With banal dreariness the clock struck again. Time was advancing in arithmetical progression: it was now eight. The ugly little window proved accessible to the sunset; a fiery parallelogram appeared on the side wall. The cell was filled to the ceiling with the oils of twilight, containing extraordinary pigments. Thus one would wonder, is that some reckless colorist’s painting there to the right of the door, or another window, an ornate one of a kind that already no longer exists? (Actually it was a parchment sheet hanging on the wall with two columns of detailed “rules for prisoners”; the bent corner, the red letters of the heading, the vignettes, the ancient seal of the city—namely, a furnace with wings—provided the necessary materials for the evening illumination.) The cell’s quota of furniture consisted of a table, a chair and the cot. Dinner (those condemned to death were entitled to get the same meals as the wardens) had already been standing and growing cold on its zinc tray for a long time. It grew quite dark. Suddenly the place was filled with golden, highly-concentrated electric light.
Cincinnatus lowered his feet from the cot. A bowling ball rolled through his head, diagonally from nape to temple; it paused and started back. Meanwhile the door opened and the prison director entered.
He was dressed as always in a frock coat and held himself exquisitely straight, chest out, one hand in his bosom, the other behind his back.
A perfect toupee, black as pitch, and with a waxy parting, smoothly covered his head. His face, selected without love, with its thick sallow cheeks and somewhat obsolete system of wrinkles, was enlivened in a sense by two, and only by two, bulging eyes. Moving his legs evenly in his columnar trousers, he strode from the wall to the table, almost to the cot—but, in spite of his majestic solidity, he calmly vanished, dissolving into the air. A minute later, however, the door opened once again, this time with the familiar grating sound, and, dressed as always in a frock coat, his chest out, in came the same person.
“Having learned from trustworthy sources that your fate has been sort of sealed,” he began in a fruity bass, “I have deemed it my duty, dear sir …”
Cincinnatus said: “Kind. You. Very.” (This still had to be arranged.)
“You are very kind,” said an additional Cincinnatus, having cleared his throat.
“Mercy,” exclaimed the director, unmindful of the tactlessness of that word. “Mercy! Think nothing. Duty. I always. But why, may I be so bold as to ask, have you not touched your food?”
The director removed the cover and raised to his sensitive nose the bowl of coagulated stew. He took a potato with two fingers and began to chew powerfully, already picking out with an eyebrow something on another dish.
“I do not know what better food you could want,” he said with displeasure, and, shooting out his cuffs, sat down at the table so as to be more comfortable while eating the rice pudding.
Cincinnatus said: “I should like to know if it will be long now.”
“Excellent sabayon! Should still like to know if it will be long now. Unfortunately I myself do not know. I am always informed at the last moment; I have complained many times and can show you all the correspondence on the subject if you are interested.”
“So it may be tomorrow morning?” asked Cincinnatus.
“If you are interested,” said the director, “… Yes, downright delicious and most satisfying, that is what I’ll tell you. And now, pour la digestion, allow me to offer you a cigarette. Have no fear, at most this is only the one before last,” he added wittily.
“It is not out of curiosity that I ask,” said Cincinnatus. “It is true that cowards are always inquisitive. But I assure you … Even if I can’t control my chills and so forth—that does not mean anything. A rider is not responsible for the shivering of his horse. I want to know why for this reason: the compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned. However, I am being left in that ignorance which is tolerable only to those living at liberty. And furthermore, I have in my head many projects that were begun and interrupted at various times … I simply shall not pursue them if the time remaining before my execution is not sufficient for their orderly conclusion. This is why …”
“Oh, will you please stop mumbling,” the director said irritably. “In the first place, it is against the rules, and in the second—I am telling you in plain Russian and for the second time—I do not know. All I can tell you is that your fate-mate is expected to arrive any day now; and when he does arrive, and has rested, and got used to the surroundings, he will still have to test the instrument, if, of course, he has not brought his own, which is altogether likely. How’s the tobacco? Not too strong?”
“No,” answered Cincinnatus, after looking absent-mindedly at his cigarette. “Only it seems to me that according to the law … not you, perhaps, but the administrator of the city … is supposed to …”
“We’ve had our chat, and that will do,” said the director. “Actually I came here not to listen to complaints but to …” Blinking, he rummaged first in one pocket, then in another; finally from an inside breast pocket he produced a sheet of ruled paper, obviously torn from a school notebook.
“There is no ash tray here,” he observed, gesturing with his cigarette; “oh well, let us drown it in what’s left of the rest of this sauce … So. I would say the light is a bit harsh. Maybe if we … Oh, never mind; it will have to do.”
He unfolded the paper and, without putting on his hornrimmed glasses, but holding them in front of his eyes, he began to read distinctly:
“ ‘Prisoner! In this solemn hour, when all eyes’… I think we had better stand,” he interrupted himself with concern and rose from his chair. Cincinnatus also rose.
“ ‘Prisoner, in this solemn hour, when all eyes are upon thee, and thy judges are jubilant, and thou art preparing for those involuntary bodily movements that directly follow severance of the head, I address to thee a parting word. It is my lot—and this I will never forget—to provide thy sojourn in gaol with all that multitude of comforts which the law allows. I shall therefore be glad to devote all possible attention to any expression of thy gratitude, preferably, however, in written form and on one side of the sheet.’ ”
“There,” said the director, folding his glasses. “That will be all. I shall not keep you any longer. Let me know if you should need anything.”
He sat down at the table and began to write rapidly, thus indicating that the audience was over. Cincinnatus went out.
On the corridor wall dozed the shadow of Rodion, hunched over on the shadow of a stool, with only a fringe of beard outlined in rufous. Further on, at the bend in the wall, the other guard had taken off his uniform mask and was wiping his face with his sleeve. Cincinnatus started down the stairs. The stone steps were narrow and slippery, with the impalpable spiral of a ghostly railing. Upon reaching the bottom he again went along corridors.
A door with the sign “office” in mirrorlike inversion was wide open; moonlight glistened on an inkwell and a wastebasket rustled and rattled furiously under the table: a mouse must have fallen into it. Cincinnatus, after passing many other doors, stumbled, hopped, and found himself in a small courtyard, filled with various parts of the dismantled moon. This night the password was silence, and the soldier at the gate responded with silence to Cincinnatus’ silence and let him pass; likewise at all the other gates. Leaving behind the misty mass of the fortress he began to slide down a steep, dewy bank of turf, reached a pale path between cliffs, twice, three times crossed the bends of the main road—which, having finally shaken off the last shadow of the fortress, ran more straight and free—and a filigrane bridge across a dried-up rivulet brought Cincinnatus to the city. He climbed to the top of a steep incline, turned left on Garden Street, and sped past a shrubbery in grayish bloom.
A lighted window flashed somewhere; behind some fence a dog shook its chain but did not bark. The breeze was doing all it could to cool the fugitive’s bare neck. Now and then a wave of fragrance would come from the Tamara Gardens. How well he knew that public park! There, where Marthe, when she was a bride, was frightened of the frogs and cockchafers … There, where, whenever life seemed unbearable, one could roam, with a meal of chewed lilac bloom in one’s mouth and firefly tears in one’s eyes … That green turfy tamarack park, the languor of its ponds, the tum-tum-tum of a distant band … He turned on Matterfact Street, past the ruins of an ancient factory, the pride of the town, past whispering lindens, past the festive-looking white bungalows of the telegraph employees, perpetually celebrating somebody’s birthdate, and came out on Telegraph Street.
From there a narrow lane went uphill, and again the lindens began to murmur discreetly. Two men, supposedly on a bench, were quietly conversing in the obscurity of a public garden. “I say he’s wrong,” said one. The
