THE KATORGA.
COMPANIONS IN EXILE--THE ‘KATORGA’--A MURDERER--THE
FELONS--KANTIER--PAY AND PUNISHMENTS--THE COUNTING-HOUSE.
About ten o’clock of a cold morning, for it was now the 4th of October,
I saw before me the outlines of a village composed of two hundred
miserable houses, all built of wood, lying near the river Irtiche,
and situated in a vast plain. Further back, upon a rising ground, and
in the middle of a fir wood, the buildings of a factory were visible.
This was Ekaterinski-Zavod. I was introduced into the counting-house
(_kazionnaia kantora_), and the _smotritel_, that is to say, the
inspector of the establishment, soon arrived; for to M. Aramilski the
gendarme had already carried all the papers which concerned me. He made
me strip to the waist before all the persons present, thus verifying
the description drawn up at Kiow, which he had in his hand. He then
ordered me to be inscribed in the register of convict labourers, not
under my name but under my number. I was then to be taken to the
station-house; and he added, as he went out, without even having
addressed me, ‘he will work with chains on his feet.’
When he was out of hearing, a young man, who, through all this
business, had continued writing like the other clerks in the office,
rose and threw himself into my arms. It was Charles Bogdaszewski of
Cracow, who, implicated in the affair of Erenberg the poet, had been
condemned for three years to hard labour, and to deportation for the
term of his natural life. Some moments afterwards, we were joined
by John Siesieki of Lublin, another political offender. They spoke
quickly, and with an emotion which they did not disguise. They conjured
me to show myself patient and submissive in every way, and not to
rebel at anything. It was only thus that I could arrive in time at
being employed in the office, instead of having to do the hard and
severe work of the factory itself; and at this price, above all, I
could purchase an immunity from those corporal punishments to which
every labouring convict is liable. I cannot describe what was the
character of this broken and breathless colloquy, or the shiver which
ran through my frame when I heard Polish lips speaking, as of a matter
of course, of their fear of blows and of the rods. They left me, but
it was to make haste to use their influence with the under-officials
of the establishment, with the treasurer and the forester, that they
might induce the _smotritel_ to go back from the order, which seemed
inconceivable to them, that I should work in irons, such a measure
not being in use here even in the case of murderers. I learnt later
what was the meaning of this unusual severity. At the bottom of my
certificated sentence, Prince Gortchakov had added with his own hand,
‘A special watch must be kept upon Piotrowski;’ and this extraordinary
recommendation had made a deep impression on M. Aramilski. ‘Since I
have been superintendent,’ he said to the forester, ‘nothing of the
sort ever occurred to me; this must be some diplomate’ (_eto dolgène
byt kakoï diplomat_).
The station-house, to which I was immediately directed, was full of
soldiers, many of them Poles who had fought in our war of independence.
These seized the least excuse to come up to me and ask me in whispers
what had become of Poland, what was happening in Europe, and whether
there were any hopes? (_Son Nadzieje?_)
Worn out with fatigue and by many emotions, I stretched myself on a
bench, and for two hours I remained plunged in a gloomy reverie. All
of a sudden I saw standing in front of me a strong truculent-looking
man, whose ignoble expression did not belie in any way the triple
mark of _vor_ which was printed on his forehead and on both cheeks.
He addressed me thus, ‘Get up, you must go and work.’ This was the
overseer of the convicts, a felon of distinction himself! Oh, my God!
Thou alone didst hear the cry of my soul, when for the first time I was
ordered about by an abject being like this! At these words of his I
darted a look at him in return which seemed to express all the desolate
indignation of my spirit, I do not know that it was so, but he stepped
back, dropped his eyes, and said with a sad air, ‘Well, what can I
do? They order me, and I must execute my orders.’ My breast heaved, I
pressed my head between my hands, for my brain felt on fire, a cold
sweat burst out all over me, and at last I breathed again. ‘Let us go,’
I said, as I rose up, and I went out, following the overseer.
He led me to a large forge close to the refining house, my feet were
placed in the anvil and my irons struck off, a deliverance which I owed
to the humane offices of my two countrymen; and thus for the first
time since I had left Kiow I was able to pull off my own boots! I was
then taken to a building which was only in part finished, a kiln for
drying the malt. The roof was not completed, and the wood-work had to
be cleared of a vast quantity of chips, litter and offensive refuse,
with which it was covered. I mounted by a ladder, and was followed by
the overseer, and by a soldier, who had orders for the future never to
let me out of his sight. On the roof I found another convict, whose
labours I was to share. A broom and a shovel were put into my hands by
my colleague, and by the overseer I was shown how to use them. The air
was cold, the sky clouded and dark, and the task imposed certainly
not a severe one; but in order to avoid any remonstrances, and to
escape being either spoken to or looked at, I worked away without ever
stopping or so much as lifting my eyes, and was soon drenched with
perspiration. Alas! I was weak, and what was more, I was weeping!
In his course of daily inspection M. Aramilski also came up upon
the roof where I was at work, followed by other officials of the
establishment. I continued to sweep without turning round, and I
avoided their eyes as much as if I had been a criminal. Some time after
they had left, the overseer said, ‘Now rest.’ I seated myself on a
heap of sweepings alongside of my companion, a young man, who was tall
and well-made, but who had the triple mark on his face, and who seemed
of an easy cheerful temper. Overcoming the hesitation which I felt, I
spoke first.
‘Have you been long in these works?’
‘Three years.’
‘To how many years’ labour are you sentenced?’
‘For life!’
‘What was your crime?’
‘I killed my master.’
I shuddered, but went on:
‘Without doubt it was an accident, you did not intend to kill him?’
‘Why, for the matter of that I did not _plan_ it,’ he said with a
sneering look; ‘I had an axe hanging at my girdle, I took it in both
my hands and split his head open for him.’
I was chilled with horror. After a few moments’ silence I said:
‘But why did you kill him so cruelly?’
‘Why? not for fun, you may be sure. No, our master was a bad man, very
cruel, who overworked us and beat us incessantly, almost to death;
and to deliver the neighbourhood from a ruffian like that I took upon
myself to kill him, and I did so. It was God’s providence that I did
not die under the knout, and now I am much happier and better off at
this _katorga_ (penal labour) than I ever was at home. The only thing
that I regret is my young wife, whom I had to leave; she is young and
pretty, and will soon find another husband.’
‘But you ought to repent of the sin of having slain a man.’
‘_That_ was not a man! That was a devil!’
We soon after this went to work again, and did not stop till nightfall.
I returned to the guard-house, and there my two countrymen came under
an escort to visit me, the _smotritel_ having given leave for this
indulgence. We conversed together in a low voice, and in the middle of
all the racket made by the soldiers and convicts we related to each
other the chief events of our lives. These poor friends did not cease
exhorting me to absolute patience and submission. They conjured me
to master my temper, to suppress all exhibitions of it, and not to
despair of seeing myself soon raised to a position which would be by
comparison more happy, and which they themselves now occupied--thanks
to their patient and irreproachable conduct. We embraced tenderly,
then separated, and I fell asleep. Thus ended my first day of convict
labour and of convict life: how many more of the same succeeded it and
resembled it!
I rose with the sun to go to the works, at eight I had breakfast, from
twelve to one we had an hour in the barracks for dinner and rest, and
then we worked till dark. The occupations were often varied according
to the wants of the establishment or the inclinations and temper of
the inspector. By day and by night I was associated with the other
felons, and always under the eye of the overseer and of the soldier in
charge of my person. On some days I swept the courtyards; sometimes I
carried wood and drew water; sometimes, again, I might be sent to hew
wood for fagots, and to stack them in symmetrical piles; and this last
employment in the open air, in the autumnal and winter months, in rain
and snow, and in the icy temperature of Siberia, was the most trying of
any. Long, gloomy, and mournful were the days, and it is needless to
dwell on them any further.
The dominant feeling in my mind was the wish to avoid any discussion
or wrangle with my superiors or with the overseers. Such an occurrence
would have brought about a terrible catastrophe, for I had made a
vow that I would not submit to corporal punishment, and that I would
resist it, whether at the price of my own life or of that of others;
and for this reason I worked beyond what was asked of me, and beyond my
own strength. I must do myself the justice to add that I neglected no
effort to conquer my feelings and moments of impatience, and I must do
my superiors the justice to say of them that they were neither teasing
nor gratuitously and wickedly unkind. Severe and hard as they often
were, they never treated me with the capricious rudeness of despots,
while the convicts who were my colleagues treated me with a deference,
I might almost say a kindness, for which I was heartily grateful.
They did not annoy me with any of those cruel jests by which the bad
even in very different ranks of life often insult any one superior to
themselves whom misfortune has brought down to their own level. More
than once I have known them offer to help me at some work which they
thought was too heavy for me, or they would change with me, taking
my task and giving me their own, if it happened to be a lighter one.
From a very early stage they ceased to speak to me with ‘_thee_’ and
‘_thou_,’ and called me ‘Sir;’ and certainly unmerited misfortune ought
to command the respect of untutored men, even of savages, where they,
in spite of bravado and seared consciences, feel themselves to be
really criminals. With the exception of a very few political offenders
like myself, all the convicts at Ekaterinski-Zavod (to the number of
three hundred souls) were really malefactors. One would have murdered
a wayfarer, another had committed a horrible rape, another would be an
utterer of false coin, another both a thief and a housebreaker. As a
daily intercourse with such men was inevitable, I had neither a false
shame nor a misplaced pride in my dealings with them. I often talked to
these strange companions, studied their characters, and heard from them
their different histories and the events of their lives. I am certainly
not about to become the historian of these heroes of the bagnio; but I
will give one tale, which is not without interest, and which shows that
a false Byronism of deed and thought was not unrepresented among them.
One of our felons, Kantier by name, was sentenced to hard labour for
life. He was still young, a man short of stature, but strongly built,
of a clear and dark but pale complexion; he had black and burning
eyes, and his whole physiognomy bespoke a firm and daring disposition.
He had been clerk to a wine merchant at St. Petersburg; and when I
asked him one day what was the cause of his sentence and punishment,
he replied, ‘It is because I killed the girl with whom I was in love.
I suspected her of being unfaithful to me. I had suffered horribly,
and I was determined to be revenged upon her. In order to execute my
design with greater ease, I pretended to make it up with her; and, by
dint of coaxing, got her to promise, on a certain holiday, to go on
an excursion into the country with me. She hesitated about it a long
time, as if she had had a presentiment of some mischief; but at last
she consented, upon the condition that she might bring a female friend
along with her. _That_ did not suit my plans very well, but I had to
put up with it. On the appointed day we started, all three of us. Armed
with a pistol and a dagger, I walked alongside of my mistress and
talked to her. She had never seemed to me either so pretty or so loving
as she did then; but that only added to my jealousy and my thirst for
revenge. More than once I was on the point of dispatching her, but her
face disarmed me. At last I stopped; it was in a field; I pointed out
something in the view to my sweetheart which made her turn away her
head. At that moment I put the pistol to her temple, and pulled the
trigger. My hand shook, and I only wounded her; the friend screamed
and ran. She, slightly hurt and stunned by the shot, turned round
two or three times, then, throwing herself on her knees before me,
“Forgive me!” she cried in a voice so touching and heart-rending that
I shuddered. But I answered by sinking the dagger into her heart, the
weapon going in up to its hilt. She fell down stiff and dead. I stabbed
her in the breast with my knife, and then ran to give myself up to the
police; and here I am, after the knout, for life....’
‘But are you not sorry for having killed her? Does not your conscience
reproach you bitterly for such a crime?’
‘Yes, I am sorry for her. I shall never forget her as long as I live,
and I shall never love any one else; but as to my conscience, I thought
I was quite right in killing her.’
‘But, if it were possible for her to be alive and come back to you, you
surely would not do so by her again?’
‘She made me first the happiest and then the most miserable of men;
and, if she could come back, I should certainly kill her again.’
‘Then, you mean to say you think you have committed no crime?’
‘Where is the crime? She took away my peace, and I took away her life;
she was the most to blame of the two.’
I must now say something about our village, and about the organisation
of the factory. The government distillery at Ekaterinski-Zavod was
founded in the reign of Catherine II., whose name it bears; and
the population consists of the descendants of former convicts. All
the interests of the village were centred in the distillery, which
produces annually from two to three million of _litres_ of alcohol,
and furnishes brandy to the country over a district of one or two
thousand _verstes_. The distillery was farmed by two rich merchants
of the government of Simbirsk, M. Orlov and M. Alexeiev, who must
have realised a considerable profit upon it, because, besides the
price which they paid as rent, and the augmented charges of pay
to the convict labourers, they had contracted for the pay of the
commanding officer and the keep of the garrison, viz. of a hundred and
one persons; and they were necessarily obliged to give constant and
valuable presents to the inspector and other government officials.
The inspector generally allowed them about half the force of convict
labourers for the distillery; the other half was employed in the
public service, as in road-making and mending, in the construction of
government buildings, and in sanitary works. Each of us received in
money three francs a month, and ninety pounds’ weight of corn, the
sale of which in the village was to furnish us with food; but the
gentlemen who farmed or rented the distillery from the crown, in order
to encourage their workpeople, raised the pay up to five, eight, and
even ten francs a month; the men employed in barrelling the spirit
being paid by the piece, and thus gaining more than the rest. In this
way, it was advantageous for the convicts to be in the employment of
the distillery, for they received a better salary, and were less likely
to encounter the trying interference of the government officials; but,
in any case of insubordination or idleness, the distillers or their
representative were obliged to refer to the inspector, who ordered the
punishment to be inflicted. This, I mean, was the case when it was
a question of the stick and the rods; as for blows and cuffs, the
convicts got plenty of them from everybody alike. The greater number
of convicts lived in barracks; the more favoured were allowed to lodge
in the village: but then they had to pay for the bed and board of the
soldier who lived there and watched them. From all this it will be seen
that, by those who had any education, the counting-house and office
of the factory were the posts especially desired, and that those who
occupied them were thought most worthy of envy; but it is needless
to add that all were alike in the eye of the law, that these steps
or grades could not give any acquired rights, and that at the good
pleasure of the inspector, or _smotritel_, one might be at any moment
‘removed to other functions.’
Thanks to the constant care with which I acquitted myself of the tasks
imposed upon me, thanks to the mastery which I had gained over myself,
and of which I certainly should not at one time have believed myself
capable, I passed, in the following year, not only into the service of
the lessees, but also was employed in their office; and in this way I
ceased to be in the constant society of persons who were unreclaimed,
and who lacked culture both morally and intellectually. I received
wages to the extent of ten francs a month, and my occupation was in
every way less painful than any former ones had been. I went to my
desk at eight in the morning, and I remained in the counting-house
till mid-day, where I was again from two in the afternoon to ten or
eleven at night; and although work was not pressing, and one was not
really wanted, yet it was incumbent on me to be always present. During
the long hours of ennui I wrote, took notes, and abandoned myself to
meditations, during which plans for the future slowly ripened in my
mind. My office, it happened, was the rendezvous of a great number
of travellers, who frequented it both for the sale of grain and in
order to buy spirituous liquors; they were peasants, townsfolk,
merchants, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. If I was very scant
of speech, and short in my communication with the official, with the
other convicts, and with the custom-house officers, I acquired, on the
contrary, with a curiosity that never flagged, from all these passing
travellers, all that was to be learnt of the peculiarities of Siberia.
I spoke to men some of whom had been to Berezov, others at Nertchinsk,
others had penetrated to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, to the
steppes of the Kirghis, even into Boukhara; and thus, without passing
the threshold of my office, I learnt to know Siberia, its nearest and
its furthest details. The knowledge thus acquired was to be of great
value to me afterwards, in forming the plan for my evasion.
One of my fellow-countrymen, Wysoçki, was head clerk in the
counting-house of the distillery; but my great ally there was the young
Russian, Stépan Bazanov, manager of the factory for the lessees, whose
relative he was. He was a lad of twenty or upwards, brave and upright,
whose only weakness was the most naïve adoration for the Emperor
Nicholas. He never would or could admit that Nicholas did wrong; all
the wrong, according to him, was owing to the Boyards, and he declared
that, were it not for the intervention of the nobility, the Tzar would
make his people the happiest in the world; and I am bound to say that,
as far as my experience has gone, this opinion is a pretty general one
in Russia, among the people, though not among the ‘staroviertsi.’ What
most disposed me to like Bazanov was that he confided his love griefs
to me. The poor boy, who was lamentably uneducated in every way, had
fallen violently in love with a cousin of his own; but the Orlovs put
difficulties in the way of the union which he so much desired. Fancy
hearing a lover’s confidences in an accursed place like this where
convicts worked! though to be sure the man who made them to me knew
that he was free, and that he did not awake every morning to fear the
stick and the rods!
I must say that the thought of being exposed at any moment, for any
trivial cause, and at the beck of any official, to treatment as
shameful as it is terrible, created in me a gloomy and fierce temper,
and that, in spite of the relative and very appreciable improvement in
my case, I was kept in a state of continual tension. I could not forget
the subject, there was no way of doing so; the punishments daily
inflicted on some one or other of the convicts, all my own equals in
the social hierarchy of the place, sent up a cry of _cras tibi_, enough
to drive anyone mad with despair. Moreover, the familiarities to which
the superiors often admit their deported labourers have a dangerous
side. There is no real trust to be placed in the caprices of a man
invested with arbitrary powers. His favours are likely to be capricious
also, for these men are generally of low minds and manners; and it
amuses them to make a sport of their fellow-creatures, raising them
one day only in order to humiliate them more deeply hereafter. This is
a snare into which many Poles, who like myself have been carried to
Siberia, are apt to fall; into which indeed they have fallen. Their
education, their manners, the noble nature of their misfortunes, all
attract to them a certain consideration, and sometimes even win for
them the good graces of their masters. Thus they rise above the level
of the common herd of the lost, and they beguile themselves with the
illusion that in this way they are reintegrated into society. But
the moment of awakening from this dream soon comes, and the deported
man, rudely reminded of his real state, may be called happy if he is
reminded of it only by word of mouth! Some years before my arrival at
Ekaterinski-Zavod, there was a Russian general, N----, who had been
condemned by Nicholas to penal servitude in Siberia. The _smotritel_,
respecting the high position and the advanced age of the prisoner,
set him to the lightest and least painful tasks, and admitted him to
society and his table. Unluckily, the general sometimes forgot himself
(especially if he drank a little too much), and, taking up the tone
of a senior and superior officer, showed himself recalcitrant. The
inspector then had him chained to the furnace of the distillery, and
obliged him for a month or a fortnight, during the extreme cold of
winter, to keep up the fires. The general, overheated and covered with
sweat and ashes, promised to amend, and recommenced his familiarities
with the _smotritel_ and other functionaries, only to find himself
again another time by the furnace. Having spent several years in this
way at the _katorga_, he was pardoned by the Tzar, and restored to his
old rank as a general officer.
One other amelioration took place in my lot, and that even before I
was told off for a clerkship in the counting-house, and it was, in my
estimation, a benefit as great as even that great improvement on my
former labours. The inspector gave me leave to live out of barracks;
and thus I was able to leave behind me that habitation which was the
ordinary dwelling of felons, and which was the scene of their drinking
and of their infamous debaucheries. I dwelt henceforth, along with my
two fellow-clerks and fellow-countrymen, in Siesieki’s house. Thanks
to the length of his long sojourn at Ekaterinski-Zavod, this exile
had scraped together, out of his slender salary, enough money to
construct a small wooden house, which was not complete as yet, and
indeed was not even roofed in; but thither notwithstanding we carried
our household goods. The wind whistled through numberless chinks, but
as wood cost next to nothing, we piled up a great fire on the earth
every night; and there we could feel not only that we were at home,
but that we were delivered from the horrible company of the common
criminals; although it must not be forgotten that we were watched, and
that we had to pay for the soldiers who mounted a ceaseless guard upon
our persons. Ah! if that little house is still standing, and shelters
perhaps at this moment some unhappy and deported brother, let him know
that he is not the first or the only one who within its modest walls
has wept as he invoked a distant and a beloved land! My friend Siesieki
had been, he told me, a prisoner in the citadel of Warsaw along with
the hapless Lévitoux, and had thus been, so to speak, an eyewitness
of his horrible death. Their cells opened into the same corridor; and
more than once Lévitoux, when returning covered with blood from the
inquest and the torture, would call to him, ‘I cannot bear it any
longer, I know that I shall go mad, and then I shall speak in spite
of myself!’ This fear haunted him continually; but one day, on his
return from one of these _blood-baths_, as he called them, he said to
his companion through the window in his door, that he begged he would
keep awake till about eleven that evening. Siesieki, without, however,
attaching much importance to this request, complied with it, and did
not go to bed or lie down: about ten at night he saw a great light
in Lévitoux’s cell. The sentry called, ‘Fire! fire!’ but before the
jailer could be fetched, or the keys of the cell found, some time was
of course allowed to elapse. The door was opened, a dense smoke filled
the corridor, and the poor fellow had just expired upon the straw
mattress, to which he had set fire with his own hands by means of his
night-light. Through his cell window my friend beheld the burnt corpse,
and saw the soldiers drag it along the corridor by the feet, a horrible
spectacle, with the head knocking upon the flags. It is said that at
the news of such a finale even Nicholas was moved, and gave orders that
in future political offenders should not be proceeded against with so
much severity; also, ever since this event, no person detained for a
political cause, and supposed to be gravely implicated in one, is ever
allowed a light in his room.
Siesieki had made, as I related before, the whole of the journey to
Siberia on foot, and had formed one of a gang. When he first arrived
at our factory, he had been put to the hardest labour, in company with
the other convicts; but some years later the forester required the
services of a clever and safe servant, and Siesieki was attached to
his department, the more readily because he added the qualifications
of a good sportsman and a good shot to those of being a clever and
an honest man. It may easily be guessed that the inspector and other
functionaries profited by the first-fruits of his chase, and that at
that price he gained permission to carry a gun. Indeed he was often
absent on leave for a week at a time, a proceeding of which we once
felt the inconvenience, for as Bogdaszewski and I were obliged to be
all day at the office, he ought to have been there to watch our house;
but profiting by one of his long absences some one robbed us! Our door
was broken in and our provisions of tea and corn stolen, a loss which
to us was no slight one.
In the neighbourhood lived several deported Poles, dwelling in Siberia
as simple exiles. They used to avail themselves of some saint’s day
or holiday to visit us, for, with permission of the authorities,
they were able to make excursions to Ekaterinski-Zavod. From them we
learnt the fate of many other exiles, and we would invoke together the
names of the thousands of our dead who had laid down their lives in
this land of expiation. The great event, however, of our monotonous
existence was the arrival among us of a Polish and Roman Catholic
priest. Four of our clergy are permitted by the Russian government to
traverse every part of Siberia. Once a year in this way they visit the
different establishments where the political offenders dwell, and offer
to them the rites and the consolations of their faith. The arrival of
one of these servants of God is made known in each district a few
days beforehand, and the faithful collect from different points. The
priest during his stay celebrates a mass, gives the Holy Communion, and
consecrates the graves of those who during the year have passed into
their rest. No honest, and above all no Christian mind, can fail to
appreciate the devotion of these four poor priests. It cannot be too
much admired, for it carries them along their ceaseless travels, and
supports them as, in their sledges, they journey through the intense
cold of Siberia, from Tobolsk to Kamtschatka, and from Nertchinsk to
the Polar Sea. The father who visited us in 1845 was a Dominican from
Samogitia; but he forbore to wear the gown of his order for fear of
outraging the Greek orthodoxy of the natives of Siberia. The inspector
had the kindness to allow us to hold service in his room, which was
the most spacious one in the village. We all went to confession, and
then approached the Lord’s Table. The crowd was great, for exiles and
Polish soldiers arrived from very great distances--even those Poles who
were not Roman Catholics did not fail to come with joy to the sacred
service, for, whether Catholics or not, to them the mass spoke of the
native land so hallowed by them and by all her children.