CHAPTER VIII

FRESH FEARS—THE COLONEL OF GENDARMERIE—INQUIRY INTO THE CASE OF GENERAL MEZENTZEV’S MURDER—MEETING WITH BOGDANOVITCH—DEPARTURE

During my imprisonment in the Petersburg House of Detention my spirits were altogether more cheerful than they had been since my first arrest. At Freiburg I had been in a chronic state of excitement and unrest, longing for the freedom that seemed so near. In the Fortress of Peter and Paul I had been downcast and despairing. Now I had reached a condition of equanimity and indifference.

“Hard labour in the Siberian mines,” I thought to myself. “What does it matter whether it be for ten years or fifteen? It is much the same to me.” My future was done for, my life gone. It is hard for a man to reconcile himself to such a thought, particularly when he feels physically sound and healthy, but one does somehow get accustomed to it. At times there will arise sudden hopes, dreams of unexpected luck, of happiness in a distant future; and then wild visions chase one another in dazzling pictures through one’s brain. But I had lived through too many bitter self-deceptions of the kind when I was at Freiburg; and I was only annoyed with myself when I found my fancy dallying with them, and tried to extinguish them at once. “Nonsense!” I cried to myself; “if anything, the only unexpected turn Fate will do you will be some bad trick.” And I steadfastly made up my mind to the worst.

68Weeks had gone by since my change of prisons, and during that time I had not been once up for examination. I did not know in the least how my affair was going. “Perhaps in ‘high circles’ they’ve taken a new departure, and invented some other means of treating me as a political criminal. Why am I not brought before the court? Why do they not send me to Odessa? Something must be happening.” I had begun to fidget in this way occasionally, when one July morning, as I came back from my walk feeling rather cheerful, the warder said to me, “Make yourself ready; they have come to fetch you!” A hired droschky awaited me at the door, and I and a gendarme got into it. From him I could learn nothing as to our destination, and although this uncertainty did not last long, it made me feel uncomfortably nervous. After about half an hour the carriage stopped in the courtyard of a large building. I was taken into a small cell with a tiny window, whose panes were of thick ribbed glass. As I was pacing up and down here I noticed an officer at the peephole in the door observing me closely.

“May I come in?” he asked, hesitatingly opening the peephole window.

“A strange question! I am at your disposal, not you at mine,” said I. The door opened, and smiling apologetically, a young man in the uniform of a colonel of gendarmerie stepped in.

“Allow me to introduce myself”—he bowed and clicked his spurs together—“Colonel Ivànov.”

“I do not understand,” said I. “Will you please tell me where I am, and why I have been brought here?”

“This is the office of the gendarmerie headquarters; you have been brought here for examination, and will soon be taken before the Public Prosecutor. I only wanted to have a chat with you, and revive some old memories. We have many common acquaintances.”

“But how do you know me?” I asked, surprised.

“Oh, excuse me,” he cried, smiling, “there is hardly 69an intelligent person in all Russia who does not know you by name.”

The young gentleman appeared to class himself among the “intellectuals”—that set in Russian Society which just at this time was protesting against the reactionary tendency and making its influence felt in some of the best Russian journals. In the language of that section of the Press it was customary to designate the revolutionists by the harmless title of “intellectuals.”

“Oh, we have many common acquaintances,” the colonel resumed. “I knew all your comrades—Malinka, Drebyàsghin, Maidànsky. I was formerly adjutant of gendarmerie at Odessa, and made acquaintance with them there. They were really delightful people.”

Now I understood why this man was a colonel already, notwithstanding his youth. The big political cases during the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties had given many officers of gendarmerie and of the law grand opportunities for self-advancement. The lives and freedom of the “politicals” were the merchandise by which they founded their fortunes. This gentleman had no doubt played no insignificant part in condemning to penal servitude or to death those comrades of mine on whom he was now lavishing his compliments. Perhaps he had been the originator of the happy thought by which the traitor Kùritzin was induced to sacrifice so many victims.[30]

My interview with this engaging young man was not exactly to my mind, and I was glad to be called away. I was taken to a comfortably furnished apartment, where Kotliarèvsky was seated in an armchair before a large table, looking over some papers.

70“I have some documents here that concern you,” he said, and began to read aloud:—

“In the beginning of August, 1878, the widow of the murdered Baron Gèhkin, adjutant in the gendarmerie, observed in the neighbourhood of General Mèzentzev’s house two young men who were apparently watching for the General.” The document went on to state that the Baroness had recognised one of these young men to be myself; and on the following day she had seen them again on the watch, her cousin Baron Berg being with her at the time. Then followed a paper in which Baron Berg corroborated the lady’s evidence. There was a time, 1878-9, when a good many people delighted in romancing about me, and persisted in ascribing to me a prominent r?le in events taking place in the most widely separated parts of Russia. These imaginings even found their way into the press, and I was often surprised to read in the papers accounts of my varied exploits; I seemed to be a perfect Stenka Rasìn![31]

I remember, for example, that on May 25th, 1878, when I was still in prison at Ki?v, a rich lady of that place was murdered, evidently by thieves. Baron Gèhkin was shot on the following night, May 26th; and on the night after that, May 27th, I and two comrades escaped from prison. I soon saw in the newspapers that, according to the opinion of many astute persons, the author of both these murders could be none other than myself!

The evidence as to my being concerned in the death of General Mèzentzev was in the same way complete nonsense. When Kotliarèvsky had read me the documents, he asked me what I had to say about them.

“It appears that the Government has not given up the attempt to implicate me in affairs not specified in the extradition treaty,” I said; “I shall therefore refuse to answer questions relating to any outside matter.”

71“Well, if you refuse to give evidence, we will leave it alone,” said Kotliarèvsky, with perfect composure, and he clapped the papers together again. “Besides, I may as well tell you that I attach no importance to the testimony of these good people. So far as I can make out, you had already gone abroad when Mèzentzev was murdered?”

I assented. He seemed, nevertheless, to want to draw me out on this subject; but as I did not assist his endeavours in that direction he began to chat about indifferent matters, asking me questions as to our Socialist propaganda and our views. When, however, I quoted from some of our writings, he confessed that they were quite unknown to him.

While we were talking, Bogdanòvitch came in from a neighbouring room. My readers will remember him as the gentleman who had been by way of identifying me at Freiburg. He greeted me, and sat down at the table. We met without any sign of ill-feeling or recollection of the sharp passage-at-arms we had had together.

“I wish you would tell me,” I said to him, “as it is now a thing of the past, when did you see me in Ki?v? I have no remembrance of you.”

He replied, laughing, that he had seen me once in prison; but I saw at once that he was bluffing. Evidently he had recognised me at Freiburg merely from Kotliarèvsky’s description. I was curious to know when exactly the Baden authorities had found out with whom they were dealing; and when I asked him this, Bogdanòvitch replied, “They knew some weeks before the extradition that you could not be Bulìgin, and then you were put under stricter supervision, with a guard before the prison. About ten days before my arrival they were informed that you were Deutsch.”[32]

72It was now clear to me why I had been moved into a different cell, and also why Herr von Berg had forbidden me to speak Russian with my visitors.

As I was going away, to be taken back to the House of Detention, I asked Kotliarèvsky whether I should soon be brought before a fully qualified tribunal. He could give me no decided answer, and himself seemed surprised at my being kept in Petersburg so long.

This was the last time I saw Kotliarèvsky. I learned afterwards in Siberia, from comrades arriving there, that though he had dealt fairly by me, his conduct of some political trials had been considered altogether too mean; it not only drew down on him the bitter hatred of the accused, but was too much even for his superiors, and he was withdrawn from the cases. About three years ago he was President of the Courts at Vilna; where he is now (1902) I do not know.

This interview convinced me still further that the Government would not be content to restrict themselves to prosecuting me in the Gorinòvitch case. Every morning I awoke wondering what would happen next; but day after day went by without anything fresh. July came, then August, and I was still waiting in my cell. One day towards the end of August gendarmes again came for me, and I was ordered to prepare for a journey; it had at last been decided to send me to Odessa. While the carriage conveyed me through the streets I sadly took leave of my beloved Petersburg, which I could never hope to see again.