[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.
§9
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 for Platonic perambulations. 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.”