CHAPTER VI

Exile—A Chief Constable—The Volga—Perm.

ON the morning of April 10, 1835, a police-officer conducted me to the Governor’s palace, where my parents were allowed to take leave of me in the private part of the office.

This was bound to be an uncomfortable and painful scene. Spies and clerks swarmed round us; we listened while his instructions were read aloud to the police-agent who was to go with me; it was impossible to exchange a word unwatched—in short, more painful and galling surroundings cannot be imagined. It was a relief when the carriage started at last along the Vladimirka River.

Per me si va nella città dolente,Per me si va nell’ eterno dolore—[79]

Per me si va nella città dolente,

Per me si va nell’ eterno dolore—[79]

79.Dante,Inferno, Canto III.

I wrote this couplet on the wall of one of the post-houses; it suits the vestibule of Hell and the road to Siberia equally well.

One of my intimate friends had promised to meet me at an inn sevenverstsfrom Moscow.

I proposed to the police-agent that he should have a glass of brandy there; we were at a safe distance from Moscow, and he accepted. We went in, but my friend was not there. I put off our start by every means in my power; but at last my companion was unwilling to wait longer, and the driver was touching up the horses, when suddenly atroika[80]came galloping straight up to the door. I rushed out—and met two strangers; they were merchants’ sons out for a spree and made some noise as they got off their vehicle. All along the road to Moscow I could not see a single moving spot, nor a single human being. I felt it bitter to get into the carriage and start. But I gave the driver a quarter-rouble, and off we flew like an arrow from the bow.

80.Three horses harnessed abreast form atroika.

We put up nowhere: the orders were that not less than 200verstswere to be covered every twenty-four hours. That would have been tolerable, at any other season; but it was the beginning of April, and the road was covered with ice in some places, and with water and mud in others; and it got worse and worse with each stage of our advance towards Siberia.

My first adventure happened at Pokróv.

We had lost some hours owing to the ice on the river, which cut off all communication with the other side. My guardian was eager to get on, when the post-master at Pokróv suddenly declared that there were no fresh horses. My keeper produced his passport, which stated that horses must be forthcoming all along the road; he was told that the horses were engaged for the Under-Secretary of the Home Office. He began, of course, to wrangle and makea noise; and then they both went off together to get horses from the local peasants.

Getting tired of waiting for their return in the post-master’s dirty room, I went out at the gate and began to walk about in front of the house. It was nine months since I had taken a walk without the presence of a sentry.

I had been walking half an hour when a man came up to me; he was wearing uniform without epaulettes and a blue medal-ribbon. He stared very hard at me, walked past, turned round at once, and asked me in an insolent manner:

“Is it you who are going to Perm with a police-officer?”

“Yes,” I answered, still walking.

“Excuse me! excuse me! How does the man dare...?”

“Whom have I the honour of speaking to?”

“I am the chief constable of this town,” replied the stranger, and his voice showed how deeply he felt his own social importance. “The Under-Secretary may arrive at any moment, and here, if you please, there are political prisoners walking about the streets! What an idiot that policeman is!”

“May I trouble you to address your observations to the man himself?”

“Address him? I shall arrest him and order him a hundred lashes, and send you on in charge of someone else.”

Without waiting for the end of his speech, I nodded and walked back quickly to the post-house. Sitting by the window, I could hear his loud angry voice as he threatened my keeper, who excused himself but did not seem seriously alarmed. Presently they came into the room together; I did not turn round but went on looking out of the window.

From their conversation I saw at once that the chief constable was dying to know all about the circumstances of my banishment. As I kept up a stubborn silence, the official began an impersonal address, intended equally for me and my keeper.

“We get no sympathy. What pleasure is it to me, pray, to quarrel with a policeman or to inconvenience a gentleman whom I never set eyes on before in my life? But I have a great responsibility, in my position here. Whatever happens, I get the blame. If public funds are stolen, they attack me; if the church catches fire, they attack me; if there are too many drunk men in the streets, I suffer for it; if too little whisky is drunk,[81]I suffer for that too.” He was pleased with his last remark and went on more cheerfully: “It is lucky you met me, but you might have met the Secretary; and if you had walked past him, he would have said ‘A political prisoner walking about! Arrest the chief constable!’”

81.great revenue was derived by Government from the sale of spirits.

I got weary at last of his eloquence. I turned to him and said:

“Do your duty by all means, but please spare me your sermons. From what you say I see that you expected me to bow to you; but I am not in the habit of bowing to strangers.”

My friend was flabbergasted.

That is the rule all over Russia, as a friend of mine used to say: whoever gets rude and angry first, always wins. If you ever allow a Jack in office to raise his voice, you are lost: when he hears himself shouting, he turns into a wild beast. But ifyoubegin shouting at his first rude word, he is certain to be cowed; for he thinks thatyou mean business and are the sort of person whom it is unsafe to irritate.

The chief constable sent my keeper to enquire about the horses; then he turned to me and remarked by way of apology:

“I acted in that way chiefly because of the man. You don’t know what our underlings are like—it is impossible to pass over the smallest breach of discipline. But I assure you I know a gentleman when I see him. Might I ask you what unfortunate incident it was that brings you...”

“We were bound to secrecy at the end of the trial.”

“Oh, in that case ... of course ... I should not venture...”—and his eyes expressed the torments of curiosity. He held his tongue, but not for long.

“I had a distant cousin, who was imprisoned for about a year in the fortress of Peter and Paul; he was mixed up with ... you understand. Excuse me, but I think you are still angry, and I take it to heart. I am used to army discipline; I began serving when I was seventeen. I have a hot temper, but it all passes in a moment. I won’t trouble your man any further, deuce take him!”

My keeper now came in and reported that it would take an hour to drive in the horses from the fields.

The chief constable told him that he was pardoned at my intercession; then he turned to me and added:

“To show that you are not angry, I do hope you will come and take pot-luck with me—I live two doors away; please don’t refuse.”

This turn to our interview seemed to me so amusing that I went to his house, where I ate his pickled sturgeon and caviare and drank his brandy and Madeira.

He grew so friendly that he told me all his privateaffairs, including the details of an illness from which his wife had suffered for seven years. After our meal, with pride and satisfaction he took a letter from a jar on the table and let me read a “poem” which his son had written at school and recited on Speech-day. After these flattering proofs of confidence, he neatly changed the conversation and enquired indirectly about my offence; and this time I gratified his curiosity to some extent.

This man reminded me of a justice’s clerk whom my friend S. used to speak about. Though his chief had been changed a dozen times, the clerk never lost his place and was the real ruler of the district.

“How do you manage to get on with them all?” my friend asked.

“All right, thank you; one manages to rub on somehow. You do sometimes get a gentleman who is very awkward at first, kicks with fore legs and hind legs, shouts abuse at you, and threatens to complain at head-quarters and get you turned out. Well, you know, the likes of us have to put up with that. One holds one’s tongue and thinks—‘Oh, he’ll wear himself out in time; he’s only just getting into harness.’ And so it turns out: once started, he goes along first-rate.”

On getting near Kazán, we found the Volga in full flood. The river spread fifteenverstsor more beyond its banks, and we had to travel by water for the whole of the last stage. It was bad weather, and a number of carts and other vehicles were detained on the bank, as the ferries had stopped working.

My keeper went to the man in charge and demandeda raft for our use. The man gave it unwillingly; he said that it was dangerous and we had better wait. But my keeper was in haste, partly because he was drunk and partly because he wished to show his power.

My carriage was placed upon a moderate-sized raft and we started. The weather appeared to improve; and after half an hour the boatman, who was a Tatar, hoisted a sail. But suddenly the storm came on again with fresh violence, and we were carried rapidly downstream. We caught up some floating timber and struck it so hard that our rickety raft was nearly wrecked and the water came over the decking. It was an awkward situation; but the Tatar managed to steer us into a sandbank.

A barge now hove in sight. We called out to them to send us their boat, but the bargemen, though they heard us, went past and gave us no assistance.

A peasant, who had his wife with him in a small boat, rowed up to us and asked what was the matter. “What of that?” he said. “Stop the leak, say a prayer, and start off. There’s nothing to worry about; but you’re a Tatar, and that’s why you’re so helpless.” Then he waded over to our raft.

The Tatar was really very much alarmed. In the first place, my keeper, who was asleep when the water came on board and wet him, sprang to his feet and began to beat the Tatar. In the second place, the raft was Government property and the Tatar kept saying, “If it goes to the bottom, I shall catch it!” I tried to comfort him by saying that in that case he would go to the bottom too.

“But, if I’mnotdrowned,bátyushka, what then?” was his reply.

The peasant and some labourers stuffed up the leak inthe raft and nailed a board over it with their axe-heads; then, up to the waist in the water, they dragged the raft off the sandbank, and we soon reached the channel of the Volga. The current ran furiously. Wind, rain, and snow lashed our faces, and the cold pierced to our bones; but soon the statue of Ivan the Terrible began to loom out from behind the fog and torrents of rain. It seemed that the danger was past; but suddenly the Tatar called out in a piteous voice, “It’s leaking, it’s leaking!”—and the water did in fact come rushing in at the old leak. We were right in the centre of the stream, but the raft began to move slower and slower, and the time seemed at hand when it would sink altogether. The Tatar took off his cap and began to pray; my servant shed tears and said a final good-bye to his mother at home; but my keeper used bad language and vowed he would beat them both when we landed.

I too felt uneasy at first, partly owing to the wind and rain, which added an element of confusion and disorder to the danger. But then it seemed to me absurd that I should meet my death before I had done anything; the spirit of the conqueror’s question—quid timeas? Caesarem vehis!—asserted itself;[82]and I waited calmly for the end, convinced that I should not end my life there, between Uslon and Kazán. Later life saps such proud confidence and makes a man suffer for it; and that is why youth is bold and heroic, while a man in years is cautious and seldom carried away.

82.The story of Caesar’s rebuke to the boatman is told by Plutarch in hisLife of Caesar, chap. 38.

A quarter of an hour later we landed, drenched and frozen, near the walls of the Kremlin of Kazán. At thenearest public-house I got a glass of spirits and a hard-boiled egg, and then went off to the post-house.

In villages and small towns, the post-master keeps a room for the accommodation of travellers; but in the large towns, where everybody goes to the hotels, there is no such provision. I was taken into the office, and the post-master showed me his own room. It was occupied by women and children and an old bedridden man; there was positively not a corner where I could change my clothes. I wrote a letter to the officer in command of the Kazán police, asking him to arrange that I should have some place where I could warm myself and dry my clothes.

My messenger returned in an hour’s time and reported that Count Apraxin would grant my request. I waited two hours more, but no one came, and I despatched my messenger again. He brought this answer—that the colonel who had received Apraxin’s order was playing whist at the club, and that nothing could be done for me till next day.

This was positive cruelty, and I wrote a second letter to Apraxin. I asked him to send me on at once and said I hoped to find better quarters after the next stage of my journey. But my letter was not delivered, because the Count had gone to bed. I could do no more. I took off my wet clothes in the office; then I wrapped myself up in a soldier’s overcoat and lay down on the table; a thick book, covered with some of my linen, served me as a pillow. I sent out for some breakfast in the morning. By that time the clerks were arriving, and the door-keeper pointed out to me that a public office was an unsuitableplace to breakfast in; it made no difference to him personally, but the post-master might disapprove of my proceedings.

I laughed and said that a captive was secure against eviction and was bound to eat and drink in his place of confinement, wherever it might be.

Next morning Count Apraxin gave me leave to stay three days at Kazán and to put up at a hotel.

For those three days I wandered about the city, attended everywhere by my keeper. The veiled faces of the Tatar women, the high cheekbones of their husbands, the mosques of true believers standing side by side with the churches of the Orthodox faith—it all reminds one of Asia and the East. At Vladímir or Nizhni the neighbourhood of Moscow is felt; but one feels far from Moscow at Kazán.

When I reached Perm, I was taken straight to the Governor’s house. There was a great gathering there; for it was his daughter’s wedding-day; the bridegroom was an officer in the Army. The Governor insisted that I should come in. So I made my bow to thebeau mondeof Perm, covered with mud and dust, and wearing a shabby, stained coat. The Governor talked a great deal of nonsense; he told me to keep clear of the Polish exiles in the town and to call again in the course of a few days, when he would provide me with some occupation in the public offices.

The Governor of Perm was a Little Russian; he was not hard upon the exiles and behaved reasonably in other respects. Like a mole which adds grain to grain in some underground repository, so he kept putting by a trifle for a rainy day, without anyone being the wiser.

§6

From some dim idea of keeping a check over us, he ordered that all the exiles residing at Perm should report themselves at his house, at ten every Saturday morning. He came in smoking his pipe and ascertained, by means of a list which he carried, whether all were present; if anyone was missing, he sent to enquire the reason; he hardly ever spoke to anyone before dismissing us. Thus I made the acquaintance in his drawing-room of all the Poles whom he had told me I was to avoid.

The day after I reached Perm, my keeper departed, and I was at liberty for the first time since my arrest—at liberty, in a little town on the Siberian frontier, with no experience of life and no comprehension of the sphere in which I was now forced to live.

From the nursery I had passed straight to the lecture-room, and from the lecture-room to a small circle of friends, an intimate world of theories and dreams, without contact with practical life; then came prison, with its opportunities for reflexion; and contact with life was only beginning now and here, by the ridge of the Ural Mountains.

Practical life made itself felt at once: the day after my arrival I went to look for lodgings with the porter at the Governor’s office; he took me to a large one-storeyed house; and, though I explained that I wanted a small house, or, better still, part of a house, he insisted that I should go in.

The lady who owned the house made me sit on the sofa. Hearing that I came from Moscow, she asked if I had seen M. Kabrit there. I replied that I had never in my life heard a name like it.

“Come, come!” said the old lady; “I mean M. Kabrit,” and she gave his Christian name and patronymic. “You don’t say,bátyushka, that you don’t know him! He is our Vice-Governor!”

“Well, I spent nine months in prison,” I said smiling, “and perhaps that accounts for my not hearing of him.”

“It may be so. And so you want to hire the little house,bátyushka?”

“It’s a big house, much too big; I said so to the man who brought me.”

“Too much of this world’s goods are no burden to the back.”

“True; but you will ask a large rent for your large house.”

“Who told you, young man, about my prices? I’ve not opened my mouth yet.”

“Yes, but I know you can’t ask little for a house like this.”

“How much do you offer?”

In order to have done with her, I said that I would not pay more than 350roubles.

“And glad I am to get it, my lad! Just drink a glass of Canary, and go and have your boxes moved in here.”

The rent seemed to me fabulously low, and I took the house. I was just going when she stopped me.

“I forgot to ask you one thing—do you mean to keep a cow?”

“Good heavens! No!” I answered, deeply insulted by such a question.

“Very well; then I will supply you with cream.”

I went home, thinking with horror that I had reached a place where I was thought capable of keeping a cow!

§7

Before I had time to look about me, the Governor informed me that I was transferred to Vyatka: another exile who was destined for Vyatka had asked to be transferred to Perm, where some of his relations lived. The Governor wished me to start next day. But that was impossible; as I expected to stay some time at Perm, I had bought a quantity of things and must sell them, even at a loss of 50 per cent. After several evasive answers, the Governor allowed me to stay for forty-eight hours longer, but he made me promise not to seek an opportunity of meeting the exile from Vyatka.

I was preparing to sell my horse and a variety of rubbish, when the inspector of police appeared with an order that I was to leave in twenty-four hours. I explained to him that the Governor had granted me an extension, but he actually produced a written order, requiring him to see me off within twenty-four hours; and this order had been signed by the Governor after his conversation with me.

“I can explain it,” said the inspector; “the great man wishes to shuffle off the responsibility on me.”

“Let us go and confront him with his signature,” I said.

“By all means,” said the inspector.

The Governor said that he had forgotten his promise to me, and the inspector slyly asked if the order had not better be rewritten. “Is it worth the trouble?” asked the Governor, with an air of indifference.

“We had him there,” said the inspector to me, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. “What a mean shabby fellow he is!”

§8

This inspector belonged to a distinct class of officials, who are half soldiers and half civilians. They are men who, while serving in the Army, have been lucky enough to run upon a bayonet or stop a bullet, and have therefore been rewarded with positions in the police service. Military life has given them an air of frankness; they have learned some phrases about the point of honour and some terms of ridicule for humble civilians. The youngest of them have read Marlinski and Zagóskin,[83]and can repeat the beginning ofThe Prisoner of the Caucasus,[84]and they like to quote the verses they know. For instance, whenever they find a friend smoking, they invariably say:

“The amber smoked between his teeth.”[85]

83.Popular novelists of the “patriotic” school, now forgotten.

84.A poem by Púshkin.

85.The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, I. 2.

They are one and all deeply convinced, and let you know their conviction with emphasis, that their position is far below their merits, and that poverty alone keeps them down; but for their wounds and want of money, they would have been generals-in-waiting or commanders of army-corps. Each of them can point to some comrade-in-arms who has risen to the top of the tree. “You see what Kreutz is now,” he says; “well, we two were gazetted together on the same day and lived in barracks like brothers, on the most familiar terms. But I’m not a German, and I had no kind of interest; so here I sit, a mere policeman. But you understand that such a position is distasteful to anyone with the feelings of a gentleman.”

Their wives are even more discontented. These poorsufferers travel to Moscow once a year, where their real business is to deposit their little savings in the bank, though they pretend that a sick mother or aunt wishes to see them for the last time.

And so this life goes on for fifteen years. The husband, railing at fortune, flogs his men and uses his fists to the shopkeepers, curries favour with the Governor, helps thieves to get off, steals State papers, and repeats verses fromThe Fountain of Bakhchisarai.[86]The wife, railing at fortune and provincial life, takes all she can lay her hands on, robs petitioners, cheats tradesmen, and has a sentimental weakness for moonlight nights.

86.Another of Púshkin’s early works.

I have described this type at length, because I was taken in by these good people at first, and really thought them superior to others of their class; but I was quite wrong.

I took with me from Perm one personal recollection which I value.

At one of the Governor’s Saturday reviews of the exiles, a Roman Catholic priest invited me to his house. I went there and found several Poles. One of them sat there, smoking a short pipe and never speaking; misery, hopeless misery, was visible in every feature. His figure was clumsy and even crooked; his face was of that irregular Polish-Lithuanian type which surprises you at first and becomes attractive later: the greatest of all Poles, Thaddei Kosciusko,[87]had that kind of face. The man’s name was Tsichanovitch, and his dress showed that he was terribly poor.

87.The famous Polish general and patriot (1746-1817).

Some days later, I was walking along the avenue which bounds Perm in one direction. It was late in May; the young leaves of the trees were opening, and the birches were in flower—there were no trees but birches, I think, on both sides of the avenue—but not a soul was to be seen. People in the provinces have no taste forPlatonicperambulations. After strolling about for a long time; at last I saw a figure in a field by the side of the avenue: he was botanising, or simply picking flowers, which are not abundant or varied in that part of the world. When he raised his head, I recognised Tsichanovitch and went up to him.

He had originally been banished to Verchoturye, one of the remotest towns in the Government of Perm, hidden away in the Ural Mountains, buried in snow, and so far from all roads that communication with it was almost impossible in winter. Life there is certainly worse than at Omsk or Krasnoyarsk. In his complete solitude there, Tsichanovitch took to botany and collected the meagre flora of the Ural Mountains. He got permission later to move to Perm, and to him this was a change for the better: he could hear once more his own language spoken and meet his companions in misfortune. His wife, who had remained behind in Lithuania, wrote that she intended to join him,walking from the Government of Vilna. He was expecting her.

When I was transferred so suddenly to Vyatka, I went to say good-bye to Tsichanovitch. The small room in which he lived was almost bare—there was a table and one chair, and a little old portmanteau standing on end near the meagre bed; and that was all the furniture. My cell in the Krutitski barracks came back to me at once.

He was sorry to hear of my departure, but he was so accustomed to privations that he soon smiled almost brightly as he said, “That’s why I love Nature; of her you can never be deprived, wherever you are.”

Wishing to leave him some token of remembrance, I took off a small sleeve-link and asked him to accept it.

“Your sleeve-link is too fine for my shirt,” he said; “but I shall keep it as long as I live and wear it in my coffin.”

After a little thought, he began to rummage hastily in his portmanteau. He took from a small bag a wrought-iron chain with a peculiar pattern, wrenched off some of the links, and gave them to me.

“I have a great value for this chain,” he said; “it is connected with the most sacred recollections of my life, and I won’t give it all to you; but take these links. I little thought that I should ever give them to a Russian, an exile like myself.”

I embraced him and said good-bye.

“When do you start?” he asked.

“To-morrow morning; but don’t come: when I go back, I shall find a policeman at my lodgings, who will never leave me for a moment.”

“Very well. I wish you a good journey and better fortune than mine.”

By nine o’clock next morning the inspector appeared at my house, to hasten my departure. My new keeper, a much tamer creature than his predecessor, and openly rejoicing at the prospect of drinking freely during the 350verstsof our journey, was doing something to the carriage. All was ready. I happened to look into the street and saw Tsichanovitch walking past. I ran to the window.

“Thank God!” he said. “This is the fourth time I have walked past, hoping to hail you, if only from a distance; but you never saw me.”

My eyes were full of tears as I thanked him: I was deeply touched by this proof of tender womanly attachment. But this was the only reason why I was sorry to leave Perm.

On the second day of our journey, heavy rain began at dawn and went on all day without stopping, as it often does in wooded country; at two o’clock we came to a miserable village of natives. There was no post-house; the native Votyaks, who could neither read nor write, opened my passport and ascertained whether there were two seals or one, shouted out “All right!” and harnessed the fresh horses. A Russian post-master would have kept us twice as long. On getting near this village, I had proposed to my keeper that we should rest there two hours: I wished to get dry and warm and have something to eat. But when I entered the smoky, stifling hut and found that no food was procurable, and that there was not even a public-house within fiveversts, I repented of my purpose and intended to go on.

While I was still hesitating, a soldier came in and brought me an invitation to drink a cup of tea from an officer on detachment.

“With all my heart. Where is your officer?”

“In a hut close by, Your Honour”—and the soldier made a left turn and disappeared. I followed him.

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