“Possibly in making love, but not when the fight begins,” added the magistrate’s brother, who tried to adopt a good-humoured tone.
“Out of this!” screamed Biek-Agamalov.
“March to the door!”
“Gentlemen, by all means, put the starar out,” sneered Artschakovski.
A horrible confusion arose in the room.
Tables and chairs were thrown over; the men shrieked, laughed, and stamped with all their might.
The flames of the lamps rose like fiery tongues on high.
The cold night air penetrated through the open windows, but without any cooling or calming effect on all these half-demented fighting-cocks.
The two civilians had already been thrown into the backyard, where they were heard fiercely screeching and threatening with tears in their voices—
“Opritschniker, brigands! This affair will cost you dear. We shall lodge a complaint with your commander, with the Governor.” “Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo,” Viatkin sneered in mockery, whilst stretching out of the window. “Go to blazes!”
It seemed to Romashov as if all the events of the day had followed one another without a break, but also without the least intelligible connection, just as if a series of wild pictures in loud and motley colours had been unrolled before his eyes.
Again were heard the scraping of the violin and the tambourine’s blustering noise.
One of the “partners” had now gone so far as to pirouette on the floor with nothing but his shirt on.
A pretty, slender woman, who had up to then escaped Romashov’s notice, with dishevelled hair over her bare neck, and sharp, prominent shoulder-blades, wound her arms round poor Lieschtschenko’s neck and sang in his ear in her shrill soprano, and in unison with the violin’s awful melody:
“When consumption sets its mark, And you’re lying pale and stark, And doctors are seen fumbling round your couch.”
Bobetinski slung a glass of ale between the curtains of one of the little, dark cabinets, whence very soon proceeded an angry, but sleepy, thick voice—
“Aren’t you ashamed, sir?
Who dares ...?
Such a low swine!”
“I say! how long have you been here?” asked Romashov of the lady in the red basquine, whilst, as it were, in an absent-minded way, he rested his hand on her strong, warm knee.
She made some answer, but he did not hear it.
A fresh scene of savagery had absorbed all his attention.
Sub-lieutenant Lbov was driving before him one of the musicians, and banging him on the head all the time with the tambourine.
The poor Jew, terrified out of his wits, ran from corner to corner, screaming and babbling his unintelligible jargon, with wholly ineffectual attempts to catch his long, fluttering coat-tails, and incessantly glancing behind him from the corners of his eyes at his unmerciful persecutor.
Everybody was laughing.
Artschakovski fell flat on the floor, and wriggled with tears in his eyes and in alarming convulsions of laughter.
Directly afterwards the other Jew’s piercing yells were audible.
Another of the company had snatched the violin, and thrown it down with fearful violence.
With a crashing sound that harmonized, in an almost touching way, with the musician’s desperate cries for help, the instrument broke into a thousand fragments.
What followed this Romashov never perceived, inasmuch as, for several minutes, he was in a sort of dark “nirvana.”
When he had somewhat regained the use of his reason, he saw, as though in a fever-dream, that all in the room were running round each other with wild shrieks and gestures of despair.
For an instant the whole swarm gathered round Biek-Agamalov, only in the next instant to be scattered like chaff in all directions. The majority sought safety in the little, dark cabinets.
“Out of it!
I won’t stand a single one!” shrieked Biek-Agamalov in Berserker fury.
He ground his teeth, stamped on the floor, and struck about him with his clenched fists.
His face was crimson; the veins in his forehead from the roots of his hair to his nose stood like strained ropes; his head was lowered like a bull’s, and his unnaturally prominent eyes with their bloodshot whites were terrifying.
He was unable to utter any human sounds, but groaned, like a wild beast, in a vibrating voice—
“Ah-ah-ah-ah!”
Suddenly, whilst bending the upper part of his body to the left with the suppleness of a panther, he drew his sabre, as quick as lightning, from its sheath.
The broad, sharp blade described, with a whistling sound, several rapid circles over his head.
In frantic terror every living creature fled helter-skelter from the room through doors and windows, the women screaming hysterically, the men trampling down all that lay in their way.
Romashov was carried by the current irresistibly towards the door, where an officer rushing past caused him, by the sharp facet of his uniform-button, a long, bleeding scratch on his face.
The next moment all stood whooping and yelling in the yard, except Romashov, who alone remained by the door of the room.
He felt his heart beating with increased force and quickness; but the murderous, unbridled scene filled him not only with terror, but also with an intoxicating feeling of savage, exulting defiance.
“I will have blood!” screamed Biek-Agamalov, with gnashing teeth.
The sight of the terror he inspired deprived him of the last remains of understanding and reflection.
With frantic strength and rage he smashed, with a few strokes, all the furniture nearest to him, and, after that, hurled his sabre with such force at a large mirror that the glass splinters hailed on all sides.
With another blow he laid waste the table, which was crowded with a number of bottles and glasses, the fragments and contents of which were thrown all over the floor.
But just at that moment cried a piercing voice of indescribable fury and boldness—
“Fool!