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

rope for it, that he should not reveal it to anyone.” VII

It was a dull autumn morning. The sun was invisible, and a warm, moist breeze came from the sea.

The fresh air, the sight of houses, the town, the horses, the people who looked at him, all distracted Svetlogoúb. Sitting on the bench of the car, with his back to the driver, he involuntarily examined the faces of the convoy soldiers and of the people in the streets.

It was early morning. The streets along which he was driven were almost empty, and they only met a few workmen. Some bricklayers with aprons on, all bespattered with mortar, who met the car, stopped and turned back again as it passed, as though to accompany it. One of them said something, then waved his hand, and then they all turned back again and went to their work. Some carters, carting loads of rattling iron bars, moved their heavy horses to let the car pass, and stood looking at Svetlogoúb with perplexed curiosity. One of them took off his cap and crossed himself. A cook with a white apron, a cap on her head and a basket on her arm, came out of a gate; but, seeing the car, she quickly turned back and ran out again with another woman, and they breathlessly followed the car with very wide-open eyes as long as it was in sight. A tattered, unshaven, grey-haired man explained something with energetic and evidently disapproving gestures to a porter, as he pointed to Svetlogoúb. Two boys ran after the car at a trot, caught up with it, and with their faces turned towards it, went along the pavement without looking where they were going. The older one walked with big strides, the little one, bareheaded, clung to the elder, looking at the car with frightened eyes, stumbling on his short legs, and keeping up with the other with difficulty. When Svetlogoúb’s eyes met those of the little boy, Svetlogoúb nodded to him. This action of the terrible man in the car staggered the boy so much that, staring with wide-open eyes and open mouth, he was just beginning to cry. Then Svetlogoúb kissed his hand to him with a kind smile, and the boy suddenly and unexpectedly answered with a sweet, kindly smile.

During the whole of the drive the consciousness of what awaited him did not disturb Svetlogoúb’s calm and solemn state of mind.

Only when the car approached the gallows and he was helped out, and saw the posts with the crossbeam, and the cord that hung from it slightly swinging in the breeze, he experienced an almost physical blow on his heart. He suddenly felt sick. But this did not last long. Beneath the scaffold he saw black rows of soldiers with guns; officers were walking in front of them; and as soon as they began helping him down from the car, he heard an unexpected rattle of beating drums, which made him start. Behind the rows of soldiers Svetlogoúb perceived carriages with ladies and gentlemen, who had come to see the sight. All this surprised him for a moment, but he immediately recollected himself as he had been before his imprisonment, and felt sorry these people did not know what he now knew. “But they will know.⁠ ⁠… I shall die, but truth will not die. They too will know! And how happy everybody⁠—not I⁠—but they all might be, and will be!”

They led him onto the scaffold, an officer following. The drums became silent, and the officer, in an unnatural tone, which sounded peculiarly weak amid the open fields and after the rattle of the drums, read the same stupid words of the sentence that had been read to him in court: about his being deprived of all his rights⁠—he whom they were about to kill!⁠—and about the near and more distant future. “Oh, why, why do they do all this?” thought Svetlogoúb. “What a pity it is that they don’t know, and that I can no longer tell them of it! But they will know⁠—everyone will know.⁠ ⁠…”

A lean priest, with thin long hair, in a lilac cassock, with a small gilt cross on his breast and a large silver one in his weak white thick-veined hand encircled by a black velvet cuff, drew near to Svetlogoúb.

“Merciful Lord!⁠ ⁠…” he began, changing the cross from his left to his right hand, and holding it out to Svetlogoúb. Svetlogoúb shuddered and moved aside. He was on the point of saying some angry words to this priest, who was taking part in the deed that was being done to him and was at the same time speaking of mercy; but, recollecting the words of the Gospels, “they know not what they do,” he made an effort and mildly uttered the words: “Excuse me, I do not want it. Please forgive me, but really I don’t want it, thank you!”

He held out his hand to the priest, who changed the cross back into his left hand, and after pressing Svetlogoúb’s hand, descended from the scaffold, trying not to look him in the face. The drums began to roll again, deafening every other sound. After the priest, a man of medium height with sloping shoulders and muscular arms, and wearing a pea-jacket over his Russian shirt, approached Svetlogoúb with rapid steps, shaking the boards of the scaffold. This man glanced rapidly at Svetlogoúb, came quite close up to him, enveloping him in a disagreeable odour of spirits and perspiration, and with clutching fingers took him by the arms just above the wrists, and pressing them together so that they hurt, twisted them behind Svetlogoúb’s back and tied them there tightly. After that, the hangman stood for a moment or two as if considering something, looking first at Svetlogoúb, then at some things he had brought with him and had put down on the scaffold, and then at the rope dangling above. Having made his observations, he went up to the