Resurrection
months and after that exiled to Archangel. There he refused to take the
oath of allegiance that was required of them and was condemned to
be exiled to the Takoutsk Government, so that half his life since he
reached manhood was passed in prison and exile. All these adventures did
not embitter him nor weaken his energy, but rather stimulated it. He was
a lively young fellow, with a splendid digestion, always active, gay
and vigorous. He never repented of anything, never looked far ahead, and
used all his powers, his cleverness, his practical knowledge to act in
the present. When free he worked towards the aim he had set himself, the
enlightening and the uniting of the working men, especially the country
labourers. When in prison he was just as energetic and practical in
finding means to come in contact with the outer world, and in arranging
his own life and the life of his group as comfortably as the conditions
would allow. Above all things he was a communist. He wanted, as it
seemed to him, nothing for himself and contented himself with very
little, but demanded very much for the group of his comrades, and could
work for it either physically or mentally day and night, without sleep
or food. As a peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at
his work, and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and
attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others. His
widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant woman, was
still living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see her while he was
free. During the time he spent at home he entered into all the interests
of his mother’s life, helped her in her work, and continued his
intercourse with former playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with them in
so-called “dog’s feet,” [a kind of cigarette that the peasants smoke,
made of a bit of paper and bent at one end into a hook] took part
in their fist fights, and explained to them how they were all being
deceived by the State, and how they ought to disentangle themselves out
of the deception they were kept in. When he thought or spoke of what a
revolution would do for the people he always imagined this people from
whom he had sprung himself left in very nearly the same conditions
as they were in, only with sufficient land and without the gentry and
without officials. The revolution, according to him, and in this
he differed from Novodvoroff and Novodvoroff’s follower, Markel
Kondratieff, should not alter the elementary forms of the life of the
people, should not break down the whole edifice, but should only alter
the inner walls of the beautiful, strong, enormous old structure he
loved so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion,
never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of
all origin, or the future life. God was to him, as also to Arago, an
hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business
with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right.
Darwinism, which seemed so important to his fellows, was only the same
kind of plaything of the mind as the creation in six days. The question
how the world had originated did not interest him, just because the
question how it would be best to live in this world was ever before him.
He never thought about future life, always bearing in the depth of his
soul the firm and quiet conviction inherited from his forefathers, and
common to all labourers on the land, that just as in the world of plants
and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form,
the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog,
the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also
does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and
therefore always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the
sufferings that lead towards it, but did not care and did not know how
to speak about it. He loved work, was always employed in some practical
business, and put his comrades in the way of the same kind of practical
work.
The other political prisoner from among the people, Markel Kondratieff,
was a very different kind of man. He began to work at the age of
fifteen, and took to smoking and drinking in order to stifle a dense
sense of being wronged. He first realised he was wronged one Christmas
when they, the factory children, were invited to a Christmas tree, got
up by the employer’s wife, where he received a farthing whistle, an
apple, a gilt walnut and a fig, while the employer’s children had
presents given them which seemed gifts from fairyland, and had cost more
than fifty roubles, as he afterwards heard.
When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their factory to
work as a working girl, and noticing his superior qualities began giving
books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to talk and explain his position
to him, and how to remedy it. When the possibility of freeing himself
and others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the
injustice of this state appeared more cruel and more terrible than
before, and he longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for
the punishment of those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel
injustice. Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the acquirement
of knowledge. It was not clear to him how knowledge should bring about
the realisation of the social ideal, but he believed that the knowledge
that had shown him the injustice of the state in which he lived would
also abolish that injustice itself. Besides knowledge would, in his
opinion, raise him above others. Therefore he left off drinking and
smoking, and devoted all his leisure time to study. The revolutionist
gave him lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the
facility with which he took it in, surprised her. In two years he had
mastered algebra, geometry, history--which he was specially fond of--and
made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and especially socialistic
literature. The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratieff with her,
forbidden books having been found in their possession, and they were
imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda Government. There Kondratieff
became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more
revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still firmer
in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader in a large
strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of
the director. He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia.
His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views of the
existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of the religion
in which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and
at first with fear, but later with rapture, freedom from it, he did
not tire of viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious
dogmas, as if wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been
practised on him.
He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and,
like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been
developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual
labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and halting
stations, which enabled him to continue his studies. He was now studying
the first volume of Karl Marks’s, and carefully hid the book in his sack
as if it were a great treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference
to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly
attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as
unanswerable truths.
He had an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looked upon as a
hindrance in all necessary business. But he pitied Maslova and was
gentle with her, for he considered her an example of the way the lower
are exploited by the upper classes. The same reason made him dislike
Nekhludoff, so that he talked little with him, and never pressed
Nekhludoff’s hand, but only held out his own to be pressed when greeting
him.
CHAPTER XIII.
LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES.
The stove had burned up and got warm, the tea was made and poured out
into mugs and cups, and milk was added to it; rusks, fresh rye and wheat
bread, hard-boiled eggs, butter, and calf’s head and feet were placed on
the cloth. Everybody moved towards the part of the shelf beds which took
the place of the table and sat eating and talking. Rintzeva sat on a box
pouring out the tea. The rest crowded round her, only Kryltzoff, who had
taken off his wet cloak and wrapped himself in his dry plaid and lay in
his own place talking to Nekhludoff.
After the cold and damp march and the dirt and disorder they had found
here, and after the pains they had taken to get it tidy, after having
drunk hot tea and eaten, they were all in the best and brightest of
spirits.
The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the criminals,
reached them through the wall, reminding them of their surroundings,
seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As on an island in the
midst of the sea, these people felt themselves for a brief interval not
swamped by the degradation and sufferings which surrounded them; this
made their spirits rise, and excited them. They talked about everything
except their present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it
generally happens among young men, and women especially, if they are
forced to remain together, as these people were, all sorts of agreements
and disagreements and attractions, curiously blended, had sprung up
among them. Almost all of them were in love. Novodvoroff was in love
with the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This Grabetz was a young, thoughtless
girl who had gone in for a course of study, perfectly indifferent to
revolutionary questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she
compromised herself in some way and was exiled. The chief interest of
her life during the time of her trial in prison and in exile was her
success with men, just as it had been when she was free. Now on the way
she comforted herself with the fact that Novodvoroff had taken a fancy
to her, and she fell in love with him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone
to fall in love herself, but did not awaken love in others, though she
was always hoping for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then
to Novodvoroff. Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary Pavlovna. He
loved her with a man’s love, but knowing how she regarded this sort of
love, hid his feelings under the guise of friendship and gratitude
for the tenderness with which she attended to his wants. Nabatoff and
Rintzeva were attached to each other by very complicated ties. Just as
Mary Pavlovna was a perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva
was perfectly chaste as her own husband’s wife. When only a schoolgirl
of sixteen she fell in love with Rintzeff, a student of the Petersburg
University, and married him before he left the university, when she was
only nineteen years old. During his fourth year at the university her
husband had become involved in the students’ rows, was exiled from
Petersburg, and turned revolutionist. She left the medical courses she
was attending, followed him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had
not considered her husband the cleverest and best of men she would not
have fallen in love with him; and if she had not fallen in love would
not have married; but having fallen in love and married him whom she
thought the best and cleverest of men, she naturally looked upon life
and its aims in the way the best and cleverest of men looked at them. At
first he thought the aim of life was to learn, and she looked upon study
as the aim of life. He became a revolutionist, and so did she. She could