42
‘WELL, I must do what I came here for,’ he said, trying to bolster up his resolution. ‘But how shall I set about it?’
He began to look round for someone in authority and catching sight of a short thin man with a moustache, wearing the straps of a prison officer, walking up and down behind the visitors, he approached him.
‘Could you possibly tell me, sir,’ he said with the most elaborate politeness, ‘where the women prisoners are, and where one is allowed to see them?’
‘Is it the women’s section you want?’
‘Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners,’ Nekhlyudov replied, with the same strained civility.
‘You ought to have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it then, that you want to see?’
‘Katerina Maslova.’
‘Is she a political prisoner?’ asked the assistant superintendent.
‘No, she’s just a –’
‘Has she already been sentenced then?’
‘Yes, she was sentenced the day before yesterday,’ answered Nekhlyudov meekly, fearing to upset the good temper of the warder, who seemed well disposed towards him.
‘If you want the women’s section, please come this way,’ said the warder, having decided from Nekhlyudov’s appearance that he was worthy of attention. ‘Sidorov,’ he called out to a moustached under-officer with medals on his breast, ‘take this gentleman to the women’s section.’
At this moment heart-rending sobs were heard coming from someone near the wire-netting.
Everything seemed strange to Nekhlyudov, but strangest of all was that he should have to thank, and feel himself under an obligation to, the warder and the senior warder – people who were doing all the cruel things that were done in this building.
The warder took Nekhlyudov out of the men’s visiting-room into the corridor, and, opening a door immediately opposite, led him into the women’s visiting-room.
This room, like that of the men, was divided into three by two rows of wire-netting but it was much smaller and there were fewer visitors and prisoners; yet the din and the noise were the same as in the men’s room. Here, too, a prison officer walked up and down between the netting but this time authority was represented by a female warder dressed in a uniform with gold cord on the sleeves and dark-blue piping, and the same sort of belt. And just as in the men’s room people were pressing close to the wire-netting: behind one wire screen the visitors from outside in all sorts of clothes, behind the other the prisoners, some in white prison dress, others in their own garments. The whole length of the net was taken up with people. Some rose on tiptoe to be heard across the heads of others; some talked sitting on the floor.
Most noticeable of all the prisoners, both by her piercing voice and her appearance, was a thin dishevelled gipsy-woman, with her kerchief slipping from her curly hair. She was standing by a post in the middle of the wire-netting on the prisoners’ side, shouting something, accompanied by quick gestures, to a gipsy in a blue coat girdled tightly below the waist. Next to the gipsy-man a soldier squatted on the ground talking to a prisoner; next to him, face pressed close to the wire, was a young peasant in bast shoes with a fair beard and a flushed face, struggling to keep back his tears. He was talking to a pretty fair-haired prisoner who gazed at him with bright blue eyes. This was Fedosya and her husband. Next to them a tramp was talking to a slatternly broad-faced woman; then a couple of women, a man, another woman – each with a woman prisoner opposite. Maslova was not among them. But at the back of the prisoners on the far side there was one more woman and Nekhlyudov knew at once that it was she, and at once he felt his heart beating faster and his breath stopping. The decisive moment was at hand. He went up to the wire-netting and recognized her. She was standing behind the blue-eyed Fedosya and smiled as she listened to what Fedosya was saying. She was not wearing the prison cloak now, as she had been two days ago, but a white jacket, tightly belted and straining over her very full chest. As they had in the court-room, her black curls peeped out from under her kerchief.
‘In a moment now, it will be decided,’ he thought. ‘How am I to call her? Or will she come up herself?’
But she did not come. She was expecting Klara and it never entered her head that this visitor was for her.
‘Who do you want?’ the woman warder who was walking up and down between the wire partitioning asked Nekhlyudov.
‘Katerina Maslova,’ said Nekhlyudov with difficulty.
‘Maslova, someone to see you!’ the wardress shouted.