Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

someone gently and lovingly at once, and knocked at the door. When the sentinel looked in at his window, he asked him what the time was, and if he would soon be relieved; but the sentinel did not answer. Then he asked for the inspector.

The inspector came, and wanted to know what he desired. “Here⁠—I have written to my mother. Please let her have it;” and at the thought of his mother the tears again filled his eyes.

The inspector took the letter, promising to forward it, and was going away; but Svetlogoúb stopped him.

“Wait a minute!” he said, holding him affectionately by his sleeve. “You are kind⁠—why do you stay in such a dismal service?”

The inspector smiled an unnatural, piteous smile, and hanging his head, he said:

“One has to live.”

“Give up this post! It is always possible to find something.⁠ ⁠… You are so kind⁠—perhaps I might⁠ ⁠…”

The inspector suddenly sobbed, quickly turned away, and went out, banging the door after him.

This agitation increased Svetlogoúb’s loving emotion, and forcing back tears of joy, he began pacing up and down the cell⁠—no longer experiencing any fear, but only a feeling of tenderness which lifted him above the world. The question of what would happen to him after death, which he had tried so hard and yet had been unable to solve, now seemed solved for him, and not by any decided, reasoned answer, but by the realization of the real life within himself.

He recalled the words of the Gospels: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”⁠—“Here am I also falling into the earth⁠—yes, ‘verily, verily,’ ” he repeated.

“I’d better sleep,” he suddenly thought, “that my strength may not fail me tomorrow;” and he lay down, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.

At six o’clock he woke up, still under the influence of a bright, merry dream. He had dreamt that he was with a little fair-haired girl, climbing wide-spreading trees covered with ripe, black cherries, which he picked into a large brass basin. The cherries missed the basin and rolled on the ground, and some sort of strange animals⁠—something like cats⁠—ran after them and threw them up into the air; while the little girl looked on, shaking with ringing, infectious laughter, so that Svetlogoúb also laughed merrily in his sleep, without knowing why. Suddenly the basin slipped out of the girl’s hands, and Svetlogoúb tried to catch it, but missed it. The brass basin, clanging as it knocked against the branches, fell to the ground, and he awoke smiling and listening to the still-continued clanging of the basin. This clanging was the noise made by the drawing of the iron bolts in the corridor. He heard the sound of footsteps, and the clanking of rifles outside, and suddenly he remembered everything. “Oh, to fall asleep again!” thought Svetlogoúb; but that was no longer possible. The steps approached his door. He heard the grating of the key feeling for the keyhole, and the creaking of the door as it opened.

A gendarme officer, the inspector, and the convoy soldiers came in.

“Death? Well, what of it? I will go.⁠ ⁠… It is a good thing⁠—everything is good,” thought Svetlogoúb, and he felt the tenderly solemn mood returning, which he had experienced the evening before.

VI

An old man belonging to a “Priestless” sect, who had lost faith in his leaders and was seeking the truth, was confined in the same prison as Svetlogoúb. He denied not only the Church of Níkon,324 but also the Government that had existed since the days of Peter the Great, whom he regarded as Antichrist. He called the Tsar’s Government, “Snuff-rule,”325 and boldly denounced priests and officials. For this he had been tried, kept in gaol, and sent from prison to prison. He was not disturbed by the fact that he had lost his liberty, that the inspectors abused him, that he was manacled, that his fellow-prisoners mocked him, that they⁠—as well as the Authorities⁠—denied God, quarrelled with one another, and denied His image within themselves in all sorts of ways: he had seen all that when he was free, everywhere in the world outside. He knew that it all resulted from people having lost the true faith and gone astray, like blind puppies away from their mother. And yet he knew that a true faith existed, because he felt it in his heart. He sought it everywhere, but was most hopeful of finding it in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be” (Revelation 22:11⁠–⁠12).

And he was always reading this mystic book and expecting every moment him who was to come, who would not only reward every man according to his works, but would reveal Divine truth to man.

On the day of Svetlogoúb’s execution this man heard the drums beat, and, having climbed to the window, saw a car arrive, and a youth with waving curls and eyes full of light, who smilingly mounted the car.

The youth held a book in his small white hand. He pressed the book to his heart, and the sectarian knew it was a Testament, and as he nodded to the prisoners at the windows he exchanged a look with the old man. The horses started, and the car, with the youth who appeared bright as an angel, and the guard who surrounded him, rattling over the stones, passed out of the gate.

The sectarian got down from the window and sat on his bunk, meditating. “That one knows the truth,” he thought. “Antichrist’s servants will strangle him with a