32

MASLOVA got out the money which she had concealed in the bread and handed it to Korablyova. Korablyova took it, looked at it and, though she could not read, trusted Beauty, who knew everything, that the slip of paper was worth two roubles fifty kopecks, and then climbed up to the ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this, the women whose bunks were not near Maslova’s moved away, while Maslova shook the dust out of her kerchief and cloak, and getting on to her bed she began to eat the bread.

‘I saved some tea for you, but I’m afraid it’s cold now,’ said Fedosya, taking down from the shelf a mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag.

The tea was stone cold and tasted more of tin than tea, but Maslova filled the mug and began to drink as she ate her roll.

‘Here, Finashka, here’s a bit for you,’ she called, breaking off a piece of bread and giving it to the boy, whose eyes were fixed on her mouth.

Korablyova in the meantime handed her the flask of vodka and a mug. Maslova offered some to Korablyova and Beauty. These three were regarded as the aristocracy of the cell because they had money and shared what they had.

A few minutes later Maslova had brightened up and was giving them a lively description of the court, mimicking the public prosecutor and telling them what had struck her most. In the court-house they had all looked at her with obvious pleasure, she said, and had kept on coming into the prisoners’ room on purpose.

‘The guard said to me himself: “All they come in here for is to look at you.” One would come in, pretending he wanted a paper or something, but I could see he didn’t want any paper: he was just eating me up with his eyes all the while,’ she said, smiling and shaking her head in wonder. ‘Like actors in the theatre.’

‘Oh yes,’ chimed in the signal-woman, and her melodious voice immediately flowed on. ‘They’re like flies round a jam jar. Whatever else they don’t know, and that’s plenty, where a woman’s concerned they’re all there. They’d sooner go without food than…’

‘Everywhere it was just the same’ Maslova interrupted her. ‘The same thing happened here, too. They had just brought me back when a party came up from the railway-station. They pestered me so, I didn’t know how to shake them off. If it hadn’t been for the chief officer…. One held on so I could hardly get rid of him.’

‘What kind of a fellow was ’e?’ asked Beauty.

‘A dark chap, with moustaches.’

‘It must be ’im.’

‘Him – who?’

‘Shcheglov. ’Im that just went past.

‘Who’s Shcheglov?’

‘She don’t know who Shcheglov is! ’E escaped twice from Siberia. Now they’ve caught ’im, but ’e’ll get away again. Even the warders are afraid of ’im,’ said Beauty, who managed to exchange notes with the male prisoners and knew all that went on in the gaol. ‘’E’ll run away, you bet your life.’

‘Well, if ’e does, ’e won’t take us with ’im,’ remarked Korablyova. ‘You’d better tell us what the lawyer said about your appeal,’ she said, turning to Maslova. ‘Is it now you’re to send it in?’

Maslova said she didn’t know anything about it.

Just then the red-haired woman, with both her freckled hands in her thick red hair, scratching her head with her nails, walked up to the ‘aristocracy’ drinking their vodka.

‘I’ll tell you all about it, Katerina,’ she began. ‘First of all you must write it down on paper that you’re not satisfied with the sentence, and then send that to the prosecutor.’

‘What call ’ave you got to come interfering’?’ Korablyova turned to her angrily, speaking in her bass voice. ‘Smell vodka, don’t you? There’s no need for you to stick your nose in. We don’t ’ave to ask you what to do.’

‘No one’s speaking to you. Don’t get so excited.’

‘It’s the drink you’re after, isn’t it? That’s why you come wriggling up.’

‘All right, give her some,’ said Maslova, who always gave away everything she had.

‘I’ll give ’er something…’

‘Let’s see you try,’ said the red-haired woman, advancing towards Korablyova. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

‘Prison scum!’

‘’Ark who’s talking!’

‘Boiled tripe!’

‘Me tripe? You convict, you – murderer!’ shouted the red-haired woman.

‘Get out, d’you ’ear,’ said Korablyova darkly.

But the red-haired woman only moved up closer, and Korablyova hit her on her bare heavy breasts. This apparently was what the red-haired woman was waiting for. Out flew one hand and grabbed Korablyova by the hair, while the other made to hit her in the face, but Korablyova grabbed the hand. Maslova and Beauty caught the red-haired woman by the arms, trying to drag her away, but she had a firm hold of Korablyova’s plait and would not let go. Only for an instant did she relax her grip, and then it was to twist the hair more tightly round her fist. Korablyova, with her head bent to one side, punched the red-haired woman’s body with one hand and tried to bite her arm. The other women crowded round the pair who were fighting, screaming and doing their best to separate them. Even the consumptive one came up and, coughing, watched the fight. The children cried and huddled together. The noise brought the warder and the female-warder in. The fighting women were separated, and Korablyova undid her grey plait and picked out the tufts of hair that had been torn from her head, while the red-haired woman held her ripped chemise over her yellow chest; both of them were loud with their explanations and complaints.

‘It’s vodka at the bottom of all this, I know that,’ said the wardress. ‘Tomorrow I shall report you to the head warder: he’ll give it you. I can smell it. You’ll get rid of it if you know what’s good for you. I’ve no time to listen to your stories now. Get back to your places and keep quiet!’

But it was a long time before silence was established. The women went on quarrelling, telling each other how it had all begun and whose fault it was. Finally the warder and the female-warder went away, and the women slowly quietened down and began going to bed. The old woman stood before the ikon and said her prayers.

‘Two gaol-birds got together,’ the red-haired woman suddenly called out in a hoarse voice from the other end of the room, accompanying each word with extraordinarily complicated oaths.

‘You’d better watch out or you’ll catch it again,’ Korablyova replied immediately, with a train of similar abuse. And both relapsed into silence.

‘If they ’adn’t stopped me I’d have scratched your walleyes out…’ the red-haired woman began again, and again Korablyova was not behind with a retort in kind.

There followed another interval of silence, longer than the first, and then more abuse. But the intervals grew longer and longer, until finally everything was quiet.

All of them were lying on their beds, and some were snoring. Only the old woman (who always took a long time over her prayers) was still bowing before the ikon, and the deacon’s daughter, who got up the moment the wardress had left, was pacing up and down the room again.

Maslova did not sleep. She kept thinking that she was now a convict condemned to hard labour, and that she had already twice been reminded of the fact – once by Botchkova and once by the red-haired woman – and she could not get used to the idea. Korablyova, who was lying with her back towards her, turned over.

‘I never thought – I never dreamed it would come to this,’ said Maslova in a low voice. ‘Other people do far worse things and nothing happens to them, while I have to suffer for a crime I never committed.’

‘Never mind, girl. Siberia isn’t the end – people manage to live there, too. You’ll get over it,’ Korablyova tried to comfort her.

‘I know I’ll survive. But it’s still not fair. I ought to have had a different fate – I’m used to a comfortable life.’

‘You can’t go against Providence,’ said Korablyova with a sigh. ‘You can’t go against Providence.’

‘I know, old girl, but it’s hard all the same.’

They were silent for a while.

‘Do you hear that blubberer?’ said Korablyova, drawing Maslova’s attention to the strange sounds coming from the other end of the room.

It was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. She was crying because they had called her names and hit her, and not given her any of the vodka she wanted so badly. She was crying too because all her life she had had nothing but abuse, jeers, insults and blows. She tried to console herself by thinking of her first sweetheart, a factory hand whose name was Fedka Molodenkov, but when she thought of this first love of hers she also remembered how it had ended. It had ended one day when this Molodenkov was drunk and for a joke had dabbed vitriol on the most sensitive spot of her body and then roared with laughter with his mates while she writhed in agony. She remembered this and felt so full of pity for herself that, thinking no one could hear her, she burst into tears and wept as children do, moaning and snuffling and swallowing the salt tears.

‘You can’t help feeling sorry for her,’ said Maslova.

‘A course you can’t. But she shouldn’t come poking her nose in.’