worker, lodger, son of lodger, etc Fifth line: age The
sixth line asked about religion. The seventh: place of birth
The eighth line: year of arrival in Sakhalin On the ninth
line, I recorded the main occupation and trade. On the tenth: literacy. This question usually takes the form of: "Are you literate?" Mine, however, asked, "Can you read?" and thus spared me many incorrect answers since peasants who cannot write but can read printed letters usually consider
themselves illiterate [The eleventh line identified family
status: married, widowed, single]. Finally, the twelfth line: "Do you receive public assistance from the state?". I used a red pencil to draw a line across the cards of female subjects as a simple way of indicating gender.
Conversation, Not Interrogation
Have conversations with people you meet on the street, or at work, or visiting over tea.
While strolling one day along the pier in Aleksandrovsk, I stepped into a boathouse where I found an old man of sixty or seventy and an old woman. They were loaded down with bags and bundles, as if setting off on a journey. We struck up a conversation. The old man had just recently received his peasant rights and was now leaving for the mainland with his wife, first to Vladivostok, and from there, "God knows where." From what they said, I gathered that they had no money. The steamer was scheduled to leave in a day or two, and they had come to the harbor to wait, hiding in the boathouse with all their possessions, and worrying that they might be turned back. They spoke of the mainland with love and reverence, confident that they would find happiness there.
In addition to the railroad and the Slobodka I have just described, the area between the seashore and the post featured an additional curiosity: the ferry across the Duyka. The object floating in the water was neither rowboat nor barge, but a large, perfectly square box. The captain of this unique vessel was a convict by the name of Krasivyj, or "Handsome," "Surname Forgotten." At the age of seventy- one, he was stooped, with jutting shoulder blades, a broken rib, a missing thumb; his body was scarred from years of lashings and beatings. His hair looked faded rather than gray. His clear, blue eyes expressed good-natured merriment. Ragged and barefooted, he was agile, chatty, and laughed with ease. In 1855, after he had deserted from the army "out of stupidity," he became a tramp and started calling himself "Surname Forgotten." He was arrested and packed off to the Tran Baikal, or, as he put it, "to Cossack country."
"Back then, " he told me, " I used to think that people in Siberia live underground, and so I up and ran away straight down the road away from Tyumen. I got as far as Kamyshlov, and there they caught up with me and sentenced me, your worship, to twenty years' penal servitude and ninety lashes. They packed me off to Kara, gave me that lashing, and then moved me from one place to another, to Sakhalin, to Kor- sakov. I took off from Korsakov with a pal, but we only got as far as Duй. I got sick and had to stop. My pal, meanwhile, got as far as Blagoveshchensk. Now I am on my second term, and it is twenty-two years I have been here on Sakhalin. And my one crime was deserting from the army."
"So why do you hide your real name? What's the point?"
"Last summer I did give my real name to an official."
"So what happened?"
"Nothing happened. The official says, 'By the time we make the correction, you'll be dead. Just stay the way you are. What do you need your name for anyway?' He's right, no mistake about it I haven't got much longer to live anyway. Still, my good sir, at least my kin would know my whereabouts."
"What is your name?"
"Here I'm called Ignatyev, Vasily, your excellence."
"And your real name?"
"Handsome" stopped to think for a moment. "Nikita Trofimov. I come from Skopinsky district, Ryazan province."
I got into the box to cross the river. "Handsome" leaned into the long pole and pushed against the riverbed, straining his emaciated, bony body. It was hard work.
"It's hard for you, isn't it?"
"It's nothing, your excellence. No one's breathing down my neck. I take it slow."
He told me that in all his twenty-two years on Sakhalin he was never beaten and never jailed.
"That's because when they send me to saw wood, I go. When they put this pole in my hand, I take it. When they tell me to light stoves in the office, I light them. You've got to submit. Life, no use angering God, is good. Praise the Lord."
Travelers passing through Novo-Mikhailovka cannot
avoid running into the formerly exiled peasant Potemkin
He keeps a shop here and another one in Duй, where his son runs the business. He gives the impression of being a hardworking, intelligent, and prosperous Old Believer.26 His rooms are clean, hung with wallpaper and a print with the inscription: "Marienbad. Sea Bathing near Libava." Both he and his aged wife are sober, thoughtful, and diplomatic in their remarks. Over tea, they told me that it is possible to make a living on Sakhalin and that the soil is fertile, but— and here's the problem—that the people have gotten lazy, spoiled, and passive. I asked whether the rumor was true that he had once served watermelons and melons from his own gardens to an important personage. Without batting an eye, he answered, "That's correct. Melons do ripen here from time to time."27
Make Inquiries
Ask for information and explanations.
Card games are very popular in Upper Armudan and the local players are famous throughout Sakhalin. Short on money, the gamblers of Armudan play for very low stakes, but play vigorously, continuously, just as in the play Thirty Years, or The Life of a Card Player.28 I had the following conversation with a settler named Sizov, one of the most passionate and tireless players in the area.
"Why, your excellence, are we not allowed on the mainland?" he asked.
"And what would you do there?" I teased. "There's no one there for you to play cards with."
"Not at alclass="underline" that's where the real games are."
"You play shtoss?" I asked after a pause.
"Exactly right, your excellence. I play shtoss."
Later, as I was leaving Upper Armudan, I asked my coachman, a convict:
"Do they play for stakes?"
"For sure, for stakes."
"What do they stand to lose?"
"What do you mean, what? Government rations, bread, for instance, or smoked fish. He'll lose his grub and his clothes, but he'll just keep on sitting there, cold and hungry."
"But what will he eat?"
"What? Well, if he wins, he eats, if he doesn't win, he goes to bed all the same, on an empty stomach."
Study Children
Talk with children and observe their games to understand, among other things, the adult world.
The children watch a gang of prisoners in chains with absolute indifference. When they see shackled convicts pushing a wheelbarrow filled with sand, they jump on the back of the barrow and roar with laughter. They play at prisoners and soldiers. A little boy runs out into the street and shouts at his pals: "Attention!" "Fall back!" Or he bundles up his toys and a piece of bread and tells his mom, "I'm going on the road!" "Watch out, a soldier might shoot you," his mother teases. He goes out on the street and wanders up and down while his pals, pretending to be soldiers, give chase. The children of Sakhalin talk about vagrants, birch rods, whips; they know about things like executioners, shackled prisoners, and cohabitants.