After they had been marching in silence for a long time, Berzejev ordered: ‘Sing’. They sang. But they stopped right after the first verse. A hesitant pause ensued, then the refrain was taken up by a timorous voice, and it was a long time before the others joined in. The melody did not quicken their lagging feet. Exile itself advanced towards them. The railway, horses, carriages and men, all had been left far behind. The sky arched over the flat earth like a round roof of grey lead, soldered around its edges. They were sealed down under the sky. In prison, at least, one knew that a sky still arched above the walls. But here the very freedom was an imprisonment. In the leaden sky there were no bars through which one could spy another sky of blue air. The vastness of this space was more confining than a cell.
Gradually they broke up into ever smaller groups. With tears in their eyes and their beards they bade each other farewell. Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion stayed together. On the first day they still spoke of one or other with whom they had sung together. As soon as they struck up in a threesome the songs that had flowed from everyone’s throats a few days previously, they remembered those others whose voices they would never hear again. The songs had become a kind of resonant bond of amity. They had brought strangers together with the power of blood shed in common and pain suffered in common. Then the departed were gradually forgotten. Only now and again did there revive in memory a face that no longer bore a name, a tear in a black beard that no longer belonged to any face, and a word would ring out whose speaker was no longer known.
They were led far and stragglingly, they saw the unpeopled shores of the Obi. The two small settlements of Hurgut and Narym seemed to them large and lively towns. They stayed overnight in Narym. They learned to collect bugs in their fists and drown them in large buckets, also to coax the small white files of lice from the walls into paper cornets and burn them. They began to esteem the lonely scattered jails where they chanced to halt as welcoming homes. They saw distant forest fires, bartered with Chinese merchants from Chifu for Siberian fur gloves and boots of reindeer hide. They listened to the legends of the Yakuts about the Indiguirka River, and the Dogdo rivulet which carries gold along its bed.
Winter came. They became accustomed to 67 degrees Celsius below zero and to the frosted windowpanes of ice in the jurts. And they awaited the forty sunless days in the town of Vierchoiansk, the town with the twenty-three houses.
It was laid down that their fixed location should be ten versts from a town, ten versts from a river and ten versts from a high-road. Yet they managed to settle by a river, the Kolyma River. It is bigger than the Rhine, only three towns are situated on it. One had nine inhabitants, another a hundred inhabitants in thirty military barracks. Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion decided on the third town of Sredni Kolymsk. Here there were huts placed far apart and only three houses with glazed windows. But within a circle of many miles it was the only place with a church, a steeple and bells — bells that had been cast in the civilized world and whose ringing was like a mother tongue.
4
The Siberian officials of the Tsar did not always deserve the bad reputation they enjoyed among the inhabitants, the condemned and even their superior authorities. Some, who considered themselves as exiles, and not without reason, were resolved to share the lot of the prisoners rather than intensify it. Many started off by avenging their fate on the condemned but mellowed after a few years when they saw that their harshness brought them no advantage. Arrogance, vanity and terror dwindled, since the controlling authorities were so far away. Others again allowed themselves to be bribed and lived on with a bad conscience. A bad conscience can make both autocrats and thugs indulgent.
Berzejev had made friends with Colonel Lelewicz, a Pole, who had assumed command of an infantry detachment in Siberia in order to have an opportunity of helping his exiled fellow-countrymen. He enjoyed such good connections in Petersburg that he did not need to conceal his sentiments behind a martial loyalty to the Tsar like other officers and officials. With his help Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion established themselves in one of the three houses furnished with windowpanes. Thus they lived in a steady private relationship with the authorities and were allowed to play cards with the officials and conduct political discussions.
Once a week the newspapers arrived, ten days old. The news they spread in this desolation resembled the stars we still see shining in the heavens though they were extinguished centuries ago. Lion affirmed that it was unimportant when one read the papers. For the very transmission of an event changes it and even denies it. That is why we find every report in the newspapers so improbable.
Lion asserted that he had been exiled only on account of his kinship with a well-known revolutionary of the same name, and that he would probably soon be released. He was, in fact, only a mild opponent of the State, favoured the introduction of a constitutional monarchy, modernization of the bureaucracy on the western model and a settlement of domestic political questions on properly applied economic principles. Between two fingers he held his pince-nez which were knotted to a broad black ribbon, threatened with them, designed interweaving arabesques in the air with them, and only settled them on the lower part of his nose when he was compelled to listen, as if Lion wanted to study his opponent better through the glass while nevertheless peering at him only over the rims of the lenses. Everything to do with natural processes was strange and disconcerting to him. He had the same respect for dogs as for wolves and bears. He hardly noticed the passage of the seasons and it made no difference to him whether the temperature was 20 or 60 degrees.
He was a constant herald of the war. ‘The Social Democrats in Germany,’ he exclaimed, ‘have at last revealed their loyalty to the Kaiser. Herr Stücklen says: “We Social Democrats love the country in which we were born, we are better patriots than people think.” Noske: “We have never entertained the idea that the frontiers of the Reich can be left unfortified without a considerable defensive army.” Because the Social Democrats are for the capital levy on principle, they vote for military credits. Thus they vote for the option of throwing half a million men against the French frontier in four days. The representatives of the International concede one and half milliards to the War Minister. That is war, gentlemen,’ concluded Lion, swinging his pince-nez in the air like a flag.
Berzejev and the official Efrejnov were for Germany, suspicious of France. Berzejev defended the German workers. Finally, he even compared the Tsar to the German Kaiser. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘the Kaiser doesn’t send anyone to Siberia.’
Efrejnov, who attributed everything bad in Russia to western influences, to which society, the intelligentsia and the Tsar himself were subject, felt offended. His fair beard, his broad shoulders shivered. ‘It just shows,’ he cried, ‘how all alike you are. You believe that somewhere Russia is like the rest of the world, in one small detail at least. Not true. Russia is oriental and everything else is the rotten decaying West. Whether it’s your German Kaiser, Berzejev, or your German workers, it’s all one. A Kaiser who rules through Parliament and democracy, that’s already the beginning of Socialism. The Kaiser, the republic, Marxism, all western ideas. The Tsar in Russia is more democratic than a socialist parliamentarian. He is sovereign by the will of the people and of the land it cultivates. The Tsar is the product of the Russian peasant. He looks after the affairs of state for which the people have no time. When did your dissatisfaction begin? Since you looked to the West and envied its civilization. Witte goes to do business with the American Jews. The Anglomaniac snob Isvolski is sent out into the world so that he can report what ties they are wearing in London and Paris. And thus you destroy the old holy autocracy of the Tsars.’