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

his duty

accurately, and had separated the weak. How could he have

foreseen this terrible heat, or the fact that they would start so

late in the day and in such crowds? The prison inspector? But the

inspector had only carried into execution the order that on a

given day a certain number of exiles and convicts—men and

women—had to be sent off. The convoy officer could not be guilty

either, for his business was to receive a certain number of

persons in a certain place, and to deliver up the same number.

He conducted them in the usual manner, and could not foresee that

two such strong men as those Nekhludoff saw would not be able to

stand it and would die. No one is guilty, and yet the men have

been murdered by these people who are not guilty of their murder.

 

“All this comes,” Nekhludoff thought, “from the fact that all

these people, governors, inspectors, police officers, and men,

consider that there are circumstances in which human relations

are not necessary between human beings. All these men,

Maslennikoff, and the inspector, and the convoy officer, if they

were not governor, inspector, officer, would have considered

twenty times before sending people in such heat in such a

mass—would have stopped twenty times on the way, and, seeing

that a man was growing weak, gasping for breath, would have led

him into the shade, would have given him water and let him rest,

and if an accident had still occurred they would have expressed

pity. But they not only did not do it, but hindered others from

doing it, because they considered not men and their duty towards

them but only the office they themselves filled, and held what

that office demanded of them to be above human relations. That’s

what it is,” Nekhludoff went on in his thoughts. “If one

acknowledges but for a single hour that anything can be more

important than love for one’s fellowmen, even in some one

exceptional case, any crime can be committed without a feeling of

guilt.”

 

Nekhludoff was so engrossed by his thoughts that he did not

notice how the weather changed. The sun was covered over by a

low-hanging, ragged cloud. A compact, light grey cloud was

rapidly coming from the west, and was already falling in heavy,

driving rain on the fields and woods far in the distance.

Moisture, coming from the cloud, mixed with the air. Now and then

the cloud was rent by flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder

mingled more and more often with the rattling of the train. The

cloud came nearer and nearer, the rain-drops driven by the wind

began to spot the platform and Nekhludoff’s coat; and he stepped

to the other side of the little platform, and, inhaling the

fresh, moist air—filled with the smell of corn and wet earth

that had long been waiting for rain—he stood looking at the

gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields, the green oatfields,

the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that glided past.

Everything looked as if covered over with varnish—the green

turned greener, the yellow yellower, the black blacker.

 

“More! more!” said Nekhludoff, gladdened by the sight of gardens

and fields revived by the beneficent shower. The shower did not

last long. Part of the cloud had come down in rain, part passed

over, and the last fine drops fell straight on to the earth. The

sun reappeared, everything began to glisten, and in the east—not

very high above the horizon—appeared a bright rainbow, with the

violet tint very distinct and broken only at one end.

 

“Why, what was I thinking about?” Nekhludoff asked himself when

all these changes in nature were over, and the train ran into a

cutting between two high banks.

 

“Oh! I was thinking that all those people (inspector, convoy

men—all those in the service) are for the greater part kind

people—cruel only because they are serving.” He recalled

Maslennikoff’s indifference when he told him about what was being

done in the prison, the inspector’s severity, the cruelty of the

convoy officer when he refused places on the carts to those who

asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that there was

a woman in travail in the train. All these people were evidently

invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of

compassion only because they held offices. “As officials they

were impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved

ground is impermeable to the rain.” Thus thought Nekhludoff as he

looked at the railway embankment paved with stones of different

colours, down which the water was running in streams instead of

soaking into the earth. “Perhaps it is necessary to pave the

banks with stones, but it is sad to look at the ground, which

might be yielding corn, grass, bushes, or trees in the same way

as the ground visible up there is doing—deprived of vegetation,

and so it is with men,” thought Nekhludoff. “Perhaps these

governors, inspectors, policemen, are needed, but it is terrible

to see men deprived of the chief human attribute, that of love

and sympathy for one another. The thing is,” he continued, “that

these people consider lawful what is not lawful, and do not

consider the eternal, immutable law, written in the hearts of men

by God, as law. That is why I feel so depressed when I am with

these people. I am simply afraid of them, and really they are

terrible, more terrible than robbers. A robber might, after all,

feel pity, but they can feel no pity, they are inured against

pity as these stones are against vegetation. That is what makes

them terrible. It is said that the Pougatcheffs, the Razins

[leaders of rebellions in Russia: Stonka Razin in the 17th and

Pougatcheff in the 18th century] are terrible. These are a

thousand times more terrible,” he continued, in his thoughts. “If

a psychological problem were set to find means of making men of

our time—Christian, humane, simple, kind people—perform the

most horrible crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution

could be devised: to go on doing what is being done. It is only

necessary that these people should he governors, inspectors,

policemen; that they should be fully convinced that there is a

kind of business, called government service, which allows men to

treat other men as things, without human brotherly relations with

them, and also that these people should be so linked together by

this government service that the responsibility for the results

of their actions should not fall on any one of them separately.

Without these conditions, the terrible acts I witnessed to-day

would be impossible in our times. It all lies in the fact that

men think there are circumstances in which one may deal with

human beings without love; and there are no such circumstances.

One may deal with things without love. One may cut down trees,

make bricks, hammer iron without love; but you cannot deal with

men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees without being

careful. If you deal carelessly with bees you will injure them,

and will yourself be injured. And so with men. It cannot be

otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human

life. It is true that a man cannot force another to love him, as

he can force him to work for him; but it does not follow that a

man may deal with men without love, especially to demand anything

from them. If you feel no love, sit still,” Nekhludoff thought;

“occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you

like, only not with men. You can only eat without injuring

yourself when you feel inclined to eat, so you can only deal with

men usefully when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man

without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and

there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself,

as all my life proves. Yes, yes, it is so,” thought Nekhludoff;

“it is good; yes, it is good,” he repeated, enjoying the

freshness after the torturing heat, and conscious of having

attained to the fullest clearness on a question that had long

occupied him.

 

CHAPTER XLI.

 

TARAS’S STORY.

 

The carriage in which Nekhludoff had taken his place was half

filled with people. There were in it servants, working men,

factory hands, butchers, Jews, shopmen, workmen’s wives, a

soldier, two ladies, a young one and an old one with bracelets on

her arm, and a severe-looking gentleman with a cockade on his

black cap. All these people were sitting quietly; the bustle of

taking their places was long over; some sat cracking and eating

sunflower seeds, some smoking, some talking.

 

Taras sat, looking very happy, opposite the door, keeping a place

for Nekhludoff, and carrying on an animated conversation with a

man in a cloth coat who sat opposite to him, and who was, as

Nekhludoff afterwards found out, a gardener going to a new

situation. Before reaching the place where Taras sat Nekhludoff

stopped between the seats near a reverend-looking old man with a

white beard and nankeen coat, who was talking with a young woman

in peasant dress. A little girl of about seven, dressed in a new

peasant costume, sat, her little legs dangling above the floor,

by the side of the woman, and kept cracking seeds.

 

The old man turned round, and, seeing Nekhludoff, he moved the

lappets of his coat off the varnished seat next to him, and said,

in a friendly manner:

 

“Please, here’s a seat.”

 

Nekhludoff thanked him, and took the seat. As soon as he was

seated the woman continued the interrupted conversation.

 

She was returning to her village, and related how her husband,

whom she had been visiting, had received her in town.

 

“I was there during the carnival, and now, by the Lord’s help,

I’ve been again,” she said. “Then, God willing, at Christmas I’ll

go again.”

 

“That’s right,” said the old man, with a look at Nekhludoff,

“it’s the best way to go and see him, else a young man can easily

go to the bad, living in a town.”

 

“Oh, no, sir, mine is not such a man. No nonsense of any kind

about him; his life is as good as a young maiden’s. The money he

earns he sends home all to a copeck. And, as to our girl here, he

was so glad to see her, there are no words for it,” said the

woman, and smiled.

 

The little girl, who sat cracking her seeds and spitting out the

shells, listened to her mother’s words, and, as if to confirm

them, looked up with calm, intelligent eyes into Nekhludoff’s and

the old man’s faces.

 

“Well, if he’s good, that’s better still,” said the old man.

“And none of that sort of thing?” he added, with a look at a

couple, evidently factory hands, who sat at the other side of the

carriage. The husband, with his head thrown back, was pouring

vodka down his throat out of a bottle, and the wife sat holding a

bag, out of which they had taken the bottle, and watched him

intently.

 

“No, mine neither drinks nor smokes,” said the woman who was

conversing with the old man, glad of the opportunity of praising

her husband once more. “No, sir, the earth does not hold many

such.” And, turning to Nekhludoff, she added, “That’s the sort

of man he is.”

 

“What could be better,” said the old man, looking at the factory

worker, who had had his drink and had passed the bottle to his

wife. The wife laughed, shook her head, and also raised the

bottle to her lips.

 

Noticing Nekhludoff’s and the old man’s look directed towards

them, the factory worker addressed the former.