Chapter 37 Part One - Thirty Four

On arriving at the courthouse, Nekhludoff met yesterday's marshal in the corridor, and asked him where the condemned prisoners were kept and whose permission was required to meet such prisoners.Prisoners are being held in separate locations, and visits must be authorized by the prosecutor until the verdict is officially pronounced, the magistrate said. "After the interrogation is over, I'll tell you to go with you. The prosecutor hasn't come yet. Just wait until the interrogation is over. Please come to the jury now. The court will start soon." Nekhludoff felt that the civil servant looked very pitiful today.

He thanked him for his kindness and went to the jury chamber. He had just approached the room when the jurors were emerging from it to the courtroom.The merchant was as happy as yesterday, had eaten and drank again, and seeing Nekhludoff greeted him as if he were an old friend.Nekhludoff was not repelled by Pyotr Gerasimovitch's intimacy and laughter today. Nekhludoff was eager to tell the whole jury about his relationship with the accused woman of the previous day. "Honestly," he thought, "I should have stood up at the trial yesterday and proclaimed my guilt." However, he entered the courtroom with several other jurors, and the same procedure as yesterday began again: It was the cry of "the court is in session", and the three judges with collars mounted on the high platform, and there was silence, and the jurors were seated on high-backed chairs, and the gendarmes, and the tsar The royal statue, the priest again—and Nekhludoff felt at that moment that, although he had a duty to do so, today as yesterday he could not break the solemn atmosphere of the courtroom.

All the preparations before the trial were the same as yesterday, except that the oath of the jurors and the president's speech to them were missing. Today's trial is a case of lock picking and robbery.The defendant was brought before the court by two gendarmes with drawn sabers.This is a twenty-year-old boy, thin and pale, wearing a gray prison robe.He sat alone in the dock, frowning and looking at the people who appeared in court.The young man was accused of breaking the padlock of the storehouse with a partner and stealing from it old rough carpets worth three rubles and sixty-seven kopeks.The indictment alleges that the young man was stopped by the police while walking with an accomplice who was roughing rugs.They both pleaded guilty immediately, and both went to jail.The accomplice was originally a small furnace maker, and soon died in prison.In this way, the young man is left to stand trial alone today.The worn rough rug was placed on the evidence table.

The trial case was exactly the same as yesterday, with all kinds of evidence, incriminating evidence, witnesses, witnesses taking oaths, interrogation, expert witnesses, cross-examination, and so on.When the policeman who was the witness was questioned by the judge, the prosecutor, and the defender, he always answered a few words weakly: "Yes, Your Excellency," or "I don't know, Your Excellency," followed by "Yes, Your Excellency." ... But, despite his soldier's dull air and his succinct speech, it was evident that he pitied the young man and was reluctant to tell the story of his arrest.

Another witness was the owner, the landlord and the owner of the rough rug.The little old man, looking very angry, asked him if those rugs belonged to him, and he reluctantly answered that they were his.When the Deputy Prosecutor asked him what he intended to do with the rugs, and whether he had any great need for them, he flew into a rage, and replied: "Well, damn those rugs, I don't need them at all. If I knew it would cause so much trouble, I wouldn't go looking for them. I'd rather stick a red note upside down, or two, if only Don't bring me here to stand trial. I've paid almost five rubles for the cab ride. I'm not well. I've got a hernia and rheumatism."

That's what the witnesses said.The defendant himself confessed to all of them.He looked around blankly like a little wild animal that had been caught, and at the same time he told the whole story of the crime intermittently. The case was clear enough, but the deputy public prosecutor shrugged his shoulders as yesterday, and asked outlandish questions, trying to hook the cunning criminal. In his statement, he confirmed that the theft occurred in a residential house and the door lock was picked, so the young man deserves the most severe punishment. The court-appointed defender testified that the burglary had not been committed in an inhabitant's premises, so that although the crime was undeniable, the offender was not a serious danger to society, as the Deputy Public Prosecutor had affirmed.

The presiding judge again pretended to be impartial and impartial as yesterday, and explained in detail to the jurors those rules that they had known for a long time and could not have been unaware.The court was paused several times like yesterday, everyone was still smoking, and the civil marshals shouted "the court has opened", and the two gendarmes tried their best to restrain their sleepiness, sitting there with drawn sabers, intimidating the prisoners . It is known through interrogation that this young man was originally sent by his father as an apprentice in a cigarette factory, where he spent five years.This year, the factory owner had a dispute with the workers, and he was fired by the boss.He couldn't find work, he wandered about the city, drinking the last pennies he had.In the small restaurant, he met the little furnace maker who was unemployed earlier than him and drank more fiercely.They got drunk together, broke open the lock late at night, and took the first thing they saw.They were arrested, confessed to stealing the rug, and were thrown in jail.The tinker died without waiting for a trial.Now, the lad is considered a dangerous individual and must be isolated from society and interrogated.

"To say that he is a dangerous person is the same as the female prisoner yesterday," thought Nekhludoff, listening to the people in the courtroom. "They are dangerous, aren't we dangerous?... I am a licentious person, a liar, but people who know my details not only don't despise me, but also respect me. Aren't we dangerous? Even if This young man is the most dangerous person in the entire court. Now that he has been arrested, what should be done with him? "This lad is clearly not a villain, but a very ordinary man. Everyone knows that. He has come to this point only because he has been in the environment that produces such a man. It is therefore clear that, If the lad is not to become such a man, he must work hard to eliminate the circumstances that produce such unfortunate people.

"But what do we do? We take such a young man who has fallen into our hands by accident, knowing that there are thousands of such people roaming the world, and we put him in a prison and let him do nothing all day long." , or do some harmful and boring labor, make friends with a group of people who are as weak and incompetent as he is in life and thus lose their way, and then put him among a group of corrupt and degenerate people at the expense of the state treasury, and exile him from Moscow Province to Irkut Tsk province. "Instead of doing anything to eliminate the circumstances that produce such people, we encourage the institutions that produce them—factories, workshops, workshops, taverns, taverns, brothels. Not only do we not abolish such institutions, They are also considered essential, encouraged and regulated.

"We cultivated not just one person in this way, but tens of millions. Then we arrested one, thinking that we had done a big thing, guaranteed our own safety, and didn't have to do anything anymore. We send him from the Moscow province to the Irkutsk province," Nekhludoff sat beside the colonel, listening to the different tones of the defender, the prosecutor and the judge, and watching their self-righteous gestures, thinking emotionally with. "Well, what a waste of energy it takes to play such a play," Nekhludoff continued, looking around the great court, at the portraits, lamps, armchairs, military uniforms, thick walls and windows.He thought of this magnificent building, and of the whole still more magnificent institution, with its vast contingent of bureaucrats, clerks, guards, orderlies, and so on.There are teams of this kind not only here, but all over Russia, and they are paid to perform such silly farces. "What would happen if we used one per cent of this energy to help the outcast? But now we see them only as a labor force that can serve our peace and comfort. In fact, When he came to the city from the countryside because of his poor family, it would be all right if someone took pity on him and gave him alms." Nekhludoff looked at the young man's frightened sick face and thought to himself, "Or, when he enters the city If, after working twelve hours in the factory, he was dragged to the tavern by his older companions, if someone said to him, "Don't go, Vanya, it's not good to go there," the young man would not Will go, will not fall, will not do bad things.

"But no one has ever pitied him since he lived as an apprentice in the city, shaved his head to prevent lice, and went shopping for his masters. On the contrary, since he lived Since I came to the city, I have heard from my master and my companions, "whoever can drink, whoever can curse, whoever can fight, whoever can be dissolute, is a good man". "Afterwards, the unhealthy heavy labor, alcoholism, and debauchery damaged his body and mind, and he became dull, frivolous, despondent, wandering around the city aimlessly, and slipping into other people's sheds in a daze. from where the useless old rugs were dragged, and we, well-fed, well-fed, educated, instead of trying to undo the cause of the lad's depravity, punished him, trying to correct it. kind of thing. "It's terrible! Whether this situation is chiefly due to cruelty or absurdity, no one can say. But both cruelty and absurdity have reached the highest point." Nekhludoff was so absorbed in thinking about this question that he was no longer listening to the trial.These thoughts frightened him himself.He wondered how he hadn't noticed this before, and how no one else had seen it.