After a six months’ interval Colonel Masyukov entered upon his office, in the winter of 1877, and made his first round of the prison, accompanied by Yakovlov. He was a man of short stature, with grey hair and moustache, very quick in his movements, despite his fifty years; he spoke in an unpleasant falsetto voice, and looked rather like a plucked chicken. His whole appearance betokened a weak and characterless disposition, as unluckily proved to be the case, both to his own and our misfortune. Intellectually limited, but good-tempered enough, Masyukov was quite unlike one’s idea of a staff officer of gendarmerie; indeed, he was in no way cut out for such a service, and knew this himself better than anyone. He had only joined the gendarmerie as a result of unforeseen circumstances. Son of a country gentleman, he had been for a time an officer in the Guards, afterwards returning to his estate, where he gave himself up to riotous living. The good dinners he gave were probably the reason of his being elected Marshal of Nobility for his district, and his subsequent dissipation led eventually to the ruin of his finances. To re-establish himself in some measure, and also, it was said, to discharge his debts of honour, he was obliged again to enter the service of the State, and he became an officer of gendarmes, induced by the higher pay given in that branch of the service, as compared with others of like standing, especially for those employed in the distant parts of Siberia. The Commandant of Kara was paid four to five thousand roubles per annum, with house, servants, horses, fuel, etc. As a late officer in the Guards and Marshal of Nobility, Masyukov was soon made colonel, and appointed to the vacant post at Kara. He himself declared afterwards that he had come with the honest intention of doing his best to better our lot; but hell is proverbially paved with good resolutions, and the political prisoners suffered more under this well-meaning bon vivant than under many a thorough-paced tyrant. But I will not anticipate.
During the early days of Masyukov’s rule we were able to rejoice in more than one concession. Besides the granting of our petition for a garden, the doors of our rooms were now hardly ever locked by day, and within the stockade surrounding the prison yard we could wander about as we pleased. In Nikolin’s time one of the rooms had always been empty, and for some reason or other he had refused to let us use it; now we were allowed possession of it, and also of the wing containing single cells, during the summer months. We thus had more space, and anyone who wished for solitude could be alone for a few hours at a time; our musicians, too, with their instruments of torture, could be sent where they disturbed no one.
Another relief was that the rule against the possession of tools was less strictly interpreted, and we were no longer obliged to conceal any work we had in hand. A vice and some other tools were procured, and our arts and crafts flourished exceedingly. Even an amateur photographer was discovered among us, and with the help of our carpenters set up a regular studio; but I cannot say that his performances were at all remarkable.
Masyukov did his best to meet our views, and fulfilled our requests whenever possible. Among other things he agreed that we might settle as we liked in what room each of us should live; so Stefanòvitch and I at once made use of this permission. Our two and a half years’ abode in the “Sanhedrin” had been very irksome to us both, and when the “great migration” caused by the above-mentioned expansion of our territory took place, we transferred ourselves into the room called the “Commune,” or sometimes “the hospital.” It was more comfortable than the other rooms in one or two particulars; it contained proper bedsteads, for instance, and besides the big table there were also little tables, one between each pair of beds.
It was, as a rule, unusual for the inmates of a room voluntarily to change their abode; we called the feeling about this “room-patriotism.” Such patriots were very keen about their own room, which was, of course, always “the best”; they never left their room-mates in the lurch, were proud of the success of any of them, and sorrowed over their griefs. The inmates of the “Commune” seemed the least possessed by this esprit de corps, perhaps because most of them were among those nomads who had already changed rooms more than once. Here, too, in contradistinction to the habits of the other rooms, each man was much occupied with his own affairs; we isolated ourselves more, and rarely held common debates or jollifications; most of us immersed ourselves in serious study, and on that account less noise and merriment went on among us.
One of the most interesting of our new room-mates, and an original altogether, was Leo Zlatopòlsky,[[94]] to whom I must devote a few words. He had studied in the Petersburg Technological Institute, had been concerned in the “Trial of the Twenty” in 1882, and sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude. He had never himself been an active revolutionist, but as he was proficient in mathematical and mechanical knowledge, he had helped the Terrorists in purely technical matters. Even as a student he had been looked on as an inventive genius, and in prison inventions became a mania with him. For a long time he was busy with the project of a circular town, wherein everything was to be run by electricity; and even plants were to be cultivated by that means, for the light and heat of the sun were much too simple affairs to satisfy our inventor. He had a scheme for a flying-machine that should not only carry us all up into aërial heights, but should also be unaffected by the velocity of our Mother Earth’s proper motion. Then he evolved his own theory of values; and beside all these high matters he would also occupy himself with the most prosaic and humble affairs, such as new methods of doing the washing, boiling potatoes, or making shoes. He elaborated a new theory of heating dwellings, invented new card games; in short, in every department of life, he was prepared to upset the existing condition of things and build it all up anew in some hitherto undreamt-of fashion. His beautiful plans, however, all suffered from one small disqualification: they were never practicable in real life. That, of course, he would never allow, declaring his inventions to be perfect and beyond criticism; but this did not prevent him from throwing one after another aside to pursue some fresh idea with equal energy. Not unnaturally he soon became the butt of everyone’s jokes, and most absurd stories were told about him. He was really a very capable and learned man; but there was just something wanting to make him a genius. Perhaps we were right in setting him down, as we did, among Lombroso’s “matoids.”
DULEMBA, KOHN, RECHNYEVSKY, LURI, MANKOVSKY
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