Resurrection
went on with the conversation, taking no notice of the prisoners.
“Who is it you want to see?”
“Doukhova.”
“Oh, she’s in the tower. You’ll have to wait a little,” he said.
“Might I not meanwhile see the prisoners Menshoff, mother and son, who
are accused of incendiarism?”
“Oh, yes. Cell No. 21. Yes, they can be sent for.”
“But might I not see Menshoff in his cell?”
“Oh, you’ll find the waiting-room more pleasant.”
“No. I should prefer the cell. It is more interesting.”
“Well, you have found something to be interested in!”
Here the assistant, a smartly-dressed officer, entered the side door.
“Here, see the Prince into Menshoff’s cell, No. 21,” said the inspector
to his assistant, “and then take him to the office. And I’ll go and
call--What’s her name? Vera Doukhova.”
The inspector’s assistant was young, with dyed moustaches, and diffusing
the smell of eau-de-cologne. “This way, please,” he said to Nekhludoff,
with a pleasant smile. “Our establishment interests you?”
“Yes, it does interest me; and, besides, I look upon it as a duty to
help a man who I heard was confined here, though innocent.”
The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, that may happen,” he said quietly, politely stepping aside to let
the visitor enter, the stinking corridor first. “But it also happens
that they lie. Here we are.”
The doors of the cells were open, and some of the prisoners were in the
corridor. The assistant nodded slightly to the jailers, and cast a side
glance at the prisoners, who, keeping close to the wall, crept back to
their cells, or stood like soldiers, with their arms at their sides,
following the official with their eyes. After passing through one
corridor, the assistant showed Nekhludoff into another to the left,
separated from the first by an iron door. This corridor was darker, and
smelt even worse than the first. The corridor had doors on both sides,
with little holes in them about an inch in diameter. There was only an
old jailer, with an unpleasant face, in this corridor.
“Where is Menshoff?” asked the inspector’s assistant.
“The eighth cell to the left.”
“And these? Are they occupied?” asked Nekhludoff.
“Yes, all but one.”
CHAPTER LII.
NO. 21.
“May I look in?” asked Nekhludoff.
“Oh, certainly,” answered the assistant, smiling, and turned to the
jailer with some question.
Nekhludoff looked into one of the little holes, and saw a tall young man
pacing up and down the cell. When the man heard some one at the door he
looked up with a frown, but continued walking up and down.
Nekhludoff looked into another hole. His eye met another large eye
looking out of the hole at him, and he quickly stepped aside. In the
third cell he saw a very small man asleep on the bed, covered, head and
all, with his prison cloak. In the fourth a broad-faced man was sitting
with his elbows on his knees and his head low down. At the sound of
footsteps this man raised his head and looked up. His face, especially
his large eyes, bore the expression of hopeless dejection. One could see
that it did not even interest him to know who was looking into his
cell. Whoever it might be, he evidently hoped for nothing good from him.
Nekhludoff was seized with dread, and went to Menshoff’s cell, No. 21,
without stopping to look through any more holes. The jailer unlocked the
door and opened it. A young man, with long neck, well-developed muscles,
a small head, and kind, round eyes, stood by the bed, hastily putting
on his cloak, and looking at the newcomers with a frightened face.
Nekhludoff was specially struck by the kind, round eyes that were
throwing frightened and inquiring glances in turns at him, at the
jailer, and at the assistant, and back again.
“Here’s a gentleman wants to inquire into your affair.”
“Thank you kindly.”
“Yes, I was told about you,” Nekhludoff said, going through the cell up
to the dirty grated window, “and I should like to hear all about it from
yourself.”
Menshoff also came up to the window, and at once started telling his
story, at first looking shyly at the inspector’s assistant, but growing
gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the
corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told
with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant
lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing,
and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff
listened, and at the same time kept looking around him--at the low
bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall,
and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant
in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would
have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It
seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take
a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place
without any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the
thought that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured
expression on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still
more dreadful. This was the story: The village public-house keeper had
enticed the young fellow’s wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts
of means. But everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the
officials, and was acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but
she ran away next day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he
saw her when he came in, the public-house keeper told him she was not
there, and ordered him to go away. He would not go, so the public-house
keeper and his servant beat him so that they drew blood. The next day
a fire broke out in the public-house, and the young man and his mother
were accused of having set the house on fire. He had not set it on fire,
but was visiting a friend at the time.
“And it is true that you did not set it on fire?”
“It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did
it himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was
mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I
once did go for him, my heart couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“Can this be true?”
“God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good--” and Nekhludoff had
some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. “You see
I am perishing without any reason.” His face quivered and he turned
up the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the
sleeve of his dirty shirt.
“Are you ready?” asked the assistant.
“Yes. Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we
can,” said Nekhludoff, and went out. Menshoff stood close to the door,
so that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was
locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.
CHAPTER LIII.
VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT.
Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell
doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks,
short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him,
Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and
perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and,
besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining
it all.
In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in
at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in
Nekhludoff’s way, bowing to him.
“Please, your honour (we don’t know what to call you), get our affair
settled somehow.”
“I am not an official. I know nothing about it.”
“Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody--one of the
authorities, if need be,” said an indignant voice. “Show some pity
on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for
nothing.”
“What do you mean? Why?” said Nekhludoff.
“Why? We ourselves don’t know why, but are sitting here the second
month.”
“Yes, it’s quite true, and it is owing to an accident,” said the
inspector. “These people were taken up because they had no passports,
and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the
prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us
not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people
to their different governments, but are keeping these.”
“What! For no other reason than that?” Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at
the door.
A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded
him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant
stopped them.
“Let some one of you speak.”
A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out
from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back
to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no
passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue.
The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to
renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said
anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in
prison the second month, as if they were criminals.
“We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the
prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help
us.”
Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old
man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey,
many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man’s cheek.
“How’s that? Is it possible for such a reason?” Nekhludoff said, turning
to the assistant.
“Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,”
calmly said the assistant, “but they seem to have been forgotten or
something.”
Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison
dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began
to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.
“Worse than dogs,” he began.
“Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know--”
“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