20

THE carters had left the inn long before Nekhlyudov awoke. The landlady had had her tea, and came in, mopping her fat perspiring neck with a handkerchief, to say that a soldier from the halting-station had brought a note. The note was from Marya Pavlovna. She wrote that Kryltsov’s attack had proved more serious than they had supposed. ‘At one time we wanted him to stay here and for us to remain with him, but this is not allowed, and we will take him along, but we fear the worst. Try to arrange it so that if we have to leave him in the next town one of us can stay with him. If it were necessary for this that I should marry him, I am, of course, willing to do so.’

Nekhlyudov sent the lad to the posting-station to order horses, and began to pack in great haste. Before he had drunk his second tumbler of tea the three-horsed post-cart drove up to the porch with bells jingling and wheels rattling on the frozen mud as if on cobblestones. Having settled his bill with the fat-necked landlady, Nekhlyudov hurried out, got into the cart and told the driver to go as fast as possible in order to catch up with the party. Just beyond the gates of the common pasture ground he came up with the carts, laden with sacks and sick prisoners, rumbling along over the frozen mud that was beginning to be worn smooth. The officer was not there; he had gone on in front. The soldiers, who had clearly been drinking, followed behind and at the sides of the road, chatting cheerfully. There were a great many carts. In each of the front carts half a dozen of the ailing criminals sat huddled together. Three of the carts at the back held three political prisoners each. In the very last one sat Novodvorov, Grabetz and Konsdratyev; the second from the rear carried Rantseva, Nabatov and the feeble rheumatic woman to whom Marya Pavlovna had given up her place. On the cart in front of them Kryltsov, supported by pillows, was lying on a heap of hay. Marya Pavlovna sat on the driver’s seat by his side. Nekhlyudov stopped his driver near Kryltsov and went over to him. One of the tipsy soldiers waved his hand to warn him off, but Nekhlyudov, paying no attention, went up to the cart and walked alongside with one hand on it. Kryltsov, in a sheepskin coat and fur cap, a scarf tied over his mouth, seemed paler and thinner than ever. His beautiful eyes looked particularly large and brilliant. Shaken from side to side by the bumping of the cart on the rough surface of the road, he lay with his gaze fixed on Nekhlyudov, and when asked how he felt only closed his eyes and angrily shook his head. He was needing all his energy, apparently, to bear the jolting of the cart. Marya Pavlovna was sitting on the farther side. She exchanged a meaning glance with Nekhlyudov which expressed all her anxiety about Kryltsov’s condition, and then began to speak in a cheerful manner.

‘It looks as if the officer is ashamed of himself,’ she shouted, so as to be heard above the clatter of the wheels. ‘Buzovkin’s manacles have been removed. He is carrying his little girl himself, and Katusha and Simonson are with them, and Vera – she’s taking my place.’

Kryltsov said something that could not be heard, pointing to Marya Pavlovna, and shook his head, frowning in the effort to repress his cough. Nekhlyudov bent over him, trying to hear what he was saying. Then Kryltsov freed his mouth from the scarf and whispered:

‘Much better now. Only I mustn’t catch cold.’

Nekhlyudov nodded agreement and exchanged glances with Marya Pavlovna.

‘Well, how about the problem of the three bodies?’ Kryltsov whispered, smiling painfully. ‘It’s a puzzle, isn’t it?’

Nekhlyudov did not understand, but Marya Pavlovna explained that he meant the well-known mathematical problem concerning the relative position of the three heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon and the earth, and that Kryltsov had jestingly applied the comparison in relation to Nekhlyudov, Katusha and Simonson. Kryltsov nodded to show that Marya Pavlovna had explained his little joke correctly.

‘The solution does not lie with me,’ said Nekhlyudov.

‘Did you get my note? Will you do it?’ asked Marya Pavlovna.

‘Certainly,’ Nekhlyudov replied, and, noticing a shade of annoyance on Kryltsov’s face, went back to his own cart, climbed into its sagging wicker body and, holding on to the sides of the conveyance as it jolted over the ruts on the rough road, started overtaking the party of prisoners in their grey prison cloaks and sheepskins, fettered and handcuffed together in pairs, stretching for three-quarters of a mile along the road. On the far side of the road he espied Katusha’s blue kerchief, Vera Bogodoukhovskaya’s black coat and Simonson in his short jacket and crocheted cap, his white woollen stockings laced up with leather thongs like sandals. He was walking beside the women, talking to them earnestly.

When they caught sight of Nekhlyudov the women nodded to him, and Simonson solemnly raised his cap. Nekhlyudov had nothing he wanted to say and, not stopping his driver, was soon ahead of them. Back in the middle of the road again, where it was not so rough, the driver drove still faster; but they were continually forced off the smooth part of the road in order to pass the strings of wagons that were moving along the highway in both directions.

The road, deeply grooved everywhere by cart-ruts, ran through a dark forest of pine-trees, enlivened on both sides by the bright sand-yellow leaves still clinging to the branches of birches and larches. When they were about half-way to the next halting-station the forest ended, fields opened on either side and the gilded crosses and cupolas of a monastery appeared in the distance. The day had turned quite fine, the clouds had dispersed, the sun had risen above the forest, and the wet leaves, the puddles, the cupolas and the crosses of the church glistened bright in its rays. In the blue-grey distance ahead on the right there was a gleam of white mountains. The vehicle entered a large village lying on the outskirts of a town. The village street was crowded with people, Russians from European Russia and natives in strange caps and cloaks. Men and women, some tipsy, some sober, swarmed about screaming at one another round booths, eating-houses, taverns and carts. The nearness to a town was in the air.

Giving a pull and a lash of the whip to the horse on the right, the driver turned sideways on his seat so that the reins fell to the right, and, evidently trying to show off, drove down the street at a brisk trot, and without reining in the horses, arrived at the river, which was to be crossed by a ferry. The raft was in the middle of the fast-running river and was coming from the opposite bank. On the near side a score of carts were waiting to cross. Nekhlyudov did not have to wait long. The raft, which had been taken high upstream against the current, was now carried swiftly down towards the planks of the landing-stage.

The tall, silent, broad-shouldered, muscular ferrymen, in sheepskins and Siberian boots, threw the cables and fastened them round the posts with quick, practised hands, and drawing the bolts back allowed the carts on board to drive ashore. Then they began loading again, packing the ferry with wagons and horses that shied at the sight of the water. The swift broad river slapped against the sides of the ferryboats, straining the cables. When the raft was full and Nekhlyudov’s cart, with the horses taken out of it, stood hemmed in all round by other wagons, on one side of the boat, the ferrymen put up the bars and, paying no heed to the entreaties of those who had not found room, unfastened the ropes and got under way. All was quiet on the raft, except for the tramp of the ferrymen’s boots and the horses’ hooves knocking against the wooden boards as they shifted from foot to foot.