Arrest—The Independent Witness—A Police-Station—Patriarchal Justice.
§1
“WE shall meet to-morrow,” I repeated to myself as I was falling asleep,
and my heart felt unusually light and happy.
At two in the morning I was wakened by my father’s valet; he was only
half-dressed and looked frightened.
“An officer is asking for you.”
“What officer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” I said, as I threw on my dressing-gown. A figure wrapped
in a military cloak was standing at the drawing-room door; I could see a
white plume from my window, and there were some people behind it—I could
make out a Cossack helmet.
Our visitor was Miller, an officer of police. He told me that he bore a
warrant from the military Governor of Moscow to examine my papers.
Candles were brought. Miller took my keys, and while his subordinates
rummaged among my books and shirts, attended to the papers himself. He
put them all aside as suspicious; then he turned suddenly to me and
said:
“I beg you will dress meanwhile; you will have to go with me.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“To the police-station of the district,” he said, in a reassuring voice.
“And then?”
“There are no further orders in the Governor’s warrant.”
I began to dress.
Meanwhile my mother had been awakened by the terrified servants, and
came in haste from her bedroom to see me. When she was stopped half-way
by a Cossack, she screamed; I started at the sound and ran to her. The
officer came with us, leaving the papers behind him. He apologised to my
mother and let her pass; then he scolded the Cossack, who was not really
to blame, and went back to the papers.
My father now appeared on the scene. He was pale but tried to keep up
his air of indifference. The scene became trying: while my mother wept
in a corner, my father talked to the officer on ordinary topics, but his
voice shook. I feared that if this went on it would prove too much for
me, and I did not wish that the under-strappers of the police should
have the satisfaction of seeing me shed tears.
I twitched the officer’s sleeve and said we had better be off.
He welcomed the suggestion. My father then left the room, but returned
immediately; he was carrying a little sacred picture, which he placed
round my neck, saying that his father on his deathbed had blessed him
with it. I was touched: the nature of this gift proved to me how great
was the fear and anxiety that filled the old man’s heart. I knelt down
for him to put it on; he raised me to my feet, embraced me, and gave me
his blessing.
It was a representation on enamel of the head of John the Baptist on the
charger. Whether it was meant for an example, a warning, or a prophecy,
I don’t know, but it struck me as somehow significant.
My mother was almost fainting.
I was escorted down the stairs by all the household servants, weeping
and struggling to kiss my face and hands; it might have been my own
funeral with me to watch it. The officer frowned and hurried on the
proceedings.
Once outside the gate, he collected his forces—four Cossacks and four
policemen.
There was a bearded man sitting outside the gate, who asked the officer
if he might now go home.
“Be off!” said Miller.
“Who is that?” I asked, as I took my seat in the cab.
“He is a witness: you know that the police must take a witness with them
when they make an entrance into a private house.”
“Is that why you left him outside?”
“A mere formality,” said Miller; “it’s only keeping the man out of his
bed for nothing.”
Our cab started, escorted by two mounted Cossacks.
§2
There was no private room for me at the police-station, and the officer
directed that I should spend the rest of the night in the office. He
took me there himself; dropping into an armchair and yawning wearily, he
said: “It’s a dog’s life. I’ve been up since three, and now your
business has kept me till near four in the morning, and at nine I have
to present my report.”
“Good-bye,” he said a moment later and left the room. A corporal locked
me in, and said that I might knock at the door if I needed anything.
I opened the window: day was beginning and the morning breeze was
stirring. I asked the corporal for water and drank a whole jugful. Of
sleep I never even thought. For one thing, there was no place to lie
down; the room contained no furniture except some dirty leather-covered
chairs, one armchair, and two tables of different sizes, both covered
with a litter of papers. There was a night-light, too feeble to light up
the room, which threw a flickering white patch on the ceiling; and I
watched the patch grow paler and paler as the dawn came on.
I sat down in the magistrate’s seat and took up the paper nearest me on
the table—a permit to bury a servant of Prince Gagárin’s and a medical
certificate to prove that the man had died according to all the rules of
the medical art. I picked up another—some police regulations. I ran
through it and found an article to this effect: “Every prisoner has a
right to learn the cause of his arrest or to be discharged within three
days.” I made a mental note of this item.
An hour later I saw from the window the arrival of our butler with a
cushion, coverlet, and cloak for me. He made some request to the
corporal, probably for leave to visit me; he was a grey-haired old man,
to several of whose children I had stood godfather while a child myself;
the corporal gave a rough and sharp refusal. One of our coachmen was
there too, and I hailed them from the window. The soldier, in a fuss,
ordered them to be off. The old man bowed low to me and shed tears; and
the coachman, as he whipped up his horse, took off his hat and rubbed
his eyes. When the carriage started, I could bear it no more: the tears
came in a flood, and they were the first and last tears I shed during my
imprisonment.
§3
Towards morning the office began to fill up. The first to appear was a
clerk, who had evidently been drunk the night before and was not sober
yet. He had red hair and a pimpled face, a consumptive look, and an
expression of brutish sensuality; he wore a long, brick-coloured coat,
ill-made, ill-brushed, and shiny with age. The next comer was a
free-and-easy gentleman, wearing the cloak of a non-commissioned
officer. He turned to me at once and asked:
“They got you at the theatre, I suppose?”
“No; I was arrested at home.”
“By Fyodor Ivanovitch?”
“Who is Fyodor Ivanovitch?”
“Why, Colonel Miller.”
“Yes, it was he.”
“Ah, I understand, Sir”—and he winked to the red-haired man, who showed
not the slightest interest. The other did not continue the conversation;
seeing that I was not charged as drunk and disorderly, he thought me
unworthy of further attention; or perhaps he was afraid to converse with
a political prisoner.
A little later, several policemen appeared, rubbing their eyes and only
half awake; and finally the petitioners and suitors.
A woman who kept a disorderly house made a complaint against a publican.
He had abused her publicly in his shop, using language which she, as a
woman, could not venture to repeat before a magistrate. The publican
swore he had never used such language; the woman swore that he had used
it repeatedly and very loudly, and she added that he had raised his hand
against her and would have laid her face open, had she not ducked her
head. The shopman said, first, that she owed him money, and, secondly,
that she had insulted him in his own shop, nay more, had threatened to
kill him by the hands of her bullies.
She was a tall, slatternly woman with swollen eyes; her voice was
piercingly loud and high, and she had an extraordinary flow of language.
The shopman relied more on gesture and pantomime than on his eloquence.
In the absence of the judge, one of the policemen proved to be a second
Solomon. He abused both parties in fine style. “You’re too well off,” he
said; “that’s what’s the matter with you; why can’t you stop at home and
keep the peace, and be thankful to us for letting you alone? What fools
you are! Because you have had a few words you must run at once before
His Worship and trouble him! How dare you give yourself airs, my good
woman, as if you had never been abused before? Why your very trade can’t
be named in decent language!” Here the shopman showed the heartiest
approval by his gestures; but his turn came next. “And you, how dare you
stand there in your shop and bark like an angry dog? Do you want to be
locked up? You use foul language, and raise your fist as well; it’s a
sound thrashing you want.”
This scene had the charm of novelty for me; it was the first specimen I
had seen of patriarchal justice as administered in Russia, and I have
never forgotten it.
The pair went on shouting till the magistrate came in. Without even
asking their business, he shouted them down at once. “Get out of this!
Do you take this place for a bad house or a gin-shop?” When he had
driven out the offenders, he turned on the policeman: “I wonder you are
not ashamed to permit such disorder. I have told you again and again.
People lose all respect for the place; it will soon be a regular
bear-garden for the mob; you are too easy with them.” Then he looked at
me and said:
“Who is that?”
“A prisoner whom Fyodor Ivanovitch brought in,” answered the policeman;
“there is a paper about him somewhere, Sir.”
The magistrate ran through the paper and then glanced at me. As I kept
my eyes fixed on him, ready to retort the instant he spoke, he was put
out and said, “I beg your pardon.”
But now the business began again between the publican and his enemy. The
woman wished to take an oath, and a priest was summoned; I believe both
parties were sworn, and there was no prospect of a conclusion. At this
point I was taken in a carriage to the Chief Commissioner’s office—I am
sure I don’t know why, for no one spoke a word to me there—and then
brought back to the police-station, where a room right under the belfry
was prepared for my occupation. The corporal observed that if I wanted
food I must send out for it: the prison ration would not be issued for a
day or two; and besides, as it only amounted to three or four _kopecks_
a day, a gentleman “under a cloud” did not usually take it.
Along the wall of my room there was a sofa with a dirty cover. It was
past midday and I was terribly weary. I threw myself on the sofa and
fell fast asleep. When I woke, I felt quite easy and cheerful. Of late I
had been tormented by my ignorance of Ogaryóv’s fate; now, my own turn
had come, the black cloud was right overhead, I was in the thick of the
danger, instead of watching it in the distance. I felt that this first
prosecution would serve us as a consecration for our mission.
------------------------------------------------------------------------