Tales from Tolstoi/God Sees the Right, Though He Be Slow to Speak
GOD SEES THE RIGHT, THOUGH HE BE SLOW TO SPEAK.[1]
In the city of Vladimir there dwelt a young merchant, Aksenov by name, and he had two shops and a house. In person Aksenov was ruddy, curly, goodly to look upon; a merry wight was he also, and none could sing a song like him. From his youth up, Aksenov had been wont to drink much, and when in drink would pick quarrels; but from the time when he had married he had ceased to drink—only very rarely did the drinking fit come upon him.
One year Aksenov made ready to go to the fair at Nizhny, and as he took leave of his family his wife said to him,
"Do not go now, I prythee, Ivan Dmitrievich, for I have had an evil dream concerning thee."
Aksenov smiled, and said, "Art thou still afraid then that I shall break loose a bit at the fair?"
His wife answered, "I myself know not why I am afraid, but the dream I had of thee was evil—methought I saw thee coming forth from the town, and thou didst take off thy cap, and I saw in my dream that thy head was all grey."
Aksenov laughed aloud.
"Nay, nay! but that is too much," said he. "Thou knowest I am used to knocking about in the way of trade, and putting up at roadside inns." And he took leave of his family and departed.
When he was half-way on his road he fell in with another merchant of his acquaintance, and with him he put up at an inn for a night's lodging. They drank tea together, and lay down to sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aksenov did not like sleeping long, and as it was easier going in the cold, he aroused the wagoner and bade him put the horses to. Then he went into the black hut, settled with his host, and drove off.
After going forty versts, he again stopped to eat, rested a bit against the walls of the inn, and at dinner-time went out into the verandah, bade them place the samovar there, took out his guitar, and began to play. Suddenly, into the courtyard there drove a troika[2] covered with bells, and from out of the equipage descended a chinovnik[3] with two soldiers, who went straight up to Aksenov, and asked him who he was and whence he came?
Aksenov told him everything about himself, and inquired, " ouldst thou not like to drink a cup of tea along with me?"
But the chinovnik never once ceased asking questions.
"Where didst thou sleep last night?" he cried, "and wert thou alone or with another merchant? Didst thou see this merchant again next morning? Why didst thou take the road again so early>"
Aksenov began to be surprised at all this questioning. He told everything just as it had happened, and said, "Why do you ask me so many questions? I am not a thief or a highwayman, or anything of that sort. I am going about my own business. Why should you ask me such questions?"
Then the chinovnik called the soldiers, and said, "I am a magistrate, and I ask you these questions because the merchant with whom you passed the night has been murdered. Show your things!—and you search him!"
They went into the inn, took his trunk and bag and undid them, and searched. All at once the magistrate drew a knife out of the bag, and shrieked, "Is this your knife?"
Aksenov looked, and saw that they had drawn a knife covered with blood out of his bag, and he was afraid.
"How comes the blood on this knife?"
Aksenov would have answered, but he couldn't utter a word. "I—I—don't know. I—I—the knife—the knife isn't mine."
Then the magistrate said: "This morning we found the merchant murdered in his bed. Nobody but yourself could have done it. The hut was locked inside, and there was nobody in the hut but you. Here's the knife covered with blood in your bag. Why, the whole thing's plain on the face of it. Speak! how did you kill him, and how much money did you rob him of?"
Aksenov took God to witness that he had not done this deed. He protested that he had never seen the merchant since he had drunk tea with him; that the money upon him was only his own 1,000 roubles; that the knife was not his. But his voice faltered, his face was pale, and he trembled like a guilty man, but it was from fear.
The magistrate called the soldiers and bade them bind him and carry him to the wagon. When they threw him, with his feet bound, on to the wagon, Aksenov crossed himself and began to weep. They took Aksenov's things and money away from him, and sent him to the prison of the town hard by. They sent to Vladimir to find out what manner of man Aksenov was, and all the merchants and dwellers in Vladimir testified that Aksenov from his youth up had been given to drinking and idling about, but was a very good sort of fellow too. Then they sat in judgment upon him, and the judges found that he had murdered the merchant and stolen 20,000 roubles from him.
His wife grieved over her husband, and didn't know what to think. All her children were still young, and one was at the breast. She took them all with her and went to that town where her husband was kept in prison. At first they would not let her in, but she begged and prayed the police-officers, and they led her to her husband. When she saw him in his prison garb, in fetters, along with highwaymen, she sank to the ground, and for a long time would not come to again. Afterwards she placed all her children around her, sat a good bit with him and told him of home affairs, and asked him concerning everything that had befallen him. He told her everything. Then said she,
"What's to be done now?"
"We must appeal to the Tsar," said he. "Surely they will not be suffered to destroy the innocent."
"His wife said she had already sent in a petition to the Tsar, but that the petition had not reached him: Aksenov said nothing, he only hung his head more than ever.
Then his wife said: "Thou dost see now that my vision of thee and thy hair growing grey was no idle tale. Already now thou art beginning to grow grey from grief. I could not drum it into thee then!"
And she began to stroke his hair, and said, "Vanya![4] my own darling, tell thy wife didst thou not do this thing?"
"What! Dost thou think this of me also?" cried Ivan—and he folded his arms and wept.
Then a soldier came and said that the wife and children must go. And Aksenov took leave of his family for the last time.
When his wife had gone, Aksenov began to recollect what they had said. When he began to reflect that his wife also thought the same thing of him, and asked him whether he hadn't killed the merchant, he thought to himself, "'Tis plain that none save God can know the truth; to Him alone must I pray, and from Him only ought I to look for mercy."
And from henceforth Aksenov ceased to send in petitions, ceased to buoy himself up with hopes, and prayed to God alone.
They condemned Aksenov to be flogged with the knout, and to be sent into hard labour. And so it was done unto him.
They cut him up with the knout, and after that, when the wounds made by the knout healed again, they drove him off with the other hard-labour criminals to Siberia.
At the katorga,[5] in Siberia, Aksenov lived twenty-one years. The hairs of his head grew white as snow, and his beard grew long and thin and grey. All his gaiety died out of him; he grew bent and double; he began to go softly; to talk but little; he never smiled, but often prayed to God. In the prison Ivan learned to sew shoes, and with the money he thus scraped together he bought the Chet'i-Minei,[6] and read them when there was light in the prison, and on festivals he went into the prison chapel, read the Apostol,[7] and sang in the choir—his voice was still quite good. His superiors loved Aksenov for his meekness, and his fellow-prisoners respected him, and called him "little father" and "the godly man." When there were petitions to be made in the prison, his comrades always sent Aksenov to the Governor to plead on their behalf, and when quarrels arose among the prisoners, Aksenov was always asked to judge betwixt them. Nobody wrote to Aksenov from home, and he knew not whether his wife and children were alive or dead.
One day they brought fresh prisoners to the katorga. In the evening all the old prisoners crowded round the new ones, and began to put questions to them as to which village or town they came from, and as to what they had done. Aksenov also sat down on the bench beside the new-comers, and with head bowed down, listened to what this or that one had to say.
One of the new prisoners was a tall, healthy old man of about sixty, with a grey-streaked beard. He told them what he had been taken up for, and this was his story:
"Yes, my brethren, not for nothing have I plumped down here! I loosed the carrier's horses from his sledge. They seized me. They said, 'You stole them!' But I said I only wanted to get along quicker—I let the horses go; besides, the carrier is my friend. I spoke true. 'Nay, but thou didst steal them,' said they. And yet they knew not what I had stolen nor where. There was a nice fuss about it; they would have sent me here to my ruin long ago if they could have got to the bottom of it, and if they drive me hither now 'tis contrary to law. But—faugh!—I am in Siberia at any rate, and there's an end of it!"
"And whence do you come?" asked one of the prisoners.
"We are from the city of Vladimir, and are dwellers there. Makar is my name and they call me Semenov."
Then Aksenov raised his head and spoke: "Tell me now, Semenov, hast thou heard in the city of Vladimir of the Aksenovs, merchants. Are they alive?"
"I couldn't help hearing. They are rich merchants, although their father is in Siberia. There are sinners there you see like us. And thou also, old father, what art thou here for?"
Aksenov didn't like to tell of his misfortune, so he sighed and said, "For my sin's sake I have been at hard labour for twenty-six years."
"But for what sort of sins?" asked Makar.
"For such as merit this punishment," said Aksenov, and would say no more; but the other prisoners told how Aksenov had come to be in Siberia. They told him how someone on the road had murdered a merchant and palmed the knife off on to Aksenov, and how he was unjustly condemned for that deed.
When Makar heard this he looked at Aksenov, clapped his hands on his knees and said, "Wonderful! This is indeed wonderful! And thou hast grown old beneath it, little father!"
They began to ask him what he was so surprised at, and where he had seen Aksenov, but Makar answered not; he only said, "Children, children, such meetings are wondrous strange." And at these words the thought entered Aksenov's mind: What if this man knows who killed the merchant? And he said, "Hast thou heard of this matter before, Semenov, or hast thou seen me before to-day?"
"How could I help hearing? The earth is full of rumours. But 'twas a long time ago, and he who heard it once has now forgotten it," said Makar Semenov.
"Perchance thou hast heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksenov.
Makar Semenov smiled and said, "Well, methinks 'tis plain that he killed him within whose bag the knife was found. If anyone palmed off his knife on thee—well, thou knowest the proverb: 'No capture—no thief.' But how could anyone have shoved a knife into thy bag? Was it not at thy bed-head? Thou wouldst have heard him."
As soon as Aksenov heard these words he thought within himself that this was the very man who had killed the merchant. He arose and went away. All that night Aksenov could not sleep. A weary longing came upon him and made him conjure up all manner of things. He fancied he saw his wife just as she was when she accompanied him for the last time to the fair. He saw her just as if she was still before him—saw her face and her eyes, and heard her speaking to him and laughing. After that he fancied he saw his children just as they were then—there the little things were, one in his little fur, the other at the breast. And he called to mind what he himself had been in those days—so young and merry; he recalled how he had sat in the little verandah of the tavern where they had seized him, playing on his guitar, and how merry and gay his soul then was. And he remembered the execution-place where they had cut him with the knout and how he had wept, and the people all around, and the fetters, and the prisoners, and the twenty-six years of hard labour, and he remembered his old age. And such a weariness came over him that the weight of it well-nigh crushed him. And all because of that evil-doer! thought Aksenov.
And such a bitterness against Makar Semenov came upon him that he longed to be avenged upon him though it were to his own destruction. He recited prayers all night, but he found no rest for his soul. In the daytime he did not go near to Makar Semenov nor even looked at him.
Thus three weeks passed away. Aksenov could not sleep o' nights, and such a weaiy longing came over him that he knew not what to do with himself. Once at night he went about the prison and perceived that the earth had been scraped from behind one of the wooden bedsteads. He stopped to look. Suddenly Makar Semenov leaped out of the bedstead and looked up at Aksenov with a frightened face. Aksenov would have passed on and made as though he saw him not, but Makar seized him by the hand and told him that he was digging a passage beneath the walls, and how he took the earth out every day in the shafts of his big boots and scattered it along the road when they drove them out to work. He said,
"Only keep silence, old man! and I'll draw thee out too. But if thou dost tell and they flog me, I'll not let thee go either—I'll kill thee!"
When Aksenov saw his malefactor he trembled all over with rage, stretched out his hand and said, "Thou canst not draw me out anyhow, and to say thou wilt kill me is nonsense—thou didst kill me long ago. And I'll tell of thee or not according as God puts it into my heart to do."
The next day when they were leading the prisoners out to work, the soldiers observed that Makar Semenov was scattering earth about; they began searching the prison and found the hole. The Governor came into the dungeon and began to ask each one of them, "Who dug out this hole?"
They all denied doing it. Those who knew would not tell of Makar Semenov because they knew that he would be whipped for it till he was half-dead. Then the Governor turned to Aksenov. He knew that Aksenov was a truthful man, and he said,
"Old man, thou art true—before God I charge thee tell me who did this thing?"
Malkar Semenov was standing there as if he had nothing to do with it and looked at the Governor, but cast not a glance at Aksenov. Aksenov's arms and lips trembled, and for a long time he could not speak a word. He thought: "Screen him, eh?—but why should I speak not of him when he has been my ruin? Let him pay for my torments now, say I! Yet if I tell upon him they'll cut him with the knout! What then? Shall I think tenderly of him though it be all in vain? Yea, I will all the same. I shall feel lighter at heart for it!"
The Governor asked him again, "Well, old man! speak the truth! Who dug out the earth?"
Aksenov looked at Makar Semenov and said, "I cannot say, your honour. God has not bidden me tell it. I'll tell it not. Do what you like with me—yours is the power."
And bully him as the Governor might, Aksenov would say nothing. Thus they did not discover who dug out the earth.
The next day, as Aksenov lay upon his bed half-dreaming, he heard someone come along and sit down at his feet. He looked into the darkness and recognised Makar. Aksenov said, "What more dost thou want with me? What dost thou here?"
Makar Semenov was silent.
Aksenov rose up and said, "What is it? Go away, or I'll call the soldier!"
Makar Semenov bent down close over Aksenov and said in a whisper, "Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me!"
Aksenov said, "For what am I to forgive thee?"
"I killed the merchant and I palmed off the knife upon thee. I would have killed thee too, but they made a stir in the courtyard, so I stuck the knife into thy bag and escaped out of the window."
Aksenov was silent and knew not what to say.
Makar Semenov got down from the bedstead, knelt on the ground, and said, "Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me!—forgive me for God's sake! I will confess that I killed the merchant—they will let thee go. Thou wilt return home."
Aksenov said, "'Tis easy for thee to speak so, but what must I endure? Whither can I go now? My wife is dead, my children have forgotten me; I have nowhere to go. …"
Makar Semenov did not rise from the ground; he bent his head against the ground and said, "Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me! When they cut me with the knout it was easier for me than to look upon thee now. … And yet thou hadst compassion upon me and didst not speak. Forgive me for Christ's sake—forgive thy accursed malefactor!"—and he fell a-sobbing.
When Aksenov heard Makar Semenov weeping, he himself began weeping top, and said, "God forgive thee; maybe I am a hundred times worse than thou!" and all at once his heart grew wondrous light and he ceased grieving about home, and wished no longer to quit the prison, but thought only of his last hour. Makar Semenov did not obey Aksenov but gave himself up as guilty; but when the official permission for Aksenov to return home arrived, he was already dead.
- ↑ This tale is one of the Razkazui dlya dyeti (Tales for Children), and is translated from the eighth (Moscow) edition of the author's collected works.
- ↑ A three-horse carriage.
- ↑ A government official.
- ↑ Short of "Ivan."
- ↑ The place where hard-labour convicts work—usually a fortress.
- ↑ Lives and Legends of the Saints.
- ↑ Epistles and Gospels.