The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (488 page)

In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in Nekhludoff's way, bowing to him.

"Please, your honour (we don't know what to call you), get our affair settled somehow."

"I am not an official. I know nothing about it."

"Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody--one of the authorities, if need be," said an indignant voice. "Show some pity on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for nothing."

"What do you mean? Why?" said Nekhludoff.

"Why? We ourselves don't know why, but are sitting here the second month."

"Yes, it's quite true, and it is owing to an accident," said the inspector. "These people were taken up because they had no passports, and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people to their different governments, but are keeping these."

"What! For no other reason than that?" Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at the door.

A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant stopped them.

"Let some one of you speak."

A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue. The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the second month, as if they were criminals.

"We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help us."

Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man's cheek.

"How's that? Is it possible for such a reason?" Nekhludoff said, turning to the assistant.

"Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes," calmly said the assistant, "but they seem to have been forgotten or something."

Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.

"Worse than dogs," he began.

"Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know--"

"What do I know?" screamed the little man, desperately. "What is our crime?"

"Silence!" shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.

"But what is the meaning of all this?" Nekhludoff thought to himself as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him through the openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met him, making him feel as if he were running the gauntlet.

"Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?" Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.

"What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they are all of them innocent," said the inspector's assistant. "But it does happen that some are really imprisoned for nothing."

"Well, these have done nothing."

"Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There are such types--desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp. To-day two of that sort had to be punished."

"Punished? How?"

"Flogged with a birch-rod, by order."

"But corporal punishment is abolished."

"Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still liable to it."

Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity, and moral nausea, that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him more strongly than ever before.

Without listening to the inspector's assistant, or looking round, he hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The inspector was in the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send for Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when Nekhludoff entered the office.

"Sit down, please. I'll send for her at once," said the inspector.

CHAPTER LIV

.

PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.

The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large, dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people. In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices. There was a writing table by the window.

The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.

The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face, dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner's clothes, who was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair, and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand, and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it with an angry look on his face.

Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful; her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips, but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes. The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and said something to the mother.

Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to the Scoptsy sect.

At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector's side, looked round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.

"And whom are you waiting for?"

Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his acquaintance.

"Is she, then, your sister?" the boy asked.

"No, not my sister," Nekhludoff answered in surprise.

"And with whom are you here?" he inquired of the boy.

"I? With mamma; she is a political one," he replied.

"Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!" said the inspector, evidently considering Nekhludoff's conversation with the boy illegal.

Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff's attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps, approached Nekhludoff and the boy.

"What is he asking you? Who you are?" she inquired with a slight smile, and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind, prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.

"He likes to know everything," she said, looking at the boy with so sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to smile back.

"He was asking me whom I have come to see."

"Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know it is," said the inspector.

"All right, all right," she said, and went back to the consumptive lad's mother, holding Kolia's little hand in her large, white one, while he continued gazing up into her face.

"Whose is this little boy?" Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.

"His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison," said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how exceptional his establishment was.

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her."

"And that young girl?"

"I cannot answer your question," said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders. "Besides, here is Doukhova."

CHAPTER LV

.

VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.

Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait, the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.

"Thanks for having come," she said, pressing Nekhludoff's hand. "Do you remember me? Let us sit down."

"I did not expect to see you like this."

"Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire nothing better," said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.

In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation. Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections, about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had never heard of.

She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, "People's Freedom," a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck, her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would lie.

The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their "sub-group," as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure to blame for her friend's arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set this friend free.

Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.

As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all concerned were arrested. "I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy." She concluded her story with a piteous smile.

Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme. She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house, the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.