Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room. They were now permitted to speak to one another.
Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission. The others firmly and silently shook each other’s hands, which were as cold as ice and as hot as fire,—and silently, trying not to look at each other, they crowded together in an awkward, absent-minded group. Now that they were together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each of them had experienced when alone; and they were afraid to look, so as not to notice or to show that new, peculiar, somewhat shameful sensation that each of them felt or suspected the others of feeling.
But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and immediately began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No change seemed to have occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so gently over all of them that it could not be discerned in any one separately. All spoke and moved about strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast or too slowly. Sometimes they seemed to choke with their words and repeated them a number of times; sometimes they did not finish a phrase they had started, or thought they had finished—they did not notice it. They all blinked their eyes and examined ordinary objects curiously, not recognizing them, like people who had worn eye-glasses and had suddenly taken them off; and all of them frequently turned around abruptly, as though some one behind them was calling them all the time and showing them something. But they did not notice this, either. Musya’s and Tanya Kovalchuk’s cheeks and ears were burning; Sergey was at first somewhat pale, but he soon recovered and looked as he always did.
Only Vasily attracted everybody’s attention. Even among them, he looked strange and terrible. Werner became agitated and said to Musya in a low voice, with tender anxiety:
“What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it possible that he—— What? I must go to him.”
Vasily looked at Werner from the distance, as though not recognizing him, and he lowered his eyes.
“Vasya, what have you done with your hair? What is the matter with you? Never mind, my dear, never mind, it will soon be over. We must keep up, we must, we must.”
Vasily was silent. But when it seemed that he would no longer say anything, a dull, belated, terribly remote answer came—like an answer from the grave:
“I’m all right. I hold my own.”
Then he repeated: