“He’ll bribe them,” the grim, grey-headed convict, who had by now finished his soup, brought out jerkily.
“To be sure he will,” said another. “He’s grabbed money enough! He had a battalion before he came to us. The other day he was wanting to marry the head priest’s daughter.”
“But he didn’t—they showed him the door, he was too poor. He’s not much of a match! When he gets up from a chair he takes all he’s got with him. He lost all his money gambling at Easter. Fedka said so.”
“Yes; the lad’s not one to spend, but he gets through cash no end.”
“Ah, brother, I was married too. It’s no use for a man to be married: when you are married the night’s too short,” remarked Skuratov, putting his word in.
“Oh, indeed! It was you we were talking about, of course,” observed the free-and-easy youth who had been a clerk. “But you are a silly fool, Kvasov, let me tell you. Do you suppose the major could bribe a general like that, and that such a general would come all the way from Petersburg to inspect the major? You are a fool, my lad, let me tell you.”
“Why, because he’s a general won’t he take it?” someone in the crowd observed sceptically.
“Of course he won’t, if he does, he’ll take a jolly big one.”
“To be sure, he will; to match his rank.”
“A general will always take bribes,” Kvasov observed with decision.
“You’ve tried it on, I suppose?” said Baklushin suddenly coming in and speaking contemptuously. “I don’t believe you’ve ever seen a general.”
“I have, though!”
“You are lying!”
“Lie yourself!”
“Lads, if he has seen one, let him tell us all directly what general he knows. Come, speak away—for I know all the generals.”
“I’ve seen General Ziebert,” Kvasov answered with strange hesitation.
“Ziebert? There isn’t such a general. He looked at your back, I suppose, your Ziebert, when he was a lieutenant-colonel maybe, and you fancied in your fright he was a general!”
“No, listen to me!” cried Skuratov, “for I am a married man. There really was such a general at Moscow, Ziebert, of German family, though he was a Russian. He used to confess to a Russian priest every year, at the fast of the Assumption, and he was always drinking water, lads, like a duck. Every day he’d drink forty glasses of Moscow river water. They said that he took it for some disease, his valet told me so himself.”
“He bred carp in his belly, I bet, with all that water,” observed the convict with the balalaika.
“Come, do shut up! We are talking business and they. … What is this inspector, brothers?” a fussy old convict, called Martinov, who had been a hussar, anxiously inquired.
“What nonsense people talk!” observed a sceptic. “Where do they get it from and how do they fit it in? And it’s all nonsense!”
“No, it’s not nonsense,” Kulikov, who had hitherto been majestically silent, observed dogmatically. He was a man of some consequence, about fifty, with an exceptionally prepossessing countenance and disdainfully dignified manners. He was aware of the fact, and was proud of it. He was a veterinary surgeon, partly of gipsy descent, who used to earn money by doctoring horses in the town, and sold vodka in prison. He was a clever fellow and had seen a good deal. He dropped his words as though he were bestowing roubles.
“That’s the truth, lads,” he went on calmly. “I heard it last week. There’s a general coming, a very important one, he’ll inspect the whole of Siberia. We all know he will be bribed too, but not by our old Eight-eyes; he wouldn’t dare to come near him. There are generals and generals, brothers. There are some of all sorts. Only I tell you our major will stay where he is, anyway. That’s a sure thing. We can’t speak, and none of the officers will speak against one of their own lot. The inspector will look into the prison and then he’ll go away and report that he found everything all right. …”
“That’s right, lads, but the major’s in a funk he’s drunk from morning till night.”
“But in the evening he drives a different sort of cart. Fedka was saying so.”
“You’ll never wash a black dog white. It’s not the first time he’s drunk, is it?”
“I say, what if the general really does nothing? It is high time they took notice of their goings on!” the convicts said to each other in excitement.
The news about the inspector was all over the prison in a moment; men wandered about the yard, impatiently, repeating the news to one another though some were purposely silent and maintained an indifferent air, evidently trying to increase their importance by so doing. Others remained genuinely unconcerned. Convicts with balalaikas were sitting on the barrack steps. Some went on gossiping. Others struck up songs, but all were in a state of great excitement that evening.
Between nine and ten we were all counted over, driven into the barracks and looked up for the night. The nights were short, we were waked between four and five, and we were never all asleep before eleven. There was always noise and talking till that hour and sometimes, as in winter, there were card parties. It became insufferably hot and stifling in the night. Though there were wafts of the cool night air from the open window, the convicts tossed about on their beds all night as though in delirium. The fleas swarmed in myriads. There were fleas in the winter too, and in considerable numbers, but from the beginning of spring they swarmed in multitudes. Though I had been told of it before, I could not believe in the reality till I experienced it. And as the summer advanced, they grew more and more ferocious. It is true that one can get used to fleas; I have learnt this by experience; but still one has a bad time of it. They torment one so much that one lies at last as though in
