IN THE PRISON CELL
Then I remember—I have no home. I am a forsaken, demented creature whom Vassili cares for no longer. But where am I going? I am going to Paul Kamarowsky, who lives and loves me!... Again I weep with joy and thankfulness at the thought that Kamarowsky lives.
Now I am in a carriage driving through the streets of Vienna; and the two strange men are still with me. They are taking me to a hotel. We arrive. I pass through a large doorway and along some passages. Then I notice that it is not a hotel. It is a vast, bare room with wooden benches round the wall. Some men in uniform stand at the door, and I notice that they do not salute me when I enter.
Neither does an elderly man who is sitting at the desk rise or come to meet me. He looks at me steadily and asks me many questions; but I pay no heed to him. The windows are open; I can hear the sound of a piano very far away; somebody is practising a romance by Chaminade that I used to play at Otrada.... How sad a piano sounds when played by an unseen hand in the silence of a sunlit street!
The man at the desk speaks in German to the uniformed men; they take my golden wristbag from me, and conduct me out of the bare room down a long passage. As I go slowly forward between the two men I notice that from the far end of the passage a group of people are coming towards us. In the center of the group walks a man, handcuffed and wearing his hat crookedly at the back of his head, as if placed there by some other hand than his own. It is Prilukoff!
He sees me. A wave of livid pallor overspreads his face. Then he bends forward towards me and makes a movement with his lips, pressing them tightly together and shaking his head; he is trying to make me understand something. As they notice this the men at my side grasp my arm and make me turn quickly down another corridor. But I hear Prilukoff's voice shouting after me. He utters a Russian word: “Molci!” (Be silent).
The men thrust me rudely into an empty cell. I sit down on a bench fixed in a corner under the small, barred window and lean my head against the wall. I feel neither unhappy nor afraid; only weary, unspeakably weary; and almost at once I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Never since I was a child at Otrada have I known such perfect rest—such utter oblivion poured upon such limitless weariness.
Suddenly my door is opened abruptly and one of the men enters; he takes me by the arm, and conducts me back to the large, bare room, where the elderly official still sits at his desk. And there, standing before him, I see Elise. She is weeping bitterly. I see her making those comical grimaces which always accompany her tears, as in Italy cheerful music accompanies a child's funeral. My mind—like a frightened bat that has flown into a room and darts hither and thither—flutters and plunges wildly through all my past life. I think of my mother, of little Peter, and of Bozevsky; I remember a pink dress I once wore here in Vienna, at a reception of the Russian Embassy.... I think of little Tioka and his days for saying “No.” ... How far, how far away it all is! What a gulf of guilt and sorrow have my tottering footsteps traversed since then.... But now—now I will climb tremblingly, devoutly, the steep road that leads back to safety; humbled to my knees I will pour out my thanks. For Paul Kamarowsky is saved; he lives and will recover!
The man at my side is dragging me roughly forward. The elderly official at the desk has beckoned to me, and as I stand before him in a line with Elise he reads aloud from a sheet of foolscap. Suddenly I hear the words: “Complicity in the murder of Count Paul Kamarowsky....”