Resurrection, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read this summer .txt] 📗

was a short, dark man, with short, grizzly hair,

quick, sparkling eyes, and a thick beard cut close on his

projecting lower jaw.

 

“Maslova? Yes, of course, I know. She was accused of poisoning,”

the Procureur said, quietly. “But why do you want to see her?”

And then, as if wishing to tone down his question, he added, “I

cannot give you the permission without knowing why you require

it.”

 

“I require it for a particularly important reason.”

 

“Yes?” said the Procureur, and, lifting his eyes, looked

attentively at Nekhludoff. “Has her case been heard or not?”

 

“She was tried yesterday, and unjustly sentenced; she is

innocent.”

 

“Yes? If she was sentenced only yesterday,” went on the

Procureur, paying no attention to Nekhludoff’s statement

concerning Maslova’s innocence, “she must still he in the

preliminary detention prison until the sentence is delivered in

its final form. Visiting is allowed there only on certain days; I

should advise you to inquire there.”

 

“But I must see her as soon as possible,” Nekhludoff said, his

jaw trembling as he felt the decisive moment approaching.

 

“Why must you?” said the Procureur, lifting his brows with some

agitation.

 

“Because I betrayed her and brought her to the condition which

exposed her to this accusation.”

 

“All the same, I cannot see what it has to do with visiting her.”

 

“This: that whether I succeed or not in getting the sentence

changed I want to follow her, and—marry her,” said Nekhludoff,

touched to tears by his own conduct, and at the same time pleased

to see the effect he produced on the Procureur.

 

“Really! Dear me!” said the Procureur. “This is certainly a very

exceptional case. I believe you are a member of the Krasnoporsk

rural administration?” he asked, as if he remembered having heard

before of this Nekhludoff, who was now making so strange a

declaration.

 

“I beg your pardon, but I do not think that has anything to do

with my request,” answered Nekhludoff, flushing angrily.

 

“Certainly not,” said the Procureur, with a scarcely perceptible

smile and not in the least abashed; “only your wish is so

extraordinary and so out of the common.”

 

“Well; but can I get the permission?”

 

“The permission? Yes, I will give you an order of admittance

directly. Take a seat.”

 

He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. “Please

sit down.”

 

Nekhludoff continued to stand.

 

Having written an order of admittance, and handed it to

Nekhludoff, the Procureur looked curiously at him.

 

“I must also state that I can no longer take part in the

sessions.”

 

“Then you will have to lay valid reasons before the Court, as

you, of course, know.”

 

“My reasons are that I consider all judging not only useless, but

immoral.”

 

“Yes,” said the Procureur, with the same scarcely perceptible

smile, as if to show that this kind of declaration was well known

to him and belonged to the amusing sort. “Yes, but you will

certainly understand that I as Procureur, can not agree with you

on this point. Therefore, I should advise you to apply to the

Court, which will consider your declaration, and find it valid or

not valid, and in the latter case will impose a fine. Apply,

then, to the Court.”

 

“I have made my declaration, and shall apply nowhere else,”

Nekhludoff said, angrily.

 

“Well, then, good-afternoon,” said the Procureur, bowing his

head, evidently anxious to be rid of this strange visitor.

 

“Who was that you had here?” asked one of the members of the

Court, as he entered, just after Nekhludoff left the room.

 

“Nekhludoff, you know; the same that used to make all sorts of

strange statements at the Krasnoporsk rural meetings. Just fancy!

He is on the jury, and among the prisoners there is a woman or

girl sentenced to penal servitude, whom he says he betrayed, and

now he wants to marry her.”

 

“You don’t mean to say so.”

 

“That’s what he told me. And in such a strange state of

excitement!”

 

“There is something abnormal in the young men of to-day.”

 

“Oh, but he is not so very young.”

 

“Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the

day by wearying one out. He talked and talked without end.”

 

“Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will

become real obstructionists.”

 

CHAPTER XXXVI.

 

NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.

 

From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary

detention prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and

the inspector explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be

in the old temporary prison. Nekhludoff went there.

 

Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.

 

The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff

only reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to

the door of the large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped

him and rang. A warder came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff

showed him his order of admittance, but the warder said he could

not let him in without the inspector’s permission. Nekhludoff

went to see the inspector. As he was going up the stairs he heard

distant sounds of some complicated bravura, played on the piano.

When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye, opened the door

to him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room and to strike

his car. It was a rhapsody of Liszt’s, that everybody was tired

of, splendidly played but only to one point. When that point was

reached the same thing was repeated. Nekhludoff asked the

bandaged maid whether the inspector was in. She answered that he

was not in.

 

“Will he return soon?”

 

The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly

again up to the same charmed point.

 

“I will go and ask,” and the servant went away.

 

“Tell him he is not in and won’t be to-day; he is out visiting.

What do they come bothering for?” came the sound of a woman’s

voice from behind the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and

stopped, and the sound of a chair pushed back was heard. It was

plain the irritated pianist meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor,

who had come at an untimely hour. “Papa is not in,” a pale girl

with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the anteroom,

but, seeing a young man in a good coat, she softened.

 

“Come in, please… . What is it you want?”

 

“I want to see a prisoner in this prison.”

 

“A political one, I suppose?”

 

“No, not a political one. I have a permission from the

Procureur.”

 

“Well, I don’t know, and papa is out; but come in, please,” she

said, again, “or else speak to the assistant. He is in the office

at present; apply there. What is your name?”

 

“I thank you,” said Nekhludoff, without answering her question,

and went out.

 

The door was not yet closed after him when the same lively tones

recommenced. In the courtyard Nekhludoff met an officer with

bristly moustaches, and asked for the assistant-inspector. It was

the assistant himself. He looked at the order of admittance, but

said that he could not decide to let him in with a pass for the

preliminary prison. Besides, it was too late. “Please to come

again tomorrow. To morrow, at 10, everybody is allowed to go in.

Come then, and the inspector himself will be at home. Then you

can have the interview either in the common room or, if the

inspector allows it, in the office.”

 

And so Nekhludoff did not succeed in getting an interview that

day, and returned home. As he went along the streets, excited at

the idea of meeting her, he no longer thought about the Law

Courts, but recalled his conversations with the Procureur and the

inspector’s assistant. The fact that he had been seeking an

interview with her, and had told the Procureur, and had been in

two prisons, so excited him that it was long before he could calm

down. When he got home he at once fetched out his diary, that had

long remained untouched, read a few sentences out of it, and then

wrote as follows:

 

“For two years I have not written anything in my diary, and

thought I never should return to this childishness. Yet it is not

childishness, but converse with my own self, with this real

divine self which lives in every man. All this time that I slept

there was no one for me to converse with. I was awakened by an

extraordinary event on the 28th of April, in the Law Court, when

I was on the jury. I saw her in the prisoners’ dock, the Katusha

betrayed by me, in a prisoner’s cloak, condemned to penal

servitude through a strange mistake, and my own fault. I have

just been to the Procureur’s and to the prison, but I was not

admitted. I have resolved to do all I can to see her, to confess

to her, and to atone for my sin, even by a marriage. God help me.

My soul is at peace and I am full of joy.”

 

CHAPTER XXXVII.

 

MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST.

 

That night Maslova lay awake a long time with her eyes open

looking at the door, in front of which the deacon’s daughter kept

passing. She was thinking that nothing would induce her to go to

the island of Sakhalin and marry a convict, but would arrange

matters somehow with one of the prison officials, the secretary,

a warder, or even a warder’s assistant. “Aren’t they all given

that way? Only I must not get thin, or else I am lost.”

 

She thought of how the advocate had looked at her, and also the

president, and of the men she met, and those who came in on

purpose at the court. She recollected how her companion, Bertha,

who came to see her in prison, had told her about the student

whom she had “loved” while she was with Kitaeva, and who had

inquired about her, and pitied her very much. She recalled many

to mind, only not Nekhludoff. She never brought back to mind the

days of her childhood and youth, and her love to Nekhludoff.

That would have been too painful. These memories lay untouched

somewhere deep in her soul; she had forgotten him, and never

recalled and never even dreamt of him. To-day, in the court, she

did not recognise him, not only because when she last saw him he

was in uniform, without a beard, and had only a small moustache

and thick, curly, though short hair, and now was bald and

bearded, but because she never thought about him. She had buried

his memory on that terrible dark night when he, returning from

the army, had passed by on the railway without stopping to call

on his aunts. Katusha then knew her condition. Up to that night

she did not consider the child that lay beneath her heart a

burden. But on that night everything changed, and the child

became nothing but a weight.

 

His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see

them in passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come,

as he had to be in Petersburg at an appointed time. When Katusha

heard this she made up her mind to go to the station and see him.

The train was to pass by at two o’clock in the night. Katusha

having helped the old ladies to bed, and persuaded a little girl,

the cook’s daughter, Mashka, to come with her, put on a pair of

old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered