Resurrection
medicine. He wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he
would pay for it himself.
“Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a gentleman
before. Instead of punching your head, he actually gives up his place
to you,” said the old man to Taras. “It seems there are all sorts of
gentlefolk, too.”
“Yes, this is quite a new and different world,” thought Nekhludoff,
looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse, home-made garments,
and sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking faces, and feeling himself
surrounded on all sides with new people and the serious interests, joys,
and sufferings of a life of labour.
“Here is_ le vrai grand monde_,” thought Nekhludoff, remembering the
words of Prince Korchagin and all that idle, luxurious world to which
the Korchagins belonged, with their petty, mean interests. And he felt
the joy of a traveller on discovering a new, unknown, and beautiful
world.
END OF BOOK II.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS.
The gang of prisoners to which Maslova belonged had walked about three
thousand three hundred miles. She and the other prisoners condemned for
criminal offences had travelled by rail and by steamboats as far as the
town of Perm. It was only here that Nekhludoff succeeded in obtaining a
permission for her to continue the journey with the political prisoners,
as Vera Doukhova, who was among the latter, advised him to do. The
journey up to Perm had been very trying to Maslova both morally and
physically. Physically, because of the overcrowding, the dirt, and the
disgusting vermin, which gave her no peace; morally, because of the
equally disgusting men. The men, like the vermin, though they changed
at each halting-place, were everywhere alike importunate; they swarmed
round her, giving her no rest. Among the women prisoners and the men
prisoners, the jailers and the convoy soldiers, the habit of a kind of
cynical debauch was so firmly established that unless a female prisoner
was willing to utilise her position as a woman she had to be constantly
on the watch. To be continually in a state of fear and strife was very
trying. And Maslova was specially exposed to attacks, her appearance
being attractive and her past known to every one. The decided resistance
with which she now met the importunity of all the men seemed offensive
to them, and awakened another feeling, that of ill-will towards her. But
her position was made a little easier by her intimacy with Theodosia,
and Theodosia’s husband, who, having heard of the molestations his wife
was subject to, had in Nijni been arrested at his own desire in order
to be able to protect her, and was now travelling with the gang as a
prisoner. Maslova’s position became much more bearable when she was
allowed to join the political prisoners, who were provided with better
accomodations, better food, and were treated less rudely, but besides
all this Maslova’s condition was much improved because among the
political prisoners she was no longer molested by the men, and could
live without being reminded of that past which she was so anxious to
forget. But the chief advantage of the change lay in the fact that she
made the acquaintance of several persons who exercised a decided and
most beneficial influence on her character. Maslova was allowed to stop
with the political prisoners at all the halting-places, but being a
strong and healthy woman she was obliged to march with the criminal
convicts. In this way she walked all the way from Tomsk. Two political
prisoners also marched with the gang, Mary Pavlovna Schetinina, the girl
with the hazel eyes who had attracted Nekhludoff’s attention when he had
been to visit Doukhova in prison, and one Simonson, who was on his
way to the Takoutsk district, the dishevelled dark young fellow with
deep-lying eyes, whom Nekhludoff had also noticed during that visit.
Mary Pavlovna was walking because she had given her place on the cart
to one of the criminals, a woman expecting to be confined, and Simonson
because he did not dare to avail himself of a class privilege.
These three always started early in the morning before the rest of the
political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.
They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town, where a
new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.
It was early on a dull September morning. It kept raining and snowing
alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts. The whole gang of
prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty women, was already
assembled in the court of the halting station. Some of them were
crowding round the chief of the convoy, who was giving to specially
appointed prisoners money for two days’ keep to distribute among the
rest, while others were purchasing food from women who had been let into
the courtyard. One could hear the voices of the prisoners counting their
money and making their purchases, and the shrill voices of the women
with the food.
Simonson, in his rubber jacket and rubber overshoes fastened with a
string over his worsted stockings (he was a vegetarian and would not
wear the skin of slaughtered animals), was also in the courtyard waiting
for the gang to start. He stood by the porch and jotted down in his
notebook a thought that had occurred to him. This was what he wrote:
“If a bacteria watched and examined a human nail it would pronounce
it inorganic matter, and thus we, examining our globe and watching its
crust, pronounce it to be inorganic. This is incorrect.”
Katusha and Mary Pavlovna, both wearing top-boots and with shawls tied
round their heads, came out of the building into the courtyard where the
women sat sheltered from the wind by the northern wall of the court,
and vied with one another, offering their goods, hot meat pie, fish,
vermicelli, buckwheat porridge, liver, beef, eggs, milk. One had even a
roast pig to offer.
Having bought some eggs, bread, fish, and some rusks, Maslova was
putting them into her bag, while Mary Pavlovna was paying the women,
when a movement arose among the convicts. All were silent and took their
places. The officer came out and began giving the last orders before
starting. Everything was done in the usual manner. The prisoners were
counted, the chains on their legs examined, and those who were to
march in couples linked together with manacles. But suddenly the angry,
authoritative voice of the officer shouting something was heard, also
the sound of a blow and the crying of a child. All was silent for a
moment and then came a hollow murmur from the crowd. Maslova and Mary
Pavlovna advanced towards the spot whence the noise proceeded.
CHAPTER II.
AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH.
This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to the
scene whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy fellow, with
fair moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and coarse abuse, and
rubbing with his left the palm of his right hand, which he had hurt in
hitting a prisoner on the face. In front of him a thin, tall convict,
with half his head shaved and dressed in a cloak too short for him and
trousers much too short, stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand,
and holding a little shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.
“I’ll give it you” (foul abuse); “I’ll teach you to reason” (more
abuse); “you’re to give her to the women!” shouted the officer. “Now,
then, on with them.”
The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his little
daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died of typhus, and
now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The exile’s explanation that
he could not carry the child if he was manacled irritated the officer,
who happened to be in a bad temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner
a beating. [A fact described by Lineff in his “Transportation”.] Before
the injured convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner
with manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he
turned now to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little girl.
The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the girl.
The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.
“All the way from Tomsk they were not put on,” came a hoarse voice from
some one in the rear. “It’s a child, and not a puppy.”
“What’s he to do with the lassie? That’s not the law,” said some one
else.
“Who’s that?” shouted the officer as if he had been stung, and rushed
into the crowd.
“I’ll teach you the law. Who spoke. You? You?”
“Everybody says so, because-” said a short, broad-faced prisoner.
Before he had finished speaking the officer hit him in the face.
“Mutiny, is it? I’ll show you what mutiny means. I’ll have you all
shot like dogs, and the authorities will be only too thankful. Take the
girl.”
The crowd was silent. One convoy soldier pulled away the girl, who was
screaming desperately, while another manacled the prisoner, who now
submissively held out his hand.
“Take her to the women,” shouted the officer, arranging his sword belt.
The little girl, whose face had grown quite red, was trying to disengage
her arms from under the shawl, and screamed unceasingly. Mary Pavlovna
stepped out from among the crowd and came up to the officer.
“Will you allow me to carry the little girl?” she said.
“Who are you?” asked the officer.
“A political prisoner.”
Mary Pavlovna’s handsome face, with the beautiful prominent eyes (he
had noticed her before when the prisoners were given into his charge),
evidently produced an effect on the officer. He looked at her in silence
as if considering, then said: “I don’t care; carry her if you like. It
is easy for you to show pity; if he ran away who would have to answer?”
“How could he run away with the child in his arms?” said Mary Pavlovna.
“I have no time to talk with you. Take her if you like.”
“Shall I give her?” asked the soldier.
“Yes, give her.”
“Come to me,” said Mary Pavlovna, trying to coax the child to come to
her.
But the child in the soldier’s arms stretched herself towards her father
and continued to scream, and would not go to Mary Pavlovna.
“Wait a bit, Mary Pavlovna,” said Maslova, getting a rusk out of her
bag; “she will come to me.”
The little girl knew Maslova, and when she saw her face and the rusk
she let her take her. All was quiet. The gates were opened, and the gang
stepped out, the convoy counted the prisoners over again, the bags were
packed and tied on to the carts, the weak seated on the top. Maslova
with the child in her arms took her place among the women next to
Theodosia. Simonson, who had all the time been watching what was going
on, stepped with large, determined strides up to the officer, who,
having given his orders, was just getting into a trap, and said, “You
have behaved badly.”
“Get to your place; it is no business of yours.”
“It is my business to tell you that you have behaved badly and I have
said it,” said Simonson, looking intently into the officer’s face from
under his bushy eyebrows.
“Ready? March!” the officer called out, paying no heed to Simonson, and,
taking hold of the driver’s shoulder, he got into the trap. The gang
started and spread out as it stepped on to the muddy high road with
ditches on each side, which passed through a dense forest.
CHAPTER III.
MARY PAVLOVNA.
In spite of the hard conditions in which they were placed, life among
the political prisoners seemed very good to Katusha after the depraved,
luxurious and effeminate life she had led in town for the last six
years, and after two months’ imprisonment with criminal prisoners. The
fifteen to twenty miles they did per day, with one day’s rest after two
days’ marching, strengthened her physically, and the fellowship with her