The journey to Moscow took two days, and then there was considerable delay while the prison-train was shunted round the city and linked up with other coaches from different parts of the country. Finally the complete train, by this time very long, set out at a slow pace on its tremendous eastern journey. To many of the prisoners there was something ominous in the fact that they were now actually on the track of the Trans-Siberian, and spirits were low during the first few hours. A.J., however, did not share the general gloom; he remembered Siberia from his previous visit, and the name did not strike any particular terror into his mind. When some of the young men spoke with dismay of the possible fate in store for them, he felt strongly tempted to tell them that parts of Siberia, at any rate, were no worse than many parts of Europe. Trigorin, however, saved him from any temptation to recount his own experiences. Trigorin described how conditions had improved since the opening of the railway; during his first exile, he said, he had had actually to walk three thousand miles from railhead at Perm, and much of the way through blinding rain and snow. He gave lurid and graphic descriptions of the horrors of the old forwarding prisons at Tiumen and Tomsk, and of the convict barges on the rivers, and of the great Siberian highway along which so many thousands of exiles had been driven to misery and death. “Things are much better now,” he said, with sadly twinkling eyes. “We politicals are pampered—no floggings, hospitals if we fall ill—what more can we expect, after all? You youngsters, whose knowledge of Siberia comes from Dostoievski’s book and a few lurid novelettes, can’t realise what a good time politicals have nowadays. We die, of course, but only of loneliness, and a man may die of that in bed in his own home, may he not?”
A mood of curious fatalism sank upon A.J. during those days and nights of travel. The journey was not too arduous; the food was coarse, but sufficient in quantity and fairly nourishing; the military guards were easygoing fellows, especially after all the politicals had given parole that they would not attempt to escape during the train-journey. The future, of course, loomed grimly enough, but A.J. did not seem to feel it; his mind had already attuned itself to grimness. He kept remembering his interviews with Stanford and Forrester, and their repeated assurances that the game was one of ’heads somebody else wins and tails you lose.’ Well, he had lost, and he could not complain that he had not been amply warned of the possibility. He felt, however, that he had had distinctly bad luck; it had been pure misfortune, and not any personal carelessness or stupidity of his own, that had led to his present position. But for his friendship with Maronin all would have still been well. Yet he did not regret that friendship. It was, on the contrary, one of the few things in his life that he prized in memory.
He remembered one of Stanfield’s remarks: “If anything goes wrong, you will have to become a Russian subject completely.” That seemed of peculiar significance now that things had gone wrong, and it was true, too, that whether he willed it so or not, he was becoming Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov in a way he had certainly never been before. He wondered frequently whether by this time the Secret Service people knew all about his trouble. Most probably information had reached them, by their own secret channels, within a few hours of his arrest. He could picture their attitude—a shrug of the shoulders, a vaguely pitying look, and then—forgetfulness. Perhaps Stanfield might have commented to Forrester or Forrester to Stanfield: “Well, he didn’t last long, eh? Still, we warned him. Wonder if he’ll play the fool by trying to make out he’s English?”
A.J. had no intention of so playing the fool. It was not merely that he had given his word, but that his common sense informed him how utterly useless it would be. Apart from his knowledge of the English language, there was nothing at all he could advance in support of any claim he might make to be other than the Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov set out with authentic-looking detail on his passport and papers of identity. And even supposing he managed to persuade the authorities to enquire into his case, the result could only mean a communication to the British Embassy, with what result he had been warned. “The British authorities would merely arch their eyebrows with great loftiness and disown you,” had been Stanfield’s way of putting it. No, there was nothing to be gained by attempting the impossible; the only course was simple endurance for the time being, and later, if he could manage it, escape. Henceforward he was doomed to be Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov without qualification, and, rather curiously, he now began to feel what he had hardly felt before—a certain pride in his new identity. He was Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov, exiled to Siberia for a political offence; and he felt that same quiet, unending antagonism towards the imperial authorities that the other exiles felt; he began to understand it, to understand them, to understand why they were so calm, why they so rarely roused the sleeping fury in their souls. They were saving it, as themselves also, for some vaguely future day.
He began, too, to breathe with comfort and comprehension the vast easy- going laziness of the country; he perceived why no one ever hurried, why trains were always late, why the word ‘sichass’ (’presently’) was so popular and universal; after all, if people were merely waiting for something to happen, there could be no special urgency about things done in the meantime. And they were waiting for something to happen—the exiles, the soldier-guards, the criminals in their chains, the railway-workers, the prison officials—a calm, passionless anticipation gleamed in their eyes when one caught them sometimes unawares. As the train rumbled eastwards this sense of anticipation and timelessness deepened immeasurably; life was just sunrise and sun-setting; food, drink, talk; the train would pull up in a siding; when would it move out again? ‘Sichass,’ of course; that might be in an hour or two, or perhaps the next day; nobody knew—nobody very much cared. When the train stopped, the prisoners sometimes climbed out and walked about the country near the track, or else lay down in the long grass with the midday sun on their faces. The nights were cold, but no snow had fallen yet. At Omsk, Krasnoiarsk, and other places, some of the men left the train, in charge of Cossack guards. Trigorin explained that they were the milder cases—men who had not definitely committed any crime, but were merely suspected of being ‘dangerous’ or of having ‘dangerous opinions.’ “It is clear,” he declared comfortingly, “that something much more serious is in store for all of us. We shall know when we reach Irkutsk.”
They reached the Siberian capital three weeks after leaving Moscow; the busy city, magnificently situated at the confluence of two rivers, gleamed brightly in the late autumnal sun. The exiles were marched from the station to the central forwarding prison and there split up into several groups. Trigorin was sent off almost immediately; he was bound for Chita, near the Manchurian frontier, and was to travel there with a contingent of local criminals. The other politicals were immensely indignant about this; it was against all the rules to put a political along with criminals, and much as they hated the penal code, such a breach of it stirred them to punctilious anger. The prison governor apologised; he was very sorry, but he could not help it; Trigorin must go with the criminals, but he would be given a separate railway coach. “Besides,” he explained, reassuringly, “they are only local murderers—not bad fellows, some of them.” Trigorin himself did not object at all, and actually rebuked his friends for their uncharitable championship. “Let us not forget,” he said, “that the only person to whom Christ definitely promised paradise was a criminal. He, the greatest of all political prisoners, was actually crucified between two of them.”