We parted quite amicably; and I took it that informal permission not to wear our fetters had been conceded. It was not so easy to get dispensation from having our heads shaved; yet that we also achieved. According to rule, half the head should have been shaved every month; and there was no getting out of this save by a downright refusal to submit. This we accordingly made; and the barber reported it to the governor, who sent for us to come to him singly.
“What do you want me to do now?” said the good-humoured old man to me.
“Simply to report to the Governor of Moscow that such and such prisoners refuse to let their heads be shaved, and declare that they will offer determined resistance if forced. We have nothing against you,” I continued, “but this is our only way of appealing publicly against barbarous and humiliating usage.”
Whether he transmitted our protest I do not know; but anyhow, we were not again asked to undergo this degrading process until the end of our stay in this prison.
Russian prison regulations provide that prisoners belonging to the different categories shall be treated differently: the “administrative exiles” less severely than those banished to Siberia after a regular trial; and the latter again somewhat better than those condemned to penal servitude. But by the end of a month or two we had so contrived that this gradation was no longer apparent. We hard-labour prisoners only differed from the other “politicals” in having to wear the convict dress, and in not being allowed—as they were—to see our ladies, who were imprisoned in their own special tower. These interviews were only permitted to them when those who wished to meet were related, married, or betrothed to each other. But this was soon arranged. Various couples had an understanding on the subject, and addressed simultaneous petitions to the Governor of Moscow, asking to be allowed interviews with each other, as they were betrothed. In most cases this was a purely fictitious engagement, as the staff very well knew, and was only designed to vary the monotony of prison life; but not seldom the pretence led to a veritable attachment, as may easily be imagined. These were mostly young people of from eighteen to eight-and-twenty, and the nature of their surroundings shed a romantic glamour over their intercourse. The young pair met in the office of the prison, a dreary apartment with grated windows; and every word was listened to by an official. Prison life lent a poetical and spiritualised expression to their features, and there was much to awaken mutual interest and compassion. Sometimes this affection remained purely platonic; but in some cases an actual wedding was the upshot. Of course, in the latter event the young couple received the hearty sympathy of all their comrades, who also had personal reasons for rejoicing. The ceremony always took place in the prison chapel, and was a great occasion which pleasantly varied our dull existence.
Prisoners were allowed at intervals to receive visitors from outside. These also must be near relations, and often other friends and acquaintances gave themselves out as betrothed to such and such a prisoner in order to be allowed entry. It occasionally happened in this way that an awkward situation came about, if a young man or a girl appeared to be betrothed to two or more different people; but the solution was generally a satisfactory one in the end.
These visits were received in the office to which we had first been introduced, but the room on these occasions took on a very different appearance. The old captain sat in his place busy with his ledgers. By the door stood the inspector in full uniform, with revolver and cartridge-bag at his waist and his long sabre at his side; and round the walls would be grouped the prisoners with their visitors. The dim light falling through the grated windows shone on many a characteristic scene. All classes and ages were represented—young and old, men, women, and even children. Here would be a doctor or lawyer accompanied by his wife talking to their brother, a banished student. There an old peasant-woman, who had made the long journey by the Volga from some distant province to bid good-bye to her favourite son, would tell him the village news or bitterly lament her difficulty in living now he had been taken from her. Close by, the scions of a noble race—Prince Volhònsky and his princess—would be chatting with Malyòvany, his uncle; or Senator Shtshulèpnikov would sermonise his young daughter for having allowed herself to be drawn into the revolutionary movement, whereby she had now to suffer the penalty of exile to Siberia. All around would be the babble of voices—condolences, arguments, gossip, even jokes. One woman would furtively wipe away a tear as she bowed a grief-stricken head; while another would break into uncontrollable sobbing, because the sight of some beloved face now pale and haggard from long confinement and anxiety had robbed her of self-command. As everywhere else throughout the world, laughter and weeping, hope and despair, went side by side; only here in prison emotion is more openly avowed, ceremony more easily dispensed with, and franker expression given to the feelings. Those who here sought out their friends or relatives speedily got acquainted with one another and with all the prisoners whom they were accustomed to see. Among the “politicals,” as Socialists, there are no distinctions of rank or privilege; and the prison atmosphere soon exercised its levelling influence on all, and bound together members of every class with the common tie of sorrow and sympathy. Once only was the rule broken, and the announcement of a visitor’s name and position fixed all eyes upon him.
A grey-headed man in the garb of the Russian lower middle-class—a long kaftan and broad girdle—had entered the room.
“Whom do you want?” asked the captain, looking up from his books.