Dmitry Matov grew green with fear. He shouted to his companion:
“Kill him! He has been listening to us! Shoot quick! He mustn’t live. He will give us both up!”
At this moment two other men appeared from the same place. Lunitsin aimed his revolver straight at Matov’s forehead, and asked:
“Who ought to be killed, traitor?”
Matov then understood that he had been caught in a trap. But he still made efforts to wriggle out of it, and called all his skill and his insolence to his assistance. They tried him for treachery. At first he defended himself. He said that he had deceived the police, and that he had entered into relations with them merely to get important information for his comrades. But his protestations soon grew weaker. Then he began to beg for mercy. He spoke of his wife and of his children.
Matov’s entreaties failed to impress anyone. His judges were adamant. His fate was decided. The sentence of hanging was passed unanimously.
Matov was bound. The noose was already thrown about his neck. Then Trirodov intervened:
“What are you going to do with him? It will be difficult to take him away, and it is dangerous to leave him here.”
“Who will come here?” said Lunitsin. “At best only by chance. Let him hang here until he’s found.”
“Let us bury him here in the garden, like a dog,” suggested Krovlin.
“Give him to me,” said Trirodov. “I will dispose his body in such a way that no one will find it.”
The others assented eagerly. Ostrov said with a scornful smile:
“Will you try your chemistry on him, Giorgiy Sergeyevitch? Well, it’s all the same to us. A bad man ought to be punished—make even a skeleton of him for your use if you like.”
Trirodov drew a flagon containing a colourless liquid from his pocket.
“Now this will put him to sleep,” he said.
He injected with a small syringe several drops of the liquid under Dmitry Matov’s skin. Matov gave a feeble cry and fell heavily to the floor. In a few moments the body lay before them, blue and apparently lifeless. Lunitsin examined Matov and said:
“He’s done for.”
The men left one by one. Trirodov alone remained with Matov’s body. Trirodov took off Matov’s clothes and burned them in the stove. He made several more injections of the same colourless liquid.
The night passed slowly. Trirodov lay on the sofa without taking his clothes off. He slept badly, tormented by oppressive dreams. He awoke several times.
Dmitry Matov lay in the next room on the floor. The liquid, injected into his blood, acted strangely. The body contracted in proper proportion, and wasted very quickly. Within several hours it lost more than half of its weight, and assumed very small dimensions; it became very soft and pliant. But all its proportions were faithfully preserved.
Trirodov made up the body into a large parcel, covered it over with plaid, and bound it with straps. It resembled a pillow wrapped up in plaid. Trirodov left by the morning train for home, carrying with him Dmitry Matov’s body.
At home Trirodov put the body into a vessel containing a greenish liquid compounded by himself. Matov’s body shrunk in it even more. It had become barely more than seven inches long. But as before all its proportions remained inviolate.
Then Trirodov prepared a special plastic substance, in which he wrapped Matov’s body. He pressed it compactly into the form of a cube, and placed it on his writing-table. And thus a thing that once had been a man remained there a thing among other things.
Nevertheless Trirodov was right when he told Ostrov that Matov had not been killed. Yes, notwithstanding his strange form and his distressing immobility, Dmitry Matov was not dead. The potentiality of life slept dormant in that solid object. Trirodov thought more than once as to whether the time had not come to rehabilitate Matov and return him to the world of the living.
He had not decided upon this before. But he was confident that he would succeed in doing this without hindrance. The process of rehabilitation required a tranquil and isolated place.
In a little more than a year at the beginning of the summer Trirodov decided to begin the process of rehabilitation. He prepared a large vat over six feet in length. He filled it with a colourless liquid, and lowered into it the cube containing Matov’s body.
The slow process of rehabilitation began. Unperceived by the eye, the cube began to thaw and to swell. It needed a half-year before it would thaw out sufficiently to permit the body to peer through.
XXII
Sonya Svetilovitch was badly shaken by the hard, cruel events of that night in the woods. She fell ill, and remained two weeks in an unconscious state. It was feared that she would die. But she was a strong girl and conquered her illness.
Scenes from that nightmarish occasion passed before the poor girl in her heavy delirium. Grey, ferocious demons, with dim, tinny eyes, came to her, taunted her, and acted without reason. There was no place in which to hide from the hideous frenzy.
Deep oppression reigned in the Svetilovitch house. Sonya’s mother wept, and bewailed her lot. Sonya’s father spoke of the matter warmly and eloquently, with gesticulations, to his friends in his study—and inevitably got into a state of indignation. Sonya’s little brothers discussed plans of vengeance. Fräulein Berta, the governess of Sonya’s younger sister, made censorious remarks about barbarous Russia.
All the acquaintances of the Svetilovitches were also indignant. But their indignation assumed only platonic forms. Perhaps it was impossible for it to have been otherwise. To be sure, all the more or less independent people in town paid the Svetilovitches visits of sympathy. Even the liberal Inspector of Taxes came. He was a patient of Doctor Svetilovitch’s, and came during the reception hour to express his interest; incidentally he asked advice about his physical indispositions and paid no fee—in view of its being a visit of sympathy.
Sonya’s father, Doctor
