19

IN this state of mind Nekhlyudov left the court and went into the jury-room. He sat by the window, listening to what was being said around him, and smoking incessantly.

The cheerful merchant was evidently in sympathy with Smelkov’s way of spending his time.

‘There, sir, he had his fling in true Siberian fashion, that’s what I say. He knew what he was about when it came to choosing a girl.’

The foreman was expatiating on the importance of the experts’ testimony. Piotr Gerassimovich was joking with the Jewish clerk and they burst out laughing about something. Nekhlyudov answered in a monosyllable to all the questions addressed to him, and longed for only one thing – to be left in peace.

When the usher came with his sidling gait to call the jurors back to the court-room Nekhlyudov was panic-stricken, as though he were going, not to give a verdict but to be tried himself. In the depths of his soul he now felt that he was a scoundrel, who ought to be ashamed to look people in the face, and yet by sheer force of habit he stepped on to the platform in his usual self-possessed manner and took his seat, next but one to the foreman, crossing his legs and toying with his pince-nez.

The defendants, who had also been taken out of the courtroom, were now brought in again.

There were some new faces in the court – witnesses – and Nekhlyudov noticed that Maslova seemed unable to take her eyes off a fat woman who sat in the first row by the railing, very showily dressed in silk and velvet, a high-crowned hat trimmed with a large bow, and an elegant reticule on her arm, which was bare to the elbow. This was, as he subsequently found out, one of the witnesses, the mistress of the establishment in which Maslova had lived.

The examination of the witnesses began: name, religion and so on. Then, after consultation with both parties as to whether the witnesses should give evidence on oath or not, the old priest came in again, dragging his legs with difficulty, and, again fingering the gold cross on his silk vestment, administered the oath to the witnesses and the expert with the same tranquil assurance that he was performing an exceedingly useful and important function. The witnesses having been sworn, all but Kitayeva, the keeper of the brothel, were led out under escort. She was asked what she knew about the case. With an affected smile and speaking in a strong German accent, but clearly and at length, she gave her evidence as follows, nodding her head under her hat at every sentence:

First of all the hotel servant Simon, whom she knew, had come to her establishment to get a girl for a rich Siberian merchant. She had sent Lyubov. After a time Lyubov came back with the merchant.

‘The merchant vass already a bit “elevated”,’ Kitayeva said with a slight smile. He had gone on drinking and treating the girls ; but as his money gave out he sent this same Lyubov, to whom he had taken a ‘predilection’, back to his room at the hotel, she told them, with a glance at the defendant.

Nekhlyudov thought he saw Maslova smile at this, and the smile filled him with disgust. A strange indefinable feeling of loathing mingled with compassion arose in him.

‘And what was your opinion of Maslova?’ timidly asked the blushing applicant for a judicial post who had been appointed by the court to be Maslova’s counsel.

‘A ferry goot one,’ replied Kitayeva. ‘She iss an etucated girl with plenty of style about her. She was prought up in a goot family and can reat French. She tid haf a trop too much sometimes put nefer forcot herself. A ferry goot girl.’

Katusha looked at the woman, then suddenly transferred her eyes to the jury and fixed them on Nekhlyudov, and her face grew serious and even stern. One of her stern eyes looked asquint. For quite a while those two strange eyes gazed at Nekhlyudov, and in spite of the terror that seized him he could not turn away from these squinting eyes with their bright clear whites. He relived that dreadful night with the ice breaking, and the mist, and, more especially, that waning moon with the upturned horns which had risen towards morning and shed its light on something black and terrible.

Those two dark eyes gazing at him and at the same time beyond him reminded him of that black and awful something.

‘She has recognized me,’ he thought. And Nekhlyudov shrank back as if expecting a blow. But she had not recognized him. She sighed quietly and began to look at the presiding judge again. Nekhlyudov sighed too. ‘If only it could be over,’ he thought. He experienced the same feeling he had when he was out hunting and had to put a wounded bird out of its misery: a mixture of loathing, pity and vexation. The wounded bird struggles in the game-bag: one is disgusted and yet feels pity, and is in a hurry to put an end to its suffering and forget it.

Such were the mingled emotions that filled Nekhlyudov’s breast as he sat listening to the examination of the witnesses.