As soon as we were alone he began giving me a very prolix account of all his experiences, and then suddenly asked me point-blank if I were not really the famous Degàiev.[[21]]
I could not help laughing heartily: the assiduous friendliness of this worthy, who, as a matter of fact, was always looking out for his own advancement, appeared now in quite a new light. Apart from the fact that (as I heard afterwards from the policemen in my cell) he drew a considerable profit, not only from my food, but even on the books he got me, he also had his eye on the reward he would receive if he could induce me to confess to being Degàiev. The Russian Government had put a price of 10,000 roubles on that man’s head, and his name was in every European newspaper.
I stayed in this prison until nightfall, when I was fetched away by three policemen in plain clothes. Every time that my guards were changed I was searched, but nothing was found. Before starting on our journey, the Frankfort police put chains on me, not heavy or thick, and quite inconspicuous, as they were attached under my clothes; but they hindered any quick movement, and of course made running impossible. I protested vehemently against this indignity; but they declared they had received special instructions, and had no choice in the matter, so I had to submit. Even this was not their final precaution. When we passed on to the railway platform, one man, a giant in stature, took me by the arm in a friendly way; another went a few steps in front, and the third came a little behind, so that we must have appeared to the uninitiated like a trio of boon companions. We installed ourselves in a carriage among the ordinary travellers, and it probably never dawned on any of them that they were sitting cheek by jowl with a fettered prisoner. I could not help thinking of the proverb used by our Russian peasants to describe German ingenuity:—“The Germans are too clever for anything; they’ve even invented apes!” I must say that my guardians behaved very civilly to me, although with formal strictness. So far as their orders permitted, they showed me many little kindnesses. In the Begleitschein with which I was given into their custody I was entered as “the so-called Bulìgin,” and by this name I went until I was handed over to the Russians.
There was no thinking of escape on this journey. My escort never let me out of their sight for a second, never stirred from my side, and watched my slightest movements. They did not enter into conversation with me, nor had I any inclination to gossip with them. I felt heavy at heart, enervated, and exhausted. My mind seemed dormant, nothing attracted my attention during the whole journey; I seemed to hear and see nothing that went on around me, but to lie wrapped in a dreary apathy. “What must be must be,” I said to myself, if a thought of the future arose. Reaction had set in after the painful excitement of the last days in Freiburg.
The following day we arrived in Berlin, where I was at once taken to prison. Which prison it was I do not know, but I remember what a gloomy impression it produced upon me. The dark cell, (into which no direct light could penetrate owing to the high wall opposite the window,) and the sour-faced warders, who never seemed to look one straight in the eyes, forced on me the thought that people who were compelled to inhabit this place for long were much to be pitied. I have made acquaintance with many prisons, both in Russia and Western Europe, but never felt so thoroughly despondent as in this Berlin gaol. Everything seemed intended to make one feel: “You are in Berlin, the capital of military Prussia, where inflexible rule and iron discipline are the watchwords applying to the smallest detail.”
The policemen who had brought me from Frankfort never left me alone even in my prison cell, keeping watch over me by turns. And I must say that I was glad of this. Their company was not exactly enlivening, but the presence of another human being mitigated the dreariness of the prison atmosphere. Fortunately I was not detained here long, and I was truly thankful when evening came, and I was once more on my travels, attended by the same escort. Next morning we were in Russia.
The frontier station where I was to be delivered over to the Russian authorities is called Granitza, a place where three empires meet—Germany, Austria, and Russia. As I was to be taken straight on to Petersburg, this was a very roundabout way to have come, and I suppose it must have been chosen from fear of a rescue being attempted at the frontier. This is the more likely, as shortly before the Polish Socialist, Stanislas Mendelssohn, had—aided by his friends—escaped from the Prussian police at another frontier station (Alexandrovo, I think), just as his surrender to the Russians was to be effected. He got safe through to Switzerland.
I remember my sensations well. It was a lovely May morning, and the sunshine gave me renewed strength. I had scarcely descended from the train with my German guards, when I was surrounded by a crowd of Russian gendarmes.
“Good morning, Deutsch! good morning, sir! Here you are at last! We have been expecting you for ever so long!” were their greetings. I saw round me the fresh, smiling faces of young Russian peasant lads, surmounting the hated dark blue uniform. Their free, familiar bearing made me smile back at them as if old friends were welcoming me.
“How do you know me?” I asked them, as we went towards the gendarmes’ quarters.