The Silent Prophet (8 page)

Gradually they broke up into ever smaller groups. With tears in their eyes and their beards they bade each other farewell. Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion stayed together. On the first day they still spoke of one or other with whom they had sung together. As soon as they struck up in a threesome the songs that had flowed from everyone's throats a few days previously, they remembered those others whose voices they would never hear again. The songs had become a kind of resonant bond of amity. They had brought strangers together with the power of blood shed in common and pain suffered in common. Then the departed were gradually forgotten. Only now and again did there revive in memory a face that no longer bore a name, a tear in a black beard that no longer belonged to any face, and a word would ring out whose speaker was no longer known.

They were led far and stragglingly, they saw the unpeopled shores of the Obi. The two small settlements of Hurgut and Narym seemed to them large and lively towns. They stayed overnight in Narym. They learned to collect bugs in their fists and drown them in large buckets, also to coax the small white files of lice from the walls into paper cornets and burn them. They began to esteem the lonely scattered jails where they chanced to halt as welcoming homes. They saw distant forest fires, bartered with Chinese merchants from Chifu for Siberian fur gloves and boots of reindeer hide. They listened to the legends of the Yakuts about the Indiguirka River, and the Dogdo rivulet which carries gold along its bed.

Winter came. They became accustomed to 67 degrees Celsius below zero and to the frosted windowpanes of ice in the
jurts.
And they awaited the forty sunless days in the town of Vierchoiansk, the town with the twenty-three houses.

It was laid down that their fixed location should be ten versts from a town, ten versts from a river and ten versts from a high-road. Yet they managed to settle by a river, the Kolyma River. It is bigger than the Rhine, only three towns are situated on it. One had nine inhabitants, another a hundred inhabitants in thirty military barracks. Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion decided on the third town of Sredni Kolymsk. Here there were huts placed far apart and only three houses with glazed windows. But within a circle of many miles it was the only place with a church, a steeple and bells—bells that had been cast in the civilized world and whose ringing was like a mother tongue.

4

The Siberian officials of the Tsar did not always deserve the bad reputation they enjoyed among the inhabitants, the condemned and even their superior authorities. Some, who considered themselves as exiles, and not without reason, were resolved to share the lot of the prisoners rather than intensify it. Many started off by avenging their fate on the condemned but mellowed after a few years when they saw that their harshness brought them no advantage. Arrogance, vanity and terror dwindled, since the controlling authorities were so far away. Others again allowed themselves to be bribed and lived on with a bad conscience. A bad conscience can make both autocrats and thugs indulgent.

Berzejev had made friends with Colonel Lelewicz, a Pole, who had assumed command of an infantry detachment in Siberia in order to have an opportunity of helping his exiled fellow-countrymen. He enjoyed such good connections in Petersburg that he did not need to conceal his sentiments behind a martial loyalty to the Tsar like other officers and officials. With his help Friedrich, Berzejev and Lion established themselves in one of the three houses furnished with windowpanes. Thus they lived in a steady private relationship with the authorities and were allowed to play cards with the officials and conduct political discussions.

Once a week the newspapers arrived, ten days old. The news they spread in this desolation resembled the stars we still see shining in the heavens though they were extinguished centuries ago. Lion affirmed that it was unimportant when one read the papers. For the very transmission of an event changes it and even denies it. That is why we find every report in the newspapers so improbable.

Lion asserted that he had been exiled only on account of his kinship with a well-known revolutionary of the same name, and that he would probably soon be released. He was, in fact, only a mild opponent of the State, favoured the introduction of a constitutional monarchy, modernization of the bureaucracy on the western model and a settlement of domestic political questions on properly applied economic principles. Between two fingers he held his pince-nez which were knotted to a broad black ribbon, threatened with them, designed interweaving arabesques in the air with them, and only settled them on the lower part of his nose when he was compelled to listen, as if Lion wanted to study his opponent better through the glass while nevertheless peering at him only over the rims of the lenses. Everything to do with natural processes was strange and disconcerting to him. He had the same respect for dogs as for wolves and bears. He hardly noticed the passage of the seasons and it made no difference to him whether the temperature was 20 or 60 degrees.

He was a constant herald of the war. 'The Social Democrats in Germany,' he exclaimed, 'have at last revealed their loyalty to the Kaiser. Herr Stücklen says: "We Social Democrats love the country in which we were born, we are better patriots than people think." Noske: "We have never entertained the idea that the frontiers of the Reich can be left unfortified without a considerable defensive army." Because the Social Democrats are for the capital levy on principle, they vote for military credits. Thus they vote for the option of throwing half a million men against the French frontier in four days. The representatives of the International concede one and half milliards to the War Minister. That is war, gentlemen,' concluded Lion, swinging his pince-nez in the air like a flag.

Berzejev and the official Efrejnov were for Germany, suspicious of France. Berzejev defended the German workers. Finally, he even compared the Tsar to the German Kaiser. 'After all,' he said, 'the Kaiser doesn't send anyone to Siberia.'

Efrejnov, who attributed everything bad in Russia to western influences, to which society, the intelligentsia and the Tsar himself were subject, felt offended. His fair beard, his broad shoulders shivered. 'It just shows,' he cried, 'how all alike you are. You believe that somewhere Russia is like the rest of the world, in one small detail at least. Not true. Russia is oriental and everything else is the rotten decaying West. Whether it's your German Kaiser, Berzejev, or your German workers, it's all one. A Kaiser who rules through Parliament and democracy, that's already the beginning of Socialism. The Kaiser, the republic, Marxism, all western ideas. The Tsar in Russia is more democratic than a socialist parliamentarian. He is sovereign by the will of the people and of the land it cultivates. The Tsar is the product of the Russian peasant. He looks after the affairs of state for which the people have no time. When did your dissatisfaction begin? Since you looked to the West and envied its civilization. Witte goes to do business with the American Jews. The Anglomaniac snob Isvolski is sent out into the world so that he can report what ties they are wearing in London and Paris. And thus you destroy the old holy autocracy of the Tsars.'

For some time Lion had been drawing restless curves in the air with his pince-nez. 'Do you imagine,' he shouted, 'that we can shut ourselves off from the West? We can't compete with world economy.

'Russia is not going to remain a nation of peasants. It is becoming industrialized. But industry dictates the political set-up. Two-thirds of our industries are in foreign hands. We produce our iron and petroleum so slowly that they do not suffice even for our own feeble production. Our coalmines deliver only 2,250 million poods as against 18 milliards in Germany and 32 milliards in the United States. The average income of a Russian subject amounts to 53 roubles a year, of a Frenchman 233, an Englishman 273, an American 345. The average Russian saves only 16 roubles a year. Our national debt amounts to 9 milliards, that is 2 roubles 80 kopecks a head. But England, which in your view belongs to the degenerate West, has a national budget of 160 million pounds sterling and underpins its economy with a further 170 millions.'

Nothing availed against Lion's figures, which he recited without the least hesitation, like a poem. As he uttered them, he drew them briskly in the air as if writing them with chalk on a blackboard. Efrejnov shook his head. Evidently he considered statistics, like Marxism, to be a product of the West and figures as crimes like assassinations. Lion had probably been sent to Siberia with more justification than the others. He regarded the ikon in the corner and the small red lamp lit a soothing gentle consolation in his heart.

5

Friedrich lit the slender candle of transparent paraffin wax.

From the ground the earth's frozen breath entered the room like a steeply rising wind. Around the house sang the still, aching cold. It was like the singing of telegraph wires.

Friedrich imagined to himself that there, in front of the house, in the impenetrable darkness, stood the smooth-planed tall posts topped with their flowers of white porcelain, linked by wires with the living world, whose forlorn voice they transformed into the clear, comforting and trustful monotony of a lullaby. When he lay down to sleep there flashed through his first slumber a rapid fancy, less than a thought and more than a dream, that his sleep would carry him towards a morning in the middle of the lively and bustling city. Berzejev still spoke to him for long stretches and did not wait for a reply. He loved his quiet younger comrade, his thin face and reserved look, and the courage with which he had joined the Revolution. 'He has no discretion,' observed Berzejev. 'His rashness hinders him from anticipating situations. But when they come he bears them steadfastly. He is easily inspired and easily disillusioned. But despondency and enthusiasm are only physiological phenomena. In reality he is melancholy, uniformly melancholy.' And Berzejev said out loud:

'This poor Efrejnov is confused by Lion. He is too unsuspecting to find arguments. I could have found them for him. Russia's faults are really the consequence of hasty endeavours to copy the West. In all probability, Russia would be sound and rich without the stupid aspiration held by a certain section of its ruling class to become civilized, and to be regarded in the fashionable spas of Western Europe as proper Europeans. The bigoted Agrarians are no less right than we ourselves, the thoroughgoing revolutionaries. They lack only understanding. Everything that lies in the middle, between thoroughgoing reaction and thoroughgoing revolution, is foolish in Russia. The bourgeois class has developed before there was a place ready for it. Now it is demanding its industries. The Tsar is helpless. He is turning himself into an Emperor on the old Western model, rather like the present German Kaiser. Autocracy gives way to bureaucracy and the officials are the vanguard of the bourgeoisie. It begins with the entry of the sons of the nobility and the rich bourgeoisie into official posts, that is, into the great cities. And the cities are the enemy of the countryside. The intelligentsia follows. It is the outpost of the Revolution. The semi-revolutionary ideals of the intelligentsia are foreign to the instincts of the Russian people. The cruelty of the Agrarian autocracy is really closer to them. You see, therefore, the imminence of an explosion. The intellectual bureaucrat renders the Agrarians impotent. He can topple the Tsar but not govern the people. His dominance will be an insignificant intermission. It is we who hold the power. Russia can only become a proletarian, not a bourgeois, republic. Only a war is needed, and the old Russia is done for. And the war is coming; we shan't be staying in Siberia much longer.'

Flour was unaffordable. In this region the housewives could bake only three times a year. Bread was scarcer than meat. For the first time Friedrich felt the immediate relation between sun and earth. For the first time he understood the simple meaning of the prayer man addresses to Heaven for his daily bread. At the breadless table where he sat down twice a day he thought of the bakers' shops in the bustling towns. He closed his eyes. He conjured up the different colours of the flour and the different shapes of the loaves.

'What are you dreaming about?' asked Berzejev.

'Of bread. When I picture the world from which we are exiled, I think of quite trivial things—flat matches, for instance, for the waistcoat pocket and round lids for beer-mugs, inkwells one can open by pressing, celluloid paper-knives and quite ordinary things like a picture-postcard. I remember one that used to hang in the shop-window of the stationer's on the corner of the street where I lived. It was old and yellowed, had been in the window for years. It was a miserable little stationer's and an ugly card. It had a wide gold edge, speckled black by flies. It showed a well-known picture. On the globe, poised in space—the space, if I remember rightly, was pale blue—sits a woman with a blindfold on the North Pole.'

'Yes, yes,' said Berzejev, 'I've seen that picture too. Wait a minute, I think the woman held something in her hand and she wore a watery blue dress. But I don't recall the wide gold margin.'

'But it was a wide gold margin,' insisted Friedrich, 'and fly-speckled, and there was a yellow post-box at the street-corner. You could stick down a letter and push it inside and even hear the way it fell—with a thud if the box was empty and with a rustle if there were letters already inside.'

'Let's stick to bread,' said Berzejev. 'You're distracting me from it. To begin with, there were two main kinds, white and black. Once in France—I was there with my father when I was fourteen—I ate hard, white, long batons of bread with a golden-brown crust. But the Russian country bread, black and reddish, with rather coarse soft grains, is the one I like best.'

'I remember,' continued Friedrich, 'how it smelled when one passed a baker's shop.'

'Especially at night!' cried Berzejev.

'Yes, at night, when it was winter, you were struck all of a sudden by a warmth from the cellars, almost like an animal warmth.'

'A bread-like warmth,' exulted Berzejev.