MASLOVA’S EARLY LIFE.
The story of the prisoner Maslova’s life was a very common one.
Maslova’s mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman,
employed on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who were
landowners. This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and, as often
happens among the village people, each one of these undesired babies,
after it had been carefully baptised, was neglected by its mother, whom
it hindered at her work, and left to starve. Five children had died in
this way. They had all been baptised and then not sufficiently fed, and
just left to die. The sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp, would
have shared the same fate, had it not so happened that one of the maiden
ladies came into the farmyard to scold the dairymaids for sending up
cream that smelt of the cow. The young woman was lying in the cowshed
with a fine, healthy, new-born baby. The old maiden lady scolded the
maids again for allowing the woman (who had just been confined) to lie
in the cowshed, and was about to go away, but seeing the baby her heart
was touched, and she offered to stand godmother to the little girl, and
pity for her little god-daughter induced her to give milk and a little
money to the mother, so that she should feed the baby; and the little
girl lived. The old ladies spoke of her as “the saved one.” When the
child was three years old, her mother fell ill and died, and the maiden
ladies took the child from her old grandmother, to whom she was nothing
but a burden.
The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so full of
spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.
The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood godmother to
the girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters; Maria Ivanovna, the
elder, was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna dressed the little girl in nice
clothes, and taught her to read and write, meaning to educate her like a
lady. Maria Ivanovna thought the child should be brought up to work, and
trained her to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished, and,
when in a bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under
these two different influences, the girl turned out half servant, half
young lady. They called her Katusha, which sounds less refined than
Katinka, but is not quite so common as Katka. She used to sew, tidy up
the rooms, polish the metal cases of the icons and do other light work,
and sometimes she sat and read to the ladies.
Though she had more than one offer, she would not marry. She felt that
life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting her would
be too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.
She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the
old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to
stay with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to
herself, fell in love with him.
Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his aunts
before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night before he left he
betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a 100-rouble note, went away.
Five months later she knew for certain that she was to be a mother.
After that everything seemed repugnant to her, her only thought being
how to escape from the shame that awaited her. She began not only to
serve the ladies in a half-hearted and negligent way, but once, without
knowing how it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice,
a thing she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing
something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a
housemaid’s place in a police-officer’s house, but stayed there only
three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began to torment
her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising mood, she fired
up, called him “a fool and old devil,” and gave him such a knock in the
chest that he fell. She was turned out for her rudeness. It was useless
to look for another situation, for the time of her confinement was
drawing near, so she went to the house of a village midwife, who also
sold wine. The confinement was easy; but the midwife, who had a case of
fever in the village, infected Katusha, and her baby boy had to be sent
to the foundlings’ hospital, where, according to the words of the old
woman who took him there, he at once died. When Katusha went to the
midwife she had 127 roubles in all, 27 which she had earned and 100
given her by her betrayer. When she left she had but six roubles; she
did not know how to keep money, but spent it on herself, and gave to
all who asked. The midwife took 40 roubles for two months’ board and
attendance, 25 went to get the baby into the foundlings’ hospital, and
40 the midwife borrowed to buy a cow with. Twenty roubles went just for
clothes and dainties. Having nothing left to live on, Katusha had to
look out for a place again, and found one in the house of a forester.
The forester was a married man, but he, too, began to annoy her from the
first day. He disgusted her, and she tried to avoid him. But he, more
experienced and cunning, besides being her master, who could send her
wherever he liked, managed to accomplish his object. His wife found it
out, and, catching Katusha and her husband in a room all by themselves,
began beating her. Katusha defended herself, and they had a fight, and
Katusha got turned out of the house without being paid her wages.
Then Katusha went to live with her aunt in town. The aunt’s husband,
a bookbinder, had once been comfortably off, but had lost all his
customers, and had taken to drink, and spent all he could lay hands
on at the public-house. The aunt kept a little laundry, and managed to
support herself, her children, and her wretched husband. She offered
Katusha the place of an assistant laundress; but seeing what a life of
misery and hardship her aunt’s assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and
applied to a registry office for a place. One was found for her with a
lady who lived with her two sons, pupils at a public day school. A
week after Katusha had entered the house the elder, a big fellow with
moustaches, threw up his studies and made love to her, continually
following her about. His mother laid all the blame on Katusha, and gave
her notice.
It so happened that, after many fruitless attempts to find a situation,
Katusha again went to the registry office, and there met a woman with
bracelets on her bare, plump arms and rings on most of her fingers.
Hearing that Katusha was badly in want of a place, the woman gave her
her address, and invited her to come to her house. Katusha went. The
woman received her very kindly, set cake and sweet wine before her,
then wrote a note and gave it to a servant to take to somebody. In the
evening a tall man, with long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the
room, and sat down at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with
glistening eyes. He began joking with her. The hostess called him away
into the next room, and Katusha heard her say, “A fresh one from the
country,” Then the hostess called Katusha aside and told her that the
man was an author, and that he had a great deal of money, and that if
he liked her he would not grudge her anything. He did like her, and gave
her 25 roubles, promising to see her often. The 25 roubles soon went;
some she paid to her aunt for board and lodging; the rest was spent on
a hat, ribbons, and such like. A few days later the author sent for her,
and she went. He gave her another 25 roubles, and offered her a separate
lodging.
Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived a
jolly young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love. She told
the author, and moved to a little lodging of her own. The shopman, who
promised to marry her, went to Nijni on business without mentioning it
to her, having evidently thrown her up, and Katusha remained alone. She
meant to continue living in the lodging by herself, but was informed
by the police that in this case she would have to get a license. She
returned to her aunt. Seeing her fine dress, her hat, and mantle, her
aunt no longer offered her laundry work. As she understood things, her
niece had risen above that sort of thing. The question as to whether she
was to become a laundress or not did not occur to Katusha, either. She
looked with pity at the thin, hard-worked laundresses, some already in
consumption, who stood washing or ironing with their thin arms in the
fearfully hot front room, which was always full of soapy steam and
draughts from the windows, and thought with horror that she might have
shared the same fate.
Katusha had begun to smoke some time before, and since the young shopman
had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of
drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the
fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered,
making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth,
which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and
ashamed. Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her
in one of the largest establishments in the city, explaining all the
advantages and benefits of the situation. Katusha had the choice before
her of either going into service or accepting this offer--and she chose
the latter. Besides, it seemed to her as though, in this way, she could
revenge herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all those who had
injured her. One of the things that tempted her, and was the cause
of her decision, was the woman telling her she might order her own
dresses--velvet, silk, satin, low-necked ball dresses, anything she
liked. A mental picture of herself in a bright yellow silk trimmed with
black velvet with low neck and short sleeves conquered her, and she gave
up her passport. On the same evening the procuress took an isvostchik
and drove her to the notorious house kept by Carolina Albertovna
Kitaeva.
From that day a life of chronic sin against human and divine laws
commenced for Katusha Maslova, a life which is led by hundreds of
thousands of women, and which is not merely tolerated but sanctioned by
the Government, anxious for the welfare of its subjects; a life
which for nine women out of ten ends in painful disease, premature
decrepitude, and death.
Katusha Maslova lived this life for seven years. During these years she
twice changed houses, and had once been to the hospital. In the seventh
year of this life, when she was twenty-six years old, happened that for
which she was put in prison and for which she was now being taken to
be tried, after more than three months of confinement with thieves and
murderers in the stifling air of a prison.