V
One day when he was in that joyous, exalted state, the inspector came into his cell at an unusual hour, and asked him if he was comfortable, or if he wanted anything. Svetlogoúb was surprised, and unable to understand what this change of manner meant. He asked for a packet of cigarettes and some matches, expecting a refusal. But the inspector replied that he would send some at once, and a watchman really brought him a packet of cigarettes and some matches. “Someone has probably interceded for me,” thought Svetlogoúb; and, having lit a cigarette, began to pace up and down the cell, considering what this change might portend.
Next day he was taken up to the court, where he had been several times before. This time, however, he was not examined, but one of the judges, without looking at him, rose from his chair with a paper in his hand. The others also rose. The judge began to read in an unnaturally expressionless voice. Svetlogoúb listened and looked at the judges’ faces. They all avoided looking at him, and listened with a significant and depressed expression on their faces. The document said that Anatole Svetlogoúb, for his participation in Revolutionary activity which had for its aim the overthrow, in the near or more distant future, of the existing Government, was sentenced to be deprived of all his rights, and to death by hanging.
Svetlogoúb listened and understood the words spoken by the official. He noticed the absurdity of the wording, “in the near or more distant future,” and the depriving of a man sentenced to death of all his rights; but he did not in the least understand the significance to himself of what had been read.
Only much later, when he was told that he might go, and was out in the street with a gendarme, did the meaning of the declaration he had just heard begin to dawn upon him.
“That’s not it … that’s not it. … It can’t be true! It’s absurd!” he said to himself, as he sat in the carriage that was taking him back to prison. He felt so full of vitality that he could not imagine death, could not connect the consciousness of his “I” with death—with the absence of that “I.”
When he returned to his cell he sat down on his bed, and closing his eyes, tried to imagine what awaited him, and could not manage to do so. He could not at all imagine that he would not be, nor that people could wish to kill him. “Me, young, kind, happy, loved by so many,” he thought, remembering his mother’s and Natásha’s affection for him, as well as that of his friends. “And they will kill me, hang me! … Who will do it? Why? … And then what will there be when I am not? … It’s impossible …” he said to himself.
The inspector came in. Svetlogoúb did not hear him enter.
“Who is it? What do you want?” asked Svetlogoúb, not recognizing him. “Ah, it’s you! … When is it to be?” he asked.
“I do not know,” answered the inspector, and, having stood still for a moment, suddenly began, in an insinuating, gentle voice:
“The priest is here … he would like to … to prep … he would like to see you.”
“I don’t want to—it is unnecessary! I want nothing. … Go away!” exclaimed Svetlogoúb.
“Don’t you want to write to anybody? … You can,” said the inspector.
“Yes, yes! Send what is necessary. I will write.”
The inspector went away.
“That means tomorrow morning,” thought Svetlogoúb. “They always behave like that. Tomorrow morning I shall not be … no, it is impossible! It’s a dream!”
But the watchman came in—the real, familiar watchman—and brought two pens, an inkstand, a packet of notepaper, and some blue envelopes, and moved the stool to the table. All this was reality, and not a dream.
“I must not think … only not think. Yes, I will write to Mother,” thought Svetlogoúb, and sat down on the stool and at once began.
“My own dear!” he wrote, and burst into tears. “Forgive me—forgive me all the grief I have caused you. Whether I was deluded or not, I could not act otherwise. I only ask you to forgive me!”—“But I have already written this. … Well, anyhow, there is no time to alter it now.”—“Do not sorrow on my account,” he continued. “A little sooner or a little later, is it not all the same? I am not frightened, nor do I repent of what I have done. I could not act otherwise. Only do you forgive me! And do not be angry with them—neither with those with whom I worked nor with those who are executing me. Neither the former nor the latter could act otherwise. Forgive them, for they know not what they do! I dare not say these words about myself, but they are in my soul, and lift me up and calm me. Forgive me! I kiss your dear, wrinkled, old hands!”
Two tears fell one after another and spread on the paper.
“I am crying, not with grief or fear, but with deep emotion before the most solemn moment of my life, and because I love you. Do not reproach my friends, but love them—especially Próhorof, because he was the cause of my death. It is so joyful to love one who is not exactly guilty, but whom one might reproach and hate! To learn to love a man of that kind—an enemy—is such happiness! Tell Natásha that her love was my comfort and joy. I did not fully realize it, but was conscious of it in the depths of my soul. It was easier for me to live, knowing that she existed and loved me. Now I have said everything. Goodbye!”
He folded the letter, sealed it, and sat down on his bed, folding his hands on his knees and swallowing his tears.
He could still not believe he was about to die. He asked himself several times whether he was not asleep, and vainly tried to wake up. And this thought gave rise to another: Whether life in this world is not all a dream, out of which the awaking is death? And if this be so, whether consciousness in this life is not merely an awakening out of the sleep of a former, unremembered life? So that this existence does not begin here, but is only a new form of life. “I shall die and enter into a new form.” He liked this idea, but when he tried to use it as a support, he felt that neither it, nor any kind of idea whatever, could remove the fear of death. At last he grew tired of thinking; his brain would no longer work. He shut his eyes and long sat without thinking.
He read his letter over again, and, seeing the name of Próhorof at the end, he remembered that his letter might be read by the officials—would in all probability be read—and would lead to Próhorof’s destruction.
“O God, what have I done?” he suddenly exclaimed; and, tearing the letter into strips, he began carefully burning them over the lamp.
He was in despair when he sat down to write; but now he felt calm—almost happy. He took another sheet of paper, and again began writing. Thoughts came thronging one after another into his head.
“Dear, darling mother,” he wrote, and his eyes were again misty with tears so that he had to wipe them with the sleeve of his prison coat in order to see what he was writing. “How little I knew myself and all the strength of love and gratitude to you which always dwelt in my heart! Now I know and feel it, and always when I recall our differences, and the unkind words I have said to you, I am pained and ashamed, and can hardly understand it. Forgive me, and remember only the good, if there was any in me! I am not afraid of death. To speak frankly, I do not understand it or believe in it. After all, if death—annihilation—exists, is it not all the same whether we die thirty years or thirty minutes sooner or later? And if there is no death, then it is quite indifferent whether it happens sooner or later.”
“But why am I philosophizing?” he thought. “I must say what I said in the other letter—something good at the end. Yes. … ‘Do not reproach my friends, but love them—especially the one who was the involuntary cause of my death. Kiss Natásha for me, and tell her that I have always loved her.’ ”
“What is it? What is going to happen?” he thought again, remembering. “Nothing? No, not nothing. … What, then?”
And suddenly it grew quite clear to him that for a living man there were, and could be, no answers to these questions.
“Then why am I putting these questions to myself? Why? Yes, why? I must not question, but live—live, as I was living just now while writing this letter. Have we not all been sentenced to death long ago, and yet we go on living? We live happily … joyfully … when we love. Yes, when we love. … While I was writing, I loved and felt happy, and I must go on living so. That is possible everywhere and always—when free and when in prison, today and tomorrow, till the end.”
He longed to speak to someone gently and lovingly at once, and knocked at the door. When the sentinel looked in at his window, he asked him what the time was, and if he would soon be relieved; but the sentinel did not answer. Then he asked for the inspector.
The inspector came, and wanted to know what he desired. “Here—I have written to my mother. Please let her have it;” and at the thought of his mother the tears again filled his eyes.
The inspector took the letter, promising to forward it, and was going away; but Svetlogoúb stopped him.
“Wait a minute!” he said, holding him affectionately by his sleeve. “You are kind—why do you stay in such a dismal service?”
The inspector smiled an unnatural, piteous smile, and hanging his head, he said:
“One has to live.”
“Give up this post! It is always possible to find something. … You are so kind—perhaps I might …”
The inspector suddenly sobbed, quickly turned away, and went out, banging the door after him.
This agitation increased Svetlogoúb’s loving emotion, and forcing back tears of joy, he began pacing up and down the cell—no longer experiencing any fear, but only a feeling of tenderness which lifted him above the world. The question of what would happen to him after death, which he had tried so hard and yet had been unable to solve, now seemed solved for him, and not by any decided, reasoned answer, but by the realization of the real life within himself.
He recalled the words of the Gospels: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”—“Here am I also falling into the earth—yes, ‘verily, verily,’ ” he repeated.
“I’d better sleep,” he suddenly thought, “that my strength may not fail me tomorrow;” and he lay down, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.
At six o’clock he woke up, still under the influence of a bright, merry dream. He had dreamt that he was with a little fair-haired girl, climbing wide-spreading trees covered with ripe, black cherries, which he picked into a large brass basin. The cherries missed the basin and rolled on the ground, and some sort of strange animals—something like cats—ran after them and threw them up into the air; while the little girl looked on, shaking with ringing, infectious laughter, so that Svetlogoúb also laughed merrily in his sleep, without knowing why. Suddenly the basin slipped out of the girl’s hands, and Svetlogoúb tried to catch it, but missed it. The brass basin, clanging as it knocked against the branches, fell to the ground, and he awoke smiling and listening to the still-continued clanging of the basin. This clanging was the noise made by the drawing of the iron bolts in the corridor. He heard the sound of footsteps, and the clanking of rifles outside, and suddenly he remembered everything. “Oh, to fall asleep again!” thought Svetlogoúb; but that was no longer possible. The steps approached his door. He heard the grating of the key feeling for the keyhole, and the creaking of the door as it opened.
A gendarme officer, the inspector, and the convoy soldiers came in.
“Death? Well, what of it? I will go. … It is a good thing—everything is good,” thought Svetlogoúb, and he felt the tenderly solemn mood returning, which he had experienced the evening before.