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

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“What do I know?” screamed the little man, desperately. “What is

our crime?”

 

“Silence!” shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.

 

“But what is the meaning of all this?” Nekhludoff thought to

himself as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were

fixed upon him through the openings of the cell doors and from

the prisoners that met him, making him feel as if he were running

the gauntlet.

 

“Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept

here?” Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.

 

“What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they

are all of them innocent,” said the inspector’s assistant. “But

it does happen that some are really imprisoned for nothing.”

 

“Well, these have done nothing.”

 

“Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt.

There are such types—desperate fellows, with whom one has to

look sharp. To-day two of that sort had to be punished.”

 

“Punished? How?”

 

“Flogged with a birch-rod, by order.”

 

“But corporal punishment is abolished.”

 

“Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still

liable to it.”

 

Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while

waiting in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was

then being inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity,

depression, perplexity, and moral nausea, that grew into physical

sickness, took hold of him more strongly than ever before.

 

Without listening to the inspector’s assistant, or looking round,

he hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The

inspector was in the office, occupied with other business, and

had forgotten to send for Doukhova. He only remembered his

promise to have her called when Nekhludoff entered the office.

 

“Sit down, please. I’ll send for her at once,” said the

inspector.

 

CHAPTER LIV.

 

PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.

 

The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,

dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for

measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung

a large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture

people. In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat

about twenty persons, men and women in groups and in pairs,

talking in low voices. There was a writing table by the window.

 

The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a

chair beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people

in the room.

 

The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant

face, dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a

middleaged woman with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling

her something and gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat

an old man, with blue spectacles, holding the hand of a young

woman in prisoner’s clothes, who was telling him something. A

schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on his face, was gazing

at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of lovers. She was quite

young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked energetic, and

was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair, and wore

a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied

with love. Nearest to the table sat a greyhaired woman dressed

in black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking

fellow, in the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder.

She was trying to say something, but the tears prevented her from

speaking; she began several times, but had to stop. The young man

held a paper in his hand, and, apparently not knowing what to do,

kept folding and pressing it with an angry look on his face.

 

Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very

prominent eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat

beside the weeping mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything

about this girl was beautiful; her large, white hands, her short,

wavy hair, her firm nose and lips, but the chief charm of her

face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes. The beautiful eyes

turned away from the mother for a moment when Nekhludoff came in,

and met his look. But she turned back at once and said something

to the mother.

 

Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy

face, sat angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as

if he belonged to the Scoptsy sect.

 

At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed

more concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker

than about what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the

inspector’s side, looked round with strained curiosity. A little

boy with closely-cropped hair came up to him and addressed him in

a thin little voice.

 

“And whom are you waiting for?”

 

Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy,

and seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive

eyes fixed on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for

a woman of his acquaintance.

 

“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.

 

“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.

 

“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.

 

“I? With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.

 

“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently

considering Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.

 

Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s

attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly

steps, approached Nekhludoff and the boy.

 

“What is he asking you? Who you are?” she inquired with a slight

smile, and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in

her kind, prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no

doubt whatever that she was and must be on sisterly terms with

everybody.

 

“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with

so sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were

obliged to smile back.

 

“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”

 

“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers.

You know it is,” said the inspector.

 

“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the

consumptive lad’s mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her

large, white one, while he continued gazing up into her face.

 

“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.

 

“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,”

said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out

how exceptional his establishment was.

 

“Is it possible?”

 

“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”

 

“And that young girl?”

 

“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging

his shoulders. “Besides, here is Doukhova.”

 

CHAPTER LV.

 

VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.

 

Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a

wriggling gait, the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large,

kind eyes.

 

“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand.

“Do you remember me? Let us sit down.”

 

“I did not expect to see you like this.”

 

“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I

desire nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual

expression of fright in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on

Nekhludoff, and twisting the terribly thin, sinewy neck,

surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty collar of her bodice.

Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.

 

In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great

animation. Her speech was intermingled with a great many long

words, such as propaganda, disorganisation, social groups,

sections and sub-sections, about which she seemed to think

everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had never heard of.

 

She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally,

“People’s Freedom,” a revolutionary movement] evidently

convinced that he was pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at

her miserable little neck, her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered

why she had been doing all these strange things, and why she was

now telling all this to him. He pitied her, but not as he had

pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault of his own in the

stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the confusion that

filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself a

heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she

could hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its

success would lie.

 

The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about

was the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to

their “sub-group,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with

her about five months before, and imprisoned in the

Petropavlovsky fortress because some prohibited books and papers

(which she had been asked to keep) had been found in her

possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure to blame

for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had

connections among influential people, to do all he could in order

to set this friend free.

 

Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for

another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in

the Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure

some scientific books which he required for his studies.

Nekhludoff promised to do what he could when he went to

Petersburg.

 

As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a

course of midwifery, she became connected with a group of

adherents to the Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in

the revolutionary movement. At first all went on smoothly. She

wrote proclamations and occupied herself with propaganda work in

the factories; then, an important member having been arrested,

their papers were seized and all concerned were arrested. “I was

also arrested, and shall be exiled. But what does it matter? I

feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story with a piteous

smile.

 

Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the

prominent eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the

daughter of a general, and had been long attached to the

revolutionary party, and was arrested because she had pleaded

guilty to having shot a gendarme. She lived in a house with some

conspirators, where they had a secret printing press. One night,

when the police came to search this house, the occupiers resolved

to defend themselves, put out the light, and began destroying the

things that might incriminate them. The police forced their way

in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally wounded a

gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that it

was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in

her hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and

was now condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.

 

“An altruistic, fine character,” said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.

 

The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about

concerned Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison,

the story of Maslova’s life and his connection with her, and

advised him to take steps to get her removed into the political

prisoner’s ward, or into the hospital to help to nurse the sick,

of which there were very many at that time, so that extra nurses

were needed.

 

Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to

act upon it.

 

CHAPTER LVI.

 

NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.

 

Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said

that the time was up, and the prisoners and their