9
ACCOMPANIED by the orderly, Nekhlyudov went out again into the dark courtyard dimly lit by the red light of the lanterns.
‘Where are you going?’ a soldier whom they met asked the orderly with Nekhlyudov.
‘You can’t get through here, it’s locked. You’ll have to go round by the other steps.’
‘What’s it locked for?’
‘The sergeant locked it and went off down to the village.’
‘Well, then, come this way.’
The soldier led Nekhlyudov along the duck-boards to another entrance. Even out in the yard they could hear the din of voices and movement to and fro within, much like the sound from a good beehive when the bees are getting ready to swarm, but when Nekhlyudov came nearer and the door opened, the din grew louder and was converted into a noisy exchange of shouting, abuse and laughter. He heard the ringing sound of chains, and smelt the familiar foul stench of human excrement and disinfectant.
These two things – the din of voices mingled with the clattering of chains and the horrible smell – always merged for Nekhlyudov into one agonizing sensation of moral nausea which soon turned to a physical feeling of sickness, the one combining with and intensifying the other.
As he entered the building, which had a huge stinking tub (known in prisons as the ‘close-stool’) in the vestibule, the first thing Nekhlyudov saw was a woman sitting on the edge of the tub. In front of her a man was standing, his pancake-shaped cap poised sideways on his shaven head. They were talking about something. Seeing Nekhlyudov, the man winked and remarked:
‘The Tsar himself can’t hold back his water.’
The woman, however, pulled the skirts of her prison cloak about her and looked down in embarrassment.
A corridor ran from the entrance, with cell doors opening on to it. The first cell was for families, then a large one for unmarried men and at the end of the passage were two smaller cells reserved for the political prisoners. The building, originally intended for a hundred and fifty and now housing four hundred and fifty, was so crowded that the prisoners, unable to get into the cells, had overflowed into the passage. Some were sitting or lying on the floor; others were moving about with empty teapots in their hands or bringing them back filled with boiling water. Among the latter was Tarass. He ran up to Nekhlyudov and greeted him affectionately. Tarass’ kindly face was disfigured by dark bruises on his nose and under one eye.
‘What have you done to yourself?’ asked Nekhlyudov.
‘Oh, nothing in particular,’ replied Tarass with a smile.
‘They’re always fighting,’ remarked the guard scornfully.
‘On account of a woman,’ said a convict, who was walking behind them. ‘He had a set-to with Blind Fedka.’
‘How is Fedosya?’ asked Nekhlyudov.
‘She’s all right. I’m taking her some hot water for tea,’ said Tarass, and went into the family cell.
Nekhlyudov looked in at the door. Every inch of the room was crowded with men and women, some on, some underneath the sleeping-benches. The air was full of steam from wet clothes that were drying, and there was an incessant chatter of women’s voices. The next door opened into the unmarried men’s cell. This was still more crowded, and the doorway itself and the passage outside were blocked by a noisy group of convicts in wet clothes, busy sharing something out or settling a dispute. The sergeant explained that the prisoner appointed to buy provisions was paying out some of the food-money that was owing to a sharper (who had won from, or lent money to, the prisoners) and receiving back little tickets made of playing cards. When they saw the sergeant and the gentleman those who were nearest stopped talking, looking at the two with hostile eyes. Among them Nekhlyudov noticed his acquaintance, the convict Fedorov, accompanied as usual by a pale miserable youth with raised eyebrows and a swollen face, and another still more repulsive, pock-marked, noseless tramp, who was reputed to have killed a comrade while they were trying to escape in the dense marshy forest in Siberia, and then, so it was said, fed on his flesh. The tramp stood in the passage, his wet prison cloak thrown over one shoulder, looking mockingly and boldly at Nekhlyudov, and not stepping aside for him. Nekhlyudov walked round him.
Though this spectacle was not new to Nekhlyudov, who during the last three months had seen the same four hundred convicts in many different circumstances – in the heat, enveloped in clouds of dust stirred up by the dragging of chained feet on the road, at resting-places by the way, and out in the courtyards at the halting-stations in warm weather where appalling scenes of barefaced debauchery occurred – nevertheless, every time he came among them and felt, as now, their attention fixed on him, he experienced an agonizing sensation of shame and a consciousness of his sin against them. Worst of all, to this sense of shame and guilt was added an unconquerable feeling of loathing and horror. He knew that in conditions such as theirs they could not be anything else than what they were, and yet he could not stifle his disgust.
‘It’s all right for them parasites,’ Nekhlyudov heard a hoarse voice say, just as he approached the door of the cell where the political prisoners were. ‘Whatever ’appens to them, they don’t get a pain in the belly.’ This was followed by some obscene abuse and a derisive burst of unfriendly laughter.