Knowing nothing about it, I too went out to stand with the others. I only learnt the details of the affair later. I thought that some inspection was going on, but, not seeing the soldiers whose duty it was to carry out the inspection, I wondered and began looking about me. The men’s faces were excited and irritated. Some were even pale. All looked anxious and silent, in anticipation of speaking to the major. I noticed that several looked at me with extraordinary amazement, but turned away in silence. It obviously seemed strange to them that I should have joined them. They evidently did not believe that I had come out to take part in the complaint, but soon afterwards all who were around me turned to me again. All looked at me inquiringly.
“What are you here for?” Vassily Antonov, who stood further off than the rest, asked me in a loud rude voice. Till then he had always addressed me formally and treated me with politeness.
I looked at him in perplexity, still trying to understand what it all meant, and beginning to guess that something extraordinary was happening.
“Yes, what need have you to stand here? Go indoors,” said a young convict of the military division, a quiet, good-natured fellow whom I knew nothing of. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“But they are all forming up, I thought there was an inspection,” I said.
“I say, so he has crawled out too!” shouted another.
“Iron beak!” said another. “Fly-crushers!” said a third with ineffable contempt. This new nickname evoked general laughter.
“He sits with us in the kitchen as a favour,” answered someone.
“They’re in clover everywhere. This is prison, but they have rolls to eat and buy sucking-pig. You eat your own provisions, why are you poking in here?”
“This is not the place for you, Alexandr Petrovitch,” said Kulikov, approaching me in a nonchalant way; he took me by the arm and led me out of the ranks.
He was pale, his black eyes were gleaming, and he was biting his lower lip. He was not awaiting the major with indifference. I particularly liked looking at Kulikov, by the way, on all such occasions, that is, on all occasions when he had to show what he was. He posed fearfully, but he did what had to be done. I believe he would have gone to the scaffold with a certain style and gallantry. At this moment, when everyone was being rude and familiar to me, he with evident intention redoubled his courtesy to me, and at the same time his words were peculiarly, as it were disdainfully, emphatic and admitted of no protest.
“This is our affair, Alexandr Petrovitch, and you’ve nothing to do with it. You go away and wait. All your friends are in the kitchen, you go there.”
“Under the ninth beam, where Antipka nimbleheels lives!” someone put in.
Through the open window of the kitchen I did in fact see our Poles. I fancied, however, that there were a good many people there besides. Disconcerted, I went into the kitchen, I was pursued by laughter, oaths, and cries of tyu-tyu-tyu (the sound which took the place of whistling in prison).
“He didn’t like it! Tyu-tyu-tyu! At him!” I had never before been so insulted in the prison, and this time I felt it very bitterly. But I had turned up at the wrong moment. In the entry to the kitchen, I met T., a young man of strong will and generous heart, of no great education, though he was a man of good birth. He was a great friend of B.’s. The other convicts marked him out from the rest of us “gentlemen” and had some affection for him. He was brave, manly and strong, and this was somehow apparent in every gesture.
“What are you doing, Goryanchikov,” he shouted to me, “come here!”
“But what’s the matter?”
“They are presenting a complaint, don’t you know? It won’t do them any good; who’ll believe convicts? They’ll try to find out the instigators, and, if we are there, they’ll be sure to pitch on us first as responsible for the mutiny. Remember what we came here for. They will be simply flogged and we shall be tried. The major hates us all, and will be glad to ruin us. And by means of us he’ll save himself.”
“And the convicts would be glad to betray us,” added M., as we went into the kitchen.
“You may be sure they wouldn’t spare us,” T. assented.
There were a great many other people, some thirty, besides us “gentlemen” in the kitchen. They had all remained behind, not wishing to take part in the complaint—some from cowardice, others from a full conviction of the uselessness of any sort of complaint. Among them was Akim Akimitch, who had a natural and inveterate hostility to all such complaints, as destructive of morality and official routine. He said nothing, but waited in perfect tranquillity for the end of the affair, not troubling himself as to its result, and thoroughly convinced of the inevitable triumph of discipline and the will of the authorities. Isay Fomitch was there too, looking much perplexed, and with drooping nose listening greedily and apprehensively to our conversation. He was in great anxiety. All the Poles of the peasant class were here, too, with their compatriots of the privileged class. There were some other timid souls, people who were always silent and dejected. They had not dared to join the others, and were mournfully waiting to see how it would end. There were also some morose and always sullen convicts who were not of a timid character. They stayed behind from obstinacy, and a contemptuous conviction that it was all foolishness, and that nothing but harm would come of it. But yet I fancy they felt somewhat awkward now, they did not look perfectly at their
