The cell in which Maslova was confined was an oblong room, twenty feet
by fifteen. The kalsomining of the walls was peeled off, and the dry
boards of the cots occupied two-thirds of the space. In the middle of
the room, opposite the door, was a dark iron, with a wax candle stuck
on it, and a dusty bouquet of immortelles hanging under it. To the
left, behind the door, on a darkened spot of the floor, stood an
ill-smelling vat. The women had been locked up for the night.
There were fifteen inmates of this cell, twelve women and three
children.
It was not dark yet, and only two women lay in their cots; one a
foolish little woman--she was constantly crying--who had been arrested
because she had no written evidence of her identity, had her head
covered with her coat; the other, a consumptive, was serving a
sentence for theft. She was not sleeping, but lay, her coat under her
head, with wide-open eyes, and with difficulty retaining in her throat
the tickling, gurgling phlegm, so as not to cough. The other women
were with bare heads and skirts of coarse linen; some sat on their
cots sewing; others stood at the window gazing on the passing
prisoners. Of the three women who were sewing, one, Korableva, was the
one who had given Maslova the instructions when the latter left the
cell. She was a tall, strong woman, with a frowning, gloomy face, all
wrinkled, a bag of skin hanging under her chin, a short braid of light
hair, turning gray at the temples, and a hairy wart on her cheek. This
old woman was sentenced to penal servitude for killing her husband
with an axe. The killing was committed because he annoyed her daughter
with improper advances. She was the overseer of the cell, and also
sold wine to the inmates. She was sewing with eye-glasses, and held
the needle, after the fashion of the peasants, with three fingers,
the sharp point turned toward her breast. Beside her, also sewing, sat
a little woman, good-natured and talkative, dark, snub-nosed and with
little black eyes. She was the watch-woman at a flag-station, and was
sentenced to three months' imprisonment for negligently causing an
accident on the railroad. The third of the women who were occupied
with sewing was Theodosia--called Fenichka by her fellow-prisoners--of
light complexion, and with rosy cheeks; young, lovely, with bright,
childish blue eyes, and two long, flaxen braids rolled up on her small
head. She was imprisoned for attempting to poison her husband. She was
sixteen years old when she was married, and she made the attempt
immediately after her marriage. During the eight months that she was
out on bail, she not only became reconciled to her husband, but became
so fond of him that the court officers found them living in perfect
harmony. In spite of all the efforts of her husband, her
father-in-law, and especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very
fond of her, to obtain her discharge, she was sentenced to hard labor
in Siberia. The kind, cheerful and smiling Theodosia, whose cot was
next to Maslova's, not only took a liking to her, but considered it
her duty to help her in every possible way. Two other women were
sitting idly on their cots; one of about forty years, who seemed to
have been pretty in her youth, but was now pale and slim, was feeding
a child with her long, white breast. Her crime consisted in that, when
the people of the village she belonged to attempted to stop a
recruiting officer who had drafted, illegally, as they thought, her
nephew, she was the first to take hold of the bridle of his horse.
There was another little white-haired, wrinkled woman, good-natured
and hunch-backed, who sat near the oven and pretended to be catching a
four-year-old, short-haired and stout boy, who, in a short little
shirt, was running past her, laughing and repeating: "You tan't tatch
me!" This old woman, who, with her son, was charged with incendiarism,
bore her confinement good-naturedly, grieving only over her son, who
was also in jail, but above all, her heart was breaking for her old
man who, she feared, would be eaten up by lice, as her daughter-in-law
had returned to her parents, and there was no one to wash him.
Besides these seven women, there were four others who stood near the
open windows, their hands resting on the iron gratings, and conversing
by signs and shouts with the prisoners whom Maslova had met in the
passageway. One of these, who was serving a sentence for theft, was a
flabby, large, heavy, red-haired woman with white-yellow freckles over
her face, and a stout neck which was exposed by the open waist collar.
In a hoarse voice she shouted indecent words through the window.
Beside her stood a woman of the size of a ten-year-old girl, very
dark, with a long back and very short legs. Her face was red and
blotched; her black eyes wide open, and her short, thick lips failed
to hide her white, protruding teeth. She laughed in shrill tones at
the antics of the prisoners. This prisoner, who was nicknamed Miss
Dandy, because of her stylishness, was under indictment for theft and
incendiarism. Behind them, in a very dirty, gray shirt, stood a
wretched-looking woman, big with child, who was charged with
concealing stolen property. This woman was silent, but she approvingly
smiled at the actions of the prisoners without. The fourth of the
women who stood at the window, and was undergoing sentence for illicit
trading in spirits, was a squat little country woman with bulging eyes
and kindly face. She was the mother of the boy who was playing with
the old woman, and of another seven-year-old girl, both of whom were
in jail with her, because they had no one else to take care of them.
Knitting a stocking, she was looking through the window and
disapprovingly frowned and closed her eyes at the language used by the
passing prisoners. The girl who stood near the red-haired woman, with
only a shirt on her back, and clinging with one hand to the woman's
skirt, attentively listened to the abusive words the men were
exchanging with the women, and repeated them in a whisper, as if
committing them to memory. The twelfth was the daughter of a church
clerk and chanter who had drowned her child in a well. She was a tall
and stately girl, with large eyes and tangled hair sticking out of her
short, thick, flaxen braid. She paid no attention to what was going on
around her, but paced, bare-footed, and in a dirty gray shirt, over
the floor of the cell, making sharp and quick turns when she reached
the wall.