CHAPTER XXIX

DISQUIETING REPORTS—VISIT OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL—RELEASE FROM PRISON

The suicide of our two comrades brought visits from various officials to the prison; first came the Public Prosecutor, then the Colonel of Gendarmerie, finally the Governor of the district. We, however, absolutely declined to enter into conversation with them, not even answering direct questions; and they left without eliciting a syllable from any of us.

No special measures were taken; everything remained as of old. Only we ourselves were as though transformed by the tragic events that had taken place; a heavy weight seemed to oppress us, our songs were hushed, jesting was at an end, we had forgotten how to laugh; games too were stopped, even chess found no devotee. Most of us still suffered acutely from shaken nerves.

So passed the winter of 1889-1890. The silence of the higher authorities was a bad sign, and we felt certain that in one way or another reprisals would be taken for the past events in Kara. The order rendering us liable to the punishment of flogging still held good, spite of the six martyrs who had gone to their death. Some of our number were terribly agitated about this during the early part of the year, and again two of our comrades determined to take their own lives in order to demonstrate to the Government that the political prisoners had not abandoned their protest against the threat. But the rest of us 292persuaded them to forego their intention until the commandant (Masyukov still held this post) should have made some reply to our demands. This reply was to the effect that fresh orders had been received whereby corporal punishment for women was entirely done away with; and men were only liable to it if they did not belong to the privileged classes, and had not been educated in a gymnasium. The sacrifices had been in so far vain that the system remained; but it could be reckoned on with comparative certainty that the authorities would not again resort to such measures. So far as we were concerned we were now aware that the rules for our treatment were in any case about to be changed, and as a matter of fact this was soon the case.

For some years a report had been current that a new prison was to be built at Akatoui—a place distant some three-hundred versts from Kara,—and that the Kara prisoners would all be transported thither. It was also rumoured that in this new prison a system was to be instituted such as had never hitherto obtained in Russia.

Meanwhile our numbers had been gradually diminishing. A good many of my companions had in course of time been allowed to leave, and were living in the penal settlement; and the number of those who had begged for pardon, and who in consequence had been liberated as “colonists,” was not small. Among others my friend Jacob Stefanòvitch should have been released in the spring of 1890, when his term in prison ended; but he preferred to remain with us until the question of our removal to Akatoui was settled, and found various pretexts for getting his release deferred.

During the last year we had had no new arrivals from Russia; because since the end of the eighties the Government had brought no revolutionists to trial, so that no sentences of penal servitude had been passed. Instead, a system had been introduced of sending political offenders for many years of banishment to Siberia, or to the island 293of Saghalien, by “administrative methods.” By the summer of 1890 most of us who still remained in our prison were already formally entitled to leave for the penal settlement, and were only unjustly detained because the number of political settlers there was limited to fifteen. I myself should have obtained release in the course of that year, but I had never expected that this would really be. From my first arrival in Kara I had resigned myself to the thought of spending my entire term of punishment in the prison; in my dreams of the future I never thought about the penal settlement, but only looked forward to the distant date when, at the expiration of my sentence, I should be allowed to live somewhere as a Siberian exile.[105] That life was depicted for me in anything but rosy colours by the letters of comrades; nevertheless I awaited with impatience the far-off day of release. Like the hero of Dostoi?vsky’s Memoirs from the Dead-house, I often counted up how many years, months, weeks, hours, I had still to spend in prison. How wearily the time passed! The fewer grew the remaining years, the slower went the days, and freedom seemed further off than ever.

Prison life had affected me considerably in the course of time. My nerves were shattered, and I felt as though borne down by a heavy burden; my brain worked with difficulty, and my general condition was one of apathy and lassitude. The future looked black to me; I was sick of life.

In August, 1890, reports assumed a more definite form, and we learned with certainty that we were shortly to be 294taken to Akatoui. This news excited us much, and plans for our arrangements in the new prison became the chief subject of conversation. It seemed incredible to us that the cruelty of the Government could go so far as to increase the hardships of prisoners who for the most part had already been ten years or more in captivity, and had suffered so much; yet we heard that the régime at Akatoui was to be unusually severe.

One day we learned that the Governor-General had come to Kara. We were ordered to assemble in the yard, and Baron Korf soon made his appearance, followed by a large suite, and guarded by gendarmes and soldiers. He informed us that an order had been sent from Petersburg for our removal to Akatoui. The regulations of the new prison provided that political convicts should henceforward be in exactly the same position as the ordinary criminals: we should share rooms with them, be fed in the same way. “In short,” concluded the Governor-General, “in no respect will any difference be made between the two classes of prisoners, and these instructions will be carried out to the letter.”

The sentences flowed smoothly from his lips, yet Baron Korf did not look altogether pleased with his mission. Upon us his words had a crushing effect; our fears were confirmed and worse, for no one had dreamt of our being placed on the footing of ordinary criminals. Above all, this meant that we should be liable to flogging, as they were.

We stood for a time speechless; partly because we were staggered by what we had heard, and partly because we had no desire to enter into conversation with the man who had degraded himself by ordering the corporal chastisement of a woman. To the repeated question whether we had anything to say, no answer was given; but Baron Korf was apparently very anxious to get into discussion with us, and the situation became rather uncomfortable. At last, as the Governor-General was preparing to leave, Mirsky suddenly 295broke the silence. With formal politeness he inquired how the words “in every respect like the ordinary criminals” were to be construed, and laid stress on the fact that ordinary convicts were allowed to enter the penal settlement without any limitation of their numbers. Visibly gratified that at last he was addressed, Baron Korf hastened to explain that in this particular also there would henceforward be no difference made between the two classes. An animated conversation now ensued between him and Mirsky, in which Yakubòvitch soon joined. With excited gestures the latter began declaring that they might treat us in all other respects like criminals, but we would never endure it if one of us were flogged.

The Governor-General attempted to restore peace: we ought not to be alarmed, he said; none of us had hitherto been punished in that way, and he hoped it might never happen in the future.

I had not intended to take part in the conversation, but when I heard those words, involuntarily I cried out, “And Sigida? A woman!”

This was a subject full of the most ominous possibilities. Baron Korf began speaking eagerly; he had apparently been waiting for the chance of such an allusion, and he seemed to feel a need of justifying himself.

“What were we to do?” he cried. “Must we be insulted, and keep silence? It was not we who first resorted to personal violence.”

“You could have tried her,” I answered; “but you had no right to torture her.”

The Governor-General stammered out a few sentences, the drift of which was that past events were irretrievable, and that he could not be held responsible for what had occurred in Kara.

It was a painful episode, and when Baron Korf had gone we returned to our cells in deep depression, feeling insulted and humiliated by the decision that we had just heard.

296The day was to bring yet another excitement. The head warder, a certain Pohorukov, made the rounds as usual, accompanied by some gendarmes, and called the roll in the various rooms. I was in the corridor, meaning to go into my room along with the gendarmes; and Fomitchov also was in the corridor, standing by the door of his room. As one of the gendarmes was unlocking that door I suddenly saw something hurtle through the air, the sound of a frightful blow followed, and the head warder fell to the ground. The gendarmes instantly fled in panic, leaving the man lying unconscious on the floor; but I ran after them, calling to them not to be frightened, that they must come and help their injured companion. It was, however, some time before they could be persuaded to return.

I ought to mention here that Golubtsòv, the clever and tactful captain of the guard, of whom I spoke before, no longer held that post. When our hunger-strikes began he got himself transferred to the section for ordinary criminals, for he saw that the dispute with Masyukov was certain to cause trouble. The new captain of the guard was a stupid, cowardly fellow. When he at last recovered from his fright I managed to induce him to unlock the door of the room where Prybylyev, our physician, was, and the latter then had the wounded man carried into our “hospital” room, where he administered first aid. The head warder had received a severe blow on the head from some hard object, he was still unconscious, and it was difficult to know at first whether the wound was dangerous or not.

As the commandant was away in attendance on the Governor-General and would not return till next day, and as the head warder was hors de combat, we prisoners had to take command, the gendarmes, who had quite lost their heads, obeying our orders without hesitation. The first thing was to get the injured man conveyed to his own house, and Prybylyev had him carried thither on the bed 297as he was. Then something must be done with Fomitchov, who himself insisted on being removed from among us; so we made the captain of the guard install him in one of the single cells in the adjacent building.

Fomitchov’s act seemed absolutely inexplicable, the head warder being a quite insignificant, ordinary kind of person, about whom we had never troubled ourselves; and the only explanation that suggested itself to us was that, excited by the news we had just heard, Fomitchov must have suddenly lost his reason. For, being, as I have related, an eccentric devoted to monarchism, Fomitchov was the last person from whom such an attack on an official could have been expected, and the theory of madness seemed the more likely, as he had on one or two former occasions shown a tendency to paroxysms of rage. We were mistaken, however; next day he himself gave us the following elucidation of his motives.

Some months before, when Fomitchov was in the prison hospital, where Pohorukov was then steward, he had been witness of a shocking scene. Some ordinary criminals had been cleaning out the yard, and the steward, declaring that the work had not been done thoroughly enough, at once ordered the men to be flogged. The punishment was instantly administered, right under the window of Fomitchov’s cell. Indignation and disgust had naturally been kindled in Fomitchov’s bosom, and abhorrence of the man who could perpetrate such a barbarity; but it would hardly have occurred to him to attack Pohorukov without further cause. Now, however, when the Governor-General had just declared that we were to be put on an equal footing with the ordinary criminals as regards flogging, Fomitchov remembered how people could be subjected to that barbarous punishment by any stupid official for the merest trifle; he wished, therefore, he said, to avenge the deed he had witnessed, and at the same time to show what would be our proceedings if anyone ever attempted to apply such treatment to us.

298Naturally we feared that the Governor-General might suppose Fomitchov’s assault to have been an act resolved on by us all, and committed with our sanction, in which case reprisals could not fail to be made; we lived, therefore, for several days in a state of excited expectancy. The doctor, meanwhile, pronounced Fomitchov to be suffering from a passing disturbance of mind, caused by learning of the new decree; fortunately, too, the injured man’s wound proved not to be mortal, and he recovered, only losing the hearing of one ear. The Governor-General was, I suppose, relieved to find that no more serious consequences had followed his announcement of the new order, and that may have made him take a lenient view of the case. Fomitchov was eventually placed under observation in the prison hospital, and his term of imprisonment was lengthened by two years as the penalty of his offence.

From the statement made by the Governor-General in response to Mirsky, we might conclude that none of us who had become entitled to leave prison for the penal settlement (that is, not less than twenty men) would be taken to Akatoui, and that therefore we should escape the severe régime there; but I personally could not believe that the hour of my release from prison was so near. My old experience at Freiburg had taught me how easily hopes may be falsified, and I repelled with energy every alluring vision, preferring rather to paint gloomy pictures of a future in prison among the criminal horde; and although the news soon reached us that we were indeed to be liberated—that a list had already been prepared of those persons who were entitled to leave—I could not trust myself to credit it. One day, however, quite unexpectedly, three of our number were released from prison—Luri, Rechnyevsky, and Souhòmlin, whose wives had followed them to Kara. Shortly after, Masyukov, accompanied by his newly appointed successor, Tominin, appeared one day in our prison, and informed 299us that seventeen others were to be liberated, my name figuring in the list.[106]

We packed up our belongings and took leave of our comrades, who were to go to Akatoui the next day; and the thought that our friends had before them such an increase of hardships damped our pleasure in attaining the long-desired semi-freedom. Beforehand we had pictured quite otherwise the joy of release and the scene of farewell. Now that the hour had struck it was hardly joy that I felt; on the contrary, I seemed almost to be quitting a home that had become dear to me. Not with heads uplifted, but sad and depressed, we bent our steps towards the door. The bolt flew back, and a larger company of men than had ever been seen to do so before on such an occasion left the prison for good. A trammelled and partial liberty lay before us; still, liberty it was.