Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

The discovery that the executioner had refused to do his duty and was ready to suffer rather than kill anybody brought about a sudden upheaval in Natalya Ivanovna’s soul, and the feeling of sympathy and horror which had come close to breaking out on several occasions, now burst its way into the open and took possession of her.

‘Filipp Vasilyevich my dear, please write the telegram for me. I want to ask the Tsar to show mercy to them.’

The district superintendent shook his head. ‘What if we were to get into trouble over this?’

‘But I’ll be the one responsible. I won’t say anything about you at all.’

‘What a kind woman she is,’ thought the district superintendent, ‘a good-hearted woman. If only my wife was like that, it would be heaven – quite different from the way things are.’

And so the district superintendent composed a telegram to the Tsar: ‘To His Imperial Majesty the Sovereign Emperor. Your Imperial Majesty’s loyal subject, widow of the Collegiate Assessor Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky who was murdered by peasants, prostrating herself at Your Imperial Majesty’s sacred feet’ (the district superintendent was particularly pleased with this bit of the telegram he had composed) ‘begs You to have mercy on the men condemned to death, the peasants so-and-so and so-and-so, of such-and-such a province, region, district and village.’

The district superintendent sent off the telegram in person, and Natalya Ivanovna’s soul was filled with joy and happiness. It seemed to her that if she, the widow of the murdered man, was ready to forgive and to ask for mercy, then the Tsar could not fail to show mercy too.

XII

Liza Yeropkina was living on a plateau of continuous exaltation. The further she travelled along the Christian way of life which had been revealed to her, the more certain was she that this way was the true one, and the more jubilant did her soul become.

Now she had two immediate objectives in view. The first was to convert Makhin, or rather, as she expressed it to herself, to return him to his true self, to his own good and beautiful nature. She loved him, and by the light of her love she was able to perceive the divine element in his soul, common to all human beings, yet she saw in this fundamental element of life shared by all men and women a goodness, a tenderness and a distinction which were his alone. Her other objective was to cease to be rich. She had wanted to get free of her property in order to put Makhin to the test, but beyond that she desired to do this for her own sake, for the sake of her soul – and she wanted to do it according to the principles of the Gospel. She started the process by planning to give away her land, but she was thwarted in putting this idea into practice first by her father, and then even more so by the flood of suppliants who applied to her in person or in writing. Then she decided to turn to an elder, a man well known for the holiness of his life, and to ask him to take her money and to use it in whatever way he thought fitting. On hearing of this her father was very angry, and in a furious exchange he called her a madwoman and a psychopath, and announced his intention of taking steps to protect her from herself, as a person of unsound mind.

Her father’s irritable, exasperated tone of voice affected her powerfully and she lost control of herself, bursting into angry tears and calling him a despot, and even a monster of selfishness.

She asked her father’s forgiveness and he said that he was not angry with her, but she could see that he was hurt and that inwardly he had not really forgiven her. She was unwilling to talk to Makhin about any of this. Her sister was jealous of her attachment to Makhin and had become quite estranged from her. Thus Liza had no one to share her feelings with, no one she could confide in.

‘God is the one I should be confiding in,’ she told herself, and as it was now Lent she decided that she would observe the Lenten fast and make her confession, telling her confessor everything and asking his advice about what she should do next.

Not far from the city there was a monastery where the elder lived who had become famous for his way of life, his teaching, his prophecies, and the healings which were attributed to him.

The elder had received a letter from Yeropkin senior, warning him of his daughter’s visit and of her abnormal, hysterical state and expressing his confidence that the elder would put her back on the right path – the path of the golden mean and the good Christian life lived in harmony with the existing order of things.