I drew a red pencil line along the bottom of each form involving a female and found this to be more convenient than a special heading indicating sex. I only recorded the people who were actually living with the family. If they said that their oldest son had gone to work in Vladivostok and the second son is a laborer in the Rykovsk settlement, I did not record the first at all, and the latter I recorded at his present residence.
I went alone from one hut to the next. Sometimes I was accompanied by a convict or a settler who had taken upon himself the role of guide only to relieve his boredom. Sometimes a guard armed with a revolver followed me like a shadow, keeping close to me or keeping his distance. If I wanted him to, he would come and clarify their answers for me. When I did ask him about anything, his forehead was immediately covered with sweat, and he said, "I couldn't possibly know, your worship!" Usually my barefoot and hatless companion, bearing my inkstand in his hands, would go running out in front of me, loudly banging open the doors, and then taking the opportunity to whisper something to the master of the house inside the doorway: probably his opinions of my census. Then I entered the house.
On Sakhalin there are all types of huts, depending on who built them—a Siberian, a Khokhol [Ukrainian} or a Chukhonets [Finn]. Most frequently it was a small frame box 14 feet by 14 feet, having two or three windows, with- out any exterior decorations, the roofs covered with straw or bark, and occasionally some thin planks. There is no courtyard, and there are no trees. Shacks and Siberian-type bathhouses are rare. If there are dogs, they are gentle, not vicious, and, as I have already stated, they only bark at the Gilyaks—probably because their footwear is made of dog fur. Therefore these tame, harmless dogs are not tied up. If these people own a pig, it has a lock and chain around its neck. A rooster is also tied up by its leg.
"Why are your pig and rooster tied up? " I asked a householder.
"In our Sakhalin everything is chained," he replied jokingly. "That's the kind of land it is."
The hut consists of one room with a Russian stove. The floor is of wood. There is a table, two or three stools, a bench, a bed with bedding, or the bedding is placed directly on the floor. Sometimes there is absolutely no fur- niture and only a featherbed lies in the middle of the floor, and it is obvious that it has just been slept on. A cup with remnants of food stands on the windowsill. The con- ditions are such that it is not a home, not a room, but, more accurately, a cell for solitary confinement.
Where there are women and children, no matter how impoverished, the hut does resemble a household full of peasant life. Nevertheless there is a persistent feeling that something important is missing; no grandmother, no grand- father, no old paintings, no inherited furniture; conse- quently, the household contains nothing from the past, nothing traditional. There is no beautiful icon corner, or if there is, it is very barren and dreary, without a lamp or any decorations. Here normal customs no longer exist. The furnishings are haphazard and it seems that the family is not living in its own home but in someone else's, or it has just arrived and has not yet had the opportunity to settle down. There is no cat, and on cold evenings no crickets can be heard. And this is all due to the fact that we are no longer in Russia.
The scenes which I ordinarily observed did not indicate good housekeeping, comfort and stability in the households. Most frequently I found a single inhabitant, lonesome and forlorn, who seems to have grown numb from forced idle- ness and boredom. He is dressed as a free man, but from habit his coat is thrown over his shoulders in prison fashion and if he has recently been released from prison, his peaked prison cap, minus its peak, has been tossed on the table. His stove is not lit; his only kitchenware consists of a small pot and a bottle stopped with paper. He reacts scornfully, with icy contempt, concerning his own life and his house- hold. He says that he has tried everything but nothing makes sense. There's but one thing left: ignore everything. While I am speaking with him his neighbors gather in the house and a conversation commences on various subjects: about the administration, the climate, women. . . . From boredom they are all willing to talk and listen endlessly.
Occasionally, in addition to the householder, you find a whole crowd of lodgers and workmen in the hut. On one threshold sits a convict-lodger with a ribbon tied around his hair, sewing shoes; a strong odor of leather and cob- bler's wax permeates the air. In the doorway his children lie on rags. Here also in a dark, tight corner his wife, who had voluntarily accompanied him, is making vareniky [Ukrainian dumplings} from blueberries, while working on a tiny rable. This family had just recently arrived from Russia.
Further, in the house itself are five men who call them- selves a lodger, a worker or a cohabitant. One stands near the stove. With cheeks puffed our, eyes popping, he is soldering something. Another, obviously a buffoon with a deliberately moronic expression, is muttering something while the rest are laughing boisterously into their hands. On the bed sits a Babylonian whore, the mistress of the house herself, Lukerya Nepomnyashchaya, tousled, ema- ciared, covered with freckles. She attempts to answer my questions flippanrly while swinging her legs. Her lack- luster eyes are not pretty, and from her hollow-cheeked, apathetic face I can imagine how much she has suffered during her short life in prisons and convict stations, and from her many illnesses. This Lukerya sets the tone of life in the house, and because of her the entire atmosphere reveals the close proximity of an insane, debauched vaga- bond. There is no possibility of a normal household here.
Occasionally I came upon a group of people in a hut who had been playing cards before I arrived. Their faces show confusion, boredom and expectation; perhaps they are anxious to return to their cards as soon as I leave? At other times I walk into a cabin completely devoid of furnishings; the stove is bare, and on the floor, along the wall, Cherkess men sit in a row, some wearing hats, others with bare, shaven, rigid heads, who stare at me without blinking. If there was only one woman in the hut, she was always lying in bed; and she would answer questions while yawning and stretching herself, and when I left she would lay down again.
The convict population regarded me as an official and thought the census was just one more of the many formal inquisitions which never lead to anything. However, the fact that I was not a local man, not an official of the Sakhalin government, awakened some curiosity among the convicts, and they would ask me, "Why are you taking a census of all of us?"
And then there would be various conjectures. Some said that the high authorities probably wanted to distribute aid among the convicts, others that the authorities had probably finally decided to resettle everyone on the main- land. It is generally believed that sooner or Iater the prison and the settlers will be moved to the mainland. A third group, pretending skepticism, said they never expected any- thing because God Himself has abandoned them, and they would say this in order to force me to raise an objection to their theory. And then, from either the doorway or the top of the stove, as if mocking all our hopes and conjec- tures, there could be heard a voice, full of fatigue, boredom and annoyance at being disturbed, saying, "They keep writ- ing, they keep writing, they keep writing, Oh, Queen of Heaven!"