• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4104 0

them. They started talking about who suffers for what, and what he’s guilty of before God. They began telling: this one killed a man, that one killed two, another set a fire, another was a runaway, so he did nothing. They started asking the old man: ‘What are you suffering for, grandpa?’ ‘I, my dear brothers,’ he says, ‘am suffering for my own and other people’s sins. I didn’t kill anybody, or take anything that wasn’t mine, but even gave to beggars. I, my dear brothers, was a merchant; I had great wealth.’ Thus and so, he says. That is, he told them how the whole thing went, in proper order. ‘I don’t grieve over myself,’ he says. ‘God, that is, has found me. I only pity my old woman and children.’ And so the old man wept. In their company there happened to be the very man who had killed the merchant. ‘Where did it happen, grandpa?’ he says. ‘When, in what month?’—he asked everything. His heart ached inside him. He goes up to the old man and—plop at his feet. ‘You’re perishing because of me, old man. It’s the real truth. This man is suffering, lads,’ he says, ‘guiltlessly and needlessly. I did that deed,’ he says, ‘and put the knife under your head while you slept. Forgive me, grandpa,’ he says, ‘for Christ’s sake.’”

Karataev fell silent, smiling joyfully, gazing at the fire, and he adjusted the logs.

“And the old man says: ‘God will forgive you, and we’re all sinful before God, I’m suffering for my own sins.’ And he wept bitter tears. And what do you think, little falcon?” Karataev was speaking with a rapturous smile that beamed brighter and brighter, as if what he was about to tell contained the chief delight and the whole meaning of the story, “what do you think, little falcon, this same murderer denounced himself to the authorities. ‘I killed six men,’ he says (he was a great villain), ‘but I’m sorriest for this old man. Let him not lament on account of me.’ He declared it: they wrote it down, duly sent a letter. This was a far-off place, it was a while before everything got done, all the papers filled out as they ought, to the authorities, that is. It went all the way to the tsar. Time passed, the tsar’s ukase came: release the merchant, give him a reward, as much as they decided. The paper came, they started searching for the old man. Where’s that old man who has suffered guiltlessly and needlessly? A paper has come from the tsar. They started searching.” Karataev’s lower jaw quivered. “But God had already forgiven him—he was dead. There it is, little falcon,” Karataev concluded and for a long time, smiling silently, he looked straight in front of him.

It was not the story itself, but its mysterious meaning, the rapturous joy that shone in Karataev’s face as he told it, the mysterious significance of that joy, that now strangely and joyfully filled Pierre’s soul.

XIV

“À vos places!”*729 a voice suddenly cried.

Among the prisoners and the convoy, a joyful commotion and expectation of something happy and solemn set in. Shouts of command were heard on all sides, and cavalrymen appeared to the left, well-dressed, on good horses, trotting around the prisoners. On all faces there was the expression of tension that people have at the proximity of high powers. The prisoners pressed together, they were pushed off the road; the convoy formed up.

“L’Empereur! L’Empereur! Le maréchal! Le duc!”—and the well-fed convoy had no sooner passed than a carriage rumbled by, drawn by gray horses in tandem. Pierre caught a glimpse of the calm, handsome, fat, and white face of a man in a three-cornered hat. It was one of the marshals. The marshal’s gaze turned to the large, conspicuous figure of Pierre, and in the expression with which this marshal frowned and turned away, Pierre fancied he saw compassion and the desire to conceal it.

The general who led the depot, his face red and frightened, urging on his skinny horse, galloped after the carriage. Several officers came together, with soldiers surrounding them. They all had tensely excited faces.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit? Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit?…”†730 Pierre heard.

As the marshal