TRANSIENTS AND TUNDRAS
OUR prison colony constantly increased, as new political prisoners were brought in, some of them already sentenced and others held to await their trials. As there was nothing to curb the excesses of the revolutionary groups after the Union of Workers had been dissolved, acts of terror, agitation against the State and attempts against the depositaries of Government funds to secure money for revolutionary purposes became rather frequent occurrences in the territory of the Far East. Their presence and their despondency reacted strongly upon all of us; for you must know that a prison is very excitable. Spread the news that a man condemned to death is within its walls, and the spirit of it changes at once. A morbid concentration sets in, which often runs into despair or real madness.
I remember that one morning a good-looking, fairhaired young man, named Arsenieff, was brought in. Perhaps twenty-five years old, he already carried a look of profound sadness in his dreamy blue eyes. That same day he was tried and condemned to death. His story was simple and easily understood by anyone who knew the Russian life. The gendarmes shot his brother, a revolutionist, in Blagoveschensk, whereupon Arsenieff shot the commander of the gendarmes in revenge and fled to Harbin, where he was discovered and arrested.
He returned from the court at nine o'clock in the evening and, going from cell to cell after his arrival, he looked sharply and quizzically into the faces of each one of his fellow-prisoners. When he came to our cell, he carefully closed the door, looked us straight in the eyes and whispered:
"I am condemned to die. They will certainly execute me to-night, as they will be in a hurry to have the thing over. Will you help to save my life?"
"Of course!" we both assured him.
"Thank you," he whispered fervently. "When the supper is brought, I want as much of a commotion as possible to be made throughout the whole prison. Profit by the slightest chance to make all the disturbance you can, and during this distraction I shall work out something for myself."
As soon as he had gone out, Nowakowski and I quietly made the round of the cells and gave all the prisoners directions as to the part they were to take in the commotion. It transpired fortunately that no specious pretext had to be resorted to, owing to the fact that the prisoners who were not receiving food from home were served with a cabbage soup in which some worms were found. The commotion started from somewhere and swelled like a roll of thunder through the prison with the curses, cries, the hammering of fists on tables and doors, and loud demands to see the Commandant of the Prison, the officer on duty, the Prosecutor and even the Tsar himself. When such a row is set up by two hundred nervous excited men, the noise can become dreadful. The whole staff, down to the last of the soldiers and the cook's helpers, rushed up to calm us. The passers-by in the street, attracted by the cries in the prison, stopped in astonishment. No one remained in the prison yard and the frightened guards even forgot to close the doors into this court. Only the sentinels outside the high board fence kept their posts.
Arsenieff carefully watched the developments and, when the authorities and staff had all gathered in the most populous and most protesting cell, he slipped unnoticed into the yard, noiselessly climbed the fence until he could see over the top, and there made out a guard not two paces away from him with his head turned in the other direction, as he stared into the upper windows of the tumultuous prison. Back of the prison yard was an open lot covered with a rank growth of high weeds and thick bushes.
Suddenly Arsenieff drew himself up and jumped down behind the astonished soldier, who from fright fumbled and dropped his rifle, while the fugitive was making off for the bushes, and only then let go a shot at him and blew the warning whistle that started all the others. Arsenieff succeeded in getting away and disappeared without a trace, while the soldier, after reporting how the thing had occurred, was tried and sentenced to four months in prison for having bungled the matter. I never heard anything more as to the fate of the daring prisoner. Did he ultimately succeed in evading the authorities, who must have instituted a doubly careful search for him; or was he finally captured and executed, as a man already condemned and in addition a fugitive now placed beyond the law? I remember only his dreamy and very sad eyes.
Severe criticism and considerable difficulties were visited upon the authorities of the prison as a result of this escape, and we prisoners were also punished by being deprived of our walks for a week and by having all the doors of our cells locked, so that there could be no further communication between us. However, these measures did not prevent another one of our inmates from vanishing like camphor.
Among the prisoners there was a young boy of only seventeen, whose face, as beautiful and delicate as that of a girl, attracted every one's attention. His long curly hair was also as soft and fine as that of a woman. His name was Kostenko, and he was a telegraph operator. He had been implicated in an affair for which he was under sentence of banishment to the north of Siberia.
One Sunday when there were many guests in the visitors' room, a young girl came to see Kostenko. She gave him a little package, took off her hat and coat and, seating herself by the window, began laughing and talking loudly with the good-looking boy. When the signal was given for the closing of the visitors' hour, the prisoners returned immediately to their cells, while the guests filed out, presenting their passes to the guard as they went. After everyone had gone, the Commandant of the Prison, passing the reception-room on the way to his office, noticed the young girl seated at the window.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in astonishment.
"I cannot go out, because Mr. Kostenko took my hat and coat, put them on, fixed his hair to make it look like a woman's and left the room, after telling me that he wanted to amuse his prison mates with his new costume and that he would be back in a few minutes. I am waiting for him to return."
"What a state of affairs," the Commandant muttered; "jokes and games in the prison! I'll make it hot for the keepers."
He rang and ordered Kostenko to be brought in. After a considerable delay a frightened-looking keeper returned and reported:
"The prisoner Kostenko is nowhere to be found and must have escaped, sir!"
Minute search was immediately instituted but failed to disclose the missing boy.
"Where is your pass?" the Commandant demanded of the girl.
"It was in the pocket of my coat," the girl answered, and began weeping. "Please give me the value of my hat and coat, for I am a poor girl and work hard for my living. Your prisoner has robbed me, and I shall make a complaint about it."
But tears availed nothing. When the examining magistrate arrived and began looking into the matter, he ordered the girl to the little Cell No. 3 to be held during the search for Kostenko, because she was suspected, in spite of her tears, of being the accomplice of the fugitive. She remained in custody for two weeks, during which she complained bitterly about the losses caused by the "scoundrel of a prisoner," as she disdainfully labelled Kostenko. When the fugitive was not found after a fortnight, she was set free. As she was about to leave and was saying good-bye to a group of Kostenko's friends, she half closed her very active, sparkling eyes and whispered:
"He must be already in Shanghai. …"
She went merrily off without any hat and coat but with the pleasing thought that she had probably saved the life of a fellow-creature and one that was very dear to her. The prisoners left behind remembered her for a long time and very often referred to her as "the sly sheeagle."
However, some other attempts at escape were not so successful. I remember three labourers being brought in one evening. Shortly after the keepers put them in their different cells, they went to the wash-room, whispered a moment among themselves and suddenly bolted through the kitchen into the yard, where they scrambled up over the fence and ran for it. Several sentries fired at them and all three went down. When the soldiers and keepers reached them, two were already dead and the third had a wounded foot. For his attempt to escape this one was tried two months later and received six years of hard labour. Such events ruffled the calm of the prison, sometimes in a mirthful and sometimes in a very sad manner.
Gradually I began to take a more active part in the prison life. Finding among my accidental housemates many young men who were quite illiterate, I proposed to Nowakowski that we start some instruction work and soon had formed with him classes in reading, writing and accounts. In addition we gave daily lectures in history, literature and physical science, to which the keepers, the soldiers and finally even the Commandant and his assistants, most of them but very poorly educated, came and listened attentively. The prisoners were attracted to us, respected us and were really fond of us. We enjoyed the respect of the authorities also and profited from this, in that, whenever punishment was meted out to the whole prison after someone had escaped, exception was made in the case of Nowakowski and myself, so that our habits of life were in no way restricted or changed.
It was interesting and curious to observe the psychology of individuals thus kept continuously within four walls and obliged to live together. I often saw serious and well-educated men quarrelling about some such trivial matter as that one of them had taken a bigger piece of bread or meat than was his rightful portion, and, because of this, turning enemies and refusing to shake hands with each other. It was a strange phenomenon, induced by the abnormal and aggravating conditions of prison life and by the nerve-wearing necessity of constant and intimate association throughout long months with others not of one's own choosing.
I saw two engineers quarrel and become estranged in bitter hatred over … kittens! There was an old cat in the prison kitchen with some very attractive, vivacious little kittens. One of the prisoners, an engineer, took the kittens to the common cell, where about twenty men were living together, and constituted himself the guardian of these offspring of the kitchen-domiciled mother. One morning another engineer, who had waked before his companion, put some milk and bread in a basin for the kittens' breakfast. When the first engineer awoke and saw the second on his knees, watching the little ones eat, he began reproaching him and accusing him of usurping the right to take care of the kittens, adding that this was nothing more than the "anarchistic principle" of violating the holy right of private property and that his actions were those of a dishonest companion. A quarrel began during which a third person stepped in and appropriated the kittens and after which the two engineers for ever remained irreconcilable enemies.
Such a demoralizing and degrading influence has the life of the prison in the common cells! Their inmates are often brought to a state of numb indifference to everything, to a brooding, morbid silence which smothers the mental faculties; or they suddenly burst forth in some violent explosion and then are not capable of restraining their anger, completely forgetting their culture and the dignity of man, created in the likeness of God.
I remember one occasion on which the whole prison was poisoned through the serving of spoiled fish. Contrary to what one would naturally suppose, this really revolting accident was passed without protestation, owing to the fact that the thought-deadened colony was too enfeebled to have the stamina to protest. At another time, right in the warmth of summer, when a broken pane of glass was not immediately replaced, such a revolt developed among the prisoners that soldiers with fixed bayonets were stationed in each of the cells.
I often felt such psychologic changes within my own self. I can never forget some of these events which occurred during my sojourn in prison.
For a single example—although the door of my cell was never locked and I could consequently go, whenever I wished, into the corridor, to the kitchen for water or tea, out into the yard for tomatoes or beans from our little garden or to walk, I sometimes did not go out for days at a time. When, however, in preparation for the coming of some higher authorities, the doors of all the cells were locked, I found myself at once urged by a dozen reasons to quit the cell. As soon as I heard the key turn in the lock, I immediately ran to the door, hammered it with my fists and shouted to the keeper to open it, as I wanted to bring water and wood from the kitchen.
In such a moment of restriction I believe that the feeling of the loss of liberty is rendered markedly more acute and that there is at once awakened a violent spirit of protest in the whole organism, which subconsciously regards liberty as the highest form of happiness and as the primary, inviolate condition of conscious human life as a part of society, State and nation.
During the days when my soul was being washed by the ebbing and flowing tides of prison sentiment, I was called one afternoon into the prison office, where I found an officer and an official from the railway, whom I knew, waiting for me. They rose when I entered and presented me with a document and a small red-leather box, announcing to me at the same time that this high decoration had been sent me from St. Petersburg at the request of General Kuropatkin in recognition of my work for the army, of course before I "became the President of the Revolutionary Government," as the officer took the precaution to explain.
At first blush I did not know exactly what to do. Then my feelings took charge and I became angry. They valued my earlier services because I had provided the army with fuel; then, for my later services, which saved the army from anarchy and from starvation during the Revolution, they all but shot me and were now keeping me in the "stone bag!"
"I cannot accept a decoration from a Government which confers rewards on an individual with its right hand and slams prison doors behind him with its left!" I answered them, and bowed myself out of their presence.
This event for ever deprived me of the right to receive a decoration from the Tsar; yet I never regretted it and always maintained jokingly that I was in strained relations with Nicholas II, in spite of the fact that he sought to propitiate me by offering me "lodging free of rent and with full maintenance" for two years and a decoration in the bargain.
Days, weeks and months passed. In general the life of the prison was even and calm, interrupted only occasionally by some unanticipated flurry or some unusual event. From time to time, like gusts of wind, came disturbing rumours that the numerous escapes had attracted to our prison the unwelcome attention of the high authorities of St. Petersburg, who urged the closing of the political prison at Harbin and the scattering of its inmates among the gaols of the other towns of East Siberia. These recommendations would probably have been followed promptly, had General Horvat not used his influence to justify and secure the continuance of our institution with its more bearable conditions. However, we felt convinced that we should not be fortunate enough to remain there until the end of our terms.
Meanwhile our building became fuller than ever, largely through the prisoners that were transferred from other towns. One day there came in a group, among whom was an unusual personality, a man named Feklin. He had been a sergeant in one of the Siberian regiments, and had taken part in the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900, during which he was in the relief of Peking; and afterwards, throughout the whole of the Russo-Japanese War, was at the front, where he showed great courage, was wounded several times and won for himself all the degrees of the Cross of St. George. He belonged to the splendid tribe of the Chuvash, living between the River Kama and the Ural Mountains.
On his return from the front he fell in love with the daughter of a rich merchant, and, as the girl was also pleased with this daring, much-decorated hero, they were soon betrothed. One day, during a political manifestation, Feklin rose and made a strong speech, in which he severely criticized the handling of matters in the army. As a result of this he was arrested and, for some incomprehensible reason, was transferred about from one prison to another until he finally turned up at our hospitable door in Harbin.
Though he was not very intelligent, he talked a great deal and was evidently straightforward, so that the whole prison, even to the keepers and soldiers, soon knew that he was madly in love with his betrothed, that he was jealous and not certain that she would wait for him, even though he felt confident the court would soon set him free. Often the poor man wept the whole night through, moaning and tossing like a child in pain.
In addition to his other trials, Feklin was plagued by a strange malady, an unknown skin disease, which he had caught during a short detention in one of the prisons of the Ural region. When he showed me his back, I was dumfounded, for all of the skin was tattooed with a dark-blue design like acanthus leaves or like the pattern on a frozen window pane. We called the prison doctor, who had never seen or heard of such an infection. He studied Feklin for a long time, summoned other doctors from the town and finally called in a bacteriologist, who discovered that the man had been infected with some weeds, which penetrated the skin and developed quickly, causing his great suffering. When the diagnosis had been made, the nursing was easy and rapid, so that in a few short weeks Alexei Feklin lost the "botanical garden" which he had been carrying around on his back.
Finally the man's trial came, lasted two days and had a very sad ending. Sentenced to banishment north of the district of the Amur, the unfortunate man was in despair, sobbed like a child and beat his head against the wall.
"Never, never again shall I see my beloved Maria!" he cried, almost beside himself.
When only three days remained before he was to start his long, despairing journey, he was called to the warden's office. As he entered, he stopped, swayed for a second and swooned. Returning to consciousness, he saw above him the tear-stained but happy face of his betrothed, who had searched for him everywhere and had now finally discovered and joined him. On the following day the orthodox priest came to the prison and there, before the circle of the condemned, married this Spartan daughter of the rich merchant to the man who had been deprived of his rights as a citizen and banished to the tundras. Through her marriage with Feklin she lost by her own free will her citizen rights as well and assumed with him the life of banishment, whose full measure of denial and deprivation has never been sensed by anyone that has not spent years in those north Siberian wastes.
They began their wedding journey in a prison car that was to take them eastward, then up over the Ussuri line to Habarovsk, from where, by wagon and on foot, they were to travel to the wild, solitary spot in the Far North which the tribunal of justice had selected for their home. There among the marshes and the forests which rotted in them they were to build their nest and raise their brood to the life which their foster-mother, this Lady Justice, chose for them.
Though their love was powerful and pure and could surely live down the greatest hardships, might not sickness and the all-searching cold of the north invade their poorly built shelter and extinguish their fire and with it the life of these two burning human souls? For a long time the prison could not forget Feklin and his Maria. Often, when the wind roared and blew driving snow against the prison windows, one of the prisoners would sigh and ask with evident emotion in his voice:
"Well, what about Alexei and Maria? Are they still alive?" No answer was possible to this heart-stirring question.