Resurrection - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (interesting novels in english .TXT) 📗

were heard coming from some one

near the net.

 

Everything here seemed strange to Nekhludoff; but strangest of

all was that he should have to thank and feel obligation towards

the inspector and the chief warders, the very men who were

performing the cruel deeds that were done in this house.

 

The corporal showed Nekhludoff through the corridor, out of the

men’s into the women’s interviewing-room.

 

This room, like that of the men, was divided by two wire nets;

but it was much smaller, and there were fewer visitors and fewer

prisoners, so that there was less shouting than in the men’s

room. Yet the same thing was going on here, only, between the

nets instead of soldiers there was a woman warder, dressed in a

blue-edged uniform jacket, with gold cords on the sleeves, and a

blue belt. Here also, as in the men’s room, the people were

pressing close to the wire netting on both sides; on the nearer

side, the townspeople in varied attire; on the further side, the

prisoners, some in white prison clothes, others in their own

coloured dresses. The whole length of the net was taken up by the

people standing close to it. Some rose on tiptoe to be heard

across the heads of others; some sat talking on the floor.

 

The most remarkable of the prisoners, both by her piercing

screams and her appearance, was a thin, dishevelled gipsy. Her

kerchief had slipped off her curly hair, and she stood near a

post in the middle of the prisoner’s division, shouting

something, accompanied by quick gestures, to a gipsy man in a

blue coat, girdled tightly below the waist. Next the gipsy man, a

soldier sat on the ground talking to prisoner; next the soldier,

leaning close to the net, stood a young peasant, with a fair

beard and a flushed face, keeping back his tears with difficulty.

A pretty, fair-haired prisoner, with bright blue eyes, was

speaking to him. These two were Theodosia and her husband. Next

to them was a tramp, talking to a broad-faced woman; then two

women, then a man, then again a woman, and in front of each a

prisoner. Maslova was not among them. But some one stood by the

window behind the prisoners, and Nekhludoff knew it was she. His

heart began to beat faster, and his breath stopped. The decisive

moment was approaching. He went up to the part of the net where

he could see the prisoner, and recognised her at once. She stood

behind the blue-eyed Theodosia, and smiled, listening to what

Theodosia was saying. She did not wear the prison cloak now, but

a white dress, tightly drawn in at the waist by a belt, and very

full in the bosom. From under her kerchief appeared the black

ringlets of her fringe, just the same as in the court.

 

“Now, in a moment it will be decided,” he thought.

 

“How shall I call her? Or will she come herself?”

 

She was expecting Bertha; that this man had come to see her

never entered her head.

 

“Whom do you want?” said the warder who was walking between the

nets, coming up to Nekhludoff.

 

“Katerina Maslova,” Nekhludoff uttered, with difficulty.

 

“Katerina Maslova, some one to see you,” cried the warder.

 

CHAPTER XLIII.

 

NEKHLUDOFF VISITS MASLOVA.

 

Maslova looked round, and with head thrown back and expanded

chest, came up to the net with that expression of readiness which

he well knew, pushed in between two prisoners, and gazed at

Nekhludoff with a surprised and questioning look. But, concluding

from his clothing he was a rich man, she smiled.

 

“Is it me you want?” she asked, bringing her smiling face, with

the slightly squinting eyes, nearer the net.

 

“I, I—I wished to see—” Nekhludoff did not know how to address

her. “I wished to see you—I—” He was not speaking louder than

usual.

 

“No; nonsense, I tell you!” shouted the tramp who stood next to

him. “Have you taken it or not?”

 

“Dying, I tell you; what more do you want?” some one else was

screaming at his other side. Maslova could not hear what

Nekhludoff was saying, but the expression of his face as he was

speaking reminded her of him. She did not believe her own eyes;

still the smile vanished from her face and a deep line of

suffering appeared on her brow.

 

“I cannot hear what you are saying,” she called out, wrinkling

her brow and frowning more and more.

 

“I have come,” said Nekhludoff. “Yes, I am doing my duty—I am

confessing,” thought Nekhludoff; and at this thought the tears

came in his eyes, and he felt a choking sensation in his throat,

and holding on with both hands to the net, he made efforts to

keep from bursting into tears.

 

“I say, why do you shove yourself in where you’re not wanted?”

some one shouted at one side of him.

 

“God is my witness; I know nothing,” screamed a prisoner from the

other side.

 

Noticing his excitement, Maslova recognised him.

 

“You’re like … but no; I don’t know you,” she shouted,

without looking at him, and blushing, while her face grew still

more stern.

 

“I have come to ask you to forgive me,” he said, in a loud but

monotonous voice, like a lesson learnt by heart. Having said

these words he became confused; but immediately came the thought

that, if he felt ashamed, it was all the better; he had to bear

this shame, and he continued in a loud voice:

 

“Forgive me; I have wronged you terribly.”

 

She stood motionless and without taking her squinting eyes off

him.

 

He could not continue to speak, and stepping away from the net he

tried to suppress the sobs that were choking him.

 

The inspector, the same officer who had directed Nekhludoff to

the women’s ward, and whose interest he seemed to have aroused,

came into the room, and, seeing Nekhludoff not at the net, asked

him why he was not talking to her whom he wanted to see.

Nekhludoff blew his nose, gave himself a shake, and, trying to

appear calm, said:

 

“It’s so inconvenient through these nets; nothing can be heard.”

 

Again the inspector considered for a moment.

 

“Ah, well, she can be brought out here for awhile. Mary

Karlovna,” turning to the warder, “lead Maslova out.”

 

A minute later Maslova came out of the side door. Stepping

softly, she came up close to Nekhludoff, stopped, and looked up

at him from under her brows. Her black hair was arranged in

ringlets over her forehead in the same way as it had been two

days ago; her face, though unhealthy and puffy, was attractive,

and looked perfectly calm, only the glittering black eyes glanced

strangely from under the swollen lids.

 

“You may talk here,” said the inspector, and shrugging his

shoulders he stepped aside with a look of surprise. Nekhludoff

moved towards a seat by the wall.

 

Maslova cast a questioning look at the inspector, and then,

shrugging her shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhludoff to the

bench, and having arranged her skirt, sat down beside him.

 

“I know it is hard for you to forgive me,” he began, but stopped.

His tears were choking him. “But though I can’t undo the past, I

shall now do what is in my power. Tell me—”

 

“How have you managed to find me?” she said, without answering

his question, neither looking away from him nor quite at him,

with her squinting eyes.

 

“O God, help me! Teach me what to do,” Nekhludoff thought,

looking at her changed face. “I was on the jury the day before

yesterday,” he said. “You did not recognise me?”

 

“No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not

even look,” she said.

 

“There was a child, was there not?” he asked.

 

“Thank God! he died at once,” she answered, abruptly and

viciously.

 

“What do you mean? Why?”

 

“I was so ill myself, I nearly died,” she said, in the same quiet

voice, which Nekhludoff had not expected and could not

understand.

 

“How could my aunts have let you go?”

 

“Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as

they noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That’s

all finished.”

 

“No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin.”

 

“There’s nothing to redeem. What’s been has been and is passed,”

she said; and, what he never expected, she looked at him and

smiled in an unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.

 

Maslova never expected to see him again, and certainly not here

and not now; therefore, when she first recognised him, she could

not keep back the memories which she never wished to revive. In

the first moment she remembered dimly that new, wonderful world

of feeling and of thought which had been opened to her by the

charming young man who loved her and whom she loved, and then his

incomprehensible cruelty and the whole string of humiliations and

suffering which flowed from and followed that magic joy. This

gave her pain, and, unable to understand it, she did what she was

always in the habit of doing, she got rid of these memories by

enveloping them in the mist of a depraved life. In the first

moment, she associated the man now sitting beside her with the

lad she had loved; but feeling that this gave her pain, she

dissociated them again. Now, this well-dressed, carefully-got-up

gentleman with perfumed beard was no longer the Nekhludoff whom

she had loved but only one of the people who made use of

creatures like herself when they needed them, and whom creatures

like herself had to make use of in their turn as profitably as

they could; and that is why she looked at him with a luring smile

and considered silently how she could best make use of him.

 

“That’s all at an end,” she said. “Now I’m condemned to Siberia,”

and her lip trembled as she was saying this dreadful word.

 

“I knew; I was certain you were not guilty,” said Nekhludoff.

 

“Guilty! of course not; as if I could be a thief or a robber.”

She stopped, considering in what way she could best get something

out of him.

 

“They say here that all depends on the advocate,” she began. “A

petition should be handed in, only they say it’s expensive.”

 

“Yes, most certainly,” said Nekhludoff. “I have already spoken to

an advocate.”

 

“No money ought to be spared; it should be a good one,” she said.

 

“I shall do all that is possible.”

 

They were silent, and then she smiled again in the same way.

 

“And I should like to ask you … a little money if you can …

not much; ten roubles, I do not want more,” she said, suddenly.

 

“Yes, yes,” Nekhludoff said, with a sense of confusion, and felt

for his purse.

 

She looked rapidly at the inspector, who was walking up and down

the room. “Don’t give it in front of him; he’d take it away.”

 

Nekhludoff took out his purse as soon as the inspector had turned

his back; but had no time to hand her the note before the

inspector faced them again, so he crushed it up in his hand.

 

“This woman is dead,” Nekhludoff thought, looking at this once

sweet, and now defiled, puffy face, lit up by an evil glitter in

the black, squinting eyes which were now glancing at the hand in

which he held the note, then following the inspector’s movements,

and for a moment he hesitated. The tempter