favorable light," I replied, feeling more and more uneasiness, but determined to take the bull by the horns.
"Did you go through the prisons?" he demanded.
"Yes," I said, "we saw most of them."
"Did they show you the 'naked command'?"
"No; I don't even know what you mean by the 'naked command.'"
"I mean a cell full of prisoners without clothing. When I first went to Kará and made a visit of inspection to the prisons, I found a kámera in which there were twenty-five convicts stark naked. This body of men was then known as the 'naked command.'"
"What was the explanation of it?" I inquired.
"I don't know," replied the officer with a shrug. "They simply had n't any clothes to wear.[1] Did your good man [a contemptuous reference to Major Pótulof] show you the solitary-confinement cells in the Middle Kará prison?"
"He did not," I replied. "What is there remarkable about them?"
"Oh, nothing," said the colonel, with assumed indifference, "except that they are not high enough to stand up in nor long enough to lie down in. You evidently did n't see anything except what they wanted you to see. I wish that I had been there; I would have shown you things as they are, not as your liubéznoi khozáin [amiable host] showed them to you."
By this time I was in a state of some bewilderment and perplexity. Could Colonel Nóvikof be sincere? Or was he merely laying a trap for me in order to ascertain what I
- ↑ I subsequently learned that the "naked command" was composed of convicts who made a regular practice of selling the clothing furnished them by the Government, in order to get money with which to gamble and buy liquor. As a punishment for this offense they had been shut up together in a large cell and deprived of clothing altogether. Of course the prisoners could not have disposed of their garments and bought liquor with the proceeds unless they had been aided in so doing by the prison officials. The existence of a naked command, therefore, showed the corruptibility, rather than the cruelty, of the prison administration. Colonel Nóvikof seemed desirous of giving me a contrary impression.
