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

rope, did something to it, and moved Svetlogoúb forward, nearer to it and to the edge of the scaffold.

Just as, at the time when the sentence had been pronounced on him, Svetlogoúb could not realize the importance of what was being said, so now he could not comprehend the full meaning of the moment that awaited him, and looked on with wonder at the hangman, who was fulfilling his terrible task hurriedly, deftly, and in a preoccupied manner. The hangman had a most ordinary Russian workman’s face; not cruel, but engrossed, like that of a man trying to do a necessary and complicated job as accurately as possible.

“Move a bit nearer here⁠ ⁠…” he muttered in a hoarse voice, pushing Svetlogoúb towards the gallows. Svetlogoúb moved closer.

“Lord, help⁠—have mercy on me!” he said.

Svetlogoúb had not believed in God, and had often even laughed at people who did; nor did he believe in Him now, for he was unable not only to express Him in words, but even to comprehend Him with his mind. But what he now meant, and addressed himself to, he knew to be the most real of all that he did know. He also knew that to address himself to It was necessary and important, and he knew this, because It instantly strengthened and calmed him.

He moved towards the gallows, and involuntarily cast a look round at the soldiers and at the motley crowd of onlookers, and again he thought: “Why, why do they do it?” And he pitied them and himself, and tears came to his eyes.

“And are you not sorry for me?” he said, his glance meeting the executioner’s bold grey eyes.

The executioner stopped for a moment. His face suddenly turned cruel.

“Get along! Talking!⁠ ⁠…” he muttered, and quickly stooping down to where his coat and a linen bag lay, with an adroit movement of his arms he embraced Svetlogoúb from behind and threw a linen sack over his head, and drew it hurriedly halfway down his back and chest.

“Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” thought Svetlogoúb, recalling the words of the Gospels.

His spirit did not struggle against death, but his strong young body would not accept it, would not submit, and wanted to rebel.

He wished to shout and to tear himself away, but at that very moment he felt a push, lost his equilibrium, felt animal terror and choking, and a noise in his head, and then everything vanished.

Svetlogoúb’s body hung swinging by the cord. His shoulders twice rose and fell.

After waiting a minute or two, the executioner, frowning gloomily, put both hands on the shoulders of the corpse and pushed it downwards with a powerful movement. And the corpse became perfectly still, except for a slow swinging movement of the big doll, with the unnaturally forward-stooping head inside the sack and the outstretched legs in prison stockings.

Descending from the scaffold, the executioner told his chief that the body might now be taken down and buried.

In an hour’s time the body was taken down from the gallows, and removed to the unconsecrated cemetery. The executioner had done what he wished and what he had undertaken to do. But it had not been an easy task to fulfil. Svetlogoúb’s words, “And are you not sorry for me?” would not leave his head. He was a murderer and a convict, and the post of hangman gave him comparative freedom and luxury; but from that day he refused to fulfil the duties he had undertaken, and drank not only all the money he had received for the execution, but also his comparatively good clothing, and finished by being put into a penitentiary and afterwards into the hospital.

VIII

One of the leaders of the Revolutionary Terrorist party, Ignatius Mezhenétsky, the same who had drawn Svetlogoúb into his terrorist activity, was being transported from the Province where he had been arrested, to Petersburg. The old man who had seen Svetlogoúb taken to execution happened to be in the same prison. He was being transported to Siberia. He still continued to seek for the true faith, and sometimes remembered the bright-faced youth who had smiled so joyfully on his way to death.

When he heard that a comrade of that youth⁠—a man holding the same faith⁠—had been brought to the prison, the sectarian was very glad, and persuaded the watchman to let him see Svetlogoúb’s friend.

In spite of the rigorous prison discipline, Mezhenétsky never ceased intercourse with the members of his party, and was every day expecting news about the progress of a plot he himself had originated, to undermine and blow up the Emperor’s train. Calling to mind some details he had omitted, he was now trying to find means to communicate them to his adherents. When the watchman came into his cell and guardedly whispered in his ear that one of the convicts wished to see him, he was very pleased, thinking that that interview might furnish him with a chance of communicating with his party.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“A peasant.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to have a talk about faith.”

Mezhenétsky smiled. “All right; send him to me,” he said. “These sectarians,” he thought, “also hate the Government.⁠ ⁠… He may be of use.”

The watchman went away, and a few minutes later opened the door and let in a rather short, lean old man with thick hair, a thin, grizzly goat’s beard, and kindly weary blue eyes.

“What do you want?” asked Mezhenétsky.

The old man glanced at him, and quickly dropping his eyes again, held out his small, thin but energetic hand.

“What do you want?”

“I want a word with thee.”

“What word?”

“About faith.”

“What faith?”

“They say thou art of the same faith as that youth that Antichrist’s servants strangled with a rope in Odessa.”

“What youth?”

“Him as they strangled in Odessa in the autumn.”

“Svetlogoúb, I suppose?”

“Yes, the same.⁠ ⁠… Thy friend?” At every question the old man gave Mezhenétsky’s face a searching glance with his kind eyes, and at once dropped them again.

“Yes, we were closely bound to each other.”

“And of the same