Through Russia Part 41

That this will happen I do not feel confident. Nor do I desire that it should.

Five years later I am pacing the courtyard of the Metechski Prison in Tiflis, and, as I do so, trying to imagine for what particular offence I have been incarcerated in that place of confinement.

Picturesquely grim without, the inst.i.tution is, inwardly, peopled with a set of cheerful, but clumsy, humourists. That is to say, it would seem as though, "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 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 pa.s.sing 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sumption?"

"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--"