One of the prisoners, a political, had a passion for acquiring information on every possible subject. Most of the others disliked him, and A.J., to whom he attached himself as often as he could, found him a great bore. “I am always anxious to improve my small knowledge of the world,” he would say, as a preface to a battery of questions. “You are a person of education, I can see—can you tell me whether Hong Kong is a British possession?” Something stirred remotely in A.J.’s memory; he said, Yes, he believed it was. “And is Australia the largest island in the world?” Yes, again; he believed so. “Then, sir, if you could further oblige me—what is the smallest island?” A.J. could never quite decide whether the man were an eccentric or a half-wit. He afterwards learned that he had aimed a bomb at a chief of police in Courland.
All this time A.J. was immensely worried about his own position, which, from conversation with other prisoners, he gathered might be very serious. There were, apparently, few limits to the power of the police; they might keep arrested persons in prison without trial for any length of time, or, at any moment, if they so desired, they might send them into exile anywhere in the vast region between the Urals and the Far East.
For five weeks nothing happened; no one either left or joined the prisoners. Then, on the thirty-eighth day (A.J. had kept count) one of the warders, during his morning visit, singled out A.J. and another prisoner to accompany him. From the fact that the two were ordered to carry their bundles with them, the rest of the prisoners drew the likeliest conclusion, and there were many sentimental farewells between friends. The jailer obligingly waited till all this was finished; he did not mind; time was of little concern to him or to anyone else at the Gontcharnaya. Then, with a good-humoured shrug of the shoulders, he relocked the door and led the two prisoners across courtyards and along corridors into the room that A.J. had visited on first entering the prison. The same man was there behind the desk, twirling his moustache upwards almost to meet the bluish pouches under his eyes.
He dealt first with the other prisoner, verifying tree man’s name and then declaring, with official emphasis: “You are found guilty of treason against the government and are sentenced to exile. That is all.” The man began to speak, but a police guard who was in the room dragged him roughly away. When the shouts of both had died down in the distance, the man behind the desk turned to A.j. “You are Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov? You too are found guilty of treason. Your sentence is exile—”
“But what is the charge? What am I accused of? Surely—”
“Silence! Take him away!”
A police guard seized him by the arms and dragged him towards the door and out into the corridor. A.J. did not shout or struggle; he was suddenly dumbfounded, and into the vacuum of bewilderment came slowly, like pain, the clutchings of a dreadful panic. Although he had had exile in mind for weeks, it had been a blow to hear the word actually pronounced over him.
Outside in the corridor the rough manners of the police guard changed abruptly to a mood of almost fatherly solicitude. “I wouldn’t worry so much if I were you,” he remarked soothingly. “Personally, I should much prefer exile to being herded in jail with criminals and such-like. I always think it is a great scandal to mix up decent fellows like yourself with that scum.” He went on to give A.J. some practical advice. “As an exile you are entitled to a fair amount of luggage, though the authorities will try to do you out of your privileges if they can. I suggest that you make out a list of everything you want to take with you, and I will see that the things are collected from where you have been living.”
A.J. was too tired and depressed at that moment to consider the matter with any zest, and the guard continued, with a curious mixture of friendliness and officialdom: “Ah, I see—you are upset—perhaps, then, you will be so good as to tell me and I will make out the list. Oh yes, I can write—I am a man of education, like yourself. Come now, there is no time to lose. You will want heavy winter clothes, the usual cooking utensils, blankets, and things like that. Oh yes, and books—you are permitted by the regulations to take books with you. You are a reader, of course? Ah, education is a wonderful thing, is it not? Perhaps you would like me to have your books packed up and sent with the other things?”
“There are too many of them,” A.J. answered dully. “Far too many to carry.”
“But you would be allowed to take a dozen or so. Do you mean that you have more than a dozen books? You are perhaps a professor, then, eh? Ah well, I will ask them to send on a dozen for you, anyhow.”
And in due course the pertinacious fellow, whose name was Savanrog, compiled his list and the bureaucratic machine, with numerous clankings and rumblings, got to work upon it. Savanrog was delighted when, a few days later, the complete assortment of articles arrived. By that time A.J. had grown more resigned to his fate, a few days of solitary confinement in a comparatively clean and comfortable cell having helped considerably towards such a state. “You see,” Savanrog exclaimed, taking both A.J.’s hands in his and shaking them, “I have managed it all for you! Oh yes, I do not let anything slip past me. It is the turn of fortune that has brought us together, Peter Vasilevitch—I have done my duty—and as for our acquaintance, it has been a thing of delight. I have always counted it a privilege to make myself known to eminent politicals like yourself.”
“But surely I am not an eminent political?” A.J. answered, half-smiling.
“Ah, you are too modest. Were you not the friend of Maronin, who killed Daniloff, Minister of the Interior?”
A.J. let the question pass. It was the first intimation he had had that his offence was reckoned as ‘friendship’ with the boy-assassin. He had sometimes feared that he would be ranked as an accessory to the crime itself; in which case, of course, his status would have been that of a criminal, not a political. Savanrog’s chatter was, in its way, reassuring.
At last the morning came when he was ordered to prepare for the journey. Savanrog, at the final moment, shook hands with him, kissed him on both cheeks, and gave him a black cigar. “It will be a breach of regulations to smoke it, until you are across the Urals,” he told him, with a last spasm of official correctitude. Then, leading A.J. into the corridor, he marched him into a courtyard in which a hundred or so other prisoners were already on parade, and with a great show of blustering brutality, pushed him into line. A.J. did not recognise any of the faces near him. He was ordered to separate his luggage into two bundles, a personal one to carry on his back, and a larger one consisting of things he would not require until the end of the journey, wherever and whenever that might be. The larger bundles of all the prisoners were then collected into a van and carried away. Afterwards the men themselves were divided up into two detachments, and here came the final welcome proof that A.J. was a political; he was not put into the group of those who had to wait for the blacksmith to manacle their wrists together. Finally the whole melancholy procession was led out through the prison-gate into the street. It was only a very short distance to the railway station, and the throngs on the pavements stared with just that helpless, half-compassionate, half-casual curiosity which A.J. had observed on so many previous occasions when he had himself formed part of them.
After marching into a goods yard beyond the station and halting beside a train, the manacled prisoners were pushed into cattle-trucks, but the politicals were allowed to choose their own places in ordinary third-class rolling-stock, passably clean and comfortable. A.J. found himself cordially welcomed by the men of his compartment. There were five of them, with one exception all young like himself. The exception was a very ancient fellow with a huge head and a sweeping beard. Even before the train moved off A.J. was told a good deal about his fellow-passengers. The old man’s name was Trigorin—just Trigorin—he seemed to possess no other. His offence had been the preaching of roadside sermons in which had occurred certain remarks capable of seditious interpretation. He had been exiled once before for a similar offence. “I am an old man,” he said, “and nothing very dreadful can happen to me now. But of course it is different for you youngsters.”