“Your husband, eh? How is he your husband if your name is Botchkareva?”
“By civil agreement, your Excellency.”
“We know these civil marriages,” he remarked scoffingly. “There are many like you in the streets,” and he dismissed my case. He said it in the hearing of a room full of people. My blood rushed to my face, and I was bitterly hurt. It was with difficulty that I got a card of admission to the prison, but how profound was my grief upon being informed that Yasha had spent there only one night and had been sent on to Irkutsk.
I had barely enough money with me to buy a fourth-class ticket to Irkutsk, and hardly any of the necessaries for a journey, but I did not hesitate to take the next train westward. It took three days to reach the Siberian capital. I stopped again with the Sementovskys, who were glad to welcome me. I made my way to the Irkutsk prison, only to discover that Yasha had been taken to the Central Distribution Prison at Alexandrovsk, two miles from the railway station of Usolye. There was little time to lose. I left the same day for Usolye, whence I had to walk to Alexandrovsk.
It was late in the autumn of 1912. I started out with little food, and was soon exhausted. It was not an easy task to get to Alexandrovsk. The road lay across a river and through an island, connected by ferries.
On the way I made the acquaintance of a woman, Avdotia Ivanovna Kitova, who was also bound for the prison. Her husband was there too, and she told me why. He was drunk when the dog-catcher came to take away his favourite dog, and he shot the dog-catcher; now he was sentenced to exile, and she had decided to go along with him, with her two children, who were in Irkutsk.
At the Central Prison I received another shock. I could not be admitted without a pass. I did not know that it was necessary to have a pass I declared. But the warden in charge, a wizened old man, with a flowing white beard, shouted angrily at me, “No! No! Get out of here. It’s against the law; you can’t be admitted. Go to Irkutsk and come back with a pass, and we will let you in.”
“But I have journeyed nearly seventy miles to see him,” I pleaded, in tears. “I am worn out and hungry. Allow me to see him just for five minutes—only five short minutes. Is there no mercy in your heart for a weak woman?”
With this I broke down and became hysterical. The harsh little warden, and his assistants in the office, became frightened. Yasha was brought in for a brief interview. The few minutes that we were allowed to pass in each other’s presence gave us new strength. He told me of his experiences, and I told him of mine, and we decided that I should go to the Governor-General, Kniazev, to entreat his mercy.
It was not till late evening that I started back to the railway station. I reached the river at dusk and managed to catch a ferry to the island. But it was dark when I landed there, and I lost my way trying to cross the island to the other ferry.