‘And you didn’t feel sorry for them at all?’ asked Makhin.
‘No, I didn’t feel sorry. I didn’t understand at that time.’
‘Well, and how do you feel towards them now?’ Stepan smiled sadly.
‘Now, you could roast me alive, but I wouldn’t do such a thing again.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I’ve come to see that all men are brothers.’
‘All right, so I am your brother, am I?’
‘Of course you are.’
‘What, I am your brother, though I am condemning you to penal servitude?’
‘That’s only because you don’t understand.’
‘And what don’t I understand?’
‘You can’t understand, if you are passing judgement on me.’
‘Well, let us get on. So where did you go after that?…’
Makhin was struck most of all by what he learned from the prison warden about Pelageyushkin’s influence on the executioner Makhorkin who, at the risk of corporal punishment, had refused to carry out his official duties.
VII
At an evening party at the house of the Yeropkins, where there were two marriageable daughters both of whom Makhin was courting, after the singing of romances (at which the highly musical Makhin distinguished himself as second singer and as accompanist), Makhin was giving a faithful, detailed account – his memory was excellent – and a quite impartial account, of the strange criminal who had brought about the conversion of the executioner. Makhin was able to remember and describe everything so well, precisely because he was always utterly impartial towards the people he had to deal with. He did not and could not enter into the spiritual state of other people, and for this reason he was extremely good at recalling everything that had happened to them and all that they had done or said.
But Pelageyushkin had aroused his interest. He made no attempt to put himself in Stepan’s place but he could not help wondering ‘What is going on in his mind?’ and although he came to no conclusions he felt that this was something of interest, and so he was giving a thorough account of the whole case at this soirée: the executioner’s repudiation of his duties, the warden’s stories about Pelageyushkin’s strange behaviour, his reading of the Gospels, and the powerful influence he exerted on his fellow-prisoners.
Makhin’s story intrigued everyone present, but it was of particular interest to the Yeropkins’ younger daughter Liza, who was eighteen years old, had just completed her studies at a young ladies’ academy, and was beginning to realize the darkness and narrowness of the thoroughly false environment in which she had been brought up – she was like a swimmer who had burst through the surface of the water and was eagerly gulping in the fresh air of life. She started to question Makhin about the details of the case and about how and why such a transformation had come upon Pelageyushkin, and Makhin told her what he had learned from Pelageyushkin about his most recent murder, and how the meekness and docility of this extraordinarily good-hearted woman with no fear of death, whom he had murdered, had vanquished him and opened his eyes, and how his reading of the Gospels had then completed the process.
For a long time that night Liza Yeropkina could not get to sleep. For some months already a struggle had been going on within her between the life of fashionable society, in which her sister had been trying to involve her, and her attraction towards Makhin, which was mingled with a desire to reform him. And now it was this latter impulse which gained the upper hand. She had already heard something of the woman who had been murdered. Now, however, after that dreadful death and what Makhin had told her based on Pelageyushkin’s account of it, she knew the whole story of Mariya Semyonovna in detail and she was deeply moved by all that she had learned about her.
Liza felt an overwhelming desire to be a woman of the sort that Mariya Semyonovna had been. She was rich and she was afraid Makhin might be courting her simply for her money. And so she decided that she would give away the property she owned, and she confided her idea to Makhin.
Makhin was glad to have this opportunity of showing his disinterestedness, and he told Liza that he did not love her for her money, and this decision of hers, which seemed to him so magnanimous, moved him deeply. Meanwhile a struggle had begun between Liza and her mother (the estate had come to her from her father), who would not permit her to give her property away. Makhin gave Liza all the help he could. And the more he pursued this course of action, the more he began to understand this new world of spiritual aspirations which had formerly seemed to him so strange and alien, and which he now saw in Liza.
VIII
In the communal cell everything had grown quiet. Stepan was lying in his place on the plank-bed, not yet asleep. Vasily went over to him, and tugging at his foot, gave him a wink as a sign that he should get up and come across to where he was standing. Stepan slipped down from the plank-bed and went up to Vasily.
‘Well now, brother,’ said Vasily, ‘I want you to help me, if you will.’
‘What sort of help do you need?’
‘I’m thinking of escaping.’
And Vasily explained that he had made all the necessary preparations for an escape attempt.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to stir up some trouble with them’ – he pointed at the prisoners lying asleep. ‘They’ll complain about me to the orderlies. I’ll be transferred to the cells upstairs and once I’m there I know what to do. But I’ll be relying on you to give me a hand to get out of the mortuary.’
‘I can do that. But where will you go?’
‘I’ll go wherever I feel like going. I reckon there’s no lack of bad characters out there.’
‘That’s true, brother, but it’s not for us to judge them.’
‘What I mean is, I’m no murderer, am I? I’ve never done in a single soul, and what’s a bit of stealing? What’s so wrong about that? Aren’t they always robbing poor devils like you and me?’
‘That’s their affair. They’ll answer for it.’
‘So are we just meant to stand there and watch them get on with it? Like, I cleaned out a church once. What harm did that do anybody? What I’ve got in mind now isn’t to rob some measly little shop. I’m going to go for some big money, and then give it away to them as need it.’
At that moment one of the prisoners sat up on the plank-bed and began listening to what they were saying. Stepan and Vasily went their separate ways.
The next day Vasily did what he had planned to do. He began complaining about the bread, saying that it was not properly cooked, and he urged the other prisoners to call the warden in and lodge an official complaint. The warden arrived and shouted abuse at them, and on discovering that Vasily was the one behind the whole thing he gave orders that he should be put into solitary confinement in one of the cells on the floor above.
That was exactly what Vasily needed.
IX
Vasily was thoroughly familiar with the upstairs cell into which they had put him. He knew how the floor was constructed and as soon as he got in there he set about taking it up. When he had managed to worm his way under the floorboards he prised apart the panels which formed the ceiling of the room below and jumped down, into the mortuary. That day there was only one dead body lying on the mortuary table. In the mortuary they kept the sacks used for making the prisoners’ palliasses. Vasily was aware of this and he was counting on it. The padlock on the door had been taken off and the hasp pushed inside. Vasily opened the door and went into the room at the end of the corridor, where a new latrine was being built. In the latrine there was a hole leading from the second floor down to the lowest one, the basement. Groping his way back to the door, Vasily went into the mortuary again, removed the shroud from the corpse, which felt icy cold (he touched it with his hand in taking the shroud off it), then took some sacks and tied them and the shroud together to form a rope, and lowered his rope down the latrine hole; then he made the rope fast round a cross-beam and climbed down it. The rope was not long enough to reach the floor. Just how much too short it was he did not know, but there was nothing for it, so he hung down as far as he could, then jumped.