Resurrection
so severely at him that the clerk was silenced.
“He ought to have a little water,” said Nekhludoff. The police officer
looked severely at Nekhludoff also, but said nothing. When the porter
brought a mug full of water, he told the policeman to offer some to the
convict. The policeman raised the drooping head, and tried to pour a
little water down the mouth; but the prisoner could not swallow it, and
it ran down his beard, wetting his jacket and his coarse, dirty linen
shirt.
“Pour it on his head,” ordered the officer; and the policeman took off
the pancake-shaped cap and poured the water over the red curls and bald
part of the prisoner’s head. His eyes opened wide as if in fear, but his
position remained unchanged.
Streams of dirt trickled down his dusty face, but the mouth continued to
gasp in the same regular way, and his whole body shook.
“And what’s this? Take this one,” said the police officer, pointing to
Nekhludoff’s isvostchik. “You, there, drive up.”
“I am engaged,” said the isvostchik, dismally, and without looking up.
“It is my isvostchik; but take him. I will pay you,” said Nekhludoff,
turning to the isvostchik.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” shouted the officer. “Catch hold.”
The policeman, the porter, and the convoy soldier lifted the dying man
and carried him to the trap, and put him on the seat. But he could not
sit up; his head fell back, and the whole of his body glided off the
seat.
“Make him lie down,” ordered the officer.
“It’s all right, your honour; I’ll manage him like this,” said the
policeman, sitting down by the dying man, and clasping his strong,
right arm round the body under the arms. The convoy soldier lifted the
stockingless feet, in prison shoes, and put them into the trap.
The police officer looked around, and noticing the pancake-shaped hat of
the convict lifted it up and put it on the wet, drooping head.
“Go on,” he ordered.
The isvostchik looked angrily round, shook his head, and, accompanied
by the convoy soldier, drove back to the police station. The policeman,
sitting beside the convict, kept dragging up the body that was
continually sliding down from the seat, while the head swung from side
to side.
The convoy soldier, who was walking by the side of the trap, kept
putting the legs in their place. Nekhludoff followed the trap.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
SPILLED LIKE WATER ON THE GROUND.
The trap passed the fireman who stood sentinel at the entrance, [the
headquarters of the fire brigade and the police stations are generally
together in Moscow] drove into the yard of the police station, and
stopped at one of the doors. In the yard several firemen with their
sleeves tucked up were washing some kind of cart and talking loudly.
When the trap stopped, several policemen surrounded it, and taking the
lifeless body of the convict under the arms, took him out of the trap,
which creaked under him. The policeman who had brought the body got
down, shook his numbed arm, took off his cap, and crossed himself.
The body was carried through the door and up the stairs. Nekhludoff
followed. In the small, dirty room where the body was taken there stood
four beds. On two of them sat a couple of sick men in dressing-gowns,
one with a crooked mouth, whose neck was bandaged, the other one in
consumption. Two of the beds were empty; the convict was laid on one of
them. A little man, with glistening eyes and continually moving brows,
with only his underclothes and stockings on, came up with quick, soft
steps, looked at the convict and then at Nekhludoff, and burst into loud
laughter. This was a madman who was being kept in the police hospital.
“They wish to frighten me, but no, they won’t succeed,” he said.
The policemen who carried the corpse were followed by a police officer
and a medical assistant. The medical assistant came up to the body and
touched the freckled hand, already growing cold, which, though still
soft, was deadly pale. He held it for a moment, and then let it go. It
fell lifelessly on the stomach of the dead man.
“He’s ready,” said the medical assistant, but, evidently to be quite in
order, he undid the wet, brown shirt, and tossing back the curls from
his ear, put it to the yellowish, broad, immovable chest of the convict.
All were silent. The medical assistant raised himself again, shook his
head, and touched with his fingers first one and then the other lid over
the open, fixed blue eyes.
“I’m not frightened, I’m not frightened.” The madman kept repeating
these words, and spitting in the direction of the medical assistant.
“Well?” asked the police officer.
“Well! He must be put into the mortuary.”
“Are you sure? Mind,” said the police officer.
“It’s time I should know,” said the medical assistant, drawing the shirt
over the body’s chest. “However, I will send for Mathew Ivanovitch. Let
him have a look. Petrov, call him,” and the medical assistant stepped
away from the body.
“Take him to the mortuary,” said the police officer. “And then you must
come into the office and sign,” he added to the convoy soldier, who had
not left the convict for a moment.
“Yes, sir,” said the soldier.
The policemen lifted the body and carried it down again. Nekhludoff
wished to follow, but the madman kept him back.
“You are not in the plot! Well, then, give me a cigarette,” he said.
Nekhludoff got out his cigarette case and gave him one.
The madman, quickly moving his brows all the time, began relating how
they tormented him by thought suggestion.
“Why, they are all against me, and torment and torture me through their
mediums.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Nekhludoff, and without listening any further
he left the room and went out into the yard, wishing to know where the
body would be put.
The policemen with their burden had already crossed the yard, and were
coming to the door of a cellar. Nekhludoff wished to go up to them, but
the police officer stopped him.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Then go away.”
Nekhludoff obeyed, and went back to his isvostchik, who was dozing. He
awoke him, and they drove back towards the railway station.
They had not made a hundred steps when they met a cart accompanied by
a convoy soldier with a gun. On the cart lay another convict, who was
already dead. The convict lay on his back in the cart, his shaved head,
from which the pancake-shaped cap had slid over the black-bearded face
down to the nose, shaking and thumping at every jolt. The driver, in
his heavy boots, walked by the side of the cart, holding the reins;
a policeman followed on foot. Nekhludoff touched his isvostchik’s
shoulder.
“Just look what they are doing,” said the isvostchik, stopping his
horse.
Nekhludoff got down and, following the cart, again passed the sentinel
and entered the gate of the police station. By this time the firemen had
finished washing the cart, and a tall, bony man, the chief of the fire
brigade, with a coloured band round his cap, stood in their place, and,
with his hands in his pockets, was severely looking at a fat-necked,
well-fed, bay stallion that was being led up and down before him by a
fireman. The stallion was lame on one of his fore feet, and the chief of
the firemen was angrily saying something to a veterinary who stood by.
The police officer was also present. When he saw the cart he went up to
the convoy soldier.
“Where did you bring him from?” he asked, shaking his head
disapprovingly.
“From the Gorbatovskaya,” answered the policeman.
“A prisoner?” asked the chief of the fire brigade.
“Yes. It’s the second to-day.”
“Well, I must say they’ve got some queer arrangements. Though of course
it’s a broiling day,” said the chief of the fire brigade; then, turning
to the fireman who was leading the lame stallion, he shouted: “Put him
into the corner stall. And as to you, you hound, I’ll teach you how to
cripple horses which are worth more than you are, you scoundrel.”
The dead man was taken from the cart by the policemen just in the same
way as the first had been, and carried upstairs into the hospital.
Nekhludoff followed them as if he were hypnotised.
“What do you want?” asked one of the policemen. But Nekhludoff did
not answer, and followed where the body was being carried. The madman,
sitting on a bed, was smoking greedily the cigarette Nekhludoff had
given him.
“Ah, you’ve come back,” he said, and laughed. When he saw the body he
made a face, and said, “Again! I am sick of it. I am not a boy, am I,
eh?” and he turned to Nekhludoff with a questioning smile.
Nekhludoff was looking at the dead man, whose face, which had been
hidden by his cap, was now visible. This convict was as handsome in face
and body as the other was hideous. He was a man in the full bloom of
life. Notwithstanding that he was disfigured by the half of his head
being shaved, the straight, rather low forehead, raised a bit over the
black, lifeless eyes, was very fine, and so was the nose above the
thin, black moustaches. There was a smile on the lips that were already
growing blue, a small beard outlined the lower part of the face, and on
the shaved side of the head a firm, well-shaped ear was visible.
One could see what possibilities of a higher life had been destroyed
in this man. The fine bones of his hands and shackled feet, the strong
muscles of all his well-proportioned limbs, showed what a beautiful,
strong, agile human animal this had been. As an animal merely he had
been a far more perfect one of his kind than the bay stallion, about the
laming of which the fireman was so angry.
Yet he had been done to death, and no one was sorry for him as a man,
nor was any one sorry that so fine a working animal had perished. The
only feeling evinced was that of annoyance because of the bother caused
by the necessity of getting this body, threatening putrefaction, out of
the way. The doctor and his assistant entered the hospital, accompanied
by the inspector of the police station. The doctor was a thick-set man,
dressed in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely
fitting his muscular thighs. The inspector was a little fat fellow, with
a red face, round as a ball, which he made still broader by a habit he
had of filling his cheeks with air, and slowly letting it out again. The
doctor sat down on the bed by the side of the dead man, and touched
the hands in the same way as his assistant had done, put his ear to the
heart, rose, and pulled his trousers straight. “Could not be more dead,”
he said.
The inspector filled his mouth with air and slowly blew it out again.
“Which prison is he from?” he asked the convoy soldier.
The soldier told him, and reminded him of the chains on the dead man’s
feet.
“I’ll have them taken off; we have got a smith about, the Lord be
thanked,” said the inspector, and blew up his cheeks again; he went
towards the door, slowly letting out the air.
“Why has this happened?” Nekhludoff asked the doctor.
The doctor looked at him through his spectacles.
“Why has what happened? Why they die of sunstroke, you mean? This is
why: They sit all through the winter without exercise and without light,
and suddenly they are taken out into the sunshine, and on a day like
this, and they march in a crowd so that they get no air, and sunstroke
is the result.”
“Then why are they sent out?”
“Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them. But may I ask who are
you?”
“I am a stranger.”
“Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time.” The doctor was vexed; he
gave his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds of the
sick.
“Well, how are you getting on?” he asked the pale man with the crooked
mouth and bandaged neck.
Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his cigarette,