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

a sudden heart-pang all the pleasant circumstances would vanish, and only the torment of unfulfilled desires remained. And again there was the grey wall with the damp marks, lit up by a small lamp, and under his body the hard plank bed, with the hay all pushed to one side in the sack which served for a mattress. The pleasantest time was when he was asleep; but the longer he was in prison, the less he slept. He waited for sleep as for the greatest happiness: he longed for it, and the more he longed, the wider awake he became. He needed only to ask himself, “Am I falling asleep?” for his drowsiness to vanish.

Running about and jumping in his cage did not help. Active exercise only brought on weakness and excited his nerves; the crown of his head began to ache, and he had but to shut his eyes to see faces appearing on a dark, spangled background⁠—shaggy, bald, large-mouthed, crooked-mouthed⁠—each more horrible than the rest. These faces made most terrifying grimaces. Later on they began to appear when his eyes were open, and not only the faces, but whole figures chattering and dancing. He grew terrified, jumped up, knocked his head against the wall, and screamed. Then the slot in the door would open:

“Screaming is forbidden!” a calm, monotonous voice would remark.

“Call the inspector!” shouted Mezhenétsky. He received no answer, and the slot was again closed. And such despair would seize him that he longed for one thing only⁠—death. Once, when in such a state, he decided to take his life. There was a ventilator in the cell, to which a rope with a noose could be fastened, and by getting onto the bedstead it would be possible to hang oneself. But he had no rope. He began to tear his sheet into strips, but there were not enough of them.

Then he decided to starve himself, and did not eat for two days; but on the third he became quite weak, and had a worse fit of hallucinations. When food was brought him he lay with open eyes, but unconscious, on the floor. The doctor came, laid him on the bed, and gave him rum and morphia, and he fell asleep.

When he awoke next morning, the doctor was standing by him, shaking his head. And suddenly Mezhenétsky was seized by the stimulating sensation of anger, which he had long not felt.

“How is it you are not ashamed to serve here?” he said, as the doctor, with bowed head, counted his pulse. “Why are you doctoring me, only to torment me again? Why, it is just the same as standing at a flogging and giving permission to repeat the operation!”

“Be so good as to turn round on your back,” the doctor said, quite unruffled, and, without looking at him, took out of his side-pocket the instruments for sounding him.

“They used to heal the wounds, in order that the remaining five thousand strokes could be given!⁠ ⁠… Go to the devil! Go to hell!” he suddenly exclaimed, taking his legs off the bed. “Be off!⁠ ⁠… I’ll die without you!”

“That’s not right, young man.⁠ ⁠… We know an answer for rudeness.⁠ ⁠…”

“To the devil, to the devil!” and Mezhenétsky was so terrible that the doctor hurried away.

X

Whether it was a result of the medicine he took, or that he had passed a crisis, or that his anger against the doctor cured him, at any rate from then onwards Mezhenétsky took himself in hand and started quite a new life.

“They can’t and won’t keep me here forever,” he thought. “After all, they will liberate me some time. Perhaps⁠—and very likely⁠—there will be a change of Administration (our people are working), and therefore I must take care of my life, to go out strong, healthy, and able to continue the work.”

He took a long time to consider the best way of living to attain his object; and this was how he arranged matters. He went to bed at nine, and whether he slept or not, remained in bed till 5 a.m. Then he got up, made himself tidy, washed, did gymnastics, and then, as he said to himself, went to business. In imagination he walked through the streets of Petersburg, from the Névsky to the Nadézhdinsky, trying to picture to himself all he was likely to see on his way: signboards, houses, policemen, carriages, and the people he might meet. In the Nadézhdinsky Street he entered the house of an acquaintance and fellow-worker, and there, with him and other comrades who dropped in, discussed prospects for the future. They argued, disputed: Mezhenétsky speaking for himself and the others. Sometimes he spoke aloud, and then the sentinel made remarks to him through the window in the door; but Mezhenétsky paid no heed to him, and continued his imaginary day in Petersburg. After spending a couple of hours with his comrade, he returned home to dinner, dined⁠—first in imagination and then in reality, on the food that was brought him⁠—and always ate moderately. Then, again in imagination, he sat at home, sometimes studying history and sometimes mathematics, and sometimes on Sundays literature. Studying history meant choosing a certain period and nation, and recalling all the facts and the chronology belonging to them. The study of mathematics meant working out and mentally solving problems. (He was particularly fond of this occupation.) On Sundays he recalled Poúshkin, Gógol, Shakespeare, or himself composed something.

Before going to bed, he again went for a short imaginary walk; carried on amusing, merry and sometimes serious conversations with comrades, both men and women⁠—some that had really taken place and some that were newly invented. And so it went on till bedtime; and just before lying down he really walked two thousand steps backwards and forwards in his cage for exercise, and when in bed he generally slept.

It was the same the next day. Sometimes he travelled south, and went about inciting the people and arranging riots, and with the people, expelled the