第65章 A WOMAN(12)

Through the bars of the double line of windows on the second and the third stories peer the murky faces and towsled heads of some of the inmates. One of the latter spits his furthest into the yard--evidently with the intention of hitting myself: but all his efforts prove vain. Another one shouts with a mordant expletive:

"Hi, you! Why do you keep tramping up and down like an old hen?

Hold up your head!"

Meanwhile the inmates continue to intone in concert a strange chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies away to give place to a refrain which coils, trickles forth from between the bars of the windows until it has permeated the free, torrid air.

As I listen to that refrain, long familiar to me, it seems to voice something intelligible, and agitates my soul almost to a sense of agony. . . .

Presently, while pacing up and down in the shadow of the building, I happen to glance towards the line of windows. Glued to the framework of one of the iron window-squares, I can discern a blue-eyed face. Overgrown with an untidy sable beard it is, as well as stamped with a look of perpetually grieved surprise.

"That must be Konev," I say to myself aloud.

Konev it is--Konev of the well-remembered eyes. Even at this moment they are regarding me with puckered attention.

I throw around me a hasty glance. My own warder is dozing on a shady bench near the entrance. Two more warders are engaged in throwing dice. A fourth is superintending the pumping of water by two convicts, and superciliously marking time for their lever with the formula, "Mashkam, dashkam! Dashkam, mashkam!"

I move towards the wall.

"Is that you, Konev?" is my inquiry.

"It is," he mutters as he thrusts his head a little further through the grating. "Yes, Konev I am, but who you are I have not a notion."

"What are you here for?"

"For a matter of base coin, though, to be truthful, I am here accidentally, without genuine cause."

The warder rouses himself, and, with his keys jingling like a set of fetters, utters drowsily the command:

"Do not stand still. Also, move further from the wall. To approach it is forbidden."

"But it is so hot in the middle of the yard, sir!"

"Everywhere it is hot," retorts the man reprovingly, and his head subsides again. From above comes the whispered query:

"Who ARE you?"

"Well, do you remember Tatiana, the woman from Riazan?"

"DO I remember her?" Konev's voice has in it a touch of subdued resentment. "DO I remember her? Why, I was tried in court together with her!"

"Together with HER? Was she too sentenced for the passing of base coin?"

"Yes. Why should she not have been? She was merely the victim of an accident, even as I was."

As I resume my walk in the stifling shade I detect that, from the windows of the basement there is issuing a smell of, in equal parts, rotten leather, mouldy grain, and dampness. To my mind there recur Tatiana's words: "Amid a great sorrow even a small joy becomes a great felicity," and, "I should like to build a village on some land of my own, and create for myself a new and better life."

And to my recollection there recur also Tatiana's face and yearning, hungry breast. As I stand thinking of these things, there come dropping on to my head from above the low-spoken, ashen-grey words:

"The chief conspirator in the matter was her lover, the son of a priest. He it was who engineered the plot. He has been sentenced to ten years penal servitude."

"And she? "

"Tatiana Vasilievna? To the same, and I also. I leave for Siberia the day after tomorrow. The trial was held at Kutair. In Russia I should have got off with a lighter sentence than here, for the folk in these parts are, one and all, evil, barbaric scoundrels."

"And Tatiana, has she any children?"

"How could she have while living such a rough life as this? Of course not! Besides, the priest's son is a consumptive."

"Indeed sorry for her am I!"

"So I expect." And in Konev's tone there would seem to be a touch of meaning. "The woman was a fool--of that there can be no doubt; but also she was comely, as well as a person out of the common in her pity for folk."

"Was it then that you found her again?"

"When?"

"On that Feast of the Assumption?"

"Oh no. It was only during the following winter that I came up with her. At the time she was serving as governess to the children of an old officer in Batum whose wife had left him."

Something snaps behind me--something sounding like the hammer of a revolver. However, it is only the warder closing the lid of his huge watch before restoring the watch to his pocket, giving himself a stretch, and yawning to the utmost extent of his jaws.

"You see, she had money, and, but for her restlessness, might have lived a comfortable life enough. As it was, her restlessness--"

"Time for exercise is up!" shouts the warder.

"Who are you?" adds Konev hastily. "Somehow I seem to remember your face; but 1 cannot place it."

Yet so stung am I with what I have heard that I move away in silence: save that just as I reach the top of the steps I turn to cry:

"Goodbye, mate, and give her my greeting."

"What are you bawling for? " blusters the warder. . . .

The corridor is dim, and filled with an oppressive odour. The warder swings his keys with a dry, thin clash, and I, to dull the pain in my heart, strive to imitate him. But the attempt proves futile; and as the warder opens the door of my cell he says severely:

"In with you, ten-years man!"

Entering, I move towards the window. Between some grey spikes on a wall I can just discern the boisterous current of the Kura, with sakli [warehouses] and houses glued to the opposite bank, and the figures of some workmen on the roof of a tanning shed.

Below, with his cap pushed to the back of his head,a sentry is pacing backwards and forwards.

Wearily my mind recalls the many scores of Russian folk whom it has seen perish to no purpose. And as it does so it feels crushed, as in a vice, beneath the burden of great and inexorable sorrow with which all life is dowered.