Chương Chương 23 · FREEDOM!

This incident occurred during my last year of imprisonment. My

recollection of what occurred this last year is as keen as of the events

of the first years; but I have gone into detail enough. In spite of my

impatience to be out, this year was the least trying of all the years I

spent there. I had now many friends and acquaintances among the

convicts, who had by this time made up their minds very much in my

favour. Many of them, indeed, had come to feel a sincere and genuine

affection for me. The soldier who was assigned to accompany my friend

and myself--simultaneously discharged--out of the prison, very nearly

cried when the time for leaving came. And when we were at last in full

freedom, staying in the rooms of the Government building placed at our

disposal for the month we still spent in the town, this man came nearly

every day to see us. But there were some men whom I could never soften

or win any regard from--God knows why--and who showed just the same hard

aversion for me at the last as at the first; something we could not get

over stood between us.

I had more indulgences during the last year. I found among the military

functionaries of our town old acquaintances, and even some old

schoolfellows, and the renewal of these relations helped me. Thanks to

them I got permission to have some money, to write to my family, and

even to have some books. For some years I had not had a single volume,

and words would fail to tell the strange, deep emotion and excitement

which the first book I read at the jail caused me. I began to devour it

at night, when the doors were closed, and read it till the break of day.

It was a number of a review, and it seemed to me like a messenger from

the other world. As I read, my life before the prison days seemed to

rise up before me in sharp definition, as of some existence independent

of my own, which another soul had had. Then I tried to get some clear

idea of my relation to current events and things; whether my arrears of

knowledge and experience were too great to make up; whether the men and

women out of doors had lived and gone through many things and great

during the time I was away from them; and great was my desire to

thoroughly understand what was _now_ going on, _now_ that I could know

something about it all at last. All the words I read were as palpable

things, which I wanted rather to feel sensibly than get mere meaning out

of; I tried to see more in the text than _could_ be there. I imagined

some mysterious meanings that _must_ be in them, and tried at every page

to see allusions to the past, with which my mind was familiar, whether

they were there or not; at every turn of the leaf I sought for traces of

what had deeply moved people before the days of my bondage; and deep was

my dejection when it was forced on my mind that a new state of things

had arisen; a new life, among my kind, which was alien to my knowledge

and my sentiments. I felt as if I was a straggler, left behind and lost

in the onward march of mankind.

Yes, there were indeed arrears, if the word is not too weak.

For the truth is, that another generation had come up, and I knew it

not, and it knew not me. At the foot of one article I saw the name of

one who had been dear to me; with what avidity I flung myself on _that_

paper! But the other names were nearly all new to me; new workers had

come upon the scene, and I was eager to know their doings and

themselves. It made me feel nearly desperate to have so few books, and

to know how hard it would be to get more. At an earlier date, in the old

Major’s time, it was a dangerous thing indeed to bring books into the

jail. If one was found when the whole place was searched, as was

regularly done, great was the disturbance, and no efforts were spared to

find out how they got in, and who had helped in the offence. I did not

want to be subjected to insulting scrutiny, and, if I had, it would have

been useless. I _had_ to live without books, and did, shut up in myself,

tormenting myself with many a question and problem on which I had no

means of throwing any light. But I can _never_ tell it all.

It was in winter that I came in, so in winter I was to leave, on the

anniversary-day. Oh, with what impatience did I look forward to the

thrice-blessed winter! How gladly did I see the summer die out, the

leaves turn yellow on the trees, the grass turn dry over the wide

steppe! Summer is gone at last! the winds of autumn howl and groan, the

first snow falls in whirling flakes. The winter, so long, long-prayed

for, is come, come at last. Oh, how the heart beats with the thought

that freedom was really, at last, at last, close at hand. Yet it was

strange, as the time of times, the day of days, grew nearer and nearer,

so did my soul grow quieter and quieter. I was annoyed at myself,

reproached myself even with being cold, indifferent. Many of the

convicts, as I met them in the court-yard when the day’s work was done,

used to get out, and talk with me to wish me joy.

“Ah, little Father Alexander Petrovitch, you’ll soon be out now! And

here you’ll leave us poor devils behind!”

“Well, Mertynof, have you long to wait still?” I asked the man who

spoke.

“I! Oh, good Lord, I’ve seven years of it yet to weary through.”

Then the man sighed with a far-away, wandering look, as if he was gazing

into those intolerable days to come.... Yes, many of my companions

congratulated me in a way that showed they really felt what they said. I

saw, too, that there was more disposition to meet me as man to man, they

drew nearer to me as I was to leave them; the halo of freedom began to

surround me, and caring for that they cared more for me. It was in this

spirit they bade me farewell.

K--schniski, a young Polish noble, a sweet and amiable person, was very

fond, about this time, of walking in the court-yard with me. The

stifling nights in the barracks did him much harm, so he tried his best

to keep his health by getting all the exercise and fresh air he could.

“I am looking forward impatiently to the day when _you_ will be set

free,” he said with a smile one day, “for when you go I shall _realise_

that I have just one year more of it to undergo.”

Need I say what I can yet not help saying, that freedom in idea always

seemed to us who were there something _more_ free than it ever can be in

reality? That was because our fancy was always dwelling upon it.

Prisoners always exaggerate when they think of freedom and look on a

free man; we did certainly; the poorest servant of one of the officers

there seemed a sort of king to us, everything we could imagine in a free

man, compared with ourselves at least; he had no irons on his limbs, his

head was not shaven, he could go where and when he liked, with no

soldiers to watch and escort him.

The day before I was set free, as night fell I went _for the last time_

all through and all round the prison. How many a thousand times had I

made the circuit of those palisades during those ten years! There, at

the rear of the barracks, had I gone to and fro during the whole of that

first year, a solitary, despairing man. I remember how I used to reckon

up the days I had still to pass there--thousands, thousands! God! how

long ago it seemed. There’s the corner where the poor prisoned eagle

wasted away; Petroff used often to come to me at that place. It seemed

as if the man would never leave my side now; he would place himself by

my side and walk along without ever saying a word, as though he knew all

my thoughts as well as myself, and there was always a strange,

inexplicable sort of wondering look on the man’s face.

How many a mental farewell did I take of the black, squared beams in our

barracks! Ah, me! How much joyless youth, how much strength for which

use there was none, was buried, lost in those walls!--youth and strength

of which the world might surely have made _some_ use. For I must speak

my thoughts as to this: the hapless fellows there were perhaps the

strongest, and, in one way or another, the most gifted of our people.

There was all that strength of body and of mind lost, hopelessly lost.

Whose fault is that?

Yes; whose fault _is_ that?

The next day, at an early hour, before the men were mustered for work, I

went through all the barracks to bid the men a last farewell. Many a

vigorous, horny hand was held out to me with right good-will. Some

grasped and shook my hand as though all their hearts went with the act;

but these were the more generous souls. Most of the poor fellows seemed

so much to feel that, for them, I was already a man changed by what was

coming, that they could feel scarce anything else. They knew that I had

friends in the town, that I was going away at once to _gentlemen_, that

I should sit at their table as their equal. This the poor fellows felt;

and, although they did their best as they took my hand, that hand could

not be the hand of an equal. No; I, too, was a gentleman now. Some

turned their backs on me, and made no reply to my parting words. I

think, too, that I saw looks of aversion on some faces.

The drum beat; all the convicts went to their work; and I was left to

myself. Souchiloff had got up before everybody that morning, and now set

himself tremblingly to the task of getting ready for me a last cup of

tea. Poor Souchiloff! How he cried when I gave him my clothes, my

shirts, my trouser-straps, and some money.

“’Tain’t that, ’tain’t that,” he said, and he bit his trembling lips,

“it’s that I am going to lose you, Alexander Petrovitch! What _shall_ I

do without you?”

There was Akim Akimitch, too; him, also, I bade farewell.

“Your turn to go will come soon, I pray,” said I.

“Ah, no! I shall remain here long, long, very long yet,” he just managed

to say, as he pressed my hand. I threw myself on his neck; we kissed.

Ten minutes after the convicts had gone out, my companion and myself

left the jail _for ever_. We went to the blacksmith’s shop, where our

irons were struck off. We had no armed escort, we went there attended by

a single sub-officer. It was convicts who struck off our irons in the

engineers’ workshop. I let them do it for my friend first, then went to

the anvil myself. The smiths made me turn round, seized my leg, and

stretched it on the anvil. Then they went about the business

methodically, as though they wanted to make a very neat job of it

indeed.

“The rivet, man, turn the rivet first,” I heard the master smith say;

“there, so, so. Now, a stroke of the hammer!”

The irons fell. I lifted them up. Some strange impulse made me long to

have them in my hands for one last time. I couldn’t realise that, only a

moment before, they had been on my limbs.

“Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!” said the convicts in their broken

voices; but they seemed pleased as they said it.

Yes, farewell!

Liberty! New life! Resurrection from the dead!

Unspeakable moment!

THE END

THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH

Note: On page 325, “the other two were the spy A----n” changed to

“the other two were the spy A--v”