|
At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going
uphill along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and
at the roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar
crowd around him and then again at his feet. The former and the
latter were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged
dog ran merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof
of its agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and
hopping along on three, and then again going on all four and rushing
to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier
and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh
of different animals- from men to horses- in various stages of
decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing
men the dog could eat all it wanted.
It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at
any moment it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short
break it began raining harder than before. The saturated road
no longer absorbed the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.
Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his
steps in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally
addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go
on! Pelt harder!"
It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far
down and deep within him his soul was occupied with something
important and comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual
deduction from a conversation with Karataev the day before.
At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying
campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was
burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up-
head and all- with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling
the soldiers in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice
a story Pierre knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when
Karataev was usually free of his fever and particularly lively.
When Pierre reached the fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled
by illness, and saw his pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze,
he felt a painful prick at his heart. His feeling of pity for
this man frightened him and he wished to go away, but there was
no other fire, and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at Platon.
"Well, how are you?" he asked.
"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant
us death," replied Platon, and at once resumed the story
he had begun.
"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on
his pale emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his
eyes, " you see, brother..."
Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had
told it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially
joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to
that tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev
evidently felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre.
The story was of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing
life with his family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with
a companion- a rich merchant.
Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next
morning his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut.
A bloodstained knife was found under the old merchant's pillow.
He was tried, knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off,
"all in due form" as Karataev put it, he was sent to
hard labor in Siberia.
"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre
came up), "ten years or more passed by. The old man was living
as a convict, submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only
he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the convicts were
gathered just as we are, with the old man among them. And they
began telling what each was suffering for, and how they had sinned
against God. One told how he had taken a life, another had taken
two, a third had set a house on fire, while another had simply
been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the old man:
'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'- 'I, my dear brothers,'
said he, 'am being punished for my own and other men's sins. But
I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was not mine,
but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my
dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell
them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he
says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my
old wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now
it happened that in the group was the very man who had killed
the other merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When,
and in what month?' He asked all about it and his heart began
to ache. So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down
at his feet! 'You are perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says.
'It's quite true, lads, that this man,' he says, 'is being tortured
innocently and for nothing! I,' he says, 'did that deed, and I
put the knife under your head while you were asleep. Forgive me,
Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"
Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire,
and he drew the logs together.
"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are
all sinners in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept
bitter tears. Well, and what do you think, dear friends?"
Karataev continued, his face brightening more and more with a
rapturous smile as if what he now had to tell contained the chief
charm and the whole meaning of his story: "What do you think,
dear fellows? That murderer confessed to the authorities. 'I have
taken six lives,' he says (he was a great sinner), 'but what I
am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let him suffer because
of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down and the papers
sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while
they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in
the papers all in due form- the authorities I mean- time passed.
The affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came:
to set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had
been awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the
old man. 'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently
and in vain? A paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking
for him," here Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God
had already forgiven him- he was dead! That's how it was, dear
fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat for a long time silent,
gazing before him with a smile.
And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the
story itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous
joy that lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic
significance of that joy.
|
