8

  In the communal cell, all had grown quiet. Stepan was lying in his berth on the plank bed, not yet asleep. Vasily went across to him and tugged his foot, winking to him as a signal to get up and come over to where he was standing. Stepan clambered down from the plank bed and approached Vasily.

  ‘Now, my friend,’ said Vasily. ‘You see if you can’t help me.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Escaping is what I have in mind.’

  And Vasily told Stepan that he had made all the arrangements for an escape.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll start a bit of trouble with them’ - he pointed to the prisoners lying asleep - ‘and they’ll complain to the orderlies. They’ll take me to the cells upstairs, and from then on it’ll be plain sailing. Only you’ll have to help to get me out of the mortuary.’

  ‘All right, then. But where’ll you go?’

  ‘I’ll go where fortune leads me. Do you think there’s any shortage of villains out there?’

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

  ‘Well, I mean, it’s not as if I was a murderer, is it? I’ve never killed a person in my life, and what’s stealing? What’s wrong about it? Don’t they rob us poor blighters?’

  ‘That’s their business. They’ll have to answer for it.’

  ‘Well, and are we supposed to just stand still and watch? Look, I burgled a church once. What harm did that do anyone? What I want to do now is make one really big haul - not just break into some little shop or other - and give the money away to them that need it.’

  Just then one of the convicts sat up on the plank bed and began to eavesdrop. Stepan and Vasily went their separate ways.

  On the following day Vasily carried out his plan. He began complaining about the bread, saying it was mouldy, and egged on the convicts to send for the warden and make an official complaint. The warden arrived, showered them with abuse and, discovering that Vasily was the ringleader, ordered him to be locked up separately in one of the solitary cells upstairs.

  This was exactly what Vasily had wanted.

  9

  Vasily was well acquainted with the upstairs cell into which he had been put. He knew how its floor was constructed and, as soon as he arrived there, he started to take the floorboards up. When he was able to wriggle under the floor, he prised open the planks on the ceiling of the room that lay directly below, and jumped down. This room was the prison mortuary; that day there was only one corpse on the mortuary table. It was in this mortuary that the sacks used for making the convicts’ straw mattresses were kept. Vasily knew this and was counting on it. The padlock on the door of the room had been unlocked and pushed inside. Vasily opened the door and went out along the corridor to its far end, where a new latrine was under construction. In this latrine there was a hole leading from the third floor down to the basement. Feeling for the door, Vasily went back into the mortuary, removed the shroud from the ice-cold corpse (his hand touched it as he pulled the shroud away), then took some sacks, tied them together with the shroud so as to make a long rope, and lowered the rope into the latrine hole; then he tied the rope to a cross-beam and climbed down it. The rope was not long enough to reach all the way down. How much of a gap was left, he did not know, but there was nothing to be done about it now, so he hung down as far as he could, and then jumped. He hurt his legs, but was able to continue walking. There were two windows in the basement. They were wide enough for him to crawl through, but were fitted with iron gratings. One of the iron gratings would have to be dislodged. What could he use to do that? Vasily began to rummage about. Lying in the basement were some sections of boards. He found one section that had a pointed end and began using it to force the bricks that held the grating in place. This work took a long time. Second cockcrow came, but still the grating held. At last one side of it came loose. Vasily shoved his pointed section of board into the gap and heaved; the grating came away, but a brick fell to the floor, making a noise. The sentries might hear. Vasily froze. All was quiet. He climbed out of the window. He would have to scale the prison wall in order to make his escape. In a corner of the yard stood an outhouse. He would have to climb on to the roof of this outhouse and get over the wall that way. He would have to take a section of board with him, for otherwise he would not be able to get on to the roof. He climbed back through the window, came out again with a section of board and froze, listening for the sentry. As he had been counting on, the sentry was marching on the other side of the courtyard square. Vasily went over to the outhouse, placed his piece of board against it, and started to climb. The board slipped and fell. Vasily was wearing socks, but no shoes. He took off his socks so as to get a better grip with his feet, positioned the board again, leapt on to it and seized the roof gutter with his hand. ‘Oh God, don’t let me fall, keep me up,’ he prayed. He hung on to the roof gutter, and then managed to get up on to the roof by one knee. The sentry was coming. Vasily lay down and froze. The sentry did not notice anything and continued on his rounds. Vasily leapt to his feet. The iron roofing clattered under his feet. He took one step, two. Then he was at the wall. He could reach it easily with his hand. One hand first, and then the other, he stretched up, and there he was, on the wall. All he had to do now was to be careful and not hurt himself as he jumped down. He turned round, hung by both hands, stretched to his full length, lowered one arm, then the other and - praise the Lord! - he was on the ground. It was soft ground, too. His legs were unharmed, and off he ran.

  When he reached his house in the suburbs, Malanya opened the door for him, and he crawled under the warm, patchwork quilt that was steeped in the smell of sweat.

  10

  Pyotr Nikolayevich’s large and attractive wife, childless, forever placid, and plump as a dry cow, stood at the window and watched her husband being killed by the peasants and his body being dragged away somewhere into the fields. The feeling of terror Natalya Ivanovna (such was the name of Pyotr Nikolayevich’s widow) experienced at the sight of this bloody deed was - as is generally the case - so powerful that it blotted out all other feelings in her. When, however, the crowd of peasants had disappeared from sight behind the garden fence and the hubbub of voices had died away, and Malanya, the barefoot girl who worked as a servant for them, came rushing in with her eyes sticking out of her head as though she were about to relate some joyous event, to say that Pyotr Nikolayevich had been murdered and his body thrown in the ravine, Natalya Ivanovna’s feeling of horror was gradually supplanted by another emotion: a sense of joy at her liberation from the despot in the smoked eyeglasses who had kept her in slavery these past twelve years. She was deeply shocked by this feeling, and tried not to acknowledge it to herself, and even more not to tell anyone else about it. When his yellow, hairy, disfigured corpse was washed and dressed and laid in its coffin, she was filled with horror, and she wept and sobbed. When the examining magistrate with special responsibility for serious cases interrogated her as a witness, he confronted her, right there and then in his office, with two peasants in fetters who had been charged with being the principal culprits. One of them was quite old, with a long, white curling beard and a face that was calm, stern and handsome; the other was of gypsy appearance and was somewhat younger, with shining black eyes and curly, dishevelled hair. Natalya Ivanovna thereupon testified that to the best of her knowledge these were the same two men who had been the first to seize Pyotr Nikolayevich by the arms, and even though the peasant who looked like a gypsy flashed and darted his eyes under his flickering eyebrows, and said reproachfully: ‘It’s a sin, ma’am! We’ll all die some day, you know’ - even in spite of this, she did not feel in the slightest sorry for them. On the contrary, during the investigation a hostile feeling rose up in her, coupled with a desire to take revenge on the murderers of her husband.

  But when a month later the case, which had been transferred to a military tribunal, ended in eight men being sentenced to penal servitude and the two ringleaders - the white-bearded old man and the swarthy ‘gypsy’ as he was called - being sentenced to be hanged, she experienced an unpleasant sensation. This soon disappeared, however, under the influence of the solemn ritual of the court. If this was what the higher authorities considered to be necessary, then it must be all right.

  The executions were to be carried out in the village. And, returning from Mass one Sunday, Malanya, wearing a new dress and new shoes, told her mistress that a gallows was being put up, that an executioner was expected to arrive from Moscow on Wednesday, that the two men’s relatives were wailing without cease, and that the noise could be heard all over the neighbourhood.

  Natalya Ivanovna stayed indoors so as not to see the gallows or the people, and wished only for one thing: for it all to be over as soon as possible. She took thought only for herself, and not for the condemned men or their families.

  11

  On the Tuesday, the chief constable, who was a friend of Natalya Ivanovna’s, dropped in to see her. Natalya Ivanovna treated him to vodka and her own pickled mushrooms. When the chief constable had sampled both, he told her that there was to be no execution the following day.

  ‘What? Why is that?’

  ‘It’s an odd story, really. We can’t find a hangman. There was one in Moscow, but my son was telling me that he started reading the Gospels and now says killing’s against his conscience. He got hard labour for the murders he committed, but now all of a sudden he says he can’t kill even if he’s got the law behind him. He was told he’d be whipped. Whip me, he says, but I still won’t do it.’

  Natalya Ivanovna suddenly blushed, and her thoughts even started to make her perspire.

  ‘But can’t they be pardoned now?’

  ‘How can they be pardoned when they’ve been found guilty by a court of law? Only the Tsar can pardon them.’

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

  ‘They have the right to appeal for mercy.’

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

  The chief constable laughed. ‘Why don’t you put in a petition for them?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘But won’t it be too late now?’

  ‘You can send a 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 job and was prepared to suffer rather than kill anyone caused a sudden upheaval within Natalya Ivanovna; the sense of horror and compassion which had already surfaced a few times in her now broke through and took possession of her.

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

  The chief constable shook his head. ‘What if we were to be punished for it?’

  ‘I’ll take the responsibility. I won’t mention you at all.’

  ‘There’s a kind woman,’ thought the chief constable. ‘A really kind woman. If my wife was like her I’d be in clover now.’

  And the chief constable wrote a telegram to the Tsar: ‘To His Imperial Majesty the Sovereign Emperor. Your Imperial Majesty’s loyal subject, the widow of the collegiate assessor Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky, murdered by peasants, prostrating herself at the sacred feet of Your Imperial Majesty [the chief constable was especially proud of this passage in the telegram] begs you to have mercy on the condemned men, the peasants so-and-so, of such-and-such a village, volost,13district and province.’

  The chief constable dispatched the telegram himself, and Natalya Ivanovna began to feel much happier. She felt that if she, the widow of the murdered man, forgave his murderers and asked for mercy for them, the Tsar could not refuse to grant her request.

  12

  Liza Yeropkina was living in a state of continuous exaltation. The further she progressed along the Christian way of life that had been revealed to her, the more convinced she became that this was the only true way, and her heart grew lighter and lighter.

  Now she had two immediate objectives: the first was to convert Makhin, or rather, as she put it privately, to return him to himself, to his good and beautiful nature. She loved him, and by the radiance of her love she saw into the divine nature of his soul, which is common to all human beings, seeing in this universal principle of life, however, a goodness, tenderness and exaltedness that were peculiar to him alone. Her other objective was to cease being rich. She wanted to get rid of all her land, in the first place in order to put Makhin to the test, and secondly for her own good, for the good of her soul - and she wanted to do this according to the letter of the Gospels. She began by dividing up the land and announcing her intention of giving it away, but she was prevented from carrying out this plan in the first instance by her father, but even more effectively by the deluge of personal and written applications that flooded in on her. Then she decided to turn to an elder who was noted for the holy life he had led, and asked him to take her money and do with it whatever he thought fitting. When her father found out about this, he was furious, and in the course of a heated conversation with her called her a madwoman and a psychopath, and said he was going to take steps to protect her from herself.

  Her father’s angry, irritable tone of voice had its effect on her and, before she was aware of it, she burst into resentful tears and said insulting things to him, calling him a despot and even a shark.

  She begged her father to forgive her; he said he was not angry, but she could see that he was hurt and had not really forgiven her. She was reluctant to tell Makhin about what had happened. Her sister, who was jealous of her because of Makhin, shunned her completely. She had no one to talk to about her feelings, no one to whom she could confide.

  ‘It’s God I must confide in,’ she told herself, and since it was Lent she decided she would fast and take holy communion, and that during confession she would tell the father confessor everything and ask his advice as to what her future actions should be.

  Not far from the city was the monastery where the elder lived, the one who was renowned for his way of life and for the teachings, prophecies and cures that were ascribed to him.

  The elder had had a letter from Yeropkin senior, warning him of his daughter’s arrival and of the abnormal, hysterical state of mind she was in; the letter expressed his confidence that the elder would be able to put her on the right track, the way of moderation and of the good, Christian life, in harmony with existing circumstances.

  Tired after a long succession of visitors, the elder received Liza and quietly began to impress upon her the importance of moderation and obedience to the existing circumstances of her life and to her parents. Liza blushed, perspired and said nothing, but when he had finished she began to remind him, timidly at first, with tears in her eyes, that Christ had said: ‘Leave thy father and thy mother, and follow me,’ and then, with an increasing degree of animation, went on to explain her entire conception of Christianity. At first the elder just smiled and made some routine points of dogma, but then he grew silent and began to sigh, muttering ‘Oh God!’ to himself now and again.

  ‘Well, all right, then, come to me for confession tomorrow,’ he said, and blessed her with his wrinkled hand.

  The following day he heard her confession and, without continuing their conversation of the day before, he sent her away, curtly refusing to take upon himself the disposition of her property.

  The purity of this girl, her fervour and complete subservience to the will of God had made a deep impression on the elder. He had long wanted to turn his back on the world, but the monastery needed his services, as they brought in money. And so he had agreed to stay on, although he had a vague awareness of the falsity of the position he was in. He had been turned into a saint and worker of miracles, while really he was just a weak man who had been carried away by his own success. And the soul of this girl, which she had just revealed to him, had opened to him a revelation of his own soul. He had seen how far he was from what he wanted to be and from what his heart was drawing him towards.

  Soon after Liza’s visit, he went into a retreat and it was not until three weeks later that he came out into the church, conducted the service and after it delivered a sermon in which he reproached himself and castigated the world for its sinfulness and called it to repentance.

  Every two weeks he delivered a new sermon. Each time they were attended by more and more people. His fame as a preacher spread further and further afield. There was something unique, bold and sincere about his sermons, and this was the reason for the powerful effect he had on other people.

  13

  Meanwhile Vasily had been doing exactly as he pleased. One night with some companions he broke into the house of Krasnopuzov, a rich man. He knew that Krasnopuzov was miserly and debauched, and he broke open the writing desk and took thirty thousand roubles from it. And he did what he pleased. He even stopped drinking and gave the money away to poor girls who wanted to get married. He provided dowries, paid off debts and kept a low profile. All he worried about was how to distribute the money fairly. He even gave some of it to the police, who as a result did not spend much time looking for him.

  His heart rejoiced. And when in the end he was arrested none the less and brought to trial, he laughed and boasted, saying that the pot-bellied Krasnopuzov’s money had been lying idle, that its owner had not known its true value, while he, Vasily, had put it into circulation and had used it to help good folk.