VI   THE PRISON ON THE HILL

PETER did not stop at the Hotel Dauria to see the room which a sleepy-eyed youth said might be had. There was a red-hot stove in the entrance-hall, a dirty stairway leading to an upper floor, a pair of stuffed bears standing among pots of rubber plants, and a few old benches on which in better days the droshky-drivers, the fur-hunters and the gossips of the city gathered of nights. The front windows were boarded up and the place still bore signs of the work of looters—leather hinges on the double doors, wall-paper ripped off in great gashes which exposed the rough plaster, and here and there the mark of a bayonet point or the pock marks of wild bullets.

Peter simply dumped his baggage in the entrance-hallway and went out again to pay off the iswostchik. Where he went, Peter wanted no one watching, so he set out as if on a casual ramble through the almost deserted streets.

He knew the way to the old prison. It would be up the Sofistkaya and over the little bridge which spanned the frozen stream running through the city. But it was not the same old wooden bridge which Peter expected to find. It proved to be a sturdy arch of concrete, level and wide.

Some of the buildings near by had been half wrecked or burned. One big building was but a shell, a black ruin streaked with snow, with the windows out and the interior walls revealing old log pillars and a few crazy rafters. From a lower window there fluttered a bit of curtain, like a distress signal from an abandoned derelict. It was the old house of the governor—Kirsakoff.

Peter lingered and studied this building. There were few people in the streets, and they paid no attention to him, for in his furs there was little about him to mark him as a foreign officer, or a soldier at all, for that matter, because he wore his pistol under his outer coat in such way that he could reach it through a pocket.

Water-carts hauled by ponies passed, bringing water from the city wells. They were shrouded in ice. A few peasants were on their way to the station bazaar with bundles of vegetables or partridges. Chinese trotted about with packs on their backs, smugglers in sugar and tea, or traders in luxuries brought in by hand over the railroad—such luxuries as candles, buttons, cigarettes, and salt.

Peter went on till he could see above him on the hill the yellow walls of the old stockade. He mounted the slope, but headed as if to pass the prison far below, and walking as if he had no other intention than to wander up the hill and look back upon the city. He stopped at times, and looked behind him.

As he went up the slope he managed to draw in closer to the stockade. The old road had no tracks upon it, proof that the prison must be deserted. And, in fact, the city itself seemed to be deserted as he looked down into it from the upper land. Though smoke came from the chimneys, the people kept mostly indoors. There was an ominous hush in the air, as if the inhabitants were afraid to be seen. The forests gave off no sound of woodsmen or hunters. Away on the side of the plains toward Manchuria Peter could see groups of three and four horsemen on patrol. But the Valley of Despair seemed like a place in which a pestilence raged, so bare was it of living beings except around the station.

“The place is accursed!” said Peter, as he stood and gazed out over the valley and the city. “After America, I know now what this all means. And there is something which has brought me back. My father, can it be you? Can you know? Have you guided me so that justice may be done? I pray that Kirsakoff be still alive!”

And Peter did know the meaning of it all. Chita was a ghastly city built from the weeping of women and the curses of men doomed to chains and living deaths in dark cells. The very soil reeked with the blood of exiles.

And Peter Gordon, the American, was once more Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, the Russian. During the three weeks that he had been on the train from Vladivostok, he had become more Russian every day. He knew now that the Russians were not free, though the throne had been overturned. There was still work to do.

Peter went on, now straight for the entrance to the prison, where he found the heavy gate lying in the snow, torn from its iron hinges and covered with the dents of logs and rocks which had battered it down.

He entered the prison yard. There were broken tables and piles of half burned records among charred logs. The sentry platforms had been dragged down from the inner wall and made a clutter of wrecked timbers. The little windows gaped open and the iron bars across them had been bent outward. Fine, hard snow covered the wreckage like a powder, gathered here and there in the cracks of the stone walks and in the holes where the flat stones had been ripped out and overturned.

The place was without life. Yet it seemed to throb with life. Peter half expected to find people inside the long galleries of the prison buildings, though he knew that there could be no living person in such a place of horrors.

The door opening to the inner guardroom was also down, a thing of planks strapped together with iron bars. It lay askew across the stone threshold, and Peter walked over its side. It gave out a dull, hollow sound, which set the echoes going through the long inner galleries of the cell-wings. A vile odor assailed him as he stepped inside, and he shivered.

He knew this place well. There were broken desks here, and gun-racks on the walls had been ripped from their supports. It was here that he had been taken the morning after his father had been cut down by the Cossack before the post-house. And Peter saw again in his mind’s eye the commandant with the gold bars on his shoulders, he heard again the careless questions snapped at him. Then he saw himself, a terrified little boy, led down the long gallery and thrust into a dark cell.

He pushed on now into the gallery with its battered cell doors lying half inside and half outside the cells, some swinging crazily on bent hinges, some partly burned and lying in bits of charred wood, others splintered and their fragments strewn along the stone-floored passage.

His feet made dull echoes. There was a sound of frightened things scampering into dark holes before him. And to Peter it seemed that there were thousands of men in the place—men who peered out at him derisively and gave long hooting laughs at him.

It was colder inside the prison than outside in the clean air—a dark, dank, penetrating cold combined with the sickly smell of an old cage in which frozen white shoots of growing vegetation killed and preserved by the cold glimmered uncannily in the rank air.

He found the cell that had been his—sixth on the right side. The big door was swung inward. The stone benches inside were black and polished with years of dirt and years of being sat upon. The stained log walls were covered with thousands of marks which recorded days and years spent in the cell by exiles. Among these rows of time-keeping scratches were also etched words of hate and messages of comfort and the scribbled jeers of men who had made a jest of going from such a place to the execution yard.

One line on the wall caught Peter’s eye under the searching beam of his pocket flash light. “God curse Kirsakoff,” Peter read. The letter had been formed by his own boyish fingers with a nail—fingers stiff with cold. He laughed at the sight of it now, and slapped the pistol on his hip under his greatcoat. His laugh came back to him multiplied a hundred times from the cells of the long galleries stretching away in the darkness. The echoes sounded like a scornful chorus from ghosts.

He sat down on the stone bench and looked at the dirty hole in the door through which food had been passed in to him—black bread and greasy soup made from the refuse of cabbages. He sat there several minutes, and threw his memory back to the days and nights which he had spent there buried alive, doubting at times that he existed till food was brought and the rats gathered round him, squeaking for their share.

Fear gripped him. He sprang up and ran, his boots making a clatter over the planks of the broken doors in the passage. He gained the prison yard and his whole body was laved in a sweat of agony. He got out into the open, and stopping an instant to scan the slopes below to see if he had been observed or followed, he turned away to the left to the fenced-in grove which was the old burial ground of the prison.

It was in there that his father had been buried, but Peter did not know where. A few rotten boards lay upon the ground; a few weather-beaten crosses scored and twisted out of shape, littered the ground. Peter stood with tears in his eyes and looked over the rough ground.

“Peter Petrovitch has come back, my father,” he said. And crossing himself, he said a prayer. Then he turned and descended the slopes toward the city, bearing off to the right and trying to make it appear to any watcher that he had been wandering about aimlessly. The thought struck him that he had been unwise in going to the prison. It might lead to gossip, especially when it became known in the city that he was an American. Why should an American officer go prowling about the old prison of a city which——

Peter checked his thoughts in that direction. It seemed strange that he should refer to himself as an American. America was now very far away, a dim vista in his memory, hard to realize, like an old dream faintly remembered. It seemed odd that America had receded so far into the background of his mind. For was he not a Russian? Yes, he knew that he was Russian to the core. His Americanism had never been anything but an outer shell, a readjustment to new conditions, a learning of new things, and a new life. But he had not changed—only the clothes upon his back. True, he thought, the clothes would serve a purpose. Who would ever suspect that an American officer had come to Chita to do what he hoped to do? Who would ever suspect that the American lieutenant, Peter Gordon, could be Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, the son of an unfortunate?

He entered the city again, this time far to the right of where he had gone up the slope, and rambled along the Sofistkaya till he came to the old post-house again—the restaurant. He went in, and found a few soldiers sitting about tables talking and playing games. He took a table to himself and when the gypsy girl came for his order, he called for vodka. He was chilled by his walk on the hill and his spirits were depressed by the prison. The liquor warmed him.

The restaurant was a dirty place. The old plank floors were spotted with mud where the ice-balls from the heels of patrons had melted, and the blackened log rafters were cobwebby and sooty. There was an ancient icon in the corner. The walls had been partly stripped of a moldy old paper so that the yellow plaster showed through the gashes. And here, as in the hotel, there were bullet craters.

Peter finished his glass of vodka and went out again. He hurried back toward the hotel, but he had not gone far when he espied in between two modern buildings and well back from the street, an old hut—an isba of the old days. He stopped in his tracks and stared at it. The building was not more than eight feet square, of single story, with a small window under the eaves. There was a rude chimney of stones at one end. A sign over the door told that cigarettes, matches, and holy cards were sold within.

Peter went in between the two buildings and pushed open the low and sagging door of the hut. There was an old man sitting on a bench under the window with a newspaper—a thin old hulk of a graybeard with a face shrouded in white whiskers that were stained yellow about his hidden mouth. He wore a tiny black skullcap on his head which brought out the bleached whiteness of his whiskers and the pallor of his crinkled forehead. His hands were tucked in the sleeves of his ragged old coat, and he huddled up toward the smoldering fire in the ancient fire-pit.

Startled by Peter’s entrance, the old man thrust the newspaper behind him quickly. As he got to his feet he kicked the paper out of sight behind a box. He stood looking at Peter with questioning eyes, knowing that there was something strange about the visitor but not being able to tell what in the vague light coming through the frosted window.

“Do you sell cigarettes here?” asked Peter.

“Yes, I sell cigarettes here,” croaked the graybeard. “Is it that you have come for cigarettes to this poor place—you, who are dressed in odd clothes?”

“What else should I come for?” asked Peter pleasantly. “Do you think I have come to rob you?”

The old one appeared relieved, but he was still on his guard.

“We never know what a man comes for these days. And you are not a man of Chita, I can tell that.”

“What does it matter where I came from, if I pay for what I take? Come! Let me see some cigarettes!”

The graybeard grunted and shuffled across the room to a shelf and took down some packets of tin covered with a faded paper.

Peter looked the room over. It was hard to believe that this tiny hut was the place in which he had worked with his father. In his memory it had taken on vaster proportions, yet in reality it was but a boxlike hovel. There was the same old adz-hewn plank bench well polished by years of use; the floor near the fire-pit had the very depressions worn into the wood by the legs of his father’s stitching-frame. And the same stone in the chimney on which his father had whetted the leather-knives! By that fire-pit Peter had spent many nights studying out Russian letters and words in battered almanacs. The place still smelled of leather—or Peter fancied it did.

“Here are cigarettes of the best quality from Harbin, gospodeen,” said the old man, proffering a long tin box. “I keep them for such as are of the upper class. I must pay grease to Chinese for bringing these cigarettes in, and if you buy, you will be back for more—and twenty rubles for the box.”

Peter sat down on the bench and pretended to examine the packet of cigarettes. But he was really looking at the little battered samovar on the little wooden table. Beside the samovar was a blackened piece of tin which was used to transfer hot coals from the fire-pit to the samovar. And the rude shelves with their packages of “Moscow biscuits,” matches, cigarettes, and holy cards for the holidays and the name days of children drew Peter’s eyes. The stock in trade was smoke-blackened and fly-specked by countless summers and winters. And the room reeked with smoke, which made the old man’s eyes red and watery.

Peter saw that the cigarettes were of the cheapest grade.

“Why do you double the price because I am a stranger?” asked Peter. “You know that half a ruble would buy these in the old days, and now with the money bad, ten is enough for them?”

“God protect us! You speak the Czar’s Russian, though you wear a foreign coat! Have you come here to buy from me, or to find who is smuggling? There is no duty now, true, but I have to pay grease, as I said. I would say the same to the Ataman himself.”

“But I know something about the price of cigarettes,” said Peter. He was willing enough to pay the price but he knew that reluctance would draw the old man out, and that an argument would probably develop an acquaintance which might be useful.

“But the troubles have come and that makes the price high,” whined the old man. “Am I to starve among my cigarettes? There are few enough to buy these days, I tell you.”

“I will pay, but you are an old robber,” said Peter, going into his pockets and fetching out two ten-ruble notes of Imperial money. The old man’s eyes danced, for he knew Imperials to be worth twice again the new paper money on which his prices were based.

“Did you come here for a ruganie?” demanded the old man, meaning a mutual slandering of each other in Russian in which both parties to the argument call names of an import so evil as to chill the marrows of respectable listeners. “And you! You look like a gentleman. From what place have you come?”

“From the place I go back to. Have you been in Chita long, little grandfather?”

“I?” asked the old man, stroking his whiskers. “Yes. What does it matter? I shall be here all time. See the hills outside? My bones shall build them higher,” and he broke out into a cackling laugh as if the joke were one that he used often and still liked its flavor.

“You were here in the old days?” pressed Peter.

The old one gave Peter a keen look, and sat down on the end of the bench, hiding the precious ten-ruble notes away somewhere under his arms.

“I? Why not?”

“You were here when the prison was full of unfortunates?”

“I was here when it was emptied, too,” and he laughed again and bent to poke the fire with an old cane. But he was getting cautious again, as if he suspected that there might be more behind the twenty rubles than he had bargained for.

“What happened when the prison was emptied? It must have been a joyful time.”

Graybeard made a noise in his throat which might have been a chuckle, and turning from the fire stood up and straightened his back, to gaze frankly at Peter as if to ask why so many questions were being asked. It was plain that he disapproved of giving gossip extra with what he sold.

“You should have been here if you wanted to know,” he said.

“I suppose they killed the soldiers,” went on Peter.

“No, the unfortunates did not kill the soldiers—except, perhaps, the bad soldiers who had been cruel. Were not the soldiers made free also by revolution? As well as the unfortunates?”

“True,” assented Peter. “But the officers? Many of the officers were killed, eh?”

“The square down there by the station,” and graybeard threw out his arm and his eyes took on a reminiscent look, “the square is full of dead folks—old and young, officers and all, rich and poor, high and low, witches and holy men. But the unfortunates did not harm me. I am Rimsky and the friend of all, though many were drunk and did not know who were friends. But I got into a potato-cellar till the worst was over, though I was stiff in the legs a good month after. But I was out in time to see them all go off to Petersburg to kill the Little Father, the fools!”

“Would you have the Czar back? Is that what you mean?” asked Peter.

“I? Why do you ask me that? Is it not enough to know that in the old days there was peace—and that I would have peace in which to die. Should not a man have peace in which to meet the dead? That is all I ask you.”

“But are not the new times better than the old?” asked Peter. “Would you have the old times back—and the prison on the hill full of people?”

Rimsky lighted the fragment of an old cigarette and smoked a minute before he replied, pulling at his whiskers.

“New times, new troubles,” he said with tired voice. “We knew in the old times what to do to be happy, and likewise what not to do. It was all put down plain in the laws and the rules of the governors. Those who wanted better government did not know that bad government is better than none. Now it is all fighting, and no man trusts another. But I am not afraid, for my life is behind me. Now, when the railroad came here, it was said that everybody would be rich and happy. Before then we had only the mail-sledges, with their bells and horses. The people were happy enough, but for these educated fools always talking about what should be done with government and getting themselves and poor people into trouble. Now what do we have? All night an accursed ringing of railroad bells and screeching whistles till a man wakes in his bed, thinking the devil is calling. And people and cows get killed by the railroad—and mad soldiers come to kill and burn honest people. Is that good? Who is made rich thereby, and who is made happy?”

“Then you think you would be happier if the Czar were back,” suggested Peter.

“Is that what you have come to ask me?” demanded Rimsky, giving Peter a shrewd look. “Is it that you are counting those who want the Czar back?”

“No, no,” said Peter. “I have nothing to do with the government. I will not say to any one what you say.”

“I cannot be too sure of that,” said Rimsky, and blew the smoke from his cigarette upward. “But when the Czar ruled, I had a watch.”

“Do you want a Czar back?” asked Peter.

“Tchuk!” cried Rimsky. “The Czar is in a well, they tell me. But how do I know what to believe? First it is one lie, and then another, till our heads whirl and we get drunk to forget so much talk about nothing. How do I know but that the Czar is on his throne and eating fish-pie for his dinner?”

“But suppose a new Czar should come to the throne?”

“Ah, now you are trying to have me talk politics and get into prison. It does not matter. I want only a fire, my tea, a good soup with meat and bones in it, and a pair of boots—and men who can be trusted, even if they be Czar’s governors and cruel. Who is a man to appeal to now if he is robbed, as was I last month? In the old days robbers were hanged, and it taught them something, too.”

“But you are speaking of Chita, of course. You had no complaint here, for you had a good Governor.”

Rimsky went to the samovar and took off the little teapot, shook it with a circular motion, filled it with hot water and poured a glass made from the bottom of a bottle full of tea for Peter.

“You talk too much for a stranger,” said Rimsky. “What do you know about our Governor? Is this the first time you have been in Siberia, young man?”

“Of course,” said Peter, taking the tea. “But I have heard about Chita before.”

“You may know more than you want to know about it before you get out,” warned Rimsky. “Are you going to stay long—and buy more of my cigarettes?”

“I’ll be here a few weeks, I suppose. I came to see if I could buy some furs.”

“Oh, but you are a soldier,” said Rimsky. “And you will find no furs that are good. Everybody is hunting men these days,” and he broke out again in his cackling laugh, as he drew himself some tea in a little yellow bowl.

“Did the unfortunates kill the Governor who was here when they got out of the prison and freedom came to the people?”

“Did they?” asked Rimsky. “You tell me.”

“But you were here, and you know. I was not here,” said Peter.

Rimsky shrugged his shoulders and sucked his tea from the bowl.

“The provodnik on the train told me that the soldiers killed the Governor here. What was the name? Kir—— well, I can’t remember.”

“Those fellows on the trains do a lot of talking,” said Rimsky. “They are know-it-alls, and all they do is take grease from people who want to have food sent up to us.”

“I’m afraid they don’t tell the truth,” said Peter.

“So they told you the soldiers killed Kirsakoff, did they? But Kirsakoff was not the Governor. You see that they lied.”

“Perhaps they did not say he was Governor when he was killed. But they said he had been a Governor in the old days.”

“If Kirsakoff had been killed, I would know it,” said Rimsky.

“True,” agreed Peter. “I thought the provodnik was talking to make wind and a big man of himself. I knew he was lying.”

“How did you know that?”

“I guessed it. Now that you say Kirsakoff was not killed, I know it was a lie. Just big talk.”

“Why should anybody kill Kirsakoff?” demanded Rimsky.

“That is what I should like to know. Everybody said he was a good man, but perhaps some people did not like him—people in the prison, of course, who were against the government.”

“General Kirsakoff had been retired when the troubles came,” said Rimsky. “More than seven years ago he was retired. I remembered well the time—I had a sore foot.”

“Was he gone from Chita when the troubles came?”

“No, he was here,” said Rimsky, looking straight at Peter.

“Ah!” said Peter. “So the provodnik lied when he said Kirsakoff was dead. He is still here.”

“What does it matter where he is?” asked Rimsky.

“It does not matter,” said Peter, and set the glass on the table, buttoning his coat about his neck in preparation for leaving.

“I hear much gossip in this place,” said Rimsky. “Where do you live in the city?”

“Thank you for the tea,” said Peter. “It is cold outside. I may want some more cigarettes—at twenty rubles a box.”

“I hear many matters spoken of here,” hinted Rimsky with confidential air. “About where governors are and such talk.”

“Is Zorogoff a good man?” asked Peter.

“It is a very cold day outside, true,” said Rimsky. “But this is a good place to hear gossip.”

“I care nothing for gossip. But I can see that you live on it, as an old gander lives on snails,” said Peter laughingly. “I am going to the Dauria—I am an American officer. But see that you do not gossip about me, old fellow.”

Rimsky wagged his old head and cackled wisely.

“A tight lip fools the devil,” warned Peter. “If you talk I’ll tell Zorogoff you charged me double for cigarettes. But I’ll come in and see you some day, and bring a bottle of vodka.”

“Then God guard you till you return!” cried Rimsky, and Peter went out through the door of the hut.

Rimsky sat chuckling into his beard after Peter had departed. And more than once the old cigarette-seller told himself, “The sturgeon does not become a sterlet because he leaves the river for the lake, and the Russian does not become a foreigner by changing his coat.” That was a saying of wise men.