Resurrection
“Why, I loved her, really loved her with a good, pure love, that night;
I loved her even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the
first time and was writing my composition.” And he remembered himself as
he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth and fulness of life
seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully sad. The difference between
what he had been then and what he was now, was enormous--just as great,
if not greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night,
and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom
they judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable
possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught
in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of
which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to,
which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of
his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the
truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in
lies: in the most dreadful of lies--lies considered as the truth by all
who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of
these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in
it.
How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her
husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the
eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How choose between the two
opposites--the recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage
from his mother? How atone for his sin against Katusha? This last, at
any rate, could not be left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he
had loved, and satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save
her from hard labour in Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour.
Atone for a fault by paying money? Had he not then, when he gave her the
money, thought he was atoning for his fault?
And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up
in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away. “Oh, that
money!” he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,” he cried aloud as he had done
then. “Only a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing. And I am that
knave, that scoundrel!” He went on aloud: “But is it possible?”--he
stopped and stood still--“is it possible that I am really a scoundrel?
. . . Well, who but I?” he answered himself. “And then, is this the only
thing?” he went on, convicting himself. “Was not my conduct towards Mary
Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And my position with
regard to money? To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea
that they are inherited from my mother? And the whole of my idle,
detestable life? And my conduct towards Katusha to crown all? Knave and
scoundrel! Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself
I cannot deceive.”
And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and
particularly to-day, felt for everybody--the Prince and Sophia
Vasilievna and Corney and Missy--was an aversion for himself. And,
strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was
something painful yet joyful and quieting.
More than once in Nekhludoff’s life there had been what he called a
“cleansing of the soul.” By “cleansing of the soul” he meant a state
of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life, a total
cessation of its activity, he began to clear out all the rubbish that
had accumulated in his soul, and was the cause of the cessation of the
true life. His soul needed cleansing as a watch does. After such an
awakening Nekhludoff always made some rules for himself which he meant
to follow forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which
he hoped never to change again. “Turning over a new leaf,” he called
it to himself in English. But each time the temptations of the world
entrapped him, and without noticing it he fell again, often lower than
before.
Thus he had several times in his life raised and cleansed himself. The
first time this happened was during the summer he spent with his aunts;
that was his most vital and rapturous awakening, and its effects had
lasted some time. Another awakening was when he gave up civil service
and joined the army at war time, ready to sacrifice his life. But here
the choking-up process was soon accomplished. Then an awakening came
when he left the army and went abroad, devoting himself to art.
From that time until this day a long period had elapsed without
any cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of his
conscience and the life he was leading was greater than it had ever been
before. He was horror-struck when he saw how great the divergence was.
It was so great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the
possibility of getting cleansed. “Have you not tried before to perfect
yourself and become better, and nothing has come of it?” whispered the
voice of the tempter within. “What is the use of trying any more? Are
you the only one?--All are alike, such is life,” whispered the voice.
But the free spiritual being, which alone is true, alone powerful,
alone eternal, had already awakened in Nekhludoff, and he could not but
believe it. Enormous though the distance was between what he wished
to be and what he was, nothing appeared insurmountable to the
newly-awakened spiritual being.
“At any cost I will break this lie which binds me and confess
everything, and will tell everybody the truth, and act the truth,” he
said resolutely, aloud. “I shall tell Missy the truth, tell her I am a
profligate and cannot marry her, and have only uselessly upset her.
I shall tell Mary Vasilievna. . . Oh, there is nothing to tell her. I
shall tell her husband that I, scoundrel that I am, have been deceiving
him. I shall dispose of the inheritance in such a way as to acknowledge
the truth. I shall tell her, Katusha, that I am a scoundrel and have
sinned towards her, and will do all I can to ease her lot. Yes, I will
see her, and will ask her to forgive me.
“Yes, I will beg her pardon, as children do.” . . . He stopped---“will
marry her if necessary.” He stopped again, folded his hands in front of
his breast as he used to do when a little child, lifted his eyes, and
said, addressing some one: “Lord, help me, teach me, come enter within
me and purify me of all this abomination.”
He prayed, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse him;
and what he was praying for had happened already: the God within him had
awakened his consciousness. He felt himself one with Him, and therefore
felt not only the freedom, fulness and joy of life, but all the power of
righteousness. All, all the best that a man could do he felt capable of
doing.
His eyes filled with tears as he was saying all this to himself, good
and bad tears: good because they were tears of joy at the awakening
of the spiritual being within him, the being which had been asleep all
these years; and bad tears because they were tears of tenderness to
himself at his own goodness.
He felt hot, and went to the window and opened it. The window opened
into a garden. It was a moonlit, quiet, fresh night; a vehicle rattled
past, and then all was still. The shadow of a tall poplar fell on the
ground just opposite the window, and all the intricate pattern of its
bare branches was clearly defined on the clean swept gravel. To the left
the roof of a coach-house shone white in the moonlight, in front the
black shadow of the garden wall was visible through the tangled branches
of the trees.
Nekhludoff gazed at the roof, the moonlit garden, and the shadows of the
poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
“How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful,” he said,
meaning that which was going on in his soul.
CHAPTER XXIX.
MASLOVA IN PRISON.
Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and footsore,
having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10 miles on the stony
road that day. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence and
tormented by hunger. During the first interval of her trial, when the
soldiers were eating bread and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her
mouth watered and she realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath
her dignity to beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had
passed, and she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected
sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could not
imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not believe what she
heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces of judges and jury, who
heard this news as if it were perfectly natural and expected, she grew
indignant, and proclaimed loudly to the whole Court that she was not
guilty. Finding that her cry was also taken as something natural
and expected, and feeling incapable of altering matters, she was
horror-struck and began to weep in despair, knowing that she must submit
to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What
astonished her most was that young men--or, at any rate, not old
men--the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them,
the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had
condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners’ room before the
trial and during the intervals, she saw these men looking in at the open
door pretending they had to pass there on some business, or enter the
room and gaze on her with approval. And then, for some unknown reason,
these same men had condemned her to hard labour, though she was innocent
of the charge laid against her. At first she cried, but then quieted
down and sat perfectly stunned in the prisoners’ room, waiting to be led
back. She wanted only two things now--tobacco and strong drink. In this
state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into the same
room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to scold her, and
call her a “convict.”
“Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What you have
deserved, that you’ve got. Out in Siberia you’ll give up your finery, no
fear!”
Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head and
looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving, only saying:
“I don’t bother you, so don’t you bother me. I don’t bother you, do I?”
she repeated this several times, and was silent again. She did brighten
up a little when Botchkova and Kartinkin were led away and an attendant
brought her three roubles.
“Are you Maslova?” he asked. “Here you are; a lady sent it you,” he
said, giving her the money.
“A lady--what lady?”
“You just take it. I’m not going to talk to you.”
This money was sent by Kitaeva, the keeper of the house in which she
used to live. As she was leaving the court she turned to the usher with
the question whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher
said she might. Having got permission, she removed the three-buttoned
Swedish kid glove from her plump, white hand, and from an elegant purse
brought from the back folds of her silk skirt took a pile of coupons,
[in Russia coupons cut off interest-bearing papers are often used as
money] just cut off from the interest-bearing papers which she had
earned in her establishment, chose one worth 2 roubles and 50 copecks,
added two 20 and one 10-copeck coins, and gave all this to the usher.
The usher called an attendant, and in his presence gave the money.
“Belease to giff it accurately,” said Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.
The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he
treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because