THE WHITE TERROR.
Miroslav was trisected longitudinally by a clear, cheerful river and by
Kasimir Street, its principal thoroughfare, which contained most of its
public buildings and best shops. The middle one of the three sections
thus formed was the home of the higher nobility and the official class;
the district across the bridge from here was inhabited by Christian
burghers and workmen, with here and there a clay hovel, the home of a
peasant family, gleaming white in the distant outskirts; while the hilly
quarter beyond Kasimir Street was the seat of Jewish industry and Jewish
poverty, part of this neighbourhood being occupied by the market places
and "the Paradise," as the slums of the town were called ironically. The
governor's house, which faced Governor's Prospect--a small square with a
fountain in the centre--and Anna Nicolayevna's were the two most
imposing buildings in Miroslav.
The countess' residence was the only structure in town that had a
colonnaded front. The common people called it the Palace and the section
of Kasimir Street it faced the Pillars. The sidewalk opposite was the
favourite promenade of the younger generation, and every afternoon, in
auspicious weather, it glittered with the uniforms of army officers and
gymnasium boys. The Palace was built by her grandfather in the closing
days of the previous century. It abutted on a long narrow lane formed
on one side by Anna Nicolayevna's garden and leading to Theatre Square,
where stood the playhouse and the Nobles' Club. When the white rigidity
of these buildings was relieved by the grass of its lawns and the
foliage of its trees the spot was the joy of the town.
During the winter of the year following the countess' sojourn at the
German watering place, Miroslav was stirred by a sensation, the central
figure of which was Pavel's tutor, the instructor of geography and
history in the local gymnasium, Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin. Pavel
was then in the graduating class.
Besides being connected with the male gymnasium Pievakin taught at the
female high school of Miroslav. The town was fond of him and he was fond
of the town and upon the whole he was contented. One of the things that
galled him was the fact that his superior, the newly appointed director
of the school, was his inferior both in years and in civil rank.
Pievakin was a "councillor of state," while Novikoff, the head of the
male gymnasium, was only a "collegiate assessor." Novikoff was a
painstaking, narrow-minded functionary, superciliously proud of his
office and slavishly loyal to the letter of the law. He was a slender,
dark-complexioned man of forty, but he tried to look much older and
heavier. He copied the Czar's side-whiskers, walked like a corpulent
grandee, perpetually pulling at his waistcoat as though he were burdened
by a voluminous paunch, and interlarded his speech with aphorisms from
the Latin Grammar.
One day as the director strutted ponderously along one of the two
corridors, the word "parliament" fell on his ear. It was Pievakin's
voice. The old man was explaining something to his class with great
ardour. Novikoff paused, his lordly walk congealing into the picture of
dignified attention. The next minute, however, his grandeur melted away.
His face expressed unfeigned horror. Pievakin was drawing an effusive
parallel between absolute monarchies and limited. This was distinctly in
violation of the Circular of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment
enjoining teachers of geography, in cases of this kind, to adhere
strictly to the bare terminology of the approved text-book without
venturing into anything like an elucidation. Not that Pievakin was
betraying any partiality for limited monarchies. Indeed, to him the
distinction between the two forms of government was neither of more nor
of less interest than the difference between a steppe and a prairie or a
simoon and a hurricane. It appealed to him because it was geography, and
in his ecstasy over the lesson all thought of the Ministry and its
Circulars had escaped his mind.
That afternoon he was summoned to the director's office on the floor
below.
Novikoff was at his large, flat-topped desk, studiously absorbed in some
papers. He silently motioned the teacher of geography to a seat, and
went on with his feigned work. After a lapse of some minutes he
straightened up, played a few scales upon the brass buttons of his
uniform, and said:
"It pains me to have to say it, Alexandre Alexandrovich, but these are
queer times and the passions of youth should be moderated, held in
check, suppressed, not aroused. The imagination of one's pupils is not
to be trifled with, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
He paused mournfully. The little old man, who had not the least idea
what he was driving at, waited in consternation. The room was
overheated, and the pause had an overpowering effect on him. He felt on
the verge of fainting.
"The point is," Novikoff resumed, with a sudden spurt in his voice,
"that in your class work you sometimes suffer yourself to say things
that cannot but be regarded as dangerous. Dangerous particularly in view
of the evil influences at work among the young of our generation; in
view of the very sad fact that college students will disguise themselves
as peasants----"
"What do you mean, sir?" Pievakin burst out, reddening violently. "How
dare you liken me to those fellows? I was serving the Czar while you
were still a whippersnapper. I'm a councillor of state, sir. How dare
you make these insinuations?"
"I expected as much," Novikoff answered, nervously polishing his
buttons. "Defying one's superior is of a piece with the views you're
trying to instill into the minds of your scholars."
"What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir," Pievakin shrieked.
"Bridle your temper, sir. I can't allow that."
"Then tell me what it's all about," the teacher of history and geography
said in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening voice.
"Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the blessings of a
constitutional government. Yes, sir. There are no spies to eavesdrop on
one in this building, but it seems you never speak so loud nor with so
much gusto as when you get to the subject of constitutions and
parliaments and things of that kind."
"It isn't true. I merely said a word or two on the various forms of
government. It's practically all in Smirnoff's Geography."
"'Practically'! It's against the law. I am very sorry, but it becomes my
duty to report it to the curator."
Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted "Spy!" and
"Scoundrel!" and darted out of the room.
This happened at a time when the "peasantist" movement, the peaceful,
unresisting stage in the history of what is commonly known as Nihilism,
was at its height. The educated young generation was in an ecstasy of
altruism. It was the period of "going to the people," when hundreds of
well-bred men and women, children of the nobility, would don peasant
garb and go to share the life of the tillers of the soil, teaching them
to read, talking to them of universal love, liberty and equality. The
government punished this "going to the people" with Asiatic severity.
Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common mortals, the
average penalty for murder being about ten years of penal servitude in
Siberia; and this penalty the courts were often ordered to impose on
absolutely peaceable missionaries, on university students who
practically did the same kind of work as that pursued by the "university
settlements" in English-speaking countries. There were about one
thousand of these propagandists in the political prisons of the empire,
and their number was growing. They were kept in solitary confinement in
cold, damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption,
scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for trial.
* * * * *
Pievakin's house was searched by gendarmes, but no "underground"
literature was discovered there. He was not arrested, but spies shadowed
his movements and about a month after the domiciliary visit he was
officially notified by the curator's office that he was to be
transferred to the four-year "progymnasium" of a small town a
considerable distance off. This implied that his work was to be
restricted to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way of
"dangerous tendencies." He grew thin and haggard and a certain look of
fright never left his eye. The other instructors at the gymnasium, all
except one, and many of his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. He
had become one of those people with whom one could not come in contact
without attracting the undesirable attention of the police. One of those
who were not afraid to be seen in his company was the "truncated cone."
"My crooked back is the only one that does not bend," the deformed man
would joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward the world seemed
to be something like this: "You people won't consider me one of you. I
am only a hunchback, something like an elf, and you will take many an
unwelcome truth from me which you would resent in one like yourselves.
So let us proceed on this understanding."
When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to a
small town "to render him harmless," he was shocked. Alexandre
Alexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would have
suspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at school
was thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess'
house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man was
hateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and a
hypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment.
At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him.
Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it.