Chapter 8

THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE

Sergey Golovin never thought of death, as though it were something not to be considered, something that did not concern him in the least. He was a strong, healthy, cheerful youth, endowed with that calm, clear joy of living which causes every evil thought and feeling that might injure life to disappear from the organism without leaving any trace. Just as all cuts, wounds and stings on his body healed rapidly, so all that weighed upon his soul and wounded it immediately rose to the surface and disappeared. And he brought into every work, even into his enjoyments, the same calm and optimistic seriousness,-it mattered not whether he was occupied with photography, with bicycling or with preparations for a terroristic act. Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.

And he did everything well: he was an excellent sailor, an expert shot with the revolver. He was as faithful in friendship as in love, and a fanatic believer in the "word of honor." His comrades laughed at him, saying that if the most notorious spy told him upon his word of honor that he was not a spy, Sergey would believe him and would shake hands with him as with any comrade. He had one fault,-he was convinced that he could sing well, whereas in fact he had no ear for music and even sang the revolutionary songs out of tune, and felt offended when his friends laughed at him.

"Either you are all asses, or I am an ass," he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: "You are an ass. We can tell by your voice."

But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only one who had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses of tea with milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced at Werner's untouched bread and said:

"Why don't you eat? Eat. We must brace up."

"I don't feel like eating."

"Then I'll eat it. May I?"

"You have a fine appetite, Seryozha."

Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull voice, out of tune:

"Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us ..."

After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well, they had failed; but then he thought: "There is something else now that must be done well-and that is, to die," and he cheered up again. And however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of a certain German named Mueller, which absorbed his