Through Russia [90]
" by order of the authorities," the inmates are presenting a stage spectacle in which they are playing, willingly and zealously, but with a complete lack of experience, imperfectly comprehended roles as prisoners, warders, and gendarmes.
For instance, today, when a warder and a gendarme came to my cell to escort me to exercise, and I said to them, " May I be excused exercise today? I am not very well, and do not feel like, etcetera, etcetera," the gendarme, a tall, handsome man with a red beard, held up to me a warning finger.
"NO ONE," he said, "has given you permission to feel, or not to feel, like doing things."
To which the warder, a man as dark as a chimney-sweep, with large blue "whites" to his eyes, added stutteringly:
"To no one here has permission been given to feel, or not to feel, like doing things. You hear that?"
So to exercise I went.
In this stone-paved yard the air is as hot as in an oven, for overhead there lours only a small, flat patch of dull, drab- tinted sky, and on three sides of the yard rise high grey walls, with, on the fourth, the entrance-gates, topped by a sort of look-out post.
Over the roof of the building there comes floating the dull roar of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being in a drum which a myriad drumsticks are beating.
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
For instance, today, when a warder and a gendarme came to my cell to escort me to exercise, and I said to them, " May I be excused exercise today? I am not very well, and do not feel like, etcetera, etcetera," the gendarme, a tall, handsome man with a red beard, held up to me a warning finger.
"NO ONE," he said, "has given you permission to feel, or not to feel, like doing things."
To which the warder, a man as dark as a chimney-sweep, with large blue "whites" to his eyes, added stutteringly:
"To no one here has permission been given to feel, or not to feel, like doing things. You hear that?"
So to exercise I went.
In this stone-paved yard the air is as hot as in an oven, for overhead there lours only a small, flat patch of dull, drab- tinted sky, and on three sides of the yard rise high grey walls, with, on the fourth, the entrance-gates, topped by a sort of look-out post.
Over the roof of the building there comes floating the dull roar of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being in a drum which a myriad drumsticks are beating.
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