Klimkov drew more air into his lungs, and began to tell of Rayisa and how she had suffocated the old man.
"Lukin?" the man with the blue goggles queried, yawning indifferently. "Aha, that's why your name is familiar to me."
He walked over to Yevsey, lifted his chin with his finger, and looked into his face for a few seconds. Then he rang.
A heavy tramp was heard, and a big pockmarked fellow with huge wrists appeared at the door, and looked at Yevsey. He had a terrifying way of spreading his red fingers like claws.
"To the corner cell?" asked the fellow in a hollow voice.
Klimkov wanted to drop on his knees. He was already bending his legs, when the fellow seized him under the arm, and pulled him through the long corridor, down the stone stairway.
"What's the matter, brat? Frightened?" he said, pushing Yevsey through a small door. "Such a spider, no face, no skin, yet a rebel!"
His words completely crushed Yevsey. He walked forward with out-stretched hands, and bumped against the wall. When he heard the heavy clang of the iron door behind him, he squatted on the floor, putting his hands about his knees and raising his knees to his drooping head. A heavy silence descended upon him. It seemed to him he would die instantly. Suddenly he jumped from the floor, and ran about the room like a mouse. His groping hands felt the palette covered with a rough blanket, a table, a chair. He ran to the door, touched it, noticed in the wall opposite a little square window, and rushed toward the window. It was below the level of the ground. The area between the ground and the outer wall was laid over with horizontal bars through which the snow sifted with a soft swish, creeping down the dirty panes. Klimkov turned noiselessly toward the door, and leaned his forehead upon it.
"Forgive me. Let me out," he whispered in his anguish.
Then he dropped on the floor again, and lost consciousness, drowned in a wave of despair.
The days and nights dragged along in black and grey stripes, slowly poisoning Yevsey's soul, biting into it and enfeebling it. They crept by in dumb stillness, filled with ominous threats and forebodings. They said nothing of when they would end their slow racking course. In Yevsey's soul everything grew silent and numb. He did not dare, was unable to, think; and when he paced his cage, he tried to make his steps inaudible.