VIII
On returning home after drill next day, Migoúrski was surprised and delighted to notice a great change in his wife. She came to meet him with a light step and beaming face as of old, and led him into their bedroom.
“Now, Josy, listen! …”
“Yes; what is it?”
“I have been thinking all night of what Rosolówski told us, and I have made up my mind. I can’t live like this—I can’t live here, I can’t! I’ll die rather than remain here!”
“But what can we do?”
“Run away!”
“Run away? How?”
“I have thought it all out. Listen. …”
And she told him the plan she had devised during the night. It was this: Migoúrski was to go away one evening and leave his overcoat on the banks of the Urál, and with it a letter saying he was going to take his life. It would be supposed that he had drowned himself. He would be searched for, and then the fact would be notified. But in reality he would be hidden. She would hide him so that no one would find him. It would be possible to live like that for a month, say, and when all had blown over, they would escape.
At first Migoúrski thought her scheme impracticable; but towards evening, after her passionate and confident persuading, he began to agree with her. He was the more inclined to do so because the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt to desert—such punishment as Rosolówski had described—would fall on him; while success would set her free, and he knew how hard life there had become for her since the children died.
Rosolówski and Ludwíka were taken into their confidence; and after long discussions, alterations and improvements, a plan was finally adopted. Their first idea was that when Migoúrski’s death should have become an accepted fact, he should run away alone and on foot. Albína would follow in a vehicle, and meet him at some appointed place. Such was the first plan. But when Rosolówski told them of all the unsuccessful attempts that had been made to escape from Siberia during the last five years (during which time only one lucky fellow had managed to get away alive), Albína proposed another plan. This was that Josy should travel to Sarátof with her and Ludwíka, hidden in their vehicle. From Sarátof he was to go disguised along the bank of the Vólga, on foot, to an appointed place where he was to meet a boat Albína would hire at Sarátof. On this they would sail down the Vólga to Astrakhán, and cross the Caspian Sea to Persia. This plan was approved by all, including the expert, Rosolówski; but there was the difficulty of arranging, in a conveyance, a place which would not attract the attention of the officials and yet could conceal a man. When, after a visit to her children’s grave, Albína told Rosolówski how hard it was for her to leave their bodies in a strange land, he, after thinking awhile, said:
“Petition the Authorities to let you take the children’s coffins with you. They will allow it.”
“No, I don’t want to. … I can’t do that,” said Albína.
“You only ask, that’s all! We won’t really take the coffins, but will make a box big enough to hold them, and will put Joseph into it.”
At first Albína rejected this proposal, so unpleasant was it to her to connect deceit with the memory of her children; but when Migoúrski cheerfully approved the scheme, she agreed.
So the final plan was worked out as follows:
Migoúrski would do all that was necessary to convince the Authorities that he had drowned himself. After his death had been accepted as a fact, Albína would present a petition for leave to return home and to take her children’s bodies with her—her husband being dead. When she received this permission, the graves would be made to look as if they had been opened and the coffins exhumed; but they would be left where they were, and, instead of them, Migoúrski would get into the box. The box would be placed in a tarantass, and in this way they would travel to Sarátof. At Sarátof they would take a boat, and on the boat Josy would be released from the box, and they would sail down to the Caspian Sea, and thence to Persia or Turkey and to freedom.