“Are you ill?” the sailor asked.
“Yes,” I murmured.
He took me by the arm and led me to a chair in the office. I was bathed in perspiration after the little walk and so dizzy that I could not see anything. When Daria Maximovna saw me she fell on my neck and wept. Turning to the officials, she cried out bitterly:
“How could you ever have such a woman arrested and subjected to torture? A woman who was so kind to the soldiers, and suffered so much for your own brothers!”
She then opened a package, took out some bread and butter, and handed them to me with these words:
“Manka, here is a quarter of a pound of bread. All we got to-day was three-eighths of a pound. And this is a quarter of a pound of butter, our entire ration.”
I was full of gratitude to this dear woman and her children, who had sacrificed their own portions for me. The bread was good. The difficulty was, according to Daria Maximovna, to get enough for them all. Even their meagre ration was not always obtainable.
I then told her my troubles and the punishment I was expecting, begging her to write to my mother in case of my execution.
I spent two weeks in that abominable cell before I was taken before the tribunal. I was marched along the Tverskaya, Moscow’s chief thoroughfare, and recognized on the way by the crowds. The tribunal was quartered in the Kremlin. For a couple of hours I waited there, at the end of which time I was surprised to see Stepan Vasiliev come in and approach me.
“Marusia, how did you ever get into this?” he asked me, shaking my hand and inviting me to sit down.