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

our lives⁠—and you sit quietly at home, enjoying yourselves, and only preach!”

“We don’t enjoy ourselves very much,” said Román, glancing round at his comrades, and burst into a fit of not infectious but loud, clear and self-assured laughter.

The brunette shook her head, smiling ironically.

“We don’t enjoy ourselves much,” repeated Román; “and if we sit here we owe it to the reaction, and the reaction is the outcome of that very First of March!”

Mezhenétsky was silent. He felt himself choking with anger, and went out into the corridor.

XII

Trying to master his excitement, Mezhenétsky began pacing up and down the corridor. The doors of the cells were left open till the evening roll-call. A tall, fair-haired convict, with a face the kindly expression of which was not destroyed by the shaving of half his head, approached Mezhenétsky.

“There’s a convict here in our cell⁠—he has seen your Honour, and he says to me: ‘Call him here’!”

“What convict?”

“ ‘Snuff-rule’ is what we call him⁠—an old man, a sectarian. He says: ‘Tell that man to come to me.’ He means your Honour.”

“Where is he?”

“Why, here, in our cell. ‘Call that gentleman!’ he says.”

Mezhenétsky followed the convict into a rather small cell, where several prisoners were sitting and lying on the bunks.

There at the edge of the bunk on the bare boards, under his grey prison cloak, lay the same old sectarian who, seven years before, had come to ask Mezhenétsky about Svetlogoúb. The old man’s face was pale, emaciated and quite shrivelled up; his hair was still just as thick; his upturned, thin, short beard quite white; and his blue eyes kindly and attentive. He lay on his back, evidently feverish, and his cheekbones were an unhealthy red.

Mezhenétsky came up to him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

The old man painfully raised himself on his elbow and held out his small, thin, trembling hand. Preparing to speak, he first breathed heavily, and drawing breath with difficulty, began in a low voice:

“Thou wouldst not reveal it to me that time⁠ ⁠… may God be with thee, but I reveal it to everybody!”

“Reveal what?”

“About the Lamb.⁠ ⁠… I reveal about the Lamb⁠ ⁠… that youth had the Lamb. And it is written that the Lamb will overcome⁠—overcome all. And those that are with him, they are the chosen, and the faithful.⁠ ⁠…”

“I do not understand,” said Mezhenétsky.

“Thou must understand in the spirit. The kings and the beast⁠ ⁠… the Lamb shall overcome them.”

“What kings?” Mezhenétsky asked.

“There are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other one is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space.⁠ ⁠… That means, his end will come soon. Have you understood?”

Mezhenétsky shook his head, thinking the old man was delirious and his words meaningless. His fellow-convicts thought so too. The shaven convict, who had called Mezhenétsky, came up, and nudging his elbow to draw his attention, looked at the old man with a wink.

“Always chattering, always chattering, our ‘Snuff-rule’! What about, he don’t know himself!”

So thought Mezhenétsky and the old man’s fellow-convicts, as they looked at him; yet the old man knew very well what he was saying, and for him it had a clear, deep meaning. He meant that evil was not to reign much longer, but that the Lamb was overcoming all by righteousness and meekness, and that the Lamb would dry every tear, and there would be no more hangmen, nor sickness, nor death. And he felt that this was already happening⁠—happening all over the world, that it was happening in his soul, enlightened by the nearness of death.

“Ay, come quickly.⁠ ⁠… Amen! Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” said he, with a faint, significant, and as Mezhenétsky thought, insane smile.

XIII

“And that’s a representative of the people!” thought Mezhenétsky, as he left the old man. “And he is one of the best of them⁠—and such ignorance!⁠ ⁠… They say” (he was thinking of Román and his friends) “that with the people as they are now, nothing can be done.”

At one time Mezhenétsky had carried on his Revolutionary activity among the peasants, and was therefore aware of the “inertia,” as he called it, of the Russian folk. He had met soldiers, some in service and some discharged, and knew their tenacious, obtuse belief in the validity of oaths and the necessity of submission; as well as the impossibility of influencing them by arguments. He knew all this, but had never arrived at the conclusion which should have been the evident outcome of that knowledge.

His talk with the Revolutionists had troubled and irritated him. “They say that all we have done⁠—what Haltoúrin, Kibáltchitch, Sophie Peróvsky did⁠—was unnecessary, and even harmful; and that we caused the reaction of Alexander III’s time⁠ ⁠… that, thanks to us, the people are convinced that the whole Revolutionary movement comes from landlords, who killed the Tsar because he took the serfs from them! What rubbish! What a want of understanding, and what insolence to imagine it!” he thought, continuing to pace the corridor. All the cells had now been closed, except the one where the new Revolutionists were. As he drew near he heard the laughter of the dark woman who was so antipathetic to him, and the rasping, determined sound of Román’s voice. Román was saying:

“… unable to understand the laws of economy, they took no account of what they were doing. And in a great measure it was⁠ ⁠…”

Mezhenétsky could not, and did not wish to, hear what was “in a great measure,” nor did he need to know it. The tone of voice of the man was sufficient to show in what utter contempt they held him, Mezhenétsky, the hero of the Revolution, who had sacrificed twelve years of his life to the cause.

And in Mezhenétsky’s heart there arose such dreadful hatred as he had never experienced before⁠—hatred of everybody and everything⁠—of all this senseless world in which only people who are like animals can live⁠—people such as the old man with his “Lamb,” and semi-animal hangmen and gaolers, and