Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

Part One

I

FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH SMOKOVNIKOV, the head of a government department, a man of incorruptible integrity and proud of it, a liberal of a gloomy cast of mind, and not only a free-thinker but a hater of any and every manifestation of religious feeling, which he regarded as a relic of primitive superstition, had returned home from his department in an extremely vexed state of mind. The governor had sent him an utterly stupid memorandum from which it could have been inferred that Fyodor Mikhailovich had acted dishonestly. Fyodor Mikhailovich, furious at the suggestion, had lost no time in composing a biting and caustic reply.

Having got home, Fyodor Mikhailovich had the feeling that everything was happening to thwart him.

It was five minutes to five. He was expecting dinner to be served at once, but the dinner was not ready. Fyodor Mikhailovich banged the door and went off to his study. Someone knocked at the door. ‘Who the devil is it now?’ he thought, and called out:

‘Who is it now?’

Into the room came Fyodor Mikhailovich’s fifteen-year-old son, a grammar-school boy in the fifth year.

‘What brings you here?’

‘It’s the first of the month today.’

‘So, is it money you’re after?’

By an established agreement, on the first day of each month the father gave his son an allowance of three roubles to spend on hobbies and amusements. Fyodor Mikhailovich frowned, reached for his wallet and fished out from it a two-and-a-half-rouble bond coupon,¹ then got out the purse in which he kept his small change and counted out a further fifty copecks. His son remained silent and did not take the money.

‘Please, Papa, can you let me have an advance?’

‘What?’

‘I wouldn’t ask you, but I borrowed some money on my word of honour, I promised to pay it back. As a man of honour I can’t just … I only need another three roubles, honestly. I won’t ask you … at least, I don’t mean I won’t ask you, it’s simply that … Please, Papa.’

‘You have already been told that –’

‘Yes, Papa, I know, but it’s just for this once, really …’

‘You receive an allowance of three roubles, and it is always too little. When I was your age I didn’t even get fifty copecks.’

‘But all my friends get more than I do now. Petrov and Ivanitsky actually have fifty roubles a month.’

‘And I tell you that if that is the way you are going to behave, then you will end up as a swindler. That is all I have to say on the matter.’

‘And what if it is? You’ll never look at things from my point of view: it means I shall have to look like an absolute cad. It’s all very well for you.’

‘Get out of here, you good-for-nothing, get out!’

Fyodor Mikhailovich jumped up from his chair and rushed at his son.

‘Get out. What you need is a good hiding.’

His son was both frightened and bitterly resentful, but his resentment outweighed his fear, and bowing his head he made hurriedly for the door. Fyodor Mikhailovich had no intention of hitting him, but he was enjoying his own anger and he continued shouting and cursing at his son as the latter made his retreat.

When the maid came to say that the dinner was ready to serve, Fyodor Mikhailovich stood up.

‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve quite lost my appetite now.’ And he walked scowling into the dining-room.

At the dinner table his wife struck up a conversation but his growled reply was so curt and irritable that she fell silent. His son too did not look up from his plate and said nothing. They ate their meal in silence, then silently got up from the table and went their separate ways.

After dinner the schoolboy went back to his own room, took the coupon and the small change out of his pocket and threw them on the desk table. Then he took off his school uniform and put on a jacket. For some time he pored over a battered Latin grammar, then he shut the door and fastened it on the hook, swept the money off the desk top and into a drawer, took some cigarette papers out of the drawer, filled one with tobacco, plugged the cardboard mouthpiece with some cotton wool, and started to smoke.

He spent a further two hours or so sitting over his grammar and his exercise books but without taking anything in, then he stood up and began pacing to and fro across the room, stamping his heels and recalling everything that had passed between him and his father. His father’s abusive words, and above all the spiteful expression on his father’s face, came back to him just as if he was hearing and seeing it now. ‘Good-for-nothing. What you need is a good hiding.’ And the more he remembered, the more furious with his father he became. He remembered his father saying to him ‘I can see how you will end up – as a swindler. Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ – and – ‘You’ll end up as a swindler if you go on like this.’ ‘It’s all right for him,’ he thought, ‘he’s forgotten what it was like when he was young. And what are these crimes I have committed? Just going to the theatre, and running out of money, and borrowing some from Petya Grushetsky. What’s so dreadful about that? Anybody else would have been sympathetic and asked me all about it, but all he does is rage at me and think of nobody but himself. Whenever he doesn’t get what he wants he shouts the house down, but I, I am a swindler. No, my father he may be, but I don’t love him. I don’t know whether all fathers are the same as he is, but I don’t love him.’

The maid knocked at his door. She had brought him a note.

‘They said you were to reply at once.’

The note read: ‘This is the third time I am having to ask you to return the six roubles you borrowed from me, but you keep trying to get out of it. That is not how honourable men behave. I ask you to send the money at once by the bearer of this note. I am extremely hard up myself. Surely you can get it? Your – depending whether you pay me or you don’t – contemptuous or respectful friend, Grushetsky.’

‘Well, what do you make of that? What a swine. He can’t wait for a bit. I shall just have to have another try.’

Mitya went to see his mother. This was his last hope. His mother was a kind-hearted woman who found it hard to refuse him anything, and she might indeed have helped him, but just now she was anxious about the illness of her youngest child, two-year-old Petya. She was annoyed with Mitya for coming in and making a noise, and she turned down his request on the spot.

He muttered something under his breath and started to walk out of the room. Feeling sorry for her son, she called him back.

‘Just a minute, Mitya,’ she said. ‘I haven’t any money at the moment but I can get some tomorrow.’

But Mitya was still seething with bitter anger against his father.

‘What’s the use of telling me “tomorrow”, when I need it right away? You may as well know that I am going to see a friend to ask him for it.’

He went out, banging the door.

‘There’s nothing else to be done. He’ll tell me where I can go to pawn my watch,’ he thought, feeling for the watch which he had in his pocket.

Mitya took the coupon and the change out of the desk drawer, put on his overcoat and set off to see his friend Makhin.

II

Makhin too was a schoolboy, but a sophisticated one. He played cards and knew women, and he always had money. He lived with his aunt. Mitya was aware that Makhin was a bad character, but when he was with him he automatically deferred to Makhin’s authority. Makhin was at home, getting ready to go out to the theatre: his scruffy little room smelt of scented soap and eau de Cologne.

‘It’s the last straw, my friend,’ said Makhin when Mitya had told him his woeful story, shown him the coupon and the fifty copecks, and explained that he was in need of nine roubles. ‘You could actually pawn your watch, but there is an even better way,’ said Makhin, winking his eye.

‘What sort of a better way?’

‘It’s really very simple.’ Makhin took the coupon. ‘You just need to put in a figure one in front of the 2 r.50, and it will read 12 r.50.’

‘But are there coupons for that amount?’

‘Naturally there are, on thousand-rouble bonds. I passed off one myself once.’

‘But surely it’s not possible?’

‘Well, shall we have a go?’ said Makhin, taking a pen and smoothing out the coupon with a finger of his left hand.

‘But it can’t be right.’

‘Oh, what nonsense.’

‘He was quite right,’ thought Mitya, remembering again the bad things his father had said about him: a swindler. ‘I’ll be a swindler now.’ He looked Makhin in the face. Makhin was looking at him and smiling quietly.

‘Well then, shall we have a go?’

‘All right, go ahead.’

Makhin painstakingly traced out a figure one.

‘Right, now we’ll go to a shop. The one on the corner there that sells photographic supplies. I happen to need a frame, to go round this person here.’

He produced a mounted photograph of a young woman with large eyes, luxuriant hair and a magnificent bosom.

‘A real peach, eh?’

‘Yes, yes, absolutely. But all the same …’

‘It’s very simple. Let’s go.’

Makhin put his coat on and the two of them went out together.

III

The bell over the door to the photographic shop gave a tinkle. The schoolboys entered and looked round the empty shop with its shelves of photographic supplies and glass display cases on the counters. From the door at the back of the shop emerged a plain-looking woman with a kindly face who took up her position behind the counter and asked them what they required.

‘A nice little picture-frame, Madame.’

‘At what sort of price?’ asked the lady, swiftly and expertly running her mittened hands with their swollen finger joints over the various types of frames. ‘These are priced at fifty copecks, these are a little dearer. And this one here is very nice, a new style – it costs one rouble twenty.’

‘Very well, I’ll take that one. But couldn’t you knock it down a bit? I’ll give you a rouble for it.’

‘All the prices here are fixed,’ said the lady with dignity.

‘All right, as you wish,’ said Makhin, putting the coupon down on the top of the display case. ‘Please give me the frame and my change, and as quickly as you can, please. We don’t want to be late for the theatre.’

‘You have plenty of time yet,’ said the lady, and she began examining the coupon with her shortsighted eyes.

‘It’ll look charming in that frame, won’t it, eh?’ said Makhin, turning to Mitya.

‘Haven’t you got any other money?’ asked the saleslady.

‘That’s just the problem. I haven’t. My father gave it to me, and I need to get it changed.’

‘And do you really not have a rouble and twenty copecks on you?’

‘I do have fifty copecks. But what’s the matter, are you afraid we are going to swindle you with forged money?’

‘No, I didn’t say that.’

‘Well, let me have it back please. We’ll find somewhere else to change it.’

‘So how much do I have to give you?’

‘Let’s see now, it should come to eleven something.’

The saleslady flicked the beads on her abacus, unlocked the bureau which served as a till, took out a ten-rouble note, and rummaging among the small change assembled a further six twenty-copeck and two five-copeck pieces.

‘Would you kindly wrap it up for me please?’ said Makhin, unhurriedly taking the money.

‘Right away.’

The saleslady wrapped up the frame and tied the package with string.

Mitya only began to breathe easily once more when the entrance bell had tinkled behind them and they had emergd into the street.

‘Well now, here’s ten roubles for you, and let me take the rest. I’ll give it back.’

And Makhin went off to the theatre, leaving Mitya to go and see Grushetsky and settle up with him.

IV

An hour after the boys had left the shop the owner returned home and started to count the takings.

‘Oh, you stupid, muddling woman! What a fool you are!’ he shouted at his wife as soon as he saw the coupon and immediately spotted the forgery. ‘And why on earth have you been accepting coupons at all?’

‘But I’ve been there when you have accepted them yourself, Zhenya, and they were twelve-rouble coupons just like this one,’ said his wife, who was growing confused and angry and was on the point of bursting into tears. ‘I don’t know myself how they managed to take me in, those schoolboys. He was a handsome young man too, he really looked so comme il faut.’²

‘And you’re a simpleton comme il faut,’ shouted her husband abusively as he went on counting the contents of the till. ‘I accept a coupon when I know and can see clearly what is written on it. But you no doubt spend your whole life gazing at the ugly mugs of schoolboys.’

His wife could take no more of this, and she too lost her temper.

‘There’s a man for you! Always blaming other people – and when you go and lose fifty-four roubles at cards, that’s a mere nothing!’

‘I – that’s a different matter altogether.’

‘I’m not talking to you any longer,’ said his wife, and she went off to her room and began to recall how her family had been against her becoming the wife of this man who was socially so much her inferior, and how she had herself insisted on the marriage; she recalled her child who had died, and her husband’s indifference at this loss, and she felt such hatred of her husband that she thought how glad she would be if he were to die. But when she had thought that she became alarmed at her own feelings and hastened to get dressed and go out. When her husband got back to their apartment she had already left. Without waiting for him she had put on her coat and driven by herself to the house of a teacher of French, an acquaintance of theirs, who had invited them to a social gathering that evening.

V

At the house of the French teacher, a Russian Pole, there was a formal tea party with sweet pastries, after which the guests sat down at several tables to play vint.³

The photographic-shop owner’s wife was at a table with the host, an army officer and an elderly deaf lady in a wig who was the widow of a music-shop owner, and a passionate and very good card-player. The play was going in favour of the photographic supplier’s wife: she made two slams. Beside her was a plate containing grapes and a pear, and she was now in a thoroughly cheerful mood.

‘Why isn’t Yevgeny Mikhailovich here yet?’ asked the hostess from another table. ‘We were counting on him for our fifth hand.’

‘I expect he’s got tied up in doing the accounts,’ said Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s wife. ‘This is the day when he settles the accounts for the groceries and the firewood.’

And remembering the scene with her husband she frowned, and her hands in their mittens trembled from the resentment she felt towards him.

‘Well, talk of the devil,’ said the host, turning towards Yevgeny Mikhailovich, who had just walked in. ‘What kept you?’

‘Oh, various kinds of business,’ replied Yevgeny Mikhailovich in a jovial voice, rubbing his hands together. And to his wife’s surprise, he came over to her and said:

‘You know that coupon – I managed to get rid of it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I gave it to a peasant for some firewood.’

And with great indignation Yevgeny Mikhailovich told everybody the story – with additional details supplied by his wife – of how some unscrupulous schoolboys had managed to dupe his wife.

‘Well now, let’s get on with the main business,’ he said, sitting down at the table when his turn arrived and shuffling the cards.

VI

Yevgeny Mikhailovich had indeed managed to get rid of the coupon to a muzhik named Ivan Mironov in payment for some firewood.

Ivan Mironov’s trade involved buying up single sazhens⁴ of firewood from the timber warehouses and delivering them to the townspeople; but he would divide the sazhen of wood into five parts, each of which he sold at the price a quarter-load would fetch in the woodyards. Early in the morning of this day which proved so ill-fated for him, Ivan Mironov had carted out an eighth-load intending to sell it, but he drove about until evening looking in vain for a customer. He continually came across experienced townsfolk who knew all about the tricks played by muzhik firewood-vendors and refused to believe his assurances that he had brought in this firewood from the country. He was getting really hungry and felt chilled to the marrow in his worn sheepskin jacket and his tattered cloth under-coat; by evening the temperature had dropped to twenty degrees of frost; and his little horse, which he had been driving pitilessly because he was at the point of selling it to the knacker, came to a complete standstill. So that Ivan Mironov was even ready to consider selling off the firewood at a loss, when he encountered Yevgeny Mikhailovich who had popped out to the tobacconist’s and was now on his way home.

‘Do you want some firewood, master? I’ll let you have it cheap. My horse won’t go any further.’

‘And where are you from, then?’

‘From the country, sir. My own firewood it is, and good and dry too.’

‘We know your sort. Well, so what are you asking for it?’ Ivan Mironov named an absurdly high sum, then started progressively to reduce it, and finally let the firewood go for his usual price.

‘Just for you, master, seeing as it’s not too far to deliver it,’ he said.

Yevgeny Mikhailovich did not waste too much time bargaining since he was pleased at the thought that he would now be able to pass on the coupon. Somehow or other, hauling on the shafts of the cart himself, Ivan Mironov managed to drag the load into the courtyard of the house and personally unloaded it into the woodshed. There was no yardman about. At first Ivan Mironov was reluctant to accept the coupon, but Yevgeny Mikhailovich was so persuasive and looked to be such an important gentleman, that he agreed to take it.

Entering the maids’ quarters from the back porch, Ivan Mironov crossed himself, wiped the melting icicles from his beard, and turning back the flap of his sheepskin jacket, drew out a small leather purse and took from it eight roubles and fifty copecks in change. He handed over the money, and the coupon he rolled up in a piece of paper and put away in his purse.

Having thanked the gentleman in a manner befitting his rank, Ivan Mironov induced his wretched, doomed, frost-covered horse to get his legs moving, not by the whip but by the use of the whip handle, and drove the empty cart away in the direction of the tavern.

Once inside the tavern Ivan Mironov ordered himself eight copecks’ worth of vodka and tea, and when he had warmed himself up and even begun to perspire a little and was in a really cheerful state of mind, he fell to chatting with the yardman who was sitting at the same table. He soon warmed to the conversation and told the yardman all about himself: how he came from the village of Vasilyevskoye twelve versts from the town, how he had taken his share of the family goods and left his father and brothers, and was now living with his wife and two sons, the elder of whom was attending a trade school and so wasn’t yet able to help him financially. He told him how he was staying in lodgings here in town and that tomorrow he was going to the knacker to sell his old hack, and he would see, but if it worked out all right he might buy himself a new horse. He told him how he had managed to put by some twenty-five roubles, and half the money was in the form of a coupon. He took out the coupon and showed it to the yardman. The yardman could not read or write but he said that he had changed money like that for the tenants and that it was good money, but there were forgeries about, and for that reason he advised him to be on the safe side and to get it changed here at the tavern bar. Ivan Mironov handed the coupon to the waiter and told him to bring back the cash to him, but the waiter did not bring back the money: instead the bald, shiny-faced tavern manager came over, holding the coupon in his pudgy hand.

‘Your money’s no good,’ he said, pointing at the coupon but not returning it.

‘That’s good money – a gentleman gave it me.’

‘This money is not good, it’s counterfeit.’

‘Well, if it’s counterfeit, give it back to me.’

‘No, my man, people like you need to be taught a lesson. You and your swindling friends have been tampering with it.’

‘Let me have my money, what right have you got to do this?’

‘Sidor, call the police,’ said the barman to the waiter.

Ivan Mironov was drunk, and being drunk he was starting to get worked up. He seized the manager by the collar and shouted:

‘Give it back, and I’ll go and see the gentleman. I know where to find him.’

The manager struggled free of Ivan Mironov’s grasp, tearing his shirt in the process.

‘Ah, if that’s how you want it – hold him!’

The waiter grabbed Ivan Mironov and at that moment the policeman appeared. Taking charge of the situation he listened to their explanations, then quickly brought things to a conclusion.

‘Down to the station with you.’

The policeman put the coupon into his own wallet and led Ivan Mironov and his horse off to the police station.

VII

Ivan Mironov spent the night in the cells at the police station along with drunks and thieves. It was not until almost noon the next day that he was summoned to appear before the local police officer. The officer questioned him and then sent him along with the constable to see the proprietor of the photographic shop. Ivan Mironov was able to remember the name of the street and the number of the house.

When the policeman had summoned the gentleman to the door and confronted him with the coupon and Ivan Mironov, who confirmed that this was the very gentleman who had given him the coupon, Yevgeny Mikhailovich put on an expression first of astonishment, and then of stern disapproval.

‘Whatever are you talking about? You must be out of your mind. This is the first time I have ever set eyes on him.’

‘Master, it’s a sin to say that, remember we’ve all got to die,’ said Ivan Mironov.

‘What’s the matter with him? You must have been dreaming. It was someone else you sold your firewood to,’ said Yevgeny Mikhailovich. ‘Anyway, wait there and I’ll go and ask my wife if she bought any firewood yesterday.’

Yevgeny Mikhailovich went away and at once called the yardman to him. The yardman, Vasily, was a good-looking, unusually strong and nimble fellow, cheery in nature and something of a dandy. Yevgeny Mikhailovich told him that if anyone asked him where the last lot of firewood had come from he should say that they had got it from the woodyard and that they never bought firewood from muzhiks.

‘There’s a muzhik here claiming that I gave him a forged coupon. He’s a muddle-headed peasant, but you’re a man of understanding. So you tell him that we only ever buy our firewood from the woodyard. Oh, and I’ve been meaning for some time to give you this towards a new jacket,’ added Yevgeny Mikhailovich, and he gave the yardman five roubles.

Vasily took the money, his eyes darting from the banknote to Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s face, tossed back his hair and gave a slight smile.

‘Everyone knows the common people are slow-witted. It’s lack of education. Don’t you worry, sir. I shall know well enough what to say.’

However tearfully Ivan Mironov begged Yevgeny Mikhailovich to acknowledge that the coupon was his, and the yardman to confirm what he was saying, both Yevgeny Mikhailovich and the yardman stuck to their line: they had never bought firewood off carts. And the policeman took Ivan Mironov back to the police station where he was charged with forging a coupon.

Only by following the advice of his cellmate, a drunken clerk, and by slipping the local police officer a five-rouble note, did Ivan Mironov succeed in getting out of detention, minus his coupon and with just seven roubles instead of the twenty-five he had had the day before. Ivan Mironov used three of the seven roubles to get drunk, and with a face full of utter dejection and dead drunk he drove home to his wife.

His wife was pregnant and nearing her time, and she was feeling ill. She began swearing at her husband, he shoved her away, and she started hitting him. He did not retaliate, but lay belly down on the plank bed and wept loudly.

Only the next morning did his wife discover what had happened, and believing what her husband said, spent a long time cursing that brigand of a gentleman who had deceived her Ivan. And Ivan, who had now sobered up, remembered the advice of the factory-hand he had been drinking with the previous evening, and decided to go and find an ablocate and lodge a complaint.

VIII

The advocate took on the case, not so much for any money he might make from it, but rather because he believed Ivan Mironov and was indignant at the way this muzhik had been so shamelessly defrauded.

Both parties were present at the hearing, and Vasily the yardman was the sole witness. At the hearing it all came out as it had done before. Ivan Mironov referred to God and to the fact that we shall all die. Yevgeny Mikhailovich, although uncomfortably aware of the unpleasantness and the danger of what he was doing, could not now alter his testimony, and he continued with an outwardly calm appearance to deny everything.

Vasily the yardman received a further ten roubles and went on asserting with a calm smile that he had never before so much as set eyes on Ivan Mironov. And when he was called to take the oath, although he quailed inwardly, he maintained a calm exterior as he repeated the words of the oath after the old priest specially brought in for this function, swearing on the cross and the Holy Gospel that he would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The proceedings ended with the judge dismissing the case brought by Ivan Mironov and decreeing that he was liable for court costs of five roubles, which Yevgeny Mikhailovich magnanimously paid on his behalf. Discharging Ivan Mironov, the judge admonished him to be more careful in future about making accusations against respectable people and said that he should be duly grateful that the court costs had been met for him and that he was not being prosecuted for slander, which could have led to his spending three months or more in prison.

‘We humbly thank you, sir,’ said Ivan Mironov, and shaking his head and sighing he left the courtroom.

It seemed as if the whole affair had ended well for Yevgeny Mikhailovich and for Vasily the yardman. But that was only how it looked. Something had actually happened which no one could see, something far more serious than anything merely human eyes could perceive.

It was more than two years now since Vasily had left his village and come to live in the town. With each year that passed he sent his father less and less of his earnings, and he did not get round to sending for his wife to come and join him, since he felt no need of her. Here in the town he had as many women as he could wish for, and not the sort of women who were anything like his old hag of a wife. With each year that passed Vasily forgot more and more the rules and standards of country life and became increasingly at home with the ways of the town. Back there in the country everything had been crude, dreary, impoverished and messy, but here everything was civilized, well-kept, clean and luxurious, as it ought to be. And he became more and more convinced that the country people lacked any understanding of life, like the beasts of the forest, whereas here – these people were real human beings. He read books by good authors, novels, and he went to theatrical performances at the People’s House.⁵ In his home village you would never see anything like that, not even in your dreams. In his village the old men would say: ‘Live with your wife according to the law, work hard, don’t eat too much and don’t get above yourself’; but here people were clever, educated – and that meant they understood the real laws of life – and lived for their own pleasure. And it was all wonderful. Before the court case with the coupon Vasily had still not believed that the upper classes had no law governing the way they lived. He had always thought they must have some such law, although he did not know what it was. But this court hearing over the coupon, and most of all, his own perjury, which despite his fears had brought him no unpleasant repercussions but had actually earned him an extra ten roubles, convinced him that there were no laws at all, and that a man should simply live for his own pleasure. And so he did, and so he went on doing. To begin with he merely took a little extra profit on the purchases he made for the tenants, but this was not enough to meet all his expenses, so he began, whenever he could, to pilfer money and valuables from the tenants’ apartments, and he even stole Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s wallet. Yevgeny Mikhailovich, certain of Vasily’s guilt, did not start proceedings against him, but gave him the sack.

Vasily had no desire to return home, but went on living in Moscow with his mistress while he looked for work. He found a low-paid job as a yardman to a small shopkeeper. Vasily started in the job, but the next month he was caught stealing sacks. His employer did not lodge an official complaint, but beat Vasily and threw him out. After this incident he was unable to find another job, his money was running out and he was getting short of clothes, so that in the end he was left with a single tattered coat, a pair of trousers and some down-at-heel shoes. His mistress abandoned him. But Vasily did not lose his bright and cheery disposition, and he waited until it was spring again, and then set off on foot for his home village.

IX

Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky, a short stocky man who wore dark glasses (he had trouble with his eyes and was in danger of losing his sight altogether), got up as usual before daybreak, and after drinking a glass of tea, put on his knee-length sheepskin coat trimmed with lambskin and set off to make the rounds of his property.

Pyotr Nikolayevich had been a customs officer and in that profession he had saved up the sum of eighteen thousand roubles. He had retired some twelve years earlier, not quite of his own volition, and had bought the small estate of a young landowner who had squandered his fortune. Pyotr Nikolayevich had married when he was still in government service. His wife, the poor orphaned daughter of an old aristocratic family, was a sturdy, plump and attractive woman who had borne him no children. Pyotr Nikolayevich was a man thorough and persistent in all his dealings. Although he knew nothing about farming (he was the son of a minor Polish nobleman) he went into it so efficiently that in ten years his ramshackle estate of three hundred desyatins⁶ had become a model of its kind. All the structures he put up, from the house itself to the barn and the shelter for the firehose, were solid and reliable, covered with sheet-iron and regularly repainted. In the equipment shed there was an orderly array of carts, wooden and metal ploughs, and harrows. All the harnesses were kept well greased. The horses were of a modest size and almost always from his own stud, with light-brown coats and black mane and tail, sturdy and well-fed animals, matched in pairs. The threshing-machine operated in its own covered barn, the feed was stored in a special shed, and the manure slurry flowed away into a properly paved pit. The cows too were bred on the estate, not particularly large, but good milkers. The pigs were of an English breed. There was a poultry-yard with hens of particularly good egg-laying strains. The fruit trees in the orchard were kept coated with grease and systematically replaced with new plants. Everything that could be seen was businesslike, clean, reliable and meticulous. Pyotr Nikolayevich took great delight in his estate and was proud of the fact that he had achieved all this not by treating his peasants oppressively, but on the contrary, by observing the strictest fairness in his dealings with them. Even in the society of the local nobility he maintained a moderate position that was more liberal than conservative, and invariably defended the common people to the advocates of serfdom. Treat them well, and they’ll treat you well in return. True, he did not tolerate blunders and mistakes on the part of the men who worked for him and he would occasionally be seen in person urging them to greater efforts; he demanded hard work, but on the other hand the lodging and the victuals provided were of the very best, the wages were always paid on time, and on festival days he treated his men to vodka.

Stepping carefully over the melting snow – this was in February – Pyotr Nikolayevich made his way past the farmhands’ stable towards the large hut in which the farm-hands lived. It was still dark, all the darker because of the fog, but in the windows of the living-hut some light could be seen. The farm-hands were just getting up. He was intending to hurry them along: according to the work schedule six of them were to take a cart over to the copse and collect the last loads of firewood.

‘What’s this then?’ he wondered, seeing the door of the stable wide open.

‘Hey, who’s in there?’

No one answered. Pyotr Nikolayevich went into the stable.

‘Who’s in there, I say?’

There was still no answer. It was dark in the stable, the ground beneath his feet was soft and there was a smell of manure. To the right of the doorway was a stall which should have been occupied by a pair of young chestnut horses. Pyotr Nikolayevich stretched out his hand – but the stall was empty. He felt in front of him with his foot. Perhaps the horses might be lying down. His foot encountered nothing but empty space. ‘Where can they have taken them?’ he thought. Could they have been taken out to be harnessed up? No, the sleigh was still there outside. He went outside again and called loudly: ‘Hey, Stepan.’

Stepan was the head farm-hand. He was just emerging from the living-hut.

‘Hello there!’ Stepan called back cheerfully. ‘Is that you, Pyotr Nikolaich? The lads are on their way.’

‘Why have you left the stable door open?’

‘The stable? I’ve no idea. Hey, Proshka, bring us a lantern here.’ Proshka came running up with a lantern. They all went into the stable. Stepan realized at once what had occurred.

‘We’ve had thieves here, Pyotr Nikolaich. The lock’s been broken.’

‘That can’t be, surely.’

‘They’ve taken them, the scoundrels. Mashka’s gone, so is Hawk. No, he’s over here. But Dapple isn’t here. And neither is Beauty.’

Three horses were missing. Pyotr Nikolayevich did not say anything. He was frowning and breathing heavily.

‘Ah, if I could get my hands on them … Who was on watch?’

‘Pyetka. Pyetka fell asleep.’

Pyotr Nikolayevich reported the theft to the police, to the district police superintendent and to the head of the zemstvo,⁷ and he sent out his own men to look for the horses. But they were not found.

‘Filthy peasants!’ said Pyotr Nikolayevich, ‘Doing this to me. Haven’t I been good to them? Just you wait. Bandits they are, the lot of them. From now on you’re going to get different treatment from me.’

X

But the horses – three chestnuts – had already been taken to outlying places. Mashka they sold to some gypsies for eighteen roubles; the second horse, Dapple, was exchanged for a peasant’s horse in a village forty versts away; and Beauty they simply rode until he dropped, then slaughtered him. They sold his hide for three roubles. The leader of this enterprise was Ivan Mironov. He had worked for Pyotr Nikolayevich in the past, knew his way round the estate, and had decided to get some of his money back. And had consequently thought up the whole plan.

After his misfortune with the forged coupon Ivan Mironov embarked on a long drinking bout and would have drunk away everything he possessed if his wife had not hidden from him the horse collars, his clothes, and anything else he might have sold to buy vodka. All the time he was on his binge Ivan Mironov was thinking incessantly not just about the individual who had wronged him, but about all the masters, some of them worse than others, who only lived by what they could filch from the likes of him. On one occasion Ivan Mironov was drinking with some peasants who came from a place near Podolsk. And as they travelled along the road the muzhiks told him about how they had driven off some horses belonging to another muzhik. Ivan Mironov began ticking off those horse-thieves for committing such an offence against another muzhik. ‘It’s a sin,’ he said. ‘To a muzhik his horse is just like a brother, yet you go and deprive him of it. If you want to steal horses, then steal them from the masters. That’s all those sons of bitches deserve anyway.’ The further they went the more they talked, and the muzhiks from Podolsk said that if you wanted to steal horses from the gentry you had to be clever about it. You needed to know all about the lie of the land, and if you hadn’t got someone on the inside, it couldn’t be done. Then Ivan Mironov remembered about Sventitsky, on whose estate he had once lived and worked, and he remembered how Sventitsky had held back a rouble and a half from his wages to pay for a broken kingpin, and he remembered too the chestnut horses he had worked with on the farm.

Ivan Mironov went and saw Sventitsky on the pretext of looking for work, but in reality he was there to see how things were and find out all he could. Having done that, and discovered that there was no night-watchman and that the horses were kept in separate loose-boxes in the stable, he called in the horse-thieves and saw the whole business through.

After splitting the proceeds with the muzhiks from Podolsk Ivan Mironov returned to his village with five roubles. At home there was no work for him to do: he had no horse. And from that time on Ivan Mironov took to associating with horse-thieves and gypsies.

XI

Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky did everything in his power to find the horse-thieves. He knew that the raid could not have been carried out without the help of one of his employees. And so he began to regard his farm-hands with suspicion and to enquire which of the farm-workers had not been sleeping at the farm on the night in question. He was told that Proshka Nikolayev had not spent that night at the farm. Proshka was a young fellow who had just returned from doing his military service, a good-looking, nimble fellow whom Pyotr Nikolayevich used to take with him on outings to serve as a coachman. The district superintendent of police was a friend of Pyotr Nikolayevich’s, and he was also acquainted with the chief constable, the marshal of the nobility, the leader of the zemstvo and the investigating magistrate. All these persons regularly came to his name-day celebrations and were familiar with his delicious fruit liqueurs and his pickled mushrooms – white mushrooms, honey agarics and milk agarics. They all sympathized with him and attempted to offer him their help.

‘There you are, and you are the one who is always defending the muzhiks,’ said the district superintendent. ‘I was telling the truth when I told you they were worse than wild animals. You can’t do a thing with them unless you use the knout and the rod. So you say it was this Proshka, the one who rides out with you as coachman, do you?’

‘Yes, he’s the one.’

‘Have him brought in here, please.’

Proshka was summoned and they began to question him.

‘Where were you that night?’

Proshka tossed his hair back and flashed them a glance.

‘At home.’

‘What do you mean, “at home”? All the farm-hands say you were not there.’

‘As you please, sir.’

‘We’re not talking about what I please. So where were you?’

‘At home.’

‘Very well, then. Constable, take this man to the district station.’

‘As you please, sir.’

So Proshka still refused to say where he had been on the night of the raid, but the reason for his obstinacy was that he had spent the night with his girlfriend Parasha and he had promised not to give her away, so he did not do so. But there was no evidence. Proshka was released again. However, Pyotr Nikolayevich was sure that the raid had been wholly the work of this Prokofy Nikolayev, and from that time on he began to hate him. One day when Pyotr Nikolayevich had taken him out with him as coachman, he sent him off to the posting station to fetch the horses some fodder. Proshka, as was his custom, bought two measures of oats at a coaching inn. He fed one-and-a-half measures to the horses and exchanged the remaining half-measure for vodka. Pyotr Nikolayevich found out about this and informed the local justice of the peace. The justice of the peace sentenced Proshka to three months in gaol. Prokofy was a man with a good opinion of himself. He considered himself superior to others and was proud of it. Being in prison was a humiliating experience for him. He could no longer give himself airs among his fellow men, and he fell at once into a gloomy state of mind.

Proshka returned home from gaol embittered, not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich, as against the world in general. As everyone said, after his time in prison Prokofy lost heart, and he took to drinking, was soon caught stealing clothes from a tradesman’s wife, and again landed up in gaol.

Meanwhile all that Pyotr Nikolayevich could discover about the horses was that someone had come across the hide of a chestnut gelding, and Pyotr Nikolayevich identified it as Beauty’s. And the impunity of these thieves came to exasperate Pyotr Nikolayevich more and more. Now he could not set eyes on muzhiks or even talk about them without being filled with anger, and whenever he had the chance he came down on them as hard as possible.

XII

Although, once he had passed on the coupon, Yevgeny Mikhailovich had stopped thinking about it, his wife Mariya Vasilyevna was unable to forgive either herself for having been duped, or her husband for the cruel things he had said to her, or – and this was the main thing – those two young villains for having taken her in so cleverly.

From the day of the deception onwards she began to look very closely at any grammar-school boys she encountered. Once she actually met Makhin but did not recognize him because he saw her first and contorted his features so effectively that it completely altered his face. But when two weeks later she came face to face with Mitya Smokovnikov on the pavement, she recognized him at once. She let him go by, then turned on her heel and walked after him. On reaching the flat where he lived she made enquiries and found out whose son he was, and the next day she went to the grammar school, where in the entrance hall she met Mikhail Vvedensky, the scripture teacher. He enquired what he could do for her. She replied that she wanted to see the headmaster.

‘Unfortunately the headmaster is not here – he is unwell; but perhaps I can help you, or take a message for him.’

Mariya Vasilyevna decided to tell the scripture teacher everything.

Father Vvedensky was a widower, a graduate from the theological academy, and a man of considerable self-esteem. The previous year he had come across Smokovnikov senior at a society meeting in the course of a discussion about religious belief, in which Smokovnikov had soundly trounced him on all points and exposed him to ridicule. As a result Vvedensky had resolved to keep a watchful eye on the son, and having detected in him the same indifference to the Divine Law that his unbelieving father had displayed, he began to persecute him, and even failed him in an examination.

Having found out from Mariya Vasilyevna about young Smokovnikov’s escapade, Vvedensky could not help feeling a certain satisfaction, seeing in this incident a confirmation of his own prejudices concerning those immoral people who lacked the guidance of the Church, and he decided to make use of the incident in order, as he tried to assure himself, to reveal the dangers threatening all those who abandoned the Church and her ways – but in the depths of his soul he simply wanted to get his own back on a proud and self-confident atheist.

‘Yes, it is very sad, very sad,’ said Father Vvedensky, stroking the smooth edges of his pectoral cross. ‘I am so glad you have entrusted this matter to me: as a servant of the Church I shall naturally try to make sure that the young man is not left without moral guidance, but I shall also do my best to make his edification as gentle as possible.’

‘Yes, I shall act in a way which befits my calling,’ said Father Vvedensky to himself, thinking that he had now quite forgotten the father’s hostility towards him and that he desired nothing but the moral good and salvation of the boy.

Next day during the scripture lesson Father Mikhail told his pupils all about the episode of the forged coupon and informed them that it was a grammar-school pupil who had been responsible for it.

‘It was a vile, shameful act,’ he said, ‘but concealing it is even worse. If it was one of you who did this – which I cannot believe – then it would be better for him to own up to it than to hide his guilt.’

As he said this he was staring straight at Mitya Smokovnikov. Mitya went red and started to sweat, then he burst into tears and ran from the classroom.

When Mitya’s mother heard about these events she persuaded her son to tell her the whole truth and then hurried off to the photographic supply shop. She paid back the twelve roubles fifty to the proprietor’s wife and induced her to keep quiet about the schoolboy’s name. She then instructed her son to deny everything, and on no account to make any confession to his father.

And indeed, when Fyodor Mikhailovich heard what had happened at the grammar school, and when his son on being questioned denied it all, he went to see the headmaster and explained the whole matter to him, saying that the scripture teacher’s conduct had been deeply reprehensible and that he did not intend to let things rest there. The headmaster called in the scripture teacher and a heated exchange took place between him and Fyodor Mikhailovich.

‘A stupid woman attempted to pin something on my son and then retracted her accusation, and you could find nothing better to do than to slander the honour of a thoroughly upright boy.’

‘I did not slander him, and I will not permit you to speak to me in such a tone. You are forgetting my vocation.’

‘I don’t give a fig for your vocation.’

‘Your deluded opinions, sir,’ said the scripture teacher, his chin quivering so that his scanty little beard trembled in sympathy, ‘your deluded opinions are well known to the whole town.’

‘Gentlemen, Father,’ said the headmaster, attempting to pacify the two disputants. But to pacify them was impossible.

‘My holy vocation makes it my duty to concern myself with the moral and religious upbringing of the young.’

‘Enough of this pretence. Do you think I don’t know that you haven’t a grain of genuine religious faith in you?’

‘I consider it beneath me to continue talking to such a gentleman as you,’ declared Father Mikhail, who had been particularly offended by Smokovnikov’s last remark, since he knew that it was accurate. He had gone through the whole course at the theological academy and consequently had long since ceased to believe in what he professed and what he preached; in fact he believed only that everyone ought to make themselves believe those things which he had made himself believe.

Smokovnikov was not so much infuriated by the scripture teacher’s behaviour, as by discovering this striking example of the clerical influence which was beginning to manifest itself throughout our society, and he told everyone about the incident.

Father Vvedensky on the other hand, seeing in it a demonstration of the nihilism and atheism which had taken hold not only of the younger generation but of the older one as well, became more and more convinced of the necessity of combating them. The more he condemned the unbelief of Smokovnikov and his kind, the more convinced he became of the firm and unshakable character of his own faith, and the less need he felt to test his faith or to reconcile it with his actual way of living. His faith, acknowledged by the world around him, was for him his principal weapon in his fight against those who denied it.

These thoughts, called forth by his clash with Smokovnikov, together with the disagreeable events at the grammar school which followed in its wake – namely, a reprimand and a caution from the school authorities – impelled him to take a decision which had been tantalizing him for a long time, since the death of his wife, in fact: to take monastic vows and thus opt for a career already followed by several of his fellow-students at the academy, one of whom was already a member of the hierarchy, another the superior of a monastery, and expected soon to be made a bishop.

Towards the end of the academic year Vvedensky left the grammar school, took his monastic vows and the new name of Misail, and was very soon given the rectorship of a seminary in a town on the Volga.

XIII

Meanwhile Vasily the yardman had set out on the highroad to the south.

By day he walked, and at night the local policeman would show him to the usual quarters provided for wanderers. Wherever he went people gave him bread, and sometimes even asked him in to have supper with them. In one village in the Oryol province where he was spending the night he was told that a merchant who had leased an orchard from the landowner was looking for fit young fellows as night-watchmen. Vasily was tired of living as a beggar but he did not want to go back to his village, so he went to see the merchant with the orchard and got himself taken on as a night-watchman at a wage of five roubles per month.

Vasily found life in his watchman’s hut very pleasant, particularly when the sweet apples had begun to ripen and the other watchmen brought in huge trusses of fresh straw gathered from under the threshing-machine in the master’s shed. He would lie the whole day long on the fresh, fragrant straw beside the still more fragrant piles of spring and winter windfall apples, just keeping an eye open to make sure the children were not pilfering the apples still on the trees, and whistling and singing songs. Singing songs Vasily was really good at. He had a fine voice. The women and girls would come up from the village to get some apples. Vasily would laugh and joke with them a bit and gave more or less apples in exchange for eggs or a few copecks to whichever of them took his fancy – and then lie down again, only getting up to have his breakfast or his dinner or his supper.

Vasily possessed only one shirt, a pink cotton one full of holes, and he had nothing to put on his feet, but his body was strong and healthy, and when the porridge pot was taken off the fire Vasily would eat enough for three, so that the old man who was the chief watchman was always amazed at him. Vasily did not sleep at night and would whistle or call out to keep himself awake, and he could see a long way in the dark, like a cat. One night some big boys from the village climbed into the trees to shake the apples down. Vasily crept up and went for them; they did their best to beat him off but he sent them all flying, and took one of them back to the hut and handed him over to the master.

Vasily’s first hut was at the far end of the orchard, but the second, where he lived for the sweet apple harvest, was only forty yards from the master’s house. And in this hut Vasily enjoyed himself even more. All day long Vasily could see the gentlemen and the young ladies playing games, going out for drives or walks, and in the evenings and at night playing the piano or the violin, singing or dancing. He would see the students and the young ladies sitting in the windows snuggling up to one another, and then some of them would go for walks in the dark avenues of lime trees, where the moonlight only came through in streaks and patches. He would see the servants hurrying about with food and drink, he would see how the cooks, the laundresses, the stewards, the gardeners, the coachmen – all of them worked just to keep the masters supplied with food and drink and amusement. Sometimes the young gentlefolk would drop in to see him in his hut, and he would choose the finest apples, the ripe and rosy ones, to give to them, and the young ladies would bite into them there and then with a crunching noise, and praise the apples and say something – Vasily knew it was about him – in French, and get him to sing for them.

Vasily greatly admired this way of life, remembering the kind of life he had led in Moscow, and the thought that the beginning and the end of everything was to have money came more and more often into his head.

And Vasily began to think more and more about what he could do to get hold of some more money right away. He started to recall how he had made the odd profit before and he decided that that wasn’t the way to go about it, just helping yourself to whatever was lying about; he needed to work out things in advance, to see what was what, and do a clean job leaving no evidence behind. Towards Christmas time they picked the last of the winter apples. The boss had made a good profit and he paid off all the watchmen, including Vasily, and thanked them.

Vasily put on the coat and the hat the young master had given him, but he did not go home, for the thought of that brutish, peasant life filled him with disgust – instead he went back to the town with the hard-drinking ex-conscripts who had worked alongside him as watchmen. Once back in the town he decided to break into and burgle the shop owned by his former employer who had beaten him and thrown him out without his wages. He knew the layout of the place and where the money was kept. He got one of the ex-soldiers to stand guard outside, and he himself smashed a window opening on to the yard, climbed in and took all the money. The thing was carried out skilfully, and no traces were found. Vasily got away with three hundred and seventy roubles. He gave a hundred to his assistant and went off with the rest to another town, where he went on a binge with his comrades and girlfriends.

XIV

Meanwhile Ivan Mironov had become an accomplished, daring and successful horse-thief. His wife Afimya, who used to nag him on account of what she called his ‘botched schemes’, was now well pleased with her husband and even quite proud of him, for he was the owner of a sheepskin coat with a hood, and she had a shawl and a new fur coat.

Everyone in the village and surrounding district knew that there was never a horse-theft in which he was not somehow involved, but they were afraid to give evidence against him, and even when some suspicion did fall on him he invariably emerged without a stain on his character. His most recent theft had been from the night-grazing ground at Kolotovka. As far as possible Ivan Mironov liked to choose who to steal from, and he got particular satisfaction when his victims were landowners and merchants. But stealing from landowners and merchants was more difficult. And so when landowners’ and merchants’ horses were not accessible he would steal peasants’ horses instead. Thus he stole from the night-grazing at Kolotovka as many horses as he could get hold of. This job, however, was carried out not by him, but by a skilful young fellow called Gerasim whom he had persuaded to do it. The muzhiks did not discover that their horses were gone until daybreak, and then they rushed off along all possible roads to look for them. The horses were in fact already hidden in a ravine in the middle of the state forest. Ivan Mironov planned to keep them there until the following night, then to make off with them to a yardman he knew in a place forty versts away. Ivan Mironov visited Gerasim in the forest and brought him some pie and vodka, returning home by a forest path on which he hoped not to meet anybody. Unfortunately for him he came up against a forest guard.

‘Been out after mushrooms, have you?’ asked the guard.

‘Yes, but I haven’t found any today,’ replied Ivan Mironov, pointing to the bast basket which he had brought with him in case of need.

‘That’s right, it’s not the mushroom season,’ said the guard, ‘but there’ll be some coming up in Lent.’ And he went on his way.

The forest guard realized that there was something suspicious here. There was no reason for Ivan Mironov to be out walking in the state forest early in the morning. The guard turned back and started to circle round through the trees. On getting near to the ravine he heard the sound of horses snorting and he crept up very quietly to the place the sound was coming from. The ground in the ravine was trampled by horses’ hooves and it was all over horse droppings. A little further on Gerasim was sitting eating something, and there were two horses standing tethered to a tree.

The guard ran back to the village and fetched the village elder, the constable and two witnesses. They approached the place where Gerasim was sitting from three directions, and seized him. Gerasim made no attempt to protest his innocence, but being drunk he at once confessed to everything. He told them that Ivan Mironov had got him drunk and talked him into doing the job, and had promised to come to the forest today to fetch the horses. The muzhiks left the horse and Gerasim where they were in the forest and set an ambush for Ivan Mironov. As soon as night had fallen they heard a whistle. Gerasim whistled back in reply. As soon as Ivan Mironov started to come down the slope they rushed at him, captured him and led him back to their village.

The next morning a crowd assembled in front of the elder’s hut. Ivan Mironov was brought out and they began to interrogate him. Stepan Pelageyushkin, a tall, stooping, long-armed muzhik with a beaky nose and a dour expression, was the first to ask him a question. Stepan was an independent peasant who had completed his military service. He had not long since moved out of his father’s house and was starting to do quite well, when his horse had been stolen from him. By working for a year in the mines Stepan managed to set himself up with two horses. Both of these had now been stolen.

‘Tell me where my horses are,’ began Stepan, pale with anger and glaring now at the ground, now straight into Ivan’s face.

Ivan Mironov denied all knowledge of them. Then Stepan struck him in the face and broke his nose, from which the blood started to trickle.

‘Tell me, or I’ll kill you!’

Ivan Mironov bent his head but said nothing. Stepan struck him again with his long arm – once, then a second time. Ivan still did not speak, just swung his head from side to side.

‘Come, all of you – beat him!’ shouted the village elder. And they all began to beat him. Ivan Mironov fell silently to the ground, then cried out: ‘You barbarians, you devils, beat me to death then. I’m not scared of you.’

Then Stepan took hold of a stone from a pile he had ready, and he smashed Ivan Mironov’s head in.

XV

Ivan Mironov’s murderers were brought to justice. Stepan Pelageyushkin was among them. The charge brought against him was particularly grave because they had all testified that he was the one who had smashed Ivan Mironov’s head in with a stone. At his trial Stepan did not try to conceal anything, but explained how when his last pair of horses had been stolen he had reported it at the police station, and they could probably have tracked the horses down with the help of the gypsies, but the district police officer had not even seen him, and had made no effort to organize a search.

‘What were we supposed to do with a man of his sort? He’d ruined us.’

‘So why didn’t the others beat him? Why just you?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘That’s not true. They all beat him, the village community decided to do away with him. I was just the one who finished him off. Why make him suffer more than necessary?’

The judges were struck by Stepan’s utterly calm expression as he described what he had done and how they had beaten Ivan Mironov to death and how he had finished him off.

Stepan did not indeed see anything very dreadful in this murder. When he was on his military service he had happened to be one of the firing-squad when a soldier was executed, and then, as also now at the murder of Ivan Mironov, he had seen nothing dreadful in it. If you killed a man, you killed a man. It’s his turn today, tomorrow it may be mine.

Stepan’s sentence was a light one: a year in prison. His peasant’s clothes were taken away from him and put in the prison stores with a number attached to them, and they made him put on a prison overall and some slippers.

Stepan had never had much respect for the authorities, but now he was utterly convinced that everyone in authority, all the masters – apart from the Tsar, who pitied the common people and treated them justly – were all of them robbers, sucking the life-blood of the people. The stories told by the exiles and the hard-labour convicts he met in prison confirmed his view of things. One had been sentenced to exile with hard labour for having denounced the thievery of the local authorities, another for striking an official who was trying unlawfully to seize the property of some peasants, and a third, for forging banknotes. The gentry and the merchants, whatever they did, could get away with it, whereas the muzhiks who had nothing got sent off to prison to feed the lice on account of any little thing whatever.

Stepan’s wife came to visit him from time to time in prison. With him away from home things had already been bad enough, but now she was ruined and destitute, and was reduced to begging with the children. The calamities afflicting his wife made Stepan even more bitter. His behaviour was vicious towards everyone he came into contact with in prison, and on one occasion he almost killed one of the cooks with an axe, for which he got an extra year on his sentence. During the course of that year he heard that his wife had died and his household no longer existed …

When Stepan had served his time he was summoned to the prison stores, and the clothes he had arrived in were taken down from a little shelf and given back to him.

‘Where am I to go now?’ he asked the quartermaster-sergeant as he put on his own clothes again.

‘Home, of course.’

‘I haven’t got a home. I reckon I shall just have to go on the road. And rob people.’

‘If you start robbing people, you’ll soon be back in here again.’

‘Well, what will be, will be.’

And Stepan went on his way. Despite what he had said, he set off in the direction of his home. He had nowhere else to go.

On his way there he happened to stop for the night at a coaching inn with a pothouse attached, which he knew.

The inn was kept by a fat tradesman from Vladimir. He knew Stepan. And he knew that Stepan had got himself into prison through bad luck. So he let him stay the night.

This rich tradesman had run off with the wife of a peasant neighbour and was living with her as his wife and business partner.

Stepan knew all about this episode – how the tradesman had offended the muzhik in his honour, and how this wretched woman had walked out on her husband and had grown obese with good eating; and now there she was, sitting all fat and sweaty over her tea – and was kind enough to invite Stepan to have some with her. There were no other travellers staying at the inn. Stepan was allowed to sleep the night in the kitchen. Matryona cleared away all the dishes and went off to the maid’s room. Stepan lay down on top of the stove, but he could not get to sleep, and kept snapping under his body the pieces of kindling which had been put there to dry. He could not get out of his head the image of the tradesman’s fat paunch bulging out of the waist of his cotton shirt, faded with washing and re-washing. The idea kept coming into his head of taking a knife and slashing that paunch wide open and letting out the fatty intestines. And of doing the same to the woman too. One moment he was saying to himself: ‘Come on now, devil take them, I shall be out of here tomorrow,’ and the next moment he would remember Ivan Mironov and start thinking again about the tradesman’s paunch and Matryona’s white, sweaty throat. If he was going to kill one, he might as well kill them both. The cock crew for the second time. If he was going to do it, it had better be now, before it got light. He had noticed a knife the evening before, and an axe. He climbed down from the stove, picked up the axe and the knife and went out of the kitchen. Just as he had got out of the room he heard the click of the latch on another door. The tradesman opened the door and came out. Stepan had not meant to do it like this. He couldn’t use the knife in this situation, so he swung the axe up and brought it down, splitting the man’s head open. The tradesman collapsed against the lintel of the door and fell to the ground.

Stepan went into the maid’s room. Matryona jumped up and stood there by the bed in her nightshirt. Stepan killed her too with the same axe. Then he lit a candle, took the money from the cash desk, and made off.

XVI

In the chief town of a country district, in a house set somewhat apart from the other buildings, lived an old man who had been a civil servant in the days before he had taken to drink, his two daughters, and a son-in-law. The married daughter was also given to drinking and led a disreputable life, but the elder daughter Mariya Semyonovna, a thin, wrinkled woman of fifty whose husband had died, was their sole support on her pension of two hundred and fifty roubles a year. The whole family lived on this money. Mariya Semyonovna also did all the housework. She looked after her weak, drunken old father and her sister’s baby, cooked and did the washing. And as is always the case in such situations, all three of them loaded all their wants and needs on to her, all three of them shouted abuse at her, and the son-in-law would even beat her when he was in a drunken state. She endured it all meekly and silently, and again, as is always the case, the more things she was expected to do, the more she managed to carry out. She even gave aid to the poor, to her own cost, giving away her clothing, and she helped to look after the sick.

On one occasion Mariya Semyonovna had a village tailor, a cripple who had lost one leg, staying in the house to do some work for her. He was altering her old father’s coat and re-covering her sheepskin jacket with cloth for her to wear to market in the winter.

The crippled tailor was an intelligent and perceptive man who had met with a great variety of people in the course of his work, and because of his disability had to spend most of his time sitting down, which disposed him to do a lot of thinking. After living for a week in Mariya Semyonovna’s household he was lost in wonderment for the life she led. Once she came into the kitchen where he was sewing, to wash some towels, and she chatted with him about his life, and how his brother had taken his share of the property and gone off to live on his own.

‘I thought it would be better like that, but I’m still as poor as ever.’

‘It’s better not to change things, but to go on living as you’ve always lived,’ said Mariya Semyonovna.

‘That’s what amazes me so much about you, Mariya Semyonovna, that you’re always bustling about here and there worrying about other people’s needs. But as I see it, you get precious little good back from them in return.’

Mariya Semyonovna did not answer.

‘You must have decided that it’s like it says in the holy books, that you’ll get your reward in the next world.’

‘We don’t know about that,’ said Mariya Semyonovna, ‘but I’m sure it’s better to live in that way.’

‘And is that what it says in the holy books?’

‘Yes, that’s what it says,’ she replied, and she read him the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospels. The tailor fell to thinking. And when he had been paid off and he had returned home he still kept thinking about what he had seen in Mariya Semyonovna’s house, and about what she had said to him and read to him.

XVII

Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky’s attitude towards the common people had changed completely, and so had their attitude towards him. Before a year was out they had felled twenty-seven of his oak trees and burned down the barn and the threshing-floor, which were not insured. Pyotr Nikolayevich decided that it was impossible to go on living among these people.

About this time the Livyentsov family were seeking a steward to look after their estates, and the marshal of the nobility had recommended Pyotr Nikolayevich as being the best farmer in the district. The Livyentsov estates although enormous in size were not yielding any profit, and the peasants were helping themselves to everything they could. Pyotr Nikolayevich undertook to set everything to rights, and after letting his own estate to a tenant he set off with his wife to go and live on the Livyentsovs’ land in the far-off Volga province.

Pyotr Nikolayevich had always been a lover of law and order, and now he was more unwilling than ever to tolerate these wild, uncivilized peasants who were illegally taking possession of property which did not belong to them. He was glad to have this chance to teach them a lesson and he set about his task with severity. One peasant he had imprisoned for the theft of forest timber, another he flogged with his own hand for not giving way to him on the road and failing to take off his hat. Concerning the meadows, about which there was a dispute, since the peasants regarded them as theirs, Pyotr Nikolayevich announced that if anyone let their cattle on to them, then he would have the animals impounded.

Spring came, and the peasants, as they had done in previous years, let their livestock out on to the manorial meadows. Pyotr Nikolayevich called all his farm-hands together and gave the order to drive the cattle and sheep into the manor farmyard. The muzhiks were out ploughing, so the farmhands, despite the women’s shrieks of protest, were able to drive the animals in. On getting back from their work the muzhiks gathered together and came across to the manor farmyard to demand that their livestock should be given back to them. Pyotr Nikolayevich came out to meet them carrying a rifle across his shoulders (he had just returned from making his tour of inspection on horseback) and informed them that he would only return their livestock to them on payment of a fine of fifty copecks per horned beast and ten copecks per sheep. The muzhiks began shouting that the meadows were theirs anyway, and had belonged to their fathers and their grandfathers before them, and that he had no right to go seizing other people’s stock.

‘Give us our cattle back, or it’ll be the worse for you,’ said one old man, going up to Pyotr Nikolayevich.

‘It’ll be the worse for me, will it?’ cried Pyotr Nikolayevich, his face all pale, advancing on the old man.

‘Give them back if you don’t want to get hurt. Parasite.’

‘What?’ shouted Pyotr Nikolayevich, and he struck the old man in the face.

‘You won’t dare fight us. Come on lads, take the cattle by force.’

The crowd surged forward. Pyotr Nikolayevich made as if to get out of the way, but they did not let him. He tried to force his way through. His rifle went off by accident, killing one of the peasants. A general riot broke out. Pyotr Nikolayevich was crushed to death. And five minutes later his mutilated body was dragged away and thrown into a ravine.

The murderers were brought before a military tribunal, and two of them were sentenced to death by hanging.

XVIII

In the village where the tailor came from five wealthy peasants had leased from the landowner for eleven hundred roubles a hundred and five desyatins of rich arable land as black as tar and distributed it among the other muzhiks in parcels costing eighteen or fifteen roubles each. None of the allotments of land went for under twelve roubles. So that they made themselves a good profit. The muzhiks who had leased the land each took five desyatins, and this land cost them nothing at all. One of these five muzhiks died, and the others invited the crippled tailor to come in with them as a partner.

When the tenants began to divide up the land, the tailor did not join in drinking vodka with them, and when the discussion turned to the question of who should get how much land, the tailor said that they should allocate it equally, and without taking money they didn’t need from the tenants, but only what they could afford.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If we don’t do it like this, we are not acting like Christians. The other way may be all right for the masters, but we are Christian people. We should do things God’s way. That’s the law of Christ.’

‘So where is this law written down, then?’

‘In the holy book, in the Gospels. Why don’t you come over to my place on Sunday, so we can talk about it?’

When Sunday came not all the peasants went to the tailor’s house, but three of them did, and he started to read to them.

He read five chapters from the Gospel of Matthew, and then they started to discuss it. They all listened, but only one of them, Ivan Chuyev, really took it in. And he took it in to such an extent that he began trying to live his whole life according to God’s way. And his family too began to live like that. He refused to take the extra land and kept only his proper share.

People began coming regularly to the tailor’s house and to Ivan’s house, and they began to understand, then they really grasped it, and they gave up smoking, and drinking, and swearing and using foul language, and they started helping one another. They also gave up going to church, and they took their household ikons back to the priest. In the end seventeen households, comprising sixty-five people, were involved. The village priest was alarmed and he reported the matter to the bishop. The bishop considered what he should do, and he decided to send to the village Father Misail, who had formerly been a scripture teacher in a grammar school.

XIX

The bishop invited Father Misail to sit down and began telling him about the strange new developments in his diocese.

‘It is all the result of spiritual weakness and ignorance. Now you are a man of learning. I want you to go down there and call the people together and get the matter cleared up.’

‘With your grace’s blessing, I shall certainly try,’ said Father Misail. He was glad to have this commission. Any situation in which he could demonstrate the strength of his faith gave him satisfaction. And in converting others he always managed to persuade himself even more thoroughly that he himself really believed.

‘Please do your best, I am deeply troubled about my little flock,’ said the bishop, unhurriedly accepting in his pudgy white hands the glass of tea which a lay brother had brought him.

‘Why have you brought only one sort of jam? Go and get another,’ he said to the lay brother. ‘I really am deeply, deeply concerned about this matter,’ he continued, addressing Misail.

Misail was glad of this opportunity to show his mettle. However, being a man of modest means he requested his travel expenses in advance, and since he feared that there might be some resistance from the uncouth peasantry, he requested that the governor of the province should be asked to send an instruction to the local police to give him every assistance, should the need arise.

The bishop set up all the arrangements, and Misail, having with the help of the lay brother and the cook assembled the hamper and provisions so necessary for a journey to the back of beyond, set off for his appointed destination. As he started out on this official mission Misail was agreeably aware of the importance of the job he was engaged in, and also of the easing of any doubts he might have had concerning his own faith: he was, on the contrary, fully confident of its authenticity.

His thoughts were centred not on the essence of his faith – this he took to be axiomatic – but on the refutation of these objections which were being made to its outward forms.

XX

The village priest and his wife received Father Misail with great respect, and the day after his arrival they called all the people together in the church. Misail, wearing a brand-new silk cassock and a pectoral cross, his hair well combed, advanced to the ambo;⁸ beside him stood the priest, a little further away the deacons and the choristers, and at the side-doors a few policemen had been stationed. The sectarians had also made their appearance, dressed in dirty, rough sheepskin coats.

After the set prayers were over Father Misail delivered a sermon in which he exhorted those who had fallen away to return to the bosom of Holy Mother Church, threatening them with the pains of hell and promising full absolution to all who repented.

The sectarians did not say anything, but when questioned they did reply.

To the question, why they had fallen away from the Church, they replied that in the church people worshipped wooden gods made by human hands, whereas not only was this not laid down in Holy Scripture, but in the prophecies it said just the opposite. When Father Misail asked Chuyev whether it was true that they referred to the holy ikons as ‘boards’, Chuyev replied: ‘That’s right – just you take any ikon you like and turn it round, and you’ll see for yourself.’ When they were asked why they did not recognize the priesthood, they replied that in Scripture it was written ‘freely have ye received, freely give’, but priests would only dispense their grace in return for money. To all Misail’s attempts to support his position by reference to Holy Scripture, the tailor and Chuyev retorted calmly but firmly, referring to the same Scripture, of which they had a thorough grasp. Misail grew angry and threatened them with the secular authorities. To this the sectarians replied that Scripture said ‘If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.’

The encounter was inconclusive and the whole thing would have ended quietly, but the next day at mass Father Misail preached a sermon about the pernicious influence of those who distort the truth, and how they deserved all kinds of retribution; and some of the peasants as they came out of the church started talking about how it would be good to teach the godless ones a lesson so that they wouldn’t go on confusing the people. And that very day, while Father Misail was enjoying some appetizers of salmon and white fish with the rural dean and an inspector who had arrived from the local town, a disorder broke out in the village. The Orthodox folk had gathered together in a crowd in front of Chuyev’s hut and were waiting for those inside to come out so that they could give them a good hiding. There were about twenty of the sectarians in there, both men and women. Father Misail’s sermon, followed by this assemblage of the Orthodox and their threatening shouts had aroused in the sectarians a fierceness which had not been there before. Evening had come and it was time for the peasant women to milk the cows, but the Orthodox believers continued to stand there and wait, and when a young lad came out they started hitting him and drove him back into the house.

The sectarians were discussing what they ought to do, but they were unable to agree among themselves.

The tailor said that they should put up with whatever happened to them and not try to defend themselves. Chuyev, however, said that if they just put up with it they might all end up getting slaughtered, and he seized a poker and went out into the village street. The Orthodox believers hurled themselves upon him.

‘All right then, let it be according to the Law of Moses,’ he shouted, and he started hitting the Orthodox believers with the poker, putting out one man’s eye in the process. The rest of the sectarians slipped out of the hut and returned to their homes.

Chuyev was put on trial for heresy and blasphemy, and sentenced to exile.

Father Misail, however, received an award and was made an archimandrite.

XXI

Two years before these events took place, a healthy attractive young woman of oriental looks named Turchaninova had come from the Don Cossack territory to St Petersburg to study at the university. In Petersburg she met a student named Tyurin, the son of a zemstvo leader in the Simbirsk province, and fell in love with him, but her love for him was not of the usual womanly type, involving the desire to become his wife and the mother of his children, but a comradely love which drew its strength above all from a shared anger and detestation against the existing social order and the people who represented it, and from a consciousness of their own intellectual, educational and moral superiority to those people.

She was a gifted student, well able to memorize the contents of lectures and to pass examinations without much effort, and in addition she devoured enormous quantities of the most recently published books. She was sure that her vocation lay not in bearing and bringing up children – in fact she regarded such a vocation with disgust and contempt – but in destroying the present order of things which fettered the fine potential of the common people, and in pointing out to men and women the new path of life revealed to her by the most recent European writers. Full in figure, pale of skin, rosy-cheeked and attractive, with dark flashing eyes and a thick plait of dark hair, she aroused in men feelings which she had no desire to arouse and could not possibly share, utterly absorbed as she was by her task of agitation and argument. But all the same she found it pleasant to arouse such feelings, and for that reason although she did not deliberately dress to show herself off, neither did she neglect her appearance. She enjoyed being attractive, and indeed it gave her the chance of showing how much she looked down on that which other women held to be so important. In her views on the possible means of struggle against the existing order she went further than most of her associates, her friend Tyurin among them, and took it as read that all methods in the struggle were valid and to be used, up to and including murder. Yet Katya Turchaninova the revolutionary was still at heart a kind and unselfish woman, forever spontaneously putting the interests, enjoyment and well-being of other people before her own, and always glad of the chance to do something to make someone else happy, whether it was a child, an old person, or an animal.

Turchaninova spent the summer vacation period in a district town in the Volga province staying with a friend of hers who was a village schoolmistress. Tyurin was living in the same district, in his father’s house. The three young people, and the local doctor too, met together frequently, lent each other books, argued, and fed one another’s shared sense of social indignation. The Tyurins’ property adjoined the Livyentsov estate where Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky was now working as the steward. As soon as Pyotr Nikolayevich had arrived there and set about restoring order, young Tyurin, noting that the Livyentsovs’ peasants had a spirit of independence and a firm resolve to stand up for their rights, began to take an interest in them and often walked over to the village to talk to the peasants, explaining to them the principles of socialism in general and of the nationalization of the land in particular.

When Pyotr Nikolayevich was murdered and the court case began, the trial gave the group of revolutionaries in the district town a powerful cause for agitation, and they denounced it outspokenly. Tyurin’s visits to the village and his conversations with the peasants were referred to in the court proceedings. Tyurin’s house was searched and some revolutionary pamphlets discovered, and he was arrested and taken away to Petersburg.

Turchaninova travelled to Petersburg after him and went to the prison to try to see him, but they would not permit her to see him on just any day, but only on a public visiting-day, and even then she was only allowed to talk to Tyurin through a double iron grille. This visit strengthened her feelings of moral outrage still further. Her indignation finally reached its climax when she was faced with a young and handsome officer of the gendarmes who was obviously ready to grant her some concessions, provided she would agree to certain proposals of his. This incident drove her to the highest pitch of fury and hatred against all representatives of authority. She went to the chief of police in order to lodge a complaint. The chief of police echoed the words of the gendarme: that there was nothing they could do, and that the matter was under the jurisdiction of the Minister. She sent in a written memorandum to the Minister requesting an interview; it was refused. Then she decided that a desperate act was called for, and she bought a revolver.

XXII

The Minister was receiving visitors at his usual hour. After passing over three petitioners and talking for a while with a provincial governor, he went up to a pretty dark-eyed young woman in black who was standing there holding a piece of paper in her left hand. A lecherous glint appeared in the Minister’s eyes at the sight of this charming petitioner, but remembering his position the Minister adopted a serious expression.

‘And what can I do for you?’ he asked, advancing towards her.

She made no reply, but swiftly drew out the revolver from beneath her cape, aimed it at the Minister’s chest and fired, but she missed.

The Minister made a grab at her arm but she stepped back away from him and fired a second shot. The Minister fled. The young woman was immediately seized and held. She was shaking and unable to speak. Then suddenly she burst into hysterical laughter. The Minister had not even been wounded.

The woman was Turchaninova. She was sent to a special detention prison pending the investigation of her case. Meanwhile the Minister, who had received congratulations and commiserations from persons in the very highest places and even from the Sovereign himself, appointed a commission to investigate the conspiracy which had led to this attempt on his life.

There was of course no conspiracy whatever; but the officials of both the secret and civil police forces went assiduously to work to search out all the threads of the nonexistent conspiracy, conscientiously justifying their salaries and their expenditure. Rising early in the morning when it was still dark, they conducted search after search, transcribed papers and books, perused diaries and private letters, and wrote out extracts from them in beautiful handwriting on the finest paper. They questioned Turchaninova any number of times and set up confrontations with witnesses in their efforts to get her to reveal the names of her accomplices.

The Minister was a kindly man at heart and felt very sorry for this healthy, attractive Cossack girl, but he told himself that he carried grave responsibilities to the state which he was bound to discharge, however painful this might prove to be. And when a former colleague of his, a court chamberlain who knew the Tyurin family, met him at a court ball and began to ask him about Tyurin and Turchaninova, the Minister shrugged his shoulders, crinkling the red sash he was wearing across his white waistcoat, and said:

‘Je ne demanderais pas mieux que de lâcher cette pauvre fillette, mais vous savez – le devoir.’⁹

And meanwhile Turchaninova was sitting in her detention cell, exchanging occasional furtive tapped messages with her fellow-prisoners and reading the books she was given, but sometimes she would fall into a mood of fury and despair, beating on the walls with her fists, screaming and laughing.

XXIII

One day when Mariya Semyonovna had been to the local treasury office to draw her pension and was on her way home, she met a teacher whom she knew.

‘Good day, Mariya Semyonovna, have you been to collect your pay then?’ he called out to her from the opposite side of the road.

‘Yes, I have,’ replied Mariya Semyonovna. ‘It will do to plug a few gaps at least.’

‘Well, you should have plenty to plug the gaps and still have some left over,’ said the teacher, and he said goodbye to her and went on his way.

‘Goodbye,’ said Mariya Semyonovna, and as she was looking back at the teacher she walked straight into a tall man with extremely long arms and a stern face. As she came near to the house where she lived she was surprised to see this same long-armed man again. He watched her go into the house, stood there for a while, then turned and walked off.

At first Mariya Semyonovna felt alarmed, then her alarm turned to a sort of melancholy. But by the time she had gone inside and distributed little gifts to her old father and her little scrofulous nephew Fedya, and petted the little dog Trezorka, who yelped with delight, she was feeling cheerful again, and handing over the money to her father she got on with the housework, to which there never seemed to be an end.

The man she had bumped into was Stepan.

After leaving the coaching inn where he had murdered the innkeeper Stepan had not gone back to the town. And strange to say, not only did the memory of the innkeeper’s murder not distress him, but he actually found himself returning to it in his mind several times each day. It gave him pleasure to think that he was capable of doing the deed so cleanly and skilfully that no one would ever find him out or prevent him from doing the same thing again, to other people. As he sat in a tavern drinking his tea and his vodka he kept scrutinizing the people around him with the same thought always in mind: how he could set about murdering them. To find himself a bed for the night he went to the house of a man who came from his own district, a drayman. The drayman was out. He said he would wait and sat down to chat with the man’s wife. Then, when she turned her back on him to tend the stove, it occurred to him that he could kill her. Surprised at himself, he shook his head, but then he took his knife from the top of his boot, threw her to the floor and cut her throat. The children started screaming, so he killed them too, and left the town at once that same day. Once out of the town he went into a village inn, where he stopped and had a good night’s sleep.

The next day he walked back to the district town, and overheard Mariya Semyonovna’s conversation with the teacher while he was walking down the street. He was frightened by the way she had stared at him, nevertheless he decided to break into her house and take the money which she had drawn. When night came he broke the lock and went upstairs into a bedroom. The first person to hear him was the younger, married daughter. She cried out. Stepan immediately cut her throat. The son-in-law woke up and grappled with him. He got hold of Stepan by the throat and struggled with him for quite some time, but Stepan was too strong for him. Having finished off the son-in-law Stepan, now in a state of some agitation and excited by the struggle, went behind a partition. On the other side of the partition Mariya Semyonovna was lying in bed. She raised herself on the bed and looked at Stepan with gentle, frightened eyes and crossed herself. Once again her look frightened Stepan. He lowered his gaze.

‘Where’s the money?’ he asked without looking up.

She did not answer.

‘Where’s the money?’ said Stepan, showing her the knife.

‘What are you doing? You can’t do this,’ she said.

‘Oh yes I can, and I will.’

Stepan moved nearer, intending to seize her arms so that she could not stop him doing what he intended to do, but she did not raise her hands, did not resist, but simply pressed her hands to her bosom, sighed heavily and repeated:

‘Oh, what a great sin. What are you doing? Have pity on yourself. You think you are destroying others, but it’s your own soul you are destroying. Oh, oh!’ she screamed.

Stepan could not stand her voice or the look on her face any longer, and he slashed the knife right across her throat. – ‘I haven’t got time to waste chatting with you.’ – She slumped back on to the pillows and began to wheeze, soaking one of the pillows with her blood. He turned away and walked through the bedrooms, collecting things as he went. When he had gathered up everything he wanted Stepan lit a cigarette, sat down for a moment, brushed down his clothes and then went out. He had thought he would get away with this murder just as easily as he had done with the previous ones, but even before he had reached the place where he planned to stay the night he suddenly felt so weary that he could hardly move a limb. He lay down in a ditch and stayed there for the rest of that night, the whole of the next day and the night that followed.

Part Two

I

As he lay there in the ditch Stepan kept seeing before him Mariya Semyonovna’s thin, meek, terrified face and hearing her voice: ‘You can’t do this,’ her peculiar lisping, pathetic voice kept on repeating. And Stepan kept reliving over again everything he had done to her. He began to feel really frightened, and he shut his eyes, swaying his shaggy head from side to side in an attempt to shake these thoughts and memories out of it. And for a moment he managed to free himself from his memories, but in their place appeared first one black devil, then another, and after them still other black devils with red eyes, all pulling hideous faces and all saying the same thing: ‘You did away with her – now do away with yourself, or we won’t give you any peace.’ And he would open his eyes and once again see her and hear her voice, and he was filled with pity for her, and with fear and loathing towards himself. And he would shut his eyes again, and again the black devils would be there.

Towards the evening of the second day he got to his feet and walked to the tavern nearby. Reaching the tavern with a great effort, he began drinking. Yet however much he drank, he was quite unable to get drunk. He sat silently at a table, downing one glass after another. Then into the tavern walked the village constable.

‘And who might you be then?’ enquired the constable.

‘I’m the one who cut all those people’s throats at the Dobrotvorovs’ house the other night.’

They bound him, and after holding him for a day at the district police station, sent him off to the main town of the province. The warden of the prison, recognizing him as a former prisoner and a trouble-maker who had now done something really bad, gave him a stern reception.

‘You’d best get it into your head that you won’t be pulling any tricks with me in charge,’ said the warden in a hoarse wheezing voice, frowning and sticking out his lower jaw. ‘And if I see you trying anything, I’ll have you flogged. And you won’t be escaping from this prison.’

‘Why would I be escaping?’ answered Stepan, looking at the ground. ‘I gave myself up of my own accord.’

‘That’s enough back-chat from you. And when a superior is talking to you, look him in the eye,’ shouted the warden, giving him a punch on the jaw.

At that moment Stepan was again seeing Mariya Semyonovna and hearing her voice. He heard nothing of what the warden had just been saying.

‘What?’ he asked, coming to his senses as he felt the blow on his chin.

‘Come on, come on now – forward march, and none of your funny business.’

The warden was expecting Stepan to get violent, to hatch schemes with other prisoners, and to try and make a break for it. But there was nothing of that kind. Whenever the guard or the warden himself looked through the peephole in his cell door, Stepan would be sitting there on a sack stuffed with straw, his head propped up in his hands, whispering something to himself. When being questioned by the investigator he also behaved quite differently from the other prisoners: he seemed absent-minded, as if he did not hear the questions, and when he did grasp them he was so truthful in his answers that the investigator, accustomed as he was to contending with the ingenuity and cunning of accused prisoners, felt rather like a man climbing a staircase in the dark, who lifts his foot to find the next step, which turns out not to be there. Stepan gave a full account of all the murders he had committed, screwing up his brow and staring at a fixed point in space, and speaking in the simplest, most businesslike manner as he tried to recall all the details: ‘He came out barefoot,’ said Stepan, talking about the first murder, ‘and he stood there in the doorway, and so I slashed him just the once and he started to wheeze, and I got straight on with it and dealt with his old woman.’ And so he went on. When the public prosecutor made his round of the cells Stepan was asked if he had any complaints or if he needed anything. He answered that there was nothing he needed and that he wasn’t being mistreated. The prosecutor walked a few steps down the stinking corridor, then stopped and asked the warden, who was accompanying him, how this prisoner was behaving.

‘It’s a most extraordinary thing,’ replied the warden, gratified that Stepan had praised the way he was being treated. ‘He’s been with us for over a month now, and his behaviour is exemplary. I am just concerned that he may be thinking up something. He’s a fearless fellow, and he’s exceptionally strong.’

II

During his first month in prison Stepan was constantly tormented by the same thing: he could see the grey walls of his cell and hear the prison noises – the hum of voices on the common cell in the floor below him, the guard’s footsteps in the corridor, the clangs that marked the passing of the hours – but at the same time he could see her, and that meek expression of hers which had already got the better of him when he had met her in the street, and the scraggy, wrinkled throat which he had slashed; and he could hear her touching, pitiful, lisping voice saying: ‘You think you’re destroying others, but it’s your own soul you’re destroying. You can’t do this.’ Then the voice would fall silent, and those three would appear – the black devils. And they kept on appearing just the same, whether his eyes were open or shut. When his eyes were shut they looked more distinct. When Stepan opened his eyes the devils would blend into the doorways and the walls and vanish for a while, but then they came at him again, from in front of him and from both sides, making dreadful faces and repeating: ‘Do away with yourself, do away with yourself. You could make a noose, you could start a fire.’ And then Stepan would start to shake, and to repeat all the prayers he could remember – the Hail Mary and the Our Father – and at first that seemed to help him. As he recited the prayers he would start to recall his past life: his father and mother, his village, the dog Wolfcub, his grandad asleep on top of the stove, the upturned benches on which he had gone sledging with the other lads; and then he would recall the girls and their songs, and the horses, how they had been stolen and how they had managed to catch the horse-thief, and how he had finished the thief off with a stone. And he would recall his first term in prison and his release, and he would recall the fat innkeeper and the drayman’s wife and the children, and then once again he would recall her. And he would feel hot all over, and throw off his prison robe, leap up from his plank-bed and start pacing rapidly up and down his cramped cell like a wild animal in a cage, making a rapid turn each time he came up against the damp, oozing walls. And again he would start to recite his prayers, but the prayers were beginning to lose their effect.

One long autumn evening, when the wind was whistling and howling in the chimney-flues and he had had enough of pacing up and down his cell, he sat down on his bunk, and realizing that he could not go on struggling any longer, that the devils were too strong for him, he gave in to them. For some time he had had his eye on the stove-pipe. If he could wind some thin cord or some thin strips of cloth round it, it ought to hold. But he would need to go about it cleverly. So he set to work, and for two days he worked away to get some strips of linen from the palliasse he slept on (when the guard came in he covered the bunk with his dressing-gown). He tied the strips together with knots, double ones so that they would hold the weight of his body without pulling away. While he was busy with this task his torments abated. When everything was ready he made a noose, placed it round his neck, climbed up on to the bed and hanged himself. But his tongue had only just begun to protrude when the strips of cloth gave way, and he fell to the floor. Hearing the noise, the guard came running in. They summoned the medical orderly and took him off to the hospital. By the next day he was quite recovered, and was discharged from the hospital and placed not in a solitary cell, but in a communal one.

In the communal cell he lived as one of twenty inmates, but he lived there just as if he had been alone, seeing nobody, talking to nobody, and suffering the same mental torments as before. It was particularly bad for him when everyone else was sleeping and he could not, and as before he kept seeing her and hearing her voice, and then again the black devils would appear, with their dreadful eyes, mocking him.

Again, as before, he recited his prayers, and as before they were of no use.

On one occasion when, after he had said his prayers, she again appeared to him, he started to pray to her, to her little soul, praying that it would let him go, that it would forgive him. And when towards morning he collapsed on to his flattened straw palliasse, he fell fast asleep, and in his sleep he dreamt that she came towards him with her scraggy, wrinkled throat, all cut open.

‘Please, will you forgive me?’

She looked at him with her meek look, and said nothing.

‘Will you forgive me?’

And three times in the same way he begged her to forgive him. But she still said nothing. And then he woke up. From that time on he began to feel better: it was as though he had come to himself, and he looked round him, and for the first time he began to make friends with his cell-mates and to talk to them.

III

One of the prisoners in Stepan’s communal cell was Vasily, who had again been caught stealing and had been sentenced to exile; another was Chuyev, who had likewise been sentenced to forcible resettlement. Vasily spent his time either singing songs in his splendid voice or telling his cell-mates the story of his adventures. Chuyev, on the other hand, was always working, or sewing away at some item of clothing or underwear, or reading the Gospels or the Psalms.

To Stepan’s question as to why he was being exiled, Chuyev replied that it was because of his true faith in Christ and because the false priests could not bear to hear the spirit speaking through people such as he, who lived according to the Gospel, and thus showed up the priests for what they were. And when Stepan asked Chuyev what this Gospel law was, Chuyev explained to him how they had found out about this true faith from a one-legged tailor when they were sharing out some land.

‘All right then, so what happens if you commit evil deeds?’ asked Stepan.

‘It tells you all about that.’ And Chuyev proceeded to read to him:

‘ “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?’ And the King shall answer and say unto them: ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand: ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.’ Then shall they also answer him, saying: ‘Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?’ Then shall he answer them, saying: ‘Verily I say unto you: inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’ And these shall go away into the everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” ’ (Matthew XXV, 31–46)

Vasily, who had been sitting on the floor opposite Chuyev and listening to him reading, nodded his handsome head approvingly.

‘That’s right,’ he declared firmly, ‘ “Go,” he says, “ye accursed ones into everlasting punishment, you never fed anyone, you just stuffed your own bellies.” That’s just what they deserve. Here, let me have the book and I’ll read some myself,’ he added, wanting to show off his reading skills.

‘But does it say there won’t be any forgiveness?’ asked Stepan, lowering his shaggy head and waiting quietly to listen to the reading.

‘Just you wait a bit and hold your noise,’ said Chuyev to Vasily, who was still going on about the rich not feeding the poor stranger and not visiting anybody in prison. ‘Just wait, will you,’ repeated Chuyev, leafing through the Gospels. Finding the place he was looking for, Chuyev smoothed out the pages with his large, powerful hand, grown quite white from his time in prison.

‘ “And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him” – with Christ, that is,’ began Chuyev, ‘ “to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called the Skull, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

‘ “Then said Jesus: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ … And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying: ‘He saved others, let him save himself, if he be the Christ, the chosen of God.’ And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar, and saying: ‘If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself.’ And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: ‘This is the king of the Jews.’ And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying: ‘If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.’ But the other answering, rebuked him, saying: ‘Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss.’ And he said unto Jesus: ‘Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.’ And Jesus said unto him: ‘Verily I say unto thee: today shalt thou be with me in paradise.’ ” ’(Luke XXIII, 32–43)

Stepan said nothing, but sat deep in thought as though listening, although in fact he heard nothing more of what Chuyev was reading.

‘So that is what the true faith is all about,’ he thought. ‘It’s only the ones who have given food and drink to the poor and visited the prisoners who will be saved, and those who didn’t do those things will go to hell. All the same, the thief only repented when he was already on the cross, and he still went to heaven.’ He saw no contradiction in this; on the contrary, the one thing seemed to confirm the other: that the merciful would go to heaven, and the unmerciful to hell – that meant that everyone had better be merciful, and the fact that Christ forgave the thief meant that Christ himself was merciful. All this was quite new to Stepan; he was merely surprised that it had remained hidden from him until now. And he spent all his spare time with Chuyev, asking questions and listening to his replies. And as he listened he began to understand. He realized that the overall meaning of this teaching was that men were brothers, and ought to love and pity each other, and then it would be well with all of them. As he listened, he perceived as something forgotten, yet familiar, everything that confirmed the overall meaning of this teaching, and he allowed everything that did not confirm it to slip past his ears, attributing it to his own lack of understanding.

And from that time onwards Stepan became a different man.

IV

Even before this happened Stepan Pelageyushkin had been a docile prisoner, but now the warden, the orderlies and his fellow-prisoners were all amazed at the change which had come over him. Without being ordered, and even when it was not his turn, he carried out all the most arduous duties, among them the cleaning out of the night-bucket. Yet despite his submissiveness his cell-mates respected and feared him, knowing his force of will and his great physical strength, especially after an incident in which two vagrants attacked him and he fought them off, breaking the arm of one of them in the process. These vagrants had set out to beat a well-heeled young prisoner at cards and had taken from him everything he owned. Stepan had stood up for him and managed to get back from them the money they had won. The vagrants had started cursing him, and then tried to beat him up, but he had overpowered them both. When the warden tried to find out the cause of the quarrel, the vagrants had maintained that it was Pelageyushkin who had set upon them both. Stepan made no attempt to justify himself, but meekly accepted his punishment, which consisted of three days in the punishment block, followed by transfer to a solitary cell.

He found it hard to be in solitary confinement because it separated him from Chuyev and the Gospels; moreover, he was afraid that his visions of the woman he had killed and the black devils might start again. But his hallucinations did not return. His entire soul was now full of a new and joyful spirit. He would even have been glad of his isolation, if only he had been able to read and if he had possessed a copy of the Gospels. That the authorities would have provided him with, but he could not read.

As a boy he had begun to learn to read in the old-fashioned way, spelling out the letters – az, buki, vyedi¹⁰ – but not being very bright he got no further than the alphabet, was quite unable at that stage to grasp how words were strung together, and so remained illiterate. Now, however, he determined to do the job properly, and asked the orderly for a copy of the New Testament. The orderly brought him one and he set to work. He was able to recognize the letters, but he could make no progress towards putting them together. However much he racked his brains to understand how words could be composed out of individual letters, he could make nothing of it. He could not sleep at night, could not stop thinking about his problem, and lost his appetite for food, falling so low in spirits that he had a bad infestation of lice and could not get rid of them.

‘Well then, have you still not got there?’ the orderly asked him one day.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘But you know the Our Father, don’t you?’

‘Of course I know it.’

‘So, just try reading that. Look, here it is’ – and the orderly showed him the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament.

Stepan started to recite the Our Father, fitting the letters he knew to the sounds he knew. And suddenly the mystery of the combining of letters was opened to him, and he began to read. It was a tremendous joy to him. From that day he began reading, and the sense which emerged little by little from the painfully assembled words took on an even greater significance for him.

His isolation no longer weighed upon Stepan, it was a cause of rejoicing to him. He was entirely preoccupied with his task, and was not at all pleased when, to make room for some newly admitted politicals, he was moved back into the communal cell.

V

Now it was often not Chuyev, but Stepan who read the Gospels aloud in the cell, and although some of the prisoners sang bawdy songs, others listened to his reading and to the conversations which took place about what he had read. Two men in particular always listened to him attentively and in silence: one was the executioner Makhorkin who was doing hard labour for murder; the other was Vasily, who had been caught stealing and was being held in the same prison, awaiting trial. Makhorkin had twice fulfilled his duties as executioner during his stay in the prison, on both occasions in other towns where no one could be found to carry out the sentences the judges had imposed. The peasants who had murdered Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky had been tried by a military tribunal and two of them had been condemned to death by hanging.

Makhorkin had been required to go to Penza to carry out his functions there. On previous occasions of this kind he had at once written to the governor – he was unusually good at reading and writing – explaining that he had been commanded to go to Penza to carry out his duties and requesting the provincial chief to grant him the appropriate daily subsistence allowance; but this time he declared, to the astonishment of the prison director, that he would not go, and that never again would he be carrying out the duty of executioner.

‘And have you forgotten the whip?’ shouted the warden.

‘The whip is the whip right enough, but killing’s against the law.’

‘So you’ve been picking up ideas from Pelageyushkin, have you? Quite the prison prophet he’s become. Well, just you wait.’

VI

Meanwhile Makhin, the grammar-school boy who had showed his friend how to forge the coupon, had left school and completed his course at the university Faculty of Law. Thanks to his success with women, including the former mistress of an elderly government minister who was a friend of his, he had while still quite a young man been made an examining magistrate. He was a dishonest man with considerable debts, a seducer of women and a gambler at cards, but he was a clever, quick-witted man with a retentive memory, and effective in his handling of legal cases.

He was examining magistrate in the district where Stepan Pelageyushkin was being tried. He had already been surprised during the first examination by Stepan’s simple, accurate and level-headed replies to his questions. Makhin was almost unconsciously aware that this man standing before him shaven-headed and in shackles, who was brought here and guarded and would be taken away to be locked up again by two soldiers, this man was somehow perfectly free and existed on a moral level which he, Makhin, could not possibly attain. For this reason, as he examined the man he was obliged to keep on pulling himself together and urging himself on, so as not to get confused and to lose his way. He was struck by the manner in which Stepan spoke of the things he had done as of something which had happened long ago and which had been carried out not by him at all, but by another person.

‘And you didn’t feel sorry for them at all?’ asked Makhin.

‘No, I didn’t feel sorry. I didn’t understand at that time.’

‘Well, and how do you feel towards them now?’ Stepan smiled sadly.

‘Now, you could roast me alive, but I wouldn’t do such a thing again.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because I’ve come to see that all men are brothers.’

‘All right, so I am your brother, am I?’

‘Of course you are.’

‘What, I am your brother, though I am condemning you to penal servitude?’

‘That’s only because you don’t understand.’

‘And what don’t I understand?’

‘You can’t understand, if you are passing judgement on me.’

‘Well, let us get on. So where did you go after that?…’

Makhin was struck most of all by what he learned from the prison warden about Pelageyushkin’s influence on the executioner Makhorkin who, at the risk of corporal punishment, had refused to carry out his official duties.

VII

At an evening party at the house of the Yeropkins, where there were two marriageable daughters both of whom Makhin was courting, after the singing of romances (at which the highly musical Makhin distinguished himself as second singer and as accompanist), Makhin was giving a faithful, detailed account – his memory was excellent – and a quite impartial account, of the strange criminal who had brought about the conversion of the executioner. Makhin was able to remember and describe everything so well, precisely because he was always utterly impartial towards the people he had to deal with. He did not and could not enter into the spiritual state of other people, and for this reason he was extremely good at recalling everything that had happened to them and all that they had done or said.

But Pelageyushkin had aroused his interest. He made no attempt to put himself in Stepan’s place but he could not help wondering ‘What is going on in his mind?’ and although he came to no conclusions he felt that this was something of interest, and so he was giving a thorough account of the whole case at this soirée: the executioner’s repudiation of his duties, the warden’s stories about Pelageyushkin’s strange behaviour, his reading of the Gospels, and the powerful influence he exerted on his fellow-prisoners.

Makhin’s story intrigued everyone present, but it was of particular interest to the Yeropkins’ younger daughter Liza, who was eighteen years old, had just completed her studies at a young ladies’ academy, and was beginning to realize the darkness and narrowness of the thoroughly false environment in which she had been brought up – she was like a swimmer who had burst through the surface of the water and was eagerly gulping in the fresh air of life. She started to question Makhin about the details of the case and about how and why such a transformation had come upon Pelageyushkin, and Makhin told her what he had learned from Pelageyushkin about his most recent murder, and how the meekness and docility of this extraordinarily good-hearted woman with no fear of death, whom he had murdered, had vanquished him and opened his eyes, and how his reading of the Gospels had then completed the process.

For a long time that night Liza Yeropkina could not get to sleep. For some months already a struggle had been going on within her between the life of fashionable society, in which her sister had been trying to involve her, and her attraction towards Makhin, which was mingled with a desire to reform him. And now it was this latter impulse which gained the upper hand. She had already heard something of the woman who had been murdered. Now, however, after that dreadful death and what Makhin had told her based on Pelageyushkin’s account of it, she knew the whole story of Mariya Semyonovna in detail and she was deeply moved by all that she had learned about her.

Liza felt an overwhelming desire to be a woman of the sort that Mariya Semyonovna had been. She was rich and she was afraid Makhin might be courting her simply for her money. And so she decided that she would give away the property she owned, and she confided her idea to Makhin.

Makhin was glad to have this opportunity of showing his disinterestedness, and he told Liza that he did not love her for her money, and this decision of hers, which seemed to him so magnanimous, moved him deeply. Meanwhile a struggle had begun between Liza and her mother (the estate had come to her from her father), who would not permit her to give her property away. Makhin gave Liza all the help he could. And the more he pursued this course of action, the more he began to understand this new world of spiritual aspirations which had formerly seemed to him so strange and alien, and which he now saw in Liza.

VIII

In the communal cell everything had grown quiet. Stepan was lying in his place on the plank-bed, not yet asleep. Vasily went over to him, and tugging at his foot, gave him a wink as a sign that he should get up and come across to where he was standing. Stepan slipped down from the plank-bed and went up to Vasily.

‘Well now, brother,’ said Vasily, ‘I want you to help me, if you will.’

‘What sort of help do you need?’

‘I’m thinking of escaping.’

And Vasily explained that he had made all the necessary preparations for an escape attempt.

‘Tomorrow I’m going to stir up some trouble with them’ – he pointed at the prisoners lying asleep. ‘They’ll complain about me to the orderlies. I’ll be transferred to the cells upstairs and once I’m there I know what to do. But I’ll be relying on you to give me a hand to get out of the mortuary.’

‘I can do that. But where will you go?’

‘I’ll go wherever I feel like going. I reckon there’s no lack of bad characters out there.’

‘That’s true, brother, but it’s not for us to judge them.’

‘What I mean is, I’m no murderer, am I? I’ve never done in a single soul, and what’s a bit of stealing? What’s so wrong about that? Aren’t they always robbing poor devils like you and me?’

‘That’s their affair. They’ll answer for it.’

‘So are we just meant to stand there and watch them get on with it? Like, I cleaned out a church once. What harm did that do anybody? What I’ve got in mind now isn’t to rob some measly little shop. I’m going to go for some big money, and then give it away to them as need it.’

At that moment one of the prisoners sat up on the plank-bed and began listening to what they were saying. Stepan and Vasily went their separate ways.

The next day Vasily did what he had planned to do. He began complaining about the bread, saying that it was not properly cooked, and he urged the other prisoners to call the warden in and lodge an official complaint. The warden arrived and shouted abuse at them, and on discovering that Vasily was the one behind the whole thing he gave orders that he should be put into solitary confinement in one of the cells on the floor above.

That was exactly what Vasily needed.

IX

Vasily was thoroughly familiar with the upstairs cell into which they had put him. He knew how the floor was constructed and as soon as he got in there he set about taking it up. When he had managed to worm his way under the floorboards he prised apart the panels which formed the ceiling of the room below and jumped down, into the mortuary. That day there was only one dead body lying on the mortuary table. In the mortuary they kept the sacks used for making the prisoners’ palliasses. Vasily was aware of this and he was counting on it. The padlock on the door had been taken off and the hasp pushed inside. Vasily opened the door and went into the room at the end of the corridor, where a new latrine was being built. In the latrine there was a hole leading from the second floor down to the lowest one, the basement. Groping his way back to the door, Vasily went into the mortuary again, removed the shroud from the corpse, which felt icy cold (he touched it with his hand in taking the shroud off it), then took some sacks and tied them and the shroud together to form a rope, and lowered his rope down the latrine hole; then he made the rope fast round a cross-beam and climbed down it. The rope was not long enough to reach the floor. Just how much too short it was he did not know, but there was nothing for it, so he hung down as far as he could, then jumped.

He hurt his legs, but he could still walk. In the basement there were two windows. They were big enough for him to crawl through, but they were fitted with iron gratings. He had to get one of them out, but what with? Vasily began to fumble about. On the floor of the basement there were some sections of timber. He found one which had a pointed end and began using it to lever out the bricks which held the grating in place. He worked away at it for a long time. The cocks had crowed for the second time, but the grating still held. At last one side of it came loose. Vasily inserted his piece of timber into the gap and pushed hard on it; the whole grating came away, but a brick fell out and crashed to the floor. The sentries might have heard. Vasily froze. All was quiet. He climbed up into the window aperture, and out. To make his escape he still had to get over the prison wall. In one corner of the yard there stood a lean-to shed. He would have to climb on to the roof of this shed, and from there on to the top of the wall. He would need to take a piece of the timber with him, otherwise he would not be able to get on to the roof. Vasily crawled back through the window. He crawled out once more with a length of timber and froze, listening to find out where the sentry was. As far as he could judge the sentry was walking along the far side of the square yard. Vasily approached the lean-to, placed the timber against it and started to climb up. The timber slipped, and fell to the ground. Vasily was in stockinged feet, with no shoes. He took off his socks so as to get a grip with his feet, put the timber in place once more, sprang on to it and managed to get his hand over the roof guttering. ‘O Lord, don’t let it come away, let it hold.’ He gripped the guttering, then got one knee on to the roof. The sentry was coming. Vasily lay flat and froze. The sentry did not notice anything and continued on his way. Vasily leapt to his feet. The iron roof clattered beneath his feet. One more step, a second, and there was the wall in front of him. He could reach out and touch it. One hand, then the other, then he stretched up, and he was on the top of the wall. If only he didn’t smash himself to bits now, jumping down. Vasily turned round, hung by both arms, stretched out as far as he could, and let go one hand, then the other. ‘Lord be praised!’ – he was on the ground. And the ground was soft. His legs were undamaged and he ran off.

When he reached his house at the edge of the town Malanya opened the door to him, and he crawled under the warm patchwork quilt which was impregnated with the smell of sweat.

X

Pyotr Nikolayevich’s sturdy, attractive wife, ever placid, childless, plump, like a barren cow, watched from the window as the peasants murdered her husband and dragged his body away somewhere into the fields. The sensation of terror which Natalya Ivanovna (such was the name of Sventitsky’s widow) experienced at the sight of this slaughter was – as is always the case – so powerful that it stifled all her other emotions. However, when the crowd of peasants had gone out of sight behind the garden fence and the hubbub of their voices had died away, and the barefooted girl Malanya, who worked for them, came running in wide-eyed as if to announce some glad tidings, with the news that they had murdered Pyotr Nikolayevich and thrown his body into the ravine, Natalya Ivanovna’s initial feeling of terror began to be mingled with something different: a feeling of joy at her liberation from the despot, eyes hidden behind his tinted spectacles, who had kept her in slavery these past nineteen years. She was horrified at this feeling and did not even acknowledge it to herself, but tried all the more not to let anyone else know about it. When they washed his yellow, mutilated, hairy corpse and dressed it and placed it in the coffin she was overcome with horror, and she wept and sobbed. When the examining magistrate responsible for serious crimes came down and questioned her as a witness, she saw before her, right there in the investigator’s office, the two peasants now in fetters who had been identified as the principal culprits. One of them was quite an old man, with a long, wavy white beard and a calm, sternly handsome face; the other looked like a gypsy, a youngish man with shining dark eyes and curly, tousled hair. She testified that as far as she knew these were the very same men who had been the first to seize Pyotr Nikolayevich by the arms, and despite the fact that the gypsy-like peasant turned his flashing eyes under his contorted brow directly upon her and said reproachfully ‘It’s a sin, lady! Ah, we shall all have to die one day’ – in spite of that she felt no pity whatever for them. On the contrary, as the investigation went on there arose within her a feeling of hostility and a desire to revenge herself on her husband’s murderers.

But when a month later the case, which had been transferred to a military tribunal, ended with eight men being condemned to penal servitude and the two men – the white-bearded old man and the dark-skinned ‘gypsy lad’, as they called him – being sentenced to be hanged, she experienced a most disagreeable feeling. But this disagreeable feeling of doubt was now quickly dissipated under the influence of the solemn ritual of the courtroom. If the higher authorities considered this to be necessary, then it must all be for the best.

The executions were to be carried out in the village. And returning from mass one Sunday in her new dress and new shoes, Malanya informed her mistress that they were putting up a gallows, that an executioner was expected to arrive from Moscow by Wednesday, and that the two men’s relatives were wailing without ceasing, so that you could hear them all over the village.

Natalya Ivanovna stayed indoors so as not to see the gallows or the local people, and her only wish was that what must be done should soon be over. She thought solely of herself, and not at all about the condemned men and their families.

XI

On the Tuesday Natalya Ivanovna received a visit from the district superintendent, a friend of hers. Natalya Ivanovna entertained him with vodka and mushrooms she had pickled herself. The district superintendent drank his vodka and enjoyed some of the snacks, and then informed her that the executions would not be taking place tomorrow.

‘What? How is that?’

‘It’s an extraordinary story. They have been unable to supply an executioner. There was one in Moscow but he, so my son tells me, got to reading the Gospels, and now he says that he can’t kill anybody. He himself was condemned to hard labour for murder, but now all of a sudden – he can’t kill someone even if it’s legal. They told him he would be flogged. Flog me, he says, but I still can’t do it.’

Natalya Ivanovna suddenly went red, and actually began to perspire because of what she was thinking.

‘But would it be impossible to pardon them now?’

‘How can they be pardoned when they have been sentenced by the court? Only the Tsar can grant pardons.’

‘But how would the Tsar ever find out about them?’

‘They have the right to appeal for mercy.’

‘But it’s on my account that they’re being executed,’ said Natalya Ivanovna, who was not very intelligent. ‘And I forgive them.’

The district superintendent burst out laughing.

‘Well then, why don’t you lodge an appeal?’

‘Can I do that?’

‘Certainly you can.’

‘But won’t it be too late to get it to him now?’

‘You could send it by telegram.’

‘To the Tsar?’

‘Of course, you can send a telegram even to the Tsar.’

The discovery that the executioner had refused to do his duty and was ready to suffer rather than kill anybody brought about a sudden upheaval in Natalya Ivanovna’s soul, and the feeling of sympathy and horror which had come close to breaking out on several occasions, now burst its way into the open and took possession of her.

‘Filipp Vasilyevich my dear, please write the telegram for me. I want to ask the Tsar to show mercy to them.’

The district superintendent shook his head. ‘What if we were to get into trouble over this?’

‘But I’ll be the one responsible. I won’t say anything about you at all.’

‘What a kind woman she is,’ thought the district superintendent, ‘a good-hearted woman. If only my wife was like that, it would be heaven – quite different from the way things are.’

And so the district superintendent composed a telegram to the Tsar: ‘To His Imperial Majesty the Sovereign Emperor. Your Imperial Majesty’s loyal subject, widow of the Collegiate Assessor Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky who was murdered by peasants, prostrating herself at Your Imperial Majesty’s sacred feet’ (the district superintendent was particularly pleased with this bit of the telegram he had composed) ‘begs You to have mercy on the men condemned to death, the peasants so-and-so and so-and-so, of such-and-such a province, region, district and village.’

The district superintendent sent off the telegram in person, and Natalya Ivanovna’s soul was filled with joy and happiness. It seemed to her that if she, the widow of the murdered man, was ready to forgive and to ask for mercy, then the Tsar could not fail to show mercy too.

XII

Liza Yeropkina was living on a plateau of continuous exaltation. The further she travelled along the Christian way of life which had been revealed to her, the more certain was she that this way was the true one, and the more jubilant did her soul become.

Now she had two immediate objectives in view. The first was to convert Makhin, or rather, as she expressed it to herself, to return him to his true self, to his own good and beautiful nature. She loved him, and by the light of her love she was able to perceive the divine element in his soul, common to all human beings, yet she saw in this fundamental element of life shared by all men and women a goodness, a tenderness and a distinction which were his alone. Her other objective was to cease to be rich. She had wanted to get free of her property in order to put Makhin to the test, but beyond that she desired to do this for her own sake, for the sake of her soul – and she wanted to do it according to the principles of the Gospel. She started the process by planning to give away her land, but she was thwarted in putting this idea into practice first by her father, and then even more so by the flood of suppliants who applied to her in person or in writing. Then she decided to turn to an elder, a man well known for the holiness of his life, and to ask him to take her money and to use it in whatever way he thought fitting. On hearing of this her father was very angry, and in a furious exchange he called her a madwoman and a psychopath, and announced his intention of taking steps to protect her from herself, as a person of unsound mind.

Her father’s irritable, exasperated tone of voice affected her powerfully and she lost control of herself, bursting into angry tears and calling him a despot, and even a monster of selfishness.

She asked her father’s forgiveness and he said that he was not angry with her, but she could see that he was hurt and that inwardly he had not really forgiven her. She was unwilling to talk to Makhin about any of this. Her sister was jealous of her attachment to Makhin and had become quite estranged from her. Thus Liza had no one to share her feelings with, no one she could confide in.

‘God is the one I should be confiding in,’ she told herself, and as it was now Lent she decided that she would observe the Lenten fast and make her confession, telling her confessor everything and asking his advice about what she should do next.

Not far from the city there was a monastery where the elder lived who had become famous for his way of life, his teaching, his prophecies, and the healings which were attributed to him.

The elder had received a letter from Yeropkin senior, warning him of his daughter’s visit and of her abnormal, hysterical state and expressing his confidence that the elder would put her back on the right path – the path of the golden mean and the good Christian life lived in harmony with the existing order of things.

Tired out from his regular session of receiving visitors, the elder nonetheless agreed to see Liza and gently counselled her to behave with moderation and to submit to the existing circumstances of her life, and to her parents. Liza said nothing, merely blushed and perspired, but when he had finished she began to speak meekly, with tears in her eyes, about the words of Christ who had said ‘Leave thy father and thy mother, and follow me’; then, becoming more and more animated, she began to explain to him her whole conception of what Christianity really meant. At first the elder smiled slightly and brought out some conventional points of teaching, but then he fell silent and began to sigh, repeating to himself ‘O Lord, O Lord’.

‘Very well then, come to me tomorrow and make your confession,’ he said, blessing her with his wrinkled hand.

The next day he heard her confession, and without continuing their conversation of the previous day, sent her away, having briefly refused to take upon himself the disposal of her property.

This young woman’s purity, her utter devotion to the will of God, her fervour, impressed the elder deeply. He had long wanted to renounce the world, but the monastery needed his activities, which were a source of income for the community. And he had accepted this, although he was vaguely aware of the falsity of his position. People were turning him into a saint, a miracle-worker, but in reality he was a weak man carried along by the current of his own success. And the soul of this young woman which had just been opened to him had revealed to him the truth about his own soul. And he had seen just how far he was from what he wanted to be and from the goal towards which his heart was drawing him.

Soon after Liza’s visit he withdrew to his cell, and it was only after three weeks had gone by that he emerged again into the church to conduct a service; and after the service he preached a sermon in which he reproached himself and denounced the wickedness of the world and called it to repentance.

He took to delivering a sermon every two weeks. And more and more people came to hear these sermons. And his fame as a preacher spread further and further. There was something special, bold and sincere in his sermons. And this was why he had such a powerful effect upon other people.

XIII

Meanwhile Vasily had been carrying out his plans as he had intended. One night he and some companions got into the house of a rich man named Krasnopuzov. He knew that Krasnopuzov was a miser and a man of depraved character, and he broke into his writing-desk and stole thirty thousand roubles in cash. And Vasily did with it as he pleased. He actually stopped drinking, and gave money to poor girls so that they could get married. He financed weddings, paid off people’s debts, and lay low himself. His only concern was how best to distribute the money. He even gave some to the police. And they stopped looking for him.

His heart rejoiced. And when eventually despite everything he was arrested, he laughed and boasted at his trial, saying that when it was in paunchy old Krasnopuzov’s possession the money had never done any good, in fact the owner didn’t know how much he’d got, ‘Whereas I put the stuff into circulation and helped good folk with it’.

And his defence was so cheerful and good-hearted that the jury almost acquitted him. He was sentenced to be exiled.

He thanked the court and gave advance warning that he intended to escape.

XIV

The telegram which Sventitsky’s widow sent to the Tsar produced no effect whatever. The committee which dealt with petitions decided initially that they would not even report it to the Tsar, but then one day when the Tsar was at luncheon and the conversation turned to the Sventitsky case, the chairman of the petitions committee who was at table with the sovereign informed him about the telegram they had received from the wife of the murdered man.

‘C’est très gentil de sa part,’¹¹ remarked one of the ladies of the Imperial family.

The Tsar merely sighed, shrugged his shoulders beneath their epaulettes and said ‘The law is the law.’ And he held up his glass, into which a chamber-footman poured some sparkling Moselle. Everyone tried to look as though they were impressed by the wisdom of the sovereign’s remark. And nothing further was said about the telegram. And the two peasants – the old man and the young man – were hanged with the assistance of a Tatar executioner, a cruel and bestial murderer who had been summoned from Kazan especially for the purpose.

The old man’s wife wanted to dress her husband’s body in a white shirt, white foot-cloths and new shoes, but she was not allowed to do so and both men were buried in a single grave outside the fence of the cemetery.

*

‘Princess Sofya Vladimirovna was telling me that he is a most wonderful preacher,’ said the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress one day to her son. ‘Faites-le venir. Il peut prěcher à la cathédrale.’¹²

‘No, it would be better to have him preach to us here,’ said the Tsar, and he gave orders that the elder Isidor should be invited to come to the court.

All the generals and highest officials were assembled in the court chapel. A new and unusual preacher was something of an event.

A small grey-haired, thin old man came out and cast his eye over them all. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ he said, and began his sermon.

To begin with all was well, but the further it went, the worse it became. ‘Il devenait de plus en plus aggressif,’¹³ as the Empress put it immediately afterwards. He fulminated against everyone and everything. He referred to the death penalty. He said that the need for the death penalty was a symptom of bad government. Could it really be permissible, in a Christian country, to kill people?

They all looked at one another, all of them concerned exclusively about the impropriety of the sermon and about how disagreeable it was for the sovereign, but no one said anything out loud. When Isidor had said ‘Amen’ the Metropolitan went up to him and asked him to come and have a word with him in private.

After his talk with the Metropolitan and the Chief Procurator of the Synod the old man was sent straight back to a monastery – not to his own monastery, but to the one at Suzdal, where the Father Superior and commandant of the prison was Father Misail.

XV

They all pretended that there had been nothing disagreeable about Father Isidor’s sermon, and no one made any mention of it. Even the Tsar felt that the elder’s words had left no impression in his mind, nevertheless on two occasions later that day his thoughts turned to the execution of the two peasants and to the telegram sent by Sventitsky’s widow appealing for their pardon. That afternoon there was a parade, followed by a drive to an outdoor fěte, then a reception for ministers, then dinner, and in the evening the theatre. As usual the Tsar fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. That night he was wakened by a terrible dream: in a field stood a gallows with corpses dangling from it, and the corpses were sticking out their tongues, and the tongues protruded further and further. And someone was shouting ‘This is your doing, this is your doing.’ The Tsar woke up sweating and started to think. For the first time ever he started to think about the responsibility which lay upon him, and all the things the little old man had said came back to him …

But he could see the human being within himself only as if from a great distance, and he was unable to yield to the simple demands of the human being within him because of all the other demands coming at him from all sides as Tsar; and to acknowledge the demands of the human being within as taking precedence over those of the Tsar – that was beyond his strength.

XVI

After serving his second term in prison Prokofy [Proshka], that lively, proud, dandified young fellow, had come out an utterly broken man. When he was sober he simply sat about doing nothing, and however much his father shouted and swore at him, he went on living an idle life consuming the family’s bread, and furthermore whenever he got the chance he would steal things and take them off to the tavern to get drunk on the proceeds. He lounged about, coughing, hawking and spitting. The doctor whom he went to consult listened to Prokofy’s chest and shook his head.

‘What you need, my lad, is what you haven’t got.’

‘I know that, it’s what I’ve always needed.’

‘You need to drink plenty of milk, and you mustn’t smoke.’

‘But it’s Lent now, and anyway we don’t have a cow.’

One night that spring he could not get to sleep the whole night, he felt rotten and he was longing for a drink. There was nothing in the house for him to get his hands on and sell. He put on his fur hat and went out. He walked down the street until he came to where the clergy lived. Outside the deacon’s house there was a harrow standing propped up against the wattle fence. Prokofy went over, slung the harrow up on to his back and walked off with it to Petrovna at the inn. ‘Maybe she’ll give me just a little bottle of vodka for it.’ He had not gone far before the deacon came out on to the porch of his house. It was now fully light, and he could see Prokofy making off with his harrow.

‘Hey, what are you up to?’

The deacon’s servants came out, seized Prokofy and threw him in the lock-up. The Justice of the Peace sentenced him to eleven months in prison.

Autumn came round. Prokofy was now transferred to the prison hospital. He was coughing all the time, fit to tear his lungs out. And he could not get warm. Those other patients must have been in better shape than he was, because they were not shivering. Prokofy, though, kept on shivering day and night. The warden was trying to economize on firewood and did not heat the prison hospital until November each year. Prokofy suffered physical agonies, but what he suffered spiritually was worse than anything. Everything seemed to him disgusting and he hated everybody: the deacon, the warden who refused to heat the hospital, the orderly, and the patient next to him who had a red, swollen lip. He also conceived a deep hatred for the new convict who was brought in to join them. This convict was Stepan. He had developed a severe inflammation of the head and had been transferred to the hospital and placed in a bed alongside Prokofy. To begin with Prokofy detested him, but later he became so fond of Stepan that his main aim in life was to have a chance of talking to him. It was only after talking to him that the pain in Prokofy’s heart was ever eased.

Stepan was constantly telling the other patients about the most recent murder he had committed and about the effect it had had on him.

‘She didn’t scream or anything like that,’ he would tell them, ‘she just said “Here you are, cut my throat. It’s not me you should feel sorry for, it’s yourself.’ ”

‘Yes, I know that well enough, it’s a terrible thing to do a person in. I once cut a sheep’s throat, and I didn’t feel too good about it myself. And here am I that’s never killed anybody, but they’ve gone and done for me, the swine. I’ve never killed anybody …’

‘Well and good, that’ll be counted in your favour.’

‘And where will that be then?’

‘What do you mean, where? What about God then?’

‘God? You don’t see much of him about, do you? I don’t believe all that stuff, friend. The way I see it is, you just die and the grass grows over you. And that’s all about it.’

‘How can you think that? I’ve done in that many, but she, she was kind-hearted, never did anything but help people. All right then, do you think it will be the same for me as it’ll be for her? No, just you wait and see …’

‘So you think that when you die, your soul goes on?’

‘That’s it. I reckon that’s the truth.’

Dying was a hard process for Prokofy as he lay there gasping for breath. But when his last hour came he suddenly felt easier. He called Stepan over to him.

‘Well, brother, goodbye. I can see it’s time for me to die now. I was really scared, but it’s all right now. I’d just like it to be quick.’

And Prokofy died in the prison hospital.

XVII

Meanwhile Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s business affairs were going from bad to worse. His shop was mortgaged. Trade refused to pick up. Another shop had opened in the town and the interest on his mortage was due. He had to take out another loan to pay the interest. And in the end he was obliged to put up the shop and all the contents for sale. Yevgeny Mikhailovich and his wife rushed hither and thither but nowhere could they find the four hundred roubles they needed in order to save their business.

They had faint hopes of the merchant Krasnopuzov, whose mistress was friendly with Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s wife. But now it was all over town that an enormous sum of money had been stolen from Krasnopuzov. People said that it amounted to half a million.

‘And who do you think stole it?’ Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s wife was saying. ‘Vasily, the one who used to be our yardman. They say he’s throwing the money about all over the place, and the police have been bribed to take no notice.’

‘He never was any good,’ said Yevgeny Mikhailovich. ‘Look how ready he was to perjure himself that time. I’d never have thought it of him.’

‘They say he actually came round to our place one day. The cook said it was him. She says he paid the dowries for fourteen poor girls to get married.’

‘Well, no doubt they’re making it up.’

Just at that moment a strange-looking elderly man in a woollen jacket came into the shop.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve got a letter for you.’

‘Who is it from?’

‘It says on it.’

‘I presume they will want a reply. Just wait a moment, please.’

‘I can’t.’

And the strange-looking man handed over the envelope and hurriedly departed.

‘Extraordinary!’

Yevgeny Mikhailovich tore open the bulging envelope and could hardly believe his eyes: inside there were hundred-rouble notes. Four of them. What on earth was this? And there was a semi-literate letter addressed to Yevgeny Mikhailovich. It read: ‘In the Gospel it says to retern good for evil. You did me a lot of evil with that cupon and I offended that peasant to but now I am sorry for you. So take these 4 Cathrines and remember your yardman Vasily.’

‘This is absolutely amazing,’ said Yevgeny Mikhailovich, to his wife and to himself. And whenever he subsequently remembered it or spoke of it to his wife, the tears would come into his eyes and her heart would be filled with joy.

XVIII

In the prison at Suzdal there were fourteen clergymen who were there primarily for having deviated from Orthodox teaching; and this was where Isidor too had been sent. Father Misail admitted Isidor in accordance with the written instructions he had received and, without interviewing him, gave the order that he should be placed in a solitary cell, as befitted a serious offender. In the third week of Isidor’s stay in the prison Father Misail was making the rounds of the inmates. Going into Isidor’s cell, he asked whether there was anything he needed.

‘There is a great deal that I need, but I cannot talk about it in the presence of other people. Please allow me the opportunity to speak to you on your own.’

They looked at one another, and Father Misail realized that he had nothing to fear from this man. He ordered that Isidor should be brought to his cell in the monastery, and as soon as they were left alone he said:

‘Well, tell me what you have to say.’

Isidor fell to his knees.

‘Brother!’ said Isidor, ‘what are you doing? Have mercy on yourself. There cannot be a villain alive worse than you, you have profaned everything that is holy …’

*

A month later Father Misail sent in applications for the release, on the grounds of repentance, not only of Isidor, but of seven of the other prisoners, together with a request that he himself should be allowed to withdraw from the world in another monastery.

XIX

Ten years went by.

Mitya Smokovnikov had long since graduated from the technical institute and was now working as an engineer on a large salary in the Siberian gold-mines. He was due to go on a prospecting trip in a certain area. The mine director recommended that he should take with him the convict Stepan Pelageyushkin.

‘But why should I take a convict with me? Won’t that be dangerous?’

‘There’s nothing dangerous about him. He’s a holy man. Ask anyone you like.’

‘So why is he here?’

The director smiled.

‘He murdered six people, but he’s a holy man. I’ll vouch for him absolutely.’

And so Mitya agreed to take Stepan, now bald, thin and weather-beaten, and they set off together.

On the journey Stepan looked after everybody’s needs as far as he could, and he looked after Mitya Smokovnikov as if Mitya had been his own offspring; and as they travelled on he told Smokovnikov his whole story. And he told him how, and why, and on what lines he was living now.

And it was a very strange thing. Mitya Smokovnikov, who until that time had lived only to eat and drink, to play cards, and to enjoy wine and women, fell to thinking for the first time about his own life. And these thoughts of his would not leave him, in fact they started an upheaval in his soul which spread out wider and wider. He was offered a job which would have brought him great benefits. He turned it down and decided to settle for what he had, to buy an estate, to get married, and to serve the common people as best he could.

XX

And so he did. But first he went to see his father, with whom his relations were strained on account of his father’s new wife and family. Now, however, he had decided to make things up with his father. And so he did. And his father was quite astonished, and ridiculed him at first, but then he stopped criticizing his son and recalled the many, many occasions when he had been at fault with regard to him.

¹ A detachable voucher issued with government bonds and exchangeable for interest payments.

² Gentlemanly, respectable.

³ A card game resembling bridge.

⁴ Sazhen: a measure equivalent to 2.13 metres (here cubic).

⁵ An educational and cultural centre for working people.

⁶ One desyatin = 1.09 hectares or 2.7 acres.

⁷ An elected district council which functioned in Russia from 1864 to 1917.

⁸ The raised platform from which the Scriptures were read and sermons preached.

⁹ I should like nothing better than to release the poor little girl, but you know how it is – one must stick to one’s duty.

¹⁰ The traditional names for a, b, v – the first letters of the Russian alphabet. Tolstoy promoted a more phonetic method of learning, and wrote several reading books.

¹¹ It is extremely nice of her.

¹² Have him sent for. He can preach at the cathedral.

¹³ He grew more and more aggressive.