Resurrection
to pass was the inspector. He was stout, and seemed a resolute,
self-satisfied man, but he looked ghastly pale, downcast, and seemed
frightened; then his assistant, frowning but resolute; behind them the
watchman. They passed my door and stopped at the next, and I hear the
assistant calling out in a strange voice: ‘Lozinsky, get up and put on
clean linen.’ Yes. Then I hear the creaking of the door; they entered
into his cell. Then I hear Lozinsky’s steps going to the opposite side
of the corridor. I could only see the inspector. He stood quite pale,
and buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, shrugging his shoulders. Yes.
Then, as if frightened of something, he moved out of the way. It was
Lozinsky, who passed him and came up to my door. A handsome young fellow
he was, you know, of that nice Polish type: broad shouldered, his head
covered with fine, fair, curly hair as with a cap, and with beautiful
blue eyes. So blooming, so fresh, so healthy. He stopped in front of my
window, so that I could see the whole of his face. A dreadful, gaunt,
livid face. ‘Kryltzoff, have you any cigarettes?’ I wished to pass him
some, but the assistant hurriedly pulled out his cigarette case and
passed it to him. He took out one, the assistant struck a match, and he
lit the cigarette and began to smoke and seemed to be thinking. Then,
as if he had remembered something, he began to speak. ‘It is cruel and
unjust. I have committed no crime. I--’ I saw something quiver in his
white young throat, from which I could not take my eyes, and he stopped.
Yes. At that moment I hear Rozovsky shouting in his fine, Jewish
voice. Lozinsky threw away the cigarette and stepped from the door.
And Rozovsky appeared at the window. His childish face, with the limpid
black eyes, was red and moist. He also had clean linen on, the trousers
were too wide, and he kept pulling them up and trembled all over. He
approached his pitiful face to my window. ‘Kryltzoff, it’s true that the
doctor has prescribed cough mixture for me, is it not? I am not well.
I’ll take some more of the mixture.’ No one answered, and he looked
inquiringly, now at me, now at the inspector. What he meant to say
I never made out. Yes. Suddenly the assistant again put on a stern
expression, and called out in a kind of squeaking tone: ‘Now, then, no
nonsense. Let us go.’ Rozovsky seemed incapable of understanding what
awaited him, and hurried, almost ran, in front of him all along the
corridor. But then he drew back, and I could hear his shrill voice
and his cries, then the trampling of feet, and general hubbub. He was
shrieking and sobbing. The sounds came fainter and fainter, and at
last the door rattled and all was quiet. Yes. And so they hanged them.
Throttled them both with a rope. A watchman, another one, saw it done,
and told me that Lozinsky did not resist, but Rozovsky struggled for
a long time, so that they had to pull him up on to the scaffold and to
force his head into the noose. Yes. This watchman was a stupid fellow.
He said: ‘They told me, sir, that it would be frightful, but it was
not at all frightful. After they were hanged they only shrugged their
shoulders twice, like this.’ He showed how the shoulders convulsively
rose and fell. ‘Then the hangman pulled a bit so as to tighten the
noose, and it was all up, and they never budged.”’ And Kryltzoff
repeated the watchman’s words, “Not at all frightful,” and tried to
smile, but burst into sobs instead.
For a long time after that he kept silent, breathing heavily, and
repressing the sobs that were choking him.
“From that time I became a revolutionist. Yes,” he said, when he was
quieter and finished his story in a few words. He belonged to the
Narodovoltzy party, and was even at the head of the disorganising group,
whose object was to terrorise the government so that it should give
up its power of its own accord. With this object he travelled
to Petersburg, to Kiev, to Odessa and abroad, and was everywhere
successful. A man in whom he had full confidence betrayed him. He was
arrested, tried, kept in prison for two years, and condemned to death,
but the sentence was mitigated to one of hard labour for life.
He went into consumption while in prison, and in the conditions he was
now placed he had scarcely more than a few months longer to live. This
he knew, but did not repent of his action, but said that if he had
another life he would use it in the same way to destroy the conditions
in which such things as he had seen were possible.
This man’s story and his intimacy with him explained to Nekhludoff much
that he had not previously understood.
CHAPTER VII.
NEKHLUDOFF SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA.
On the day when the convoy officer had the encounter with the prisoners
at the halting station about the child, Nekhludoff, who had spent
the night at the village inn, woke up late, and was some time writing
letters to post at the next Government town, so that he left the inn
later than usual, and did not catch up with the gang on the road as
he had done previously, but came to the village where the next halting
station was as it was growing dusk.
Having dried himself at the inn, which was kept by an elderly woman who
had an extraordinarily fat, white neck, he had his tea in a clean room
decorated with a great number of icons and pictures and then hurried
away to the halting station to ask the officer for an interview
with Katusha. At the last six halting stations he could not get the
permission for an interview from any of the officers. Though they had
been changed several times, not one of them would allow Nekhludoff
inside the halting stations, so that he had not seen Katusha for
more than a week. This strictness was occasioned by the fact that
an important prison official was expected to pass that way. Now this
official had passed without looking in at the gang, after all, and
Nekhludoff hoped that the officer who had taken charge of the gang in
the morning would allow him an interview with the prisoners, as former
officers had done.
The landlady offered Nekhludoff a trap to drive him to the halting
station, situated at the farther end of the village, but Nekhludoff
preferred to walk. A young labourer, a broad-shouldered young fellow
of herculean dimensions, with enormous top-boots freshly blackened with
strongly smelling tar, offered himself as a guide.
A dense mist obscured the sky, and it was so dark that when the young
fellow was three steps in advance of him Nekhludoff could not see him
unless the light of some window happened to fall on the spot, but he
could hear the heavy boots wading through the deep, sticky slush. After
passing the open place in front of the church and the long street,
with its rows of windows shining brightly in the darkness, Nekhludoff
followed his guide to the outskirts of the village, where it was pitch
dark. But soon here, too, rays of light, streaming through the mist
from the lamps in the front of the halting station, became discernible
through the darkness. The reddish spots of light grew bigger and bigger;
at last the stakes of the palisade, the moving figure of the sentinel, a
post painted with white and black stripes and the sentinel’s box became
visible.
The sentinel called his usual “Who goes there?” as they approached, and
seeing they were strangers treated them with such severity that he would
not allow them to wait by the palisade; but Nekhludoff’s guide was not
abashed by this severity.
“Hallo, lad! why so fierce? You go and rouse your boss while we wait
here?”
The sentinel gave no answer, but shouted something in at the gate and
stood looking at the broad-shouldered young labourer scraping the mud
off Nekhludoff’s boots with a chip of wood by the light of the lamp.
From behind the palisade came the hum of male and female voices. In
about three minutes more something rattled, the gate opened, and a
sergeant, with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, stepped out of the
darkness into the lamplight.
The sergeant was not as strict as the sentinel, but he was extremely
inquisitive. He insisted on knowing what Nekhludoff wanted the officer
for, and who he was, evidently scenting his booty and anxious not to let
it escape. Nekhludoff said he had come on special business, and would
show his gratitude, and would the sergeant take a note for him to the
officer. The sergeant took the note, nodded, and went away. Some time
after the gate rattled again, and women carrying baskets, boxes, jugs
and sacks came out, loudly chattering in their peculiar Siberian dialect
as they stepped over the threshold of the gate. None of them wore
peasant costumes, but were dressed town fashion, wearing jackets and
fur-lined cloaks. Their skirts were tucked up high, and their heads
wrapped up in shawls. They examined Nekhludoff and his guide curiously
by the light of the lamp. One of them showed evident pleasure at the
sight of the broad-shouldered fellow, and affectionately administered to
him a dose of Siberian abuse.
“You demon, what are you doing here? The devil take you,” she said,
addressing him.
“I’ve been showing this traveller here the way,” answered the young
fellow. “And what have you been bringing here?”
“Dairy produce, and I am to bring more in the morning.”
The guide said something in answer that made not only the women but even
the sentinel laugh, and, turning to Nekhludoff, he said:
“You’ll find your way alone? Won’t get lost, will you?”
“I shall find it all right.”
“When you have passed the church it’s the second from the two-storied
house. Oh, and here, take my staff,” he said, handing the stick he
was carrying, and which was longer than himself, to Nekhludoff; and
splashing through the mud with his enormous boots, he disappeared in the
darkness, together with the women.
His voice mingling with the voices of the women was still audible
through the fog, when the gate again rattled, and the sergeant appeared
and asked Nekhludoff to follow him to the officer.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEKHLUDOFF AND THE OFFICER.
This halting station, like all such stations along the Siberian
road, was surrounded by a courtyard, fenced in with a palisade of
sharp-pointed stakes, and consisted of three one-storied houses. One of
them, the largest, with grated windows, was for the prisoners, another
for the convoy soldiers, and the third, in which the office was, for the
officers.
There were lights in the windows of all the three houses, and, like
all such lights, they promised, here in a specially deceptive manner,
something cosy inside the walls. Lamps were burning before the porches
of the houses and about five lamps more along the walls lit up the yard.
The sergeant led Nekhludoff along a plank which lay across the yard up
to the porch of the smallest of the houses.
When he had gone up the three steps of the porch he let Nekhludoff pass
before him into the ante-room, in which a small lamp was burning, and
which was filled with smoky fumes. By the stove a soldier in a coarse
shirt with a necktie and black trousers, and with one top-boot on, stood
blowing the charcoal in a somovar, using the other boot as bellows. [The
long boots worn in Russia have concertina-like sides, and when held to
the chimney of the somovar can be used instead of bellows to make the
charcoal inside burn up.] When he saw Nekhludoff, the soldier left the
somovar and helped him off with his waterproof; then went into the inner
room.
“He has come, your honour.”
“Well, ask him in,” came an angry voice.
“Go in at the door,” said the soldier, and went back to the somovar.
In the next room an officer with fair moustaches and a very red face,
dressed in an Austrian jacket that closely fitted his broad chest and
shoulders, sat at a covered table, on which were the remains of his