Resurrection

Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.

The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine. All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of consideration, not the beauty of God’s world, given for a joy to all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving one another.

She did not wait to be told, but sat down as soon as she had replied to the last question.

“Your name?” turning abruptly to the third prisoner. “You will have to rise,” he added, softly and gently, seeing that Máslova kept her seat.

Máslova got up and stood, with her chest expanded, looking at the president with that peculiar expression of readiness in her smiling black eyes.

“What is your name?”

“Lubóv,” she said.

Nekhlúdoff had put on his pince-nez, looking at the prisoners while they were being questioned.

“No, it is impossible,” he thought, not taking his eyes off the prisoner. “Lubóv! How can it be?” he thought to himself, after hearing her answer. The president was going to continue his questions, but the member with the spectacles interrupted him, angrily whispering something. The president nodded, and turned again to the prisoner.

“How is this,” he said, “you are not put down here as Lubóv?”

The prisoner remained silent.

“I want your real name.”

“What is your baptismal name?” asked the angry member.

“Formerly I used to be called Katerína.”

“No, it cannot be,” said Nekhlúdoff to himself; and yet he was now certain that this was she, that same girl, half ward, half servant to his aunts; that Katúsha, with whom he had once been in love, really in love, but whom he had seduced and then abandoned, and never again brought to mind, for the memory would have been too painful, would have convicted him too clearly, proving that he who was so proud of his integrity had treated this woman in a revolting, scandalous way.

“Your family name⁠—your surname, I mean?” the president went on.

“They used to call me by my mother’s surname, Máslova.”

“What class?”

“Meschánka.”

“Religion⁠—orthodox?”

“Orthodox.”

“Occupation. What was your occupation?”

Máslova remained silent.

“What was your employment?”

“You know yourself,” she said, and smiled. Then, casting a hurried look round the room, again turned her eyes on the president.

There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, so terrible and piteous in the meaning of the words she had uttered, in this smile, and in the furtive glance she had cast round the room, that the president was abashed, and for a few minutes silence reigned in the court. The silence was broken by someone among the public laughing, then somebody said ssh, and the president looked up and continued:

“Have you ever been tried before?”

“Never,” answered Máslova, softly, and sighed.

And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away. “Oh, that money!” he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,” he cried aloud as he had done then. “Only a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing. And I am that knave, that scoundrel!” He went on aloud: “But is it possible?”⁠—he stopped and stood still⁠—“is it possible that I am really a scoundrel?⁠ ⁠… Well, who but I?” he answered himself. “And then, is this the only thing?” he went on, convicting himself. “Was not my conduct towards Mary Vasílievna and her husband base and disgusting? And my position with regard to money? To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea that they are inherited from my mother? And the whole of my idle, detestable life? And my conduct towards Katúsha to crown all? Knave and scoundrel! Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself I cannot deceive.”

And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and particularly today, felt for everybody⁠—the Prince and Sophia Vasílievna and Cornéy and Missy⁠—was an aversion for himself. And, strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet joyful and quieting.

“O God, help me! Teach me what to do,” Nekhlúdoff thought, looking at her changed face. “I was on the jury the day before yesterday,” he said. “You did not recognise me?”

“No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not even look,” she said.

“There was a child, was there not?” he asked.

“Thank God! he died at once,” she answered, abruptly and viciously.

“What do you mean? Why?”

“I was so ill myself, I nearly died,” she said, in the same quiet voice, which Nekhlúdoff had not expected and could not understand.

“How could my aunts have let you go?”

“Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as they noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That’s all finished.”

“No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin.”

“There’s nothing to redeem. What’s been has been and is passed,” she said; and, what he never expected, she looked at him and smiled in an unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.