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Updated: August 3, 2024
"It isn't like hanging a dog, which you take behind the barn and it is done in no time. I suppose you would like to be hanged like that, you fool!" "I don't want to be hanged," and suddenly Yanson frowned strangely. "He said that I should be hanged, but I don't want it." And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and joyous laughter.
It seemed from the tone of his voice that Yanson was falling asleep. Werner found his flabby hand in the darkness and pressed it. Yanson withdrew it drowsily. "Are you afraid?" asked Werner. "I don't want to be hanged." They became silent. Werner again found the Esthonian's hand and pressed it firmly between his dry, burning palms.
Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, turning black. The light went out. "The light's out," said Tanya. "Yes, the light's out."
"Yes," answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play on him. "Have you a wife?" asked Yanson. "No. I have no wife. I am single." "I am also alone. Alone," said Yanson. Werner's head also began to feel dizzy.
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.
Only a dog wags his tail and snarls when he is taken to be hanged, but you are a man. Who is that dope? He isn't one of you, is he?" He darted his glance rapidly about, and hissing, kept spitting continuously. Yanson, curled up into a motionless bundle, pressed closely into the corner. The flaps of his outworn fur cap stirred, but he maintained silence.
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.
But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily: "Why must I be hanged?" He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an undertone as he led him away from the courtroom: "You are a fool, young man!" "Why must I be hanged?" repeated Yanson stubbornly.
The little horse, driven to madness by the whip, would rear, as if possessed by a demon; the sled would sway, almost overturn, striking against poles, and Yanson, letting the reins go, would half sing, half exclaim abrupt, meaningless phrases in Esthonian.
The sled would stand sideways, almost overturned, the horse standing with widely spread legs up to his belly in a snow-bank, from time to time lowering his head to lick the soft, downy snow, while Yanson would recline in an awkward position in the sled as if dozing away.
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