Resurrection

by Leo Tolstoy

  "Yes, and when shall I see you again?" she added, with a sigh, carefully drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.

  "Say you will come."

  Nekhludoff promised.

  That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of his having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if in answer to those thoughts--her look, her sigh, her words, "When shall I see you again?" and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her, and he also smiled. "Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And have I done right in divesting myself of my wealth?" And the answers to the questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed into the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed mixed in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former sequence of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or validity.

  "And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it through--supposing I repent of having acted right," he thought; and unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  LYDIA SHOUSTOVA'S HOME.

  Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he would have to go on living as he lived.

  He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but evil thoughts generate all evil actions.

  An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts uncontrollably drag one along that path.

  When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts. However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he knew that state to be death.

  Yesterday's temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad and important work that awaits one.

  On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.

  "Whom do you want?" she asked severely, looking at him over her spectacles.

  Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy appeared on her face.

  "Oh, Prince!" she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. "But why have you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us," she said, catching hold of Nekhludoff's hand and trying to kiss it.

  "I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This way, this way, please," said Shoustova's mother, as she led the way through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and pulling at her tucked-up skirt. "My sister's name is Kornilova. You must have heard of her," she added, stopping before a closed door. "She was mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!"

  Shoustova's mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like her mother's. She had a striped cotton blouse on.

  Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and moustaches.

  "Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!" he said.

  The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large, grey eyes.

  "So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to intercede for?" Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.

  "Yes, I am," said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. "It was aunt who was so anxious to see you. Aunt!" she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a door.

  "Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much," said

  Nekhludoff.

  "Take a seat here, or better here," said Shoustova, pointing to the battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.

  "My cousin, Zakharov," she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the young man.

  The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova's, and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room and silently sat down on the window-sill.

  "Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt's, but I hardly know her," said Shoustova.

  Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather belt, came in from the next room.

  "How do you do? Thanks for coming," she began as soon as she had taken the place next Shoustova's on the sofa.

  "Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?"

  "She does not complain," said Nekhludoff. "She says she feels perfectly happy."'

  "Ah, that's like Vera. I know her," said the aunt, smiling and shaking her head. "One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for others; nothing for herself."

  "No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece was imprisoned for nothing."

  "Yes, that's true," said the aunt. "It is a dreadful business.

  She suffered, in reality, because of me."

  "Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the same."

  "Allow me to know better," said the aunt. "You see," she went on to Nekhludoff, "it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should say from whom she had them."

  "But I never told them," said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a lock that was not even out of place.

  "I never said you did," answered the aunt.

  "If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me," said

  Shoustova, blushing, and looking round uneasily.

  "Don't speak about it, Lydia dear," said her mother.

  "Why not? I should like to relate it," said Shoustova, no longer smiling nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting redder.

  "Don't forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it."

  "Not at all---Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet. When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told him I would not answer."

  "Then this--Petrov--"

  "Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard," put in the aunt, to explain her niece's words to Nekhludoff.

  "Then he began persuading," continued Shoustova, excitedly and hurriedly. "'Anything you tell me,' he said, 'can harm no one; on the contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people whom we may be uselessly tormenting.' Well, I still said I would not tell. Then he s
aid, 'All right, don't tell, but do not deny what I am going to say.' And he named Mitin."

  "Don't talk about it," said the aunt.

  "Oh, aunt, don't interrupt," and she went on pulling the lock of hair and looking round. "And then, only fancy, the next day I hear--they let me know by knocking at the wall--that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so--it tormented me so that I nearly went mad."

  "And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken up?"

  "Yes, but I didn't know. I think, 'There, now, I have betrayed him.' I walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking. I think, 'I have betrayed him.' I lie down and cover myself up, and hear something whispering, 'Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!' I know it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to fall asleep, I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is terrible!" and as Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and twisted and untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.

  "Lydia, dear, be calm," the mother said, touching her shoulder.

  But Shoustova could not stop herself.

  "It is all the more terrible--" she began again, but did not finish, and jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.

  Her mother turned to follow her.

  "They ought to be hanged, the rascals!" said the schoolboy who was sitting on the window-sill.

  "What's that?" said the mother.

  "I only said--Oh, it's nothing," the schoolboy answered, and taking a cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  LYDIA'S AUNT.

  "Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young," said the aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.

  "I should say for every one," Nekhludoff replied.

  "No, not for all," answered the aunt. "For the real revolutionists, I have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police lives in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and others, and for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is all over, and all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and rest. I have been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the young and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia), for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of freedom; and the bad food and bad air--all that is nothing. Three times as many privations would be easily borne if it were not for the moral shock when one is first taken."

  "Have you experienced it?"

  "I? I was twice in prison," she answered, with a sad, gentle smile. "When I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22, had a child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and the parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a human creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my little daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack--I felt terribly depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the gendarme officer who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that people liked smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light; and that mothers love their children, and children their mothers. Then how could they tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and lock me up in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not be borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men, and believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it after all that. I have ceased to believe in humanity since then, and have grown embittered," she finished, with a smile.

  Shoustova's mother came in at the door through which her daughter had gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in again.

  "And what has this young life been ruined for?" said the aunt. "What is especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it."

  "She will recover in the country, with God's help," said the mother. "We shall send her to her father."

  "Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether," said the aunt. "Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova," and she got the letter out of her pocket.

  "The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to her, according to how far it coincides with your principles," she said. "It contains nothing compromising."

  Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to Vera Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He sealed the letter without reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

  The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer, Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in the morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast. Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he could bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man. In spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of the Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to take no part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody nor any measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice, almost shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same boisterous manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but because such was his character.

  "Ah, that's right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast? Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something substantial--begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass of wine," he shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. "I have been thinking of you. I will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his own hands. You may count on that, only it occurred to me that it would be best for you to call on Toporoff."

  Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.

  "It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may himself meet your wishes."

  "If you advise it I shall go."

  "That's right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?" shouted Bogatyreff. "Tell me. Eh?"

  "I feel myself getting hypnotised," replied Nekhludoff.

  "Hypnotised!" Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. "You won't have anything? Well, just as you please," and he wiped his moustaches with his napkin. "Then you'll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the petition to me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow." Shouting these words, he rose, crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth, and began buckling on his sword.

  "And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out," said Nekhludoff, and shaking Bogatyreff's strong, broad hand, and with the sense of pleasure which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the door-steps.

  Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff, following Bogatyreff's advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the sectarians' fate depended.

  The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility. Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the position he occupied was this. It was his duty to keep up and to defend, by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human
institution--the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials. Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and he was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or some sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could not conquer.

  Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.

  A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive. In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the cookery book did not mean its words literally.

  His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross superstition, but the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore the superstition must be kept up.

  Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them still deeper into it.