Karlov moodily touched the shoulder of the man on the cot. Stefani Gregor puzzled him. He came to this room more often than was wise, driven by a curiosity born of a cynical philosophy to discover what it was that reenforced this fragile body against threats and thirst and hunger. He knew what he wanted of Gregor - the fiddler on his knees begging for mercy. And always Gregor faced him with that silent calm which reminded him of the sea, aloof, impervious, exasperating. Only once since the day he had been locked in this room had Gregor offered speech. He, Karlov, had roared at him, threatened, baited, but his reward generally had been a twisted wintry smile.
He could not offer physical torture beyond the frequent omissions of food and water; the body would have crumbled. To have planned this for months, and then to be balked by something as visible yet as elusive as quicksilver! Born in the same mudhole, and still Boris Karlov the avenger could not understand Stefani Gregor the fiddler. Perhaps what baffled him was that so valiant a spirit should be housed in so weak a body. It was natural that he, Boris, with the body of a Carpathian bear, should have a soul to match.
But that Stefani, with his paper body, should mock him! The damned bourgeoisie!
The quality of this unending calm was understandable: Gregor was always ready to die. What to do with a man to whom death was release? To hold the knout and to see it turn to water in the hand! In lying he had overreached. Gregor, having accepted as fact the reported death of Ivan, had nothing to live for. Having brought Gregor here to torture he had, blind fool, taken away the fiddler's ability to feel. The fog cleared. He himself had given his enemy this mysterious calm. He had taken out Gregor's soul and dissipated it.
No. Not quite dissipated. What held the body together was the iron residue of the soul. Venom and blood clogged Karlov's throat. He could kill only the body, as he had killed the fiddle; he could not reach the mystery within. Ah, but he had wrung Stefani's heart there.
There were pieces of the fiddle on the table where Gregor had placed them, doubtless to weep over when he was alone. Why hadn't he thought to break the fiddle a little each day?
"Stefani Gregor, sit up. I have come to talk." This was formula.
Karlov did not expect speech from Gregor.
Slowly the thin arms bore up the torso; slowly the legs swung to the floor. But the little gray man's eyes were bright and quick to-night.
"Boris, what is it you want?"
"To talk" - surprised at this unexpected outburst.
"No, no. I mean, what is it all about - these killings, these burnings?"
Karlov was ready at all times to expound the theories that appealed to his dark yet simple mind - humanity overturned as one overturned the sod in the springtime to give it new life.
"To give the proletariat what is his."
"Ha!" said the little man on the cot. "What is his?"
"That which capitalism has taken away from him."
"The proletariat. The lowest in the human scale - and therefore the most helpless. They shall rule, say you. My poor Russia!
Beaten and robbed for centuries, and now betrayed by a handful of madmen - with brains atrophied on one side! You are a fool, Boris.
Your feet are in strange quicksands and your head among chimeras.
You write some words on a piece of paper, and lo! you say they are facts. Without first proving your theories correct you would ram them down the throat of the world. The world rejects you."
"Wait and see, damned bourgeoisie!" thundered Karlov, not alive to the fact that he was being baited.
"Bourgeoisie? Yes, I am of the middle class; the rogue on top and the fool below. I see. The rogue and the fool cannot combine unless the bourgeoisie is obliterated. Go on. I am interested."
"Under the soviet the government shall be everything."
"As it was in Prussia."
Karlov ignored this. "The individual shall never again become rich by exploiting the poor."
Karlov strove to speak calmly. Gregor's willingness to discuss the aims of the proletariat confused him. He suspected some ulterior purpose behind this apparent amiability. He must hold down his fury until this purpose was in the open.
"Well, that is good," Gregor admitted. "But somehow it sounds ancient on my ear. Was there not a revolution in France?"
"Fool, it is the world that is revolting!" Karlov paused. "And no man in the future shall see his sister or his daughter made into a loose woman without redress."
"Your proletariat's sister and daughter. But the daughter of the noble and the daughter of the bourgeoisie - fair game!"
Sometimes there enters a man's head what might be called a sick idea; when the vitality is at low ebb and the future holds nothing. Thus there was a grim and sick idea behind Gregor's gibes. It was in his mind to die. All the things he had loved had been destroyed. So then, to goad this madman into a physical frenzy. Once those gorilla-like hands reached out for him Stefani Gregor's neck would break.
"Be still, fiddler! You know what I mean. There will be no upper class, which is idleness and wastefulness; no middle class, the usurers, the gamblers of necessities, the war makers. One great body of equals shall issue forth. All shall labour."
"For what?"
"The common good."
"Your Lenine offered peace, bread, and work for the overthrow of Kerensky. What you have given - murder and famine and idleness. Can there be common good that is based upon the blood of innocents? Did Ivan ever harm a soul? Have I?"
"You!" Karlov trembled. "You - with your damned green stones! Did you not lure Anna to dishonour with the promise to show her the drums, the sight of which would make all her dreams come true? A child, with a fairy story in her head!"
"You speak of Anna! If you hadn't been spouting your twaddle in taverns you would have had time to instruct Anna against guilelessness and superstition."
"How much did they pay you? Did you fiddle for her to dance? ... But I left their faces in the mud!"
