Read Online The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Susan Sontag, Victor Serge, Willard R. Trask - Free Book Online Page B

the amorous tenor, the brave Red soldier … Not far away a squatting Tatar watched over his merchandise: felt hats, carpets, a saddle, daggers, a yellow quilt covered with strange stains, a very old fowling piece. “A good gun,” he said soberly as Romachkin bent over it. “Three hundred.” Thus they became acquainted. The fowling piece was useless, except to attract the dangerous client. “I have another one at home that’s brand new,” the Tatar — Akhim — finally said at their fourth meeting, after they had drunk tea together. “Come and see it.”
    Akhim lived at the end of a courtyard surrounded by white birches, in the district of quiet, clean little alleys around Kropotkin Street (they had to go through Death Street to reach it). There, in a cavern darkened by the hides and felts that hung from the ceiling, Akhim displayed a magnificent Winchester with two shining blue barrels — “twelve hundred rubles, my friend.” That was Romachkin’s salary for six months, and the gun was not at all the weapon for what he had in mind — only two shots, clumsy to transport. Well, by sawing off part of the barrel and two thirds of the stock, it could be carried under an ordinary suit. Romachkin hesitated, weighing the pros and cons. By going into debt, by selling everything he owned which was salable, and even stealing a few things from the office besides, he could not get together six hundred … A series of dull explosions shook the walls and rattled the windowpanes. “What’s that?” — “Nothing, my friend, they’re dynamiting St. Saviour’s Cathedral.” They dropped the subject. “No, really,” Romachkin said, “I can’t, it’s too expensive. Besides …” He had said that he was a hunter, a member of the official hunter’s association, and consequently had a permit … Akhim’s face changed, Akhim’s voice changed, he went for the singing tea-kettle, poured tea into their glasses, sat down opposite Romachkin on a low stool, and drank the amber beverage with relish; doubtless he was getting ready to say something important, perhaps his final price, nine hundred? Romachkin could no more get together nine hundred than twelve hundred. It was devastating. After a long silence he heard Akhim’s caressing voice mingling with the distant boom of an explosion:
    â€œIf it is to kill somebody, I have something better …”
    â€œBetter?” Romachkin asked, gasping for breath …
    On the table, between their glasses, lay a Colt revolver with a short barrel and a black cylinder — a forbidden weapon, the mere presence of which was a crime — a fine clean Colt, calling the hand, fortifying the will.
    â€œFour hundred, my friend.”
    â€œThree hundred,” said Romachkin unconsciously, already filled with the Colt’s spell.
    â€œThree hundred — take it, my friend,” said Akhim, “because my heart trusts you.”
    It was only as he went out that Romachkin noticed how strangely neglected and disorderly Akhim’s quarters looked. It was not a place where anyone lived, it was a place where someone was waiting to vanish, in a confusion like a station platform during the rout of an army. Under the white birches, Akhim smiled at him mildly. Romachkin set out through the peaceful little streets. The heavy Colt lay against his chest, in the inside pocket of his coat. From what robbery, what murder on the distant steppe, did it come? Now it lay against the heart of a pure man whose one thought was justice.
    He stopped for a moment at the entrance to a huge construction yard. There was a wide view under the liquid blue of the moon. In the distance, through scaffolding and the rubble of demolished buildings, he could see the waters of the Moskva, as through the crenelations of a ruined fortress. To the right was the scaffolding of an uncompleted