I have already spoken of Kulikov. He was no longer a young man, but passionate, strong, of great vitality, with extraordinary and varied abilities. There was strength in him, and he still wanted to live; such people keep this wish to live into deep old age. And if I should start wondering why none of us tried to escape, then Kulikov would naturally be one of the first I would wonder about. But Kulikov did try. Who had more influence on whom, A—v on Kulikov or Kulikov on A—v, I don’t know, but they were worthy of each other and were mutually suited to this affair. They became friends. I believe Kulikov counted on A—v to prepare the passports. A—v was a nobleman, from good society—that promised a certain diversity in their future adventures, once they made it back to Russia. Who knows how they arranged things and what their hopes were; but their hopes certainly went beyond the usual routine of Siberian vagrancy. Kulikov was a born actor, he had many different roles to choose from in life; he could hope for many things, at least for diversity. Prison must be oppressive for such people. They arranged to escape.
But it was impossible to escape without a convoy soldier. They had to persuade a convoy soldier to join them. There was a Pole serving in one of the battalions stationed in our fortress, an energetic man and perhaps deserving of a better lot, a man already on in years, trim, serious. In his youth, having only just come to serve in Siberia, he had deserted out of a deep longing for his native land. He was caught, punished, and spent two years in the penal companies. When they sent him back to the ranks, he thought better of it and began to serve zealously, with all his might. For distinguished service he was made a corporal. He was an ambitious, self-confident man, and knew his own worth. He looked, he spoke like a man who knew his own worth. During those years I met him several times among our convoy soldiers. The Poles told me a thing or two about him as well. It seemed to me that the former longing had turned into a concealed, smoldering, perpetual hatred in him. This was a man capable of anything, and Kulikov was not mistaken in choosing him as a comrade. His name was Koller. They made arrangements and fixed the day. It was in the month of June, in the hot days. The climate in that town was rather steady; in summer the weather was invariably hot, and that played into the hands of tramps. Naturally, they could not set out straight from the fortress: the whole town stands in the open, exposed on all sides. There is no forest for a great distance around. They had to change into ordinary clothes, and for that they had to get to the outskirts, where Kulikov had long had a hideout. I don’t know if their friends on the outskirts were in on the secret. It must be supposed that they were, though later on, during the trial, that was not fully explained. That year in one corner of the outskirts a young and quite comely girl nicknamed Vanka-Tanka, who showed great promise and later partly fulfilled it, was just beginning her career. She was also called “Fire.” It seems she played a certain part here. Kulikov had been bankrupting himself on her for a whole year. Our lads came out to the morning roll call and deftly arranged to be sent with the prisoner Shilkin, a stove maker and plasterer, to plaster some empty battalion barracks, which the soldiers had long since left for the camps. A—v and Kulikov went with him as porters. Koller turned up as convoy, and since two convoy soldiers were needed for three prisoners, Koller, as a veteran and corporal, was readily entrusted with a young recruit to be trained and instructed in convoy duties. Which means that our jailbreakers had a very strong influence on Koller and gained his trust, since after many years of service and some success recently, he, an intelligent, solid, prudent man, decided to follow them.
They came to the barracks. It was six o’clock in the morning. There was nobody there besides them. After working for about an hour, Kulikov and A—v told Shilkin they were going to the workshop, first, to see someone, and, second, at the same time to pick up some tool they turned out to be lacking. Shilkin had to be handled cleverly, that is, as naturally as possible. He was a Muscovite, a stove maker by profession, from Moscow tradesmen, cunning, devious, intelligent, taciturn. Outwardly he was frail and haggard. He should have gone around all the time in a waistcoat and dressing gown, Moscow style, but fate had worked otherwise, and after long wanderings he had settled with us permanently in the special section, that is, in the category of the most terrible military criminals. How he earned such a career I don’t know; but I never noticed any particular displeasure in him; he always behaved himself peaceably and steadily; only he occasionally got drunk as a cobbler, but then, too, he behaved well. He was not, of course, in on the secret, but he had sharp eyes. Needless to say, Kulikov winked at him, meaning they were going to get vodka stashed away in the workshop the day before. Shilkin was touched by that; he parted with them without any suspicions and remained alone with the recruit, while Kulikov, A—v, and Koller went to the outskirts.
Half an hour went by; the absent men did not come back, and Shilkin, suddenly realizing it, fell to thinking. The fellow had gone through hell and high water. He began to recollect: Kulikov had seemed to be in a special mood, A—v had seemed to exchange whispers with him twice, Kulikov had at least winked at him a couple of times, he had seen that; now he remembered it all. In Koller, too, he had noticed something: at least, as he was leaving with them, he began giving instructions to the recruit on how to behave in his absence, and that had somehow been not entirely natural, at least from Koller. In short, the more Shilkin remembered, the more suspicious he became. Meanwhile, time was passing, the men did not come back, and his uneasiness reached the utmost limits. He realized very well how much at risk he was in this affair: the authorities might turn their suspicions on him. They might think he had knowingly allowed his comrades to leave, by mutual arrangement, and if he were slow to report the disappearance of Kulikov and A—v, those suspicions would be still more justified. There was no time to lose. Then he remembered that Kulikov and A—v had become somehow especially close lately, had often whispered together, had often walked behind the barracks, away from all eyes. He remembered that even then he had already thought something about them … He looked searchingly at his convoy; the soldier yawned, leaning on his gun, and picked his nose in the most innocent way, so that Shilkin did not deign to impart his thoughts to him, but simply told him to follow him to the engineering workshop. In the workshop they had to inquire whether the men had come there. It turned out that no one there had seen them. All of Shilkin’s doubts were dispelled: “They might simply have gone to drink and carouse in the outskirts, which Kulikov sometimes did,” Shilkin thought, “but here even that can’t be so. They would have told me, because there was no point in concealing it from me.” Shilkin dropped his work and, without stopping at the barracks, went straight to the prison.
It was already nearly nine o’clock when he appeared before the master sergeant and told him what was going on. The master sergeant got scared and even refused to believe it at first. Naturally, Shilkin told it all to him only in the form of a surmise, a suspicion. The master sergeant rushed straight to the major. The major rushed immediately to the commandant. Within a quarter of an hour all the necessary steps had been taken. It was reported to the governor-general himself. The criminals were important ones, and on account of them there might be a severe dressing-down from Petersburg. Rightly or not, A—v was reckoned a political prisoner; Kulikov was from the “special section,” that is, an archcriminal, and a military one to boot. There had never yet been an instance of anyone escaping from the special section. It was recalled, incidentally, that according to the rules each prisoner of the special section was supposed to have two convoy guards, or at least one each. This rule had not been observed. The affair thus proved to be an unpleasant one. Messengers were sent to all the townships, to all the surrounding areas, to inform them about the escapees and leave their descriptions everywhere. Cossacks were sent to pursue them, to catch them; letters were written to the neighboring districts and provinces … In short, they were all panic-stricken.
Meanwhile, another sort of excitement began in the prison. The prisoners, as they came back
from work, learned at once what was happening. The news had already spread everywhere. Everyone took it with a sort of extraordinary, secret joy. Everyone’s heart leaped … Besides the fact that this incident disrupted the monotonous life of the prison and stirred up the anthill, an escape, and such an escape, echoed somehow intimately in every soul and touched long-forgotten strings; something like hope, daring, the possibility of changing their lot, stirred in all hearts. “So people can escape: why, then …?” And at this thought each man took courage and looked defiantly at the others. In any case they all suddenly became somehow proud and began to glance haughtily at the sergeants. Naturally, the authorities swooped down on the prison at once. The commandant himself came. The prisoners took courage and looked on boldly, even somewhat contemptuously, and with a sort of silent, stern gravity, as if to say: “We know how to handle things.” Needless to say, our men foresaw at once that there would be a general visit from the authorities. They also foresaw that there would certainly be searches, and everything was hidden beforehand. They knew that in such cases the authorities always become wise after the fact. And so it happened: there was great turmoil; they rummaged through everything, searched everywhere, and—found nothing, naturally. The prisoners were sent to their afternoon work under a reinforced convoy. In the evening, guards looked into the barracks every other minute; the people were counted up one more time than usual; in the process they miscounted twice more than usual. That led to more fuss: we were all driven out to the yard and counted over again. Then we were counted yet another time in the barracks … In short, there was a great fuss.
But the prisoners didn’t turn a hair. They all looked extremely independent and, as always happens in such cases, behaved themselves with extraordinary decorum all that evening, meaning: “There’s no finding fault with anything.” Needless to say, the authorities were thinking “Did the escapees not leave some accomplices behind in the prison?” and ordered the guards to keep their eyes and ears open. But the prisoners only laughed. “As if you’d leave accomplices behind in a job like that!” “A job like that is done on tiptoe, or not at all.” “And is Kulikov the kind, is A—v the kind, as not to hide all traces in such a job? It was masterfully done, no loose ends. These folk have gone through hell and high water; they can get through a locked door all right!” In short, Kulikov and A—v grew in fame; everybody was proud of them. The feeling was that their deed would go down to the furthermost generations of prisoners, outliving the prison itself.
“Masterful folk,” said some.
“See, people thought you couldn’t escape from here. But they escaped!…,” others added.
“Escaped, yes!” a third offered, looking around with some authority. “But who escaped?… The likes of you, was it?”
At another time, a prisoner to whom these words were addressed would certainly have responded to the challenge and defended his honor. But now he modestly kept silent. “In fact, not everybody’s like Kulikov and A—v; prove yourself first …”
“And really, brothers, what are we doing living here?” A fourth, modestly sitting by the kitchen window, broke the silence, speaking in a slight singsong from some sort of limp but secretly self-satisfied feeling, propping his cheek in his palm. “What are we here? We live, but we’re not people; we die, but we’re not dead men. E-ech!”
“The thing’s not a boot. You can’t kick it off. Why ‘e-ech’?”
“Yes, but Kulikov …,” one of the hotheads, a young greenhorn, tried to mix in.
“Kulikov!” another picked up at once, contemptuously narrowing his eyes at the greenhorn. “Kulikov!…”
By which he meant: How many Kulikovs are there?
“And A—v, too, brothers, he’s a slick one, oh, he’s a slick one!”
“You said it! He’ll wind Kulikov around his little finger. He’ll give ’em all the slip!”
“I’d like to know how far they’ve gone by now, brothers …”
And the conversation turned at once to how far they might have gone, and what direction they might have taken, and where it would be best for them to go, and what was the nearest township. There were people who knew the area. They were listened to with curiosity. They spoke of the inhabitants of the neighboring villages and decided that they were unreliable folk. They lived close to town, they knew what was what; they would not let the prisoners off, they would catch them and turn them in.
“The muzhiks here are a wicked bunch, brothers. O-o-oh, what muzhiks!”
“Untrustworthy folk!”
“Salt-eared Siberians.1 Keep away from them, they’ll kill you.”
“Well, but our lads …”
“Depends on who gets the upper hand. And there’s no flies on ours.”
“If we don’t die first, we’ll hear.”
“And what do you think? Will they catch them?”
“I think they’ll never catch them in their lives!” another hothead picks up, banging his fist on the table.
“Hm. Well, it all depends on what turn it takes.”
“And here’s what I think, brothers,” Skuratov puts in. “If I was a tramp, never in their lives would they take me!”
“You, hah!”
Some start laughing, others make a show of not wanting to listen. But Skuratov is already wound up.
“Never in their lives would they take me!” he goes on energetically. “I often think about it to myself, brothers, and marvel at myself: seems I’d just squeeze through a crack and wouldn’t be taken.”
“You’d most likely get hungry and go to the peasants for bread.”
General guffawing.
“For bread? Nonsense!”
“What are you wagging your tongue for? You and Uncle Vasya killed the cow’s death,*1 that’s what you came here for.”
The guffawing grows louder. The serious ones look still more indignant.
“That’s nonsense!” shouted Skuratov. “It’s Mikitka who blabbed about me, and not about me, but about Vaska, and I just got dragged into it. I’m a Muscovite and a well-tried tramp since childhood. A clerk, when he was teaching me to read, used to yank my ear and say: ‘Repeat after me: “Have mercy on me, God, according to Thy great mercy” and so on …’ And I’d repeat after him: ‘Have the police on me according to Thy mercy’ and so on … I’ve been acting like that ever since I was a kid.”
Everybody guffawed again. But that was just what Skuratov wanted. He couldn’t help playing the fool. They soon dropped him and took up the serious discussion again. It was mainly the old men and the knowledgeable ones who did the talking. The younger and humbler people were glad enough just to look on, and thrust their heads forward to listen. A large crowd gathered in the kitchen; naturally, there were no sergeants there; there would have been no talk in their presence. Among those who were especially pleased I noticed the Tatar Mametka, a short man with high cheekbones, an extremely comical figure. He spoke almost no Russian and understood almost nothing of what the others said, but he also thrust his head from behind the crowd and listened, listened with delight.
“So, Mametka, yakshi?”*2 Skuratov, rejected by all and having nothing to do, latched on to him.
“Yakshi, oh, yakshi!” Mametka babbled, becoming all animated, nodding his funny head at Skuratov. “Yakshi!”
“They won’t take them? Yok?”*3
“Yok, yok!” And Mametka started babbling again, this time waving his arms.
“Meaning yours lies, mine never tries, is that it?”
“It, it, yakshi!” Mametka agreed, nodding his head.
“Well, so, yakshi!”
And, smacking him on the hat and pulling it down over his eyes, Skuratov walked out of the kitchen in the merriest of spirits, leaving Mametka in some astonishment.
The strictness in the prison continued for a whole week, as did the intensifying pursuit and search in the vicinity. I don’t know how, but the inmates received at once and in detail all the news of the authorities’ maneuvers outside the prison. For
the first few days, all the news was in favor of the escapees: there was no trace of them, they had vanished, and that was all. Our people only chuckled. All worry about the fate of the escapees vanished. “They won’t find anything, they won’t take anybody!” they said smugly.
“Nothing left! Off like a shot!”
“Bye-bye, don’t cry, back soon!”
We knew that all the local peasants were on their feet and were keeping watch on all the suspicious places, all the woods, all the ravines.
“Nonsense,” our people said, chuckling, “they must have somebody they’re staying with now.”
“No doubt about it!” said others. “Men like them prepare everything beforehand.”
They went further in their suppositions: they started saying that the escapees may have been sitting on the outskirts all along, waiting in some cellar until the “halarm” died down and their hair grew back. Live there half a year, a year, and then go away …
In short, everybody was even in a sort of romantic state of mind. Then suddenly, some eight days after the escape, a rumor went around that their trail had been found. Naturally, the absurd rumor was rejected at once with contempt. But that same evening the rumor was confirmed. The prisoners began to worry. The next morning there was talk in town that they had already been caught and were in transit. After dinner still more details were learned: they had been caught fifty miles away, in such-and-such village. Finally, precise news was received. The sergeant major, coming back from the major’s, announced positively that in the evening they would be brought straight to the prison guardhouse. Doubt was no longer possible. It is hard to describe the impression this news made on the prisoners. At first it was as if everybody became angry, then dejected. Then a certain tendency to mockery peeped through. They began to laugh, not at the pursuers now, but at the pursued—a few at first, then almost everybody, except for several serious and firm ones, who thought independently and could not be thrown off by mockery. They looked contemptuously at the light-minded masses and held their peace.
Notes from a Dead House Page 36