Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

talking to Theodosia in whispers, and bowed and made the sign of

the cross only when every one else did.

CHAPTER XLI.

VISITING DAY—THE MEN’S WARD.

Nekhludoff left home early. A peasant from the country was still

driving along the side street and calling out in a voice peculiar

to his trade, “Milk! milk! milk!”

The first warm spring rain had fallen the day before, and now

wherever the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The

birch trees in the gardens looked as if they were strewn with

green fluff, the wild cherry and the poplars unrolled their long,

balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses the double

window-frames were being removed and the windows cleaned.

In the Tolkoochi [literally, jostling market, where second-hand

clothes and all sorts of cheap goods are sold] market, which

Nekhludoff had to pass on his way, a dense crowd was surging

along the row of booths, and tattered men walked about selling

top-boots, which they carried under their arms, and renovated

trousers and waistcoats, which hung over their shoulders.

Men in clean coats and shining boots, liberated from the

factories, it being Sunday, and women with bright silk kerchiefs

on their heads and cloth jackets trimmed with jet, were already

thronging at the door of the traktir. Policemen, with yellow

cords to their uniforms and carrying pistols, were on duty,

looking out for some disorder which might distract the ennui that

oppressed them. On the paths of the boulevards and on the

newly-revived grass, children and dogs ran about, playing, and

the nurses sat merrily chattering on the benches. Along the

streets, still fresh and damp on the shady side, but dry in the

middle, heavy carts rumbled unceasingly, cabs rattled and

tramcars passed ringing by. The air vibrated with the pealing and

clanging of church bells, that were calling the people to attend

to a service like that which was now being conducted in the

prison. And the people, dressed in their Sunday best, were

passing on their way to their different parish churches.

The isvostchik did not drive Nekhludoff up to the prison itself,

but to the last turning that led to the prison.

Several persons—men and women—most of them carrying small

bundles, stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison.

To the right there were several low wooden buildings; to the

left, a two-storeyed house with a signboard. The huge brick

building, the prison proper, was just in front, and the visitors

were not allowed to come up to it. A sentinel was pacing up and

down in front of it, and shouted at any one who tried to pass

him.

At the gate of the wooden buildings, to the right, opposite the

sentinel, sat a warder on a bench, dressed in uniform, with gold

cords, a notebook in his hands. The visitors came up to him, and

named the persons they wanted to see, and he put the names down.

Nekhludoff also went up, and named Katerina Maslova. The warder

wrote down the name.

“Why—don’t they admit us yet?” asked Nekhludoff.

“The service is going on. When the mass is over, you’ll be

admitted.”

Nekhludoff stepped aside from the waiting crowd. A man in

tattered clothes, crumpled hat, with bare feet and red stripes

all over his face, detached himself from the crowd, and turned

towards the prison.

“Now, then, where are you going?” shouted the sentinel with the

gun.

“And you hold your row,” answered the tramp, not in the least

abashed by the sentinel’s words, and turned back. “Well, if

you’ll not let me in, I’ll wait. But, no! Must needs shout, as if

he were a general.”

The crowd laughed approvingly. The visitors were, for the greater

part, badly-dressed people; some were ragged, but there were also

some respectable-looking men and women. Next to Nekhludoff stood

a clean-shaven, stout, and red-cheeked man, holding a bundle,

apparently containing undergarments. This was the doorkeeper of

a bank; he had come to see his brother, who was arrested for

forgery. The good-natured fellow told Nekhludoff the whole story

of his life, and was going to question him in turn, when their

attention was aroused by a student and a veiled lady, who drove

up in a trap, with rubber tyres, drawn by a large thoroughbred

horse. The student was holding a large bundle. He came up to

Nekhludoff, and asked if and how he could give the rolls he had

brought in alms to the prisoners. His fiancee wished it (this

lady was his fiancee), and her parents had advised them to take

some rolls to the prisoners.

“I myself am here for the first time,” said Nekhludoff, “and

don’t know; but I think you had better ask this man,” and he

pointed to the warder with the gold cords and the book, sitting

on the right.

As they were speaking, the large iron door with a window in it

opened, and an officer in uniform, followed by another warder,

stepped out. The warder with the notebook proclaimed that the

admittance of visitors would now commence. The sentinel stepped

aside, and all the visitors rushed to the door as if afraid of

being too late; some even ran. At the door there stood a warder

who counted the visitors as they came in, saying aloud, 16, 17,

and so on. Another warder stood inside the building and also

counted the visitors as they entered a second door, touching each

one with his hand, so that when they went away again not one

visitor should be able to remain inside the prison and not one

prisoner might get out. The warder, without looking at whom he

was touching, slapped Nekhludoff on the back, and Nekhludoff felt

hurt by the touch of the warder’s hand; but, remembering what he

had come about, he felt ashamed of feeling dissatisfied and

taking offence.

The first apartment behind the entrance doors was a large vaulted

room with iron bars to the small windows. In this room, which was

called the meeting-room, Nekhludoff was startled by the sight of

a large picture of the Crucifixion.

“What’s that for?” he thought, his mind involuntarily connecting

the subject of the picture with liberation and not with

imprisonment.

He went on, slowly letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and

experiencing a mingled feeling of horror at the evil-doers locked

up in this building, compassion for those who, like Katusha and

the boy they tried the day before, must be here though guiltless,

and shyness and tender emotion at the thought of the interview

before him. The warder at the other end of the meeting-room said

something as they passed, but Nekhludoff, absorbed by his own

thoughts, paid no attention to him, and continued to follow the

majority of the visitors, and so got into the men’s part of the

prison instead of the women’s.

Letting the hurrying visitors pass before him, he was the last to

get into the interviewing-room. As soon as Nekhludoff opened the

door of this room, he was struck by the deafening roar of a

hundred voices shouting at once, the reason of which he did not

at once understand. But when he came nearer to the people, he saw

that they were all pressing against a net that divided the room

in two, like flies settling on sugar, and he understood what it

meant. The two halves of the room, the windows of which were

opposite the door he had come in by, were separated, not by one,

but by two nets reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The wire

nets were stretched 7 feet apart, and soldiers were walking up

and down the space between them. On the further side of the nets

were the prisoners, on the nearer, the visitors. Between them was

a double row of nets and a space of 7 feet wide, so that they

could not hand anything to one another, and any one whose sight

was not very good could not even distinguish the face on the

other side. It was also difficult to talk; one had to scream in

order to be heard.

On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of

wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each

other’s features and to say what was necessary in such a way as

to be understood.

But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to,

and his neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to

drown each other’s voices’ and that was the cause of the din and

shouting which struck Nekhludoff when he first came in. It was

impossible to understand what was being said and what were the

relations between the different people. Next Nekhludoff an old

woman with a kerchief on her head stood trembling, her chin

pressed close to the net, and shouting something to a young

fellow, half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively

with raised brows. By the side of the old woman was a young man

in a peasant’s coat, who listened, shaking his head, to a boy

very like himself. Next stood a man in rags, who shouted, waving

his arm and laughing. Next to him a woman, with a good woollen

shawl on her shoulders, sat on the floor holding a baby in her

lap and crying bitterly. This was apparently the first time she

saw the greyheaded man on the other side in prison clothes, and

with his head shaved. Beyond her was the doorkeeper, who had

spoken to Nekhludoff outside; he was shouting with all his might

to a greyhaired convict on the other side.

When Nekhludoff found that he would have to speak in similar

conditions, a feeling of indignation against those who were able

to make and enforce these conditions arose in him; he was

surprised that, placed in such a dreadful position, no one seemed

offended at this outrage on human feelings. The soldiers, the

inspector, the prisoners themselves, acted as if acknowledging

all this to be necessary.

Nekhludoff remained in this room for about five minutes, feeling

strangely depressed, conscious of how powerless he was, and at

variance with all the world. He was seized with a curious moral

sensation like seasickness.

CHAPTER XLII.

VISITING DAY—THE WOMEN’S WARD.

“Well, but I must do what I came here for,” he said, trying to

pick up courage. “What is to be done now?” He looked round for an

official, and seeing a thin little man in the uniform of an

officer going up and down behind the people, he approached him.

“Can you tell me, sir,” he said, with exceedingly strained

politeness of manner, “where the women are kept, and where one is

allowed to interview them?”

“Is it the women’s ward you want to go to?”

“Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners,”

Nekhludoff said, with the same strained politeness.

“You should have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it,

then, that you want to see?”

“I want to see a prisoner called Katerina Maslova.”

“Is she a political one?”

“No, she is simply …”

“What! Is she sentenced?”

“Yes; the day before yesterday she was sentenced,” meekly

answered Nekhludoff, fearing to spoil the inspector’s good

humour, which seemed to incline in his favour.

“If you want to go to the women’s ward please to step this way,”

said the officer, having decided from Nekhludoff’s appearance

that he was worthy of attention. “Sideroff, conduct the gentleman

to the women’s ward,” he said, turning to a moustached corporal

with medals on his breast.

“Yes, sir.”

At this moment heart-rending sobs