Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhlúdoff were obliged to smile back.

“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”

“Mary Pávlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know it is,” said the inspector.

“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s mother, holding Kólia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he continued gazing up into her face.

“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhlúdoff asked of the inspector.

“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,” said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how exceptional his establishment was.

“Is it possible?”

“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”

“And that young girl?”

“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, here is Doúkhova.”

Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait, the thin, yellow Véra Doúkhova, with her large, kind eyes.

“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhlúdoff’s hand. “Do you remember me? Let us sit down.”

“I did not expect to see you like this.”

“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire nothing better,” said Véra Doúkhova, with the usual expression of fright in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhlúdoff, and twisting the terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty collar of her bodice. Nekhlúdoff asked her how she came to be in prison.

In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation. Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and subsections, about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhlúdoff had never heard of.

She told him all the secrets of the Nardovólstvo,20 evidently convinced that he was pleased to hear them. Nekhlúdoff looked at her miserable little neck, her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied her, but not as he had pitied Menshóff, the peasant, kept for no fault of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would lie.

The business that Véra Doúkhova wanted to see Nekhlúdoff about was the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their “subgroup,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five months before, and imprisoned in the Petropávlovsky fortress because some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had been found in her possession. Véra Doúkhova felt herself in some measure to blame for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhlúdoff, who had connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set this friend free.

Besides this, Doúkhova asked him to try and get permission for another friend of hers, Gourkévitch (who was also imprisoned in the Petropávlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhlúdoff promised to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.

As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the Nardovólstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all concerned were arrested. “I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story with a piteous smile.

Nekhlúdoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent eyes. Véra Doúkhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme. She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house, the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.

“An altruistic, fine character,” said Véra Doúkhova, approvingly.

The third business that Véra Doúkhova wanted to talk about concerned Máslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of Máslova’s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take steps to get her removed into the political prisoner’s ward, or into the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at that time, so that extra nurses were needed.

Nekhlúdoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon it.

Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhlúdoff took leave of Véra Doúkhova and went to the door, where he stopped to watch what was going on.

The inspector’s order called forth only heightened animation among the prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose and continued to talk standing, some went on talking without