Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

by Michael Pearce

  Dmitri looked closely. Might she not have changed? And did he remember her that clearly? He had seen her only once and that for a short time. Once or twice he stopped. On each occasion the official asked the woman her name eagerly. The names were never Shumin.

  The official sent guards in to search the barracks. They returned unsuccessful.

  ‘I know what it is!’ said the official suddenly. ‘She’ll be in with the others.’

  He took Dmitri out of the stockade and into another one. There were three long huts, each crowded to overflowing, this time with women, children and men.

  ‘Families,’ said the official. ‘The women have chosen to go with the men.’

  ‘Chosen?’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Yes. When their husbands were exiled they decided to go with them. It’s not so bad out there, you know. At least, not in some parts. You’re not in actual prisons. You’re in settlements.’

  The air was foul, the children crying. It was exactly the same as the other huts he had seen. There were no partitions and there was the same long, common sleeping platform.

  The official asked the same question as before and received the same answer. He made them line up and got Dmitri to inspect them; with, however, the same result.

  ‘She couldn’t be with the men,’ said the official doubtfully.

  All the same, they went back to the main prison and into the men’s barracks.

  ‘Now, you bastards, you haven’t got any women in here, have you?’

  ‘If only we had!’

  He made them line up. Dmitri’s inspection this time was cursory. In these hard coarse faces there was no trace of Anna Semeonova.

  The official wasn’t looking at the prisoners anyway. He was turning over the coats left lying on the platform.

  ‘What are you looking for, then?’

  ‘Women.’

  There was a general guffaw.

  ‘You’ll be lucky!’

  He searched the piles of coats, though, with surprising thoroughness and then looked carefully under the platform.

  ‘Try the shit-tub!’ someone advised.

  Dmitri was glad to get out into the open air.

  ‘Feeling bad?’ said the official. ‘You get used to it.’

  He called some men from the kitchens and they sprayed Dmitri from heat to foot with dilute carbolic acid.

  ‘Just a precaution,’ said the official. ‘We’ve had a bit of an epidemic here.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Typhus.’

  The carbolic acid suddenly smelt fresh; almost agreeable.

  ‘What happens if people die?’ asked Dmitri.

  ‘We bury them.’

  ‘Anna Semeonova – Shumin, that is; could she have died?’

  ‘Not if she’s on the list.’

  However, back in the office he checked the lists, both the sick lists and the death lists. Shumin wasn’t on them.

  ‘They don’t usually die on the way out,’ said the official. ‘It’s later.’

  He pushed the papers away and sat thinking.

  ‘There’s the cells,’ he said doubtfully.

  He took Dmitri into the main building. It contained the Governor’s quarters, the kitchen, the hospital and the workshops, together with a number of separate cells. The cells were about ten feet by fifteen and housed from a dozen to thirty prisoners. The prisoners were different from the ones he had seen in the barracks. They were in ordinary, not convict, clothes. The prison official took off his hat when he went into one of the cells.

  ‘With politicals,’ he said, ‘you never know. They may get to be important.’

  ‘Shumin is a political,’ said Dmitri.

  In one of the cells a man was reading a book. It was dark in the cell and he was standing by the window holding the book up to the light. As they went into the cell he closed the book and came towards them.

  ‘Well, Kiril Maximovich,’ he said to the prison official, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘Have you got a woman in here, Grigori Yusupovich?’ said the official, half jokingly. They seemed on good terms.

  ‘A woman?’ The man seemed surprised. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Grigori!’ said another of the prisoners. ‘Don’t you know whether we’ve a woman here or not?’

  Grigori, slightly bewildered, returned to his reading.

  ‘No,’ said the other prisoner.

  ‘A prisoner can’t just disappear,’ said Dmitri. ‘Not from a place like Tiumen.’

  ‘Nor have they,’ said the Governor smoothly. There must have been an error in the papers.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the Convoy Administration that?’

  ‘What other explanation can there be?’

  ‘That you’ve lost her.’

  The martinet lips went thin.

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely. I think it far more likely that she never was here.’

  ‘The forms say she’s here,’ Dmitri pointed out.

  ‘Clerical error,’ said the martinet.

  ‘We have checked.’

  ‘Check again!’

  Dmitri felt his choler rising.

  ‘I think you should check again,’ he managed, however, with surprising mildness.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the Governor coldly. ‘The error plainly does not lie here.’

  Dmitri considered.

  ‘In fact,’ said the Governor, pressing home, ‘I suggest, young man, that you return to – where was it you said you came from? Kursk? – Kursk, and pursue your inquiries there.’

  ‘I probably will do so,’ said Dmitri meekly, ‘only I would like to be able, when I get there, to reassure Prince Dolgorukov – ’

  ‘Prince Dolgorukov?’

  ‘A friend of the girl’s family. As I was saying, I would like to be able to assure the Prince – ’

  This time all the women, in all the different parts of the prison, were being brought out for inspection. There were too many of them to line up in the yard of the women’s prison so they were being brought out on to the road that separated the women’s prison and the family prison from the men’s prison. The gates of the men’s prison were open for officials to pass to and fro, and a crowd of its inmates had gathered to observe the proceedings, held back by a row of guards.

  Dmitri hovered uncertainly. He had spent the morning in the office with some officials checking the prisoner lists. Yes, it appeared, Shumin’s name was in the general arrival list. No, it was not on any of the sick lists, nor, fortunately, on the list of the dead. The list of the transfers out? Some prisoners were transferred out most days, on their way to postings to towns and settlements and prisons in the more remote parts of Siberia.

  ‘She wouldn’t have been posted on as quickly as that,’ the officials assured him.

  Nevertheless, he checked the lists. No Shumin appeared; nor did anything – bearing in mind the misunderstanding that had arisen at Kursk over handwriting – that could conceivably have been taken for Shumin.

  There had been a roll call when the prisoners arrived. Shumin’s name was on that. It appeared, then, that she had definitely arrived; and that she had not departed.

  The officials, though, hesitated.

  The roll call on arrival, they said, was not, perhaps, as watertight as it might be. The prisoners had, after all, walked from Ekaterinburg. It had taken them several days, nearly a week, in fact, and on the way the convoy would have stretched out. The last stragglers would have arrived many hours after the first.

  Not only that; the sick, the pregnant and those fortunate enough to cadge a lift would have come on the carts, which would have arrived before any of the walkers. The consignment would not, therefore, have arrived together. They would have been ticked off on the list when they did arrive, but the roll call was not, the official pointed out, a roll call in the true sense.

  What was a roll call in the true sense? asked Dmitri. What they were having now: a parade at which e
veryone answered individually by name.

  More and more women came out of the prisons and assembled in the road. It was taking ages. Some of the women had already been standing there for an hour. In fact, the guards did not insist on them standing. They were allowed to sit and many of them squatted down in the road.

  Some of them appeared to be enjoying it. They waved to the male prisoners crowding at the gate. The men called back with enthusiasm. The crowd had grown bigger now. Almost all the men allowed in the yard had gone over to the gates. Some had climbed on to others’ backs in order to be able to see better.

  Dmitri paced up and down, miserably, in the space left behind them. Only a few men, too weak or too ill to stand, had not joined the spectators. They sat or lay with their backs against the wall of the prison building.

  One of the men looked up at him as he passed.

  ‘A beautiful day, is it not, Brother?’

  It was not; but Dmitri, taken by surprise, muttered some response. The man must be simple. He had an open, innocent face and looked up at Dmitri trustingly.

  ‘God hears our prayers,’ he said.

  That confirmed it. He was simple. You met them all over the place. More often in the country than in the town, but even in Kursk Dmitri had occasionally come across them, standing vacantly in the street, brought coppers by the children or bowls of kasha by the women. There were lots of beggars in Russia but holy ones had a special standing. They were treated with clumsy tolerance and even given a certain respect. There were those who claimed that in compensation for their affliction they stood in a special relationship with God. This, to Dmitri, was superstition. In his view they were all cracked. As this one probably was.

  One of the officials came hurrying towards him.

  ‘We’re about ready now,’ he said.

  Dmitri pushed his way through the crowd and out between the gates. The women were now standing, a dozen great lines of them, stretching right along the road in front of the main prison. The senior official began to take him up and down the lines.

  It was a ridiculous operation. The further he got, the more convinced of that he became. If Anna Semeonova had been here, surely it would have emerged by now? Surely she would have spoken up? Or someone would – if only to save them from all this bother.

  Several of the women were looking round. Men were going into the women’s prison, first, guards and then orderlies carrying huge pails. The pails contained disinfectant. The prison authorities were seizing the chance of the mass evacuation to spray the barracks thoroughly. The guards were making sure that no women were left inside.

  The end of the line was now in sight. What would he do when he got to the end and still hadn’t found her? She had come, she had not left, she was still here, therefore. Only she wasn’t.

  The orderlies re-emerged with the pails. The guards came up and reported. Dmitri looked quickly over the women remaining. There were no blondes among them.

  The senior officer looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head.

  ‘They’ll have to wait until the rooms have dried,’ said the official.

  The women sat down. A cold wind stirred their rags.

  Dmitri went back through the prison gates. Just inside he saw the man who had spoken to him. A beautiful day? God hears our prayers? Not in Tiumen, he didn’t.

  The men prisoners, hungry for women, clung on at the gate. The orderlies, prisoners themselves, were returning with the pails. The pails were heavy wooden ones and one of the carriers stumbled under the weight. Some of the disinfectant splashed out and over one of the guards. The guard cursed and pushed the bucket away. For good measure he caught the orderly a blow with his rifle.

  The butt slid excruciatingly down the man’s shins. He doubled up in pain and stumbled. One of the guards on the other side pushed him back into line and he fell to his knees. The first guard lifted his rifle again.

  ‘Here, none of that!’ said a big prisoner standing in the front row of the crowd.

  The guards turned on him immediately.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  The butts began to go in.

  There was a sudden commotion in the crowd and a man pushed through.

  ‘No blows! No blows!’ he cried.

  He threw himself between the guards and the man they were pounding.

  ‘Christ, another one!’ said one of the guards.

  They turned their attention to the newcomer.

  ‘Stop it!’ shouted Dmitri, and hurled himself forward.

  The guards looked up in astonishment.

  ‘I order you to stop it! This is in breach of the Regulations for the Treatment of Prisoners!’

  ‘What do you know about it?’ said one of the guards belligerently.

  ‘I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘Here, hold on a minute!’ said another of the guards in alarm.

  The new kind of lawyer was a relatively recent creation in Russia, a product of the Reforming Acts of the previous Tsar. Information travelled slowly in nineteenth-century Russia; not so slowly, however, for the guards not to have heard of them and know that they were bad news.

  They stopped their beating. The fallen orderly picked himself up and ran off. The big prisoner shook himself, then caught hold of the man who had intervened and pushed him away into the crowd. As he disappeared behind the other prisoners, Dmitri saw his face. It was the man who had spoken to him.

  Some time later he saw them again in the yard, talking together. He went over to them.

  ‘You want to watch out, that’s all,’ the big man was saying. ‘If you go round trying to get in the way every time you see a guard hitting someone, one of these days they’ll really fix you.’

  ‘No blows!’ said the other man firmly. ‘No blows!’

  ‘What I’m saying is’, said the big man, ‘that there’ll be plenty of blows and all coming your way if you don’t look out!’

  The littler man shook his head. The big man caught Dmitri’s eye.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said. ‘You can’t reason with them. Not with Milk-Drinkers.’

  ‘Milk-Drinkers?’

  ‘He’s a Milk-Drinker.’

  Dmitri looked at the little man with interest. He had heard of Milk-Drinkers; just. They were one of the many sects that had sprung up in Russia after the Great Schism of the seventeenth century, which had split the Orthodox Church between those who wished to keep to the old rites and those who wanted to move with the Church hierarchy towards reform. The Molokans had wished to keep to the old ways. To which they had added their dietary principles and a few other ones.

  ‘Do you take anything apart from milk?’ he asked curiously.

  The little man nodded.

  ‘Bread,’ he said. ‘Fruit. Anything that grows.’

  ‘But not meat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The little man puckered his face up.

  ‘Blows,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got to respect them,’ said the big man, ‘even if you don’t go along with them.’

  ‘What on earth is he doing here?’ asked Dmitri.

  ‘They won’t pay taxes.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the Government spends it on bad things,’ said the Milk-Drinker.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Soldiers. Prisons.’

  ‘Courts?’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Courts, too.’

  ‘You’ve got to have courts. You can’t do without law.’

  ‘You don’t need courts. Law is inside us.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But suppose we disagree?’

  ‘We’re not going to disagree, though, are we?’ said the Milk-Drinker. ‘God’s law is the same for all of us.’

  ‘I’m afraid people do disagree,’ said Dmitri, ‘and that’s why we have to have courts. Not only that; sometimes people know what the law is but break it all the same.’

  ‘If they break it,’ said the Milk-Drinker, ‘that’s because
they’re wrong in their hearts. And courts don’t do anything about that.’

  ‘Well …’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Courts mean blows,’ said the Milk-Drinker. ‘Oh, I know that’s not how the Tsar intends it, but it’s how it comes out. You don’t make people good by adding blows to blows.’

  ‘How do you make people good, then?’ asked Dmitri.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Milk-Drinker. ‘I only know that you start by getting rid of the soldiers and prisons.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said the big man. ‘There’s no reasoning with them!’

  The big man’s name was Methodosius.

  The Milk-Drinker nodded approvingly when he said this.

  ‘It’s a good name,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the only thing good about me,’ said the big man, and laughed.

  The Milk-Drinker’s name was Timofei. Once Dmitri had been talking to him for a little while the slight oddity of manner disappeared. He seemed in no way different from any of the other peasants who came into town on market days.

  The same could not quite be said of Methodosius. On the face of it he was an ordinary peasant, too. He wore the same long smock-type shirt and baggy breeches, the same high boots beneath his convict coat, as they did – and this at a time when in the countryside dress was still an indicator of rank, as it had been in the old days, prescribed so by the Tsar. His face was as tanned as theirs were, perhaps even more so. Certainly he seemed a man who spent his days out of doors. And yet …

  There was something different about him. Partly it was the way he wore his convict coat, open at the chest, as if he was determined not to conceal or confine the man beneath. He carried himself almost with bravado. No, perhaps bravado was not the word. Dmitri knew criminal bravado and this wasn’t it. What it was, he wasn’t quite sure. Independence, perhaps? He thought it best not to pry too closely.

  They asked him about himself. He told them the truth, that he was a lawyer looking for a girl who had perhaps been transported by accident. They accepted what he said without comment. Perhaps, they, too, thought it best not to pry.

  Dmitri could hardly expect his part in the incident at the gate to go unnoticed. He was, therefore, not surprised when the following morning he was summoned by the Governor.