“Had he ever admitted Maronin before at such a late hour?”
“I believe so—once.”
“Why, then, were you surprised to see him when he came to- night?”
A.J. answered, with an effort of casualness: “Because on that last occasion when he paid me a call after permitted hours I gave the boy such a scolding for breaking rules and leading me into possible trouble, that I felt quite sure he had learned a lesson and would not do so again.”
“I see…And you still say that you have not the slightest idea how Maronin met with his injury?”
“Not the slightest.”
“May we examine your passport?”
“Certainly.”
He produced it and handed it over. While it was being closely inspected two police officers carried the boy’s body to a waiting ambulance below. Finally the leading officer handed the passport back to A.J. with the words: “That will be all for the present, but we may wish to question you again.” The police then departed, but A.J. was under no illusion that danger had departed with them. When he looked out of his sitting-room window he could see and hear the march of a patient watcher on the pavement below.
He drank some brandy to steady his nerves and spent the rest of the night in his easiest armchair. He did not care to enter the bedroom. Now that the police had left him, personal apprehensions were again overshadowed by grief.
He had fallen into a troubled doze when he was awakened by the sound of scuffling on the landing outside, punctuated by shrill screams from the woman who usually came in the mornings to clear up his room and prepare breakfast. She was evidently being compelled to give up her keys, and a moment later the door was unlocked and two police guards strode into the room. They were of a very different type from those of the previous visit. Huge, shaggy fellows, blustering in manner and brutal in method, A.J. recognised their class from so many stories he had heard in that underground beer-hall. “You are to come with us immediately,” one of them ordered gruffly. “Take any extra clothes and personal articles that you can put into a small parcel.” A.J. felt a sharp stab of panic; the routine was dreadfully familiar. “By whose orders?” he asked, feeling that a show of truculence might have some effect with men who were obviously uneducated; but the only reply was a surly: “You’ll find that out in good time.”
The men were armed with big revolvers, apart from which they were of such physique that resistance was out of the question. A.J. gathered together a few possessions and accompanied his two escorts to a pair-horse van waiting at the kerbside. This they bade him enter, one of them getting inside with him, while the other took the reins. The inside was almost pitch dark. After a noisy rattling drive of over half an hour the doors were opened and A.J. was ushered quickly into a building whose exterior he had no time to recognise. The two guards led him into a large bleak room unfurnished except for a desk and a few chairs. A heavily-built and dissipated-looking man sat at the desk twirling his moustache. When A.J. was brought in the man put on a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and stared fiercely.
“You are Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov?” he queried; and to A.J.’s affirmative, merely replied: “Take him away.”
The guards continued their Journey with him along many corridors and across several courtyards. He knew that he was in a prison, though which one out of the many in Petersburg he had no idea. At last one of the guards unlocked and opened a door and pushed him into a room already occupied by what at first seemed a large crowd. But that was because, in the dim light admitted by a small and heavily-barred window, it was difficult to distinguish the inhabitants from their bundles of clothing.
They had seemed asleep when A.J. entered, but as soon as the guards retired and the door was relocked they all burst into sudden chatter. A.J., dazed and astonished, found himself surrounded by gesticulating men and youths, all eager to know who he was, why he had been sent there, and so on. He told them his name, but thought it wiser to say that no charge had been made against him so far. They said: “Ah, that is how it very often happens. They do not tell you anything.” They even laughed when he asked the name of the prison; it amused them to have to supply such information. It was the Gontcharnaya, they said.
Altogether there were a score or more inhabitants of that room. About half were youths of between seventeen and twenty-one. One of them told A.J. he had already been imprisoned for two months without knowing any charge against him, and there was a steady hopelessness in his voice as he said so. “These people are not all politicals,” he went on, whispering quietly amidst the surrounding chatter. “Some are criminals—some probably government agents sent to spy on us—who knows?—there is always that sort of thing going on. A fortnight ago two fellows were taken away—we don’t know where, of course—nothing has happened since then until you came.”
Considering their plight the majority of the prisoners were cheerful; they laughed, played with cards and dice, sang songs, and exchanged anecdotes. One of them, a Jew, had an extensive repertoire of obscenity, and whenever the time fell heavily somebody would shout: “Tell us another story, Jewboy.” Another prisoner spent most of his time crouched in a corner, silent and almost motionless; he was ill, though nobody could say exactly what was the matter with him. He could not take the prison food, and so had practically to starve. The food was nauseating enough to anyone in good health, since apart from black bread it consisted of nothing but a pailful of fish soup twice a day, to be shared amongst all the occupants. A.J. could not stomach it till his third day, and even then it made him heave; it smelt and tasted vilely and looked disgusting when it was brought in with fish-heads floating about on its greasy surface. It was nourishing, however, and to avoid it altogether would have been unwise. There were no spoons or drinking vessels; each man dipped his own personal mug or basin into the pail and took what he wanted, and the same mugs, unwashed, served for the tea which the men were allowed to make for themselves.
At night they slept on planks ranged round the wall a foot from the floor. The cracks in the planks were full of bugs. Most of the men were extremely verminous; indeed, it was impossible not to be so after a few days in such surroundings. A smell of dirty clothes and general unwholesomeness was always in the air, mixed with the stale fish smell from the soup-pail and other smells arising from the crude sanitary methods of the place.
The warders were mostly quite friendly and could be bribed to supply small quantities of such things as tea, sugar, and tobacco (to be chewed, not smoked). The entire prison routine was an affair of curious contrasts—it was slack almost to the point of being good-humoured, yet, beyond it all, there was a sense of complete and utter hopelessness. One felt the power of authority as a shapeless and rather muddled monster, not too stern to be sometimes easy-going, but quite careless enough to forget the existence of any individual victim. Most hopeless of all was the way in which some of the victims accepted the situation; they did not complain, they did not show anger, indignation, or even (it seemed) much anxiety. When the warders unlocked the door twice a day their eyes lifted up, with neither hope nor fear, but with just a sort of slow, smouldering fever. And when the man in the corner grew obviously very ill, they did what they could for him, shrugged their shoulders, went on with their card playing, and let him die. After all, what else was possible? Only in the manner and glances of a few of the youngsters did there appear any sign of fiercer emotions.