing with the buckets and spreading the sawdust, Cincinnatus, not knowing what to do, leaned against the wooden railing, but a slight tremor was running all through it and some curious spectators below started to palpate his ankles; he moved away and, a little short of breath, wetting his lips, his arms folded somewhat awkwardly across his chest, as if he did it for the first time, he began looking around. Something had happened to the lighting, there was something wrong with the sun, and a section of the sky was shaking. Poplars had been planted around the square, but they were stiff and rickety—one of them was very slowly…
But again a buzzing noise passed through the crowd: Rodrig and Roman, stumbling, shoving against each other, puffing and grunting, clumsily carried the heavy case up the steps and plunked it down on the board floor. M’sieur Pierre threw off his jacket remaining clad in a singlet. A turquoise woman was tattooed on his white biceps, while, in one of the first rows of the crowd, which was pressing around the very scaffold (regardless of the firemen’s entreaties), stood the same woman in the flesh, and also her two sisters, as well as the little old man with the fishing rod, and the tanned flower woman, and the youth with his staff, and one of Cincinnatus’s brothers-in-law, and the librarian, reading a newspaper, and that stout fellow Nikita Lukich the engineer—and Cincinnatus also noticed a man whom he used to meet every morning on the way to the kindergarten, but whose name he did not know. Beyond these first rows there followed other rows where eyes and mouths were not so clearly drawn; and beyond them, there were layers of very hazy, and, in their haziness, identical faces, and then—the furthest ones were really quite badly daubed on the backdrop. Another poplar fell.
Suddenly the band stopped—or rather, now that it stopped, one realized that it had been playing all this time. One of the musicians, plump and placid, taking apart his instrument, shook the saliva out of its shiny joints. Beyond the orchestra was a limp, green, allegorical prospect: a portico, cliffs, a soapy cascade.
Nimbly and energetically (so that Cincinnatus involuntarily recoiled) the deputy city director jumped up on the platform, and casually placing one high-raised foot on the block (he was a master of relaxed eloquence) proclaimed in a loud voice:
“Townspeople! One brief remark.
Lately in our streets a tendency has been observed on the part of certain individuals of the younger generation to walk so fast that we oldsters must move aside and step into puddles. I would also like to say that after tomorrow a furniture exhibit will open at the corner of First Boulevard and Brigadier Street and I sincerely hope to see all of you there. I also remind you that tonight, there will be given with sensational success the new comic opera Socrates Must Decrease. I have also been asked to tell you that the Kifer Distributing Center has received a large selection of ladies’ belts, and the offer may not be repeated. Now I make way for other performers and hope, townspeople, that you are all in good health and lack nothing.”
Sliding with the same nimbleness between the cross-pieces of the railing, he jumped down from the platform to the accompaniment of an approbatory murmur. M’sieur Pierre, who had already put on a white apron (from under which his jack boot showed) was carefully wiping his hands on a towel, and calmly, benevolently looking around. As soon as the deputy director had finished, he tossed the towel to his assistants and stepped over to Cincinnatus.
(The square black snouts of the photographers swayed and froze still.)
“No excitement, no fuss, please,” said M’sieur Pierre. “We shall first of all remove our little shirt.”
“By myself,” said Cincinnatus.
“That’s the boy. Take the little shirt away, men. Now I shall show you how to lie down.”
M’sieur Pierre dropped onto the block. The audience buzzed.
“Is this clear?” asked M’sieur Pierre, springing up and straightening his apron (it had come apart at the back, Rodrig helped tie it). “Good. Let’s begin. The light is a bit harsh … Perhaps you could … There, that’s fine. Thank you. Perhaps just a wee bit more … Excellent! Now I shall ask you to lie down.”
“By myself, by myself,” said Cincinnatus and lay face down as he had been shown, but at once he covered the back of his neck with his hands.
“What a silly boy,” said M’sieur Pierre from above. “If you do that how can I… (yes, give it here; then, immediately after, the bucket). And anyway why all this contraction of muscles? There must be no tension at all. Perfectly at ease. Remove your hands, please … (give it to me now). Be quite at ease and count aloud.”
“To ten,” said Cincinnatus.
“What was that, my friend?” said M’sieur Pierre as if asking him to repeat, and softly added, already beginning to heave, “Step back a little, gentlemen.”
“To ten,” repeated Cincinnatus, spreading out his arms.
“I am not doing anything yet,” said M’sieur Pierre with an extraneous note of gasping effort, and the shadow of his swing was already running along the boards, when Cincinnatus began counting loudly and firmly: one Cincinnatus was counting, but the other Cincinnatus had already stopped heeding the sound of the unnecessary count which was fading away in the distance; and, with a clarity he had never experienced before—at first almost painful, so suddenly did it come, but then suffusing him with joy,
