“This is his wife! Here’s the blackguard Kristianpoller’s wife!” shouted the soldier.
An unspeakable, inhuman lust inflamed his tiny, pallid, hairless face. He raised a short wooden club and brought it down upon the Jewess’s head. It felled her instantly. Everyone cried out. Blood showed upon the kerchief’s shimmering white. And as though the sight of the red blood, the first of that day’s shedding, had lent clear meaning and direction to their vague and smouldering fury, now in the others, too, awoke an invincible desire to strike, to trample underfoot. Red veils of blood already hung before their eyes, streaming red veils like bloody waterfalls. They struck at random, each with whatever he chanced to have in his hand, and their blows fell on the men, the women, and the children, even on inanimate objects within range.
Kontsev, arriving from the barracks with a small platoon, could see at once that he could not cope with the trouble in the town. He sent word post-haste back to Colonel Tarabas, meanwhile addressing the crowd in various languages, shouting alternate threats and reassurance to them above the great commotion. The peasants and the soldiers were, however, too far gone in their delirium to understand or to be sobered by his words. They merely felt obscurely that some force of order was moving their way, inimical therefore, and set themselves to oppose it energetically. The implements with which they had just been laying about them they now employed as missiles against Kontsev and his troop. Kontsev feared to risk giving a decisive command without his colonel’s leave. He decided, therefore, to retreat for the time being, distributing his men on either side of the street to guard such houses as had so far escaped attack. Nor did the crowd attempt to advance. With all the greater violence they turned back on the Jews around them, and on the captives in their midst. Here and there blue flames went up from the interior of the houses, and through doors and windows came screams and wailing. Kontsev waited impatiently. Colonel Tarabas must come any moment now.
But only Kontsev’s messenger came back. He reported that all the officers both in the mess and in their sleeping-quarters were in a state of almost complete inanimation, and that not even the mighty Colonel Tarabas differed, at that moment, from the rest. On the contrary, his condition was, if anything, worse. For as the cook and the soldiers on duty in the mess had told him, there had been a fight in the late afternoon. Old Major Kisilaika, the one whom they had found in charge of the station when they first arrived, left over from the old days and in no mind since to resign, had called across the room to Colonel Tarabas that the kind of reckless drinking which went on there was a thing unknown in the old Russian army. Out of this remark a fracas had arisen. Tarabas had invited all the dissatisfied to leave the new army on the spot. There-upon the officers had started fighting, Tarabas as well. And then there had been a surprising reconciliation all round, the result of which had been a fresh outbreak of the desire to drink until they could hold no more.
Sergeant-Major Kontsev decided to gather his small platoon together and tackle the mob of peasants with fixed bayonets. He was not yet aware that there were soldiers in the crowd. Some of these still had the pistols with them which they had fired at Ramzin’s drawings. They hated Kontsev. They had not forgotten one iota of what he had done to them. They recognized him by his voice, and with Ramzin’s encouragement decided that their moment of revenge was come. They pushed the peasants out of their way and placed themselves in the forefront of the mob. As Kontsev gave the command to advance, Ramzin shot, and the deserters followed suit. Three of Kontsev’s men went down. He realized the danger, but it was too late. Before he could cry “Fire!” to his troops, Ramzin and the deserters had pushed forward and discharged the remainder of their ammunition, to the triumphant yells of the drunken peasants.
Three or four oil-lanterns only lit the street, but now from time to time, ever more frequently, thin tongues of flame shot out from the Jews’ houses, casting a feeble, intermittent shine into the darkness where a short and fierce hand-to-hand encounter now began. Old soldier that he was, Sergeant-Major Kontsev clearly foresaw the outcome of this fight. He knew that his small troop was no match for that infuriated mob. Shame and grief filled him at the thought of the inglorious end awaiting him in this inglorious brawl, him, than whom the mighty Russian army had had no more intrepid soldier. Many another soldier, honourable foes both Austrian and German, he had killed with his honourable soldier’s hands. He had come to this place partly because he had not known where else to go, but partly, too, out of devotion to his master and colonel, Tarabas. What was this new little country to Kontsev? What in the devil’s name were the Koropta Jews to him? — Ah, what an end for an old soldier who had fought in the great war! All these thoughts coursed with great rapidity through grand old Kontsev’s mind while his well-trained soldier’s conscience, like a separate brain — his real one — dictated all the measures to him which this most hideous situation called for. A pistol in his left hand, and in his right the great curved sabre, with the yelling peasants and the deserters, his mortal enemies, all round him, the courageous Kontsev shot and thrust on every side at once. He towered over the besetting horde by his whole powerful and massive head. In every region of his body he felt pain; blow upon blow hailed down upon him. Suddenly he felt something pierce his throat. Dense clouds now hung before his blood-shot eyes, but he could just distinguish Ramzin, with an ordinary peasant’s jack-knife in his upraised hand.
“Dog,” Kontsev said, the death-rattle in his throat. “Son and grandson of a bitch!”
With the last gleam of consciousness vouchsafed him by approaching death Kontsev grasped the ignominious manner of his going. A peasant’s knife had gone into his throat. A despicable bandit had wielded it. Shame, bitterness, and hate distorted his features. He sank down, first upon his knees. Then his arms went out; they fell back to give him room. He had not strength enough to support himself upon his hands. He fell forward and lay at his full length, his face in the slime and litter of the road. The blood streamed out of his neck, it overflowed the collar of his tunic and soaked into the mud.
Over his corpse and over the corpse of the other soldiers the mob’s hobnailed boots trampled and stamped. Some bore self-inflicted wounds, others had been injured. But the sight of their own blood did not in the least appease them; it mounted to their heads even more potently than the other blood which they saw flowing round them. Just as the brief battle had not tired them, but on the contrary had only increased their blind urge to destroy. Out of their cavernously gaping mouths came, in a strange and regular, almost a strict rhythm, inhuman cries, in which sobs and wailing, triumph, grief, weeping and laughter, and the cries of wild beasts in heat and hunger, all were mingled.
One of the soldiers suddenly produced a torch. He had wound a table-cloth round his stick, smashed one of the street-lanterns, drenched the cloth with oil and set it alight. First he made passes with the torch over the heads of the crowd, then he put it first to one of the low, overhanging cottage roofs, then to another. They were shingle-roofs and very dry. Many now followed his example, and gradually the whole Koropta high street had begun to burn.
The licking flames dancing so gaily on the roofs to right and left all the way up and down the street delighted the mob so much that they almost forgot the Jews. True, they still dragged the poor captives with them. When these stumbled and fell to their knees, which they did continually, they were wrenched roughly up again, but they were no longer kicked about or beaten. Their captors even began to talk to them with heartening and pacifying words, and to draw their attention to the gruesome beauties of the night’s performance.