“Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from these drunken brutes!” I would plead.
“We will take you away soon—to shoot you!” the warder would joke in reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors.
The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my case. The days—long, cruel, agonizing days—passed slowly by. The impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep!
Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand.
“Botchkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the door facing me.
I was so surprised that I thought at first that this was another trick to torture me.
“Free?” I asked. “Why?” I had grown to believe the warder’s tales of what awaited me, and I could not imagine him as the carrier of such tidings.
“Am I free for good?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the answer. “You will go with a guard to the Soldiers’ Section, where you will get the necessary papers.”
I bade farewell, with a sigh of relief, to the chamber of horrors, and went immediately to get the document from the tribunal, which stated that I had been arrested but found innocent of the charge and that, as I was ill, I was to be allowed complete freedom of movement in the country. With this passport in my pocket I was set at liberty.