After I left for Rykovsk the wedding feast, upon the bride's parents’ wishes, lasted for several more days.

Such exceptional merrymaking was odd to see among Sakhalin exiles; it was a splotch of color on the gray background of life there. Those laughing, dancing people who seemed heedlessly cheerful were, in fact, profoundly sad. Even the healthy and married Pl— — ski, who’d been in Aleksandrovsk the whole time, was always busy with his large farm, and who was notably better off than others, similarly lived in a deep gloom. Four days before K— — n's wedding, he was sobbing like a child and wanted to die. His wife, utterly devoted to the dairy farm and especially active and energetic, also seemed to be that type of person with frayed nerves. Every disagreement with her over religion, history, science, art, or the farm invariably ended in sobs. Many times, she grabbed me by the hands and, not letting go, told me, for an hour or two and with tears in her eyes, about the unendurable conditions of life on Sakhalin. Such anxiety could only be explained by her long confinement in prison and enslavement in exile.

Yet these people, I repeat, were materially secure, married, and had the prospect of soon leaving Sakhalin. Imagine the situation for the bachelors, especially those whose katorga terms would not end, in their ironical expression, “until next century”!

I’ve already said that marriage is the sorest question for educated exiles on Sakhalin. Whom do you marry there? A female convict, and you’re stuck forever! …

One kind woman who understood the exiles’ difficult situation wrote, trying to summon some girlfriends from Russia. But none apparently responded. This is understandable. Just as a bird during mating season hurriedly begins building a nest for her future chicks, so a woman during her first attempt to get married instinctively worries about building a family refuge. But what can she count on on Sakhalin? Indeed, to acquire material security, few women have chosen to assume the terrible mantle of “wife of an exiled penal laborer.”