A MESSAGE THROUGH THE WALL.
Months had passed. Spring was three or four weeks old, but cell No. --
on the first floor of the Trubetzkoy Bastion, Fortress of Peter and
Paul, had not yet tasted its caressing breath. It was a rather spacious,
high-ceiled vault, but being quite close to the stone fence outside, it
was practically without the range of sunshine and breeze. Its window,
which was high overhead, at the top of a sloping stretch of sill, sent
down twilight at noonday and left it in the grip of night two or three
hours after. The chill, damp air was laden with a stifling odour of
must. The lower part of the walls was covered with a thick layer of
mould which looked like a broad band of heavy tapestry of a
dark-greenish hue.
The solitary inmate of this pit was walking back and forth diagonally,
from corner to corner. He wore a loose, shapeless cloak of coarse but
flimsy material, which he was continually wrapping about his slim,
emaciated figure. He was shivering. As he walked to and fro, his head
was for the most part thrown back, his eyes raised to the window, whose
sloping sill he could have scarcely touched with the tips of his
fingers. Now and then he paused and turned toward one of the walls, as
though listening for some sounds, and then, with an air of nerveless
disappointment, he would resume his walk.
It was Pavel.
The spy who accompanied Elkin from Miroslav to Moscow had shadowed him
in the ancient city until he saw him with Prince Boulatoff and then with
Makar and a university student, in whose room the four revolutionists
were arrested, shortly after, in the course of a heated debate between
Makar and Elkin on the riots and the question of emigration to America.
During the first few weeks of Pavel's stay in the fortress the guards,
who had been converted to revolutionary sympathies by a celebrated
political prisoner named Nechayeff, had carried communications not only
from prisoner to prisoner, but also from them to the revolutionists at
large; so that the _Will of the People_ was at one time partly edited
from this fortress, and a bold plot was even planned by Nechayeff to
have the Czar locked up in a cell while he visited its cathedral. But
these relations between the guards and the revolutionists, which lasted
about a year, had finally been disclosed, and since then Pavel and the
inmates of the other cells had been treated with brutal stringency.
Pavel's trial was not likely to take place for another year or two,
but his fate was clear to him: death, probably commuted to
life-imprisonment, which actually amounted to slow death in a spacious
grave like this vault, or in the mines of Siberia, was the usual doom of
men charged with "crimes" like his. His future yawned before him in the
form of a black, boundless cavern charged with dull, gnawing pain, like
the pain that was choking him at this moment. The worst part of his
torture was his solitude. The most inhuman physical suffering seemed
easier to bear than this speechless, endless, excruciatingly monotonous
solitude of his. "Oath-men" as the sworn-in attendants of the prison
were called (under-sized, comical looking fellows, most of them) came
into his cell three or four times a day--with food, or to put things to
rights hastily--but neither they nor the gendarmes who invariably
accompanied them ever answered his questions. One morning, in an excess
of self-commiseration and resentment at their stolid taciturnity, he had
spat in the face of a gendarme. He had done so, at the peril of being
flogged, in the hope of hearing him curse, at least; but the gendarme
merely wiped his bewhiskered face and went on watching the "oath-man"
silently.
Whenever Pavel was taken out for his 15-minute walk in a secluded little
yard, which was once in two days, the sentinels he met would turn their
backs on him, lest he should see more faces than was absolutely
necessary. The warden and the prison doctor were the only human beings
whose voices he could hear, and these were brutally laconic and brutally
rude or ironical with him. To be taken to the prison office for an
examination by the procureur was the one diversion which the near future
held out to him; but then his near future might be a matter of weeks and
might be a matter of months.
Back and forth he walked, at a spiritless, even pace, as monotonous as
his days of gloom and misery, as that dull pain which was ceaselessly
choking his throat and gnawing at his heart. At one moment he paused and
felt his gums with his fingers. Were they swollen? Was he developing
scurvy? Or was it mere imagination? He also passed his hand over his
cheeks, and it seemed to him that they were sunken a little more than
they had been the day before. But the great subject of his thoughts
to-day was his mother, and tantalising, heart-crushing thoughts they
were. Where was she? How was she? Was she alive at all? He pictured her
committing suicide because of his doom, and the cruel vision persisted.
And if she was not dead, her life was little better than death. He tried
to think of something else, but no, the appealing, reproachful image of
his mother, of his poor dear mother who had scarcely had a day of
happiness since she married, would not leave his mind. As a matter of
fact, his efforts to think of something else were scarcely sincere. He
would not shake that image out of his brain if he could. It was tearing
his heart to pieces, yet he would rather stand all these tortures than
shut his mother out of his thoughts. To talk to somebody was the only
thing that could have saved him from the terrible pang that was
harrowing him at this moment; but the chimes of the cathedral, which
played the quarter-hours as well as the hours, and the crash of iron
bolts at the opening of cells at meal-time were the only sounds that he
could expect to hear to-day. His heart was writhing within him.
Something was clutching at his brain. He seemed to feel himself going
mad. He was tempted to cry at the top of his voice; to cry like a wild
beast; but, of course, he was not going to give such satisfaction to the
enemy.
He gazed at the sloping window-sill. For the thousandth time a desire
took hold of him to mount it and take a look through the glass; and for
the thousandth time he cast a hopeless glance at his bed, at the table,
the chair, the wash-stand: they were all nailed to the floor, a large
earthen water-cup and a salt-cellar made of lead being the only movable
things in his room.
Four months ago there had been a prisoner in the adjoining cell with
whom he carried on long conversations by rapping out his words on the
wall, but one day their talk had been interrupted in the middle of a
sentence, after which that man had been removed. The cell had long
remained empty, as could be inferred from the fact that Pavel never
heard its door opened at meal-time. Since a week ago it had been
tenanted again, but all his attempts at conversation with his new
neighbour had so far been futile. His taps on the wall had been left
unanswered.
Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting with
homesickness and anguish at the thought of his mother, he heard a rapid
succession of fine, dry sounds on the right wall. He started, and,
breathless and flushed with excitement, he listened. "Who are you?" the
mould-grown wall demanded.
Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and seeing no eye
in it, he took a turn or two up and down the room and stopped hard by
the wall, upon which he rapped out his reply:
"Boulatoff. Who are you?"
"The Emperor of all Africa," came the answer.
"What?" Pavel asked in perplexity. "You have not finished your sentence,
what were you saying?"
"Begone!" the wall returned. "How dare you doubt my title? I am the
Emperor of all Africa. How dare you speak to me? Away with you!"
Pavel's heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had
gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
"Dear friend, dear comrade!" he implored. "Can't you try and remember
your name?"
"Begone, or I'll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!" This was
followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears
in his eyes.
In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in
excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes
that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of
his connection with the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt
as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each
other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now.
Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld
barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the
red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled Makar's vision
of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress
of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of
liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to
her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm
marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of
love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He
recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of
merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.
"Who are you?"
"Boulatoff," Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart. He expected
other absurdities from his insane neighbour. "And you?"
"Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day. My lucid
interval, perhaps. I remember everything."
Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of themselves, of their
mutual friends, of the last news that had reached Bieliayeff through his
other wall. It appeared that Bieliayeff's neighbour on that side of his
cell was Elkin.
Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure. He was going
to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his fellow townsman; but at
this he had an instinctive feeling that there was an eye at the peephole
and he dropped his hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in
thought.
They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour later.
"Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me," Pavel tapped out. "I feel
guilty and miserable. If it were not for me he would be in America now.
Besides, I have been unjust to him. This oppresses me more than anything
else."
These communications through the wall are the most precious things life
has to offer in living graves like those of the fortress of Peter and
Paul. The inmate of such a grave will listen to the messages of his
neighbours with the most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his
possession, with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every word
of a long message as if reading it from a written memorandum.
After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back with Elkin's
answer.
"He says he loves you," the tap-tap said, "and that it is he who ought
to apologise. It was he who was unjust. As to his American scheme, he is
happy to be here. It is sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says."
Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a message from him
reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.
"Hello, old boy!" it said. "At last I have completed the revolutionary
programme I have been so long engaged upon. It's a dandy! It is not the
same I spoke to you about in Moscow. It covers every point beautifully.
It would save the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable
to make."
* * * * *
One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress, after a
long confinement and no end of examinations in Miroslav. She was in
another part of the building and communicating with her was impossible.
Pavel scarcely ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she
was in the building and he would not even have a chance to see her? He
was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in a cage.
At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message from her. It had
come through walls, floors and ceilings.
"Clanya sends her love," it ran, "and tells him to keep away from the
damp walls as much as possible."
"Tell Clanya I think of her day and night," he rapped back.
Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart swelling with
emotion he threw himself upon his bed and buried his face in his hands.
THE END.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original
text were retained, including:
"assistant procureur" and "assistant-procureur"
"ball-room" and "ball room"
"bedroom" and "bed-room"
"candlestick" and "candle-stick"
"capmaker" and "cap-maker"
"Catherine" and "Catharine"
"Chernishevsky" and "Chernyshevsky"
"cobblestones" and "cobble-stones"
"colour" and "color"
"drily" and "dryly"
"favourite" and "favorite"
"featherbeds" and "feather-beds"
"fiascos" and "fiascoes"
"footsteps" and "foot-steps"
"grey" and "gray"
"heartfelt" and "heart-felt"
"homebound" and "home-bound"
"laborer" and "labourer"
"market place" and "market-place"
"neighbour" and "neighbor"
"odour" and "odor"
"parlour" and "parlor"
"pedlar" and "peddlar"
"peephole" and "peep-hole"
"realise" and "realize"
"regime" and "regime"
"reverie" and "revery"
"Rodkevitch" and "Rodkevich"
"rumour" and "rumor"
"side whiskers" and "side-whiskers"
"stepchild" and "step-child"
"topboots" and "top-boots"
"tramcar" and "tram-car"
"trunkmaker" and "trunk-maker"
"undersized" and "under-sized"
"Vice-Emperor" and "vice-Emperor"
"wagons" and "waggons"
"waiting room" and "waiting-room"
"woolen" and "woollen"
The following corrections were made to the text:
Page 5: "ma chere" changed to "ma chere"
(Don't take it ill, _ma chere_." She)
Page 8: "Czarowitch" changed to "Czarowitz"
(the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,)
Page 15: "waistcoast" changed to "waistcoat"
(pulling at his waistcoat as though)
Page 16: "ecstacy" changed to "ecstasy"
(and in his ecstasy over)
Page 23: "Medicis" changed to "Medici"
(Venus de Medici--and the)
Page 34: added missing end quote
(essence?" For the)
Page 36: "Alexander" changed to "Alexandre"
(who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off)
Page 44: "myterious" changed to "mysterious"
(mysterious air of the "radicals")
Page 44: added missing exclamation mark
(number of _Forward!_ and another)
Page 47: added missing period
(nunnish face. She made quite)
Page 65: "idotic" changed to "idiotic"
(restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his)
Page 68: "a la" changed to "a la"
(trimmed whiskers a la Alexander II.,)
Page 95: "Alexandre" changed to "Alexander"
(on the part of Alexander II.)
Page 104: missing word "the" added
(beaming at the sight)
Page 104: "cosversation" changed to "conversation"
(in turning the conversation)
Page 114: "Vassilyevitch" changed to "Vassilyevich"
(Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything)
Page 130: "Paval" changed to "Pavel"
("Exactly," Pavel assented,)
Page 137: added missing hyphen
(three-fourths of them)
Page 145: added missing end quote
(view of it." At this)
Page 146: "Judge" changed to "judge"
(Olga, the judge, and the )
Page 151: "tete-a-tete" changed to "tete-a-tete"
(house for _tete-a-tete_ purposes.)
Page 163: removed extraneous comma
(imprisoned army officer slipped away)
Page 166: "surrounding" changed to "surroundings"
(Their immediate surroundings were)
Page 167: "minature" changed to "miniature"
(miniature garden between)
Page 186: added missing period
(well-travelled fellow. He can)
Page 215: extra quote mark deleted
(she says. You have a)
Page 219: "L'Assomoir" changed to "L'Assommoir"
(dwelt on Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and)
Page 231: "bood-bye" changed to "good-bye"
(a hurried good-bye and made for)
Page 242: added missing hyphen
(Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had)
Page 248: "Littlie" changed to "Little"
(speak Little-Russian to Purring Cat,)
Page 248: "Littlie" changed to "Little"
(from Little Russia, answered)
Page 249: repeated word "the" deleted
(by the "gay bard," which Clara)
Page 252: "Lavadia" changed to "Livadia"
(still in Livadia with his bride,)
Page 254: "insistance" changed to "insistence"
(his heart with cruel insistence.)
Page 267: "Michail" changed to "Michail"
(residence, the Michail Palace,)
Page 275: added missing comma
(your fur cap," she gestured.)
Page 283: "street" changed to "Street"
(the Little Garden Street precinct had)
Page 286: "street" changed to "Street"
(Garden Street for the Czar's drive)
Page 288: "distinquished" changed to "distinguished"
(A distinguished revolutionary writer)
Page 289: "street" changed to "Street"
(cheese shop on Little Garden Street)
Page 294: added missing comma
("Don't," he begged them,)
Page 305: removed extraneous comma
(the prison corridor answered his)
Page 326: changed end double quote to single quote
(such a cap?' says I.)
Page 333: "spokeman's" changed to "spokesman's"
(whispered in the spokesman's ear)
Page 335: changed period to colon
(Finally he shouted huskily:)
Page 366: "street" changed to "Street"
(near Nicholas Street, the best street)
Page 368: "street" changed to "Street"
(and about Nicholas Street and bore down)
Page 373: "market" changed to "Market"
(crowd on Cucumber Market,)
Page 374: "ran" changed to "run"
(of primitive humanity run)
Page 376: "street" changed to "Street"
(Nicholas Street, from a residence over)
Page 380: "maurauders" changed to "marauders"
(the marauders for the slashers)
Page 382: "banners" changed to "hammers"
(crowbars, hammers or axes)
Page 387: "stupour" changed to "stupor"
(revolting stupor of inebriety.)
Page 391: "sooth" changed to "soothe"
(trying to soothe an angry baby.)
Page 395: changed period to colon
(Hannah said, gravely:)
Page 403: "street" changed to "Street"
(Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow)
Page 415: added missing period
(in a sunny spot.)
Page 420: added missing period
(There is a St. Petersburg)
Page 425: "access" changed to "excess"
(One morning in an excess)
End of Project Gutenberg's The White Terror and The Red, by Abraham Cahan