I noticed one of the convicts, a grey-headed but ruddy cabinetmaker, smiling and flirting with the baker girls. Just before they came in he had tied a red handkerchief round his neck. A fat peasant woman whose face was covered with pockmarks put her tray on his bench. Conversation began between them.
“Why didn’t you turn up yesterday?” said the convict with a self-satisfied smile.
“Upon my word I did, but not a sign to be seen of you,” answered the lively woman.
“I was wanted, or you may be sure I’d have been there. … The day before yesterday all your lot came to see me.”
“Who did?”
“Maryashka came, Havroshka came, Tchekunda came, Twopenny-halfpenny came.”
“What does it mean?” I asked Akim Akimitch. “Is it possible?”
“It does happen,” he answered, dropping his eyes discreetly, for he was an extremely chaste man.
It certainly did happen, but very rarely, and in spite of immense difficulties. On the whole, men were much more keen on drinking, for instance, than on that sort of thing, in spite of its being naturally difficult for them to live in the way they were forced to do. Women were difficult to get hold of. The time and place had to be found, arrangements had to be made, meetings had to be fixed, seclusion had to be sought, which was particularly difficult, the guards had to be won over, which was still more difficult, and altogether a sum of money—immense, relatively speaking—had to be spent. Yet I happened sometimes, later on, to be a witness of amatory scenes. I remember one day in the summer we were three of us in a shed on the bank of the Irtish, heating some sort of kiln; the guards were good-natured fellows. At last two “frillies,” as the convicts called them, made their appearance.
“Well, where have you been so long? I bet you’ve been at the Zvyerkovs,” was how they were greeted by the convict whom they had come to see and who had been expecting them a long time.
“I’ve been so long? Why, I haven’t been there longer than a magpie on a pole,” the girl answered gaily.
She was the dirtiest girl imaginable. She was the one called Tchekunda. With her came Twopenny-halfpenny. The latter was beyond all description.
“I’ve not seen you for a long time either,” the gallant went on, addressing Twopenny-halfpenny; “how is it you seem to be thinner?”
“Maybe. I used to be ever so fat, but now one would think I’d swallowed a needle.”
“Always being with the soldiers, eh?”
“No, that’s a lie that spiteful tongues have told you; though what of it? Though I’m thin as any rake, the soldier-lads I’ll ne’er forsake!”
“You chuck them and love us; we’ve got cash. …”
To complete the picture, imagine this gallant with a shaven head, in parti-coloured clothes, guarded and in fetters.
I took leave of Akim Akimitch, and hearing that I might go back to the prison, I went back escorted by a guard. The convicts were already coming home. The men on piecework are the first to return. The only way of making a convict work hard is to put him on piecework. Sometimes huge tasks are set them, but they always do the work twice as quickly as when they are working by the day. When he finishes his task the convict goes home without hindrance and no one prevents his doing so.
They don’t dine altogether, but as they come in, just as it happens; indeed there would not have been room for them all at once in the kitchen. I tried the soup, but not being used to it I could not eat it, and I made myself some tea. We sat down at the end of the table. With me was a comrade of the same social class as myself.
Convicts kept going and coming. There was plenty of room however; they were not yet all in. A group of five men sat down together at the big table. The cook poured them out two bowls of soup and put on the table a whole dish of fried fish. They were keeping some sort of fête and eating their own food. They cast unfriendly glances in our direction. One of the Poles came in and sat down beside us.
“I’ve not been at home, but I know all the news,” a tall convict shouted aloud as he walked into the kitchen and looked round at everyone present.
He was a thin muscular man of fifty. There was something sly, and at the same time merry, about his face. What was particularly striking about him was his thick protruding lower lip; it gave a peculiarly comic look to his face.
“Well, have you had a good night? Why don’t you say good morning? Hullo, my Kursk friends!” he added, sitting down beside the group who were eating their own food. “A good appetite to you! Give a welcome to a friend.”
“We are not Kursk men, brother.”
“Tambov, then?”
“But we are not from Tambov either. You’ll get nothing from us, brother. You go and ask a rich peasant.”
“I’ve colliwobbles and rumble-tumbles in my belly today. And where is he living, your rich peasant?”
“Why, Gazin yonder is a rich peasant, you go to him.”
“Gazin’s having a spree today, lads, he is drinking; he is drinking all his money.”
“He’s worth a good twenty roubles,” observed another. “It’s a good business, lads, selling vodka.”
“Well, won’t you welcome a friend? I must have a sup of regulation fare then.”
“You go and ask for some tea. The gentlemen there have got some.”
“Gentlemen? There are no gentlemen here. They
