Chapter 32 Part 1 - Twenty Nine

Maslova did not return to her cell until six in the evening.She is not used to long-distance travel, and now she has walked fifteen miles of gravel road at a stretch, her legs are sore, and she has been mentally hit by the unexpected and severe sentence, coupled with the unbearable hunger, she is almost paralyzed. Her mouth was watering as bailiffs ate bread and hard-boiled eggs next to her during a break in the interrogation.She was hungry, but it was humiliating to ask them for something to eat.Another three hours passed after this, and she no longer wanted to eat, but felt weak all over.Just then, she heard the unexpected verdict.For the first moment she thought she had heard it wrong, could not believe what she was hearing, could not associate the word convict with herself.However, she was very indignant to see the solemn and indifferent faces of the judge and jury, and the indifference in the sentence, and she cried out to the whole court.But when she saw that even her complaints were ignored, and the situation could not be changed, she cried, feeling that she had to submit to the great injustice that was forced upon her.She was especially surprised that it was the middle-aged and young men who had been looking at her amiably all the time who had sentenced her so cruelly.She saw that there was only one person, the deputy prosecutor, who was always in a different mood from the others.Sitting at first in the prisoner holding room waiting for the trial, and then sitting there again during interrogation breaks, she saw these men pretending to have something to do, walking up and down her door, or simply walking into the room, just to To get a good look at her.Who would have thought that these men would inexplicably sentence her to hard labor, even though she did not commit the crimes she was accused of.At first she wept aloud, but then she stopped crying and sat in the detention cell, waiting to be escorted back to prison.Now she only craves one thing: smoking.She was in this state of mind when Bochkova and Karzinkin were also brought into this room after the sentencing.As soon as Bochkova arrived she scolded Maslova and called her a convict.

"Well, you won? You're not guilty? I'm afraid I won't be able to escape this time, bitch! You deserve it.After serving hard labor, how can you still show off? " Maslova sat there with her hands in the sleeves of her prison robe, her head bowed, she stared blankly at the heavily trodden floor two paces ahead, and said only: "I didn't offend you, and you don't offend me. I didn't offend you," she repeated several times, and then stopped talking.It was not until Karzinkin and Bochkova were escorted away, and a bailiff brought her three rubles, that she became a little more flexible.

"Are you Maslova?" he asked. "Here, here it is from a lady," said the bailiff, handing her the money. "Which lady?" "You just take it, who wants to talk to you so much." The money was sent to him by the brothel master Ban Kidayeva.As she left the court she asked the magistrate if she could give Maslova some money.The civil marshal said yes.With permission, she took off her suede gloves with three buttons, and with her plump, white hands, she took a fashionable purse from the back fold of her silk skirt.In the purse was a thick stack of coupons that she had cut from brothel-earned securities.She took out a coupon of two rubles and fifty kopecks, together with two twenty-kopeck pieces and a ten-kopeck piece, and handed it to the magistrate.The marshal summoned a bailiff, who handed over the money to the bailiff in the presence of the benefactor.

-------- ①In the era of imperial Russia, coupons on securities were often circulated as cash. "You must give it to her," Kidayeva told the bailiff. The bailiff was angry at being so distrusted of him, and that was why he treated Maslova so furiously. Maslova was glad to have the money, because with it she could get the only thing she wanted at the moment. "I wish I could get some cigarettes to smoke," she thought to herself, longing for a cigarette.She really wanted to smoke, so she desperately inhaled the smell of cigarettes that filled the corridor-it was wafting from the various offices.But she had to wait a long time, because the clerk who was in charge of sending her back to prison forgot about the defendant, and was only talking about a banned article with a lawyer, and even had an argument with him.After the trial was over, a few men, young and old, came to look at her and whispered to each other.But she didn't pay any attention to them at the moment.

It was not until after four o'clock that she was escorted back to prison.The townsman and Chuvash who had escorted her led her out of the courtroom through the back door.While still in the hall of the court she gave them twenty kopeks and asked them to buy her two white rolls and a pack of cigarettes.The Chuvash laughed, took the money and said: "Okay, we'll buy it for you," he said, and he actually went and bought her cigarettes and bread, and handed her the change. Smoking is not allowed on the road.So Maslova had to go back to the cell with an unsatisfied addiction to cigarettes.She went back to the gate of the prison, where about a hundred male prisoners had just arrived from the train station.She met them in the hallway.

Some of the prisoners had beards, some had no beards, some were old and some were young, some were Russians, some were from other nationalities, some had shaved heads and clattered iron chains on their feet.They made the front room very dusty and filled with footsteps, talking and sweat.When the prisoners passed by Maslova, they all looked at her lewdly, and some of them walked past her with lewd expressions on their faces. "Hey, what a pretty girl," said one of the prisoners. "Hello, lady," said another with a wink. A swarthy prisoner, with a blue-shaven back and a mustache on his clean-shaven face, with rattling fetters, jumped up to her and threw his arms around her.

"Don't you even recognize your old friends? Huh, don't pretend!" He bared his teeth, his eyes sparkled, and shouted.Maslova pushed him away. "What are you doing, bastard?" the deputy warden came from behind and yelled at him. The prisoner tightened his body and hurriedly dodged.The deputy warden turned to Maslova and cursed: "What are you doing here?" Maslova wanted to say that she had just returned from the court, but she was too tired to speak. "Just from the courthouse, sir," said the older escort, passing through the throng, raising his hand to the brim of his hat.

"Oh, then hand her over to the warden. It's a shame!" "Yes, sir." "Sokolov! Take her," cried the deputy warden. The superintendent came up, angrily pushed Maslova on the shoulder, nodded to her, and led her into the corridor of the women's prison.There she was searched all over, but nothing was found (the pack of cigarettes had been stuffed in the bread), and she was sent back to the same cell from which she came out in the morning.