Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

But Pelageyushkin had aroused his interest. He made no attempt to put himself in Stepan’s place but he could not help wondering ‘What is going on in his mind?’ and although he came to no conclusions he felt that this was something of interest, and so he was giving a thorough account of the whole case at this soirée: the executioner’s repudiation of his duties, the warden’s stories about Pelageyushkin’s strange behaviour, his reading of the Gospels, and the powerful influence he exerted on his fellow-prisoners.

Makhin’s story intrigued everyone present, but it was of particular interest to the Yeropkins’ younger daughter Liza, who was eighteen years old, had just completed her studies at a young ladies’ academy, and was beginning to realize the darkness and narrowness of the thoroughly false environment in which she had been brought up – she was like a swimmer who had burst through the surface of the water and was eagerly gulping in the fresh air of life. She started to question Makhin about the details of the case and about how and why such a transformation had come upon Pelageyushkin, and Makhin told her what he had learned from Pelageyushkin about his most recent murder, and how the meekness and docility of this extraordinarily good-hearted woman with no fear of death, whom he had murdered, had vanquished him and opened his eyes, and how his reading of the Gospels had then completed the process.

For a long time that night Liza Yeropkina could not get to sleep. For some months already a struggle had been going on within her between the life of fashionable society, in which her sister had been trying to involve her, and her attraction towards Makhin, which was mingled with a desire to reform him. And now it was this latter impulse which gained the upper hand. She had already heard something of the woman who had been murdered. Now, however, after that dreadful death and what Makhin had told her based on Pelageyushkin’s account of it, she knew the whole story of Mariya Semyonovna in detail and she was deeply moved by all that she had learned about her.

Liza felt an overwhelming desire to be a woman of the sort that Mariya Semyonovna had been. She was rich and she was afraid Makhin might be courting her simply for her money. And so she decided that she would give away the property she owned, and she confided her idea to Makhin.

Makhin was glad to have this opportunity of showing his disinterestedness, and he told Liza that he did not love her for her money, and this decision of hers, which seemed to him so magnanimous, moved him deeply. Meanwhile a struggle had begun between Liza and her mother (the estate had come to her from her father), who would not permit her to give her property away. Makhin gave Liza all the help he could. And the more he pursued this course of action, the more he began to understand this new world of spiritual aspirations which had formerly seemed to him so strange and alien, and which he now saw in Liza.

VIII

In the communal cell everything had grown quiet. Stepan was lying in his place on the plank-bed, not yet asleep. Vasily went over to him, and tugging at his foot, gave him a wink as a sign that he should get up and come across to where he was standing. Stepan slipped down from the plank-bed and went up to Vasily.

‘Well now, brother,’ said Vasily, ‘I want you to help me, if you will.’

‘What sort of help do you need?’

‘I’m thinking of escaping.’

And Vasily explained that he had made all the necessary preparations for an escape attempt.

‘Tomorrow I’m going to stir up some trouble with them’ – he pointed at the prisoners lying asleep. ‘They’ll complain about me to the orderlies. I’ll be transferred to the cells upstairs and once I’m there I know what to do. But I’ll be relying on you to give me a hand to get out of the mortuary.’

‘I can do that. But where will you go?’

‘I’ll go wherever I feel like going. I reckon there’s no lack of bad characters out there.’

‘That’s true, brother, but it’s not for us to judge them.’

‘What I mean is, I’m no murderer, am I? I’ve never done in a single soul, and what’s a bit of stealing? What’s so wrong about that? Aren’t they always robbing poor devils like you and me?’

‘That’s their affair. They’ll answer for it.’

‘So are we just meant to stand there and watch them get on with it? Like, I cleaned out a church once. What harm did that do anybody? What I’ve got in mind now isn’t to rob some measly little shop. I’m going to go for some big money, and then give it away to them as need it.’

At that moment one of the prisoners sat up on the plank-bed and began listening to what they were saying. Stepan and Vasily went their separate ways.