6

NEKHLYUDOV grew particularly fond of a consumptive young man, one Kryltsov, who was being deported to hard labour and was with the party Katusha had joined. Nekhlyudov had met him for the first time at Ekaterinburg and after that had seen him on the march and had several talks with him. Once during the summer they spent nearly a whole day together at a halting-station, and Kryltsov, growing more and more communicative, told Nekhlyudov his whole story and explained why he had become a revolutionary. Up to the time of his imprisonment there was not much to tell. His father, a wealthy landowner in the southern provinces of Russia, had died when he, Kryltsov, was still a child. He was an only son, brought up by his mother. Study came very easily to him, both at school and at the university, and he graduated top in the mathematical faculty of his year. He was offered a university lectureship and the chance of travelling abroad. But he hesitated. There was a girl he was in love with and he was thinking of marriage and of taking an active part in rural administration. He wanted everything and could not make up his mind on anything in particular. At this point some fellow students asked him for a contribution to ‘the cause’. He knew that this ‘cause’ meant the revolutionary cause, in which at that time he took no interest whatever, but, out of comradeship and pride (lest it should be thought he was afraid), he gave them money. Those who had collected the money were caught, a note was found showing that money had been given by Kryltsov; he was arrested, kept for a while at the police-station and then sent to prison.

‘The discipline was not particularly strict in that prison,’ Kryltsov told Nekhlyudov (he was sitting on the high sleeping bunk, with his sunken chest and his elbows on his knees, the beautiful wise kind eyes with which he looked at Nekhlyudov glittering feverishly). ‘We not only tapped on the walls to each other but we could walk about the corridors and talk, share our provisions and tobacco, and in the evenings we even sang in chorus. I had a good voice. Yes, if it hadn’t been for my mother, who was overcome with grief, it would have been all right in prison, even pleasant and interesting. It was there I met the famous Petrov (he later cut his throat with a piece of glass in the Fortress) and other revolutionaries, too. But I was not one myself. I also got to know my two neighbours in the cells next to mine. They had both been caught in the same affair, and arrested with Polish proclamations in their possession, and were to be tried for attempting to escape from the convoy while being taken to the railway-station. One was a Pole called Lozinski, and the other, Rozovski, was a Jew. Yes. Well, this Rozovski was quite a boy. He said he was seventeen, but he did not look more than fifteen. Small and slender, with bright black eyes, full of life, and very musical like most Jews. His voice was still breaking, but he sang beautifully. Yes. I saw them both taken to be tried. They were taken in the morning. At night they returned and told us they had been sentenced to death. No one had expected this. Their case was so unimportant: they had only tried to get away from the escort and hadn’t even hurt anyone. And besides, it seemed so unnatural to execute a child like Rozovski. And all of us in the prison decided that it was only to scare them, and the sentence would never be confirmed. We were very agitated at first, but then we calmed down and prison life went on as before. Yes. Only one evening the watchman came to my door and told me mysteriously that the carpenters had come and were putting up the gallows. At first I did not understand what he meant – what gallows? But the old watchman was so upset that when I looked at him I realized it was for our two. I wanted to tap out a message to the others, but was afraid those two would hear. The other prisoners were also silent. Apparently everybody knew. There was dead silence all that evening in the corridor and in the cells. We did not tap or sing. About ten o’clock the watchman came again and said that the hangman had arrived from Moscow. He said this and went away. I began calling him back. Suddenly I heard Rozovski shout to me from his cell across the corridor: “What do you want? Why are you calling him?” I said something about his bringing me some tobacco, but he seemed to guess something was wrong and started asking me why there was no singing, why we didn’t tap on the walls. I don’t remember how I answered, but I stepped back quickly so as to avoid speaking to him. Yes. It was a terrible night. I listened all night long to every sound. Suddenly, towards morning, I heard doors opening and footsteps – a lot of footsteps – along the passage. I went and stood at the slit in my door. There was a lamp burning in the corridor. The chief warder went by first. He was a big fat man and usually seemed self-confident and determined. But now he looked awful: pale, his head hanging down, and sort of frightened. Behind him was his assistant – frowning, with a grim look; and after him the guard. They passed my door and halted outside the next cell, and I heard the assistant calling out in a strange voice: “Get up, Lozinski, and put on clean linen!” Yes. Then I heard the door creak as they went into the cell. Then I heard Lozinski’s steps crossing to the opposite side of the corridor. I could only see the chief warder. Pale as a man could be, he stood buttoning and unbuttoning his coat and shrugging his shoulders. Yes. Suddenly he acted as though something had scared him, and stepped out of the way. It was Lozinski, who went past him and stopped at my door. A handsome young fellow he was, you know, that fine Polish type, with a straight broad forehead, a mass of fair curly hair like silk, and beautiful blue eyes. So full of vigour and health and youth. He stopped in front of the slit in my cell door, so that I could see the whole of his face – a dreadful, drawn, grey face. “Have you any cigarettes, Kryltsov?” I was just going to pass him some but the assistant, as though afraid of being late, hurriedly pulled out his own case and offered it to him. He took a cigarette and the assistant struck a match. He began to smoke and seemed to be musing. Then he seemed to remember something and began to speak. “It’s both cruel and unjust. I have committed no crime. I –” Something seemed to quiver in his white young throat – I could not tear my eyes from it – and he stopped. Yes. Then I heard Rozovski shouting from the corridor in his high-pitched Jewish voice. Lozinski threw down his cigarette stub and walked away from my door. Then I could see Rozovski through the slot. His child’s face with the limpid black eyes was red and running with sweat. He also had clean linen on, and his trousers were too wide, and he kept pulling them up with both hands, and was trembling all over. He put his pitiful face to my window. “Kryltsov, it’s true, isn’t it, that the doctor prescribed herb tea for me? I am not well. I want some more of that herb tea.” No one answered, and he looked inquiringly now at me, now at the head warder. But what he wanted to say, I never understood. Yes. Then all at once the assistant assumed a stern look and called out again in a kind of squeaking voice: “What’s all this nonsense? Come along!” Rozovski was apparently incapable of realizing what awaited him, and hurried along the corridor ahead of them all, almost at a run. But a moment later he stood stock-still and refused to move, and I could hear his shrill voice wailing. Then there was a general hubbub and the tramping of feet. He was uttering piercing shrieks, and sobbing. Then the sounds came fainter and fainter – the door of the passage clanged and all was quiet.… Yes. And so they were hanged. Both strangled with ropes. A watchman, another one, saw it done, and told me that Lozinski offered no resistance, but Rozovski struggled for a long while so that they had to drag him on to the scaffold and force his head into the noose. Yes. The watchman was a rather stupid fellow. “People told me it would be horrible, sir. But it wasn’t a bit horrible. As they were hanging, their shoulders moved just twice. Like this” – and he demonstrated how the shoulders moved convulsively up and then down. “Then the hangman jerked the rope, so as to tighten the noose, and that was that: they never budged no more.” No, it wasn’t a bit horrible,’ Kryltsov repeated the watchman’s words and tried to smile, but burst into sobs instead.

For a long time after that he was silent, breathing heavily and repressing the sobs that were choking him.

‘On that day I became a revolutionary. Yes,’ he said, when he was quieter, and he finished his story in a few words.

He belonged to the People’s Freedom party and was even head of a sabotage-group whose purpose it was to terrorize the Government into resigning and calling upon the people to assume power. To this end he went to Petersburg, journeyed abroad, went to Kiev, to Odessa, and was everywhere successful. A man in whom he had complete confidence betrayed him. He was arrested, tried, kept in prison for two years and condemned to death, though the sentence was changed to hard labour for life.

In prison he had developed consumption and in the conditions in which he now found himself it was plain that he could scarcely live more than a few months. This he knew, and had no regrets over what he had done, saying that if he had his life over again he would use it in the same way – that is, to destroy the established order of things which made possible what he had seen.

Knowing this man, and hearing his story, made a great deal intelligible to Nekhlyudov that he had not understood before.