Hands (a story)

...They discharged me from the Cheka, of course...

...I go into the office, I tear myself loose from the comrades and say, shaking and stammering: 'Shoot me!' I say, 'Shoot me, Felix Edmundovich, but I can't kill that priest!' I say this and fall on the floor like a log, I don't remember anything more...

...He was a Latvian, had a funny name, nothing like ours...

...they're no use for any kind of work...

...He gripped my hand, thanked me, and then took us all—there were about thirty of us boys, all mobilized by the Party—and made us stand in a row and told us, 'you can't build a house on a swamp, you must first dry it, and while you dry it you must kill all kinds of toads and reptiles...

...Don't worry, brother, I understand—you do this to spare my feelings, so I don't feel embarrassed and ashamed...

...You had to drag them off or else it could happen that you come in with the next one and he would start twisting and try to get away from you—all that bother and extra work...

...And there is no wound on him, no blood, he walks and prays: 'Oh Lord, You have stopped a bullet aimed by evil hands...

...So they assigned me to the factory stores...

...Well, I work my share there and make myself useful...

...I came back, had another shot, then took the second one out...

...No one can murder a living soul!' And then more of this sort...

...It's all the same to me...

...I am a Party man...

...Something to do with that Patriarch, Tikhon...

...It had nothing to do with God, or anything like that...

...He was recently sentenced together with another Russian writer, Abram Tertz...

...But all these stories about special rations, that we Chekists were fed with chocolate and white rolls, that's all bourgeois lies...

...Only he looked so severe, didn't even smile...

...but one thing I knew for sure: I couldn't have missed him, I let him have it at only two paces...

...I came to in a hospital...

...Well, I'm not angry at them—they were young, after all, and their life wasn't any too sweet, so they thought up this trick...

...And that third one, he was still young, a handsome priest boy he was...

...The Latvian and Golovchiner went first...

...And you can't go back to the machine with them, that's for sure...

...No, I don't bear them any grudge...

...It is ne-ce-ssary...

...But you understand why it happened to me...

...Well then, Golovchiner and the Latvian finished off theirs, and it was my turn...

...Your hands,' he yelled at me, 'your hands are covered with blood...

...Well now,' they say, 'this and that, here's your assignment, Malinin...

...that's an iron necessity,' he said...

...I drink now and then, when the right company turns up, or when there's something to celebrate, like with you now...

...How you and I kept a secret together, and how you jabbered in French with that Whiteguardist, and how we took Yaroslav...

...You couldn't throw sand in my eyes with that kind of Menshevik crap...

...Ye-es...

...I go, and in my daydreams I see myself catching all the counterrevolutionaries, one by one, and stop them from mucking up our young Soviet Power...

...I was just joking, to keep my spirits up...

...But alcohol they did give us, that's true...

...I was, after all, a revolutionary hero, and, on the other hand, don't you forget, a Party member, a politicallyconscious worker...

...And we had this set-up: the guardroom, you see, was in the middle...

...It touches the heart, if I may say so...

...But this one walks straight towards me with his little steps, and floats in his robe as if I had never shot him...

...I quite forget what the medics call the shakes in their lingo...

...I never did anything like that in my life before, starting conversation with a condemned man...

...Well, look, look all you want...

...Who are you, where are you from and what do you do?' they ask...

...Simply, when I went out into the yard, to pull myself together, our boys took the magazine out of my Mauser and put another one in—with blind cartridges...

...The Party,' they say, 'is mobilizing you, Malinin, Vassili Semyonovich, into the heroic ranks of the Cheka, the Extraordinary Committee to Fight the Counterrevolution...

...Or else I'll really go to pieces...

...So they assigned me to the Special Service Section or, to put it in ordinary language, they made me carry out executions...

...I told him our Regional Committee sent him their greetings...

...I come back, down another one, and some thing gets hold of me...

...you, Vlasyenko, you Golovchiner, and you...' I forgot what they called the fourth one...

...And it packs such a wallop, it almost tore my arm from my shoulder...

...we had ordinary soldiers' rations, if you wish: bread, buckwheat and fish...

...We get out into the yard...

...And I had prepared myself by downing a few...

...Well, Vaska,' they say, 'so you got drunk till you got the shakes?' They mean my hands...

...But our boys from the factory, they ask right away...

...That's not the kind of hands they need there...

...Look,' one of them would say, `you people won and now you're the bosses...

...I grabbed my Mauser and went for the third one...

...I let him go three steps forward, that's the proper way, put the barrel of my gun between his shoulder blades and let him have it...

...They played me a joke, sort of...

...So, I finally went, I mean for the first, and took him out...

...You must, Vassili, you must...

...If you don't finish him off, he, that reptile, will overturn the entire Soviet Republic.' I got used to it...

...They gave us alcohol...

...And there's no bread around, nor horse radish...' Well, I soon cut that kind of talk short...

...Nothing like it, I'm a hard man, a Party man, I don't believe in any gods, angels or archangels—and yet I began to feel faint...

...Doesn't matter, anyway, I got it all written up, I'll show you later...

...But there he stands before me, his eyes aflame like a wolf's, his chest bared, and something like a halo shines over his head —it occurred to me later that he was standing with his head against the sun, it was just about to set...

...And then, you see, I look and this priest that I shot turns around and starts walking towards me...

...Of course, there is all kinds of paperwork, writing freight bills and all that...

...It is only my hands...

...I accept my punishment for Your sake...

...Or something against socialism generally...

...Our commandant gave the orders: `You,' he said, 'Malinin, take three...

...Look at your hands!' "I throw the Mauser on the ground and run to the guardroom, I knock someone down in the doorway, and get into the room...

...They cured everything, except for one thing: my hands—you can see it yourself—still shake...

...Don't kid yourself, I saw how you looked at them and turned your head away...

...Well, it was sort of an accident...

...On the one side of it was the room where they kept those who were to be shot, and on the other was the yard...

...I don't remember whether I emptied my whole magazine into him...

...I grab a rifle from the stand and shout: 'Lead me,' I shout, 'lead me to Dzerzhinsky, or I'll pepper you all with this!' "Well, they take the rifle from me, lead me out in a quick march...

...And the nursing and the cleanliness, and the food, good food for those days, light food you might say...

...Sure, I went for a couple of years to the parochial school by the village church...

...But he still walks towards me, as if nothing had happened...

...And my education, you know it yourself, one war with the Krauts, another with the Whites, and then slaving behind a machine, that's my education for you...

...You prayed for paradise and you'll soon get there!' "Well...

...When we got demobilized in 1921, the year we won, I returned right away to my native factory, if you'll pardon the phrase...

...Remember how you spoke at that meeting and grabbed me by the hand, I just happened to be near you, and said: 'With these very hands,' you said...

...At the front, you know it yourself, it's a different story: either you get him or he gets you...

...Then they started assigning us...

...I really did see Felix Edmundovich...

...The nervous shock, it seems, passed into my hands...

...We wish you,' they say, 'great success in the struggle against the world bourgeoisie and, should you happen to see Comrade Dzerzhinsky,* give him our humble regards.' So, what do I do...

...I was a hard one...

...And it's not because I was afraid or that I had some kind of weakness for religion...

...Only it's not from drink...

...We can't very well not drink to our meeting...

...I drank while I was doing it, of course, you can't do it without drinks...

...The author of this story—which first appeared in the Polish magazine Kultura published in Paris—is at present serving a five-year term at forced labor somewhere in the Soviet Union...

...Because of my hands I don't do this myself...

...And what's your education?' they say...

...And to this task,' he said, `we must all put our hands ...' I mean he told it to us like a story, like an anecdote, everything was natural and clear...

...I worked barely a year at that factory, no more, and—boom—they call me to the Regional Committee...

...The priest jerks his beard up, looks to the sky...

...Even now, you're still looking at me so as not to see my hands...

...For me there were honors and respect...

...After all, it's a sight you don't see every day...

...You, Serge, are an intellectual, and you're polite, we all know that...

...I worked at it for seven months, and then this accident happened...

...We took them one by one...

...Well, you know how a Mauser shoots—like a cannon...

...For malicious tricks...

...That's why you keep quiet and don't ask any questions...

...A man like Golovchiner, he had it easy, he was a Jew after all, and they, so they tell me, I don't know if it's true, don't even have holy icons—and here I sit and drink and all kinds of nonsense gets into my head, how my late mother took me to the village church and how I kissed the hand of our village priest, Father Vassili, and he—he was an old man— called me his namesake all the time...

...I can't say the work was hard—but you couldn't call it easy either...

...March,' I tell him, 'march, Father, and don't look back...

...So, I got there...

...Naturally, you don't always finish them off the first time: some fall right away, like a sack, others turn and twist, like a top, and some walk and roll like drunks...

...Well, sure, I got used to it...

...There were twelve of them...

...So, what the hell, I thought, the devil take you, you son-of-a-bitch, I'll finish you off in a moment and then—sleep...

...You walk behind him through the yard • Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was the first head of the Cheka, the forerunner of the GPU, set up by the Bolshevik regime during its early years for purposes of"internal security," and think to yourself, try to explain it to yourself...

...Ye-e-es...

...In a word —enemies...

...I lead him through the corridor, I see him lifting the long folds of his robe over the threshold, and I begin to feel sick, I don't understand what's going on...

...We had all kinds of volun teers for conversations...

...And as for the priest, I found out later just what was behind all that...

...Fill it up, Seryozha, fill it up...

...It happened now and then, to be sure, that I had to set things straight for somebody or other...

...You finish one off in the yard, and then the boys help you to drag him off to the side and you come back for the next one...

...But here...

...Yes, Sir,' I say, 'I will carry out my assignment, the order of the Party.' I grabbed the assignment, dropped into the factory to say goodby to the boys and was on my way...

...A girl was sent to help me out with this, quite a clever girl she is...

...I won't get offended...

...And he tears his robe over his chest and lays it all bare and, brother, he had a hairy, curly chest, comes towards me and yells at the top of his voice: 'Shoot' he says, 'Shoot me, you AntiChrist...

...Now, you son-of- ...' I say, 'now, Father, halt!' And I stick my gun again into him, into his chest this time...

...I'll put my fingers in my mouth, I'll throw up, and then I can wash and get myself in proper shape again...

...Murder me, your Christ!' "I lost my head altogether, and let him have it again and again...

...In any case, it's better when they don't cry...

...Nervous shock,' the doctors say...

...We were ordered to liquidate a bunch of priests...

...They cared for me, to tell the truth, well and lovingly...

...Well then, I went out, did everything necessary—but—I didn't feel any better...

...Wait,' I say, 'wait, boys, I'll be back in a moment.' "I put my Mauser on the table and go out...

...So that's how it went...

...I remember it all, brother...

...Fill yours up now, don't wait for me...

...And that's my life, brother...

...For doing counterrevolutionary propaganda...

...For throwing confusion into the minds of their parishioners...