Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

Now it was often not Chuyev, but Stepan who read the Gospels aloud in the cell, and although some of the prisoners sang bawdy songs, others listened to his reading and to the conversations which took place about what he had read. Two men in particular always listened to him attentively and in silence: one was the executioner Makhorkin who was doing hard labour for murder; the other was Vasily, who had been caught stealing and was being held in the same prison, awaiting trial. Makhorkin had twice fulfilled his duties as executioner during his stay in the prison, on both occasions in other towns where no one could be found to carry out the sentences the judges had imposed. The peasants who had murdered Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky had been tried by a military tribunal and two of them had been condemned to death by hanging.

Makhorkin had been required to go to Penza to carry out his functions there. On previous occasions of this kind he had at once written to the governor – he was unusually good at reading and writing – explaining that he had been commanded to go to Penza to carry out his duties and requesting the provincial chief to grant him the appropriate daily subsistence allowance; but this time he declared, to the astonishment of the prison director, that he would not go, and that never again would he be carrying out the duty of executioner.

‘And have you forgotten the whip?’ shouted the warden.

‘The whip is the whip right enough, but killing’s against the law.’

‘So you’ve been picking up ideas from Pelageyushkin, have you? Quite the prison prophet he’s become. Well, just you wait.’

VI

Meanwhile Makhin, the grammar-school boy who had showed his friend how to forge the coupon, had left school and completed his course at the university Faculty of Law. Thanks to his success with women, including the former mistress of an elderly government minister who was a friend of his, he had while still quite a young man been made an examining magistrate. He was a dishonest man with considerable debts, a seducer of women and a gambler at cards, but he was a clever, quick-witted man with a retentive memory, and effective in his handling of legal cases.

He was examining magistrate in the district where Stepan Pelageyushkin was being tried. He had already been surprised during the first examination by Stepan’s simple, accurate and level-headed replies to his questions. Makhin was almost unconsciously aware that this man standing before him shaven-headed and in shackles, who was brought here and guarded and would be taken away to be locked up again by two soldiers, this man was somehow perfectly free and existed on a moral level which he, Makhin, could not possibly attain. For this reason, as he examined the man he was obliged to keep on pulling himself together and urging himself on, so as not to get confused and to lose his way. He was struck by the manner in which Stepan spoke of the things he had done as of something which had happened long ago and which had been carried out not by him at all, but by another person.

‘And you didn’t feel sorry for them at all?’ asked Makhin.

‘No, I didn’t feel sorry. I didn’t understand at that time.’

‘Well, and how do you feel towards them now?’ Stepan smiled sadly.

‘Now, you could roast me alive, but I wouldn’t do such a thing again.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because I’ve come to see that all men are brothers.’

‘All right, so I am your brother, am I?’

‘Of course you are.’

‘What, I am your brother, though I am condemning you to penal servitude?’

‘That’s only because you don’t understand.’

‘And what don’t I understand?’

‘You can’t understand, if you are passing judgement on me.’

‘Well, let us get on. So where did you go after that?…’

Makhin was struck most of all by what he learned from the prison warden about Pelageyushkin’s influence on the executioner Makhorkin who, at the risk of corporal punishment, had refused to carry out his official duties.

VII

At an evening party at the house of the Yeropkins, where there were two marriageable daughters both of whom Makhin was courting, after the singing of romances (at which the highly musical Makhin distinguished himself as second singer and as accompanist), Makhin was giving a faithful, detailed account – his memory was excellent – and a quite impartial account, of the strange criminal who had brought about the conversion of the executioner. Makhin was able to remember and describe everything so well, precisely because he was always utterly impartial towards the people he had to deal with. He did not and could not enter into the spiritual state of other people, and for this reason he was extremely good at recalling everything that had happened to them and all that they had done or said.