The story of the seven hanged
LN Andreev
The story of the seven hung The
old, fat, sickly sick man sits in someone else’s house, in someone else’s bedroom, in someone else’s chair and looks at his body with bewilderment, listens to his feelings, tries hard and can not quite master thoughts in his head : “Fools!” They think that when they told me about the attempt on my life, telling me the time when I had to be torn to pieces by a bomb, they saved me from the fear of death! They, fools, think they saved me by secretly bringing me and my family in this strange home, where I am saved, where I’m in As if someone knew the day and the hour when he should die, he could not live with this knowledge, and they say to me: “At one o’clock in the afternoon, Your Excellency!” . “
The minister, on whom the revolutionaries were plotting the assassination, pondered the night that could become his last night, the bliss of the ignorance of the end, as
The perpetrators detained in the denounced time with bombs, hellish machines and revolvers at the door of the minister’s house spend the last nights and days before the hanging, to which they will be hurriedly sentenced, in thoughts as painful.
How can it be that they, young, strong, healthy – will die? And is it death? “I’m afraid of it, the devil, I’m afraid?” Thinks one of the five bomb-throwers, Sergei Golovin, “it’s a pity for me!” It’s a great thing, no matter what the pessimists say, and what if I have a pessimist? And why did my beard grow? Did not grow, did not grow, and then suddenly grew up – why? .. “
In addition to Sergei, the son of a retired colonel (his father at the last meeting wished him to meet death as an officer on the battlefield), there are four more in the prison cell. The son of merchant Vasya Kashirin, who gives all his strength to not show the terror of death to the torturers. Unknown by the name of Werner, who was considered the instigator, who has his mental
With five “political” waiting for the hanging on one crossbar, the Estonian Janson, barely speaking a Russian farmhand, convicted of killing the owner and attempting to rape the mistress (he did all this foolishly, having heard that similar happened on the next farm), and Mikhail Golubets on nickname Tsyganok, the last in a series of atrocities which was the murder and robbery of three people, and the dark past – went into a mysterious depth. Misha himself calls himself with complete frankness a robber, braves both what he did and what awaits him now. Janson, on the contrary, is paralyzed by both the deed and the verdict of the court and repeats the same thing to all, putting everything in one phrase that he can not express: “I do not have to hang.”
The hours and days are on. Until the moment when they are gathered together and then taken together for the city, in the March forest – hung, convicted singly overpower the thought, seeming wild, ridiculous, incredible to each in its own way. The mechanical man Werner, who regarded life as a complex chess problem, will be instantly healed of contempt for people, disgust even for their appearance: he would rise above the world in a balloon – and be touched by how this world is beautiful. Musya dreams of one thing: that people, in whose kindness she believes, did not spare her and did not declare the heroine. She thinks of her comrades, with whom she is destined to die, as friends, whose house will enter with a greeting of laughing lips. Serezha exhausts his body with the gymnastics of the German doctor Müller, defeating fear with an acute sense of life in a young flexible body. Vasya Kashirin is close to insanity, all people seem to him dolls, and, like a drowning man, he grasps at the words “all of those who mourn joy” that have surfaced from somewhere in their early childhood, utters them with emotion… but the emotion evaporates once he remembers the candles, the priest in a cassock, an icon and a hated father, bowing in church. And it becomes even worse. Janson turns into a weak and stupid animal. And only the Gypsies to the last step to the gallows and bite. He was horrified only when he saw that everyone was leading to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. And then Tanechka Kovalchuk gives way to him in a pair with Musya, and the Tsyganok leads her by the arm, guarding and groping for the road to death, as a man should lead a woman. All of them grieving, “utters them with emotion… but the emotion evaporates at once, as soon as he remembers candles, a priest in a cassock, an icon and a hated father bowing in church, and he becomes even more frightening. Jansson turns into a weak and dumb animal. only the Gypsies to the last step to the gallows bragging and zuboskalit. He was horrified only when he saw that everyone was leading to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. Then Kovalchuk concedes to him a place in pair with Musya, and Tsyganok leads her by the arm, guarding and groping for the road to death, as should lead a man to a woman. All of them grieving, “utters them with emotion… but the emotion evaporates at once, as soon as he remembers candles, a priest in a cassock, an icon and a hated father bowing in church, and he becomes even more frightening. Jansson turns into a weak and dumb animal. only the Gypsies to the last step to the gallows bragging and zuboskalit. He was horrified only when he saw that everyone was leading to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. Then Kovalchuk concedes to him a place in pair with Musya, and Tsyganok leads her by the arm, guarding and groping for the road to death, as should lead a man to a woman. And only the Gypsies to the last step to the gallows and bite. He was horrified only when he saw that everyone was leading to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. And then Tanechka Kovalchuk gives way to him in a pair with Musya, and the Tsyganok leads her by the arm, guarding and groping for the road to death, as a man should lead a woman. And only the Gypsies to the last step to the gallows and bite. He was horrified only when he saw that everyone was leading to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. And then Tanechka Kovalchuk gives way to him in a pair with Musya, and the Tsyganok leads her by the arm, guarding and groping for the road to death, as a man should lead a woman.
The sun rises. Fold the corpses in a box. The spring snow is also soft and fragrant, in which a worn-out lost galoshes are lost by Sergei.
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