Motl, Hannah’s sole employe, was hammering away at his bindings and courting attention by all sorts of vocal quirks and trills. During the Days of Awe, the solemn festivals of autumn, he sang in a synagogue choir; so he never ceased asserting his musical talents. As Clara’s visitor took no heed of his flourishes he proceeded to imitate domestic animals, church bells, a street organ playing a selection from Il Trovatore, and a portly captain drilling his men, but all to no purpose. As the noise he was making was a good cover for their talk, she did not stop him. At any rate, Motl scarcely understood any Russian.
“I have only seen him at a distance,” Clara said, meaning the prisoner. “But I know that he eats and sleeps well, and looks comfortable.”
“He would look comfortable if you tied him up in a sack. Is he still ‘dumb’?”
She portrayed the warden’s bed-ridden and voiceless wife who suffered from a disease of the spinal and vocal chords, and the disorder at his house and in the prison. She had always wondered at the frequent cases of political gaol-breaking, but if every gaol were conducted as this one was the number would be much larger, she thought. That vodka was quite openly sold and bought in every common gaol in the empire was no news to her, but this was a trifle compared to what she had heard of Rodkevich’s administration. One of his gaolers had told her of imprisoned thieves whom he would give leave of absence in order that he might confiscate part of their booty when they came back.
“Yes, I think he is a man who would go into any kind of scheme that offered money, or—excitement,” she said, gravely; and she added with a smile: “He might even become a man of principle if there were money in it.”
“He won’t give ‘a political’ ‘leave of absence,’ though, will he?” Pavel joked. “Still, upon the whole, it looks rather encouraging.”
“I think it does.”
“Do you?” And his eyes implored her for a more enthusiastic prediction of success.
“Indeed I do,” she answered soberly. “But whether I do or not, we must go to work and get him out.”
“This damsel is certainly not without backbone,” he said to himself.