MASLOVA IN PRISON
THOUGH hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together: paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal – still spring was spring, even in the town.
The sun shone warm, the air was balmy, the grass, where it did not get scraped away, revived and sprang up everywhere: between the paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry trees were unfolding their gummy and fragrant leaves, the bursting buds were swelling on the lime trees; crows, sparrows, and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls warmed by the sunshine. All were glad: the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of consideration, not the beauty of God’s world, given for a joy to all creatures – this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and to love – but only their own devices for enslaving one another.
Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the fact that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of spring that was considered sacred and important, but that a notice, numbered and with a superscription, had come the day before, ordering that on this, the 28th day of April, at 9 A. M., three prisoners now detained in the prison, a man and two women (one of these women, as the chief criminal, to be conducted separately), had to appear at the Court. So now, on the 28th of April, at eight o’clock in the morning, the chief jailer entered the dark, stinking corridor of the women’s part of the prison. Immediately after, a woman, with curly grey hair, and a look of suffering on her face, came into the corridor. She was dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed with gold lace, and had a blue-edged belt round her waist,
The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the cell – from which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that in the corridor – called out ‘Maslova! to the Court,’ and closed the door again.