Chapter 17

THE TSAREVITCH AT VYATKA—THE FALL OF TYUFYAEV—I AM TRANSFERRED TO VLADIMIR—THE POLICE-CAPTAIN AT THE POSTING-STATION

The Tsarevitch will visit Vyatka! The Tsarevitch is travelling about Russia to show himself and look at the country! This news interested all, but the governor, of course, more than any one. He was worried and did a number of incredibly stupid things: ordered the peasants along the high-road to be dressed in holiday attire, ordered the fences to be painted and the sidewalks to be repaired in the towns. At Orlov a poor widow who owned a small house told the mayor that she had no money to repair the sidewalk and he reported this to the governor. The latter ordered that the planks should be taken from her floors (the sidewalks there are made of wood), and that, should they not be sufficient, the repairs should be made at the government expense and the money recovered from her afterwards, even if it were necessary to sell her house by public auction. The sale did not take place, but the widow’s floors were broken up.

Fifty versts from Vyatka there was the spot in which the wonder-working ikon of St. Nicholas of Hlynov appeared to the people of Novgorod. When emigrants from Novgorod settled at Hlynov (now Vyatka) they brought the ikon, but it disappeared and turned up again on the Great river fifty versts from Vyatka. They fetched it back again, and at the same time took a vow that if the ikon would stay they would carry it every year in a solemn procession to the Great river. This was the chief summer holiday in the Vyatka province; I believe it was on the 23rd of May. For twenty-four hours the ikon was travelling down the river in a magnificent boat with the bishop and all the clergy in full vestments accompanying it. Hundreds of boats and craft of all sorts filled with peasants, men and women, Votyaks, and artisans, made up a bright-coloured procession following the sailing image, and foremost of all was the governor’s decked boat covered with red cloth. This barbaric ceremony was a very fine show. Tens of thousands of people from districts near and far were awaiting the image on the banks of the Great river. They were all camping in noisy crowds about a small village, and what was most strange, crowds of heathen Votyaks, Tcheremisses, and even Tatars came to pray to the image, and, indeed, the festival is a thoroughly pagan ceremony. Outside the monastery-wall Votyaks and Russians bring sheep and calves to be sacrificed; they are killed on the spot, a monk reads a service over them, blesses and consecrates the meat, which is sold at a special window within the precincts. The meat is distributed in pieces to the people; in old days it used to be given for nothing, now the monks charge a few kopecks for every piece. So that a peasant who has presented a whole calf has to pay something for a piece for his own consumption. In the monastery-yard sit whole crowds of beggars, the halt, the blind, and the lame, who raise a lamentation in chorus. Lads—priests’ sons or boys from the town—sit on the tombstones near the church with inkpots and cry: ‘Who wants to be prayed for?’ Peasant girls and women surround them, mentioning names, and the lads, saucily scratching with their pens, repeat: ‘Marya, Marya, Akulina Stepanida, Father Ioann, Matryona.... Well, Auntie, you have got a lot; you’ve shelled out two kopecks, we can’t take less than five; such a family—Ioann, Vassilisa, Iona, Marya, Yevpraxyea, Baby Katerina....’

In the church there is a great crush and strange preferences are shown; one peasant woman will hand her neighbour a candle with exact instructions to put it up ‘for our visitor,’ another for ‘our host.’ The Vyatka monks and deacons are continually drunk during the whole time of this procession. They stop at the bigger villages on the way, and the peasants regale them enough to kill them.

So this popular holiday, to which the peasants had been accustomed for ages, the governor proposed to change to an earlier date, wishing to entertain the Tsarevitch who was to arrive on the 19th of May; he thought there would be no harm in St. Nicholas going on his visit three days earlier. The consent of the bishop was of course necessary; fortunately the bishop was an amenable person, and found nothing to protest against in the governor’s intention of changing the festival of the 23rd of May to the 19th.

The governor sent a list of his ingenious plans for the reception of the Tsarevitch to the Tsar—as though to say, see how we fête your son. On reading this document the Tsar flew into a rage, and said to the Minister of Home Affairs: ‘The governor and the bishop are fools, leave the holiday as it was.’ The Minister gave the governor a good scolding, the Synod did the same to the bishop, and St. Nicholas went on his visit according to his old habits.

Among various instructions from Petersburg, orders came that in every provincial town an exhibition should be held of the various natural products and handicrafts of the district, and that the things exhibited should be arranged according to the three natural kingdoms. This division into animal, vegetable, and mineral greatly worried the officials, and Tyufyaev himself to some extent. That he might not make a mistake he made up his mind in spite of his dislike to summon me to give advice. ‘Now, for instance, honey,’ he said, ‘where would you put honey? or a gilt frame—how are you to decide where it is to go?’ Seeing from my answers that I had wonderfully precise information concerning the three natural kingdoms, he offered me the task of arranging the exhibition.

While I was busy placing wooden vessels and Votyak dresses, honey and iron sieves, and Tyufyaev went on taking the most ferocious measures for the entertainment of his Imperial Highness at Vyatka, the Highness in question was graciously pleased to stay at Orlov, and the news of the arrest of the Orlov mayor burst like a clap of thunder on the town. Tyufyaev turned yellow, and there was an uncertainty apparent in his gait.

Five days before the Tsarevitch arrived in Orlov, the mayor wrote to Tyufyaev that the widow whose floor had been broken up to make the sidewalk was making a fuss, and that So-and-so, a wealthy merchant and a prominent person in the town, was boasting that he would tell the Tsarevitch everything. Tyufyaev disposed of the latter very adroitly; he told the mayor to have doubts of his sanity (the precedent of Petrovsky pleased him), and to send him to Vyatka to be examined by the doctors; this business could be delayed till the Tsarevitch had left the province of Vyatka, and that would be the end of it. The mayor did as he was bid, the merchant was put in the hospital at Vyatka.

At last the Tsarevitch arrived. He gave Tyufyaev a frigid bow, did not invite him to visit him, but at once sent for the doctor, Dr. Enohin, to inquire concerning the arrested merchant. He knew all about it. The Orlov widow had given him her petition, the other merchants and artisans told him all that was going on. Tyufyaev’s face was more awry than ever. Things looked black for him. The mayor said straight out that he had written instructions from the governor for everything.

Dr. Enohin declared that the merchant was perfectly sane. Tyufyaev was lost.

Between seven and eight in the evening the Tsarevitch visited the exhibition with his suite. Tyufyaev conducted him, explaining things incoherently, getting into a muddle and speaking of the ancient Siberian prince Tohtamysh as though he were a tsar. Zhukovsky and Arsenyev, seeing that things were not going well, asked me to show them the exhibition. I led them round.

The Tsarevitch’s expression had none of that narrow severity, that cold merciless cruelty which was characteristic of his father; his features were more suggestive of good nature and listlessness. He was about twenty, but was already beginning to grow stout.

The few words he said to me were friendly and very different from the hoarse, abrupt tones of his uncle Constantine and the menacing intonations of his father, which made the listener almost faint with terror.

When he had gone away, Zhukovsky and Arsenyev began asking me how I had come to Vyatka. They were surprised to hear a Vyatka official speak like a gentleman. They at once offered to speak of my position to the Tsarevitch, and did in fact do all that they could for me. The Tsarevitch approached the Tsar for permission for me to return to Petersburg. The Tsar replied that that would be unfair to the other exiles, but, in consideration of the Tsarevitch’s representations, he ordered me to be transferred to Vladimir, which was geographically an improvement, being seven hundred versts nearer home. But of that later.

In the evening there was a ball. The musicians who had been sent for expressly from one of the factories arrived dead drunk; the governor arranged that they should be locked up for twenty-four hours before the ball, escorted straight from the police station to their seats in the orchestra and not allowed to leave them till the ball was over.

The ball was a stupid, awkward, extremely poor and extremely gaudy affair, as balls always are in little towns on exceptional occasions. Police officers fussed about, government clerks in uniform huddled against the walls, ladies flocked round the Tsarevitch as savages do round travellers.... Apropos of the ladies, in one little town a _goûter_ was arranged after the exhibition. The Tsarevitch took nothing but one peach, the stone of which he threw on the window-sill. All at once a tall figure saturated with spirits stepped out from the crowd of officials; it was the district assessor, notoriously a desperate character, who with measured steps approached the window, picked up the stone and put it in his pocket.

After the ball or the _goûter_, he approached one of the ladies of most consequence and offered her the stone gnawed by royalty; the lady accepted it with enthusiasm. Then he approached a second, then a third, all were in ecstasies.

The assessor had bought five peaches, cut out the stones, and made six ladies happy. Which had the real one? Each was suspicious of the genuineness of her own stone....

After the departure of the Tsarevitch, Tyufyaev with a weight on his heart prepared to exchange his autocratic power for the chair of a senator; but worse than that happened.

Three weeks later the post brought from Petersburg papers addressed to the governor of the province. Everything was turned upside down in the secretariat; the registrar ran to say that they had received a decree; the office manager rushed to Tyufyaev, the latter gave out that he was ill and would not go to the office. Within an hour we learned that he had been dismissed _sans phrase_.

The whole town was delighted at the fall of the governor; there was something stifling, unclean, about his rule, a fetid odour of red tape, but for all that it was disgusting to look at the rejoicings of the officials.

Yes, every ass gave a parting kick to this wounded boar. The meanness of men was just as apparent as at the fall of Napoleon, though the catastrophe was on a different scale. Of late I had been on terms of open hostility with him, and he would have certainly sent me off to some obscure little town, if he had not been sent away himself. I had held aloof from him, and I had no reason to change my behaviour in regard to him. But the others, who only the day before had been cap in hand at the sight of his carriage, eagerly anticipating his wishes, fawning on his dog and offering snuff to his valet, now barely greeted him and made an outcry all over the town against the irregularities, the guilt of which they shared with him. This is nothing new, it has been repeated so continually in every age and every place that we must accept this meanness as a common trait of humanity and at any rate feel no surprise at it.

The new governor, Kornilov, arrived. He was a man of quite a different type: a tall, stout, lymphatic man about fifty with a pleasantly smiling face and cultured manner. He expressed himself with extraordinary grammatical correctness at great length with a precision and clarity calculated by its very excess to obscure the simplest subject. He had been at the Lyceum of Tsarskoe Syelo, had been a schoolfellow of Pushkin’s, had served in the Guards, bought the new French books, liked talking of important subjects, and gave me De Tocqueville’s book on _Democracy in America_ on the day after his arrival.

The change was very great. The same rooms, the same furniture, but instead of a Tatar _baskak_, with the exterior of a Tunguz and the habits of a Siberian—a _doctrinaire_, rather a pedant, but at the same time quite a decent man. The new governor was intelligent, but his intelligence seemed somehow to shed light without giving warmth, like a bright, winter day which is pleasant though one does not look for fruits from it. Moreover, he was a terrible formalist—not in a pettifogging way, but ... how shall I express it?... it was formalism of a higher sort, but just as tiresome as any other.

As the new governor was really married, the house lost its ultra-bachelor and polygamous character. Of course this brought all the councillors back to their lawful spouses; bald old men no longer boasted of their conquests among the fair, but, on the contrary, alluded tenderly to their faded, angularly-bony, or monstrously fat wives.

Kornilov had some years before coming to Vyatka been promoted to be civil governor somewhere, straight from being a colonel in the Semyonovsky or Izmailovsky regiment. He went to his province knowing nothing of his duties. To begin with, like all novices he set to work to read everything. One day a document came to him from another province which he could make nothing of, though he read it two or three times. He called the secretary and gave it him to read. The secretary could not explain the business clearly either.

‘What will you do with that document,’ Kornilov asked him, ‘if I pass it on to the office?’

‘I shall hand it in to the third table, it’s in their section.’

‘Then the head-clerk of the third table knows what to do?’

‘To be sure he does, your Excellency, he has been in charge of that table for seven years.’

‘Send him to me.’

The head-clerk came in. Kornilov handing him the paper asked what was to be done. The head-clerk glanced through the document and informed him that they ought to make an inquiry in the palace of justice and send a notification to the police-captain.

‘But notify what?’

The head-clerk was nonplussed, and at last admitted that it was difficult to express it in words, but that it was easy to write it.

‘Here is a chair, I beg you to write your answer.’

The head-clerk took up the pen and without hesitation briskly scribbled off two documents.

The governor took them, read them once, read them twice, but could make nothing of it. ‘I saw,’ he told me, smiling, ‘that it really was an answer to the document, and crossing myself I signed it. Nothing more was heard of the business—the answer was completely satisfactory.’

The news of my transfer to Vladimir came just before Christmas; I was soon ready and set off.

My parting with Vyatka society was very warm. In that remote town I had made two or three friends among the young merchants. Every one wanted to show sympathy and kindness to the exile. Several sledges accompanied me as far as the first posting-station, and in spite of all my efforts to prevent it my sledge was filled up with a perfect load of all sorts of provisions and wine. Next day I reached Yaransk.

From Yaransk the road goes through endless pine forests. It was moonlight and very frosty at night. The little sledge flew along the narrow road. I have never seen such forests since, they go on in that way unbroken as far as Archangel, and sometimes reindeer come through them to the Vyatka province. The forest was for the most part of large trees; the pines, of remarkable straightness, ran past the sledge like soldiers, tall and covered with snow from under which their black needles stuck out like bristles; one would drop asleep and wake up again and still the regiments of pines would be marching rapidly by, sometimes shaking off the snow. The horses were changed at little clearings; there was a tiny house lost among the trees, the horses were tied up to a trunk, the bells would begin tinkling, two or three Tcheremiss boys in embroidered shirts would run out, looking sleepy. The Votyak driver would swear at his companion in a husky alto, shout ‘Aïda,’ begin singing a song on two notes, and again pines and snow, snow and pines.

Just as I drove out of the Vyatka province it was my lot to take my last farewell of the official world, and it showed itself in all its glory _pour la clôture_.

We stopped at a posting-station, the driver began unharnessing the horses, when a tall peasant appeared in the porch and asked:

‘Who has arrived?’

What’s that to do with you?’

‘Why, the police-captain told me to inquire, and I am the messenger of the rural court.’

‘Well then, go into the station hut, my travelling permit is there.’

The peasant went away and came back a minute later, saying to the driver, ‘He is not to have horses.’

This was too much. I jumped out of the sledge and went into the hut. A half-tipsy police-captain was sitting on a bench, dictating to a half-tipsy clerk. A man with fetters on his hands and feet was sitting or rather lying on another bench in the corner. Several bottles, glasses, tobacco ash, and bundles of papers were scattered about.

‘Where is the police-captain?’ I asked in a loud voice as I went in.

‘The police-captain’s here,’ answered the half-tipsy man whom I recognised as Lazarev, a man I had seen in Vyatka. As he spoke he fixed a rude and impudent stare upon me, and all at once rushed at me with open arms.

I must explain that after Tyufyaev’s downfall the officials, seeing that I was on rather good terms with the governor, had began making up to me.

I stopped him with my hand and asked him very gravely, ‘How could you give orders that I shouldn’t have horses. What nonsense is this, stopping travellers on the high-road?’

‘Why, I was joking; upon my soul, aren’t you ashamed to be angry! Here, horses, order the horses! Why are you standing there, you rascal?’ he shouted to the messenger. ‘Please have a cup of tea with rum.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But haven’t we any champagne....’ He hurried to the bottles, they were all empty.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘An inquiry, this fine fellow here has killed his father and sister with an axe, in a quarrel, through jealousy.’

‘So that’s why you are drinking together?’

The police-captain was disconcerted. I glanced at the Tcheremiss; he was a young fellow of twenty, with nothing ferocious about his face, which was typically oriental, with shining, narrow eyes and black hair.

It was all so disgusting that I went out into the yard again. The police-captain ran out after me with a glass in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other, and pressed me to have a drink.

To get rid of him I drank some; he caught hold of my hand and said: ‘I am sorry, there, I am sorry! there it is, but I hope you won’t speak of it to his Excellency, don’t ruin an honourable man!’ With that the police-captain _seized my hand and kissed it_, repeating a dozen times over: ‘For God’s sake don’t ruin an honourable man.’ I pulled away my hand in disgust and said to him:

‘Oh get away, as though I were likely to tell him.’

‘But how can I be of service to you?’

‘See they make haste and harness the horses.’

‘Look alive,’ he shouted, ‘Aïda, aïda!’ and he himself began dragging at the straps and harness.

This incident is vividly imprinted on my memory. In 1841, when I was for the last time in Petersburg, I had to go to the secretariat of the Minister of Home Affairs to try and get a passport. While I was talking to the head-clerk of the table, a gentleman passed ... shaking hands familiarly with the magnates of the secretariat and bowing condescendingly to the head-clerks of the tables. ‘Bah, hang it all,’ I thought, ‘surely that is he! Who is that?’ I asked.

‘Lazarev, a clerk of special commissions and a great authority in the ministry.’

‘Was he once a police-captain in the Vyatka province?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I congratulate you, gentlemen, nine years ago he kissed my hand.’

Perovsky was a master in the choice of men.