STEPAN had been very submissive and meek ever since he came to
the prison, but now he made the prison authorities and all his
fellow-prisoners wonder at the change in him. Without being ordered, and
out of his proper turn he would do all the very hardest work in prison,
and the dirtiest too. But in spite of his humility, the other prisoners
stood in awe of him, and were afraid of him, as they knew he was a
resolute man, possessed of great physical strength. Their respect for
him increased after the incident of the two tramps who fell upon him; he
wrenched himself loose from them and broke the arm of one of them in the
fight. These tramps had gambled with a young prisoner of some means and
deprived him of all his money. Stepan took his part, and deprived the
tramps of their winnings. The tramps poured their abuse on him; but when
they attacked him, he got the better of them. When the Governor asked
how the fight had come about, the tramps declared that it was Stepan
who had begun it. Stepan did not try to exculpate himself, and bore
patiently his sentence which was three days in the punishment-cell, and
after that solitary confinement.
In his solitary cell he suffered because he could no longer listen to
Chouev and his Gospel. He was also afraid that the former visions of HER
and of the black devils would reappear to torment him. But the visions
were gone for good. His soul was full of new and happy ideas. He felt
glad to be alone if only he could read, and if he had the Gospel. He
knew that he might have got hold of the Gospel, but he could not read.
He had started to learn the alphabet in his boyhood, but could not grasp
the joining of the syllables, and remained illiterate. He made up
his mind to start reading anew, and asked the guard to bring him the
Gospels. They were brought to him, and he sat down to work. He contrived
to recollect the letters, but could not join them into syllables. He
tried as hard as he could to understand how the letters ought to be put
together to form words, but with no result whatever. He lost his sleep,
had no desire to eat, and a deep sadness came over him, which he was
unable to shake off.
“Well, have you not yet mastered it?” asked the guard one day.
“No.”
“Do you know ‘Our Father’?”
“I do.”
“Since you do, read it in the Gospels. Here it is,” said the guard,
showing him the prayer in the Gospels. Stepan began to read it,
comparing the letters he knew with the familiar sounds.
And all of a sudden the mystery of the syllables was revealed to him,
and he began to read. This was a great joy. From that moment he could
read, and the meaning of the words, spelt out with such great pains,
became more significant.
Stepan did not mind any more being alone. He was so full of his work
that he did not feel glad when he was transferred back to the common
cell, his private cell being needed for a political prisoner who had
been just sent to prison.
V
IN the meantime Mahin, the schoolboy who had taught his friend
Smokovnikov to forge the coupon, had finished his career at school and
then at the university, where he had studied law. He had the advantage
of being liked by women, and as he had won favour with a vice-minister’s
former mistress, he was appointed when still young as examining
magistrate. He was dishonest, had debts, had gambled, and had seduced
many women; but he was clever, sagacious, and a good magistrate. He was
appointed to the court of the district where Stepan Pelageushkine
had been tried. When Stepan was brought to him the first time to give
evidence, his sincere and quiet answers puzzled the magistrate. He
somehow unconsciously felt that this man, brought to him in fetters and
with a shorn head, guarded by two soldiers who were waiting to take
him back to prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably superior to
himself. He was in consequence somewhat troubled, and had to summon up
all his courage in order to go on with the inquiry and not blunder in
his questions. He was amazed that Stepan should narrate the story of his
crimes as if they had been things of long ago, and committed not by him
but by some different man.
“Had you no pity for them?” asked Mahin.
“No. I did not know then.”
“Well, and now?”
Stepan smiled with a sad smile. “Now,” he said, “I would not do it even
if I were to be burned alive.”
“But why?
“Because I have come to know that all men are brethren.”
“What about me? Am I your brother also?”
“Of course you are.”
“And how is it that I, your brother, am sending you to hard labour?”
“It is because you don’t know.”
“What do I not know?”
“Since you judge, it means obviously that you don’t know.”
“Go on. . . . What next?”