My conscience was clear; I was not afraid of the tribunal; but the thought of putting off the moment of sweet reunion, maybe for several more months, appalled me. The wagon was ready. Zurin bade me a friendly farewell. I was put into the wagon. Two hussars with drawn swords got in with me, and I drove off down the high road.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Tribunal
Worldly rumor—
Sea waves’ murmur.
PROVERB
I was certain that my whole fault lay in my unauthorized absence from Orenburg. I could easily justify myself: sorties not only had never been forbidden, but had even been strongly encouraged. I could be accused of excessive fervor, but not of disobedience. But my friendly relations with Pugachev could be proved by many witnesses and would have to seem at the very least highly suspicious. For the whole journey I reflected on the interrogations awaiting me, thought over my responses, and decided to tell the whole truth before the tribunal, considering this means of justifying myself to be the most simple and at the same time the most reliable.
I arrived in devastated and burnt-down Kazan. In the streets, instead of houses, lay heaps of embers, and sooty walls stuck up without roofs or windows. Such were the traces left by Pugachev! They brought me to the fortress, left whole in the midst of the fire-ravaged town. The hussars handed me over to a guards officer. He ordered a blacksmith sent for. Shackles were put on my legs and riveted tightly. Then they took me to the prison and left me alone in a narrow and dark cell, with nothing but bare walls and a little window barred by an iron grille.
Such a beginning boded no good for me. However, I lost neither courage nor hope. I resorted to the consolation of all the afflicted and, tasting for the first time the sweetness of prayer poured forth from a pure but tormented heart, fell peacefully asleep, not caring what might happen to me.
The next day the prison guard woke me up with the announcement that I was summoned before the commission. Two soldiers led me across the yard to the commandant’s house, stopped in the front hall, and let me go inside alone.
I entered a rather big room. At a table covered with papers sat two men: an elderly general of stern and cold appearance, and a young captain of the guards, about twenty-eight years old, very pleasant in appearance, free and easy in manner. By the window at a special table sat a secretary with a pen behind his ear, bending over his paper, ready to take down my testimony. The interrogation began. They asked me my name and rank. The general inquired whether I was the son of Andrei Petrovich Grinyov. And to my reply retorted sternly:
“A pity such an estimable man should have such an unworthy son!”
I calmly replied that, whatever the accusations hanging over me, I hoped to dispel them by a frank explanation of the truth. He did not like my assurance.
“You’re a sharp one, brother,” he said to me, frowning, “but we’ve seen sharper!”
Then the young man asked me by what chance and at what time I had entered Pugachev’s service, and on what assignments I had been employed by him.
I replied with indignation that, as an officer and a gentleman, I could not enter into any service with Pugachev or accept any assignments from him.
“How is it, then,” my interrogator rejoined, “that the gentleman and officer was the only one spared by the impostor, while all his comrades were villainously put to death? How is it that this same officer and gentleman feasts amicably with the rebels, and accepts from the chief villain gifts of a fur coat, a horse, and fifty kopecks? How did such a strange friendship come about and what was it based on, if not on treason or at least on vile and criminal cowardice?”
I was deeply offended by the guards officer’s words and hotly began to justify myself. I told how my acquaintance with Pugachev began on the steppe, during a snowstorm; how, when the Belogorsk fortress was taken, he recognized me and spared me. I said that, in fact, I was not ashamed to have taken the coat and the horse from the impostor; but that I had defended the Belogorsk fortress from the villain to the final limit. Finally I referred to my general, who could testify to my zeal during the calamitous siege of Orenburg.
The stern old man took an opened letter from the table and began to read it aloud:
To Your Excellency’s inquiry concerning Lieutenant Grinyov, alleged to be involved in the present commotion and to have entered into relations with the villain impermissible in the service and contrary to his sworn duty, I have the honor to explain that the said Lieutenant Grinyov served in Orenburg from the beginning of October of last year, 1773, until the 24th of February of the present year, on which day he left town and thereafter has not presented himself under my command. But it has been heard from deserters that he was in Pugachev’s camp, and together with him drove to the Belogorsk fortress, where he used to serve; as concerns his behavior, I can…
