12

ONE of the newcomers was a short thin young man in cloth-covered sheepskin coat and top-boots. He walked with a light quick step, carrying two large steaming teapots filled with hot water and holding under his arm bread wrapped in a cloth.

‘Well, so our prince has put in an appearance again,’ he said, setting a teapot down among the mugs and handing the bread to Maslova. ‘We’ve bought some wonderful things,’ he went on, taking off his coat and tossing it over the heads of the others on to a corner bunk. ‘Markel has bought milk and eggs; why, we’ll have a regular ball tonight. And I see Rant-seva is still at it, radiating her aesthetic cleanliness,’ he said, and looked with a smile at Rantseva. ‘Now then, make the tea,’ he told her.

The whole presence of this man – his movements, his voice, the expression of his face – seemed to breathe good cheer and gaiety. The other newcomer – also a short bony man with very prominent cheek-bones in a thin sallow face, beautiful greenish wide-set eyes and a finely drawn mouth – was exactly the reverse, dejected and despondent. He wore an old wadded coat and galoshes over his boots. He was carrying two earthenware pots and two round boxes made of birch-bark. Depositing his load in front of Rantseva, he nodded to Nekhlyudov, bending his neck only and keeping his eyes fixed on him all the while. Then, having reluctantly given him his clammy hand to shake, he began to take out the provisions.

Both these political prisoners were men of the people. The first, Nabatov, was a peasant; the other, Markel Kondratyev, was a factory hand. Markel had fallen in with the revolutionary movement at the ripe age of thirty-five, while Nabatov had joined when he was eighteen. Having by reason of his exceptional ability found his way from the village school to the high-school, Nabatov supported himself all the while by giving lessons. He finished his schooling with a gold medal, but did not proceed to the university because, while still in the senior class at school, he had decided to go back among the people from whom he had come, taking enlightenment to his neglected brothers. This he did, first becoming a clerk in a large village, but he was soon arrested for reading books to the peasants and organizing a consumers’ and producers’ association among them. The first time he was kept in prison for eight months, after which he was released and placed under secret surveillance. The moment he was free he went to another village in another province, established himself as a schoolteacher, and did the same thing again. He was picked up again, and this time imprisoned for a year and two months, which served only to strengthen his convictions.

After his second term in prison he was exiled to the province of Perm. He ran away from there. Again he was arrested and after seven months in prison deported to the province of Archangel. From there he was sentenced to exile in Yakutsk for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new Tsar; so that half his adult life had been spent in prison and in exile. All these adventures had in no way embittered him, nor had they diminished his energy; if anything, they seemed to have stimulated it. He was an indomitable man with a splendid digestion, always alike active, cheerful and vigorous. He never regretted anything, and never looked far into the future, but applied all his mental powers, his cleverness and common sense to life in the present. When he was at liberty he worked towards the aim he had set himself – the enlightenment and organization of the working people, particularly of the peasants. When in prison he was just as energetic and practical in establishing contact with the outside world and in arranging life, not only for himself but for the little circle of people with him, as comfortably as circumstances would permit. First and foremost, he was a social being. He did not seem to want anything for himself and was content with very little, but for his comrades he demanded much and could do any sort of work, physical and mental, non-stop, without sleep or food. As a peasant he was industrious, quick-witted, smart at his work and naturally abstemious and polite without effort, and considerate not only of other people’s feelings but of their opinions, too. His widowed mother, an illiterate superstitious old peasant woman, was still living and Nabatov helped her and went to see her whenever he was at large. During the time he was at home he entered fully into her life, assisted her with the work and always kept in touch with his old companions in the village. He smoked cheap tobacco with them in paper twisted into the shape of a dog’s hind-leg, took part in their friendly bouts and tried to make them understand that they had always been cheated and that they ought to do all they could to free themselves from the state of deception in which they were being kept. When he thought or spoke of what a revolution could do to benefit the masses he always had in mind the class from which he himself had sprung, and saw them living in very nearly the same conditions as now, only possessing land and being independent of gentry and bureaucracy. The revolution, according to him, ought not to change the people’s basic way of living – in this respect he differed from Novodvorov and Novodvorov’s follower, Markel Kondratyev. The revolution, in his opinion, ought not to destroy the whole fabric but only alter the inner workings of the great, solid, beautiful old structure he loved so passionately.

He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion: he never thought about metaphysical problems, about the origin of all origins or life in the next world. To him, as to Arago,¹ God was a hypothesis for which, so far, he had had no use. He was not in the least concerned about the origin of the universe, and did not care whether Moses or Darwin was right, and Darwinism, which seemed so important to his associates, he took no more seriously than the story of the creation of the world in six days.

He was not interested in the question of how the world came into being, just because he was constantly occupied by the question of how best to live in this world. Nor did he ever think of the future life, having inherited from his ancestors the firm and calm belief, common to all who till the soil, that just as in the animal and vegetable kingdoms nothing ceases to exist but is continually being transformed from one thing into another – manure into grain, grain into fowl, tadpole into frog, caterpillar into butterfly, acorn into oak – so man does not perish either but only undergoes a change. This he believed, and therefore he always looked death bravely and even gaily in the eye and unflinchingly bore the suffering that leads up to it; but he did not like and did not know how to talk about these things. He was fond of work and was always busy with practical affairs, and encouraged his comrades to do the same.

The other political prisoner in dais party who originated from the people, Markel Kondratyev, was a man of a different type. He started work at fifteen and took to smoking and drinking as a way of stifling a dim sense of injury. He first had the feeling when they (the village boys) were brought in to look at a Christmas-tree which the mill-owner’s wife had arranged. He and his friends received a penny whistle, an apple, a gilded walnut and a fig, while the mill-owner’s children were given toys which seemed to him to be presents from fairyland, and had cost, as he afterwards heard, over fifty roubles. When he was twenty a famous woman revolutionary came to work in his factory and, noticing Kondratyev’s marked ability, she began to give him books and pamphlets, and to talk to him, explaining his position to him, the cause of it and how it could be improved. When the possibility of freeing himself and others from oppression became clear in his mind the injustice of their present circumstances appeared more cruel and terrible than ever, and he longed passionately not only for deliverance but for revenge on those who had established and who maintained such cruel injustice. It was knowledge, he was told, that gave this possibility, and he devoted himself feverishly to the acquisition of knowledge. He did not see how the socialist ideal was to be realized through knowledge, but he believed that, as knowledge had revealed to him the injustice of the conditions in which he lived, so it would also remedy the injustice itself. Besides, knowledge would raise him in his own estimation above other people. He therefore gave up drinking and smoking, and used all his spare time, of which he now had more, having been promoted to store-keeper, for studying.

The woman revolutionary who taught him was struck by the amazing aptitude with which, insatiable, he devoured knowledge of every sort. In two years he had mastered algebra, geometry, history (of which, he was particularly fond), and had read widely in belles-lettres and critical philosophy and, above all, the works of socialist writers.

The woman revolutionary was arrested and Kondratyev with her, forbidden books having been found in his possession. He was sent to prison and afterwards exiled to Vologda. There he became acquainted with Novodvorov, read a great deal more revolutionary matter, memorized everything and became even nore confirmed in his socialist views. After his term of exile he organized a big strike which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of its director. He was arrested and sentenced to loss of civil rights and exile.

His views on religion were as negative as his views on the existing economic order of things. Realizing the absurdity of the faith in which he had been brought up, and having with difficulty freed himself from it – knowing terror in the process, and then rapture – as if in retribution for the deception which had been practised on his forefathers and himself, he never tired of pouring venomous and embittered ridicule on priests and religious dogmas.

By habit an ascetic, he was content with very little, and like any man who has been used since childhood to working and has a powerful physique, he was quick and skilful at all forms of manual labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and at the halting-stations, which enabled him to continue his studies. He was now poring over the first volume of Marx, which he carried about in his sack with the greatest care, like some priceless treasure. Except Novodvorov, to whom he was particularly attached and whose judgements on all subjects he accepted as irrefutable truth, he treated all his companions with reserve and indifference.

For women, whom he considered a hindrance in all useful activity, he had an insurmountable contempt. But he pitied Maslova and was kind to her, seeing in her an example of the exploitation of the lower by the upper classes. He disliked Nekhlyudov for the same reason, was taciturn with him and never pressed his hand, merely extending his own for Nekhlyudov to shake when Nekhlyudov greeted him.