36

FROM the public prosecutor Nekhlyudov went straight to the preliminary detention prison. But it turned out there was no Maslova there, and the chief warder explained to him that she must be in the old deportation prison. Nekhlyudov drove there.

Maslova was there all right The public prosecutor had forgotten that six months previously some political incident had been exaggerated to the utmost limits by the gendarmery, with the result, it would seem, that all the preliminary detention centres had been swamped by students, doctors, labourers, girl-students and doctors’ assistants.

There was a huge distance between the two prisons, and it was almost nightfall before Nekhlyudov reached the deportation prison. He was about to go up to the door of the vast gloomy building when the sentry stopped him, and he only rang. A gaoler came in answer to the bell. Nekhlyudov showed him his order of admittance but the gaoler said he could not let him in without the superintendent’s permission. Nekhlyudov went to the superintendent’s quarters. As he was going up the stairs he heard through a door the sounds of an elaborate bravura being played on the piano. When a sulky servant-girl with a bandage over one eye opened the door to him, the sounds seemed to burst out of the room and strike his ears. It was the well-known Rhapsody of Liszt that everybody was tired of, splendidly played but only up to a certain point. When this passage was reached the pianist went back over it again. Nekhlyudov asked the maid with the bandaged eye if the superintendent was in. She replied that he was not.

‘Will he be back soon?’

The Rhapsody again stopped, and was again repeated loudly and brilliantly up to the bewitched passage.

‘I will go and ask.’

And the servant went away.

The Rhapsody was in full swing once more but suddenly, before reaching the charmed place, broke off and a woman’s voice came from the other side of the door.

‘Tell him he is not in and won’t be today. He is out visiting.

What do they come bothering for?’

The Rhapsody began again but stopped, and there was the sound of a chair being pushed back. Evidently the irritated performer wanted to give a piece of her mind to the tiresome caller who had come out of hours.

‘Papa is not in,’ expostulated a pale, ill-looking girl with crimped hair and dark circles round her dull eyes, as she came out into the ante-room; but the sight of a young man in a well-cut coat mollified her. ‘Won’t you come in? What is it you want?’

‘I should like to see one of the prisoners here.’

‘A political prisoner, I suppose?’

‘No, not a political prisoner. I have a permit from the public prosecutor.’

‘Well, I don’t know, papa is out. But do come in, please,’ she invited him in again from the little ante-room. ‘Or you could speak to his assistant. He is in the office now. What is your name?’

‘Thank you,’ said Nekhlyudov, without answering her question, and went out.

The door had hardly closed upon him when the same gay lively strains were heard again, so ill-suited both to the surroundings they came from and to the appearance of the sickly girl so resolutely practising them. In the courtyard Nekhlyudov met a young officer with bristly dyed moustaches, and asked for the assistant superintendent. It was the assistant him – self. He took the permit, looked at it and said that he could not admit him on a pass for the preliminary detention prison. Besides, it was too late…

‘Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow at ten o’clock everybody is allowed in. You come then, and you will find the superintendent himself here. You could see the prisoner in the common room, or, if the superintendent allows it, in the office.’

And so, not having succeeded in obtaining an interview that day, Nekhlyudov set off for home. Agitated at the idea of seeing her, Nekhlyudov walked through the streets, thinking now not of the court but of his conversation with the public prosecutor and the prison superintendents. The fact that he had been seeking an interview with her and had told the public prosecutor of his intention, and had been to two prisons in order to see her excited him to such an extent that it was a long time before he could compose himself. When he got home he immediately fetched out his long-neglected diaries, read a few passages out of them, and entered the following:

‘For two years I have not kept my diary, and I thought I should never return to such childishness. Yet it was not childishness but converse with my own self, the true divine self which lives in every man. All this time I was asleep and there was no one for me to converse with. This self of mine was awakened by an extraordinary event on the 28th of April, in the law-court, where I was one of the jury. I saw her in the prisoners’ dock, the Katusha I seduced, in a prison cloak. Through a strange mistake, for which I blame myself, she was sentenced to penal servitude. I have just come back from the public prosecutor and the prison. They would not let me see her but I am determined to do all in my power to see her, confess to her and atone for my sin – by marriage if need be. O Lord, do Thou help me! My soul is at peace and I am full of joy.’