The Secret of the Night [100]
Koupriane," interrupted Gounsovski, slightly troubled at hearing his wife pronounce Annouchka's name, "Koupriane ought to be able to understand that this time Priemkof must bring things off, or he is definitely ruined."
"Priemkof knows it well enough," replied Madame as she re-filled the glasses, "but Koupriane doesn't know it; that is all we can tell you. Is it enough? All the rest is mere gossip.
It certainly was enough for Rouletabille; he had had enough of it! This idle gossip and these living bombs! These pinchbecks, these whispering tale-tellers in their bourgeois, countrified setting; these politico-police comhinations whose grotesque side was always uppermost; while the terrible side, the Siberian aspect, prisons, black holes, hangings, disappearances, exiles and deaths and martyrdoms remained so jealously hidden that no one ever spoke of them! All that weight of horror, between a good cigar and "a little glass of anisette, monsieur, if you won't take champagne." Still, he had to drink before he left, touch glasses in a health, promise to come again, whenever he wished - the house was open to him. Rouletabille knew it was open to anybody - anybody who had a tale to tell, something that would send some other person to prison or to death and oblivion. No guard at the entrance to check a visitor - men entered Gounsovski's house as the house of a friend, and he was always ready to do you a service, certainly!
He accompanied the reporter to the stairs. Rouletabille was just about to risk speaking of Annouchka to him, in order to approach the subject of Natacha, when Gounsovski said suddenly, with a singular smile:
"By the way, do you still believe in Natacha Trebassof?"
"I shall believe in her until my death," Rouletabille thrust back; "but I admit to you that at this moment I don't know where she has gone."
"Watch the Bay of Lachtka, and come to tell me to-morrow if you will believe in her always," replied Gounsovski, confidentially, with a horrid sort of laugh that made the reporter hurry down the stairs.
And now here was Priemkof to look after! Priemkof after Matiew! It seemed to the young man that he had to contend against all the revolutionaries not only, but all the Russian police as well - and Gounsovski himself, and Koupriane! Everybody, everybody! But most urgent was Priemkof and his living bombs. What a strange and almost incomprehensible and harassing adventure this was between Nihilism and the Russian police. Koupriane and Gounsovski both employed a man they knew to be a revolutionary and the friend of revolutionaries. Nihilism, on its side, considered this man of the police force as one of its own agents. In his turn, this man, in order to maintain his perilous equilibrium, had to do work for both the police and the revolutionaries, and accept whatever either gave him to do as it came, because it was necessary he should give them assurances of his fidelity. Only imbeciles, like Gapone, let themselves be hanged or ended by being executed, like Azef, because of their awkward slips. But a Priemkof, playing both branches of the police, had a good chance of living a long time, and a Gounsovski would die tranquilly in his bed with all the solaces of religion.
However, the young hearts hot with sincerity, sheathed with dynamite, are mysteriously moved in the atrocious darkness of Holy Russia, and they do not know where they will be sent, and it is all one to them, because all they ask is to die in a mad spiritual delirium of hate and love - living bombs!* ____________________________________________________________________
*In the trial after the revolt at Cronstadt two young women were charged with wearing bombs as false bosoms. ____________________________________________________________________
At the corner of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok Rouletabille came in the way of Koupriane, who was leaving for Pere Alexis's place and, seeing the reporter, stopped his carriage and called that he was going immediately to the datcha.
"You have seen Pere Alexis?"
"Yes," said
"Priemkof knows it well enough," replied Madame as she re-filled the glasses, "but Koupriane doesn't know it; that is all we can tell you. Is it enough? All the rest is mere gossip.
It certainly was enough for Rouletabille; he had had enough of it! This idle gossip and these living bombs! These pinchbecks, these whispering tale-tellers in their bourgeois, countrified setting; these politico-police comhinations whose grotesque side was always uppermost; while the terrible side, the Siberian aspect, prisons, black holes, hangings, disappearances, exiles and deaths and martyrdoms remained so jealously hidden that no one ever spoke of them! All that weight of horror, between a good cigar and "a little glass of anisette, monsieur, if you won't take champagne." Still, he had to drink before he left, touch glasses in a health, promise to come again, whenever he wished - the house was open to him. Rouletabille knew it was open to anybody - anybody who had a tale to tell, something that would send some other person to prison or to death and oblivion. No guard at the entrance to check a visitor - men entered Gounsovski's house as the house of a friend, and he was always ready to do you a service, certainly!
He accompanied the reporter to the stairs. Rouletabille was just about to risk speaking of Annouchka to him, in order to approach the subject of Natacha, when Gounsovski said suddenly, with a singular smile:
"By the way, do you still believe in Natacha Trebassof?"
"I shall believe in her until my death," Rouletabille thrust back; "but I admit to you that at this moment I don't know where she has gone."
"Watch the Bay of Lachtka, and come to tell me to-morrow if you will believe in her always," replied Gounsovski, confidentially, with a horrid sort of laugh that made the reporter hurry down the stairs.
And now here was Priemkof to look after! Priemkof after Matiew! It seemed to the young man that he had to contend against all the revolutionaries not only, but all the Russian police as well - and Gounsovski himself, and Koupriane! Everybody, everybody! But most urgent was Priemkof and his living bombs. What a strange and almost incomprehensible and harassing adventure this was between Nihilism and the Russian police. Koupriane and Gounsovski both employed a man they knew to be a revolutionary and the friend of revolutionaries. Nihilism, on its side, considered this man of the police force as one of its own agents. In his turn, this man, in order to maintain his perilous equilibrium, had to do work for both the police and the revolutionaries, and accept whatever either gave him to do as it came, because it was necessary he should give them assurances of his fidelity. Only imbeciles, like Gapone, let themselves be hanged or ended by being executed, like Azef, because of their awkward slips. But a Priemkof, playing both branches of the police, had a good chance of living a long time, and a Gounsovski would die tranquilly in his bed with all the solaces of religion.
However, the young hearts hot with sincerity, sheathed with dynamite, are mysteriously moved in the atrocious darkness of Holy Russia, and they do not know where they will be sent, and it is all one to them, because all they ask is to die in a mad spiritual delirium of hate and love - living bombs!* ____________________________________________________________________
*In the trial after the revolt at Cronstadt two young women were charged with wearing bombs as false bosoms. ____________________________________________________________________
At the corner of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok Rouletabille came in the way of Koupriane, who was leaving for Pere Alexis's place and, seeing the reporter, stopped his carriage and called that he was going immediately to the datcha.
"You have seen Pere Alexis?"
"Yes," said