EXILE—THE MAYOR AT POKROVO—THE VOLGA—PERM
On the morning of the 10th of April an officer of gendarmes took me to
the house of the governor-general. There, in the private part of the
building, my relatives were allowed to come and say good-bye to me.
Of course it was all awkward and wrung the heart; the prying spies and
clerks, the reading of the instructions to the gendarme who was to take
me, the impossibility of saying anything without witnesses: in fact,
more distressing and painful surroundings could not be imagined.
I heaved a sigh of relief when at last the carriage rolled off along
Vladimirka.
‘Per me si va nella città dolente,
Per me si va nel eterno dolore——’
At a station somewhere I wrote those two lines, which apply equally well
to the portals of Hell and the Siberian high-road.
Seven versts from Moscow there is a restaurant called ‘Perov’s’; there
one of my most intimate friends had promised to wait for me. I suggested
to the gendarme a drink of vodka. It was a long way from the town. We
went in, but my friend was not there. I tried every device to linger in
the tavern; at last the gendarme would stay no longer and the driver was
starting the horses—when suddenly a troika dashed up straight to the
restaurant. I flew to the door ... two strangers, merchants’ sons, out
for a spree, noisily dismounted from the chaise. I looked into the
distance—not one moving point, not one man could be seen on the road to
Moscow ... it was bitter to get in and drive off. I gave the driver
twenty kopecks, and we flew like an arrow from the bow.
We drove without stopping; the gendarme had been ordered to do not less
than two hundred versts in the twenty-four hours. This would have been
quite endurable at any time but the beginning of April. In places the
road was covered with ice, in places with mud and water; moreover, as we
drove towards Siberia it got worse and worse at every station.
The first incident of my journey was at Pokrovo.
We had lost several hours owing to the ice which was floating down the
river and cutting off all communication with the opposite bank. The
gendarme was in a nervous fidget; all at once the superintendent of the
posting-station at Pokrovo announced that there were no horses. The
gendarme pointed out that in the permit he was instructed to give them
couriers’ horses if there were no post horses. The superintendent
replied that those horses had been taken by the Deputy Minister of Home
Affairs. I need hardly say that the gendarme began to quarrel and made a
row. The superintendent ran to try and get private horses and the
gendarme went with him.
I got tired of waiting for them in the superintendent’s dirty room. I
went out at the gate and began walking in front of the house. It was my
first walk unescorted by a soldier after nine months’ imprisonment.
I had walked up and down for half an hour when suddenly I was met by a
man wearing a uniform with epaulettes and a blue _pour le mérite_ on his
neck. He looked at me with marked persistence, passed me, and at once
turning back asked me with a fierce air: ‘Is it you who are being taken
by a gendarme to Perm?’
‘Yes,’ I answered without stopping.
‘Excuse me, excuse me, but how dare he?...’
‘With whom have I the honour to speak?’
‘I am the mayor,’ answered the stranger in a voice which betrayed a
profound sense of the dignity of that public position. ‘Upon my soul! I
am expecting the Deputy Minister from hour to hour, and here there are
political prisoners walking about the streets. What an ass your gendarme
is!’
‘Will you please address yourself to the gendarme in person.’
‘It is not a matter of addressing myself, I’ll arrest him. I’ll order
him a hundred strokes and send you on with a policeman.’
I nodded without waiting for him to finish his speech and strode rapidly
back into the station.
From the window I could hear him fuming at the gendarme and threatening
all sorts of things. The gendarme apologised but did not seem much
frightened. Three minutes later they both came in. I was sitting turned
toward the window and did not look at them.
From the mayor’s questions to the gendarme, I saw that he was consumed
by the desire to find out for what offence, how and why, I was being
sent into exile. I remained obstinately silent. The mayor began
addressing me and the gendarme indiscriminately: ‘No one cares to enter
into our position. Do you suppose it is pleasant for me to have to swear
at a soldier and cause unpleasantness to a man whom I have never seen in
my life? It is the responsibility! The mayor is in charge of the town.
Whatever happens, I have to answer for it; if government funds are
stolen, it is my fault; if the church is burnt down, it is my fault; if
there are a great many men drunk in the street, it is my fault; if there
is not enough liquor drunk, it is my fault too’ (the last phrase pleased
him very much and he went on in a more cheerful tone). ‘It’s a good
thing you met me, but if you had met the Minister and you walking up and
down, he would have asked, how is this, a political prisoner out for a
walk? Put the mayor under arrest....’
At last I was weary of his eloquence and, turning to him, I said: ‘Do
what your duty requires, but I beg you to spare me your admonitions. I
see from what you say that you expect me to bow to you; it is not my
habit to bow to strangers.’
The mayor was confused.
‘It is always like that among us,’ A—— A—— used to say; ‘whichever is
first to begin scolding and shouting always gets the best of it. If you
allow an official to raise his voice, you are lost; hearing himself
yelling, he becomes a wild beast. If at his first rude word you begin
shouting, he is invariably scared and gives way, thinking you are a
determined person and that such persons had better not be irritated too
much.’
The mayor sent the gendarme to inquire about horses and, turning to me,
observed by way of apology: ‘I have acted like this for the sake of the
soldier; you don’t know what our soldiers are like—one must not allow
the slightest slackness, but, believe me, I can discriminate—allow me to
ask you what unlucky chance....’
‘At the conclusion of our trial we were forbidden to speak of it.’
‘In that case.... Of course.... I do not venture ...’ and the mayor’s
eyes expressed agonies of curiosity. He paused.
‘I had a distant relative, he was a year in the Peter-Paul fortress. You
see, I, too—excuse me, it worries me. I believe you are still angry? I
am a military man, stern, accustomed to the service; I went into the
regiment at seventeen. I have a hasty temper, but it is all over in a
minute. I won’t touch your gendarme, the devil take him entirely....’
The gendarme came in with the reply that the horses could not be driven
in from the grazing-ground in less than an hour.
The mayor informed him that he forgave him on my intercession. Then
turning to me he added:
‘And to show that you are not angry, you will not refuse my request. I
live only two doors away; allow me to ask you to take pot-luck at lunch
with me.’
This was so funny after our encounter that I went to the mayor’s and ate
his dried sturgeon and caviare and drank his vodka and Madeira.
He became so affable that he told me all his domestic affairs, even
describing his wife’s illness which had lasted seven years. After
luncheon he took with proud satisfaction a letter from a vase standing
on the table and gave me to read ‘a poem’ by his son, deemed worthy of
being read in public at the examination for the Cadet School. After
obliging me with such marks of complete confidence, he adroitly passed
to an indirect question about my case. This time I partly gratified his
curiosity.
This mayor reminded me of the secretary of the district court of whom
our friend Shtchepkin used to tell: ‘Nine police-captains came and went,
but the secretary remained unchanged, and went on managing the district
as before. “How is it you get on with all of them?” Shtchepkin asked
him. “Oh, it’s nothing; with God’s help we get round them somehow. Some
certainly were hot-tempered at first, would stamp with their forelegs
and their hindlegs, shout, swear for all they were worth, say they’d
kick me out, and they’d report me to the governor—well, as you see, I
know my place, one holds one’s tongue and thinks; give him time, he’ll
be broken in! This is just first being in harness! And, as a matter of
fact, they can be driven all right!”’
When we reached Kazan the Volga was in all the glory of the spring
floods. The whole distance from Uslon to Kazan we had to float on a
punt, the river had overflowed for fifteen versts or more. It was a
cloudy day. The ferry had broken down, a number of carts and conveyances
of all sorts were waiting on the bank. The gendarme went to the station
superintendent and asked for a punt. The man gave it reluctantly, saying
that it would be better to wait, that it was not safe to cross. The
gendarme was in a hurry because he was drunk and because he wanted to
show his power.
They put my carriage on a little punt and we floated off. The weather
seemed calmer. Half an hour later the Tatar put up a sail, when suddenly
the storm began to rage again. We were carried along with such violence
that, running upon a log, we crashed against it so that the wretched
punt was broken and the water poured over the deck. The position was
disagreeable; however, the Tatar succeeded in getting the punt on to a
sandbank. A merchant’s barge came into sight. We shouted to it and asked
them to send a boat; the bargemen heard us and floated by without doing
anything.
A peasant came up with his wife in a little canoe made out of a
tree-trunk, asked us what was the matter, and, remarking ‘Well, what of
it? Stop up the hole and go your way rejoicing. What’s there to mope
about? It’s because you are a Tatar, I suppose, you can’t do anything,’
climbed on to the punt.
The Tatar certainly was very much alarmed. First, when the water had
poured over the sleeping gendarme, the latter had leapt up and at once
began beating the Tatar. Secondly, the boat was government property, and
the Tatar kept repeating: ‘Here it will go to the bottom, what will
become of me! what will become of me!’
I comforted him by saying that if it went to the bottom he would go with
it.
‘It is all right, master, if I drown, but how if I don’t?’
The peasant and the others stopped up the hole with all sorts of things.
The peasant struck it with his axe and knocked in some little plank;
then, up to his waist in the water, helped to drag the punt off the
sandbank and we were soon floating off into the channel of the Volga.
The river rushed us along savagely. The wind and the sleet cut the face,
the cold penetrated to the bone, but soon the monument of Ivan the
Terrible began to stand out from the fog and the floods of water. It
seemed as though the danger were over, when suddenly the Tatar shouted
in a plaintive voice, ‘A leak, a leak!’ and the water began pouring
vigorously in at the hole that had been stuffed up. We were in the very
centre of the river, the punt moved more and more slowly, one could
foresee that it would soon sink altogether. The Tatar took off his cap
and prayed. My valet, overcome with terror, wept and said: ‘Farewell,
mother, I shall not see you again.’ The gendarme swore and vowed to
thrash them all as soon as they got to the bank.
At first I too was frightened; besides, the wind and the rain added
confusion and uproar. But the thought that it was absurd that I should
perish without having _done anything_, that youthful ‘_Quid timeas,
Caesarem vehis!_’ got the upper hand and I calmly awaited the end,
convinced that I could not perish between Uslon and Kazan. Later on,
life breaks us of this proud confidence and punishes us for it; that is
why youth is bold and full of heroism, while with the years a man grows
cautious and is rarely carried away.
A quarter of an hour later, we were ashore near the walls of the Kazan
Kremlin, drenched and shivering. I went into the nearest tavern, drank
off a glass of foaming wine, ate a fried egg, and set off to the
post-office.
In villages and little towns there is a room at the posting-station for
travellers, in big towns every one puts up at hotels and there is
nothing at the posting-stations for travellers. I was taken to the
posting-station. The superintendent of the station showed me his room;
there were women and children in it and a sick and bedridden old man;
there was absolutely not a corner where I could change my clothes. I
wrote a letter to the general of gendarmes and asked him to assign a
room to me somewhere that I might get warm and dry my clothes.
An hour later the gendarme returned and said that Count Apraxin had
ordered that a room should be given me. I waited a couple of hours; no
one came and I sent the gendarme off again. He came back with the answer
that Colonel Pol, to whom the General had given the order to find me a
room, was playing cards at the Nobles’ Club and that a room could not be
found me till next day.
This was barbarous; and I wrote a second letter to Count Apraxin asking
him to send me on immediately, saying that I might find shelter at the
next posting-station. The Count was graciously pleased to be in bed, and
the letter was left until the morning. There was nothing for it. I took
off my wet clothes and lay down on the table of the post-office wrapped
in the greatcoat of the ‘elder’; for a pillow I took a thick book and
laid some linen upon it.
In the morning I sent out for some breakfast. The post-office officials
were by now assembling. The clerk in charge submitted to me that it
really was not the right thing to have breakfast in a public office,
that it did not matter to him personally, but that the postmaster might
not like it.
I answered him jocosely that a man cannot be turned out who has no right
to go, and if he has no right to go he is obliged to eat and drink where
he is detained....
Next day Count Apraxin gave me permission to remain three days in Kazan
and to put up at the hotel.
I spent those three days wandering about the town with the gendarme. The
Tatar women with their covered faces, their broad-cheeked husbands,
mosques of the true faith side by side with orthodox churches, all was
suggestive of Asia and the East. In Vladimir, in Nizhni there is a
feeling of nearness to Moscow, here of remoteness from her.
In Perm I was taken straight to the governor. He was holding a great
reception; his daughter was being married that day to an officer. He
insisted on my going in, and I had to present myself to the whole
society of Perm in a dirty travelling coat, covered with mud and dust.
The governor, after talking all sorts of nonsense, forbade me to make
acquaintance with the Polish exiles and ordered me to come to him in a
few days, saying that then he would find me work in the office.
This governor was a Little Russian; he did not oppress the exiles, and
altogether was a harmless person. He was improving his position somehow
on the sly, like a mole working unseen underground; he was adding grain
to grain and laying by a little hourly for a rainy day.
From some inexplicable idea of discipline, he used to order all the
exiles who lived in Perm to appear before him at ten o’clock in the
morning on Saturdays. He would come out with his pipe and a list, verify
whether we were all present, and, if any one was not, send a policeman
to find out the reason and, after saying scarcely anything to any one,
would dismiss us. In this way in his reception-room I became acquainted
with all the Polish exiles, whose acquaintance he had warned me I must
not make.
The day after my arrival the gendarme went away, and for the first time
since my arrest I found myself in freedom.
In freedom ... in a little town on the Siberian frontier, with no
experience, with no conception of the surroundings in which I had to
live.
From the nursery I had passed into the lecture-room, from the
lecture-room to a circle of friends—it had all been theories, dreams, my
own people, no practical responsibilities. Then prison to let it all
settle. Practical contact with life was beginning here near the Ural
Mountains.
It began at once; the day after my arrival, I went with a porter from
the governor’s office to look for a lodging and he took me to a big
house of one storey. In spite of my protesting that I was looking for a
very little house or, still better, part of a house, he obstinately
insisted on my going in.
The landlady made me sit down on her sofa and, learning that I came from
Moscow, asked if I had seen Mr. Kabrit in Moscow. I told her that I had
never even heard the name.
‘How is that?’ observed the old woman; ‘I mean Kabrit,’ and she
mentioned his Christian name and his father’s name. ‘Upon my word, sir,
why, he was our vice-governor!’
‘But I have been nine months in prison, perhaps that is why I have not
heard of him,’ I said, smiling.
‘Maybe that is it. So you will take the house, my good sir?’
‘It is too big, much too big; I told the man so.’
‘You can’t have too much of a good thing,’ she said.
‘That is so, but you will want more rent for so much of a good thing.’
‘Ah, my good sir, but who has talked to you about my price? I have not
said a word about it yet.’
‘But I know that such a house cannot be cheap.’
‘How much will you give?’
To get rid of her, I said that I would not give more than three hundred
and fifty roubles.
‘Well, I would be thankful for that. Bid the man bring your bits of
trunks, darling, and take a little glass of Teneriffe.’
Her price seemed to me fabulously low. I took the house, and, just as I
was on the point of going, she stopped me. ‘I forgot to ask you, are you
going to keep your own cow?’
‘Good Heavens, no!’ I answered, almost appalled by her question.
‘Well, then, I will let you have cream.’
I went away thinking with horror where I was and what I was that I could
be considered capable of keeping my own cow. But before I had time to
look round, the governor informed me that I was transferred to Vyatka
because another exile who had been allotted to Vyatka had asked to be
transferred to Perm, where he had relations. The governor wanted me to
leave the next day. This was impossible; thinking to remain some time in
Perm, I had bought all sorts of things and I had to sell them even at
half-price. After various evasive answers, the governor gave me
permission to remain forty-eight hours, exacting a promise that I would
not seek an opportunity of seeing the other exiles.
I was preparing to sell my horse and all sorts of rubbish the next day
when suddenly the police-master appeared with an order to leave within
twenty-four hours. I explained to him that the governor had given me an
extension of time. The police-master showed me the instructions, in
which he certainly was directed to see me off within twenty-four hours.
The document had been signed that very day and, consequently, after the
conversation with me.
‘Ah,’ said the police-master, ‘_I_ understand, I understand; our fine
gentleman wants to throw the responsibility on me.’
‘Let us go and confront him with it.’
‘Let us!’
The governor said that he had forgotten the permission he had given me.
The police-master asked slyly whether he wished him to make a fresh copy
of the instructions.
‘Is it worth while?’ the governor remarked simply.
‘We have caught him,’ said the police-master, gleefully rubbing his
hands, ‘the scribbling soul!’
The Perm police-master belonged to a special type of military men turned
into officials. They are men who have had the luck in the army to come
in contact with a bayonet or to be hit by a bullet, and so to be given
such posts as that of local police-master or executive clerk.
In the regiment they have acquired certain airs of frankness, have
learnt by heart various phrases about the inviolability of honour and
the noble feelings, and also sarcastic jeers at the ‘scribbling gentry.’
The younger among them have read Marlinsky[130] and Zagoskin,[131] know
the beginning of the _Prisoner of the Caucasus_ and _Voynarovsky_, and
often repeat verses. Some, for instance, will say every time they see a
man smoking:
‘The amber smoked between his lips.’
They are all without exception deeply and volubly conscious that their
position is far inferior to their merits, that only poverty keeps them
in this ‘world of ink,’ that if it were not for their wounds and lack of
means, they would be commanding army corps or have the rank of
adjutant-generals. Every one of them will quote a striking instance of
some old comrade and say: ‘Why, Kreits, or Ridiger, was made a cornet
with me. We lodged together. Called each other Petrusha and Alyosha—but
there, I’m not a German, you see, and I had no backing—so I can stay a
policeman. Do you imagine it’s easy for an honourable man with our ideas
to do police work?’
Their wives are even louder in their complaints, and with heavy hearts
go to Moscow every year to put money into the bank, on the pretext that
a mother or aunt is ill and wants to see them for the last time.
And so they live in comfort for fifteen years. The husband, railing
against his destiny, thrashes the police, beats the workpeople, cringes
to the governor, screens thieves, steals legal documents, and repeats
verses from the _Fountain of Bahtchisaray_.[132] The wife, complaining
of destiny and provincial life, grabs everything she can get, takes
tribute from petitioners and shops, and raves over moonlight nights.
I have made this digression because at first I was taken in by these
gentry and believed they really were rather better than the rest, which
is far from being the case....
I brought away from Perm one personal memory which is dear to me.
At one of the governor’s inspections of the exiles a Polish priest
invited me to go and see him. I found several Poles there. One of them
sat in silence pensively smoking a little pipe; misery, hopeless misery,
was apparent on every feature of his face. He was round-shouldered, even
crooked, his face was of the irregular Polish-Lithuanian type which at
first surprises and then attracts. The greatest of the Poles, Thaddeus
Kosciuszko, had just such features. The clothes of the Pole, whose name
was Tsihanovitch, gave evidence of terrible poverty.
A few days later I was walking along the deserted boulevard with which
Perm is bounded on one side; it was in the second half of May, the young
leaves were opening, the birches were in flower (I remember the whole
avenue was of birches), and there was no one anywhere. Our provincials
are not fond of _platonic_ walks. After strolling for some time, I saw
at last on the other side of the boulevard, that is, where the open
country began, a man botanising or perhaps simply gathering the scanty
and monotonous flowers of that region. When he raised his head I
recognised Tsihanovitch and went up to him.
Later on I saw a good deal of the victims of the Polish insurrection;
their record is particularly rich in martyrs—Tsihanovitch was the first.
When he told me how he had been persecuted by executioners in the
uniform of adjutant-generals—those tools with which the brutality of the
savage despot of the Winter Palace fights—then our discomforts, our
prison, and our trial seemed to me paltry.
At that time in Vilna the commanding officer _on the side of the
victorious enemy_ was the celebrated renegade Muravyov, who immortalised
himself by the historic declaration, ‘that he belonged to the Muravyovs
who hanged and not the Muravyovs who are hanged.’ For Nicholas’ narrow,
vindictive outlook, men of feverish ambition and coarse callousness were
always the best fitted or, at any rate, the most sympathetic.
The generals who sat in the torture chamber and tormented the
emissaries, their friends or the friends of their friends, behaved to
the prisoners like blackguards, with no breeding, no feeling of
delicacy, and at the same time were very well aware that all their
doings were covered by the military coat of Nicholas, soaked in the
blood of the Polish martyrs and the tears of Polish mothers.... This
Passion Week of a whole people still awaits its Luke or its Matthew....
But let them know: one torturer after another will be shamed at the bar
of history and leave his name there. That will be the portrait gallery
of the period of Nicholas by way of pendant to the gallery of the
generals of 1812.
Muravyov spoke to the prisoners as though they were of a lower class,
and swore at them in the language of the market. Once he was so carried
away by fury that he went up to Tsihanovitch and would have taken him by
the shoulder and perhaps have struck him, but met the fettered
prisoner’s eyes, was abashed, and went on in a different tone.
I guessed what those eyes must have looked like; when he told me the
story three years after the event, his eyes glowed, the veins stood out
on his forehead and on his bowed neck.
‘What could you have done in chains?’
‘I could have torn him to pieces with my teeth, I could have beaten him
to death with my skull, with my chains,’ he said, trembling.
Tsihanovitch was sent at first to Verhoturye, one of the remotest towns
of the province of Perm, lost in the Ural Mountains, buried in snow and
so far from every road that in winter there was scarcely any means of
communication. I need hardly say that living in Verhoturye was worse
than in Omsk or Krasnoyarsk. Being in complete solitude, Tsihanovitch
occupied himself with the study of natural science, collected the scanty
flora of the Ural Mountains, and at last received permission to move to
Perm; and this was a great amelioration of his lot. Again he heard the
sound of his own language and met with comrades in misfortune. His wife,
who had remained in Lithuania, wrote that she was setting off to _walk_
to him from the province of Vilna.
When I was transferred so unexpectedly to Vyatka, I went to say good-bye
to Tsihanovitch. The little room in which he lived was almost completely
empty. A small, old trunk stood beside the meagre bed, a wooden table
and a chair made up the rest of the furniture. It reminded me of my cell
in the Krutitsky Barracks.
The news of my departure grieved him, but he was so used to
disappointments that a minute later he said to me with a smile that was
almost bright: ‘That’s just what I love nature for; wherever a man may
be, she cannot be taken from him.’
I wanted to leave him something as a souvenir. I took a little stud out
of my shirt and asked him to accept it.
‘It won’t suit my shirt, but I shall keep your stud to the end of my
days and I will wear it at my funeral.’
Then he sank into thought and all at once began rapidly rummaging in his
trunk. He found a little bag, from it drew out an iron chain made in a
peculiar way, and, tearing several links off, gave them to me with the
words: ‘That chain is very precious to me, the most sacred memories of a
certain time are connected with it. I do not give you all, but take
these links. I never thought that I, an exile from Lithuania, would
present them to a Russian exile.’
I embraced him and said good-bye.
‘When are you going?’ he asked.
‘To-morrow morning, but I will not invite you; a gendarme is always
sitting in my lodging.’
‘And so a good journey to you; may you be happier than I.’
At nine o’clock next morning the police-master turned up at my lodgings
and began hurrying me off. The Perm gendarme, a far more manageable
person than the Krutitsky one, was busy getting the carriage ready, not
concealing his joy at the hope of being able to be drunk for three
hundred and fifty versts. Everything was ready. I glanced casually into
the street; Tsihanovitch was passing, I rushed to the window.
‘Well, thank God,’ he said, ‘this is the fourth time I have walked past
to say good-bye to you, if only from a distance, and still you did not
see me.’
With eyes full of tears I thanked him. This tender, womanly attention
deeply touched me; but for this meeting I should have had nothing to
regret in Perm!
On the day after we left Perm there was a heavy, unceasing downpour of
rain from dawn, such as is common in forest districts; at two o’clock we
reached a very poor village in the province of Vyatka. There was no
house at the posting-station. Votyaks[133] (who could not read or write)
performed the duties of overseer, looked through the permit for horses,
saw whether there were two seals or one, shouted ‘Aïda, aïda!’ and
harnessed the horses, I need hardly say, twice as quickly as it would
have been done had there been a superintendent. I wanted to get dry and
warm and to have something to eat. Before we reached the village, the
Perm gendarme agreed to my suggestion that we should rest for a couple
of hours. When I went into the stifling hut, without a chimney, and
found that it was absolutely impossible to get anything, that there was
not even a pot-house for five versts, I regretted our decision and was
on the point of asking for horses.
While I was thinking whether to go on or not to go on, a soldier came in
and reported that the officer at the étape had sent to invite me to a
cup of tea.
‘With the greatest pleasure. Where is your officer?’
‘In the hut near by, your honour,’ and the soldier made the familiar
left-about-turn. I followed him.
A short, elderly officer with a face that bore traces of many anxieties,
petty cares, and fear of his superiors, met me with all the genial
hospitality of deadly boredom. He was one of those unintelligent,
good-natured soldiers who work in the service for twenty-five years
without promotion and without reasoning about it, as old horses serve,
who probably suppose that it is their duty at dawn to put on their
harness and drag something.
‘Whom are you taking, and where?’
‘Oh, don’t ask, for it is heart-rending. Well, I suppose my superiors
know all about it; it is our duty to carry out orders and we are not
responsible, but, looking at it as a man, it is an ugly business.’
‘Why, what is it?’
‘You see, they have collected a crowd of cursed little Jew boys of eight
or nine years old. Whether they are taking them for the navy or what, I
can’t say. At first _the orders were to drive them to Perm, then there
was a change and we are driving them to Kazan_. I have taken them over a
hundred versts. The officer who handed them over said it was dreadful,
and that’s all about it; a third were left on the way’ (and the officer
pointed to the earth). ‘Not half will reach their destination,’ he
added.
‘Have there been epidemics, or what?’ I asked, deeply moved.
‘No, not epidemics, but they just die off like flies. A Jew boy, you
know, is such a frail, weakly creature, like a skinned cat; he is not
used to tramping in the mud for ten hours a day and eating dried
bread—then again, being among strangers, no father nor mother nor
petting; well, they cough and cough until they cough themselves into
their graves. And I ask you, what use is it to them? What can they do
with little boys?’
I made no answer.
‘When do you set off?’ I asked.
‘Well, we ought to have gone long ago, but it has been raining so
heavily.... Hey, you there! tell the small fry to form up.’
They brought the children and formed them into regular ranks: it was one
of the most awful sights I have ever seen, those poor, poor children!
Boys of twelve or thirteen might somehow have survived it, but little
fellows of eight and ten.... No painting could reproduce the horror of
that scene.
Pale, exhausted, with frightened faces, they stood in thick, clumsy,
soldiers’ overcoats, with stand-up collars, fixing helpless, pitiful
eyes on the garrison soldiers who were roughly getting them into ranks.
The white lips, the blue rings under their eyes looked like fever or
chill. And these sick children, without care or kindness, exposed to the
icy wind that blows straight from the Arctic Ocean, were going to their
graves.
And note that they were being taken by a kind-hearted officer who was
obviously sorry for the children. What if they had been taken by a
military political economist?
I took the officer’s hand and, saying ‘Take care of them,’ rushed to my
carriage. I wanted to sob and felt that I could not control myself.
What monstrous crimes are secretly buried in the archives of the
infamous reign of Nicholas! We are used to them, they are committed
every day, committed as though nothing were wrong, unnoticed, lost in
the terrible distance, noiselessly sunk in the silent bogs of
officialdom or shrouded by the censorship of the police.
Have we not seen with our own eyes seven hungry peasants from Pskov, who
were being forcibly removed to the province of Tobolsk and were pitched
without food or night’s lodging in the Tverskoy Square in Moscow until
Prince D. V. Golitsyn ordered them to be cared for at his own expense?