HOW HOPE GOT GLIMPSE OF HELL
The Free Command at Kara was a community hybrid of the
ticket-of-leave and exile systems. Prisoners who had served their
terms in the prison or the mines without discredit were permitted to
live outside, where and how they could, on condition that they did
not leave the neighbourhood.
Government made them a trifling allowance of a few pence a day, they
were permitted to receive remittances from home if there was any one
there able to send them, and they might supplement their meagre
incomes within certain very narrow lines if they could find any means
of doing so. Exercise of the professions was absolutely forbidden,
and as most of them were professional men, or in training therefor,
their hardships were many.
Life in the Free Command was less like living death than the life of
the prisons and the mines, but it was subject to many bitter trials,
not the least of which was the constant and ruthless surveillance of
their insolent Cossack guards. At any hour of the day or night the
sheepdogs might walk in upon them to see that they were still there
and plotting no mischief.
More than once, Hope, lying listless in her little inner room, had
been startled by the sudden intrusion of a coarse hairy face,
surmounted by a fur shako, and two dull eyes, which glared stolidly
at her and roved insolently round the room, and at last took
themselves disappointedly away.
The officer in charge of the political prisoners and their wolfish
keepers was one Captain Sokolof. Sokolof was in most respects a
typical gendarme official, obstinate, conservative, none too quick of
understanding outside the circumscribed routine of his profession.
But, on the other hand, he was not intentionally more brutal than
circumstances seemed to him to demand. He carried out the
instructions transmitted to him from headquarters to the very last
letter. Of his own accord he never added to them, and that was much.
His position was not without its anomalies, but he did not allow them
to trouble him. Colonel Zazarin, as Governor, held supreme power,
but Sokolof was in charge of the politicals, and was answerable for
them, not to Zazarin, but to the Minister of the Interior. It was a
command within a command, but as Zazarin never interfered with
Sokolof they got on well enough and rarely clashed.
Sokolof's right-hand man was one Lieutenant Razia, a reduced copy of
his chief, smaller in body, smaller in mind, if anything still more
stubbornly wedded to the last letter of the law as demeaned by the
Ministry of the Interior, since all his hopes of advancement lay
therein; withal something of a brute in his callosity and harshness
to those in his power, and hated accordingly, both in the prison and
out of it. He was a low-browed, black-a-vised fellow, with a
powerful projecting under-jaw, and most of his head behind his ears
like a monkey's. Pavlof took a dislike to him at first sight, and
never had reason to change his opinion.
Captain Sokolof had had a sharp attack of typhus in the summer, and
was still unfit for duty. During his sickness and slow convalescence
his duties and his mantle had fallen on Lieutenant Razin, and Razin
made the most of them. So much so, indeed, that the souls of the
prisoners--to whom Razin, if he could have managed it, would have
permitted no such high indulgence--were stirred within them to the
supreme point of revolt. And the revolt of the utterly helpless
against irresponsible power armed to the teeth is one of the strange
sights of the world.
An in-prisoner at Kara possesses nothing save his bare life, and such
trifling ameliorations as the irresponsibles of their grace permit
him. These are at best capricious, and when the small mind finds
itself in power it loses no opportunity of self-magnification by the
arbitrary exhibition thereof. It fusses and worries and curtails
privileges which, small as they are, are still to the prisoner very
spice of the life that is drearier than death. Under such conditions
the trodden worms sometimes turn, and then comes the amazing sight of
the powerless fighting the all-powerful, ants _versus_ giants, a
struggle that stirs one even in the hearing.
How shall men--and women no less--without a weapon, make head against
their keepers armed to the teeth? How shall men possessed of nothing
fight legionaries with the empire behind them? Even when a man has
nothing, so long as he lives he has his life; and when a man counts
his life as less than nothing he rises above his nature and becomes a
menace and a danger to the oppressor.
The power which strips him of every thing but life thereby leaves him
his sole means of defence. With their bare lives the abjects fight
the ruthlessness that would trample them below the mud, and they
generally win.
For, strangely enough, the autocratic power which condemns its
victims to extremest bitterness of life still objects to their dying.
Savage as are its methods, it still covets rank among the civilised
of the earth; and an acute, hypersensitive fear of forfeiting its
precarious position serves to hold its punitive hand just this side
of death. It insists on life where death would be a grace. At
times, indeed, its victims are driven to madness and despair. But
that is not of first intention, it is incidental to the system, not
authorised by it. For how shall a Government, which cannot keep its
sheep in hand, control the doings of its underlings and wolf-dogs in
the pastures five thousand miles away?
So when, through extra brutality, or the callous stupidity which is
kin to it, the oppressed are driven to despair, they calmly say, "We
prefer to die"; and, since other means are denied them, they say, "We
will die of hunger," and they refuse to eat.
Then it becomes a case of endurance and bitter suffering on the one
side, and of much trepidation on the other. For if these men die
wholesale, and in such a manner, inquisition must follow and a
calling to account. Yet the ruthlessness that has provoked so dire a
test fears for its future control if it yield too soon. And so the
dreadful duel goes on. On the one side threats and futile attempts
at forced feeding, followed in due course by promises; and on the
other side the long-drawn agonies of slow starvation and the
invincible determination to die sooner than give in.
Such is a hunger-strike among the Siberian exiles, and when Pavlof
came in one day from his visitation of the prison with a clouded
face, Madame Roskova was quick to perceive it.
It was the day Hope broke cover perforce and joined them in the outer
room, and Madame had been jubilantly waiting his coming to reap the
reward of her careful ministry.
"Here she is, Serge Petrovitch, and almost herself again! A little
frozen yet, maybe, but you must complete the cure yourself. Nu!
What's the matter with the man now?" as Pavlof bent and kissed Hope's
forehead, and the blood rushed up into her pale face to meet his
unavoidable salute.
"There is trouble up at the prison, Anna Vassilievna," he said
gravely.
"What, then?" she asked, startled. For trouble inside the prison had
more than once sent ripples over the high stockade, and had led to
general restrictions and a tightening of bonds.
"Razin has gone too far. He has nagged and bullied till they are
desperate. They have declared a hunger-strike, and some of them are
not in condition to stand much of it."
"Da! That is bad. Who is in it?"
He named a dozen or so, and at mention of some of them Madame broke
out into expressions of pity.
"Da! They will die," she said forebodingly. "No one knows what it
is like till they have been through it. We tried it once in the
women's kamera at Irkutsk. They took away all our underclothing,
that we had bought with our own money too, and made us wear convict
clothes. And they took away our mats and made us sleep on the bare
boards, and they threatened to whip us. So we struck, and sometimes
of a night I find myself lying in the cold and dark again, and not a
scrap of food inside my lips for ten days. And mostly we were very
still. The silence was like the coming of death, only full of
agonies at first. And some of us moaned, though it was a point of
honour among us not to, and one night I bit my finger nearly through
and sucked the blood to keep myself quiet. Ah God! a terrible,
terrible time! And I am sorry for them."
"And how did it end?" asked Hope, anxiously horrified.
"Oh, they gave way when two of us died. It was the fourteenth day, I
heard afterwards. We lost count ourselves. You see, we just lay day
and night without moving, and there was nothing to mark the time. We
beat them," she said, with a gleam in her kind eyes, "but it was very
terrible," and sat, hands in lap, unusually idle, brooding over the
thought of it.
So deeply did their minds become engaged upon this matter that, for
the moment, their personal concerns fell into the background, and
Hope had time to accustom herself, unwatched, to the innumerable
little awkwardnesses of the false position into which fate had cast
her.
Pavlof almost lived in the prison, but refused to sleep there. The
kameras at night are unwholesome at best, and he did not consider the
scattered huts of the Free Command wholesome places for women to
sleep alone in.
So he always came home to them sooner or later, and brought with him
the shadow of the silent struggle which was going on behind the grim
teeth of the great stockade.
He told them briefly of the grievous suffering patiently endured, for
the agonies come first, and are followed by the lethargy which,
failing respite, sinks quietly into death.
He told them, as the days passed, of the growing discomfort of the
authorities. The strikers demanded the dismissal of the infamous
Razin, in addition to the restitution of their abrogated privileges.
Too ready a compliance on the part of the governor would be
equivalent to the hanging of a sword above his head for similar
emergencies; too late a compliance meant loss of life and trouble
with the authorities at home. Colonel Zazarin was a man of wrath in
those days, and it was dangerous to approach him.
He would endeavour to strike the happy mean--happy, that is, for
himself, but a lengthening horror for the rest--by yielding to the
prisoners' demands when, in his opinion, they had purchased the right
with a sufficiency of suffering. The risk lay in missing the
psychological moment when the scale should stand on the even balance
between life and death, and on Pavlof, as acting medico, was laid the
heavy responsibility of deciding when that moment had arrived.
Day after day he spent in the gloomy kameras, gloomier now than ever,
with death in its grimmest form hanging over them, waiting with the
patience of the inevitable till the time should come to drop silently
and finally down.
Several times each day he registered the falling temperatures and
weakening pulses of the sufferers, suffering much himself in all that
they endured. More than once he urged Zazarin to step down and save
them. But in Zazarin's judgment the malcontents had not yet suffered
enough, and he held grimly aloof. For the doctor being a prisoner
himself, Zazarin took measure of him by himself, believed that he
would magnify the risks, and so discounted all his representations.
Night after night Pavlof came home with gloomier face; and, full of
the bitter thoughts his reports evoked in her, Anna Roskova went
about her duties in the silence of a deeply touched soul which knows
and understands. Her critical eye no longer troubled itself with the
shortcomings of this most curious married couple. Death was abroad,
nay, close at hand, and this was no time for hypercriticism of
abnormal curiosities among the living. So, through the tension
without and the sufferings of many, Hope's personal troubles were
lightened somewhat, and her mind had little time to dwell on itself
for thought of those others lying in the deepening gloom of the
kameras till death should set them free. The respite was grateful to
her, though the indirect cause of it shocked and wounded her sorely.
Madame Roskova questioned Paul minutely as to the symptoms of his
patients each night, and lived again her own bitter experience in his
telling of them.
"You will lose some of them, Serge Petrovitch," she said, with gloomy
emphasis, on the twelfth night of the strike.
"I told Zazarin so yesterday. I have told him so twice to-day. Two
or three are just on the line and may slip over at any time."
"He is a brute. What does he say?"
"He says that those who pull through will not forget it as long as
they live."
"He is right. It wouldn't be surprising if others besides did not
forget it either. The only surprising thing about it is that a man
like that has been allowed to live so long."
"He is a hard man," admitted Pavlof wearily. He had just come from
an ineffectual tussle with the hard man.
"Hard men and soft men are all alike when they are dead men," said
Madame grimly.
"That does no good, Anna Vassilievna. The next man is just the same.
The others never learn."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Madame. "If one man is killed for
his brutality the next is like to go warily lest he follow."
But Pavlof shook his head. "Force never was a remedy, and it never
will be. If you killed half-a-dozen Governors there would still come
one who would grind us all to powder. The spring is poisoned. Until
the source is sweet the water will be bitter," and weary as he
was--for the bruising of the inner man tells also on the outer--he
picked up his cap and flung on his coat, and went back to see if the
imminent shadow had settled down on any of his patients. If Zazarin
lost any of them it should not be for lack of warning.
Hope and Anna Roskova sat before the stove hopeful of better news
when he returned. But he did not come back that night, and they
understood that matters were at a critical stage.
In the kinship of the great shadow, Anna Roskova began to speak of
things that had come within her own experience, and Hope sat frozen
with horror at the recital of hardships and persecutions almost past
belief--of solitary confinements, prolonged till richly dowered minds
gave way; of brutal whippings, the indignities alone of which would
have sufficed to break most women's spirits; of life in the huts of
the Northern barbarians, which some of their company had endured and
marvellously survived; of batterings at the hands of brutal Cossacks;
of despairing suicides; of more merciful shootings deliberately
provoked.
And in the hearing of such things, bravely borne by men and women
whose gravest fault was too great a love for their down-trodden
fellows, Hope's own troubles seemed light and of small account. She
took shame to herself for taking them so much to heart, forgetting
that the wearing of her body had had much to do with the depressing
of her soul.
She longed to confide in Madame Roskova. The very relation of the
whole matter between herself and Pavlof would have been such a mighty
relief, both as to the past and as to the future. In the light of
full knowledge Anna Roskova could have made things so easy and
straightforward for her. But Pavlof had judged otherwise, and to act
against his advice might bring down upon them, and on Serge, troubles
beyond her understanding.
If Madame Roskova had some dim expectation that her own unburdening
might provoke response in kind, she was disappointed. She gave Hope
every opportunity, endeavoured even to lead her gently in that
direction, but, in the fear of committing herself, Hope hardly dared
to open her mouth about her own concerns, though she could question
Madame eagerly enough as to the details of these terrible happenings.
And Anna Roskova misjudged her of a cold and reticent nature, and
marvelled at its alliance with so frank and beautiful a face.
It was midday before Pavlof came in, tired to death, but in great
relief of mind. The hunger-strike was over. One of the strikers had
died in the night.
"Who?" asked Madame anxiously.
"Sophie Rubova."
"Ah, the poor child. I knew her mother. Well?"
"We did our best to save her by forcing her to swallow. But it was
too late. She was a mere shadow and too frail to stand any handling.
I went at once to Zazarin. He was for blaming me. I reminded him of
my three separate reports yesterday, of which I had copies, and he
shut up. He came down to the prison and pledged his word to satisfy
all their grievances. If he had only done it yesterday he might have
saved the poor little Sophie. But perhaps she is better dead. She
would have suffered from it all her life, as some of the others will."
"It is simple murder and that man is a devil," said Madame Roskova
bitterly. "May God cast it all up to him when his time comes!"