The first apartment behind the entrance doors was a large vaulted
room with iron bars to the small windows. In this room, which was
called the meeting-room, Nekhludoff was startled by the sight of
a large picture of the Crucifixion.
"What's that for?" he thought, his mind involuntarily connecting
the subject of the picture with liberation and not with
imprisonment.
He went on, slowly letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and
experiencing a mingled feeling of horror at the evil-doers locked
up in this building, compassion for those who, like Katusha and
the boy they tried the day before, must be here though guiltless,
and shyness and tender emotion at the thought of the interview
before him. The warder at the other end of the meeting-room said
something as they passed, but Nekhludoff, absorbed by his own
thoughts, paid no attention to him, and continued to follow the
majority of the visitors, and so got into the men's part of the
prison instead of the women's.
Letting the hurrying visitors pass before him, he was the last to
get into the interviewing-room. As soon as Nekhludoff opened the
door of this room, he was struck by the deafening roar of a
hundred voices shouting at once, the reason of which he did not
at once understand. But when he came nearer to the people, he saw
that they were all pressing against a net that divided the room
in two, like flies settling on sugar, and he understood what it
meant. The two halves of the room, the windows of which were
opposite the door he had come in by, were separated, not by one,
but by two nets reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The wire
nets were stretched 7 feet apart, and soldiers were walking up
and down the space between them. On the further side of the nets
were the prisoners, on the nearer, the visitors. Between them was
a double row of nets and a space of 7 feet wide, so that they
could not hand anything to one another, and any one whose sight
was not very good could not even distinguish the face on the
other side. It was also difficult to talk; one had to scream in
order to be heard.
On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of
wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each
other's features and to say what was necessary in such a way as
to be understood.
But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to,
and his neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to
drown each other's voices' and that was the cause of the din and
shouting which struck Nekhludoff when he first came in. It was
impossible to understand what was being said and what were the
relations between the different people. Next Nekhludoff an old
woman with a kerchief on her head stood trembling, her chin
pressed close to the net, and shouting something to a young
fellow, half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively
with raised brows. By the side of the old woman was a young man
in a peasant's coat, who listened, shaking his head, to a boy
very like himself. Next stood a man in rags, who shouted, waving
his arm and laughing. Next to him a woman, with a good woollen
shawl on her shoulders, sat on the floor holding a baby in her
lap and crying bitterly. This was apparently the first time she
saw the greyheaded man on the other side in prison clothes, and
with his head shaved. Beyond her was the doorkeeper, who had
spoken to Nekhludoff outside; he was shouting with all his might
to a greyhaired convict on the other side.