Resurrection
“No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in
the bosom of the Father he hath declared him,” said the old man in the
same rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow.
“It’s clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray
to a hole,” said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his
girdle, pulling straight the harness on one of the horses.
Some one laughed.
“What is your faith, Dad?” asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his
cart on the same side of the raft.
“I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one--no one but myself,”
said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before.
“How can you believe yourself?” Nekhludoff asked, entering into a
conversation with him. “You might make a mistake.”
“Never in your life,” the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his
head.
“Then why are there different faiths?” Nekhludoff asked.
“It’s just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that
there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as
in a swamp,--lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out.
Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy,
and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy--every faith
praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies.
There are many faiths, but the spirit is one--in me and in you and in
him. So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one
be himself, and all will be as one.”
The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that
as many as possible should hear him.
“And have you long held this faith?”
“I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me.”
“Persecute you? How?”
“As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and
take me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the
Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing
because I am free. They say, ‘What is your name?’ thinking I shall name
myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything:
I have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself.
‘What is your name?’ ‘Man.’ ‘How old are you?’ I say, ‘I do not count my
years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.’
‘Who are your parents?’ ‘I have no parents except God and Mother Earth.
God is my father.’ ‘And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?’ they say.
I say, ‘Why not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.’ ‘Where’s the
good of talking to him,’ they say, and I say, ‘I do not ask you to talk
to me.’ And so they begin tormenting me.”
“And where are you going now?” asked Nekhludoff.
“Where God will lead me. I work when I can find work, and when I can’t
I beg.” The old man noticed that the raft was approaching the bank and
stopped, looking round at the bystanders with a look of triumph.
Nekhludoff got out his purse and offered some money to the old man, but
he refused, saying:
“I do not accept this sort of thing--bread I do accept.”
“Well, then, excuse me.”
“There is nothing to excuse, you have not offended me. And it is not
possible to offend me.” And the old man put the wallet he had taken
off again on his back. Meanwhile, the post-cart had been landed and the
horses harnessed.
“I wonder you should care to talk to him, sir,” said the driver, when
Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again.
“He is just a worthless tramp.”
CHAPTER XXII.
NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL.
When they got to the top of the hill bank the driver turned to
Nekhludoff.
“Which hotel am I to drive to?”
“Which is the best?”
“Nothing could be better than the Siberian, but Dukeoff’s is also good.”
“Drive to whichever you like.”
The driver again seated himself sideways and drove faster. The town
was like all such towns. The same kind of houses with attic windows
and green roofs, the same kind of cathedral, the same kind of shops and
stores in the principal street, and even the same kind of policemen.
Only the houses were almost all of them wooden, and the streets were not
paved. In one of the chief streets the driver stopped at the door of an
hotel, but there was no room to be had, so he drove to another. And here
Nekhludoff, after two months, found himself once again in surroundings
such as he had been accustomed to as far as comfort and cleanliness
went. Though the room he was shown to was simple enough, yet Nekhludoff
felt greatly relieved to be there after two months of post-carts,
country inns and halting stations. His first business was to clean
himself of the lice which he had never been able to get thoroughly rid
of after visiting a halting station. When he had unpacked he went to the
Russian bath, after which he made himself fit to be seen in a town,
put on a starched shirt, trousers that had got rather creased along the
seams, a frock-coat and an overcoat, and drove to the Governor of the
district. The hotel-keeper called an isvostchik, whose well-fed Kirghiz
horse and vibrating trap soon brought Nekhludoff to the large porch of
a big building, in front of which stood sentinels and a policeman. The
house had a garden in front, and at the back, among the naked branches
of aspen and birch trees, there grew thick and dark green pines and
firs. The General was not well, and did not receive; but Nekhludoff
asked the footman to hand in his card all the same, and the footman came
back with a favourable reply.
“You are asked to come in.”
The hall, the footman, the orderly, the staircase, the dancing-room,
with its well-polished floor, were very much the same as in Petersburg,
only more imposing and rather dirtier. Nekhludoff was shown into the
cabinet.
The General, a bloated, potato-nosed man, with a sanguine disposition,
large bumps on his forehead, bald head, and puffs under his eyes, sat
wrapped in a Tartar silk dressing-gown smoking a cigarette and sipping
his tea out of a tumbler in a silver holder.
“How do you do, sir? Excuse my dressing-gown; it is better so than if I
had not received you at all,” he said, pulling up his dressing-gown over
his fat neck with its deep folds at the nape. “I am not quite well, and
do not go out. What has brought you to our remote region?”
“I am accompanying a gang of prisoners, among whom there is a person
closely connected with me, said Nekhludoff, and now I have come to
see your Excellency partly in behalf of this person, and partly about
another business.” The General took a whiff and a sip of tea, put
his cigarette into a malachite ashpan, with his narrow eyes fixed on
Nekhludoff, listening seriously. He only interrupted him once to offer
him a cigarette.
The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed
that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession.
But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the
impossibility of such a reconciliation; so as not to feel the inner
discord in which he was living, he gave himself up more and more to the
habit of drinking, which is so widely spread among military men, and
was now suffering from what doctors term alcoholism. He was imbued
with alcohol, and if he drank any kind of liquor it made him tipsy. Yet
strong drink was an absolute necessity to him, he could not live without
it, so he was quite drunk every evening; but had grown so used to this
state that he did not reel nor talk any special nonsense. And if he
did talk nonsense, it was accepted as words of wisdom because of the
important and high position which he occupied. Only in the morning, just
at the time Nekhludoff came to see him, he was like a reasonable being,
could understand what was said to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a
proverb he was fond of repeating: “He’s tipsy, but he’s wise, so he’s
pleasant in two ways.”
The higher authorities knew he was a drunkard, but he was more educated
than the rest, though his education had stopped at the spot where
drunkenness had got hold of him. He was bold, adroit, of imposing
appearance, and showed tact even when tipsy; therefore, he was
appointed, and was allowed to retain so public and responsible an
office.
Nekhludoff told him that the person he was interested in was a woman,
that she was sentenced, though innocent, and that a petition had been
sent to the Emperor in her behalf.
“Yes, well?” said the General.
“I was promised in Petersburg that the news concerning her fate should
be sent to me not later than this month and to this place-”
The General stretched his hand with its stumpy fingers towards the
table, and rang a bell, still looking at Nekhludoff and puffing at his
cigarette.
“So I would like to ask you that this woman should be allowed to remain
here until the answer to her petition comes.”
The footman, an orderly in uniform, came in.
“Ask if Anna Vasilievna is up,” said the General to the orderly, “and
bring some more tea.” Then, turning to Nekhludoff, “Yes, and what else?”
“My other request concerns a political prisoner who is with the same
gang.”
“Dear me,” said the General, with a significant shake of the head.
“He is seriously ill--dying, and he will probably be left here in the
hospital, so one of the women prisoners would like to stay behind with
him.”
“She is no relation of his?”
“No, but she is willing to marry him if that will enable her to remain
with him.”
The General looked fixedly with twinkling eyes at his interlocutor, and,
evidently with a wish to discomfit him, listened, smoking in silence.
When Nekhludoff had finished, the General took a book off the table,
and, wetting his finger, quickly turned over the pages and found the
statute relating to marriage.
“What is she sentenced to?” he asked, looking up from the book.
“She? To hard labour.”
“Well, then, the position of one sentenced to that cannot be bettered by
marriage.”
“Yes, but--”
“Excuse me. Even if a free man should marry her, she would have to
serve her term. The question in such cases is, whose is the heavier
punishment, hers or his?”
“They are both sentenced to hard labour.”
“Very well; so they are quits,” said the General, with a laugh. “She’s
got what he has, only as he is sick he may be left behind, and of course
what can be done to lighten his fate shall be done. But as for her, even
if she did marry him, she could not remain behind.”
“The Generaless is having her coffee,” the footman announced.
The General nodded and continued:
“However, I shall think about it. What are their names? Put them down
here.”
Nekhludoff wrote down the names.
Nekhludoff’s request to be allowed to see the dying man the General
answered by saying, “Neither can I do that. Of course I do not suspect
you, but you take an interest in him and in the others, and you have
money, and here with us anything can be done with money. I have been
told to put down bribery. But how can I put down bribery when everybody
takes bribes? And the lower their rank the more ready they are to be
bribed. How can one find it out across more than three thousand miles?
There any official is a little Tsar, just as I am here,” and he laughed.
“You have in all likelihood been to see the political prisoners; you
gave money and got permission to see them,” he said, with a smile. “Is
it not so?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I quite understand that you had to do it. You pity a political prisoner
and wish to see him. And the inspector or the convoy soldier accepts,
because he has a salary of twice twenty copecks and a family, and he
can’t help accepting it. In his place and yours I should have acted
in the same way as you and he did. But in my position I do not permit
myself to swerve an inch from the letter of the law, just because I am