§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 350 roubles.
“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!