CHAPTER XI

THE VISIT OF THE MINISTER—I AM TURNED INTO A CONVICT—THE PRISON AT KI?V

Shortly after my trial a feverish anxiety set in at the Odessa prison: the Minister of Justice was expected. Of course, everything except the straw and the tub was taken out of my cell; and one day the great man appeared, attended by an imposing suite—the governor of the town among the rest. As soon as Nabòkov saw me he greeted me by name, which seemed to excite the governor’s interest in no small degree.

“Your Excellency is pleased to recognise Deutsch?”

“Oh yes; we have met in Petersburg,” answered Nabòkov in an agreeable tone, as if recalling a meeting in some elegant drawing-room instead of in a prison. He then turned to me, to tell me that he had received my petition, and had “reported to His Majesty”; but the Tsar had pronounced that as a former member of the army I must go before a court-martial, and therefore that had been the only course. The manner in which I was lodged seemed to strike the minister unpleasantly, for he looked round my cell, and asked if I were properly treated and had no complaints to make. I now learned that my transference to Moscow was decided on; that I was to winter there, and remain until the journey to Siberia was possible.

The way in which the minister had spoken to me seemed to have made a powerful impression on the prison authorities; for scarcely had “His Excellency” left the place 95than the governor hastened to my cell, and took me to one much more comfortable, where were a good bed, a table, and a chair.

“A report has been made to His Majesty himself about you!” I was therefore a person of consequence, and the governor’s official soul was troubled. I was offered books from a lending library, and was henceforth treated with marked civility. Of course, I knew that this alteration really proceeded from orders given by the three functionaries spoken of in a previous chapter, who had been the cause of my former ill-treatment. This is a striking example of the arbitrary way in which prisoners are used.

I had not much longer to enjoy these marks of favour. A fortnight later I was informed that a party of convicts would start for Moscow that evening. I was to accompany them, and accordingly must assume the convict garb. After eighteen years I think of that day with a shudder.

First of all, I was taken into a room where was stored everything necessary to the equipment of a convict under sentence. On the floor lay piles of chains; and clothes, boots, etc., were heaped on shelves. From among them some were selected that were supposed to fit me; and I was then conducted to a second room. Here the right side of my head was shaved, and the hair on the left side cut short. I had seen people in the prison who had been treated in this fashion, and the sight had always made a painful impression on me, as indeed it does on everyone. But when I saw my own face in the glass a cold shudder ran down my spine, and I experienced a sensation of personal degradation to something less than human. I thought of the days—in Russia not so long ago—when criminals were branded with hot irons.

A convict was waiting ready to fasten on my fetters. I was placed on a stool, and had to put my foot on an anvil. The blacksmith fitted an iron ring round each ankle, and welded it together. Every stroke of the 96hammer made my heart sink, as I realised that a new existence was beginning for me.

The mental depression into which I now fell was soon accompanied by physical discomfort. The fetters at first caused me intolerable pain in walking, and even disturbed my sleep. It also requires considerable practice before one can easily manage to dress and undress. The heavy chains—about 13 lbs. in weight—are not only an encumbrance, but are very painful, as they chafe the skin round the ankles; and the leather lining is but little protection to those unaccustomed to these adornments. Another great torment is the continual clinking of the chains. It is indescribably irritating to the nervous, and reminds the prisoner at every turn that he is a pariah among his kind, “deprived of all rights.”

The transformation is completed by the peculiar convict dress, consisting—besides the coarse linen underclothing—of a grey gown made of special material, and a pair of trousers. Prisoners condemned to hard labour wear a square piece of yellow cloth sewn on their gowns. The feet are clad in leathern slippers nicknamed “cats.” All these articles of clothing are inconvenient, heavy, and ill-fitting.

I hardly knew myself when I looked in the glass and beheld a fully attired convict. The thought possessed me—“For long years you will have to go about in that hideous disguise.” Even the gendarme regarded me with compassion.

“What won’t they do to a man?” he said. And I could only try to comfort myself by thinking how many unpleasant things one gets used to, and that time might perhaps accustom one even to this.

My own clothes I gave away to the warders, and any possessions of value—watch, ring, cigarette-case—I sent by post to relations. I kept only my books. I had been given a bag in which to keep a change of linen; and into it I also put a few volumes of Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine, 97Molière, and Rousseau, thus completing my preparations for travelling.

PRISONERS MARCHING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ODESSA

To face page 96

Evening came. The officer in command of the convoy appeared in the prison courtyard with his men and took the party in charge. I was conducted to the office. A statyehny spìsok[41] is prepared for each individual convict, in which his name and place of exile are entered, and also a list of the exciseable things he takes with him. In the statyehny spìsok of each political prisoner his photograph is pasted, and in mine there were two.

The officer carefully went through all these dossiers. We were then arranged in processional order. The soldiers surrounded us; the officer lifted his cap and crossed himself.

“A pleasant journey! Good-bye!” called out the prison officials.

“Thanks. Good-bye!” cried the officer. He then gave the signal to start, and off we marched at a slow pace to the station.

On account of the conditions attached by the Grand Duke of Baden to my extradition, I had till now been treated sometimes as an ordinary criminal, sometimes as a “political”; but from the moment I joined this convoy I was treated frankly as a “political.”[42] This being so, I was not placed among the ordinary criminals when we reached the train, but was put in the compartment reserved for the escort. Here there was a fair amount of room, and one could be pretty comfortable, while the others were packed like herrings in a barrel; but, on the other hand, the society of the soldiers was not very enlivening, as they dared not exchange a word with me in presence of the officer.

98After four-and-twenty hours we arrived at Ki?v, where we were to have a day’s rest. We got out of the train, were formed up in procession, encircled by the soldiers, and marched by a roundabout way through the suburbs to the prison.

A strange emotion possessed me, when, after years of wandering both in Russia and abroad, I once again passed through the streets of my native town. I had not been here since I had fled from prison in 1878, six years before; and now I returned in chains, with the ominous yellow diamond on my back, a convict doomed to years of exile.

“Get on, get on! Mind what you’re about!” I heard a rough voice say, and felt a poke in my back from the butt-end of a rifle.

“This is the beginning,” I thought, and pictured all the humiliation and suffering that lay before me. However, the officer had remarked the incident, and coming up, reprimanded the soldier who had hustled me.

When we came to the prison gate the convicts were told off one by one like sheep, and let through the door in turn. I was taken straight to the office. Here everything was altered, and everywhere faces were strange to me. Fat old Captain Kovàlsky was gone, and the rest of the staff had been changed too.

“It was from this prison you escaped?” asked a haughty-looking man in uniform, the new governor, Simàshko. I assented.

“Ah, you managed that very cunningly!” said he, laughing.

In reality the thing had been very simple. One of my comrades, named Frolènko, had provided himself with a false passport, and had got employment in the prison; one night he took Stefanòvitch, Bohanòvsky and me away disguised as warders.[43]

99After the usual formalities I was led away to my cell, and as I passed along the corridors I noticed that structural alterations had been made everywhere. The cell in which I was installed was unusually large, and was almost filled up by the wooden bedshelves; apparently it was generally used for a large number of prisoners temporarily confined there, and had now been assigned for my sole occupation, so that I might not be left among the other convicts.

The prison of Ki?v has an interesting history in connexion with the “politicals.” Many episodes—not always entirely tragic—in the revolutionary movement have taken place there; indeed, in that respect scarcely any other Russian prison except the Fortress of Peter and Paul can equal it. Above all, it has been the scene of frequent escapes. Besides us Tchigirìners, in the same year the student Isbìtsky and an Englishman named Beverley 100attempted an escape. They had scooped out a tunnel under the wall, and were actually already free, when a sentinel espied them and fired. The Englishman fell dead, and Isbìtsky was caught. Four years later another student, named Basil Ivànov, escaped with the help of the officer in command of the guard, a certain Tìhonov, a member of the Naròdnaia Vòlya. Shortly before my arrival, Vladìmir Bìtshkov also disappeared from Ki?v prison in a very mysterious way, and so far as I know a certain much-esteemed authority has to this day not solved the riddle of that, and is probably still racking his brains over it. Finally, in August, 1902, eleven “very important” prisoners escaped from Ki?v, nine of them having been arrested early in the year, and two the year before. These prisoners were allowed to take exercise every evening in the prison courtyard, in presence of only one warder. They and their friends knew that one of the surrounding outer walls, beyond which were fields, was unguarded on the outside. They were provided secretly with an iron anchor weighing twenty pounds, and with an improvised ladder made of strips of sheets. At a given moment some of the prisoners muffled and gagged the guard, and tied him up before he could give the alarm. In the meantime others formed themselves into a living pyramid, and thus managed to fix their anchor to the top of the prison wall, so that they could fasten to it their ladder for ascending and a rope for descending on the other side. That after they were actually free they could manage to hide in the town, and afterwards all get away safely, was due to the sympathy of the general public, many members of which not only helped the fugitives by deed, but also subscribed together a considerable sum to assist the escape. It is noteworthy that from first to last in this affair no one was killed or hurt, nor a drop of blood shed.

But these prison walls have also witnessed sadder scenes. Many revolutionists have passed their last hours within 101them, waiting to be led to the scaffold. Still greater is the number of those who have left this place to tread the path to exile and the Siberian prisons. Only the Fortress of Peter and Paul, the gaol at Odessa, and perhaps the Warsaw citadel, can for memories like these compare with the prison of Ki?v. Here too, more than anywhere else, have conflicts taken place between the imprisoned revolutionists and the authorities. The tradition as to these occurrences remains unbroken; every “political” cherishes the memory of the “old times”—i.e. the exceptionally stormy years 1877-9. The young generation speaks of them as the “heroic ages”; and not only the prison staff, but even the ordinary criminals (who are employed here in the domestic labour of the place), relate stories of them. The authorities have never succeeded in uprooting the independent spirit that flourishes within these precincts, and the door had hardly closed behind me when I had a proof of it.

“The ‘politicals’ beg that you will be so kind as to write down your name, in what case you are implicated, and where you were sentenced,” I heard a voice at the door say. I stepped nearer, and saw it proceeded from one of the ordinary criminals, who was speaking through the peephole. When I answered that I had nothing on which to write, he instantly produced a pencil and a bit of paper, and poked them through to me.

I stated shortly who I was, and begged my comrades to let me know in return who and how many they were, and concerned in what cases. The same man came back almost immediately with a reply, which ended with the words: “You will soon hear particulars verbally from our ladies.”

And sure enough I soon heard a woman’s voice bidding me climb up to the window. I did so; but as I then found that there was no way of opening it, I wasted no time, simply proceeding to smash two panes of the double windows. Outside stood two ladies, wives of 102political prisoners, by name Paraskovya Shebalina[44] and Vitolda Rechnyèvskaia. They were taking exercise in the courtyard of the women’s quarters, and my window being close to the wall separating the two yards, we could easily communicate. I thus heard full details about the imprisoned “politicals,” who were not few in number, as a trial had just taken place in the Ki?v courts, at which twelve persons had been sentenced: four of them, including Shebalìn, to penal servitude, and his wife to exile, on the sole ground that in their house type had been discovered with which a pamphlet was to be secretly printed. We were, however, suddenly interrupted in our talk by the appearance of the assistant governor.

“What’s all this? You’ve broken the window?”

“Yes,” said I; “why haven’t you proper fastenings, so that they could be opened?”

“Well, you will suffer for it; you will be frozen with cold to-night.” And in fact there was a sharp November frost. He then turned to the two ladies, and bade them go away, as it was entirely against rules to wait about at the door. Here, however, he met his match; for the two turned on him, requesting him to be off himself, and not disturb us. Paraskovya Shebalina especially was most energetic in her treatment of him. She was a lively and charming young lady, whom the atmosphere of a prison had rendered so nervously excitable that the mere sight of an official would send her into a passion, which led to endless contests.

Vitolda Rechnyèvskaia shared the captivity of her husband. They were a very young couple, married only a few days before their arrest. Thaddeus Rechnyèvsky[45] was twenty-one years of age; he had just left the school of jurisprudence in Petersburg University when he was 103arrested, and was now (1884) under examination as to his association with the Polish Socialist “proletarian” party, whose members were prosecuted at Warsaw in 1885.

Besides the above mentioned, who were either condemned to banishment or still under examination, there were in the prison a number of people who were to be exiled by “administrative methods.” There had been riots in Ki?v University shortly before this, in consequence of which the University was closed, and many of the students were imprisoned.

New facts and impressions crowded upon me, and it was late before I lay down. I threw over the plank-bed the sheepskin that had been given me, and covered myself with my great-coat. The night was frightfully cold, and the wind whistled through the broken window. I put my bag under my head, but the French and German classics it contained did not make a very comfortable pillow, and it was long ere I slept. Suddenly I was awakened by a terrific hullabaloo. I ran to the door, and called to the warder to know what was happening. After some time he turned up, and I learned that the criminals in the next room had been having a tussle; one of them had hidden away a few roubles, and the others having seen it, had tried to murder and rob him. He had succeeded in keeping them at bay and calling for help.

“That’s the way that lot always go on!” remarked the warder composedly, and returned to his post and his nap. There were no further consequences of the scrimmage; with an “I’ll teach you!” the warder had separated the combatants, and the thing was at an end. He never even reported the occurrence, it was such an everyday event.

Next morning the governor came hurrying to me, and said that the colonel of gendarmerie was coming to visit me. This was Novìtsky; I did not know him personally, but many amusing stories were told about him in our circles. He arrived, accompanied by his adjutant, put the usual question—“Have you any complaint to make?”—and 104then began to chat. It was pure curiosity that had brought him. I remember he wanted to know if, when abroad, I had come across Debagòrio-Makriyèvitch, who had been imprisoned at Ki?v in 1879 and condemned to penal servitude; but on his way to Siberia had “swopped” with one of the ordinary criminals, and so escaped. When I said I had seen him in Switzerland, Novìtsky overwhelmed me with questions: “Now tell me, how is Vladimir Kàrpovitch? What is he doing over there?” One would have thought Makriyèvitch was at least one of his relations; he spoke of him familiarly by his Christian name and his father’s name.[46] Like Colonel Ivànov in Petersburg, who had known my old companions, he too went off into praises of them; though all the while he was doing what he could to bring two of Makriyèvitch’s comrades to the scaffold.[47] They are easy-going people, these ornaments of officialdom!