CHAPTER V.THE KATORGA.
COMPANIONS IN EXILE—THE ‘KATORGA’—A MURDERER—THE FELONS—KANTIER—PAY AND PUNISHMENTS—THE COUNTING-HOUSE.
COMPANIONS IN EXILE—THE ‘KATORGA’—A MURDERER—THE FELONS—KANTIER—PAY AND PUNISHMENTS—THE COUNTING-HOUSE.
About ten o’clock of a cold morning, for it was now the 4th of October, I saw before me the outlines of a village composed of two hundred miserable houses, all built of wood, lying near the river Irtiche, and situated in a vast plain. Further back, upon a rising ground, and in the middle of a fir wood, the buildings of a factory were visible. This was Ekaterinski-Zavod. I was introduced into the counting-house (kazionnaia kantora), and thesmotritel, that is to say, the inspector of the establishment, soon arrived; for to M. Aramilski the gendarme had already carried all the papers which concerned me. He made me strip to the waist before all the persons present, thus verifying the description drawn up at Kiow, which he had in his hand. He then ordered me to be inscribed in the register of convict labourers, not under my name but under my number.I was then to be taken to the station-house; and he added, as he went out, without even having addressed me, ‘he will work with chains on his feet.’
When he was out of hearing, a young man, who, through all this business, had continued writing like the other clerks in the office, rose and threw himself into my arms. It was Charles Bogdaszewski of Cracow, who, implicated in the affair of Erenberg the poet, had been condemned for three years to hard labour, and to deportation for the term of his natural life. Some moments afterwards, we were joined by John Siesieki of Lublin, another political offender. They spoke quickly, and with an emotion which they did not disguise. They conjured me to show myself patient and submissive in every way, and not to rebel at anything. It was only thus that I could arrive in time at being employed in the office, instead of having to do the hard and severe work of the factory itself; and at this price, above all, I could purchase an immunity from those corporal punishments to which every labouring convict is liable. I cannot describe what was the character of this broken and breathless colloquy, or the shiver which ran through my frame when I heard Polish lips speaking, as of a matter of course, of their fear of blows and of the rods. They left me, but it was to make haste to use their influence with the under-officials of the establishment, with the treasurer and the forester, that they might induce thesmotritelto go back from the order, which seemed inconceivable to them, that I should work in irons, such a measure not being in use here even in the case of murderers. I learnt later what was the meaning of this unusual severity. At the bottom of my certificated sentence, Prince Gortchakov had added with his own hand, ‘A special watch must be kept upon Piotrowski;’ and this extraordinary recommendation had made a deep impression on M. Aramilski. ‘Since I have been superintendent,’ he said to the forester, ‘nothing of the sort ever occurred to me; this must be some diplomate’ (eto dolgène byt kakoï diplomat).
The station-house, to which I was immediately directed, was full of soldiers, many of them Poles who had fought in our war of independence. These seized the least excuse to come up to me and ask me in whispers what had become of Poland, what was happening in Europe, and whether there were any hopes? (Son Nadzieje?)
Worn out with fatigue and by many emotions, I stretched myself on a bench, and for two hours I remained plunged in a gloomy reverie. All of a sudden I saw standing in front of me a strong truculent-looking man, whose ignoble expression did not belie in any way the triple mark ofvorwhich was printed on his forehead and on both cheeks. He addressed me thus, ‘Get up, you must go and work.’ This was the overseer of the convicts, a felon of distinction himself! Oh, myGod! Thou alone didst hear the cry of my soul, when for the first time I was ordered about by an abject being like this! At these words of his I darted a look at him in return which seemed to express all the desolate indignation of my spirit, I do not know that it was so, but he stepped back, dropped his eyes, and said with a sad air, ‘Well, what can I do? They order me, and I must execute my orders.’ My breast heaved, I pressed my head between my hands, for my brain felt on fire, a cold sweat burst out all over me, and at last I breathed again. ‘Let us go,’ I said, as I rose up, and I went out, following the overseer.
He led me to a large forge close to the refining house, my feet were placed in the anvil and my irons struck off, a deliverance which I owed to the humane offices of my two countrymen; and thus for the first time since I had left Kiow I was able to pull off my own boots! I was then taken to a building which was only in part finished, a kiln for drying the malt. The roof was not completed, and the wood-work had to be cleared of a vast quantity of chips, litter and offensive refuse, with which it was covered. I mounted by a ladder, and was followed by the overseer, and by a soldier, who had orders for the future never to let me out of his sight. On the roof I found another convict, whose labours I was to share. A broom and a shovel were put into my hands by my colleague, and by the overseer I was shown how to use them. The air was cold, the skyclouded and dark, and the task imposed certainly not a severe one; but in order to avoid any remonstrances, and to escape being either spoken to or looked at, I worked away without ever stopping or so much as lifting my eyes, and was soon drenched with perspiration. Alas! I was weak, and what was more, I was weeping!
In his course of daily inspection M. Aramilski also came up upon the roof where I was at work, followed by other officials of the establishment. I continued to sweep without turning round, and I avoided their eyes as much as if I had been a criminal. Some time after they had left, the overseer said, ‘Now rest.’ I seated myself on a heap of sweepings alongside of my companion, a young man, who was tall and well-made, but who had the triple mark on his face, and who seemed of an easy cheerful temper. Overcoming the hesitation which I felt, I spoke first.
‘Have you been long in these works?’
‘Three years.’
‘To how many years’ labour are you sentenced?’
‘For life!’
‘What was your crime?’
‘I killed my master.’
I shuddered, but went on:
‘Without doubt it was an accident, you did not intend to kill him?’
‘Why, for the matter of that I did notplanit,’ he said with a sneering look; ‘I had an axe hanging at mygirdle, I took it in both my hands and split his head open for him.’
I was chilled with horror. After a few moments’ silence I said:
‘But why did you kill him so cruelly?’
‘Why? not for fun, you may be sure. No, our master was a bad man, very cruel, who overworked us and beat us incessantly, almost to death; and to deliver the neighbourhood from a ruffian like that I took upon myself to kill him, and I did so. It was God’s providence that I did not die under the knout, and now I am much happier and better off at thiskatorga(penal labour) than I ever was at home. The only thing that I regret is my young wife, whom I had to leave; she is young and pretty, and will soon find another husband.’
‘But you ought to repent of the sin of having slain a man.’
‘Thatwas not a man! That was a devil!’
We soon after this went to work again, and did not stop till nightfall.
I returned to the guard-house, and there my two countrymen came under an escort to visit me, thesmotritelhaving given leave for this indulgence. We conversed together in a low voice, and in the middle of all the racket made by the soldiers and convicts we related to each other the chief events of our lives. These poor friends did not cease exhorting me to absolute patience and submission. They conjured me to master my temper,to suppress all exhibitions of it, and not to despair of seeing myself soon raised to a position which would be by comparison more happy, and which they themselves now occupied—thanks to their patient and irreproachable conduct. We embraced tenderly, then separated, and I fell asleep. Thus ended my first day of convict labour and of convict life: how many more of the same succeeded it and resembled it!
I rose with the sun to go to the works, at eight I had breakfast, from twelve to one we had an hour in the barracks for dinner and rest, and then we worked till dark. The occupations were often varied according to the wants of the establishment or the inclinations and temper of the inspector. By day and by night I was associated with the other felons, and always under the eye of the overseer and of the soldier in charge of my person. On some days I swept the courtyards; sometimes I carried wood and drew water; sometimes, again, I might be sent to hew wood for fagots, and to stack them in symmetrical piles; and this last employment in the open air, in the autumnal and winter months, in rain and snow, and in the icy temperature of Siberia, was the most trying of any. Long, gloomy, and mournful were the days, and it is needless to dwell on them any further.
The dominant feeling in my mind was the wish to avoid any discussion or wrangle with my superiors or with the overseers. Such an occurrence would havebrought about a terrible catastrophe, for I had made a vow that I would not submit to corporal punishment, and that I would resist it, whether at the price of my own life or of that of others; and for this reason I worked beyond what was asked of me, and beyond my own strength. I must do myself the justice to add that I neglected no effort to conquer my feelings and moments of impatience, and I must do my superiors the justice to say of them that they were neither teasing nor gratuitously and wickedly unkind. Severe and hard as they often were, they never treated me with the capricious rudeness of despots, while the convicts who were my colleagues treated me with a deference, I might almost say a kindness, for which I was heartily grateful. They did not annoy me with any of those cruel jests by which the bad even in very different ranks of life often insult any one superior to themselves whom misfortune has brought down to their own level. More than once I have known them offer to help me at some work which they thought was too heavy for me, or they would change with me, taking my task and giving me their own, if it happened to be a lighter one. From a very early stage they ceased to speak to me with ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ and called me ‘Sir;’ and certainly unmerited misfortune ought to command the respect of untutored men, even of savages, where they, in spite of bravado and seared consciences, feel themselves to be really criminals. With the exception of a very few political offenderslike myself, all the convicts at Ekaterinski-Zavod (to the number of three hundred souls) were really malefactors. One would have murdered a wayfarer, another had committed a horrible rape, another would be an utterer of false coin, another both a thief and a housebreaker. As a daily intercourse with such men was inevitable, I had neither a false shame nor a misplaced pride in my dealings with them. I often talked to these strange companions, studied their characters, and heard from them their different histories and the events of their lives. I am certainly not about to become the historian of these heroes of the bagnio; but I will give one tale, which is not without interest, and which shows that a false Byronism of deed and thought was not unrepresented among them.
One of our felons, Kantier by name, was sentenced to hard labour for life. He was still young, a man short of stature, but strongly built, of a clear and dark but pale complexion; he had black and burning eyes, and his whole physiognomy bespoke a firm and daring disposition. He had been clerk to a wine merchant at St. Petersburg; and when I asked him one day what was the cause of his sentence and punishment, he replied, ‘It is because I killed the girl with whom I was in love. I suspected her of being unfaithful to me. I had suffered horribly, and I was determined to be revenged upon her. In order to execute my design with greater ease, I pretended to make it up with her;and, by dint of coaxing, got her to promise, on a certain holiday, to go on an excursion into the country with me. She hesitated about it a long time, as if she had had a presentiment of some mischief; but at last she consented, upon the condition that she might bring a female friend along with her.Thatdid not suit my plans very well, but I had to put up with it. On the appointed day we started, all three of us. Armed with a pistol and a dagger, I walked alongside of my mistress and talked to her. She had never seemed to me either so pretty or so loving as she did then; but that only added to my jealousy and my thirst for revenge. More than once I was on the point of dispatching her, but her face disarmed me. At last I stopped; it was in a field; I pointed out something in the view to my sweetheart which made her turn away her head. At that moment I put the pistol to her temple, and pulled the trigger. My hand shook, and I only wounded her; the friend screamed and ran. She, slightly hurt and stunned by the shot, turned round two or three times, then, throwing herself on her knees before me, “Forgive me!” she cried in a voice so touching and heart-rending that I shuddered. But I answered by sinking the dagger into her heart, the weapon going in up to its hilt. She fell down stiff and dead. I stabbed her in the breast with my knife, and then ran to give myself up to the police; and here I am, after the knout, for life....’
‘But are you not sorry for having killed her? Does not your conscience reproach you bitterly for such a crime?’
‘Yes, I am sorry for her. I shall never forget her as long as I live, and I shall never love any one else; but as to my conscience, I thought I was quite right in killing her.’
‘But, if it were possible for her to be alive and come back to you, you surely would not do so by her again?’
‘She made me first the happiest and then the most miserable of men; and, if she could come back, I should certainly kill her again.’
‘Then, you mean to say you think you have committed no crime?’
‘Where is the crime? She took away my peace, and I took away her life; she was the most to blame of the two.’
I must now say something about our village, and about the organisation of the factory. The government distillery at Ekaterinski-Zavod was founded in the reign of Catherine II., whose name it bears; and the population consists of the descendants of former convicts. All the interests of the village were centred in the distillery, which produces annually from two to three million oflitresof alcohol, and furnishes brandy to the country over a district of one or two thousandverstes. The distillery was farmed by two rich merchants of the government of Simbirsk, M. Orlov andM. Alexeiev, who must have realised a considerable profit upon it, because, besides the price which they paid as rent, and the augmented charges of pay to the convict labourers, they had contracted for the pay of the commanding officer and the keep of the garrison, viz. of a hundred and one persons; and they were necessarily obliged to give constant and valuable presents to the inspector and other government officials. The inspector generally allowed them about half the force of convict labourers for the distillery; the other half was employed in the public service, as in road-making and mending, in the construction of government buildings, and in sanitary works. Each of us received in money three francs a month, and ninety pounds’ weight of corn, the sale of which in the village was to furnish us with food; but the gentlemen who farmed or rented the distillery from the crown, in order to encourage their workpeople, raised the pay up to five, eight, and even ten francs a month; the men employed in barrelling the spirit being paid by the piece, and thus gaining more than the rest. In this way, it was advantageous for the convicts to be in the employment of the distillery, for they received a better salary, and were less likely to encounter the trying interference of the government officials; but, in any case of insubordination or idleness, the distillers or their representative were obliged to refer to the inspector, who ordered the punishment to be inflicted. This, I mean, was the case when it was a question ofthe stick and the rods; as for blows and cuffs, the convicts got plenty of them from everybody alike. The greater number of convicts lived in barracks; the more favoured were allowed to lodge in the village: but then they had to pay for the bed and board of the soldier who lived there and watched them. From all this it will be seen that, by those who had any education, the counting-house and office of the factory were the posts especially desired, and that those who occupied them were thought most worthy of envy; but it is needless to add that all were alike in the eye of the law, that these steps or grades could not give any acquired rights, and that at the good pleasure of the inspector, orsmotritel, one might be at any moment ‘removed to other functions.’
Thanks to the constant care with which I acquitted myself of the tasks imposed upon me, thanks to the mastery which I had gained over myself, and of which I certainly should not at one time have believed myself capable, I passed, in the following year, not only into the service of the lessees, but also was employed in their office; and in this way I ceased to be in the constant society of persons who were unreclaimed, and who lacked culture both morally and intellectually. I received wages to the extent of ten francs a month, and my occupation was in every way less painful than any former ones had been. I went to my desk at eight in the morning, and I remained in the counting-house tillmid-day, where I was again from two in the afternoon to ten or eleven at night; and although work was not pressing, and one was not really wanted, yet it was incumbent on me to be always present. During the long hours of ennui I wrote, took notes, and abandoned myself to meditations, during which plans for the future slowly ripened in my mind. My office, it happened, was the rendezvous of a great number of travellers, who frequented it both for the sale of grain and in order to buy spirituous liquors; they were peasants, townsfolk, merchants, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. If I was very scant of speech, and short in my communication with the official, with the other convicts, and with the custom-house officers, I acquired, on the contrary, with a curiosity that never flagged, from all these passing travellers, all that was to be learnt of the peculiarities of Siberia. I spoke to men some of whom had been to Berezov, others at Nertchinsk, others had penetrated to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, to the steppes of the Kirghis, even into Boukhara; and thus, without passing the threshold of my office, I learnt to know Siberia, its nearest and its furthest details. The knowledge thus acquired was to be of great value to me afterwards, in forming the plan for my evasion.
One of my fellow-countrymen, Wysoçki, was head clerk in the counting-house of the distillery; but my great ally there was the young Russian, Stépan Bazanov,manager of the factory for the lessees, whose relative he was. He was a lad of twenty or upwards, brave and upright, whose only weakness was the most naïve adoration for the Emperor Nicholas. He never would or could admit that Nicholas did wrong; all the wrong, according to him, was owing to the Boyards, and he declared that, were it not for the intervention of the nobility, the Tzar would make his people the happiest in the world; and I am bound to say that, as far as my experience has gone, this opinion is a pretty general one in Russia, among the people, though not among the ‘staroviertsi.’ What most disposed me to like Bazanov was that he confided his love griefs to me. The poor boy, who was lamentably uneducated in every way, had fallen violently in love with a cousin of his own; but the Orlovs put difficulties in the way of the union which he so much desired. Fancy hearing a lover’s confidences in an accursed place like this where convicts worked! though to be sure the man who made them to me knew that he was free, and that he did not awake every morning to fear the stick and the rods!
I must say that the thought of being exposed at any moment, for any trivial cause, and at the beck of any official, to treatment as shameful as it is terrible, created in me a gloomy and fierce temper, and that, in spite of the relative and very appreciable improvement in my case, I was kept in a state of continual tension. I could not forget the subject, there was no way of doing so;the punishments daily inflicted on some one or other of the convicts, all my own equals in the social hierarchy of the place, sent up a cry ofcras tibi, enough to drive anyone mad with despair. Moreover, the familiarities to which the superiors often admit their deported labourers have a dangerous side. There is no real trust to be placed in the caprices of a man invested with arbitrary powers. His favours are likely to be capricious also, for these men are generally of low minds and manners; and it amuses them to make a sport of their fellow-creatures, raising them one day only in order to humiliate them more deeply hereafter. This is a snare into which many Poles, who like myself have been carried to Siberia, are apt to fall; into which indeed they have fallen. Their education, their manners, the noble nature of their misfortunes, all attract to them a certain consideration, and sometimes even win for them the good graces of their masters. Thus they rise above the level of the common herd of the lost, and they beguile themselves with the illusion that in this way they are reintegrated into society. But the moment of awakening from this dream soon comes, and the deported man, rudely reminded of his real state, may be called happy if he is reminded of it only by word of mouth! Some years before my arrival at Ekaterinski-Zavod, there was a Russian general, N——, who had been condemned by Nicholas to penal servitude in Siberia. Thesmotritel, respecting the high positionand the advanced age of the prisoner, set him to the lightest and least painful tasks, and admitted him to society and his table. Unluckily, the general sometimes forgot himself (especially if he drank a little too much), and, taking up the tone of a senior and superior officer, showed himself recalcitrant. The inspector then had him chained to the furnace of the distillery, and obliged him for a month or a fortnight, during the extreme cold of winter, to keep up the fires. The general, overheated and covered with sweat and ashes, promised to amend, and recommenced his familiarities with thesmotriteland other functionaries, only to find himself again another time by the furnace. Having spent several years in this way at thekatorga, he was pardoned by the Tzar, and restored to his old rank as a general officer.
One other amelioration took place in my lot, and that even before I was told off for a clerkship in the counting-house, and it was, in my estimation, a benefit as great as even that great improvement on my former labours. The inspector gave me leave to live out of barracks; and thus I was able to leave behind me that habitation which was the ordinary dwelling of felons, and which was the scene of their drinking and of their infamous debaucheries. I dwelt henceforth, along with my two fellow-clerks and fellow-countrymen, in Siesieki’s house. Thanks to the length of his long sojourn at Ekaterinski-Zavod, this exile had scraped together,out of his slender salary, enough money to construct a small wooden house, which was not complete as yet, and indeed was not even roofed in; but thither notwithstanding we carried our household goods. The wind whistled through numberless chinks, but as wood cost next to nothing, we piled up a great fire on the earth every night; and there we could feel not only that we were at home, but that we were delivered from the horrible company of the common criminals; although it must not be forgotten that we were watched, and that we had to pay for the soldiers who mounted a ceaseless guard upon our persons. Ah! if that little house is still standing, and shelters perhaps at this moment some unhappy and deported brother, let him know that he is not the first or the only one who within its modest walls has wept as he invoked a distant and a beloved land! My friend Siesieki had been, he told me, a prisoner in the citadel of Warsaw along with the hapless Lévitoux, and had thus been, so to speak, an eyewitness of his horrible death. Their cells opened into the same corridor; and more than once Lévitoux, when returning covered with blood from the inquest and the torture, would call to him, ‘I cannot bear it any longer, I know that I shall go mad, and then I shall speak in spite of myself!’ This fear haunted him continually; but one day, on his return from one of theseblood-baths, as he called them, he said to his companion through the window in his door, that he begged he would keep awaketill about eleven that evening. Siesieki, without, however, attaching much importance to this request, complied with it, and did not go to bed or lie down: about ten at night he saw a great light in Lévitoux’s cell. The sentry called, ‘Fire! fire!’ but before the jailer could be fetched, or the keys of the cell found, some time was of course allowed to elapse. The door was opened, a dense smoke filled the corridor, and the poor fellow had just expired upon the straw mattress, to which he had set fire with his own hands by means of his night-light. Through his cell window my friend beheld the burnt corpse, and saw the soldiers drag it along the corridor by the feet, a horrible spectacle, with the head knocking upon the flags. It is said that at the news of such a finale even Nicholas was moved, and gave orders that in future political offenders should not be proceeded against with so much severity; also, ever since this event, no person detained for a political cause, and supposed to be gravely implicated in one, is ever allowed a light in his room.
Siesieki had made, as I related before, the whole of the journey to Siberia on foot, and had formed one of a gang. When he first arrived at our factory, he had been put to the hardest labour, in company with the other convicts; but some years later the forester required the services of a clever and safe servant, and Siesieki was attached to his department, the more readily because he added the qualifications ofa good sportsman and a good shot to those of being a clever and an honest man. It may easily be guessed that the inspector and other functionaries profited by the first-fruits of his chase, and that at that price he gained permission to carry a gun. Indeed he was often absent on leave for a week at a time, a proceeding of which we once felt the inconvenience, for as Bogdaszewski and I were obliged to be all day at the office, he ought to have been there to watch our house; but profiting by one of his long absences some one robbed us! Our door was broken in and our provisions of tea and corn stolen, a loss which to us was no slight one.
In the neighbourhood lived several deported Poles, dwelling in Siberia as simple exiles. They used to avail themselves of some saint’s day or holiday to visit us, for, with permission of the authorities, they were able to make excursions to Ekaterinski-Zavod. From them we learnt the fate of many other exiles, and we would invoke together the names of the thousands of our dead who had laid down their lives in this land of expiation. The great event, however, of our monotonous existence was the arrival among us of a Polish and Roman Catholic priest. Four of our clergy are permitted by the Russian government to traverse every part of Siberia. Once a year in this way they visit the different establishments where the political offenders dwell, and offer to them the rites and the consolations of their faith. The arrival of one of these servants ofGod is made known in each district a few days beforehand, and the faithful collect from different points. The priest during his stay celebrates a mass, gives the Holy Communion, and consecrates the graves of those who during the year have passed into their rest. No honest, and above all no Christian mind, can fail to appreciate the devotion of these four poor priests. It cannot be too much admired, for it carries them along their ceaseless travels, and supports them as, in their sledges, they journey through the intense cold of Siberia, from Tobolsk to Kamtschatka, and from Nertchinsk to the Polar Sea. The father who visited us in 1845 was a Dominican from Samogitia; but he forbore to wear the gown of his order for fear of outraging the Greek orthodoxy of the natives of Siberia. The inspector had the kindness to allow us to hold service in his room, which was the most spacious one in the village. We all went to confession, and then approached the Lord’s Table. The crowd was great, for exiles and Polish soldiers arrived from very great distances—even those Poles who were not Roman Catholics did not fail to come with joy to the sacred service, for, whether Catholics or not, to them the mass spoke of the native land so hallowed by them and by all her children.