“We have arrived!” said Werner gayly when the carriage stopped, and he
jumped out easily. But with Yanson it was a rather slow affair:
silently and very drowsily he resisted and would not come out. He
seized the knob. The gendarme opened the weak fingers and pulled his
hand away. Then Yanson seized the corner of the carriage, the door, the
high wheel, but immediately let it go upon the slightest effort on the
part of the gendarme. He did not exactly seize these things; he rather
cleaved to each object sleepily and silently, and was torn away easily,
without any effort. Finally he got up.
There were no flags. The railroad station was dark, deserted and
lifeless; the passenger trains were not running any longer, and the
train which was silently waiting for these passengers on the way needed
no bright light, no commotion. Suddenly Werner began to feel weary. It
was not fear, nor anguish, but a feeling of enormous, painful,
tormenting weariness which makes one feel like going off somewhere,
lying down and closing one’s eyes very tightly. Werner stretched
himself and yawned slowly. Yanson also stretched himself and quickly
yawned several times.
“I wish they’d be quicker about it,” said Werner wearily. Yanson was
silent, shrinking together.
When the condemned moved along the deserted platform which was
surrounded by soldiers, to the dimly lighted cars, Werner found himself
near Sergey Golovin; Sergey, pointing with his hand somewhere aside,
began to say something, but only the word “lantern” was heard
distinctly, and the rest was drowned in slow and weary yawning.
“What did you say?” asked Werner, also yawning.
“The lantern. The lamp in the lantern is smoking,” said Sergey. Werner
looked around. Indeed, the lamp in the lantern was smoking very much,
and the glass had already turned black on top.
“Yes, it is smoking.”
Suddenly he thought: “What have I to do with the smoking of the lamp,
since——”
Sergey apparently thought the same, as he glanced quickly at Werner and
turned away. But both stopped yawning.
They all went to the cars themselves, only Yanson had to be led by the
arms. At first he stamped his feet and his boots seemed to stick to the
boards of the platform. Then he bent his knees and fell into the arms
of the gendarmes, his feet dangled like those of a very intoxicated
man, and the tips of the boots scraped against the wood. It took a long
time until he was silently pushed through the door.
Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, unconsciously imitating the
movements of his comrades—he did everything as they did. But on
boarding the platform of the car, he stumbled, and a gendarme took him
by the elbow to support him. Vasily shuddered and screamed shrilly,
drawing back his arm:
“Ai!”
“What is it, Vasya?” Werner rushed over to him. Vasily was silent,
trembling in every limb. The confused and even offended gendarme
explained:
“I wanted to keep him from falling, and he—”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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