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And all the way to the prison the soldiers felt that they were not walking but flying through the air as if hypnotized by the prisoner, they felt neither the ground beneath their feet, nor the passage of time, nor themselves. Mishka Tsiganok, like Yanson, had had to spend seventeen days in prison before his execution.
He stumbled over something and fell upon his face, and then he felt that IT was going to seize him. Lying on his stomach, holding to the floor, hiding his face in the dark, dirty asphalt, Yanson howled in terror. He lay; and cried at the top of his voice until some one came.
Sometimes during sharp turns, Werner's live, bent knee would strike against the live, bent knee of the gendarme, and it was hard to believe that the execution was approaching. "Where are we going?" Yanson asked suddenly. He was somewhat dizzy from the continuous turning of the dark box and he felt slightly sick at his stomach. Werner answered and pressed the Esthonian's hand more firmly.
Satan was disgraced, the sacredness of the prison and the execution was re-established, and the old man inquired condescendingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity: "Do you want to meet somebody or not?" "What for?" "Well, to say good-by! Have you no mother, for instance, or a brother?" "I must not be hanged," said Yanson softly, and looked askance at the warden. "I don't want to be hanged."
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!
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.
If he laughed longer, it seemed to the warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if the warden himself might lead the prisoners to the gates, bowing and saying: "Take a walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some of you would like to go to the village?" "Satan!" But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly.
And from these monotonously repeated words, and from the fact that each day came, passed and ended as every ordinary day had passed, Yanson became convinced that there would be no execution.
Although Yanson had been condemned to death, there were many others similarly sentenced, and he was not regarded as an important criminal. They spoke to him accordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just as they would speak to prisoners who were not to be executed. The warden, on learning of the verdict, said to him: "Well, my friend, they've hanged you!"
The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence. Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer. The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky looked so ordinary, the footsteps of people and their conversation on matters of business sounded so ordinary, the smell of the sour soup of cabbage was so ordinary, customary and natural that he again ceased believing in the execution.
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