For two weeks I hovered between life and death, suffering agonizing pains, writhing in breathless convulsions that choked my breathing. I was fed only on milk, introduced into my throat through a tube. For a month I was incapable of speech, at the end of which time I was out of danger, but I had to spend another month in the hospital before I regained my normal health.
Yasha could not, at first, understand the reason for my act. The Governor was so kind, so generous. He had not only commuted his sentence, but had given us five hundred roubles for a shop. Could there be anything more noble? He finally arrived at the conclusion that the trials of the last year had resulted in a temporary mental derangement, which was responsible for my attempt at suicide. I did not disillusion him, although I was tempted to do so whenever he praised the Governor.
Upon leaving the hospital, we opened the butcher’s shop and immediately began to do good business. For several months we led a peaceful life. Then, one afternoon, the Governor suddenly called at our shop, ostensibly to inquire how we were prospering. He stretched out his hand to me, but I turned away.
The Governor left, and Yasha raged at me for my inexplicable conduct. Had I gone mad? I must have, to be capable of refusing to greet our benefactor, the kindest of men! I was sullen and silent, but Yasha would not be satisfied. He demanded an explanation. There was nothing left for me to do but to make a clean breast of it, which I did.
The truth was such a shock to him that it threw him into convulsions. He struck me with something and felled me to the floor. His face turned chalk-white, the veins stood out on his temples, and he was trembling all over. He seemed utterly prostrated by the horror of this nightmare. The Governor’s liberality was now explained. The five hundred roubles, the commutation of his sentence, it had all been dearly paid for by his beloved.
My attempted suicide now appeared to him in its true light. He would take vengeance. He would kill the Governor, he swore, yes, he would murder that most despicable of villains. I hugged his feet and begged him not to attempt to carry out his threat. He paid no heed to my prayers, and talked of the hollowness of his life if he did not avenge me.
He set off on his fateful errand, all my efforts to bar his way having failed. When he appeared at the Governor’s office and requested an audience, giving his name, the clerks immediately suspected him of some sinister design. The secretary reported to the Governor that Buk, the butcher, desired an audience, but that his manner roused suspicion. The Governor ordered that he should be detained and searched. A long, sharp knife was found on him, and he was arrested, orders being given for his exile on the following day to Amga, a hamlet about one hundred and thirty miles from Yakutsk. I had only twenty-four hours to dispose of the shop, and was compelled to hand it over to a local political, with the understanding that he would pay us for it a few months later.
It was Easter Eve, 1914, when we started out in a cart, driven by a Yakut, for Amga. The mud was the worst I have ever come across. The horses sank so deep, and the wheels of the vehicle stuck so often, that frequently we had to alight and help in extricating them. We spent Easter Day in a native’s hut on the road, in which children, women and animals lived together. There is always a fire in the centre of these huts, the smoke being allowed to escape through a hole in the roof. The cows were milked in the hut, and the filth was beyond words. After supping on some bread and a sort of tea, which was unfit for human consumption, we went to sleep. The following day we resumed our journey to Amga.
V
Escape from Exile
We spent about six days on the road to Amga. It was a town with a mixed population. Half of its homes were tiny cabins, built by Russian exiles, many of whom had married Yakut women, as the latter were physically attractive and were proud to be the wives of white men. The natives ill-treated their wives, and were lazy, so that the women usually laboured to support their families. Some of the Yakuts were very wealthy, owning as many as a thousand head of deer and cattle. Men, women and children alike dressed only in fur. They made their bread of a coarse flour, ground by hand.
There were about fifteen political exiles in Amga. Five of these were university graduates, and one of them was Prince Alexander Gutemurov, who had been arrested eight years before, and had turned grey in exile.
I was the first Russian woman to come to Amga, and the joy of the small colony of politicals knew no bounds. As the Yakut women never wash clothes, the filth in which the white men lived was unspeakable, and their unkempt appearance testified eloquently to the conditions in which they lived. They were at the mercy of vermin, and offered little resistance to epidemics. Clean food, drinkable milk, could not be had at any price. Money was cheap at Amga. The Prince, for instance, received a monthly allowance of one hundred roubles (about ten guineas), but he could not get a bath for a thousand.
I immediately took charge of the situation, and the small cabin which I rented at two roubles a
