The Governor-General stammered out a few sentences, the drift of which was that past events were irretrievable, and that he could not be held responsible for what had occurred in Kara.
It was a painful episode, and when Baron Korf had gone we returned to our cells in deep depression, feeling insulted and humiliated by the decision that we had just heard.
The day was to bring yet another excitement. The head warder, a certain Pohorukov, made the rounds as usual, accompanied by some gendarmes, and called the roll in the various rooms. I was in the corridor, meaning to go into my room along with the gendarmes; and Fomitchov also was in the corridor, standing by the door of his room. As one of the gendarmes was unlocking that door I suddenly saw something hurtle through the air, the sound of a frightful blow followed, and the head warder fell to the ground. The gendarmes instantly fled in panic, leaving the man lying unconscious on the floor; but I ran after them, calling to them not to be frightened, that they must come and help their injured companion. It was, however, some time before they could be persuaded to return.
I ought to mention here that Golubtsòv, the clever and tactful captain of the guard, of whom I spoke before, no longer held that post. When our hunger-strikes began he got himself transferred to the section for ordinary criminals, for he saw that the dispute with Masyukov was certain to cause trouble. The new captain of the guard was a stupid, cowardly fellow. When he at last recovered from his fright I managed to induce him to unlock the door of the room where Prybylyev, our physician, was, and the latter then had the wounded man carried into our “hospital” room, where he administered first aid. The head warder had received a severe blow on the head from some hard object, he was still unconscious, and it was difficult to know at first whether the wound was dangerous or not.
As the commandant was away in attendance on the Governor-General and would not return till next day, and as the head warder was hors de combat, we prisoners had to take command, the gendarmes, who had quite lost their heads, obeying our orders without hesitation. The first thing was to get the injured man conveyed to his own house, and Prybylyev had him carried thither on the bed as he was. Then something must be done with Fomitchov, who himself insisted on being removed from among us; so we made the captain of the guard install him in one of the single cells in the adjacent building.
Fomitchov’s act seemed absolutely inexplicable, the head warder being a quite insignificant, ordinary kind of person, about whom we had never troubled ourselves; and the only explanation that suggested itself to us was that, excited by the news we had just heard, Fomitchov must have suddenly lost his reason. For, being, as I have related, an eccentric devoted to monarchism, Fomitchov was the last person from whom such an attack on an official could have been expected, and the theory of madness seemed the more likely, as he had on one or two former occasions shown a tendency to paroxysms of rage. We were mistaken, however; next day he himself gave us the following elucidation of his motives.
Some months before, when Fomitchov was in the prison hospital, where Pohorukov was then steward, he had been witness of a shocking scene. Some ordinary criminals had been cleaning out the yard, and the steward, declaring that the work had not been done thoroughly enough, at once ordered the men to be flogged. The punishment was instantly administered, right under the window of Fomitchov’s cell. Indignation and disgust had naturally been kindled in Fomitchov’s bosom, and abhorrence of the man who could perpetrate such a barbarity; but it would hardly have occurred to him to attack Pohorukov without further cause. Now, however, when the Governor-General had just declared that we were to be put on an equal footing with the ordinary criminals as regards flogging, Fomitchov remembered how people could be subjected to that barbarous punishment by any stupid official for the merest trifle; he wished, therefore, he said, to avenge the deed he had witnessed, and at the same time to show what would be our proceedings if anyone ever attempted to apply such treatment to us.
Naturally we feared that the Governor-General might suppose Fomitchov’s assault to have been an act resolved on by us all, and committed with our sanction, in which case reprisals could not fail to be made; we lived, therefore, for several days in a state of excited expectancy. The doctor, meanwhile, pronounced Fomitchov to be suffering from a passing disturbance of mind, caused by learning of the new decree; fortunately, too, the injured man’s wound proved not to be mortal, and he recovered, only losing the hearing of one ear. The Governor-General was, I suppose, relieved to find that no more serious consequences had followed his announcement of the new order, and that may have made him take a lenient view of the case. Fomitchov was eventually placed under observation in the prison hospital, and his term of imprisonment was lengthened by two years as the penalty of his offence.
From the statement made by the Governor-General in response to Mirsky, we might conclude that none of us who had become entitled to leave prison for the penal settlement (that is, not less than twenty men) would be taken to Akatoui, and that therefore we should escape the severe régime there; but I personally could not believe that the hour of my release from prison was so near. My old experience at Freiburg had taught me how easily hopes may be falsified, and I repelled with energy every alluring vision, preferring rather to paint gloomy pictures of a future in prison among the criminal horde; and although the news soon reached us that we were indeed to be liberated—that a list had already been prepared of those persons who were entitled to leave—I could not trust myself to credit it. One day, however, quite unexpectedly, three of our number were released from prison—Luri, Rechnyevsky, and Souhòmlin, whose wives had followed them to Kara. Shortly after, Masyukov, accompanied by his newly appointed successor, Tominin, appeared one day in our prison, and informed us that seventeen others were to be liberated, my name figuring in the list.[[106]]
We packed up our belongings and took leave of our comrades, who were to go to Akatoui the next day; and the thought that our friends had before them such an increase of hardships damped our pleasure in attaining the long-desired semi-freedom. Beforehand we had pictured quite otherwise the joy of release and the scene of farewell. Now that the hour had struck it was hardly joy that I felt; on the contrary, I seemed almost to be quitting a home that had become dear to me. Not with heads uplifted, but sad and depressed, we bent our steps towards the door. The bolt flew back, and a larger company of men than had ever been seen to do so before on such an occasion left the prison for good. A trammelled and partial liberty lay before us; still, liberty it was.