For What?

Za chto?

Leo Tolstoy | Vol. 42, pp. 84-106

I

In the spring of 1830, to Pan Yachevski at his ancestral estate of Rozhanka there arrived the only son of his late friend, young Józef Migurski.

Yachevski was a sixty-five-year-old man with a broad forehead, broad shoulders, and a broad chest, with long white mustaches on a brick-red face—a patriot from the time of the second partition of Poland. As a youth he had served together with the elder Migurski under the banners of Kosciuszko, and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the apocalyptic—as he called her—harlot Catherine II and that traitor, her loathsome lover Poniatowski, and he believed just as firmly in the restoration of the Polish Commonwealth as he believed at night that the sun would rise again in the morning. In the year 1812 he commanded a regiment in the forces of Napoleon, whom he adored. The downfall of Napoleon grieved him, but he did not despair of restoration, even if the Kingdom of Poland was maimed. Alexander I’s opening of the Sejm in Warsaw revived his hopes, but the Holy Alliance, the reaction throughout Europe, and the capriciousness of Constantine postponed the fulfillment of his cherished desire. From 1825 Yachevski settled in the country and lived continuously at his Rozhanka, occupying his time with farming, hunting, and reading newspapers and letters through which he still ardently followed political events in his fatherland. He was married to his second wife, a poor but beautiful minor noblewoman, and this marriage was unhappy. He neither loved nor respected this second wife of his, was burdened by her, and treated her badly, coarsely, as if taking out on her his mistake in remarrying. There were no children from his second wife. From his first wife there were two daughters: the elder, Wanda, a stately beauty who knew the value of her beauty and was bored in the country; and the younger, Albina, her father’s favorite, a lively, bony girl with curly blond hair and large, shining blue eyes set wide apart, like her father’s.

Albina was fifteen when Józef Migurski arrived. Migurski had visited the Yachevskis before as a student, in Vilna where they spent their winters, and had courted Wanda; but now for the first time he came to them in the country as a fully grown, free man. The arrival of young Migurski was pleasant to all the inhabitants of Rozhanka. To old Yachevski, Józef Migurski was pleasant because he reminded him of his friend, Józef’s father, at the time when they were both young, and also because he spoke with fervor and the rosiest hopes about the revolutionary ferment not only in Poland but abroad, from where he had just arrived. To Pani Yachevska, Migurski was pleasant because in the presence of guests old Yachevski restrained himself and did not scold her for everything as he usually did. To Wanda he was pleasant because she was sure Migurski had come for her sake and intended to propose to her; she was prepared to give him her consent but intended—as she told herself—lui tenir la dragée haute. Albina was glad that everyone was glad. Not only Wanda was sure that Migurski had come with the intention of proposing to her. Everyone in the house thought so—from old Yachevski to the nurse Ludwika—though no one spoke of it.

And this was true. Migurski had come with this intention, but after spending a week, troubled and upset by something, he left without proposing. Everyone was surprised by this unexpected departure, and no one except Albina understood the reason for it. Albina knew that the cause of this strange departure was she herself. Throughout his stay at Rozhanka she had noticed that Migurski was especially excited and cheerful only with her. He treated her as a child, joked with her, teased her, but with a woman’s instinct she sensed that in his manner toward her there was not the attitude of an adult toward a child, but of a man toward a woman. She saw this in the admiring glance and tender smile with which he met her when she entered a room and saw her out when she left. She did not give herself a clear account of what this was, but his attitude toward her made her happy, and she involuntarily tried to do what pleased him. And everything she did pleased him. And so in his presence she did everything she did with special excitement. He was pleased by the way she raced the beautiful borzoi that leaped upon her and licked her glowing, radiant face; he was pleased by how at the slightest provocation she burst into contagiously ringing laughter; he was pleased by how, still laughing merrily with her eyes, she assumed a serious expression during the priest’s tedious sermon; he was pleased by how with extraordinary accuracy and comedy she imitated now the old nurse, now the drunken neighbor, now Migurski himself, instantly passing from the portrayal of one to another. He was pleased, above all, by her rapturous joy in life, as if she had just now fully discovered all the charm of life and was hastening to enjoy it. He was pleased by this special joy of hers, and this joy was aroused and intensified precisely because she knew that it delighted him. And therefore only Albina knew why Migurski, who had come to propose to Wanda, left without doing so. Though she would not have dared to say this to anyone, did not say it clearly even to herself, in the depths of her soul she knew that he had wanted to love her sister and had fallen in love with her, Albina. Albina was very surprised by this, considering herself entirely insignificant compared with the clever, educated, beautiful Wanda, but she could not help knowing that it was so, and could not help rejoicing in it, because she herself had fallen in love with Migurski with all the strength of her soul—had fallen in love as one loves only the first time and only once in a lifetime.

II

At the end of summer the newspapers brought news of the Paris revolution. Following this came reports of disturbances being prepared in Warsaw. Yachevski awaited with fear and hope with each post the news of Constantine’s assassination and the beginning of revolution. At last in November there arrived at Rozhanka first the news of the attack on the Belvedere, of the flight of Constantine Pavlovich, then that the Sejm had declared the Romanov dynasty deprived of the Polish throne, that Chlopicki had been declared dictator, and the Polish people were free once more. The uprising had not yet reached Rozhanka, but all its inhabitants followed its course, expected it to come to them, and prepared for it. Old Yachevski corresponded with an old acquaintance, one of the leaders of the uprising, received mysterious Jewish agents on revolutionary rather than commercial business, and prepared to join the uprising when the time came. Pani Yachevska not only as always, but more than ever, concerned herself with her husband’s material comforts and, as always, thereby irritated him more and more. Wanda sent her diamonds to a friend in Warsaw so that the money realized could be given to the revolutionary committee. Albina was interested only in what Migurski was doing. Through her father she knew that he had joined Dwernicki’s detachment, and she tried to learn everything that concerned that detachment. Migurski wrote twice: once announcing that he had joined the army, another time, in mid-February, writing an ecstatic letter about the Polish victory at Stoczek, where they took six Russian guns and prisoners: “Zwycięstwo Polaków i klęska Moskali! Wiwat!” he ended the letter. Albina was in raptures. She studied the map, calculated where and when the Muscovites would be finally defeated, and turned pale and trembled when her father slowly opened the packets brought from the post. Once her stepmother, coming into her room, found her before the mirror in trousers and a confederate cap. Albina was preparing to run away from home in men’s clothing to join the Polish army. Her stepmother told her father. Her father summoned his daughter and, concealing his sympathy for her, even his admiration, gave her a severe reprimand, demanding that she put the foolish thoughts of participating in the war out of her head. “A woman has other work: to love and console those who sacrifice themselves for the fatherland,” he told her. Now she was needed by him, constituting his joy and consolation, and the time would come when she would be needed by a husband as well. He knew how to influence her. He hinted to her that he was lonely and unhappy, and kissed her. She pressed her face to him, hiding the tears that nonetheless dampened the sleeve of his dressing gown, and promised him not to undertake anything without his consent.

III

Only people who have experienced what the Poles experienced after the partition of Poland and the subjugation of one part of it to the power of the hated Germans, another to the power of the still more hated Muscovites, can understand the rapture that the Poles experienced in 1830 and 1831, when after former unhappy attempts at liberation a new hope of freedom seemed realizable. But this hope did not last long. The forces were too unequal, and the revolution was crushed once more. Once more tens of thousands of mindlessly obedient Russian people were driven into Poland, and under the command now of Diebitsch, now of Paskevich, and of the supreme director Nicholas I, not knowing themselves why they were doing this, having soaked the earth with their own blood and that of their brother Poles, crushed them and once again handed them over to the power of weak and insignificant people who desired neither freedom nor the oppression of the Poles, but only one thing: the satisfaction of their greed and childish vanity.

Warsaw was taken, the separate detachments were defeated. Hundreds, thousands of people were shot, beaten to death with sticks, exiled. Among those exiled was young Migurski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself was enrolled as a soldier in a line battalion in Uralsk.

The Yachevskis spent the winter of 1832 in Vilna for the old man’s health, as after 1831 he suffered from heart disease. Here a letter came to them from Migurski from the fortress. He wrote that however hard what he had endured and what awaited him had been, he was glad that he had had to suffer for his fatherland, that he did not despair of the sacred cause for which he had given part of his life and was ready to give the rest of it, and that if tomorrow a new opportunity arose he would do the same. Reading the letter aloud, the old man sobbed at this place and for a long time could not continue. In the rest of the letter, which Wanda read aloud, Migurski wrote that whatever his plans and dreams had been during that last visit of his, which would remain forever the brightest point in all his life, he now neither could nor wished to speak of them.

Wanda and Albina each understood the meaning of these words in her own way, but neither explained to anyone how she understood them. At the end of the letter Migurski sent greetings to all and, among other things, addressed Albina in that same playful tone he had used with her during his visit, asking whether she still ran as fast, outrunning the borzois, and whether she still mimicked everyone so well. He wished the old man health, the mother success in her household affairs, Wanda a worthy husband, and Albina the continuation of her same joy in life.

IV

Old Yachevski’s health grew worse and worse, and in 1833 the whole family moved abroad. Wanda met in Baden a wealthy Polish émigré and married him. The old man’s illness rapidly worsened, and at the beginning of 1833 he died abroad in Albina’s arms. He would not let his wife care for him and to the last minute could not forgive her for the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Yachevska returned with Albina to the country.

Albina’s main interest in life was Migurski. In her eyes he was the greatest hero and martyr, to whose service she resolved to devote her life. Even before going abroad she had begun to correspond with him, at first on her father’s behalf, then on her own. After her father’s death she returned to Russia and continued to correspond with him, and when she turned eighteen she announced to her stepmother that she had decided to go to Uralsk to Migurski in order to marry him there. Her stepmother began to reproach Migurski for wanting selfishly to ease his hard situation by attracting a wealthy girl and making her share his misfortune. Albina grew angry and declared to her stepmother that only she could attribute such base thoughts to a man who had sacrificed everything for his people, that Migurski, on the contrary, had refused the help she had offered him, and that she had irrevocably decided to go to him and marry him if only he would grant her this happiness. Albina was of age and had money—those 300,000 zlotys that their late uncle had left to the two nieces. So nothing could detain her.

In November 1833 Albina said farewell to her family, who saw her off with tears as if to her death, to a distant unknown land of barbarous Muscovy, got into her father’s carriage, newly repaired for the long journey, with old faithful nurse Ludwika whom she was taking with her, and set off on the long road.

V

Migurski lived not in the barracks but in separate quarters of his own. Nicholas Pavlovich required that the demoted Poles not only bear all the hardship of the harsh soldier’s life, but also endure all the humiliations to which common soldiers were subjected at that time; but most of those simple people who had to carry out these orders understood the full weight of the position of these demoted men and, despite the danger of not fulfilling his will, where they could, did not fulfill it. The semi-literate battalion commander who had risen from the ranks, the commander of the battalion in which Migurski was enrolled, understood the position of the former wealthy, educated young man who had lost everything, pitied and respected him, and granted him all kinds of indulgences. And Migurski could not help appreciating the good nature of this lieutenant-colonel with white side-whiskers on his puffy soldier’s face, and to repay him agreed to tutor his sons, who were preparing for the cadet corps, in mathematics and French.

Migurski’s life in Uralsk, which had now dragged on for seven months, was not only monotonous, dreary, and dull, but also hard. Apart from the battalion commander, with whom he tried to keep at as great a distance as possible, his only acquaintance was one exiled Pole, an uneducated and scheming, unpleasant man who was engaged in the fish trade here. But the main hardship of Migurski’s life was that he found it difficult to accustom himself to want. After the confiscation of his estate he had no means at all and managed by selling the gold items he had left.

His only and great joy in life after his exile was his correspondence with Albina, the poetic, sweet image of whom since his visit to Rozhanka had remained in his soul and now in exile grew more and more beautiful. In one of her first letters she asked him, among other things, what the words in his old letter meant: “whatever my wishes and dreams may have been.” He replied that now he could confess to her that his dreams had been of calling her his wife. She replied that she loved him. He replied that it would have been better if she had not written this, because it was terrible for him to think of what might have been and was now impossible. She replied that it was not only possible but would certainly be. He replied that he could not accept her sacrifice, that in his present situation it was impossible. Soon after this letter of his he received notification of 2,000 zlotys. By the postmark on the envelope and the handwriting he recognized that it had been sent by Albina, and he remembered that in one of his first letters he had jokingly described to her the pleasure he now experienced in earning by his lessons everything he needed—money for tea, tobacco, and even books. Putting the money into another envelope, he sent it back with a letter in which he begged her not to spoil their sacred relationship with money. He had plenty of everything, he wrote, and was completely happy knowing that he had such a friend as she. At this their correspondence stopped.

In November, Migurski was sitting at the lieutenant-colonel’s, giving the boys a lesson, when the sound of an approaching post bell was heard and sleigh runners creaked on the frosty snow and stopped at the entrance. The children jumped up to find out who had arrived. Migurski remained in the room, looking at the door and awaiting the children’s return, but the lieutenant-colonel’s wife herself came through the door.

“Some ladies have come for you, ‘Pan,’ asking for you,” she said. “Probably from your parts, they look like Poles.”

If Migurski had been asked whether he considered Albina’s arrival possible, he would have said it was unthinkable; but in the depths of his soul he had been expecting her. The blood rushed to his heart, and gasping for breath he ran out to the entrance hall. In the entrance hall a fat, pockmarked woman was untying the kerchief on her head. Another woman was coming through the door of the colonel’s quarters. Hearing footsteps behind her, she looked around. From under her hood shone the joyful, wide-set, sparkling blue eyes with frost-covered lashes of Albina. He stood transfixed, not knowing how to meet her, how to greet her. “Józef!” she cried, calling him as her father had called him and as she called him to herself, threw her arms around his neck, pressed her flushed cold face to his, and laughed and cried.

Learning who Albina was and why she had come, the kind colonel’s wife received her and lodged her at her house until the wedding.

VI

The good-natured lieutenant-colonel obtained permission from higher authorities. A priest was sent for from Orenburg, and the Migurskis were married. The battalion commander’s wife was the matron of honor, one of the pupils carried the icon, and Brzozowski, an exiled Pole, was the best man.

Albina, strange as it may seem, passionately loved her husband but did not know him at all. She was only now getting to know him. It goes without saying that in the living man of flesh and blood she found much that was ordinary and unpoetic that was not in the image she had carried and nurtured in her imagination; but precisely because this was a man of flesh and blood, she found in him much that was simple and good that was not in that abstract image. She had heard from acquaintances and friends of his bravery in war and knew of his courage at the loss of his fortune and freedom, and imagined him a hero, always living an elevated, heroic life; in reality, with all his extraordinary physical strength and bravery, he turned out to be a meek, gentle lamb, the simplest of men, with good-natured jokes, with that same childlike smile of the sensuous mouth surrounded by a blond beard and mustache that had charmed her back in Rozhanka, and with an ever-burning pipe that was especially hard for her during her pregnancy.

Migurski too only now came to know Albina, and in Albina for the first time came to know woman. From the women he had known before his marriage he could not know women. And what he learned in Albina about women in general surprised him and might rather have disillusioned him about women in general, had he not felt toward Albina as Albina a particularly tender and grateful feeling. Toward Albina as woman in general he felt an affectionate, somewhat ironic condescension; but toward Albina as Albina, not only tender love but admiration and a sense of unpayable debt for her sacrifice, which had given him undeserved happiness.

The Migurskis were happy because, having directed all the force of their love toward each other, they experienced among strangers the feeling of two people who have lost their way in winter, freezing and warming each other. The joyful life of the Migurskis was also aided by the participation in their life of the slavishly, self-sacrificingly devoted to her young mistress, good-naturedly grumbling, comical, always falling in love with all men, nurse Ludwika. The Migurskis were happy with their children too. After a year a boy was born. A year and a half later a girl. The boy was a copy of his mother: the same eyes and the same vivacity and grace. The girl was a healthy, beautiful little animal.

The Migurskis were unhappy at being so far from their homeland, and above all at the weight of their unaccustomed humiliated position. Albina especially suffered for this humiliation. He, her Józef, a hero, the ideal of a man, had to stand at attention before every officer, perform rifle drill, go on guard, and obey without a murmur.

Besides this, the news from Poland was most sad. Almost all their close relatives and friends had either been exiled or, having lost everything, had fled abroad. For the Migurskis themselves there was no end in sight to this situation. All attempts to petition for pardon or at least for an improvement in his position, for promotion to officer, achieved nothing. Nicholas Pavlovich held reviews, parades, drills, went to masquerades, flirted with the masks, galloped needlessly around Russia from Chuguev to Novorossiysk, Petersburg and Moscow, frightening the people and running horses to death, and when some bold person dared to request mitigation of the fate of exiled Decembrists or Poles, who suffered for that same love of fatherland that he himself praised, he, thrusting out his chest, fixed his leaden eyes on something or other and said: “Let them serve. It is too early.” As if he knew when it would not be too early, and when the time would come. And all his courtiers—generals, chamberlains, and their wives, who fed near him—were moved by the extraordinary farsightedness and wisdom of this great man.

On the whole, there was still more happiness than unhappiness in the Migurskis’ life. Thus they lived for five years. But suddenly an unexpected, terrible grief overwhelmed them. First the little girl fell ill, two days later the boy fell ill: burned with fever for three days and on the fourth day, without medical help (no one could be found), died. Two days after him the little girl died too.

Albina did not drown herself in the Ural only because she could not without horror imagine her husband’s situation at the news of her suicide. But it was hard for her to live. Always active and caring before, she now left all her cares to Ludwika, sat for hours doing nothing, silently looking at whatever caught her eye, then suddenly jumped up and ran to her little room, and there, not answering the consolations of her husband and Ludwika, wept quietly, only shaking her head and asking them to go away and leave her alone. In summer she went to the children’s grave and sat there, tearing at her heart with memories of what had been and what might have been. She was especially tormented by the thought that the children might have lived if they had lived in a city where medical help could have been available. “For what? For what?” she thought. “Both Józef and I—we want nothing from anyone except that he should live as he was born and as his fathers and grandfathers lived, and I only want to live with him, to love him, to love my little ones, to raise them.” “And suddenly they torment him, exile him, and from me they take what is dearer to me than light. Why? For what?” She put this question to people and to God. And could not imagine the possibility of any answer.

And without this answer there was no life. And her life stopped. The poor life in exile, which she had formerly known how to adorn with her womanly taste and elegance, now became unbearable not only for her but also for Migurski, who suffered for her and did not know how to help her.

VII

At this most difficult time for the Migurskis there arrived in Uralsk a Pole, Rosolowski, who was implicated in the grandiose plan of rebellion and escape organized at that time in Siberia by the exiled priest Sierocinski.

Rosolowski, just like Migurski, just like thousands of people punished by exile to Siberia for wanting to be what they were born—Poles—was implicated in this affair, punished for it with the birch, and given over as a soldier to the same battalion where Migurski was. Rosolowski, a former mathematics teacher, was a tall, stooped, thin man with hollow cheeks and a frowning brow.

On the very first evening of his stay, Rosolowski, sitting over tea at the Migurskis’, began naturally to tell in his slow, calm bass about the affair for which he had suffered so cruelly. The affair consisted in Sierocinski organizing a secret society throughout Siberia, the aim of which was, with the help of Poles enrolled in Cossack and line regiments, to incite the soldiers and convicts, raise the settlers, seize the artillery in Omsk, and liberate everyone.

“But was this really possible?” asked Migurski.

“Quite possible, everything was ready,” said Rosolowski, frowning gloomily, and slowly, calmly told the whole plan of liberation and all the measures taken for the success of the affair and, in case of failure, for saving the conspirators. Success was certain, had not two villains betrayed them. Sierocinski, according to Rosolowski, was a man of genius and great spiritual strength. He died a hero and martyr too. And Rosolowski in his level, calm bass began to tell the details of the execution, at which by order of the authorities he had been obliged to be present together with all those tried in this case.

“Two battalions of soldiers stood in two rows, in a long street, each soldier holding in his hand a supple rod, of such a thickness confirmed by the highest authority that only three could fit into the barrel of a rifle. Dr. Szakalski was led first. Two soldiers led him, and those who had the rods struck him on his bared back when he drew level with them. I saw this only when he approached the place where I stood. Before that I heard only the drumroll, but then, when the whistle of the rods and the sound of the blows on the body became audible, I knew he was approaching. And I saw how the soldiers dragged him by the rifles, and he walked, shuddering and turning his head now to one side, now to the other. And once, when they led him past us, I heard the Russian doctor say to the soldiers: ‘Don’t beat hard, have mercy.’ But they all beat; when they led him past me the second time, he was no longer walking by himself but was being dragged. It was terrible to look at his back. I shut my eyes. He fell and was carried away. Then they led the second. Then the third, then the fourth. All fell, all were carried away, some dead, others barely alive, and we all had to stand and watch. This went on for six hours—from early morning until two in the afternoon. They led the last, Sierocinski himself. I had not seen him for a long time and would not have recognized him, he had aged so. His shaven face was all in wrinkles, pale greenish. His naked body was thin, yellow, the ribs sticking out above the sunken belly. He walked just as all the others did, shuddering and jerking his head at each blow, but he did not groan and loudly recited the prayer: Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.”

“I heard it myself,” Rosolowski rasped rapidly and, closing his mouth, began to breathe heavily through his nose.

Ludwika, sitting by the window, sobbed, covering her face with a kerchief.

“And you feel like describing it all! Beasts—beasts is what they are!” cried Migurski and, throwing down his pipe, jumped up from his chair and with quick steps went into the dark bedroom. Albina sat as if turned to stone, staring at the dark corner.

VIII

The next day Migurski, coming home from drill, was surprised by the sight of his wife, who with light steps, with a radiant face, met him as in the old days and led him into the bedroom.

“Now, Józef, listen.”

“I’m listening. What?”

“I thought all night about what Rosolowski told us. And I’ve decided: I cannot live like this, cannot live here. I cannot! I will die, but I will not stay here.”

“But what is to be done?”

“Flee.”

“Flee? How?”

“I’ve thought it all out. Listen.”

And she told him the plan she had devised that night. The plan was this: he, Migurski, would leave the house in the evening and leave on the bank of the Ural his greatcoat and on the greatcoat a letter in which he would write that he was taking his own life. They would think he had drowned himself. They would search for the body, send papers. But he would hide. She would hide him so that no one would find him. They could live like this for a month. And when everything had settled down, they would run away.

At first her scheme seemed impossible to Migurski, but by the end of the day, when she convinced him with such passion and certainty, he began to agree with her. Besides, he was inclined to agree also because the punishment for an unsuccessful escape, the same punishment Rosolowski had described, would fall on him, Migurski, while success would liberate her, and he saw how hard life here had become for her after the children’s death.

Rosolowski and Ludwika were initiated into the scheme, and after long consultations, changes, and corrections, the escape plan was worked out. At first they wanted Migurski, after being recognized as drowned, to flee alone on foot. Albina would drive out in a carriage and at an agreed place meet him. Such was the first plan. But then, when Rosolowski told of all the failed escape attempts of the past five years in Siberia (in all that time only one lucky man had escaped and saved himself), Albina proposed another plan, that Józef, hidden in the carriage, should travel with her and Ludwika to Saratov. In Saratov he would walk in disguise down the bank of the Volga and at an agreed place get into a boat, which she would hire in Saratov and in which she would float together with Albina and Ludwika down the Volga to Astrakhan and across the Caspian Sea to Persia. This plan was approved by all and by the chief organizer Rosolowski, but there was the difficulty of arranging such a compartment in the carriage that would not attract the attention of the authorities but could contain a man. When Albina, after a visit to the children’s grave, told Rosolowski how painful it was for her to leave the children’s remains in a foreign land, he thought for a moment and said:

“Ask the authorities for permission to take the children’s coffins with you; they will permit it.”

“No, I don’t want that, I don’t want it!” said Albina.

“Ask. In this lies everything. We won’t take the coffins, but will make a large box for them and put Józef in the box.”

At first Albina rejected this proposal, so unpleasant was it for her to connect deception with the memory of her children, but when Migurski cheerfully approved the plan, she agreed.

So the final plan was worked out as follows: Migurski would do everything that should convince the authorities that he had drowned himself. When his death was recognized, Albina would submit a petition that after her husband’s death she be allowed to return to her homeland and take with her the children’s remains. When she received this permission too, a pretense would be made that the graves were dug up and the coffins taken, but the coffins would be left in place, and instead of the children’s coffins Migurski would be placed in a box prepared for this purpose. The box would be put in a tarantass and thus they would reach Saratov. From Saratov they would get into a boat. In the boat Józef would come out of the box, and they would float to the Caspian Sea. And there Persia or Turkey and freedom.

IX

First of all the Migurskis bought a tarantass under the pretext of sending Ludwika to her homeland. Then began the construction of such a box in the tarantass in which, without suffocating, a man could lie, even if curled up, and from which he could quickly and inconspicuously get out and climb back in. The three of them—Albina, Rosolowski, and Migurski himself—devised and fitted the box. Rosolowski’s help was especially valuable, as he was a good carpenter. The box was made so that, fastened to the springs behind the body of the carriage, it fitted tightly to the body, and the wall that came against the body dropped away so that a man, removing the wall, could lie partly in the box, partly on the floor of the tarantass. Besides this, holes were drilled in the box for air, and the top and sides of the box were to be covered with matting and tied with ropes. One could enter and exit through the tarantass, in which a seat had been made.

When the tarantass and box were ready, even before her husband’s disappearance, Albina, to prepare the authorities, went to the colonel and announced that her husband had fallen into melancholy, had attempted suicide, and she feared for him and asked that he be temporarily released. Her ability for dramatic art served her well. The anxiety and fear for her husband she expressed were so natural that the colonel was touched and promised to do all he could. After this Migurski composed the letter that was to be found in the cuff of his greatcoat on the bank of the Ural, and on the appointed day, in the evening, he went to the Ural, waited for darkness, laid his clothes on the bank, the greatcoat with the letter, and secretly returned home. In the attic, locked with a padlock, a place was prepared for him. At night Albina sent Ludwika to the colonel to report about her husband, that he had left the house twenty hours ago and had not returned. In the morning they brought her her husband’s letter, and with an expression of strong despair she took it in tears to the colonel.

A week later Albina submitted a petition to leave for her homeland. The grief expressed by Migurska struck all who saw her. Everyone pitied the unfortunate mother and wife. When her departure was permitted, she submitted another petition for permission to dig up the children’s bodies and take them with her. The authorities marveled at this sentimentality but permitted this too.

The day after receiving this permission, in the evening, Rosolowski with Albina and Ludwika in a hired cart with the box in which the children’s coffins were to be placed arrived at the cemetery, at the children’s grave. Albina, falling on her knees at the children’s graves, prayed and quickly rose and, frowning, turning to Rosolowski, said:

“Do what is necessary, but I cannot,” and she walked aside.

Rosolowski with Ludwika shifted the gravestone and dug up the top parts of the grave with a spade so that the grave had a dug-up appearance. When everything was done, they called Albina and returned home with the box filled with earth.

The appointed day of departure arrived. Rosolowski rejoiced at the success of the enterprise, brought almost to completion. Ludwika baked pastries and pies for the journey and, repeating her favorite saying, “Jak mame kocham,” said that her heart was bursting with fear and joy. Migurski rejoiced both at his liberation from the attic, where he had sat for more than a month, and most of all at Albina’s revival and joy in life. She seemed to have forgotten all her former grief and all the dangers, and as in her girlhood, running up to him in the attic, she shone with rapturous joy.

At three in the morning the Cossack escort came and brought the horses from the Cossack driver. Albina with Ludwika and the little dog got into the tarantass on the cushions covered with a rug. The Cossack and the driver sat on the box. Migurski, dressed in peasant clothes, lay in the body of the tarantass.

They drove out of the town, and the good troika carried the tarantass along the smooth, beaten road between the endless, unplowed steppe overgrown with last year’s silvery feather grass.

X

Albina’s heart sank in her breast from hope and rapture. Wishing to share her feelings, she occasionally, barely smiling, indicated to Ludwika with her head now the broad back of the Cossack sitting on the box, now the floor of the tarantass. Ludwika with a meaningful look stared motionlessly ahead and only slightly wrinkled her lips. The day was clear. On all sides stretched the boundless empty steppe, gleaming with silvery feather grass in the slanting rays of the morning sun. Only now on one side, now on the other of the hard road along which, as on asphalt, the quick legs of the unshod Bashkir horses sounded hollowly, could be seen the mounds of earth heaped up by gophers; on the back sat the sentry animal and, warning of danger, whistled shrilly and disappeared into its burrow. Rarely did they meet travelers: a convoy of Cossacks with wheat, or mounted Bashkirs with whom the Cossack briskly exchanged Tatar words. At all the stations the horses were fresh, well-fed, and the half-rubles for vodka that Albina gave made the drivers drive, as they said, like couriers—at a gallop the whole way.

At the very first station, while the former driver had led away the horses and the new one had not yet brought fresh ones and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albina, leaning over, asked her husband how he felt, whether he needed anything.

“Excellently, comfortably. I need nothing. I can easily lie here for two days.”

Toward evening they arrived at the large village of Dergachi. So that her husband could stretch his limbs and refresh himself, Albina stopped not at the post station but at an inn, and at once, giving money to the Cossack, sent him to buy her eggs and milk. The tarantass stood under a shed, the yard was dark, and, posting Ludwika to watch for the Cossack, Albina let her husband out, fed him, and before the Cossack’s return he climbed back into his secret place. They sent for horses again and drove on. Albina felt an ever-increasing lift of spirits and could not restrain her rapture and gaiety. There was no one for her to talk to except Ludwika, the Cossack, and Trezorek, and she amused herself with them.

Ludwika, despite her plainness, at any contact with a man immediately suspected this man of amorous designs on her, and now suspected this very thing in relation to the healthy, good-natured Ural Cossack with extraordinarily clear and kind blue eyes, who was escorting them and who was especially pleasant to both women for his simplicity and good-natured amiability. Besides Trezorek, whom Albina threatened, not allowing him to sniff under the seat, she now amused herself with Ludwika and her comical coquetry with the Cossack, who was unaware of the intentions attributed to him and smiled good-naturedly at everything they said to him. Albina, excited by the danger, by the success of the affair beginning to be realized, by the wonderful weather and the steppe air, experienced a feeling of childish rapture and gaiety she had not felt for a long time. Migurski heard her cheerful talk and also, despite the physical hardship of his position that he concealed (he was especially hot and tormented by thirst), forgetting himself, rejoiced in her joy.

Toward evening of the second day something became visible in the mist. It was Saratov and the Volga. The Cossack with his steppe eyes saw both the Volga and the mast and pointed them out to Ludwika. Ludwika said she saw them too. But Albina could make out nothing. And only deliberately loud—so her husband could hear—she said:

“Saratov, the Volga,” as if talking to Trezorek, telling her husband all that she saw.

XI

Without entering Saratov, Albina stopped on the left side of the Volga in the Pokrovskaya settlement, directly opposite the town itself. Here she hoped during the night to have time to talk with her husband and even let him out of the box. But the Cossack throughout the short spring night did not leave the tarantass and sat beside it in an empty cart standing under the shed. Ludwika by Albina’s orders sat in the tarantass and, being fully convinced that the Cossack did not leave the tarantass for her sake, blinked, laughed, and covered her pockmarked face with a kerchief. But Albina no longer saw anything amusing in this and grew more and more anxious, not understanding why the Cossack stayed so constantly near the tarantass.

Several times in the short May night with dawn merging into dawn Albina came out of the room of the inn past the foul-smelling gallery to the back porch. The Cossack still did not sleep and, with his legs hanging down, sat on the empty cart standing near the tarantass. Only before dawn, when the roosters had already awakened and were calling from yard to yard, Albina, coming down, found time to talk to her husband. The Cossack was snoring, sprawled in the cart. She cautiously approached the tarantass and pushed the box.

“Józef!” There was no answer.

“Józef, Józef!” she said more loudly in alarm.

“What is it, dear, what?” Migurski said sleepily from the box.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was asleep,” he said, and by the sound of his voice she knew he was smiling. “Well then, should I come out?” he asked.

“You can’t, the Cossack is here,” and saying this she glanced at the Cossack sleeping in the cart.

And, strange to say, the Cossack was snoring, but his eyes, his kind, blue eyes, were open. He was looking at her and only on meeting her glance closed his eyes.

“Did it seem so to me, or was he really not sleeping?” Albina asked herself. “It must have seemed so,” she thought, and again turned to her husband.

“Bear it a little longer,” she said. “Do you want to eat?”

“No. I want to smoke.”

Albina again glanced at the Cossack. He was sleeping. “Yes, it seemed so to me,” she thought.

“I will now go to the governor.”

“Well, good luck…”

And Albina, taking a dress from her trunk, went to her room to change.

Having changed into her best widow’s dress, Albina crossed the Volga. On the embankment she took a cab and drove to the governor. The governor received her. The pretty, sweetly smiling Polish widow, speaking excellent French, greatly pleased the elderly, youthful-looking governor. He granted her everything and asked her to come again tomorrow to receive from him an order to the town chief in Tsaritsyn. Rejoicing both at the success of her petition and at the effect of her attractiveness that she saw in the governor’s manner, Albina, happy and full of hope, was returning down the unpaved street on a long cart to the pier. The sun had already risen above the forest and with slanting rays played on the rippling water of the vast flood. To the right and left on the hillside, like white clouds, could be seen the apple trees drenched in fragrant blossoms. A forest of masts could be seen at the shore, and sails showed white on the sunlit, rippling flood stirred by the breeze. At the pier, having started talking with the driver, Albina asked whether it was possible to hire a boat to Astrakhan, and dozens of noisy, cheerful boatmen offered her their services and boats. She made a deal with one of the boatmen who pleased her more than the others and went to see his boat, a kosovushka, standing in the press of other boats at the pier. On the boat was a small mast with a sail that could be set up, so one could go with the wind. In case of no wind there were oars and two healthy, cheerful oarsmen-bargemen sitting in the sun in the boat. The cheerful, good-natured pilot advised not leaving the tarantass but, taking off its wheels, putting it on the boat. “It will just fit, and it will be more comfortable for you to sit. God willing the weather holds, in five days or so we’ll run to Astrakhan.”

Albina made a deal with the boatman and told him to come to the Pokrovskaya settlement, to Loginov’s inn, to see the tarantass and receive a deposit. Everything was succeeding better than she had expected. In the most rapturously happy state Albina crossed the Volga and, having paid the driver, headed for the inn.

XII

The Cossack Danilo Lifanov was from Streletsky Umet on the Obshchy Syrt. He was thirty-four years old and was serving the last month of his term of Cossack service. In his family there was a ninety-year-old grandfather who still remembered Pugachev, two brothers, the wife of the elder brother who had been exiled to hard labor in Siberia for the old faith, his own wife, two daughters, and two sons. His father had been killed in the war with the French. He was the eldest in the house. In their yard there were sixteen horses, two teams of oxen, and they had plowed and sown with wheat fifteen hundred-acre plots of their free land. He, Danilo, had served in Orenburg, in Kazan, and was now finishing his term. He firmly held to the old faith, did not smoke, did not drink, and did not eat from the same dishes as worldly people, and he kept his oath just as strictly. In all his affairs he was slowly but firmly thorough, and to what he was charged to do by the authorities he devoted all his attention and did not forget for a minute until he had fulfilled everything, as he understood it, of his purpose. Now he had been ordered to escort two Polish women with coffins to Saratov so that nothing bad should happen to them on the way, so they should travel quietly, make no mischief, and in Saratov hand them over properly to the authorities. And so he had delivered them to Saratov, with the little dog and all their coffins. The women were quiet, affectionate, though Poles, and did nothing bad. But here, in the Pokrovskaya settlement, in the evening, passing by the tarantass, he saw the little dog jump into the tarantass and there began to whine and wag its tail, and from under the seat of the tarantass a man’s voice seemed to come. One of the Polish women, the old one, seeing the little dog in the tarantass, was frightened of something, seized the little dog and carried it away.

“There’s something here,” thought the Cossack, and began to watch. When the young Polish woman came out to the tarantass at night, he pretended to be asleep and clearly heard a man’s voice from the box. Early in the morning he went to the police and reported that the Polish women in his charge were traveling not for good but instead of dead people were carrying some living man in the box.

When Albina in her rapturously cheerful mood, confident that now everything was finished and in a few days they would be free, approached the inn, she was surprised to see at the gate a smart pair with an outrigger and two Cossacks. At the gate a crowd was pressing, peering into the yard.

She was so full of hope and energy that it never occurred to her that this pair and the crowding people had any relation to her. She entered the yard and at one and the same time, glancing under the shed where her tarantass stood, saw that the crowd was pressing precisely around her tarantass, and at the same instant heard Trezorek’s desperate barking. The most terrible thing that could happen had happened. Before the tarantass, his clean uniform gleaming, with buttons and shoulder straps shining in the sun and patent leather boots, stood a portly man with black side-whiskers and was saying something loudly in a hoarse, commanding voice. Before him between two soldiers in peasant clothes with hay in his tangled hair stood her Józef and, as if bewildered by what was happening around him, was raising and lowering his powerful shoulders. Trezorek, not knowing that he was the cause of all the misfortune, bristling, was uselessly barking furiously at the police chief. Seeing Albina, Migurski started, wanted to go to her, but the soldiers held him back.

“It’s nothing, Albina, nothing!” said Migurski, smiling his meek smile.

“And here’s the lady herself!” said the police chief. “Please come here. The coffins of your babies? Eh?” he said, winking at Migurski.

Albina did not answer and only, clutching her breast, with open mouth, looked with horror at her husband.

As happens in pre-mortal and generally decisive moments of life, in one instant she felt and thought through an abyss of feelings and thoughts and at the same time did not yet understand, did not believe in her misfortune. The first feeling was one she had known for a long time—a feeling of wounded pride at the sight of her hero husband, humiliated before those coarse, wild people who now held him in their power. “How dare they hold him, this best of all men, in their power?” Another feeling that seized her at the same time was the consciousness of the misfortune that had occurred. But the consciousness of misfortune called up in her the memory of the main misfortune of her life, the death of the children. And immediately the question arose: for what? For what were the children taken? And the question, for what were the children taken? called up the question: for what now is he perishing, suffering, the beloved, best of men, her husband? And at once she remembered what shameful punishment awaited him, and that she, she alone, was guilty of this.

“Who is he to you? Is he your husband?” repeated the police chief.

“For what, for what?” she cried, and bursting into hysterical laughter, fell on the box that had now been removed from the carriage springs and stood by the tarantass. All shaking with sobs, her face flooded with tears, Ludwika came up to her.

“Mistress, dear mistress! As I love God, nothing will happen, nothing,” she said, senselessly moving her hands over her.

Manacles were put on Migurski and he was led from the yard. Seeing this, Albina ran after him.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” she said. “It was all me! I alone am guilty.”

“They’ll sort out there who is guilty. Your turn will come too,” said the police chief and pushed her away with his hand.

Migurski was led to the crossing, and Albina, not knowing herself why she was doing this, followed him and did not listen to Ludwika’s persuading.

The Cossack Danilo Lifanov all this time stood by the wheels of the tarantass and gloomily glanced now at the police chief, now at Albina, now at his own feet.

When Migurski was led away, Trezorek, left alone, wagging his little tail, began to fawn on him. He had grown used to him during the journey. The Cossack suddenly pushed away from the tarantass, tore off his cap, flung it with all his might to the ground, kicked Trezorek away from him, and went to the tavern. In the tavern he demanded vodka and drank day and night, drank away all he had on him and with him, and only on the second night, waking up in a ditch, stopped thinking about the question that tormented him: had he done right in reporting to the authorities about the Polish woman’s husband in the box?

Migurski was tried and sentenced for escape to running the gauntlet of a thousand men. His relatives and Wanda, who had connections in Petersburg, obtained a mitigation of his punishment, and he was exiled to permanent settlement in Siberia. Albina went after him.

Nicholas Pavlovich rejoiced that he had crushed the hydra of revolution not only in Poland but throughout Europe, and prided himself on having not violated the precepts of Russian autocracy and for the good of the Russian people having kept Poland in the power of Russia. And people in stars and gilded uniforms so praised him for this that he sincerely believed he was a great man and that his life was a great blessing for humanity and especially for the Russian people, toward whose corruption and stupefaction all his powers were unconsciously directed.

—L. N. Tolstoy.

Translator’s Notes:

This novella was written in 1906 and published posthumously. Tolstoy was 78 when he wrote it, drawing on his long-standing sympathy for the Polish cause and his hatred of Nicholas I’s regime.
The story is set during and after the November Uprising of 1830-31, when the Poles attempted to throw off Russian rule. The uprising was crushed by the Russian army under Diebitsch and Paskevich.
The title “For What?” (Za chto?) is the question Albina keeps asking—why must her husband suffer? Why were her children taken? It echoes throughout the story as an indictment of senseless oppression.
Kosciuszko (Tadeusz Kosciuszko, 1746-1817) led the 1794 uprising against Russia and Prussia.
Constantine Pavlovich (1779-1831) was the Grand Duke of Russia and commander-in-chief of the Polish army; his harsh rule helped provoke the uprising.
Nicholas I (1796-1855) was the Russian Tsar known for his severe repression of the Polish uprising and the Decembrist revolt.
The French phrases: “lui tenir la dragée haute” means “to keep him on a short leash” or “to make him work for it”; the Polish “Jak mame kocham” means “As I love my mother” (an oath).
The execution scene describes the brutal Russian military punishment of “running the gauntlet” (shpitsruten), where the condemned was forced to walk between two rows of soldiers who beat him with rods.
The Latin “Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam” is from Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great loving-kindness.”
Pugachev (Yemelyan Pugachev, c. 1742-1775) led a major peasant rebellion against Catherine the Great, which explains why the old Cossack grandfather might remember him.
The Cossack Danilo’s moral crisis at the end—getting drunk to escape his guilt about betraying the fugitives—shows Tolstoy’s interest in how ordinary people are corrupted by serving unjust authority.