Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

by Irina Reyfman

I already hear the voice of nature,

  The primal voice, the voice of divinity.

  The gloomy firmament shuddered, and liberty shone forth.

  “Here finally is the end,” said the newfangled versifier to me.

  I was very glad of it and almost wished to utter, perhaps, unpleasant criticism of his poem, but the little bell announced that it was more seemly to hasten on the road on postal nags than to clamber on to Pegasus if it is willful.

  GORODNYA

  On arriving in this village, it was not singing in verses that struck my hearing but the heart-piercing lamentations of women, children, and elders. Leaving my carriage, I sent it off to the postal yard, curious as I was to learn the cause of the noticeable disturbance from the street.

  On drawing close to one gang, I learned that conscription was the cause of the sobbing and tears of the throng. From many hamlets, belonging either to the state or landowners, conscripts had gathered on their way to surrender for conscription.

  In one crowd an old woman of about fifty years, holding a twenty-year-old lad by the head, wailed, “My dear little child, for whom are you abandoning me? To whom are you entrusting the parental home? Our fields will be overgrown with grass; our hut, with moss, and I, your poor elderly mother, will be forced to go begging. Who will warm my decrepit body from cold, who will shelter it from the heat? Who will give me to drink and feed me? Well, this does not lie so heavily on the heart but who will close my eyes when I expire? Who will receive my parental blessing? Who will commit my body to our shared mother, the raw earth? Who will come to commemorate me at the grave? Your burning tear will not fall on it, that comfort I shall not have.”

  Next to the old woman there stood a maiden, already grown up. She, too, wailed: “Farewell, friend of my heart, farewell, my beautiful little sun. For me, your chosen bride, there will no longer be any consolation, any amusement. My girlfriends will not envy me. The sun will not rise over me to bring me joy. You abandon me to grieve though neither as a widow nor as a married wife. If only our elders, inhuman though they are, had allowed us to marry; if you had only, my dear friend, gone to sleep just one night, gone to sleep on my white breast. Perhaps God would have taken pity on me and given me a little boy as a comfort.”

  The lad said to them, “Stop weeping, stop tearing my heart out. Our ruler summons us to service. My lot was chosen. It is God’s will. He will live to whom it is not given to die. Perhaps somehow with the regiment I shall come to see you. Perhaps I shall somehow manage to earn a rank. Do not grieve, my little dear mother. Look after little Praskovya for me.” This conscript was rendered from a state settlement.

  My ear picked out from the crowd standing nearby words of a completely different type. In their midst I saw a man of about thirty years, average height, standing staunchly and cheerfully gazing upon those standing around.

  “The Lord has heard my prayer,” he said. “The tears of an unhappy man have reached the comforter of all. Now I shall at least know that my fate will depend on my good or bad behavior. Until now it depended on female caprice. The simple thought that I shall not be punished by the cudgel without a trial consoles me.”

  Having learned from his speech that he was a house serf, I was curious to learn the reason for his uncommon delight. To my question about this he replied: “If, Sir, on the one side stood the gallows and on the other side was a deep river, and standing between the two perils there was no way to avoid going right or left, into the noose or the water, what would you choose, what would reason and sensibility force you to wish? I think that you and indeed any other person would choose to plunge into the river in the hope that once he swam across to the other bank the danger would have passed. Nobody would agree to test with their own neck whether or not the noose was firm. This was my case. The soldier’s life is a hard one, better than the noose, though. And it would be a good thing if all it meant were death rather than perishing from a slow death, under the cudgel, cat-o’-nine-tails, in chains, in a cellar, naked, barefoot, thirsty, hungry, under ceaseless harassment. Dear sir, although you consider serfs your property, often worse than cattle, it is to their bitterest misfortune that they have not been deprived of sensation. You find it surprising, I see, to hear words like these from the mouth of a peasant; but now that you have heard them, why do you not feel surprise at the hard-heartedness of your brethren, the nobility?”

  And in truth, I had not anticipated what was said from someone dressed in a rough plain rough caftan with a shaven brow. Yet out of a desire to satisfy my curiosity I asked him to explain to me how, being of such low extraction, he had attained an understanding those wrongly called noble frequently lacked.

  “If you will not be bored listening to my tale, then I shall tell you that I was born into slavery, the son of the serf tutor of my former master. What delight it is for me that I shall no longer be called Vanka nor by some abusive appellation nor be summoned by whistling. My old master, a good-hearted man, wise, and virtuous, not rarely aggrieved for the fate of his slaves, wishing to reward me, too, for my father’s long-term service, gave me an education equal to his son’s. There was hardly any difference between us except that the cloth on the caftan he wore was somewhat finer. What the young gentleman was taught, I was also taught. Our lessons were equal in every way and I can say without boasting that I excelled my young owner in much.

  “‘Vanyusha,’ the old gentleman would say to me, ‘your happiness depends entirely on you. You have greater motivation to learning and morality than my son. After my death, he will be rich and will know no need, whereas you have known it from birth. So then, try to be worthy of the care I have taken of you.’ When my young master was in his seventeenth year, he and I were sent to foreign lands with a tutor who was instructed to consider me a companion rather than a servant. As he saw me off, my old master said to me, ‘I hope that you will return for my own peace of mind and that of your parents. Within the borders of this state you are a slave, but outside them you are free. When you return, the shackles that were laid on you at birth will not be restored.’ We were away five years and were on the way back to Russia. My young master was in a state of joy to see his parent, while I, I admit, felt hopeful about using the promise I’d been made. My heart trembled as I crossed again the borders of my fatherland. And in truth, the heart’s foreboding was not wrong. In Riga, my young master received the news of his father’s death. He was moved by it, I was brought to despair. For all my efforts to earn the friendship and trust of my young master had always been futile. Not only did he not love me but hated me, perhaps because of the envy typical of small souls.

  “Seeing the dismay the news of his father’s death caused me, he told me that he would not forget the promise made to me provided I were deserving. It was the first time he dared to mention this, since after attaining his independence after the death of his father, he immediately dismissed his tutor in Riga, after paying him generously for his labors. One has to be fair to my former master since he has many good qualities but they are overshadowed by a timidity of spirit and flightiness.

  “A week after our return to Moscow my former master fell in love with a young woman, fine of countenance. But she joined to her physical beauty the most vile spirit and a cruel and severe heart. Brought up in the arrogance of her pedigree, she regarded only appearance, nobility, wealth as distinctions. In two months, she became the spouse of my master and my mistress. Until that time, I felt no change in my condition and lived in the home of my owner as a companion. Although he did not give me orders, I sometimes anticipated his wishes, aware of his power and my lot. Scarcely had the young mistress crossed the threshold of the home in which she was determined to be in charge than I sensed the hardship of my fate. On the first evening after the wedding and the next day, when I was introduced to her by her spouse as his companion, she was occupied by the usual concerns of a new marriage. But in the evening, when in the presence of the bustling assembly everyone came to the table and sat down to the newlyweds�
� first supper, I, as was customary, took my place at the lower end. The new mistress told her husband fairly loudly that if he wanted her to sit at the table with the guests, he should not allow serfs to sit there. After a look at me, prompted now by her, he sent to tell me to leave the table and take supper in my room. Imagine how strongly I felt this humiliation. I, however, hid the tears welling up in my eyes and withdrew. On the next day I did not dare to show up. Not inquiring about me, they brought me my dinner and supper. It was the same on subsequent days. One day in the afternoon, a week after the wedding, the new mistress, inspecting the house and assigning duties and lodgings to all the servants, entered my rooms. They had been allocated to me by my old master. I was not at home. I will not repeat what she said while in my rooms by way of mockery, but when I returned, I was informed that she had ordered me to be assigned a corner on the ground floor, together with unmarried domestics where my bed, the trunk with clothing and linen, were already placed. Everything else she left in my rooms, where she installed her maids.

  “What took place in my soul on hearing this is easier to feel than describe, if anyone could. But in order not to detain you with perhaps excessive storytelling: my mistress, having assumed the management of the house and not finding in me a fitness for service, designated me a lackey and dressed me in livery. The slightest imagined infringement in my work incurred slaps in the face, cudgels, and cat-o’-nine-tails. O my good sir, it would be better not to have been born! How many times did I resent my deceased benefactor for giving me a sensitive soul. Would that I had grown up in ignorance, unaware that as a man I was the equal of everyone else. Long, long ago, would I have deprived myself of my hateful life, if an interdiction by the Supreme Judge of all did not stop me. I resolved myself to endure my fate patiently. And I endured not only bodily wounds but also the wounds she inflicted on my soul. But I came close to violating my pledge and taking away the lamentable remnants of my life after there occurred a new wound to my soul.

  “My mistress’s nephew, a lad of eighteen years, a sergeant of the Guards, brought up in the fashion of Moscow fops, fell in love with his aunt’s chambermaid and, having prevailed because of her shrewd ardor, made her a mother. Resolute though he was in his amorous affairs, he became somewhat embarrassed by the outcome since his auntie, when she learned about this, banned her chambermaid from her presence and gently scolded her nephew. In the manner of merciful masters, she intended to punish her former favorite and to give her in marriage to a stable hand. But since they were all married, and a pregnant woman needed a husband for the honor of the house, she could find no one worse than me among all her servants. And of the ‘special favor’ my mistress informed me in the presence of her husband. I could no longer endure the abuse. ‘Inhuman woman! You have the power to torment me and to mutilate my body: you say that the laws give you this right over us. This I scarcely believe. What I do know for sure is that nobody can be forced to enter into marriage.’ These words effected beastly silence from her. Turning to her spouse then: ‘Ungrateful son of a humane father, you forget his last wishes, forget also your declaration; but do not drive to despair a nobler soul than your own, beware!’ I could say no more than that because, on my mistress’s order, I was taken to the stables and mercilessly whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails. The next day I could hardly get out of bed because of the beating; and again I was brought before my mistress. ‘I will forgive you your impudence of yesterday,’ she said. ‘Marry my Mavrushka, she entreats you, and I, fond of her despite her transgression, want to do this for her.’ ‘Everyone heard my response yesterday,’ I told her. ‘This is the only answer. I shall only add that I will lodge a complaint against you to the authorities since you have no right to force me to do this.’ ‘Well, it is time for you to be conscripted,’ my mistress shrieked furiously…. A traveler who has lost his way in a terrible desert would feel less joy on recovering it than I had when I heard these words. ‘Conscripted,’ she repeated, and the next day this was carried out.—Foolish woman! She thought that becoming a soldier would be a punishment, as it is for peasants. For me this was joy, and as soon as they shaved my brow, I felt reborn. My strength was renewed. Reason and spirit began to work again. O! hope, sweet sensation of the unfortunate, abide with me.” A heavy tear, but not laden with grief and despair, fell from his eyes. I clasped him to my heart. New joy lit up his face. “Not everything is lost; you give strength to my soul,” he told me, “against sorrow, giving me the sense that my calamity will not be endless….”

  I went across from this unfortunate man to a crowd in which I saw three men shackled with the heaviest chains. “Cause for surprise,” I said to myself looking at these captives.—“Now they are dejected, weary, timid, and not only do not they want to be soldiers, but it takes the greatest cruelty to put them in this position. But once they come to grips with performing their difficult calling, they become vigorous, enterprising and even despise their former state.” I asked the man nearby who, to judge by his clothes, looked like a government official steward: “Surely, it was out of fear for their escape that they were bound in such heavy chains?” “Your guess is correct. They belonged to a landowner who needed money for a new carriage, and to obtain it he sold them to state peasants as prospective recruits.”

  I: “My friend, you are mistaken, state peasants cannot buy their own brethren.”

  He: “It is not done in the form of sale. The owner of these unfortunate men, taking money by agreement, sets them free. They are presumed to be following their own wishes to register as state peasants in the district that paid the money for them, and the district, following a general arrangement, enrolls them as soldiers. They are now being transported, together with their manumission papers, for registration in our district.”

  Free people who committed no crime are being sold like cattle! O laws! Your wisdom is often contained only in the letter. Is not this a clear mockery? But even more than this, it is a mockery of the sacred name of freedom! Oh! If the slaves oppressed by their heavy shackles in furious despair, using the irons that impede their freedom, shattered our heads, the heads of their inhuman masters, and stained their fields with our blood, what would the state lose because of this? From their midst great men would soon erupt to succeed the massacred tribe. But their view of themselves would be different, and they would give up the oppression of others as their right.—This is not a dream, but my gaze penetrates the thick curtain of time that hides the future from our eyes. I gaze across the entire century.—In indignation I walked away from the crowd.

  But the shackled detainees are now free. If they had at least some initiative, they would frustrate the oppressive intentions of their tyrants…. Let us return. “My friends,” I told the captives in their own fatherland. “Are you aware that if you do not want to join the military nobody can force you to do so?” “Master, stop mocking wretched people. Even without your joke it is painful for one of us to part from his decrepit father; for the other, from his young sisters; for the third, from his young wife. We know that our master sold us for a thousand rubles, to be conscripted.” “If until now you did not know this, then know that it is forbidden to sell people to be conscripted; that peasants cannot buy people; that your master manumitted you; and that those who bought you want you to register in their district as if by your accord.” “Oh, if this is so, Master, thank you. When they line us up for measurement, we all will say that we do not want to be soldiers and that we are free people.” “Add to this that your owner sold you at a time when it was not legal and that you have been conscripted unwillingly.”* It is easy to imagine the joy that spread across the faces of these unfortunate people. Bouncing up from their place and vigorously shaking their shackles, it looked as if they were testing their strength to throw them off. But this conversation almost caused me great trouble: when they understood my speech, the recruiting agents were incandescent with anger and accosted me, saying: “Master, you are meddling in others’ business, get out of here while still in one p
iece.” And they began to push me so strongly as I resisted that I hastily had to move away from this crowd.

  On walking up to the post station, I found another crowd of peasants surrounding a man in torn frock coat, somewhat drunk, it seemed, and making faces at the bystanders who looking at him laughed until they cried. “What wonder do you have here?” I asked one boy. “What are you laughing at?” “This recruit here is a foreigner, cannot utter a peep in Russian.” From a few words that he uttered I learned that he was a Frenchman. My curiosity arose even more. I wanted to learn how a foreigner could be given up for conscription by peasants. I asked him in his native tongue: “My friend, by what chance do you find yourself here?”

  The Frenchman: “Fate wanted it so. Where it is good, that’s where one should live.”

  I: “But how did you manage to become a recruit?”

  Frenchman: “I like the military life, I know it already, I myself wanted it.”

  I: “But how did it come about that you were taken as a recruit from the village? From villages they usually take to be soldiers only peasants and only Russians. I see that you are neither a peasant nor Russian.”

  Frenchman: “This is how. In Paris, as a child, I trained to be a hairdresser. I went to Russia with a certain gentleman. In Petersburg, I dressed his hair for an entire year. He did not have money to pay me. I left him and, unable to find a position, nearly died from hunger. Fortunately, I managed to get a place as a sailor on a ship sailing under the Russian flag. Before leaving for sea I was put under oath as a Russian subject, and went to Lübeck. At sea, the captain often beat me with the end of a rope for being idle. Being careless, I fell from the rigging onto the deck and broke three fingers, which made me forever unable to manage a comb. Upon arriving in Lübeck, I ran into Prussian recruiters and served in different regiments. I was beaten with sticks, not infrequently, for idleness and drinking. While drunk I stabbed to death a fellow soldier and left Memel where I was stationed. Recalling that I was bound to Russia by oath, like a faithful son of the fatherland, I set off to Riga with two thalers in my pocket. On the way I fed myself by alms. In Riga, my luck and art served me well: I won about twenty rubles in a tavern and, having bought myself a good caftan for ten, went with a merchant to Kazan’ as a lackey. But, passing through Moscow, I met in the street two of my countrymen who advised me to leave my master and look for a position as a teacher in Moscow. I told them I was not good at reading. But they responded: ‘You speak French, that is enough.’ My master did not notice when I left him on the street. He continued on his way and I stayed in Moscow. Soon my countrymen found me a position as a teacher for a hundred and fifty rubles, a pood of sugar, a pood* of coffee, ten pounds of tea a year, meals, a servant, and the use of carriage. But I had to live in the country. So much the better. There they were unaware for a whole year that I could not write. But one of the in-laws of the gentleman in whose house I lived gave my secret away to him, and they sent me back to Moscow. Unable to find another such fool and unable to practice my skill as a hairdresser because of my broken fingers, afraid to die of hunger, I sold myself for two hundred rubles. They registered me as a peasant and now are sending me off as a recruit. I hope,” he said with an air of importance, “that as soon as there is a war I will rise to the rank of general. And if there is no war, I will line my pockets as much as I can manage to do, and, crowned with laurels, will retire to my fatherland.”