In his speech the Public Prosecutor described Olga's murder in vivid
colours and drew especial attention to the brutality of the murderer,
to his malignancy. . . . “An old, worn-out voluptuary saw a girl,
young and pretty. Knowing the whole horror of her position in the
house of her mad father, he enticed her to come to him by a bit of
bread, a dwelling, and some bright-coloured rags. . . . She agreed. An
old, well-to-do husband is easier to be borne than a mad father and
poverty. But she was young, and youth, gentlemen of the jury,
possesses its own inalienable rights. . . . A girl brought up on
novels, in the midst of nature, sooner or later was bound to fall in
love. . . .” And so on in the same style. It finished up with “He who
had not given her anything more than his age and bright coloured rags,
seeing his prize slipping away from him, falls into the fury of a
brute, to whose nose a red-hot iron had been applied. He had loved in
a brutish way and he must hate in a brutish way,” etc., etc.
In charging Urbenin with Kuz'ma's murder, Polugradov drew special
attention to those thief-like processes, well thought out and weighed,
that accompanied the murder of a “sleeping man who the day before had
had the imprudence to give testimony against him.” “I suppose you
cannot doubt that Kuz'ma wanted to tell the Public Prosecutor
something specially concerning him.”
The counsel for the defence, Smirnyaev, did not deny Urbenin's guilt;
he only begged them to admit that Urbenin had acted under the
influence of a state of temporary insanity, and to have indulgence for
him. When describing how painful the feelings of jealousy are, he
cited as an example Shakespeare's “Othello.” He looked at that
“all-human type” from every side, giving extracts from various critics,
and got into such a maze that the presiding judge had to stop him with
the remark that “a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory
for the jurymen.”
Taking advantage of having the last word, Urbenin called God to
witness that he was not guilty either in deed or thought.
“It is all the same to me where I am—in this district where everything
reminds me of my unmerited shame and of my wife, or in penal
servitude; but it is the fate of my children that is troubling me.”
And, turning to the public, Urbenin began to cry, and begged that his
children might be cared for.
“Take them. The Count will not lose the opportunity of vaunting his
generosity, but I have already warned the children; they will not
accept a crumb from him.”
Then, noticing me among the public, he looked at me with suppliant
eyes and said:
“Defend my children from the Count's favours!”
He apparently had quite forgotten the impending verdict, and his
thoughts were only centred on his children. He talked about them until
he was stopped by the presiding judge.
The jury were not long in consultation. Urbenin was found guilty,
without extenuating circumstances on any count.
He was condemned to the loss of all civil rights, transportation and
hard labour for fifteen years.
So dearly had he to pay for his having met on a fine May morning the
poetical “girl in red.”
More than eight years have passed since the events described above
happened. Some of the actors in the drama are dead and decomposed,
others are bearing the punishment of their sins, others are wearily
dragging on life, struggling with dullness and awaiting death from day
to day.
Much is changed during these eight years. . . . Count Karnéev, who has
never ceased to entertain the sincerest friendship for me, has sunk
into utter drunkenness. His estate which was the scene of the drama
has passed from him into the hands of his wife and Pshekhotsky. He is
now poor, and is supported by me. Sometimes of an evening, lying on
the sofa in my room in the boarding-house, he likes to remember the
good old times.
“It would be fine to listen to the gipsies now!” he murmurs. “Serezha,
send for some cognac!”
I am also changed. My strength is gradually deserting me, and I feel
youth and health leaving my body. I no longer possess the same
physical strength, I have not the same alertness, the same endurance
which I was proud of displaying formerly, when I could carouse night
after night and could drink quantities which now I could hardly lift.
Wrinkles are appearing on my face one after the other; my hair is
getting thin, my voice is becoming coarse and less strong. . . . Life
is finished.
I remember the past as if it were yesterday. I see places and people's
faces as if in a mist. I have not the power to regard them
impartially; I love and hate them with the former intensity, and never
a day passes that I, being filled with feelings of indignation or
hatred, do not seize hold of my head. As formerly, I consider the
Count odious, Olga infamous, Kalinin ludicrous owing to his stupid
presumption. Evil I hold to be evil, sin to be sin.
But not infrequently there are moments when, looking intently at a
portrait that is standing on my writing-table, feel an irresistible
desire to walk with the “girl in red” through the forest, under the
sounds of the tall pines, and to press her to my breast regardless of
everything. In such moments I forgive the lies, the fall into the
dirty abyss, I am ready to forgive everything, if only a small part of
the past could be repeated once more. . . . Wearied of the dullness of
town, I want to hear once again the roar of the giant lake and gallop
along its banks on my Zorka. . . . I would forgive and forget
everything if I could once again go along the road to Tenevo and meet
the gardener Franz with his vodka barrel and jockey-cap. . . . There
are moments when I am even ready to press the blood-stained hand of
good-natured Pëtr Egorych, and talk with him about religion, the
harvest and the enlightenment of the people. . . . I would like to
meet “Screw” and his Nadenka again. . . .
Life is mad, licentious, turbulent—like a lake on an August
night. . . . Many victims have disappeared for ever beneath its dark
waves . . . Heavy dregs lie at the bottom.
But why, at certain moments, do I love it? Why do I forgive it, and in
my soul hurry towards it like an affectionate son, like a bird
released from a cage?
At this moment the life I see from the window of my room in these
chambers reminds me of a grey circle; it is grey in colour without any
light or shade. . . .
But, if I close my eyes and remember the past, I see a rainbow formed
by the sun's spectrum. . . . Yes, it is stormy there, but it is
lighter too. . . .
S. Zinov'ev.