“Decide one thing, just one thing, for me!” he said (as if everything now depended on me). “My wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and my children, even if they are not stripped of rank and property, my children will become a convict’s children, and that forever. And what a memory, what a memory I shall leave in their hearts!”
I was silent.
“And how to part with them, to leave them forever? For it will be forever, forever!”
I sat silently whispering a prayer to myself. Finally I got up, I was frightened.
“Well?” he looked at me.
“Go,” I said, “tell them. All will pass, the truth alone will remain. Your children , when they grow up, will understand how much magnanimity there was in your great resolution.”
He left me then, as if he had indeed made up his mind to it. Yet he still kept coming to me for more than two weeks, every evening, preparing himself, still unable to make up his mind. He tormented my heart. One time he would come determinedly and say with deep feeling:
“I know that paradise will come to me, will come at once, the moment I tell. For fourteen years I have been in hell. I want to suffer. I will embrace suffering and begin to live. One can go through the world with a lie, but there is no going back. Now I do not dare to love not only my neighbor, but even my own children. Lord, but perhaps my children really will understand the cost of my suffering and will not condemn me! The Lord is not in power but in truth.”
“Everyone will understand your deed,” I said to him, “if not now, they will understand later, for you will have served the truth, not earthly truth, but a higher one ...”
And he would go away seeming comforted, and the next day he would suddenly come again, malicious, pale, and say mockingly:
“Each time I come in, you look at me with such curiosity: What, you still have not told?’ Wait, do not despise me so much. It is not as easy to do as you may think. Perhaps I shall not do it at all. You would not go and denounce me then, would you, eh?” Yet not only would I have been afraid to look at him with senseless curiosity, I was even afraid to glance at him. This torment made me ill, and my soul was full of tears. I was even unable to sleep at night.
“I have just now come from my wife,” he went on. “Do you understand what a wife is? My children, as I was leaving, called out to me: ‘Good-bye, papa, come back soon and read to us from
His eyes flashed, his lips trembled. Suddenly he struck the table with his fist so that the things on it jumped—he was such a mild man, it was the first time he had done anything like that.
“But is there any need?” he exclaimed, “is there any necessity? No one was condemned, no one was sent to hard labor because of me, the servant died of illness. And I have been punished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And they will not believe me at all, they will not believe one of my proofs. Is there any need to tell, is there any need? I am ready to suffer still, all my life, for the blood I have shed, only so as not to strike at my wife and children. Would it be just to ruin them along with myself? Are we not mistaken? Where is the truth here? And will people know this truth, will they appreciate it, will they respect it?”
“Lord!” I thought to myself, “he thinks about people’s respect at such a moment!” And I felt so much pity for him then that I believe I would have shared his lot if it would have made it easier for him. I could see that he was nearly in a frenzy. I was horrified, having understood by then, not with reason alone but with my living soul, how great was the cost of such a resolution.
“Decide my fate!” he exclaimed again.
“Go and tell,” I whispered to him. There was little voice left in me, but I whispered it firmly. Then I took the Gospel from the table, the Russian translation,[206] and showed him John, chapter 12, verse 24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” I had read this verse just before he came.
He read it.
“True,” he said, and smiled bitterly. “Yes, in these books,” he said, after a pause, “one finds all sorts of terrible things. It is easy to shove them under someone’s nose. Who wrote them, were they human beings?”
“The Holy Spirit wrote them,” I said.
“It’s easy for you to babble,” he smiled again, but this time almost hatefully. I again took the book, opened it to a different place, and showed him the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 31. He read: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” He read it and threw the book aside. He even began trembling all over.
