A new post was offered to my husband. He had recently been nominated President of the Commission of Demarcation, and was obliged to start for Erzeroum, the capital of Anatolia. I felt a burning desire to see Sergy before his departure, and acting upon the impulse of the moment, for I am a person of prompt action, I rushed off to Kars at once, without stopping to think of the state of the roads or anything else; determined to brave all dangers, I felt adventurous enough to undertake this voyage through Asia.
It was five o’clock in the morning when I started on my journey in a hired carriage, accompanied by my faithful Helena. All the way was strewed with corpses of horses and camels. We encountered on our road bands of wandering Asiatic tribes very fierce-looking and armed from head to foot.
We reached Kars without any adventure whatever towards night. A crowd of red-fezzed Turks surrounded our carriage as soon as we arrived at the market-place, and stared at us in a rather hostile manner. We tried in vain to make ourselves understood and looked helplessly about us, when I suddenly perceived in the crowd Mr. Danilevski, a Russian officer whom I had known at Alexandropol. I greeted him with a radiant smile, for if he was not the rose, he had been near the rose. My heart was inclined to fail me when I asked for Sergy, and my discouragement was profound when Mr. Danilevski told me that my husband had already started for Erzeroum. Fate treated me with exasperating asperity, and his departure left me inconsolable; I wondered what on earth I should do with myself in Kars; fortunately Sergy had kept his lodging, and Mr. Danilevski proposed to escort us thither.
Our carriage stopped before a shabby little house, and we made our way up a dark and tortuous stairs to a room which had a dreary deserted appearance. A rickety table and two lame chairs formed almost all the furniture. The proprietor, an old Turk wearing an enormous white turban on his head, came in and welcomed me graciously, putting his hand to his heart and to his forehead. He offered me a little refreshment, which one of his wives brought in to me on a tray laden with all sorts of sweets; but what I wished for most at that moment was that my host would go away, for I was very weary and exhausted after the journey. When the old Turk had paid me all his oriental civilities and I had got rid of him, I lay down upon a mattress which had been spread on the floor, for there was no bed in the room, but nevertheless I was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow.
I woke up the next morning feeling very miserable, very desolate. Here I was alone in a land I knew not, among people whose language I could not speak.
How dark those days were! I wanted my husband so badly! oh, so very badly, and he was so desperately far away! In every letter Sergy announced his speedy return, and I was looking forward to the happy time that would unite us again. But he failed to arrive, and I felt myself the most forsaken and miserable of women. I was here within four walls, leading such a weary, grey life. I had nothing to fill up my time with and didn’t know what to do with myself all day, and was in such a state of melancholy that I wished myself dead a thousand times. And in these moments of wretchedness, except Helena, I had not a human being to speak to; I was all alone in my misery! The few Russian ladies staying at Kars saw everything through black spectacles, which irritated me, and I preferred to shut myself up in my room in order to escape from the great trial of their sympathy and condolences; I felt myself far better alone. The ticking of the clock and the wind in the chimney were the only sounds that broke the silence around me. I hadn’t talked for so long that I felt myself growing dumb. My life was made of nothing but privations; I reduced my own personal requirements to the strictest minimum: a plate of soup and gruel, that was our usual fare. Luckily a sort of torpor came over me which made me indifferent to my surroundings.
A long, heavy winter was drawing near. I felt the cold terribly; my broken window was stuffed up with paper instead of panes, of glass and the stove smoked atrociously, it was impossible to heat it on windy days.
Thus went day after day. At length a telegram came from Sergy. I was sure it was announcing his arrival and burst it open with a smile of triumph, but this smile very soon disappeared, for the telegram was an awful surprise, and shocked me dreadfully, saying that my husband was appointed governor-general of Erzeroum. For three weeks I had already lived this loathsome life and I had still many more weary weeks to pass before Sergy could return to me! What would I not give only to be able to go to him! Once the idea entered my mind, I communicated my wish to join him to Sergy, who treated the subject as an insane one, apprehending the state of the roads, quite impracticable in that season.
The epidemic of typhus that seemed softened down, broke out again, sweeping away whole villages. The death-list of my husband’s companions of arms swelled. I was present at the funeral service officiated over by General Goubski, a good friend of ours, and was very painfully impressed by it; all who stood by were dry-eyed, his servant only seemed somewhat afflicted. I returned home in a most depressed state of mind. As I entered my room I perceived on the flat roof of the house opposite my lodgings an unusual animation; there was a table in the middle surrounded by officers and soldiers; I was told that it was a public sale of all the articles that had belonged to an inhabitant of that house, a Cossack colonel who had just been carried away by the typhus. On the other side of the roof the clothes of the deceased officer were burnt on a wood-pile. At the sight of that my nerves utterly gave way, and I was seized more than ever with a strong desire to rejoin my husband. I was so awfully anxious knowing him to be in Erzeroum, where the disease was at its height, that I could endure the separation, the uncertainty, the suspense no longer. My pillow that night was all moistened with tears. I lay in the dark, save for the ghastly light of the smouldering fire on the opposite roof, with my pessimistic thoughts to keep me company; I turned my face to the wall and sobbed hot, miserable sobs until I fell into an uneasy slumber.
The next morning my mind was made up and I despatched a telegram to my husband, telling him that, come what might, I would start for Erzeroum. It was all to no purpose again; Sergy showed himself the most inexorable of husbands and wrote to me that I must listen to reason and wait patiently until his return after the ratification of the armistice. But I was not in a humour to listen to reason. “Wait patiently,” I cried out with unusual heat in myself, “Patience be hanged! I’ll go crazy if I don’t go to Sergy; I cannot possibly sit still and wait!”