‘That last edifying thought is one that I read in my “Reader” when I was twelve years old,’ said Aglaya.
‘It’s all philosophy,’ observed Adelaida. ‘You’re a philosopher and have come to teach us.’
‘You may be right,’ smiled the prince. ‘I may be a philosopher, and, who knows, I may indeed have the aim of teaching people ... That may be so; truly, it may.’
‘And your philosophy is just the same as Yevlampia Nikolayevna’s, ‘Aglaya again chimed in. ’She’s an official’s widow and comes to see us, a sort of dependant. All she cares about in life is cheapness; all that matters is how cheaply one can live, all she talks about is copecks, and, yet, mind you, she has money, she’s an impostor. It’s just the same with your immense life in prison, and perhaps your four years of happiness in the country, for which you sold your city of Naples, and at a profit, too, though only a few copecks.’
‘On the subject of life in prison one might disagree,’ said the prince. ‘I heard the story of a man who spent about twelve years in prison; he was one of the patients receiving treatment from my professor. He had fits, was anxious sometimes, wept and even once tried to kill himself. His life in prison was very sad, I assure you, but it was not, of course, a matter of copecks. And all the friends he had were a spider and a little tree that grew under his window ... But I’d do better to tell you about another encounter I had last year with another man. Here there was one very strange circumstance - strange, really, because incidents of this kind happen very rarely. This man was once taken up with others to the scaffold, and the death sentence by firing squad was read out to him, for a political offence. Some twenty minutes later a reprieve was read out to him, and a different degree of punishment was fixed, but in the interval between the two sentences, twenty minutes, or at least quarter of an hour, he lived in the unquestionable conviction that in a few minutes’ time he would face sudden death. I was dreadfully keen to listen when he sometimes recalled his impressions of that time, and I asked him questions about it again on several occasions. He remembered it all with uncommon clarity and said he would never forget anything of those minutes. Some twenty paces from the scaffold, around which stood the people and the soldiers, three posts had been dug into the ground, as there were several criminals. The first three were led up to the posts, bound, dressed in the death apparel (long white loose overalls), and white caps were pulled down over their eyes so that they could not see the rifles; then a company of several soldiers was lined up opposite each post. My acquaintance was eighth on the list, and so he would have to go out to the posts in the third group. A priest went round them all with a cross. It turned out that the man had about five minutes left to live, no more. He said that those five minutes seemed to him an
infinite length of time, an immense richness; it seemed to him that during those five minutes he would live so many lives that there was no point in thinking about the last moment yet, so he made various allocations: he calculated the time he needed to say goodbye to his companions, and allotted some two minutes to it, then he allotted another two minutes to think about himself for the last time, and then look around him for the last time. He remembered very well making precisely these three allocations, and that he calculated in precisely this way. He was dying at the age of twenty-seven, healthy and strong; he recalled that as he said farewell to his companions he asked one of them a rather irrelevant question and was even very interested in the reply. Then, after he had taken leave of his companions, came the two minutes he had set aside for
thinking about himself;
he knew in advance what he was going to think about: he kept wanting to imagine as quickly and vividly as he could how it could be like this: now he existed and was alive, but in three minutes’ time he would be
something,
someone or something - but who? And where? He thought he would be able to determine all this in those two minutes! Not far away there was a church, and the top of it, with its gilded roof, was sparkling in the bright sunlight. He remembered looking at that roof with awful persistence, and at the beams of light that sparkled from it; he could not tear himself away from them; it seemed to him that they were his new nature, those beams, that in three minutes’ time he would somehow fuse with them ... The unknown quality of this new phenomenon and the revulsion which it inspired in him, now that it was coming and would soon be upon him, were dreadful; but he says that nothing was so hard for him at the time as the incessant thought: “What if I didn’t have to die? What if I could get my life back - what an infinity it would be! And it would all be mine! Then I would make each minute into a whole lifetime, I would lose nothing, would account for each minute, waste nothing in vain!” He said that this idea finally turned into such fury that he wanted them to shoot him as quickly as possible.’
The prince suddenly fell silent; they all waited for him to continue and draw a conclusion.
‘Have you finished?’ asked Aglaya.
‘What? Yes, I have,’ said the prince, emerging from his momentary reflection.
‘But why did you tell us about this?’
‘I just ... remembered it ... I was making conversation ...’
‘You’re very abrupt,’ observed Alexandra. ‘I expect, Prince, you intended to show that not a single moment may be valued in mere copecks, and that sometimes five minutes are more precious than treasure. All that is commendable, but permit me to ask, this friend of yours who told you of such sufferings ... I mean, his sentence was commuted, so he was given that “eternal life”. Well, what did he do with that wealth later on? Did he live each minute “accounting” for it?’
‘Oh no, he told me himself - I’d already asked him about it - he didn’t live like that at all, and wasted far too many minutes.’
‘Well then, there’s your proof, that means it’s impossible to live “counting each minute”. For some reason, it’s impossible.’
‘Yes, for some reason it’s impossible,’ the prince repeated. ‘That’s what I thought, too ... And yet somehow I don’t believe it ...’
‘You mean you think you’ll live more wisely than anyone else?’ said Aglaya.
‘Yes, that has sometimes occurred to me.’
‘And does it still?’
‘Yes ... it does,’ replied the prince, looking at Aglaya as before with a quiet and even timid smile; but at once burst out laughing again and gave her a cheerful look.
‘Such modesty!’ said Aglaya, almost irritated.
‘But how brave you are, here you are laughing, and I was so shocked by all the things in his story that I kept having dreams about it afterwards, kept dreaming about those five minutes ...’
Once more he cast a searching and earnest gaze over his female listeners.
‘You’re not angry with me about something, are you?’ he asked suddenly, as if embarrassed, but looking them all straight in the eye.
‘What for?’ all three girls exclaimed in surprise.
‘Well, because it’s as if I were lecturing you all the time ...’
They all began to laugh.
‘If you’re angry, then don’t be,’ he said. ‘I mean, I myself know that I have lived less than others and have less understanding of life. It’s possible that I sometimes talk very strangely ...’
And he decidedly lost his composure.
‘If you say you were happy you must have lived more and not less; so why are you wriggling and making excuses?’ Aglaya began, sternly and captiously. ‘And please do not worry about lecturing us, there is no superiority there on your part. With quietism like yours one could fill a hundred years with happiness. Whether one showed you an execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That’s the way to get on in life.’
‘What you are so angry about, I don’t understand,’ the general’s wife chimed in, having long been observing their faces as they talked, ‘and what you are talking about I don’t understand, either. What little finger, and what nonsense is this? The prince speaks beautifully, just a little sadly, that’s all. Why are you discouraging him? When he began he was laughing, but now he has gone all dazed and dreamy.’
‘Never mind,
Maman.
But Prince, it’s a pity you’ve never seen an execution, there was one thing I wanted to ask you about.’
‘I
have
seen a execution,’ replied the prince.
‘You have?’ Aglaya exclaimed. ‘I ought to have guessed it! That crowns everything. If you’ve seen one, how can you say that you lived happily all the time? Well, I’m right am I not?’
‘But do they execute people in your village?’
‘I saw it at Lyons, I went there with Schneider, he took me. It was the first thing I saw when I arrived.’
‘Well, did it appeal to you greatly? Was it very educational? Useful?’ asked Aglaya.
‘It did not appeal to me at all, and I was rather ill after it, but I will confess that the spectacle riveted me, I couldn’t tear my eyes from it.’
‘I wouldn’t have been able to either,’ said Aglaya.
‘Over there they don’t like women to go and look, there are even articles about those women in the newspapers afterwards.’
‘That means that if they don’t consider it a matter for women, by the same right they mean to say (and, I suppose, claim in justification) that it’s a matter for men. I congratulate them on their logic. And you think the same way, of course?’
‘Tell us about the execution,’ Adelaida broke in.
‘I’d much rather not at the moment ...’ the prince said, becoming embarrassed, and apparently frowning.
‘It’s as if you grudged telling us,’ Aglaya inserted sharply.
‘No, it’s because I have just been telling someone about that execution.’
‘Telling whom?’
‘Your valet, while I was waiting ...’
‘What valet?’ resounded from all sides.
‘The one who sits in the vestibule, he has greying hair and a reddish face; I was sitting in the vestibule waiting to go into Ivan Fyodorovich’s study.’
‘That’s strange,’ the general’s wife observed.
‘The prince is a democrat,’ Aglaya snapped. ‘Well, if you told Alexey, you really can’t refuse to tell us.’
‘I certainly want to hear it,’ Adelaida repeated.
‘Actually, just now,’ the prince said turning to her, rather animated again (he seemed to grow animated very quickly and trustingly), ‘I actually had the idea, when you asked me for a subject for a painting, of giving you a subject: to paint the face of a condemned man a minute before the guillotine falls, while he’s still standing on the scaffold and before he lies down on that plank.’
‘You mean the face? Only the face?’ asked Adelaida. ‘That would be a strange subject, and what sort of painting would it be?’
‘I don’t know, but why not?’ the prince insisted with heat. ‘I saw a painting like that at Basle once.
3
I would very much like to tell you ... I will tell you some time ... It made a great impression on me.’
‘You shall certainly tell us about the Basle painting later,’ said Adelaida, ‘but now I want you to explain to me the painting of
this execution. Can you tell it to me as you imagine it to yourself? How is this face to be painted? Just the face, yes? What is this face like?’
‘It’s exactly a minute before death,’ the prince began with perfect willingness, carried along by memory and, it seemed, at once forgetting about everything else, ‘at the very moment he has climbed the short stepladder and has just mounted the scaffold. At that point he glanced in my direction; I looked at his face and understood everything ... But I mean, how is one to describe it? I should like it terribly, terribly much if you or someone else would paint it! Best if it were you! I thought at the time that a painting would be useful. You know, in this case everything must be portrayed as it was beforehand, everything, everything. He’d been living in prison, expecting his sentence to be at least a week hence; he had somehow been relying on the usual formalities, on the likelihood that the document would have to go somewhere and would take a week to come back. But then suddenly for some reason the procedure was curtailed. At five o’clock in the morning he was asleep. It was the end of October; at five o’clock in the morning it’s still cold and dark. The head gaoler came in, quietly, with a guard and cautiously touched him on the shoulder, the man raised himself on one elbow and saw the light: “What is it?” “The execution is at ten.” Half awake, he did not believe it, began to argue that the document would not come back for a week yet, but when he had completely woken he stopped arguing and fell silent - so it is told - then said: “All the same, it’s hard, coming all of a sudden ...”, again fell silent, and did not want to say any more. At this point three or four hours go by on the usual things: a priest, a breakfast at which he is served wine, coffee and beef (well, is that not mockery? I mean, think how cruel it is, yet on the other hand, as God is their witness, those innocent people are acting from purity of heart and are convinced that it is philanthropy), then the dressing (do you know what dressing is like for a condemned man?), and at last he is taken through the town to the scaffold ... It seems to me he probably thought on the way: “There’s a long time, three streets to live yet; when I’ve gone along this one, there will still be another, and then yet another, where there’s a bakery on the right ... it will be a long time before we get to the bakery!” All around the crowd, shouting, noise, ten thousand faces, ten thousand eyes - all that has to be borne, and above all, the thought: “Look, there are ten thousand of them, and none of them is being executed, but I’m being executed!” Well, this is all as a preliminary. A short stepladder leads up to the scaffold; at this point, in front of the steps, he suddenly burst into tears, yet this is a strong and courageous man whom they say was a great villain. The priest has been with him constantly, riding with him in the cart, and talking all the time - though the man has scarcely been listening to him: and if he begins to listen, understands no more than a couple of words. That is how it is bound to be. At last he begins to climb the steps; now his legs are tied and so he moves with short steps. The priest, who is doubtless an intelligent man, has stopped talking, and keeps giving him the cross to
kiss. At the foot of the steps he was very pale, but when he had climbed them and stood on the scaffold he suddenly turned as white as paper, just like white writing paper. His legs had probably gone weak and numb, and then he felt nausea - as though his throat were being constricted, making it tickle - have you ever felt that, when you were frightened or at moments of great terror, when all of your reason remains but has no power any more? I think that if, for example, doom is inevitable, and the house is collapsing on top of one, one will have a sudden urge to sit down and close one’s eyes and wait for what may come next! ... It was at this very point, when this weakness was beginning, that the priest rather more quickly, with a swift gesture, suddenly began to put the cross right to the man’s lips without a word, a small cross, silver, four-pointed - doing so frequently, every minute. And as soon as the cross touched his lips, he would open his eyes, and again for a few seconds come to life again, as it were, and his legs moved forward. He kissed the cross avidly, hurried to kiss it, as though he were hurrying lest he forget to take something with him in reserve, just in case, but he would hardly have been aware of anything religious at that moment. And so it continued right up to the plank itself ... It’s strange that men seldom faint at these very last seconds! On the contrary, the brain is horribly alive and must work fiercely, fiercely, fiercely, like an engine in motion; I imagine various thoughts chattering, all unfinished, and perhaps ridiculous ones, too, irrelevant ones: “Look at that man staring - he has a wart on his forehead, look at the executioner, one of his lower buttons is rusty” ... and all the while you keep remembering; there is one point like that, which you cannot forget, and you must not faint, and everything moves and whirls around it, around that point. And to think that this goes on until the very last quarter of a second, when your head lies on the block, waits, and
knows,
and suddenly it hears above it the sliding of the iron! That you would certainly hear! If I were lying there I would make a special point of listening for it and hearing it! At that point there would perhaps only be one-tenth of a moment left, but you would certainly hear it! And imagine, to this day there are those who argue that when the head flies off it may possibly for a second know that it has flown off - what a conception! And what if it were five seconds? ... Paint the scaffold so that only the last stair can be seen clearly and closely; the condemned man has stepped on to it: his head, white as paper, the priest holding out the cross, the man extending his blue lips and staring - and
knowing everything.
The cross and the head - that is the painting, the face of the priest, of the executioner, of his two assistants and a few heads and eyes from below - all that may be painted on a tertiary level, as it were, in a mist, as a background ... That’s what the painting should be like.’