第58章 CHAPTER XX(2)

A madman, with two obsessions. A pitiable Samson with his arms round the pillars of society to drag it down upon his head because society had defiled his sister! Ah, how many thousands in Russia like him!

A great yearning filled Gregor's heart, because he understood; but he suppressed expression of it because the sick idea was stronger.

"Yes, yes! I loved those green stones because it was born in me to love beautiful things. Have you forgotten, Boris, the old days in Moscow, when we were students and I made you weep with my fiddle?

There was hope for you then. You had not become a pothouse orator on the rights of the proletariat - the red-combed rooster on the smouldering dungheap! Beauty, no matter in what form, I loved it.

Yes, I was mad about those emeralds. I was always stealing in to see them, to hold them to the light, simply because they were beautiful." Gregor's hands flew to his throat, which he bared. "I lured her there! Twas I, Boris! ... Those beautiful hands of yours, fit for the butcher's block! Kill me! Kill me!"

But Karlov shrank back, covering his eyes. "No! I see now! You wish to die! You shall live!" He rushed toward the far wall, a huge grotesque shadow rising to meet him - his own, thrown upon the wall by the wavering candlelight. He turned shaking, for the temptation had been great.

At once Gregor realized his failure. The tenseness went out of him.

He spoke calmly. "Yes, I wanted to die. I no longer possess anything. I lied, Boris; but it is useless to tell you that. I knew nothing of Anna until it was too late. I wanted to die."

Karlov began to pace furiously, the candle flame springing after him each time he passed it.

There was a question in Gregor's mind. It rushed to his lips a dozen times but he dared not voice it. Olga. Since Karlov could not be tempted to murder, it would be futile to ask for an additional burden of mental torture. Perhaps it had not happened - the terrible picture he drew in his mind - since Karlov had not boasted of it.

"Come, Boris. There is blood on your hands. What is one more daub of it?"

Karlov stopped, scowled, and ran his fingers through his hair.

Perhaps some ugly memory stirred the roots of it. "You wish to die!"

Gregor bent his head to his hands and Karlov resumed his pacing.

After a while Gregor looked up.

"Private vengeance. You begin your rule with private vengeance."

"The vengeance of a people. All the breed. Did France stop at Louis? Do we tear up the roots of the poisonous toadstool that killed someone we loved and leave the other toadstools thriving?"

"To cure the world of all its ills by tearing up the toadstools and the flowers together - do you call that justice? The proletariat shall have everything, and he begins by killing off noble and bourgeoisie and dividing up the loot! Even with his oppression the noble had a right to live. The bourgeoisie must die because of his benefactions to a people. The world for the proletariat, and damnation for the rest!"

"Let each become one of us," cried Karlov, hoarsely. "We give them that right."

"You lie! You have done nothing but assassinate them when they surrendered. But tell me, have not you, Lenine, and Trotzky overlooked something?"

"What?" Karlov was vaguely grateful for this diversion. The lust to kill was still upon him and he was fighting it. He must remember that Gregor wished to die. "What have we overlooked?"

"Human nature. Can you tear it apart and reconstruct it, as you would a clock? What of creative genius in this proletariat millennium of yours?"

"The state will carefully mother that."

Gregor laughed sardonically. "Will there be creative genius under your rule? Will you not suffocate it by taking away the air that energizes it - ambition? You will have all the present marvels of invention to start with, but will you ever go beyond? Have you read history and observed the inexorable? I doubt it. What is progress?

A series of almost imperceptible steps."

"Which capitalism has always obstructed," flung back Karlov.

"Which capitalism has always made possible. Curb it, yes; but abolish it, as you have done in unhappy Russia! Why do you starve there? Poor fool, because you have assassinated those forces which created food - that is to say, put it where you could get it. Three quarters of Russia are against you. You read nothing in that? The efficient and the inefficient, they shall lie down together as the lion and the ass, to paraphrase. They shall become equal because you say so. What is, fundamentally, this Bolshevism? The revolt of the inefficient. The mantle of horror that was Germany's you have torn from her shoulders and thrown upon yours. Fools!"

The anarch's huge fists became knotted; wrinkles corrugated his forehead; but he did not stir. Gregor wanted to die.

Gregor pointed with trembling hand toward the brown litter on the table. "To destroy. You shattered a soul there. You tore mine apart when you did it. For what? To better humanity? No; to rend something, to obliterate something that was beautiful. Demolition.