The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (464 page)

The dignified man with the whiskers, the colonel, the merchant, and several more held their arms and fingers as the priest required of them, very high, very exactly, as if they liked doing it; others did it unwillingly and carelessly. Some repeated the words too loudly, and with a defiant tone, as if they meant to say, "In spite of all, I will and shall speak." Others whispered very low, and not fast enough, and then, as if frightened, hurried to catch up the priest. Some kept their fingers tightly together, as if fearing to drop the pinch of invisible something they held; others kept separating and folding theirs. Every one save the old priest felt awkward, but he was sure he was fulfilling a very useful and important duty.

After the swearing in, the president requested the jury to choose a foreman, and the jury, thronging to the door, passed out into the debating-room, where almost all of them at once began to smoke cigarettes. Some one proposed the dignified man as foreman, and he was unanimously accepted. Then the jurymen put out their cigarettes and threw them away and returned to the court. The dignified man informed the president that he was chosen foreman, and all sat down again on the high-backed chairs.

Everything went smoothly, quickly, and not without a certain solemnity. And this exactitude, order, and solemnity evidently pleased those who took part in it: it strengthened the impression that they were fulfilling a serious and valuable public duty. Nekhludoff, too, felt this.

As soon as the jurymen were seated, the president made a speech on their rights, obligations, and responsibilities. While speaking he kept changing his position; now leaning on his right, now on his left hand, now against the back, then on the arms of his chair, now putting the papers straight, now handling his pencil and paper-knife.

According to his words, they had the right of interrogating the prisoners through the president, to use paper and pencils, and to examine the articles put in as evidence. Their duty was to judge not falsely, but justly. Their responsibility meant that if the secrecy of their discussion were violated, or communications were established with outsiders, they would be liable to punishment. Every one listened with an expression of respectful attention. The merchant, diffusing a smell of brandy around him, and restraining loud hiccups, approvingly nodded his head at every sentence.

CHAPTER IX

.

THE TRIAL--THE PRISONERS QUESTIONED.

When he had finished his speech, the president turned to the male prisoner.

"Simeon Kartinkin, rise."

Simeon jumped up, his lips continuing to move nervously and inaudibly.

"Your name?"

"Simon Petrov Kartinkin," he said, rapidly, with a cracked voice, having evidently prepared the answer.

"What class do you belong to?"

"Peasant."

"What government, district, and parish?"

"Toula Government, Krapivinskia district, Koupianovski parish, the village Borki."

"Your age?"

"Thirty-three; born in the year one thousand eight--"

"What religion?"

"Of the Russian religion, orthodox."

"Married?"

"Oh, no, sir."

"Your occupation?"

"I had a place in the Hotel Mauritania."

"Have you ever been tried before?"

"I never got tried before, because, as we used to live formerly--"

"So you never were tried before?"

"God forbid, never."

"Have you received a copy of the indictment?"

"I have."

"Sit down."

"Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova," said the president, turning to the next prisoner.

But Simon continued standing in front of Botchkova.

"Kartinkin, sit down!" Kartinkin continued standing.

"Kartinkin, sit down!" But Kartinkin sat down only when the usher, with his head on one side, and with preternaturally wide-open eyes, ran up, and said, in a tragic whisper, "Sit down, sit down!"

Kartinkin sat down as hurriedly as he had risen, wrapping his cloak round him, and again began moving his lips silently.

"Your name?" asked the president, with a weary sigh at being obliged to repeat the same questions, without looking at the prisoner, but glancing over a paper that lay before him. The president was so used to his task that, in order to get quicker through it all, he did two things at a time.

Botchkova was forty-three years old, and came from the town of Kalomna. She, too, had been in service at the Hotel Mauritania.

"I have never been tried before, and have received a copy of the indictment." She gave her answers boldly, in a tone of voice as if she meant to add to each answer, "And I don't care who knows it, and I won't stand any nonsense."

She did not wait to be told, but sat down as soon as she had replied to the last question.

"Your name?" turning abruptly to the third prisoner. "You will have to rise," he added, softly and gently, seeing that Maslova kept her seat.

Maslova got up and stood, with her chest expanded, looking at the president with that peculiar expression of readiness in her smiling black eyes.

"What is your name?"

"Lubov," she said.

Nekhludoff had put on his pince-nez, looking at the prisoners while they were being questioned.

"No, it is impossible," he thought, not taking his eyes off the prisoner. "Lubov! How can it be?" he thought to himself, after hearing her answer. The president was going to continue his questions, but the member with the spectacles interrupted him, angrily whispering something. The president nodded, and turned again to the prisoner.

"How is this," he said, "you are not put down here as Lubov?"

The prisoner remained silent.

"I want your real name."

"What is your baptismal name?" asked the angry member.

"Formerly I used to be called Katerina."

"No, it cannot be," said Nekhludoff to himself; and yet he was now certain that this was she, that same girl, half ward, half servant to his aunts; that Katusha, with whom he had once been in love, really in love, but whom he had betrayed and then abandoned, and never again brought to mind, for the memory would have been too painful, would have convicted him too clearly, proving that he who was so proud of his integrity had treated this woman in a revolting, scandalous way.

Yes, this was she. He now clearly saw in her face that strange, indescribable individuality which distinguishes every face from all others; something peculiar, all its own, not to be found anywhere else. In spite of the unhealthy pallor and the fulness of the face, it was there, this sweet, peculiar individuality; on those lips, in the slight squint of her eyes, in the voice, particularly in the naive smile, and in the expression of readiness on the face and figure.

"You should have said so," remarked the president, again in a gentle tone. "Your patronymic?"

"I am illegitimate."

"Well, were you not called by your godfather's name?"

"Yes, Mikhaelovna."

"And what is it she can be guilty of?" continued Nekhludoff, in his mind, unable to breathe freely.

"Your family name--your surname, I mean?" the president went on.

"They used to call me by my mother's surname, Maslova."

"What class?"

"Meschanka." [the lowest town class or grade]

"Religion--orthodox?"

"Orthodox."

"Occupation. What was your occupation?"

Maslova remained silent.

"What was your employment?"

"You know yourself," she said, and smiled. Then, casting a hurried look round the room, again turned her eyes on the president.

There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, so terrible and piteous in the meaning of the words she had uttered, in this smile, and in the furtive glance she had cast round the room, that the president was abashed, and for a few minutes silence reigned in the court. The silence was broken by some one among the public laughing, then somebody said "Ssh," and the president looked up and continued:

"Have you ever been tried before?"

"Never," answered Maslova, softly, and sighed.

"Have you received a copy of the indictment?"

"I have," she answered.

"Sit down."

The prisoner leant back to pick up her skirt in the way a fine lady picks up her train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the sleeves of her cloak, her eyes fixed on the president. Her face was calm again.

The witnesses were called, and some sent away; the doctor who was to act as expert was chosen and called into the court.

Then the secretary got up and began reading the indictment. He read distinctly, though he pronounced the "I" and "r" alike, with a loud voice, but so quickly that the words ran into one another and formed one uninterrupted, dreary drone.

The judges bent now on one, now on the other arm of their chairs, then on the table, then back again, shut and opened their eyes, and whispered to each other. One of the gendarmes several times repressed a yawn.

The prisoner Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks. Botchkova sat quite still and straight, only now and then scratching her head under the kerchief.

Maslova sat immovable, gazing at the reader; only now and then she gave a slight start, as if wishing to reply, blushed, sighed heavily, and changed the position of her hands, looked round, and again fixed her eyes on the reader.

Nekhludoff sat in the front row on his high-backed chair, without removing his pince-nez, and looked at Maslova, while a complicated and fierce struggle was going on in his soul.

CHAPTER X

.

THE TRIAL--THE INDICTMENT.

The indictment ran as follows: On the 17th of January, 18--, in the lodging-house Mauritania, occurred the sudden death of the Second Guild merchant, Therapont Emilianovich Smelkoff, of Kourgan.

The local police doctor of the fourth district certified that death was due to rupture of the heart, owing to the excessive use of alcoholic liquids. The body of the said Smelkoff was interred. After several days had elapsed, the merchant Timokhin, a fellow-townsman and companion of the said Smelkoff, returned from St. Petersburg, and hearing the circumstances that accompanied the death of the latter, notified his suspicions that the death was caused by poison, given with intent to rob the said Smelkoff of his money. This suspicion was corroborated on inquiry, which proved:

1. That shortly before his death the said Smelkoff had received the sum of 3,800 roubles from the bank. When an inventory of the property of the deceased was made, only 312 roubles and 16 copecks were found.

2. The whole day and night preceding his death the said Smelkoff spent with Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) at her home and in the lodging-house Mauritania, which she also visited at the said Smelkoff's request during his absence, to get some money, which she took out of his portmanteau in the presence of the servants of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova and Simeon Kartinkin, with a key given her by the said Smelkoff. In the portmanteau opened by the said Maslova, the said Botchkova and Kartinkin saw packets of 100-rouble bank-notes.

3. On the said Smelkoff's return to the lodging-house Mauritania, together with Lubka, the latter, in accordance with the attendant Kartinkin's advice, gave the said Smelkoff some white powder given to her by the said Kartinkin, dissolved in brandy.

4. The next morning the said Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) sold to her mistress, the witness Kitaeva, a brothel-keeper, a diamond ring given to her, as she alleged, by the said Smelkoff.

5. The housemaid of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova, placed to her account in the local Commercial Bank 1,800 roubles. The postmortem examination of the body of the said Smelkoff and the chemical analysis of his intestines proved beyond doubt the presence of poison in the organism, so that there is reason to believe that the said Smelkoff's death was caused by poisoning.

When cross-examined, the accused, Maslova, Botchkova, and Kartinkin, pleaded not guilty, deposing--Maslova, that she had really been sent by Smelkoff from the brothel, where she "works," as she expresses it, to the lodging-house Mauritania to get the merchant some money, and that, having unlocked the portmanteau with a key given her by the merchant, she took out 40 roubles, as she was told to do, and that she had taken nothing more; that Botchkova and Kartinkin, in whose presence she unlocked and locked the portmanteau, could testify to the truth of the statement.

She gave this further evidence--that when she came to the lodging-house for the second time she did, at the instigation of Simeon Kartinkin, give Smelkoff sonic kind of powder, which she thought was a narcotic, in a glass of brandy, hoping he would fall asleep and that she would be able to get away from him; and that Smelkoff, having beaten her, himself gave her the ring when she cried and threatened to go away.