They kept the knife, one only for each kitchen, to cut up the bread and meat.
In every corner and all about the tables there were convicts with their caps and sheepskins on, their belts fastened, ready to go out to work at once. Before some of them stood wooden cups of kvas. They crumbled the bread into the kvas and sipped that. The noise and uproar were insufferable; but some were talking quietly and sensibly in the corners.
“A good breakfast to old man Antonitch, good morning!” said a young convict sitting down by a frowning and toothless prisoner.
“Well, good morning, if you mean it,” said the other, not raising his eyes and trying to munch the bread with his toothless gums.
“I thought you were dead, Antonitch, I really did.”
“No, you may die first, I’ll come later.”
I sat down beside them. Two steady-looking convicts were talking on my right, evidently trying to keep up their dignity with one another.
“They won’t steal from me, no fear,” said one. “There’s more chance of my stealing something from them.”
“I am a prickly customer too.”
“Are you though? You are a jail-bird like every one else; there’s no other name for us. . . . She’ll strip you and not say thank you. That’s where my money went, brother. She came herself the other day. Where could I go with her? I began asking to go to Fedka-Hangman’s, he’s got a house at the end of the town, he bought it from the Jew, Scabby-Solomon, the fellow who hanged himself afterwards.”
“I know. He used to sell vodka here three years ago and was nicknamed Grishka Black Pot-house. I know.”
“No, you don’t know. That was another fellow, Black Pot-house.”
“Another! You know a fat lot. I’ll bring you ever so many witnesses.”
“You’ll bring witnesses! Where do you come from and who am I?”
“Who are you? Why, I used to beat you and I don’t boast of it and you ask who are you!”
“You used to beat me! Why, the man’s not born who’ll beat me, and the man who did is underground.”
“You Bender pest!”
