Chapter 70 Part Two - Eight

When Nekhludoff returned home, he found that the tent had been cleaned up for him to spend the night.In the tent, there was a tall bed with duck down mattresses, two pillows, and a thick red double quilt that couldn't be rolled up. It was closely quilted and patterned. It was probably the dowry of the housekeeper's wife.The steward invited Nekhludoff to eat what was left of lunch, but Nekhludoff declined.The butler apologized for the poor food and equipment, and took his leave, leaving Nekhludoff alone in the room. The refusal of the peasants did not perplex Nekhludoff in the slightest.On the contrary, although the peasants in Kuzminskoye accepted his advice and thanked him repeatedly, while the peasants here did not trust him, and even held him hostile, he felt calm and happy.The tent was stuffy and dirty.Nekhludoff went out, thinking of going into the garden, but thinking of that night, thinking of the windows of the maids' room, thinking of the back porch, he did not want to go again to those places stained by criminal past.He sat on the porch again, inhaling the warm air that was rich with the scent of young birch leaves, and looked a long time over the twilight garden, listening to the gurgling of the mill, the song of the nightingale, and the cry of a little bird in the bush near the porch. Monotone cry.The light in the butler's window went out.In the east, behind the barn, the rising moon casts a silver light.The lightning in the sky illuminates more and more clearly the lush gardens in bloom and the decaying houses.There was thunder in the distance, and a third of the sky was covered by dark clouds.Nightingales and other birds stopped singing.Over the sound of running water in the mill came the quacking of geese.Then in the village, in the housekeeper's yard, the early roosters began to crow--they always crowed very early on sultry nights with thunderstorms.As the saying goes: When the night is good, the rooster crows early.For Nekhludoff that night was more than a good one.It was a night of joy and happiness for him.He was still a pure boy at that time, and he spent a happy summer here, and all the scenes are vivid in his mind now.He felt not only as happy now as he had been then, but as happy as he had been in the best time of his life.He not only remembered, but relived, that at the age of fourteen he had prayed to God to reveal the truth to him.He still remembers how when he was a child, he fell on his mother's lap, cried and said goodbye to her, and promised her to be a good child forever and never make her sad.He remembered making an agreement with Nikolenka Irtenev as a child that they would help each other lead a good life and try to make everyone happy.

Now he remembered the temptation he had experienced in Kuzminskoye: he was attached to his house, woods, farm and land.Now he asks himself: Is he still reluctant to part with those things?He even found it strange that he would miss those things.He thought of the sights he had seen during the day: the woman with her children who had lost her husband, who was imprisoned for cutting down trees in his Nekhludoff's woods; and the absurd Matryo Na, she actually thinks, or at least talks about, that a woman like them deserves to be a mistress; The unfortunate child who lived and smiled wryly, was dying because of lack of food; the emaciated pregnant woman was forced to work for him for nothing because she was too tired to watch the hungry cow.He thought of the prison, the yin and yang head, the prison cell, the stench and the shackles, and at the same time thought of his own life and the extravagant life of all the nobles in the capital.The matter was so clear that there was no doubt about it.

A nearly full moon rose behind the barn, covering the yard with black shadows, and the iron roof of the dilapidated house was shining brightly. A nightingale was silent for a while, as if unwilling to live up to the bright moonlight, it sang again in the garden. Nekhludoff remembered how in Kuzminskoe he had begun to think about his life, to decide what and how to do in the future.He remembered how he was stuck with these problems and couldn't solve them because he was worried about every problem.Now that he was asking these questions to himself, he couldn't help being surprised to find them so simple.So it becomes simple, because now he no longer thinks about what will happen to him, and is not even interested in these problems, but only what should be done logically.Strange to say, he has no idea what to do for himself, but he knows exactly what to do for others.Now he understands that the land must be given to the peasants, because it is abominable to keep it.He understood that Katyusha should not be left behind, but should be helped to atone for her at any cost.He understood that everything related to judgment and punishment must be studied, analyzed, and understood, because he saw things that others did not.He didn't know what the consequences of all this would be, but he understood that no matter it was the first thing, the second thing, or the third thing, he had to do it.This strong belief made him happy.

Dark clouds approached.Instead of a hazy flash of lightning in the distance, what I saw now was bright lightning that illuminated the entire yard, the hut, and the collapsed porch.Thunder rumbled overhead.The birds had stopped singing, but the leaves were rustling, and the wind blew right into the porch where Nekhludoff was sitting, and stirred his hair.Big drops of rain fell drop by drop, beating the burdock leaves and the tin roof.A bright flash of lightning illuminated the entire sky, and everything was silent for a moment.Before Nekhludoff could count from one to three, there was a thunderclap above his head, and then a thunderclap rumbled through the air.

Nekhludoff went into the room. "Really, really," he thought. "Everything in our lives, the whole meaning of these things, I don't understand and can't understand. Why do I have two aunts? Why is Nikolenka dead and I live? Why is there a Katyu in the world Sha? How could I be so mad at her? Why was there that war? How did I live my life afterward? There is nothing I can do to understand it all, to understand all the things of the Lord. Will, that's within my power. I have no doubts about that. I do it, and I feel at ease." The drizzle had turned into a torrential downpour, dripping off the roof and pattering into a barrel; lightning was lighting up the yard and the house, but less frequently.Nekhludoff went back into the house, undressed, and lay down on the bed, but feared that there might be bedbugs, since the dirty and torn wallpaper probably harbored them.

"Yes, I am not a master but a servant," he thought, and was pleased. His concerns are justified.As soon as he turned off the light, the bugs came to bite him. "Hand over the land and go to Siberia. Siberia is full of fleas, bedbugs, and filth... What's the big deal, since I have to suffer this kind of crime, I can bear it." However, despite his wish, he still couldn't bear this crime.He got up and sat down by the open window, watching the receding clouds and the reappearing moon.