The laughter was louder than ever. The serious ones looked on with even greater indignation.
“That’s nonsense!” shouted Skuratov. “That’s a fib of Mikita’s, and it’s not about me, but Vaska, and they’ve mixed me up in it. I’m a Moscow man and I was brought up to tramping from a child. When the deacon was teaching me to read, he used to pull me by the ear and make me repeat, ‘Lead me not into temptation in Thy infinite mercy,’ and soon I used to repeat, ‘lead me to the police station in Thy infinite mercy,’ and so on. So that’s how I used to go on from my childhood up.”
Every one burst out laughing again. But that was all Skuratov wanted. He could not resist playing the fool. Soon the convicts left him and fell to serious conversation again. It was mainly the old men, authorities on such affairs, who gave their opinions. The younger and humbler prisoners looked on in silent enjoyment and craned their heads forward to listen. A great crowd gathered in the kitchen; there were, of course, no sergeants present. They would not have spoken freely before them.
Among those who were particularly delighted, I noticed a Tatar, called Mametka, a short man with high cheek bones, an extremely comic figure. He could hardly speak Russian at all and could hardly understand anything of what was said, but he, too, was craning his head forward out of the crowd and listening, listening with relish.
“Well, Mametka, yakshee?”[1] Skuratov, abandoned by all and not knowing what to do with himself, fastened upon him. “Yakshee, oh, yakshee!” Mametka muttered in great animation, nodding his ridiculous head to Skuratov. “Yakshee!”
“They won’t catch them, yok?”
“Yok, yok!” and Mametka began babbling, gesticulating as well.
“So you lie, me not understand, eh?”
“Yes, yes, yakshee,” Mametka assented, nodding.
“Yakshee to be sure!” and Skuratov, giving the Tatar’s cap a tweak that sent it over his eyes, went out of the kitchen in the best of spirits, leaving Mametka somewhat perplexed.
For a whole week there was strict discipline in the prison, and search and pursuit were kept up vigorously in the neighbourhood. I don’t know how, but the convicts got immediate
- ↑ Tatar word.
