Times have changed. Young officials are now more common than old ones, and should an arist portray a scene showing a prisoner being flogged, the paiming would depict an intelligent young man in a smart new uniform instead of the former old drunken captain with a purple nose.
We talked on and on. Evening came and the lamp was lit. I bade farewell to the hospitable Mr. Bely and went to the quarters of the secretary of the police administration, where lodgings had been prepared for me. It was dark and quiet, the sea murmured dully and the starry sky seemed gloomy, as if it knew that nature was preparing something evil.
I had walked down the street almost to the sea, and saw the ships at anchor, and when I turned to the right, I heard loud voices and boisterous laughter. Brightly lit windows glowed in the darkness. I seemed to be approach- ing a provincial club on an autumn evening. These were the quarters of the secretary. I climbed the ancient, creaking stairs to the veranda and entered the house. In the parlor, through the fog and tobacco smoke usually found in tav- erns and damp premises, I saw military men and officials gliding like gods walking on clouds. I was already ac- quainted with one of them, Mr. von F., the agricultural inspector, whom I had met previously in Alexandrovsk. I saw the rest for the first time, although all greeted my appearance with such complacency that they gave the im- pression they had known me for a long time. They Jed me to the table and compelled me to drink vodka, half diluted with water, and some very bad cognac. I was served some tough fried meat served by the convict Khomenko, a Ukrainian with a black mustache. Another visitor at the party was the director of the Irkutsk magneto- meteorological observatory, E. V. Shtelling, who had ar- rived on the Vladivostok from Kamchatka and Okhotsk, where he was trying to obtain instruments for the meteoro- logical station.
Here I also met Major S., the warden of the Korsakov prison, who had formerly served under General Greser in the Petersburg police. He is a tall, stout man with that solid, impressive carriage which I have found only in private and police officials. Recounting his brief meetings with many famous Perersburg writers, he called them by their first names, Misha and Vanya. And when he invited me to lunch and dinner, he twice addressed me familiarly as ty [thou].(1
When the guests departed at 2 a.m., I went to bed. Suddenly I heard a roaring and a whiscling sound. It was the northeaster. Now I knew why the sky had been lower- ing all evening. Khomenko came in from outside and told us the ships had sailed and a tremendous storm was raging on the sea. "But don't worry, they'll come back," he said and laughed. "How can they fight it?"
The room became cold and damp. It was probably no more than six or seven degrees. Poor F., the young secre- tary of the police department, could not get any sleep; he had a severe cold and racking cough. Captain K., who shared his quarters, also could not sleep. He came out of his room and spoke through the partition:
"I get the Nedelya.' Would you like to have it?"
In the morning it was cold in bed, in the room, in the town. When I went out of doors a cold rain was falling, a strong wind bent the trees, and the sea roared. The gusts of wind and rain were hurled against your face and they drummed against the roofs like bird shot. The Vladivostok and Baikal, unable to battle the storm, had returned and now lay at anchor, shrouded in mist. I took a walk along the streets and along the shore near the jetty. The grass was soaked, the trees showered water.
Near the guardhouse on the jetty there lies the skeleton of a young whale. Once it was happy, playful, roaming the expanses of the northern seas. Now the white bones of the giant lie in the mud, pounded by rain.
The main street is paved and well maintained, with sidewalks, street lamps and trees. It is swept daily by an old man bearing the brand of a criminal. In the street there are only the offices and homes of the officials, and not one convict is housed there. Most of the houses are new and pleasant looking. The heavy prison atmosphere, which is so obvious in Due, is missing. In those four streets of Korsakov, there are more old buildings than new, and there is no lack of houses which are twenty or thirty years old. In Korsakov we find more old buildings and more old officials than in the North, indicating perhaps that the South is more conducive to a settled and peaceful life than the two Northern districts. I observed that life was more patriarchal here, the people were more conservative, and even the very worst customs were observed more carefully.
Corporal punishment is administered more frequently than in the North; they have been known to beat fifty men at a time. In the South a stupid custom initiated long ago by a forgotten colonel has survived. When a group of pris- oners on the street or along the shore moves in the direc- tion of a free citizen, then from 50 feet away you hear the guard shouting, "Attention! Caps off!" And so, sunk in misery, with bared heads, the prisoners scowl at you as though they feared that if they had taken off their caps at 20 or 30 feet, rather than 50, you would have beaten them with a stick. This is what Mr. Z. and Mr. N. do.
I am sorry I did not meet the oldest Sakhalin officer, Second Captain Shishmarev. At his age and as an old in- habitant he could have argued with old Mikryukov, who lives in Palensk. He died several months before my arrival, and all I saw was the house where he lived. He settled on Sakhalin in prehistoric times when there was no penal servitude, so long ago that a legend grew up concerning the origin of Sakhalin. In this legend the officer's name is closely connected with a geological cataclysm.
Once upon a time, in a remote age, Sakhalin did not exist. Suddenly a submerged cliff rose above sea level, and on the cliff there sat two creatures—a gray stallion and Second Captain Shishmarcv. Wc arc told that he wore a woolen frock coat with epaulets, and in his official reports he described non-Russians as "barbaric forest dwellers." He had taken part in several expeditions. Once he went down the Tym River with Polyakov and quarreled with him. We can read all this in the expedition's reports.
Korsakov Post has 163 inhabitants, 93 malc and 70 female. Including the free men, soldiers, their wives and children, and the prisoners sleeping in the prison, the popiilation is a little over i,ooo.
There arc 56 homesteads. None of these are rural, but rather urban and boiirgeois. From the agricultiiral point of view they are completely meaningless. There arc only 3 dcsyatins of arable land and only 18 dcsyatins of meadow- land, also used by the prison. lt is necessary to sec how close the houses arc to each other and how they cling picturesqiiely to the slope and along the bottom of a valley-like ravine to understand how whoever chose the site failed to realize that homesteaders would come to live here as well as soldiers.
The homesteaders answered the question about what work they do and how they supported themselves by say- ing: "A little work, a little trade. . . ." As to additional earnings, as the reader will sec below, the inhabitant of Southern Sakhalin finds himself in a better position than one in the North. If he wants to, he can earn extra money during the spring and summer, but the Korsakov people are not particularly interested, for they rarely try to earn extra money. They are citizens who live by uncertain means —uncertain because they are fortuitous and haphazard. Some live on money brought from Russia, and these arc in the majority; another is a scribe; a third is a clerk; a fourth runs a store, although by law he has no right to do so; a fifth exchanges odds and ends from prisoners for Japanese vodka, which he sells, etc. The women, even the free women, engage in prostitution, and this includes a woman of the privileged class, of whom it is said that she com- pleted her course at an institute. It is not so cold and people are less hungry here than in the North. The convicts whose wives sell their bodies smoke Turkish tobacco at 50 kopecks a quarter-pound. Prostitution appears to be more malignant here than in the North, although in fact there is probably very little difference.