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Do Not Get Discouraged

Do not be put off by initial difficulties and fear of the unforeseen.

However, back to my story. As it was getting late in the day and I had not been able to find lodgings on shore, I decided to board the Baikal. But here too I met with a setback: the sea had turned rough and the Ghiliak boatmen refused to row me across at any price. I was back to walking up and down the shore wondering what to do. The sun was going down and the waves turned black on the Amur. From both banks rose the frenzied howling of Ghiliak dogs. "Now what exactly was my reason for coming here?" I asked myself, be­ginning to suspect that it had been sheer folly to undertake this trip. The realization that the convict colony was now quite near, that in a matter of days I would disembark on Sakhalin without even an official letter of introduction, that I could be told to turn back—this realization gnawed at me most disagreeably. At last, however, two Ghiliaks consented to row me over for a ruble, and I reached the Baikal un­harmed in a rowboat knocked together out of three boards.

.[It] was calm and clear, which is rare in these waters. On the smooth surface of the sea, pairs of whales blew jets of water high into the air and this beautiful, original spectacle kept us entertained during the entire crossing. I have to ad­mit, however, that my spirits were low and sank even lower as we drew close to Sakhalin. I was uneasy. The officer ac­companying the soldiers was amazed to learn my reason for going to Sakhalin and insisted that lacking an official posi­tion, I had absolutely no right to visit the penal colony. I knew he was wrong, of course, but his words depressed me all the same, and I worried that I would meet with the same views on Sakhalin.

.I spent the night on board. Early the next morning, at about five, loud shouts woke me. "Hurry! Hurry! Last run to shore! The cutter's leaving!" In an instant, I boarded the cut­ter, and took my place next to a young official with an angry, sleepy face. The whistle sounded, and we made for the shore, towing two barges full of convicts. The prisoners were sluggish and gloomy, exhausted by their night's labor and lack of sleep; no one spoke. Their faces were covered with dew. I remember several sharp-featured Caucasians with fur hats pulled low over their brows.

.Everything that yesterday had seemed so dark and menacing and threatened the worst was now melting in the early morning brilliance. Fat, clunky Cape Zhonkier with its lighthouse, the "Three Brothers,"5 the high, craggy coastline visible on both sides from a distance of several dozen miles, the transparent mist on the mountains, and the smoke from the fires—nothing looked terrifying in the brilliant sunlight.

Do Not Make Too Many Plans

Sometimes it is useful to leave things up to chance, especially when in an unfamiliar setting.

On shore, someone's horse was standing harnessed to a buggy without springs. Convicts put my bags on the buggy; a man with a black beard wearing a jacket over long shirttails climbed up on the box. We started.

"Where to, your worship?" he asked, turning around and doffing his cap.

I asked whether he knew of an apartment or even a room for rent.

"Certainly, your worship, there is something for rent."

.. .The driver took me to the Aleksadrovskaya Slobodka, a district in the suburbs, to the house of P, one of the peasant exiles. I was shown my lodgings.

After services on September 8, a holy day,61 was just leav­ing the church in the company of a young official when a corpse was brought in on a stretcher. The pallbearers—four ragged convicts with coarse faces ravaged by alcohol—looked just like the beggars in our cities. They were followed by two more, just like them, who made up the reserve, and also a woman with two children, and a dark Georgian, Kelbokiani, dressed in the attire of a free man (he works as a scribe and is called "Prince"), and all of them seemed to be in a hurry, afraid of missing the priest. Kelbokiani told us that the de­ceased was a free woman named Lyalikova whose husband, a settler, had gone to Nikolayevsk. The two children were hers, and now he, Kelbokiani, her lodger, had no idea what he was to do with them. Having no better alternatives, my compan­ion and I went ahead to the cemetery without waiting for the end of the funeral service.

Accept Invitations

Go to dinner, pay attention to the furnishings and the food, lis­ten to the guests, and take part in the conversation.

While I was talking with the clerk, into the shop walked the owner,7 dressed in a silk jacket and flashy tie. We introduced ourselves.

"Won't you be so kind as to have dinner at my home?" he proposed.

I agreed, and off we went. He lived comfortably: furni­ture from Vienna, flowers, an American Aristone gramo­phone, and a bentwood rocker on which L sits after dinner. In addition to the housewife, the dining room held four guests, all officials. One, an old man without a mustache and with gray sideburns that made him look like the play­wright Ibsen, turned out to be the junior physician at the local infirmary. Another, also old, introduced himself as a staff officer of the Orienburg Cossack Army. From his very first words, this officer impressed me as a very kindly indi­vidual and a great patriot. He was meek and good-natured in his judgments, but when he started to discuss politics, he came out of his shell and spoke with passion about the power of Russia's military and with scorn about the Ger­mans and the British, of whom he had absolutely no per­sonal experience. Once, when traveling to Sakhalin, he had wanted to buy his wife a silk shawl in Singapore. When told he would have to change Russian money into dollars, he took great offense and said, "What next! Exchange my Or­thodox money for some kind of Ethiopian money?!" And the shawl was not bought.

Dinner consisted of soup, chicken, and ice cream. Wine was also served.

"When, roughly, do you have your last snowfall here?" I asked.

"In May," L answered.

"Wrong. In June," snapped the doctor who looked like Ibsen.

"I know a settler," said L, "whose California wheat yielded twenty-two-fold. I know him personally."

Another objection from the doctor.

"Wrong. Your Sakhalin yields exactly zero. It's an ac­cursed land."

"Nevertheless, if you please," said one of the officials, "in '82 the wheat yielded forty-fold. I know this for a fact."

"Don't you believe him," the doctor warned me. "They're just pulling wool over your eyes."

At dinner the following legend was told: when the Rus­sians took possession of the island and set about harassing the Ghiliaks, the Ghiliak shaman laid a curse on Sakhalin and predicted that nothing good would ever come of it.

"And that's precisely what happened," sighed the doctor.

Take Walks

Take walks with a companion or by yourself, to talk things over and try to get a detached view of things.

I have pleasant memories of walks around Aleksandrovsk and the area with the postmaster, the author of Sakhalinу.s Our favorite destination was the lighthouse situated high above the valley on Cape Zhonkier. When you look up at it by day­light, you see a modest little house with a mast and a lantern, but at night, when it shines brilliantly in the dark, penal servitude itself seems to be staring out through its red eye. The road to the lighthouse climbs steeply, spiraling around the mountain past ancient larches and firs. The higher you climb, the freer you breathe. The sea stretches out before you. Slowly your mind fills with thoughts that have nothing to do with prison, penal servitude, and the exile colony, and you begin to appreciate the tedium and duress of the life below. Day in and day out the convicts and exiles endure their pun­ishment, while from morning to night the free people talk of nothing but who got a flogging, and who tried to escape, and who was caught, and who would get a flogging. And, strange to say, after only a single week you find yourself getting used to these conversations and interests and the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is rush to read the general orders—the local daily paper—and then all day long you lis­ten and talk about who tried to escape, and who was shot down, etc. On the mountain, however, looking out toward the sea and the beautiful ravines, you suddenly find all this talk utterly banal and vulgar, as, indeed, it is.