Summary
Narrated from a third-person omniscient perspective, “God Sees the Truth, But Waits” opens by introducing Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov, the story’s protagonist. Aksionov is a young merchant who lives in a town called Vladimir; he owns two shops and a house. He is handsome, with fair, curly hair. He is fun-loving and likes to sing. As a younger man, he would drink to excess, becoming boisterous, but he quit drinking after he married.
One summer Aksionov travels to Nizhny Fair without his wife and children. Just before he leaves, his wife warns him not to set out, saying she dreamt something bad happened, and that he returned with his hair having gone grey. Aksionov laughs and says the dream is a lucky sign; he predicts he will sell all his goods and bring the family back presents. Halfway to the town, Aksionov meets a fellow merchant, with whom he decides to stay at an inn. They have tea and then go to their adjoining rooms.
Aksionov wakes before dawn to travel while the air is still cool. He wakes his driver and asks him to get the horses ready for the carriage. Aksionov pays his bill and then continues the journey, stopping after twenty-five miles at another inn. While Aksionov’s horses are being fed, Aksionov orders a samovar of tea to be heated and begins to play guitar.
A troika, pulled by three horses, pulls up; an official and two soldiers step down from the vehicle to question Aksionov about where he came from. Aksionov answers and then asks the official to join him for tea. The official continues questioning rapidly, asking where Aksionov spent the night, if he was with a fellow merchant, if he saw the merchant that morning, and why he left the inn before dawn.
Confused, Aksionov describes everything that had happened at the inn and then asks why he is being questioned as if he were a thief or robber. The police official says the merchant with whom he spent the previous night was found dead with his throat cut. The official searches Aksionov’s luggage and draws a knife out of a bag, shouting to know whose knife it is. Aksionov sees the knife is stained with blood and grows frightened.
The official asks why there is blood on the knife and Aksionov stammers that he doesn’t know and it’s not his. The official says the merchant was found in his bed and that Aksionov was the only person who could have killed him, because the house was locked from the inside and no one else was there. The official says Aksionov’s face and manner in reaction to the knife reveal his guilt. The official asks how Aksionov killed the merchant and how much money he stole.
Aksionov swears his innocence and says he didn’t see the merchant after they had tea together. He has no money except eight thousand rubles that belong to him, and the knife is not his. As he speaks, his voice breaks, his face is pale, and he trembles as though guilty.
The police official has the soldiers bind Aksionov’s feet together and fling him in their cart; as they do so, Aksionov makes the sign of the cross and weeps. They take his money and goods and send him to be imprisoned in the nearest town. Police make inquiries about Aksionov’s character in Vladimir; they learn that Aksionov used to drink, and waste his time, but that he is a good man. The trial arrives, and Aksionov is charged with murdering the merchant from Ryazan and stealing twenty thousand rubles.
Aksionov’s wife despairs, unsure what to believe. She takes her small children with her to the town where he is held and begs the jail officials to let her see him. She collapses when she sees him in a prison uniform and chains, locked up with criminals. She regains herself and draws her children close. She sits near him and he tells her what happened to him. She asks what they can do and he says they must petition the czar to not let an innocent man suffer death. She says she already sent a petition to the czar, which was not accepted. Disheartened, Aksionov says nothing.
Analysis
The story opens by establishing Aksionov’s carefree and fun-loving manner. As a successful merchant, Aksionov has no reason to be risk-averse, and so dismisses his wife’s premonition that he will be beset by some tragedy if he goes to the Nizhy Fair.
Although she doesn’t know exactly what her nightmare means, she interprets the image of her husband’s hair going grey as evidence that he will experience an event that prematurely ages him. Aksionov laughs off her concerns and chooses to interpret the dream symbolism as auspicious, a sign that he will sell all his goods at the fair. In reality, the nightmare foreshadows the end of his life as he knows it.
Tolstoy describes Aksionov’s journey and time at the inn using plain language and with a conspicuous lack of importance; Aksionov is simply going about his life. The mundane tone Tolstoy sets contrasts sharply against the arrival of the police official, who disrupts Aksionov’s pleasant roadside stop to accuse him of murdering his fellow merchant. The shock of the situation is compounded by the bluntness of the official’s description of the murderer having slit the man’s throat.
The official’s direct accusation throws Aksionov into such a state of panic and dread that he can barely speak. His trembling reaction to the bloody knife among his possessions appears to suggest his guilt, as though he has been caught red-handed. In this tense exchange and the consequent sequence of events leading to Aksionov’s swift condemnation, Tolstoy introduces the theme of injustice.
The police are so certain of Aksionov’s guilt that rather than investigate other suspects they return to his hometown for confirmation that he is a man of questionable character. And although Aksionov is charged with stealing twenty-thousand rubles, the police do not recover the stolen money; Aksionov only has eight thousand rubles with him during his arrest. Regardless of the lack of evidence against him, Aksionov is jailed. His only recourse is to petition the Czar, which his wife has tried to no avail. And with Aksionov’s defeated reaction, Tolstoy introduces the first glimpse of the story’s thematic concern with acceptance.
