A.J.’s other fellow-passengers were also sent away, but whither, he could not discover. He himself was kept at Irkutsk. It was a better managed prison than the Gontcharnaya at Petersburg, but after the easy-going train- journey the return to routine of any kind was irksome. A.J. found most of his fellow-prisoners in a state of depression and melancholy that soon began to affect him also, especially when the freezing up of the river and the first big snowstorm of the season marked the onset of Siberian winter.
The prison governor was a good-tempered, jovial fellow who liked to make the days and nights pass by as pleasantly as possible for Himself and mankind in general. Every morning he would tour the prison and greet the men with a bluff, companionable—“Good morning, boys—how goes it?” He was always particular about their food and the warmth of their rooms, and he would sometimes pay a surprise visit to the kitchens to sample the soup that was being prepared for them. He seemed a little in awe of some of the politicals, but he was on friendly terms with most of the criminals, and enjoyed hearing them give their own accounts of their various crimes. The more bloodthirsty and exciting these were, the better he liked them; he would sometimes, at the end of a particularly thrilling recital, clap a man on the back and exclaim: “Well, you are a fellow, and no mistake! To think of you actually doing all that!”
Naturally, the criminals invented all kinds of incredibilities to please him.
A.J. soon found that the only way to keep his mind from descending into the bitterest and most soul-destroying gloom was to think of the only inspiring possibility open to a prisoner—that of escape. Together with another political he began to plan some method of getting away, not immediately, but as soon as the spring weather should make the open country habitable. This task, with all its complications, helped the winter days to pass with moderate rapidity. Unfortunately a fellow-prisoner who was a government spy (there were many of these, sometimes unknown even to the prison authorities) gave the plan away, and A.J. and his co-conspirator were summoned before the governor. His attitude was rather that of a pained and reproachful guardian whose fatherly consideration has been basely rewarded. “Really, you know,” he told them, “that was a very foolish thing to do. Your attempt to escape has already been reported to Petersburg, and it will only make your eventual punishment more severe. The original idea was to exile you to Yakutsk as soon as the season permitted, but now heaven knows where you will be sent.” And he added, almost pathetically: “Whatever made you act so unreasonably?”
So the position seemed rather more hopeless than ever. Soon, too, the easy-going governor was sent away to another prison. The Petersburg authorities transferred him to Omsk, and in his place was sent a different type of man altogether—a small, dapper, bristling-moustached martinet, whom everyone—prisoners and prison officials alike—detested with venomous intensity. It was he who, the following May, sent for A.J. and barked at him in staccato tones: “Ouranov, your case has been reconsidered by the authorities in view of your recent attempt to escape. Your revised sentence is that of banishment for ten years to Russkoe Yansk. You will go first to Yakutsk, and then wait for the winter season. You will need special kit, which you will be allowed to purchase, and I am instructed to pay you the customary exile’s allowance, dated back to the time of your entry into Siberia. Perhaps you will sign this receipt.”
A fortnight later the journey commenced. A.J. had spent part of the interval in making purchases in the Irkutsk shops; the two Cossack guards who were to accompany him to his place of exile advised him what to buy and how much to pay for it. They were big, simple-hearted, illiterate fellows and could give him few details about Russkoe Yansk, except that the journey there would take many months. A.J. suspected that with the usual Siberian attitude towards time, they were merely estimating vaguely; he could not believe that even the remotest exile station could be quite so inaccessible. The first stage was by road and water to Yakutsk. Along with hundreds of other exiles, including a few women, the trek was begun across the still frost-bound country to Katchugo, near the source of the Lena. This part of the journey was made in twenty-mile stages and lasted over a week. The nights were spent in large barn-like sheds, horribly verminous, and well guarded by sentries on all sides.
At Katchugo the entire detachment was transferred to barges, and resigned itself to a two months’ meandering down the river to Yakutsk, which was reached towards the end of July. The horrors of that journey, under a sky that never, during the short summer, darkened to more than twilight, engraved still more deeply the mood of fatalism that had already descended on most of the prisoners. A.J. was no exception. He did not find himself worrying much, and he was not nearly so low-spirited as he had been amidst the comparatively comfortable surroundings of the Irkutsk prison. He felt scarcely more than a growing numbness, as if a part of his brain and personality were losing actual existence.
Yakutsk was almost pleasant after the barges, and the remaining weeks of the summer passed without incident. Prison regulations, owing to the remoteness of the settlement, were lax enough, and A.J. made several acquaintances. One of them, an educated exile who had been allowed to set up as a boot-repairer, had even heard of Russkoe Yansk. It was on the Indigirka river, he thought, well beyond the Arctic Circle. It could only be a very small settlement and it was years since he had heard of anyone being sent there. “Perhaps they have made a mistake,” he hazarded, with dispassionate cheerfulness. “Or perhaps the place does not exist at all and they will have to bring you back. That has happened, you know. There was a man sent to one place last year and the Cossacks themselves couldn’t find it. They looked for it all winter and then had to hurry back before the thaw began.” He laughed heartily. “I’m not inventing the story, I assure you. Some of those Petersburg officials don’t know their own country—they just stare at a map and say—’Oh, we’ll send him here—or there’—and maybe the map is wrong all the time!”
Early in September the Lena, miles wide, began to freeze over, and soon the whole visible world became transfixed in the cold, darkening glare of winter. The two guards who had left Irkutsk in charge of A.J. and who had spent the summer amusing themselves as well as the amenities of Yakutsk permitted, now indicated that the time for the resumption of the journey had arrived. From now onwards it became a much more personal and solitary affair—almost, in fact, a polar expedition, but without the spur of hope and ambition to mitigate hardship. The three men, heavily furred, set out by reindeer sledge into the long greyness of the sub-Arctic winter. Two of them carried arms, yet the third man, defenceless, was given the place of honour on all occasions—at night-time in the wayside huts, usually uninhabited, and during the day whenever a halt was made for rest and food. The temperature sank lower and lower and the sky darkened with every mile; they crossed a range of bleak mountains and descended into a land of frozen whiteness unbroken anywhere save by stunted willows. For food, there were birds which the guards shot or snared, and unlimited fish could be obtained by breaking through the thick ice in the streams. The fish froze stiff on being taken out of the water; they had to be cut into slices and eaten raw between hunks of bread. A.J.’s palate had by this time grown much less fastidious, and he found such food not at all unpleasant when he was hungry enough. The cold air and the harsh activity of the daily travel bred also in him a sense of physical fitness which, at any other time, he would have relished; as it was, however, he felt nothing but a grim and ever-deepening insensitiveness to all outward impressions. He imagined vaguely the vast distance he had already travelled, but it did not terrify him; it was merely a memory of emptiness and boredom, and though he knew that the end of the journey would mean the end of even the last vestige of changefulness, he yet longed for it, because, for the moment, it seemed a change in itself.