Another Rykovsk exile-settler, Elizaveta K., was not treated like Old Lady Marˊia. Disconcerted over the future of an adult daughter left behind in Moscow Province, she was scheming to invite her to Sakhalin and marry her off to a guard or any “good” man in general there.

Elizaveta came to me for advice.

“My Masha,” she said, “has been living with others ever since I was brought to Sakhalin. She's now nineteen years old. Who's going to protect her there? Were she living here with me, she wouldn't be a maiden very long: there are few good brides here. Only, I don't know if she can be assigned to me here on the government's account.”

“If your daughter agrees to come to Sakhalin, that can be done.”

I feared trying to dissuade Elizaveta from her intentions. I imagined she knew full well the conditions of life there. It was true that few women were on Sakhalin, and that a modest young woman could absolutely count on a good selection, given that certain prison officials and educated exiles transacted even with simple female convicts not just to be their cohabitants but their legal wives. Finally, one had to guess that if a grown-up, literate young woman was agreeing to join penal laborers on Sakhalin, then she was having a difficult time getting married in Moscow.

I wrote up the necessary paperwork and told Elizaveta what to do.

My petition was crowned with unforeseen success. Masha arrived at Aleksandrovsk Post with exiles aboard the first steamer from Odessa. She was held for several days in quarantine along with the newly arrived female convicts. Her mother, as soon as she learned of Masha's arrival, went to meet her in Sakhalin's capital and soon returned with her to Rykovsk. Their first visit was to me.

I’d imagined Masha to be a sickly or homely woman who, over despair for her fate, was risking finding fortune in the remote lands of penal laborers; but to my surprise, she proved to be a very attractive, vivacious young woman with pink cheeks. Enervated by the slew of novel impressions during her twomonth journey, she undertook with passion to regale me about her departure from Moscow, route past the “Arapian,” Indian, and Chinese lands, her arrival on Sakhalin, and her time in the quarantine hut.