§3
Towards morning the office began to fill up. The first to appear was a clerk, who had evidently been drunk the night before and was not sober yet. He had red hair and a pimpled face, a consumptive look, and an expression of brutish sensuality; he wore a long, brick-coloured coat, ill-made, ill-brushed, and shiny with age. The next comer was a free-and-easy gentleman, wearing the cloak of a non-commissioned officer. He turned to me at once and asked:
“They got you at the theatre, I suppose?”
“No; I was arrested at home.”
“By Fyodor Ivanovitch?”
“Who is Fyodor Ivanovitch?”
“Why, Colonel Miller.”
“Yes, it was he.”
“Ah, I understand, Sir”—and he winked to the red-haired man, who showed not the slightest interest. The other did not continue the conversation; seeing that I was not charged as drunk and disorderly, he thought me unworthy of further attention; or perhaps he was afraid to converse with a political prisoner.
A little later, several policemen appeared, rubbing their eyes and only half awake; and finally the petitioners and suitors.
A woman who kept a disorderly house made a complaint against a publican. He had abused her publicly in his shop, using language which she, as a woman, could not venture to repeat before a magistrate. The publican swore he had never used such language; the woman swore that he had used it repeatedly and very loudly, and she added that he had raised his hand against her and would have laid her face open, had she not ducked her head. The shopman said, first, that she owed him money, and, secondly, that she had insulted him in his own shop, nay more, had threatened to kill him by the hands of her bullies.
She was a tall, slatternly woman with swollen eyes; her voice was piercingly loud and high, and she had an extraordinary flow of language. The shopman relied more on gesture and pantomime than on his eloquence.
In the absence of the judge, one of the policemen proved to be a second Solomon. He abused both parties in fine style. “You’re too well off,” he said; “that’s what’s the matter with you; why can’t you stop at home and keep the peace, and be thankful to us for letting you alone? What fools you are! Because you have had a few words you must run at once before His Worship and trouble him! How dare you give yourself airs, my good woman, as if you had never been abused before? Why your very trade can’t be named in decent language!” Here the shopman showed the heartiest approval by his gestures; but his turn came next. “And you, how dare you stand there in your shop and bark like an angry dog? Do you want to be locked up? You use foul language, and raise your fist as well; it’s a sound thrashing you want.”
This scene had the charm of novelty for me; it was the first specimen I had seen of patriarchal justice as administered in Russia, and I have never forgotten it.
The pair went on shouting till the magistrate came in. Without even asking their business, he shouted them down at once. “Get out of this! Do you take this place for a bad house or a gin-shop?” When he had driven out the offenders, he turned on the policeman: “I wonder you are not ashamed to permit such disorder. I have told you again and again. People lose all respect for the place; it will soon be a regular bear-garden for the mob; you are too easy with them.” Then he looked at me and said:
“Who is that?”
“A prisoner whom Fyodor Ivanovitch brought in,” answered the policeman; “there is a paper about him somewhere, Sir.”
The magistrate ran through the paper and then glanced at me. As I kept my eyes fixed on him, ready to retort the instant he spoke, he was put out and said, “I beg your pardon.”
But now the business began again between the publican and his enemy. The woman wished to take an oath, and a priest was summoned; I believe both parties were sworn, and there was no prospect of a conclusion. At this point I was taken in a carriage to the Chief Commissioner’s office—I am sure I don’t know why, for no one spoke a word to me there—and then brought back to the police-station, where a room right under the belfry was prepared for my occupation. The corporal observed that if I wanted food I must send out for it: the prison ration would not be issued for a day or two; and besides, as it only amounted to three or four kopecks a day, a gentleman “under a cloud” did not usually take it.
Along the wall of my room there was a sofa with a dirty cover. It was past midday and I was terribly weary. I threw myself on the sofa and fell fast asleep. When I woke, I felt quite easy and cheerful. Of late I had been tormented by my ignorance of Ogaryóv’s fate; now, my own turn had come, the black cloud was right overhead, I was in the thick of the danger, instead of watching it in the distance. I felt that this first prosecution would serve us as a consecration for our mission.