Go to a Wedding
Observe what people are wearing, their ages, rituals, conversations, and social roles; try to figure out what they are feeling.
One evening in Aleksandrovsk the local priest, Father Yegor, dropped by for a brief visit before going to church to officiate at a wedding. I came along. In the church, candles were just being lit; the singers had already assembled in the choir loft and were waiting for the bridal couple with bored faces. There were many women, both convict and free, and they kept turning around impatiently to look at the door. Suddenly a person stationed at the door waved and whispered excitedly, "They're coming!" The singers began to clear their throats. A wave of people surged from the door, someone shouted sternly, and finally, the young couple stepped inside. He was a convict typesetter, about twenty-five years old, dressed in a jacket with a stiffly starched wing collar and a white cravat. She was a convict, about three or four years his senior, in a blue dress with white lace and flowers in her hair. A shawl was spread out on the rug. The bridegroom stepped on it first. The best men, typesetters, were also wearing white ties. Father Yegor emerged from behind the altar and spent a long time leafing through the prayer book propped up on the lectern. "Blessed be our God,." he intoned, and the wedding ceremony began. While the priest was placing wreaths on the bride's and groom's heads and praying to God to crown them with honor and glory, the faces of the women in the congregations expressed deep emotion and joy, and it seemed as if everyone had forgotten that the ceremony was taking place in a prison church, in penal servitude, far, very far from their native land. The priest spoke to the groom, "Exalt yourself, oh bridegroom, as did Abraham " As soon as the ceremony was finished, the church
emptied and the smell of melting wax spread from the burning candles which the guard was rushing to put out, and all at once it became very depressing. We stepped out on the portico. Rain. Close to the church, a crowd had gathered in the darkness and two tarantasses15 stood by. In one sat the newlyweds; the other was empty.
"Here, Father!" Voices were calling out to Father Yegor and dozens of hands were stretching out of the darkness as if to grab him. "This way, Father! Do us the honor!"
Father Yegor was helped into the tarantass and set off for the home of the newlyweds.
Visit Cemeteries
Study the graves and the headstones; notice the inscriptions; take part in a funeral.
At the Aleksandrovsk cemetery I saw a black cross with an image of the Holy Mother and the following inscription: "Here lie the ashes of the maid Afimya Kurnikovaya, deceased in the year 1888, on the 21st day of May. She was 18 years old. This cross was erected in her memory and to mark the departure of her parents to the mainland in the year 1889, in June."
.The cemetery was situated about a half-mile from the church, behind the settlement, near the sea, on a steep hill. While we were still climbing the hillside, we were overtaken by the funeral procession. Evidently, the service had taken no more than a couple of minutes. From the top of the hill, we could see the coffin lurching on the stretcher and a little boy holding back and pulling away from a woman who was dragging him by the hand.
On one side, we had an extensive view out on the post and the surrounding countryside; on the other, we saw the sea, peaceful and sparkling in the sun. There were a lot of graves and crosses on the hill. Two large crosses standing side by side marked the graves of a certain Mitsul and the guard Selivanov, who was killed by a prisoner. The small crosses that marked the graves of the convicts were all identical and reticent. While Mitsul will be remembered for some time to come, those others lying under all those little crosses—the murderers, fugitives, chain-clanging prisoners—are of use to no one.. .except, perhaps, to someone out in the Russian steppe, or to some old drayman sitting by a campfire deep in a forest somewhere, trying to relieve his boredom by telling a story about a man from his village who had once gone on a crime spree. His companion stares out into the darkness and shivers; a night bird shrieks—that is the extent to which he will be remembered. A cross marking the grave of an exiled medic is inscribed as follows:
Passer-by! May this verse to you recall
That all beneath the skies is finite, etc.
And closes with:
Farewell, my comrade, till that joyful morn!
Ye. Fedorov
Keep Moving
Fight the fatigue that comes with research by moving around. On September 10, I was back on the Baikal, with which the reader is already acquainted, this time to sail to the south of Sakhalin Island. I was pleased to be going because I had grown quite tired of the north and was anxious for new impressions. The Baikal hoisted anchor shortly after nine. It was very dark. I stood alone at the stern, looking back, saying farewell to that gloomy little world guarded from the sea by the Three Brothers now barely visible above the surface of the water and looming in the darkness like three black monks. Even through the din of the ship, I could hear the ominous crash of waves against those reefs. Soon, however, Zhonkier and the Brothers fell far behind and vanished—for me, forever—in the darkness. The tumult of the turbulent waves, filled with an impotent, evil yearning,
slowly faded 16
We had sailed about six miles when fires flared up on the shore: this was the frightful Voyevodsk prison; a little farther along, we caught sight of the fires of Duй. Then, a bit later on, everything disappeared, and only the darkness remained and with it, the sort of dread with which one wakes up from a portentous nightmare.
observe Make Tours of Inspection
Visit sites at times suitable for seeing how they normally Junction.
I arrived at five o'clock in the morning, just as the settlers were getting up. What stench, filth, crowding! Their hair was disheveled as though they had spent the night brawling; their faces, still half-asleep, were sallow and sickly and seemed insane. It was clear that they had slept in their clothes and boots, tightly packed together on the sleeping platform17 or on the filthy dirt floor beneath it. The physician making the rounds with me that morning told me that there was only seven cubic feet of air for every three or four men. And this, incidentally, at a time when cholera was expected on Sakhalin and all vessels had been placed under quarantine.
That same morning I made a visit to the Voyevodsk prison. It was built in the 1870s on a steep bank of over 3,360 square feet that had to be leveled before the building could be erected. At present, this is the most infamous of all the Sakhalin prisons. It has withstood all attempts at reform and thus serves as a perfect example of the old model of prisons that used to inspire such intense disgust and horror in eyewitnesses. The Voyevodsk prison consists of three large buildings and a smaller one for individual cells. Naturally, there is not much one can say about the cubic volume of air or the ventilation here. When I entered the prison, the floors had just been washed, and the damp, dank air had not yet dissipated since the night and lay heavy. The first thing I heard here were complaints about bedbugs. There is no living for the bedbugs. At one time, they were exterminated with chloride of lime or frozen to death during the severe cold, but nowadays even these measures are useless. The quarters of the prison guards also have the sour stench of the latrine; here too one hears complaints about bedbugs.