They went off and I continued on my way more warily than before, at last reaching my quarters safe and sound.
I was staying with an old Cossack non-commissioned officer, whom I liked because of his kindly nature and particularly because of his pretty daughter, Nastya.
She was waiting for me as usual at the gate, wrapped in a fur coat; the moon shone on her sweet lips now blue from the cold of the night. Seeing me, she smiled, but I had other things on my mind. "Good night, Nastya," I said, passing by. She was about to say something in reply, but sighed instead.
I locked the door of my room, lit a candle and flung myself on the bed. Tonight, however, sleep eluded me for longer than usual. The east was already beginning to grow pale when I fell asleep, but evidently the heavens had ordained that I was not to sleep this night. At four o'clock in the morning two fists banged at my window. I sprang up-what was the matter? "Wake up and get dressed!" several voices shouted. I dressed hastily and went out. "Do you know what's happened?" the three officers who had come for me said to me in chorus; they were as white as death.
"What?" "Vulić has been killed." I was stupefied. "Yes, killed!" they went on. "Let's go, quick." "Where to?" "We'll tell you on the way."
We set off. They told me everything that had happened, adding to the story various observations concerning the strange predestination that had saved him from certain death half an hour before he died. Vulić had been walking alone along a dark street, when the drunken Cossack who had slashed up the pig bumped into him, and might perhaps have gone on without paying any attention to him had Vulić not stopped suddenly and said: "Who you looking for, boy?"
"You!" the Cossack answered, striking him with his saber and splitting him from the shoulder nearly to the heart... The two Cossacks whom I had seen and who were pursuing the murderer reached the spot, and picked up the wounded man, but he was already breathing his last and mouthed only the words: "He was right!" I alone understood the dark meaning of these words-they referred to me. I had involuntarily predicted the poor man's fate. My instinct had not failed me-I had indeed read on his altered features the stamp of death coming soon.
The murderer had locked himself in a vacant hut at the far end of the settlement, and that's where we went. A large number of women were running in the same direction, wailing as they went. Every now and then a Cossack sprang belatedly out into the street, hurriedly buckling on a dagger, and ran past us. There was a fearful commotion.
At last we arrived on the scene to find a crowd gathered around the hut, whose doors and shutters had been fastened from the inside. Officers and Cossacks were holding a hot argument and the women kept howling and lamenting. Among them I noticed an old woman whose imposing face expressed frantic despair. She was seated on a thick log, her elbows on her knees and her hands supporting her head. She was the murderer's mother. At times her lips moved... was it with a prayer or a curse?
In the meantime, some decision had to be made and the perpetrator arrested. But no one was anxious to go in first.
I went up to the window and looked in through a crack in a shutter. The man lay on the floor, holding a pistol in his right hand. A bloodstained saber lay beside him. His face was pale, and his expressive eyes rolled fearfully. At times he shuddered and clutched at his head, as if hazily recollecting the happenings of the previous day. There did not seem to be much resolve in his uneasy glance and I told the major that there was no reason why he shouldn't order the Cossacks to break down the door and rush him, for it would be better to do so now rather than later when the man would've fully recovered his senses.
Just then an old captain of the Cossacks went up to the door and called to the man inside by name. The latter responded.
"You've sinned, brother Yefimych," said the Cossack captain. "So there's nothing you can do but give yourself up!"
"I won't!" replied the Cossack.
"You should fear God's anger! You are not a heathen Chechen, you're an honest Christian. You've gone astray and it can't be helped. You can't escape your fate!"
"I won't give myself up!" the Cossack shouted menacingly, and we could hear the click of the pistol as he cocked it.
"Hey, missus!" the Cossack captain said to the old woman. "You speak to your son-maybe he'll listen to you... After all, this sort of thing is only defying God. Look, the gentlemen have been waiting for two hours now."
The old woman looked at him intently and shook her head.
"Vasiliy Petrovich," said the Cossack captain, walking over to the major, "he won't give himself up-I know him. And if we break in the door, he'll kill many of our men. Wouldn't it be better if you ordered him to be shot? There is a wide crack in the shutter."
At that moment, a strange thought flashed through my mind; like Vulić, I thought of putting fate to a test.
"Wait," I said to the major, "I'll take him alive." Telling the Cossack captain to keep him talking and stationing three Cossacks at the entrance with instructions to break in the door and to rush to help me as soon as the signal was given, I walked around the hut and approached the fateful window, my heart pounding.
"Hey there, you donkey!" shouted the Cossack captain. "Are you making fun of us or what? Or maybe you think we won't be able to capture you?" He began hammering at the door with all his strength, while I, pressing my eye to the hole, followed the movements of the Cossack inside, who did not expect an attack from this side. Then I suddenly broke off the shutter and threw myself through the window, head first. The pistol went off next to my ear and the bullet tore off an epaulet. The smoke that filled the room, however, prevented my adversary from finding his saber, which lay beside him. I hugged him in my arms – the Cossacks broke in, and in less than three minutes the criminal was tied up and led off under guard. The people left for home and the officers congratulated me-and indeed they had reason to do so.
After all this, one might think, how could one help becoming a fatalist? But who knows for certain whether he is convinced of anything or not? And how often we mistake a deception of the senses or an error of reason for conviction!
I prefer to doubt everything. Such a disposition does not preclude a resolute character. On the contrary, as far as I am concerned, I always advance more boldly when I don't know what is waiting me for me. After all, nothing worse than death can happen-and death you can't escape!
After returning to the fort, I told Maksim Maksimich everything I had seen and experienced, and wanted to hear his opinion about predestination. At first he didn't understand the word, but I explained it to him as best I could, whereupon he said, wisely shaking his head: "Yes, sir! It's a funny business that! By the way, these Asiatic pistol cocks often miss fire if they are poorly oiled, or if you don't press hard enough with your finger. I must admit I don't like those Circassian rifles either. They are a bit inconvenient for the likes of us-the butt is so small that unless you watch out you can get your nose scorched... Their sabers, now, are a different matter-I take my cap off to them!"
Then he added after thinking a little more: "Yes, I'm sorry for that poor man... Why the hell did he stop to talk to a drunk at night! I suppose, though, that all that happened to him was already written in that big book[113] when he was born!"
I could get nothing more out of him. In general he doesn't like metaphysical talk.
1837-9[114]
113
we've added "big book" here – it's our predestined fate, the mythical story that the author God has already assigned every detail to our mortal lives, and supposedly written it in a book available for consultation in heaven. Note the parallel to a similar expression at the start of this novel.
114
Another online edition of this work can be found at the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center. That English translation, entitled "The Heart of a Russian," by J. H. Wisdom Marr Murray, N.Y.: Knopf, 1916, has a different order to the chapters and has heavy Victorian prose and sketchy footnotes. However, the edition, by Judy Boss, Carolyn Fay, and David Seaman, does have page numbers and a few color illustrations. We did not refer to it when doing this edition. A text-only version of that translation was released in Project Gutenberg in May, 1997.
For further references, please see the books by Cornwell and Nabokov previously cited, as they contain notes, a map, chronologies, excerpts from critical material, and everything you need.