Writer 1879: Solitary Journey in France

Chapter 482 Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears! (Bonus Chapter 19 for 1000 Votes in October)

In the study, Baroness Alexievna, seeing her daughter Sofia's still puzzled expression, pointed to the chair opposite her: "Sit."

Sofia bit her lip, forced herself to sit down, and placed her hands on her knees, clenching them tightly.

She finally couldn't hold back any longer: "Mother, I don't understand. Why did you agree to him? That promise—"

The Baroness interrupted her: "That promise is worth a lot more than you think right now!"

Sophia's eyes widened as the Baroness took out a letter and placed it on the desk.

The Baroness sighed: "Do you think our Shcherbatov family is safe right now?"

"You think everything will be fine once we transfer the money to Paris and buy this house?"

She shook her head and pointed to the letter on the table: "Your father wrote last month. He said the atmosphere in St. Petersburg is getting increasingly tense."

His Majesty is growing increasingly impatient with those 'Westernized' nobles. The Ministry of the Interior is already investigating several families who have long resided abroad—

See if they have engaged in any acts of 'disloyalty to the motherland'.

Sophia's expression changed: "But...but we're not being unfaithful—"

The Baroness said, "It doesn't matter. What matters is what His Majesty thinks, and what those ministers who want to curry favor with the Tsar report."

She picked up the letter, then put it down again: "Our Shcherbatov family is like walking on a tightrope."

On one side is Russia, where our roots are, where our land, our titles, and our history are.

On one side is Europe, the 'safe haven' we thought we had..."

She paused, looking out at the rooftops of Paris: "But what if something happens to Russia? What if one day we lose everything we have in Russia?"
At that time, how long could our house in Paris and our bank savings hold us? Were we really going to have to cross the ocean to America?

Sofia was speechless; she suddenly felt cold. Even though the fireplace was burning brightly, she was still cold.

The Baroness continued, “That young man, Lionel Sorel. He’s not a nobleman, but he has something we don’t.”

Sofia asked instinctively, "What is it?"

The Baroness's answer was simple: "The future. He belongs to the future. And we—"

She gave a bitter smile: "We belong to the past, or at most, to the present, and this present is disappearing little by little."

She looked at Sofia with a complicated expression: "You look down on his promises today, thinking they're unrealistic. But what about ten or twenty years from now?"

When the surname Sherbatov no longer means anything in Russia, our children may be in exile, or they may be wanted by the authorities.

That promise might be the only thing that could save their lives!

Sophia fell silent. The study was quiet, with the faint sound of carriages drifting from the distant street.

After a long silence, Sofia asked in a low voice, "Then... how do we save Chekhov?"

The Baroness nodded: "Write to your father tomorrow, using the most urgent channels. Tell him this is my request—"

Tell him to prepare himself; he'll need to use his connections soon to get that young man named Anton Chekhov off the exile list.

She paused, then added, "Don't say why. Just say... just say we owe someone in Paris a favor that we have to repay."

Sophia nodded, but hesitated for a moment: "Why not now?"

The Baroness shook her head: "Mr. Sorel said he would make other efforts. Let's see what results his other efforts will yield."

She stood up, walked to the window, and turned her back to Sophia: "Go write a letter. Go now."

Sofia also stood up and walked towards the door, but couldn't help looking back one last time.

My mother stood by the window. Her usually tall and broad back looked, for some reason, very small and lonely.

Paris unfolded before her eyes outside the window, with the city's rooftops stretching to the horizon under a gray sky.

That's someone else's city.

Sofia suddenly understood her mother's choice—they were gambling.

Betting on the "future" that Lionel Sorel spoke of, betting that his promise will one day come true.

Just like those French nobles who transferred their wealth to England back then, betting on the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty.

This time, however, they weren't betting on a dynasty, but on a single person.

Sofia gently closed the door and walked towards her room.

She wanted to write a letter to her father, who was far away in St. Petersburg, asking him to intervene in an Okrana case and to save a young student she had never met.

For the promise of a novelist.

She walked to her desk, spread out the letter paper, and picked up her pen.

The pen tip hovered over the paper, hesitant to fall.

--------

Butirka Prison, Moscow.

The wind at the end of January was like a knife, sweeping across the high brick walls of the prison and whistling sharply through the cracks in the iron bars.

The walls were dark red, the bricks were quite old, and black mold grew in the cracks.

The window was very high, but the opening was small, with thick iron bars. The glass was so dirty that it was almost opaque, and all you could see was a gray sky outside.

Anton Chekhov sat on a wooden plank bed in the corner of his cell, his back against the cold brick wall.

He has been here for a month.

The cell was small, only twenty paces long and fifteen paces wide, yet it held more than thirty people.

The ground was compacted soil, damp and glistening with an oily sheen.

In the corner sat a wooden bucket, a chamber pot, its lid half-open, emitting a pungent ammonia smell.

There are simply not enough beds.

Twenty people were crammed into a makeshift bed made of wooden planks, while the remaining ten or so slept on the ground, covered with dry grass or rags.

Chekhov was lucky to be assigned a bunk, although it was in the corner closest to the wall, at least he didn't have to sleep directly on the mud floor.

The cell housed all sorts of people. Near the door were several student prisoners like him, one of whom was a university student named Sergei from Kazan University, who had been arrested for organizing a reading group.

He was tall and thin, and wore a pair of broken glasses with the lenses cracked so much that they had to be tied together with thread.

He was always speaking to others in a low voice, talking about things like "land and freedom" and "the will of the people."

Besides student offenders, there are also ordinary criminals.

There were three young men in the corner, homeless people, who had been arrested for "wandering without a job".

They huddled together all day, like frightened animals, their eyes empty and devoid of light.

A drunkard was sleeping next to a chamber pot. He had drunk too much of his own homemade liquor and was suffering from alcohol poisoning. His hands were shaking badly and his speech was slurred.

There was also a thief, only seventeen years old, with nimble fingers, who could steal candy from the guard's pocket right under his nose.

Chekhov also saw a woman who wasn't in this cell, but in the women's cell next door.

Once, during his time out for exercise, he saw her standing at the other end of the yard, wearing a worn-out gray dress, with her hair cut very short and her face so thin it was almost unrecognizable.

She stared at the sky beyond the prison walls, motionless, like a statue.

Later, I heard that she was a female teacher who was arrested for teaching farmers to read and was sentenced to five years of exile to Yakutsk.

What truly alarmed him was the always-smiling fat man in the cell.

The fat man claimed his name was Peter, a small businessman, and that he had been arrested for "tax issues."

He was very talkative and enjoyed chatting with people, especially Chekhov.

“Anton Pavlovich, you’re a university student? That’s amazing.”

"From Moscow State University? Studying medicine? He'll definitely be a respectable person in the future."

Sometimes the fat man would hand over a small piece of candy he'd somehow gotten his hands on, or a crumpled piece of tobacco.

"Take it, don't be shy. We're all in the same boat here, let's look after each other."

Chekhov initially answered the questions, but later stopped, realizing that the fat man was asking very detailed questions.

"How are your classmates doing?"

Do you guys usually have gatherings? Where do you meet?

What books do your classmates read? Where do they buy them?

The fat man had small eyes, which would squint into slits as he talked.

Chekhov soon realized he was "the crow," so he began to avoid the fat man; if he couldn't avoid him, he would only say trivial things.

The fat man wasn't angry; he was still smiling and didn't miss a single question.

This is what daily life is like in prison.

At six o'clock in the morning, the small window in the cell door opened, and the guard threw in a day's rations:

Each person received a piece of black bread, only the size of a fist; and a bowl of thin soup, which consisted of just a few rotten vegetable leaves and potato peels floating in hot water.

Then came the long wait.

Some people were sleeping, some were daydreaming, and some were talking quietly.

Sergei said that after Alexander II's assassination last year, the new Tsar tightened control and arrested many people.

"But we will not stop, the people will awaken one day!"

Chekhov simply listened without saying a word.

He recalled the satirical sketches he had written, mocking bureaucrats, priests, and apathetic commoners.

Back then, he felt that his pen was a knife that could cut open the festering sores of society; now he knows that the real knife is made of iron and held in the hands of people in uniform.

But he doesn't regret it; he simply did what he believed he should do.

He was just worried about home; he missed his mother, Yevgenia Yakovlevna, the woman who was always busy and always worried.

She has poor health, suffers from rheumatism, and her joints ache in winter. Now that her son has been arrested and sentenced to exile, what will happen to her? Will she cry? Will she fall ill?

He missed his father, Pavel Yegorovich, the man crushed by life.

He was an alcoholic and irritable, but Chekhov knew that his father still harbored a sense of pride—pride in his son's admission to Moscow University.

Now that pride is shattered. What will the father think? Will he feel that his son has disgraced him?
He misses his brother Alexander.

That perpetually drunk older brother. Will he take care of the family? Or will he just drink even more, squandering the last bit of money the family has?
He missed his younger siblings, Ivan, Mikhail, and of course, Masha.

Martha, his smartest sister. Would she do something foolish? Would she try to save him? No, please don't!
Chekhov felt a pang of anxiety; Masha was only eighteen, and there was nothing she could do.

He only hoped that she would be safe and that she would not be implicated because of him.

Will Okrana cause trouble for his family? Will he search the house? Will he arrest his father as well?
These thoughts, like rats, gnawed at his heart in the darkness.

He turned over, facing the cold brick wall, forcing himself to think about something else.

I think about the anatomy classes in medical school, about the structures of bones, muscles, and blood vessels.

I think of the stories he wrote, the minor official who sneezed and splashed snot on the general's head, and the retired soldier who wrote a letter to his learned neighbor.

Words. Only words will not betray him.

He was conceiving new stories in his mind, about this cell, about these people.

That female teacher, that smiling, chubby informant, and Sergei, that college student who firmly believed the people would awaken.

If they could all survive, if one day he could write these things down, if he could send them all to Mr. Sorel…

Chekhov closed his eyes, and in the distance came the sound of church bells—

It's midnight.

(End of third update!)

(End of this chapter)