29

IT was six o’clock in the evening before Maslova was back in her cell, tired and footsore after trudging nearly nine miles over the cobblestones, when she was not used to walking. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence, and on top of everything else she was hungry.

Her mouth had watered and she realized that she was hungry when the guards ate bread and hard-boiled eggs during one of the recesses, but she considered it beneath her dignity to ask them for food. Three hours later, however, the desire to eat had passed and she only felt weak. It was in this state that she heard the unexpected sentence. At first she thought she had not heard right: she could not believe her ears, could not think of herself as a convict. But when she saw the calm businesslike faces of judges and jury, who took the sentence as a matter of course, she rebelled and cried aloud that she was innocent. But seeing that her scream, too, was taken as something natural, something to be expected that could not affect the case, she burst into tears, feeling that submission to the cruel and amazing injustice was all that remained to her. What astonished her most was that men, young men, not old men – the very ones in whose eyes she had always found favour – should condemn her so cruelly. One of them – the assistant prosecutor – she had seen in quite a different humour. Sitting in the prisoners’ room before the trial and during the recesses she had seen these men, pretending that they were on other business, pass by the door or come into the room to have a look at her. And then suddenly for some reason these same men had sentenced her to hard labour although she was innocent of the charge against her. At first she wept in the prisoners’ room, but then calmed down and sat quietly, completely stunned, waiting to be taken back. She only wanted one thing now – to smoke. This was the condition Botchkova and Kartinkin found her in when they were brought to the same room after the sentence. Botchkova immediately began to rail at her and call her a ‘convict’.

‘Copped it, haven’t you? Gettin’ off, was you? I don’t think – no fear, you wasn’t, you slut! Got what you deserved. Out in Siberia you’ll have to give up your airs and graces, I can tell you.’

Maslova sat with bowed head, her hands in the sleeves of her prison cloak, staring in front of her at the dirty floor.

‘I don’t bother you, so you leave me alone. I don’t bother you, do I?’ she repeated several times, then relapsed into silence. It was only after Kartinkin and Botchkova had been led away and the guard brought her three roubles that she brightened up a little.

‘You Maslova?’ he inquired. ‘Here – lady sent you this,’ he said, giving her the money.

‘What lady?’

‘You just take it. I don’t want no talk with you.’

The money had been sent by the brothel-keeper. As she was leaving the court-room Kitayeva had turned to the usher and asked whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher said she could. Having received this permission, she pulled the three-button suède glove from her plump white hand, drew a stylish note-case from the back folds of her silk skirt, and selecting from a fairly large bundle of coupons,¹ just cut off from some interest-bearing papers she had earned in her establishment, one worth two roubles and fifty kopecks, she added two twenty — and one ten-kopeck coins, and handed the sum to the usher. The usher called one of the guards and in the presence of the donor handed him the money.

‘Be sure you gif it to her,’ Karolina Albertovna Kitayeva said to the guard.

The guard was annoyed by her lack of confidence, and this made him surly with Maslova.

Maslova was glad to have the money because it could give her the only thing she now desired.

‘If only I could get hold of some cigarettes and have a smoke!’ she said to herself, and all her thoughts centred on the one longing to smoke. So frantic was she that she greedily inhaled the air whenever a whiff of tobacco smoke drifted through the door of one of the offices that opened on to the corridor. But she had to wait for quite a time because the secretary whose business it was to give the order for her return forgot all about the prisoners, so engrossed was he in a discussion – indeed, it was quite an argument – with one of the lawyers about the censored newspaper article. A number of people, both young and old, dropped in, too, after the trial, to have a look at her, saying something to each other in whispers. But now she did not even notice them.

At last, just after four, she was allowed to go, and her escort – the man from Nizhni-Novgorod and the Chuvash – led her away from the court-house by a back door. While still in the vestibule of the court-house she gave them twenty kopecks, asking them to buy two rings of white bread and some cigarettes. The Chuvash laughed, took the money and said:

‘Right you are, we’ll get ’em,’ and did in fact buy both cigarettes and rolls, and gave her back the right change.

But she could not smoke in the street, so that she reached the prison with her craving unsatisfied. As they approached the entrance about a hundred prisoners who had arrived by rail were being brought in. She ran into them in the passageway.

The convicts – bearded, clean-shaven, old, young, Russians, foreigners, some with half their heads shaved – clanking the shackles on their legs, filled the ante-room with dust, noise and the acrid smell of sweat. All of them stared hungrily at Maslova, and some, their faces distorted with lust, came up to her and brushed against her in passing.

‘Here’s a good-looking wench,’ said one.

‘My respects, missy,’ said another, winking at her.

A swarthy fellow, the back of his head showing blue where it had been shaved, with a moustache on his beardless face, stumbled over his rattling chains as he sprang towards her and embraced her.

‘Don’t you know a friend when you see him? Come on, none of your airs, now!’ he shouted, showing his teeth and flashing his eyes when she pushed him away.

‘What d’you think you’re up to, you bastard?’ shouted the assistant chief officer, coming up from behind.

The convict shrank back and quickly jumped away. The assistant chief officer turned to Maslova.

‘What are you doing here?’

Maslova wanted to tell him that she had been brought back from the court-house but she was so tired she could not be bothered to speak.

‘She has come from the Court, sir,’ said the senior of her escort party, stepping forward with his fingers to his cap.

‘Well, hand her over to the head warder. I won’t have this sort of thing!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sokolov, see to her!’ shouted the assistant chief officer.

The head warder came up and giving Maslova an angry push on the shoulder, and making a sign with his head that she must follow, led her to the women’s section. There she was searched and as nothing prohibited was found on her (she had hidden her packet of cigarettes inside one of the rings of bread) she was readmitted to the cell she had left that morning.