A deathly silence reigned in the room. She tried to catch the least sound, the least motion to discern the least token of life, but all was still as the grave. Suddenly she heard some voices in the adjacent room, and through the thin partition she could distinctly hear all that was spoken there. She felt her heart sink within her, as among many other voices she recognized her brother’s voice. Then there was a sound of a heavy blow, a thud from the falling of a human body, and her brother’s outcry.
Her heart was beating fast. She understood that she was alongside of the torture-chamber, where her brother was brought in to be tortured, and that she was put there in order to be tortured by the pangs and sufferings of her dearly beloved brother.
Then fell in quick succession a number of heavy blows, followed by his desperate outcries. The pain must have been unbearable—he seemed to be gasping for breath. His tormentors did not stop, however, but continued beating him for a long time. The blows fell thick and heavy, and his outcries turned into desperate screams, into wild heartbreaking sounds of one losing his reason under the influence of terrible pain. And the poor girl had to hear it all, and to know that she was powerless to stay the hands of his tormentors.
Finally the cries ceased. Were the hangmen tired, or was her brother dead? Her heart full of anguish, she pressed her ear against the partition in an effort to catch the least sound of his voice. At that moment one of the executioners entered the room and she began begging him to tell her what had become of her brother. Was he alive? Why was he tortured? What for? But it was in vain to expect human feeling in a hangman. Could the suffering of a young girl touch his heart? To her beseeching he replied rudely, laughing: “If you will not inform us all about your brother and the rest of your friends, the same will be done to you. Then you will find out what became of him and whether he is still alive.”
He then ordered her to follow him and she was led back into her former cell, where she was left to pass the night on the bare floor. But she did not close her eyes the whole night. In a dull stupor, thoughtless, motionless, she sat in a corner till morning.
The guard was all the time within, never for a moment leaving her. In the morning some black bread and water was brought to her; no other food through the whole day. But she could not touch a mouthful. As soon as night came on she was again taken into the room where she had been the previous night, and again she had to live through the same horrors of the past night. For many hours of horror she heard almost continually the screams and sobs of her brother. These sobs rent the poor girl’s soul. After her brother’s cries she heard others; she heard the sobs of another man and instinctively recognized the voice of a dear friend, a man whom she knew well and who was very near to her. That was the second night.
The third night she was again taken to listen to the sobs of the tortured; but that night she remembers as a horrible nightmare, which she could not distinguish from reality. She did not hear her brother’s cries any more; others of her friends were being tortured. She felt that she was losing her reason and she wished for death.
The fourth night she was again taken in this room. The chief executioner, organizer, and director of these tortures, Green, came in and proposed that she inform him about her brother and confess all her own crimes.
But what crimes? She had done nothing criminal; she is still so young; she knows nothing criminal either of her brother or of her other friends. What could she confess?
Upon getting her negative answer she was led into the adjacent room, from which those screams had come forth the preceding nights. It was a small room with two windows. In the center stood a table; on it were wooden and rubber canes. There was a gendarme officer, Ivanoff, with ten secret-police agents. Many held canes in their hands. The young girl was seized and put flat on the table, face down, four of the detectives grabbed her hands and feet, and the others that were armed with canes began to beat her at the command of Officer Ivanoff. The blows fell heavily, striking over the head, back, and legs.