With a sigh of impatience, the doctor rinsed off the tongue depressor and asked what the devil I wanted. The voice was startlingly familiar. Provoked by my silence, he turned around. For a moment, we stared at each other. I said, not very pleasantly, “Are you also The King of Doctors?”
My friend’s, or former friend’s, face had already brazened out its look of embarrassment. Without a word of apology, he assured me, “I did actually have some medical training. In fact, I might still, one day, go back and finish my studies. There’s something fascinating about medicine, don’t you think?”
I ignored his question. “How did you convince them?”
He laughed. “They had a doctor, but he came down with the cholera and they needed someone right away. To take care of the guards, not the prisoners. Eventually, they’re bound to find me out. But meanwhile, I have a bed to myself, and there’s plenty of food.”
“Do you need an orderly?” I asked half-jokingly.
“I have one. In fact, he knows more about medicine than I do. But I keep him so busy, he doesn’t have time to notice.”
My friend painted some fiery stuff over the teeth marks in my hand. He then stuffed several biscuits into my pocket, and swore to me, once again, that he would not escape without me.
Chapter 22: Gold Mine at the End of the Earth
Days later, our barge docked, again. While guards shouted, we staggered down the gangplank under a rusty sun, our legs struggling to adjust to a ground no longer moving. Unlike the previous barge cruise, after which we were relieved to be on solid ground, what awaited us this time would make us regret not having fully appreciated our previous voyage.
We were immediately formed into a konvoi and told to start walking. Before us lay a six-month trek. Provided that we walked briskly and avoided dying on the way.
It was clear that my new boots would not last through the winter. Not unless, like the old-timers, I walked barefoot. At least until the road iced over. So I slept with the boots under my head, and advised Pyavka to do the same. He gave me the pitying smile of a man who had no plans to winter in Siberia.
For days and weeks, and still more days, we trudged toward an unchanging horizon. Some of us had learned to walk with our eyes closed, asleep from the waist up, until we stumbled and fell upon our faces, to the great merriment of those who lacked this useful talent.
It was August, or maybe September, when we lurched to a halt near an old Cossack settlement. At such rest stops, women often came to the road with baskets of bread, milk, fish pies, and even eggs, sometimes for money, sometimes out of pure charity. This time we were disappointed. Even the women who ordinarily worked the fields were nowhere in sight.
But shortly after nightfall, a handful of our guards came back from the village with the news that, for those who still had money, ‘arrangements’ could be made for female companionship.
Although by now I was hardened to depravity, the only thing that shocked me was that the money went not to the women but to their husbands.
Midnight came and went without a sign of the expected visitors. Some of the men began voicing ugly suspicions. In response, we heard the nervous click of bolts, as our guards made sure each rifle had a bullet ready in its chamber. All, however, was instantly forgiven at the cry, “They're coming!”
Men jumped and rushed to the road to observe the shy approach of a remarkably small woman. On closer inspection, she turned out to be a goat.
In the morning, the cheated prisoners complained bitterly to their procurers who, for their part, insisted heatedly that the women did show up. “But when they saw how many of you were waiting, they got frightened and ran away. So you see it’s entirely your own fault.”
To avert an outright mutiny, our commandant agreed to let us rest there one more night. Some of the men demanded their money back. This, they were told, was impossible, because the Cossack husbands had drunk it all up.
But one of the guards shrewdly guessed that Pyavka still had some money. He took him aside and offered, for a mere ten rubles, to furnish him with the exclusive use of a “beautiful young Cossack maiden.”
While Pyavka weighed this proposition with the solemnity he might once have devoted to, say, a cartload of smuggled tobacco, I took the liberty of reminding him, with all possible tact, of the heartbroken wife he had told me awaited him in Warsaw.
Pyavka’s wintry expression made it clear that I had overstepped myself. No man ever had a wife so loyal, so devoted, he confirmed angrily. “A woman who is more angel than mortal. And yet, the fact is, she and my lawyer control all of my bank accounts. And women, after all, being weak creatures and easily misled, and in a city like Warsaw, where temptation springs from the very cracks in the pavement, who could truly say. . .?”
Overcome with emotion, he covered his eyes for a moment. Then looked around for the guard to hear more details. Rebuffed in my appeal to his finer feelings, I addressed myself to his commercial sense, pointing out that, as any worldly person knew, ten rubles was well above the going rate for a “young Cossack maiden,” even in an expensive city like Petersburg. Besides, “Tomorrow we’ll be moving on. So if they don’t come through tonight, you know what they say in Warsaw: ‘No refund on perishable goods.’”
Being, essentially, a capitalist, Pyavka took this to heart. He told the guard that for the fee he was charging, the only acceptable terms were cash on delivery. This so deeply affronted our intermediary that he turned his back on us, muttering indignantly about tight-fisted Jews.
Around midnight, there was a fresh uproar. Some prisoners had managed to slip their fetters and run away. Or more likely, had gone to the village to collect, by force, what they felt was owed to them.
Awakened, our Commander flew into a rage and concluded that he had been too lenient with us. Orders were shouted for us to line up and, in utter darkness, continue our march.
By the time we were ready to move out, all but one of the escapees had returned from the village, some with scratched and bloodied faces, but mostly looking well pleased with themselves.
This, however, did not settle the matter. Cossack discipline demanded that for the one prisoner still missing, one of our guards was to be held responsible. His punishment consisted of having his horse taken from him. While this may not seem very tragic, a Cossack’s horse was more precious than his wife. To be ‘unhorsed’ was the height of humiliation. Indeed, when a thief was caught stealing a Cossack’s horse, even women and children participated in his execution.
Our escort of 55 Cossacks was compelled now to ride on 54 horses. We prisoners walked with carefully averted faces. It was obvious that our guardians were only itching for their chance to settle accounts.
Before the night was out, one convict, unable to resist the same fatal curiosity as Lot’s wife, turned his head to see which of the guards was traveling on foot. For this, he got a bullet in the back, and was left unburied by the side of the road. This made a distinct impression on the rest of us.
Our commandant obliged us to walk all that night and halfway through the next morning with no break even to relieve our bladders. Yet, having seen a man shot just for looking behind him, no one breathed a word of protest. We could hope only that, sooner or later, the horses would need a rest.
Around midmorning, a general in a coach descended upon us in a cloud of red dust. We lurched to a halt, and then turned, finally permitted to urinate. Every last one of us collapsed where he stood, not even troubling to choose a dry spot.
Puzzled by our quaint manner of greeting him, the general questioned our commanding officer, who assured him fervently that everything was in perfect order. None of us was insane enough to contradict him.
The general strolled past our row of sprawling bodies and demanded to know how we were. No one said a word. Impatiently, the general ordered us to rise to attention. He marched up and down once more, looked deep into our faces and insisted that we tell him, truthfully, how we felt.
Dead silence.
He asked me how I felt. I tossed him a vigorous salute and answered, as he expected, “Very well, your nobility.”
Pleased with my intelligent response, the general asked me to translate his words into Polish, as follows: “Brothers, you are indeed prisoners. But you still remain the beloved children of your Little Father, the Czar. And I demand to know whether you are receiving adequate food at least once a day.”
Still no one opened his mouth. The general glowered at me, and I sweated with remorse at having volunteered.
“I see by your posture you were once a soldier.” I admitted as much. “Then you know what happens to a man who fails to respond to a direct question from a superior officer.”
I assured him vigorously that I did, indeed. But I also knew, if I answered truthfully, what would happen to me after he left.
At this, the general, beet-faced, summoned our commandant and warned him that he would hold him personally responsible for my safety.
Our terrified commandant insisted that all of us, not just I, alone, were free to speak our minds. But I didn’t see anyone else jump forward to take him up on this offer.
The general looked at me as though all this were my fault. And so, standing at strict attention, I reported to him that one of our group was shot during the night. And for all I knew, his body still lay where it fell.
I said, “Either we are all under sentence of death, or we are not. And if we’re not, does any guard have the right to kill a man merely for turning his head?”
Having heard me out with some impatience, the general confronted our guards and demanded, in a terrible voice, to know precisely what had happened.
They assured him, to a man, that the only rifle discharged during the night had fired no more than a warning shot over our heads to frighten some prisoners poised to run away. If anyone was actually struck by this errant bullet, of which there was not the slightest proof, it was his fellow convicts who were guilty of not having reported it until now.
Not being a total fool, the general demanded a head count. For two long hours, we stood in a ragged line while his Adjutant checked off each name against the roster. Nearly ten percent of the names on the list were unaccounted for. All of us, prisoners and guards alike, professed to be mystified.
Pyavka singed me with a look of reproach. Why, his eyes demanded, had he been such a fool as to listen to me, a man habituated to slavish, soldierly obedience, when he should long ago have realized how easy it was to run away?
The general sent an aide back to where I told him the body had been left. I could only hope that the villagers had not, with unaccustomed neatness, already buried it.
Some hours later, the aide returned. He carried a bloodless corpse lashed down in front of his saddle. The victim was someone who, from my perspective, fully deserved to come to a bad end. But given a choice, I would have preferred to settle our differences with my own hands.
At the sight of the body, hardened murderers wept rivers of tears. Even the general dabbed at his eyes. An immediate investigation was ordered to identify the killer. Too late. A shot echoed from the nearby woods, and the guards followed the sound. Presently, they produced what was left of the guilty party – one of their fellow guards. Clearly familiar with Czarist justice, the shooter had decided to cheat his own fate.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, this investigation had so distracted our general that he drove off in his coach without ever finding out whether we received enough to eat.
Pyavka no longer spoke of escape. In fact, he hardly spoke at all. Over the weeks, his lordly personality had leaked out of him, like straw from an old mattress. In the words of the Psalmist, the water had reached the edge of his soul. Even his once-majestic features had shrunk to little more than a freestanding nose with barely enough room around the edges for a haunted pair of pinpoint eyes, and a wormhole of a mouth that expanded only at feeding time. While once he had treated me as a disciple on whom he might deign, out of sheer caprice, to shower a few crumbs of royal benevolence, he now clung to me like a child to his mother’s skirt.
We came to a place with a more permanent look. It was, in fact, less a camp than the kind of log-walled “fort” seen in a Western film beset by the flaming arrows of encircling Indians. Most of my fellow criminals assumed, with great joy, that we had reached our destination, and eagerly agreed that “Siberia” was not nearly as bad as they had feared.
For those of a trusting nature, the fort even boasted a charlatan in a medical coat who was prepared, for a modest price, to paint a few strokes of foul-smelling ointment on the ulcerous sores caused by our leg irons. He was also available to perform surgery and cut hair.
While Pyavka darted like a crab in all directions, gathering crumbs of information on where we were and how far it was to the railroad – assuming one managed to escape – I, like any soldier, concentrated on being first in line at the cookhouse.
The sludge ladled into our bowls had a raw green color that, for the next two days, was reflected in our urine.
My belly filled and warmed, never mind with what, I found a sheltered space and devoted myself to some serious sleeping.
Agitated, Pyavka shook my shoulders. He had just learned what most of us knew from the day we arrived. Where we were was simply another transit camp. Our final destination was a gold mine in the “real” Siberia, a walk of three or four months which, by my calculations, should get us there at a fairly cold time of year, a season when daylight lasted about as long as a cigarette.
Why did I need to be awakened with this wonderful news? “It means I don’t have much time,” Pyavka confided rather more loudly than necessary. “The guards here can still be bribed with money. At the mine, they will accept nothing but gold, and I’ll be left with a pocketful of worthless rubles.”
Still scraping the sleep out of my eyes, I tried, but failed, to follow his reasoning.
“Don’t you understand? My only hope is to escape now while my money is still worth something.”
“And then what?”
“I’m trying to tell you. From here it’s only a five-day walk to the railroad.”
I was interested, but not excited. And even less so, when Pyavka, with a smirk of pride, disclosed that he had already made a deal: “One hundred rubles to let out twenty men, each with a loaf of bread and a bottle of water.”
My jaw dropped. Having walked and slept at this man’s side for the past ten or twelve weeks, I couldn’t imagine when he had suddenly acquired eighteen other intimate friends. And what mad excess of generosity was it that moved him to treat a pack of cutthroats and bandits to the honor of taking part in an escape that might be a little bit conspicuous?
He waited patiently for me to ask, “Why twenty?”
“In a mass escape, the commandant, himself, is held accountable. Which will make him eager to cover up the whole business.”
“And the other guards will just sit there and scratch themselves?”
“Oh, they’ll come after us all right. And Heaven help anyone they catch.”
“But you believe you can outrun them. Chains and all? You can outrun Cossacks on horseback?”
“I’ve taken care of that, too,” he said, testy at what he took to be my unceasing tendency to find fault. Pyavka then favored me with his most irritating smile. “Haven’t you ever wondered why, all along, someone didn’t simply kill me and take all my money?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“It’s because they know about you.”
“Me?” My heart did a hop and a skip. “What do they know about me?”
“Only that you were a famous terrorist whom I employ as my bodyguard. And that you are so devoted to me, you would give your life to keep me from harm.”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “So any time they
want to rob you, all they have to do is kill me, first.”
“No one needs to kill anyone. I told you; it’s all fixed. The guard is even drawing us a map of how to get to the railroad.”
He had not, in so many words, invited me to take part in this mad excursion of his. Nor was I at all sure I would accept. But it crushed my spirits to know that the man had, entirely on his own, made these dangerous plans. And used my name to frighten people.
I was not, by nature, what you would call a pessimist. But I could suddenly think of a million obstacles. To begin with: “A five-day walk with shackles on your legs? Just how far do you think you will get? The guards will take your money and open the gates. And then they’ll sit and laugh until you all come limping back, begging to be let in.”
“You think I haven’t thought of that?”
The Accidental Anarchist Page 20