Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

Though the watchman’s wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette Máslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking unceasingly.

“There, now, ducky, so it’s true,” she said. “Truth’s gone to the dogs and they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you’d go free. Korabléva says, ‘She’ll go free.’ I say, ‘No,’ say I. ‘No, dear, my heart tells me they’ll give it her.’ And so it’s turned out,” she went on, evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.

The women who had been standing by the window now also came up to Máslova, the convicts who had amused them having gone away. The first to come up were the woman imprisoned for illicit trade in spirits, and her little girl. “Why such a hard sentence?” asked the woman, sitting down by Máslova and knitting fast.

“Why so hard? Because there’s no money. That’s why! Had there been money, and had a good lawyer that’s up to their tricks been hired, they’d have acquitted her, no fear,” said Korabléva. “There’s what’s-his-name⁠—that hairy one with the long nose. He’d bring you out clean from pitch, mum, he would. Ah, if we’d only had him!”

“Him, indeed,” said Khoroshávka. “Why, he won’t spit at you for less than a thousand roubles.”

“Seems you’ve been born under an unlucky star,” interrupted the old woman who was imprisoned for incendiarism. “Only think, to entice the lad’s wife and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my old days⁠—” she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. “If it isn’t the beggar’s staff it’s the prison. Yes, the beggar’s staff and the prison don’t wait for an invitation.”

“Ah, it seems that’s the way with all of them,” said the spirit trader; and after looking at her little girl she put down her knitting, and, drawing the child between her knees, began to search her head with deft fingers. “Why do you sell spirits?” she went on. “Why? but what’s one to feed the children on?”

These words brought back to Máslova’s mind her craving for drink.

“A little vodka,” she said to Korabléva, wiping the tears with her sleeve and sobbing less frequently.

“All right, fork out,” said Korabléva.

Máslova got the money, which she had also hidden in a roll, and passed the coupon to Korabléva. Korabléva accepted it, though she could not read, trusting to Khoroshávka, who knew everything, and who said that the slip of paper was worth two roubles fifty copecks, then climbed up to the ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this, the women whose places were further off went away. Meanwhile Máslova shook the dust out of her cloak and kerchief, got up on the bedstead, and began eating a roll.

“I kept your tea for you,” said Theodosia, getting down from the shelf a mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag, “but I’m afraid it is quite cold.” The liquid was quite cold and tasted more of tin than of tea, yet Máslova filled the mug and began drinking it with her roll. “Fináshka, here you are,” she said, breaking off a bit of the roll and giving it to the boy, who stood looking at her mouth.

Meanwhile Korabléva handed the flask of vodka and a mug to Máslova, who offered some to her and to Khoroshávka. These prisoners were considered the aristocracy of the cell because they had some money, and shared what they possessed with the others.

In a few moments Máslova brightened up and related merrily what had happened at the court, and what had struck her most, i.e., how all the men had followed her wherever she went. In the court they all looked at her, she said, and kept coming into the prisoners’ room while she was there.

“One of the soldiers even says, ‘It’s all to look at you that they come.’ One would come in, ‘Where is such a paper?’ or something, but I see it is not the paper he wants; he just devours me with his eyes,” she said, shaking her head. “Regular artists.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said the watchman’s wife, and ran on in her musical strain, “they’re like flies after sugar.”

“And here, too,” Máslova interrupted her, “the same thing. They can do without anything else. But the likes of them will go without bread sooner than miss that! Hardly had they brought me back when in comes a gang from the railway. They pestered me so, I did not know how to rid myself of them. Thanks to the assistant, he turned them off. One bothered so, I hardly got away.”

“What’s he like?” asked Khoroshávka.

“Dark, with moustaches.”

“It must be him.”

“Him⁠—who?”

“Why, Scheglóff; him as has just gone by.”

“What’s he, this Scheglóff?”

“What, she don’t know Scheglóff? Why, he ran twice from Siberia. Now they’ve got him, but he’ll run away. The warders themselves are afraid of him,” said Khoroshávka, who managed to exchange notes with the male prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. “He’ll run away, that’s flat.”

“If he does go away you and I’ll have to stay,” said Korabléva, turning to Máslova, “but you’d better tell us now what the advocate says about petitioning. Now’s the time to hand it in.”

Máslova answered that she knew nothing about it.

At that moment the red-haired woman came up to the “aristocracy” with both freckled hands in her thick hair, scratching her head with her nails.

“I’ll tell you all about it, Katerína,” she began. “First and foremost, you’ll have to write down you’re dissatisfied with the sentence, then give notice to the Procureur.”

“What do you want here?” said Korabléva angrily; “smell the vodka, do you? Your chatter’s not wanted. We know what to do without your advice.”

“No one’s speaking to you; what do you stick your nose in for?”

“It’s vodka you want; that’s why you come wriggling yourself in here.”

“Well, offer her some,” said Máslova, always ready to share anything she possessed with anybody.

“I’ll