309

p Mitya Pavlov, from Sormovo, where I come from myself, died of typhus somewhere in Yelets.

p In 1905, during the Moscow uprising, he brought us from St. Petersburg a big box of fulminate of mercury capsules and thirty-five feet of fuse, wound round his chest. Either his sweating had made the fuse swell, or it had been too tightly wrapped round his ribs, but as soon as he entered my room Mitya collapsed on the floor, his face turned blue and his eyes bulged, as if he were dying of asphyxia.

p “You must be crazy, Mitya! You might have fainted on the way here. D’you realise what would have happened to you then?”

p Gasping for breath, he replied guiltily, “We’d have lost the fuse, and the capsules as well.”

p M. Tikhvinsky, who was massaging his chest, also scolded him grumpily, but Mitya was screwing up his eyes and asking questions.

p “How many bombs will it make? Will they smash us? Is Presnya still holding out?”

p Then, from where he was lying on the sofa he sent a look at Tikhvinsky, who was examining the capsules.

p “Is he the one who makes the bombs?" he asked in a whisper. “Is he a professor? A worker? You don’t say—"

p And all of a sudden he inquired anxiously:

p “He won’t blow you up, will he?"

p And not one word about himself, about the danger he had only just escaped by a hair’s breadth.

Translated by Robert Daglish