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

“The same, I expect⁠ ⁠…” Mezhenétsky answered, with a smile.

“It’s about that I want a word with thee.”

“And what is it you want exactly?”

“To know your faith.”

“Our faith. Well, sit down,” said Mezhenétsky, shrugging his shoulders. “This is our faith: We believe that there are men who, having seized all the power, torment and deceive the people, and that we must not spare ourselves, but must struggle against them in order to save the people they exploit.” From habit Mezhenétsky used the word “exploit,” but correcting himself, he substituted the word “torment”; “and so they must be destroyed. They kill, and so they must be killed, until they come to their senses.”

The old sectarian sighed, without raising his eyes.

“Our faith lies in not sparing ourselves, and in abolishing despotic Government, and establishing a free, elected, popular Government.”

The old man heaved a deep sigh; rose, smoothed the skirts of his gown, sank down on his knees, and knocking his forehead on the dirty floor, lay at Mezhenétsky’s feet.

“Why are you bowing?”

“Do not deceive me! Reveal to me wherein your faith lies,” said the old man, without rising or lifting his head.

“I have told you wherein our faith lies. But get up, or else I won’t talk.”

The old man rose.

“And did that youth hold the same faith?” he said, standing before Mezhenétsky and glancing at him now and then with his kind eyes, and immediately dropping them again.

“Yes, it was⁠ ⁠… just that. That is why they hanged him. And me, you see, they are taking to the Petropávlof Fortress for the same faith.”

The old man made a deep bow and went out of the cell. “Not therein lay that youth’s faith,” he thought. “That youth knew the true faith, but this one either just boasts that he holds the same faith, or he won’t reveal it.⁠ ⁠… Well, what of that? I will go on striving.⁠ ⁠… Here or in Siberia, and everywhere, there is God, and everywhere there are men. If you’ve lost your way, ask it;” and the old man took the New Testament, which opened of itself at the pages of Revelation; and, having put on his spectacles, he sat down by the window and began to read.

Another seven years passed. Mezhenétsky had served his sentence of solitary confinement in the Petropávlof Fortress, and was being transported to penal servitude in Siberia.

During those seven years he had lived through a great deal, but the trend of his thoughts had not changed, nor had his energy weakened. When cross-examined before his imprisonment in the Fortress, he had astonished the magistrates and judges by his firmness and his scornful attitude with regard to the people in whose power he found himself. In the depths of his soul he suffered because he had been caught and was unable to finish the work he had begun; but he did not show it. As soon as he was face to face with people, the energy of anger awoke in him. He remained silent when questioned, except when an opportunity presented itself to say something that would wound one of the examiners: a gendarme officer, or the Public Prosecutor.

When the usual phrase, “You can materially better your position by a frank confession,” was repeated to him, he smiled contemptuously and said, after a short pause:

“If you expect to make me betray my comrades, through fear or for profit, you are judging me by yourselves. Can you possibly imagine that when doing what you are now trying me for, I was not prepared for the worst? So you cannot surprise or frighten me by anything you do; you can do to me what you like, but I shall not speak.”

He was pleased to see how, quite abashed, they glanced at one another.

In the Petropávlof Fortress he was put into a small damp cell with a window high up in the wall, and he knew that it was not for months, but for years, and was seized with terror at the well-ordered, dead silence and by the consciousness that he was not alone, but that behind these impenetrable walls were other prisoners, sentenced to ten or twenty years’ confinement, committing suicide, being hanged, going out of their minds, or slowly dying of consumption. Here were men and women and friends, perhaps.⁠ ⁠… “Years will pass, and I too shall lose my reason, hang myself, or die. And no one will ever hear of it,” he thought.

Anger rose in his soul, against everybody, but especially against those who were the cause of his imprisonment. This anger demanded objects to wreck itself on, demanded action and noise⁠—but here was dead silence, or the soft footsteps of silent men who answered no questions, and the sound of doors being locked or unlocked, food brought at appointed hours, visits from the silent men, the light of the rising sun shining through the dim panes, then darkness; and the same silence, and the same footsteps, and the same sounds, today and tomorrow.⁠ ⁠… And his anger, unable to vent itself, ate into his heart.

He tried to tap, but was not answered, and his tapping was followed only by the same soft footsteps, and the calm voice of a man threatening him with the punishment cell.

Only sleep brought rest and relief; but the awakening was all the more dreadful. In his dreams he always saw himself free, and generally absorbed in actions he considered incompatible with Revolutionary activity. Sometimes he was playing some strange kind of violin, sometimes courting girls, or rowing in a boat, or hunting, or having a doctor’s degree conferred on him by some foreign University for a strange scientific discovery, and returning thanks in a speech at a dinner-party. These dreams were so distinct, and the reality so dull and monotonous, that they differed little from actuality.

The only painful thing about his dreams was that he always woke up at the very moment that what he was striving for and longing for was on the point of being realized. With