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Title: The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia - with and introduction by Julius Bramont
Author: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia - with and introduction by Julius Bramont" ***
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
FICTION
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIUS BRAMONT
THE PUBLISHERS OF _EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY_ WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY
TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE
COMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS:
TRAVEL
SCIENCE
FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY
CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS
ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE
[Illustration: Decoration]
IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING: CLOTH, FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER,
ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP; LIBRARY BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY
& OLD MEN FROM THE CHIMNEY CORNER
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
THE HOUSE _of the_ DEAD
_or Prison Life in Siberia_
BY FEDOR DOSTOÏEFFSKY
[Illustration: Decoration]
LONDON: PUBLISHED
by J.M. DENT & SONS LTD
AND IN NEW YORK
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO
FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION 1911
REPRINTED 1914
INTRODUCTION
"The Russian nation is a new and wonderful phenomenon in the history of
mankind. The character of the people differs to such a degree from that
of the other Europeans that their neighbours find it impossible to
diagnose them." This affirmation by Dostoïeffsky, the prophetic
journalist, offers a key to the treatment in his novels of the troubles
and aspirations of his race. He wrote with a sacramental fervour whether
he was writing as a personal agent or an impersonal, novelist or
journalist. Hence his rage with the calmer men, more gracious
interpreters of the modern Sclav, who like Ivan Tourguenieff were able
to see Russia on a line with the western nations, or to consider her
maternal throes from the disengaged, safe retreat of an arm-chair exile
in Paris. Not so was _l'âme Russe_ to be given her new literature in the
eyes of M. Dostoïeffsky, strained with watching, often red with tears
and anger.
Those other nations, he said--proudly looking for the symptoms of the
world-intelligence in his own--those other nations of Europe may
maintain that they have at heart a common aim and a common ideal. In
fact they are divided among themselves by a thousand interests,
territorial or other. Each pulls his own way with ever-growing
determination. It would seem that every individual nation aspires to the
discovery of the universal ideal for humanity, and is bent on attaining
that ideal by force of its own unaided strength. Hence, he argued, each
European nation is an enemy to its own welfare and that of the world in
general.
To this very disassociation he attributed, without quite understanding
the rest of us, our not understanding the Russian people, and our taxing
them with "a lack of personality." We failed to perceive their rare
synthetic power--that faculty of the Russian mind to read the
aspirations of the whole of human kind. Among his own folk, he avowed,
we would find none of the imperviousness, the intolerance, of the
average European. The Russian adapts himself with ease to the play of
contemporary thought and has no difficulty in assimilating any new idea.
He sees where it will help his fellow-creatures and where it fails to be
of value. He divines the process by which ideas, even the most
divergent, the most hostile to one another, may meet and blend.
Possibly, recognising this, M. Dostoïeffsky was the more concerned not
to be too far depolarised, or say de-Russified, in his own works of
fiction. But in truth he had no need to fear any weakening of his
natural fibre and racial proclivities, or of the authentic utterance
wrung out of him by the hard and cruel thongs of experience. We see the
rigorous sincerity of his record again in the sheer autobiography
contained in the present work, _The House of the Dead_. It was in the
fatal winter of 1849 when he was with many others, mostly very young men
like himself, sentenced to death for his liberal political propaganda; a
sentence which was at the last moment commuted to imprisonment in the
Siberian prisons. Out of that terror, which turned youth grey, was
distilled the terrible reality of _The House of the Dead_. If one would
truly fathom how deep that reality is, and what its phenomenon in
literature amounts to, one should turn again to that favourite idyllic
book of youth, by my countrywoman Mme. Cottin, _Elizabeth, or the Exiles
of Siberia_, and compare, for example, the typical scene of Elizabeth's
sleep in the wooden chapel in the snow, where she ought to have been
frozen to death but fared very comfortably, with the Siberian actuality
of Dostoïeffsky.
But he was no idyllist, though he could be tender as Mme. Cottin
herself. What he felt about these things you can tell from his stories.
If a more explicit statement in the theoretic side be asked of him, take
this plain avowal from his confession books of 1870-77:--
"There is no denying that the people are morally ill, with a grave,
although not a mortal, malady, one to which it is difficult to assign a
name. May we call it 'An unsatisfied thirst for truth'? The people are
seeking eagerly and untiringly for truth and for the ways that lead to
it, but hitherto they have failed in their search. After the liberation
of the serfs, this great longing for truth appeared among the
people--for truth perfect and entire, and with it the resurrection of
civic life. There was a clamouring for a 'new Gospel'; new ideas and
feelings became manifest; and a great hope rose up among the people
believing that these great changes were precursors of a state of things
which never came to pass."
There is the accent of his hope and his despair. Let it prove to you the
conviction with which he wrote these tragic pages, one that is affecting
at this moment the destiny of Russia and the spirit of us who watch her
as profoundly moved spectators.
JULIUS BRAMONT.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(_Dostoïeffsky's works, so far as they have appeared in English._)
Translations of Dostoïeffsky's novels have appeared as
follows:--Buried Alive; or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in
Siberia, translated by Marie v. Thilo, 1881. In Vizetelly's One
Volume Novels: Crime and Punishment, vol. 13; Injury and Insult,
translated by F. Whishaw, vol. 17; The Friend of the Family and the
Gambler, etc., vol. 22. In Vizetelly's Russian Novels: The Idiot,
by F. Whishaw, 1887; Uncle's Dream; and, The Permanent Husband,
etc., 1888. Prison Life in Siberia, translated by H. S. Edwards,
1888; Poor Folk, translated by L. Milman, 1894.
See D. S. Merezhkovsky, Tolstoi as Man and Artist, with Essay on
Dostoïeffsky, translated from the Russian, 1902; M. Baring,
Landmarks in Russian Literature (chapter on Dostoïeffsky), 1910.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAP. PAGE
I. TEN YEARS A CONVICT 1
II. THE DEAD-HOUSE 7
III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 24
IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 43
V. FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_) 61
VI. THE FIRST MONTH 80
VII. THE FIRST MONTH (_continued_) 95
VIII. NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF 110
IX. MEN OF DETERMINATION--LUKA 125
X. ISAIAH FOMITCH--THE BATH--BAKLOUCHIN 133
XI. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 152
XII. THE PERFORMANCE 171
PART II
I. THE HOSPITAL 194
II. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 209
III. THE HOSPITAL (_continued_) 225
IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA 248
V. THE SUMMER SEASON 264
VI. THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT 286
VII. GRIEVANCES 302
VIII. MY COMPANIONS 325
IX. THE ESCAPE 344
X. FREEDOM! 363
PRISON LIFE IN SIBERIA.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
TEN YEARS A CONVICT
In the midst of the steppes, of the mountains, of the impenetrable
forests of the desert regions of Siberia, one meets from time to time
with little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants, built entirely of
wood, very ugly, with two churches--one in the centre of the town, the
other in the cemetery--in a word, towns which bear much more resemblance
to a good-sized village in the suburbs of Moscow than to a town properly
so called. In most cases they are abundantly provided with
police-master, assessors, and other inferior officials. If it is cold in
Siberia, the great advantages of the Government service compensate for
it. The inhabitants are simple people, without liberal ideas. Their
manners are antique, solid, and unchanged by time. The officials who
form, and with reason, the nobility in Siberia, either belong to the
country, deeply-rooted Siberians, or they have arrived there from
Russia. The latter come straight from the capitals, tempted by the high
pay, the extra allowance for travelling expenses, and by hopes not less
seductive for the future. Those who know how to resolve the problem of
life remain almost always in Siberia; the abundant and richly-flavoured
fruit which they gather there recompenses them amply for what they lose.
As for the others, light-minded persons who are unable to deal with the
problem, they are soon bored in Siberia, and ask themselves with regret
why they committed the folly of coming. They impatiently kill the three
years which they are obliged by rule to remain, and as soon as their
time is up, they beg to be sent back, and return to their original
quarters, running down Siberia, and ridiculing it. They are wrong, for
it is a happy country, not only as regards the Government service, but
also from many other points of view.
The climate is excellent, the merchants are rich and hospitable, the
Europeans in easy circumstances are numerous; as for the young girls,
they are like roses and their morality is irreproachable. Game is to be
found in the streets, and throws itself upon the sportsman's gun. People
drink champagne in prodigious quantities. The caviare is astonishingly
good and most abundant. In a word, it is a blessed land, out of which it
is only necessary to be able to make profit; and much profit is really
made.
It is in one of these little towns--gay and perfectly satisfied with
themselves, the population of which has left upon me the most agreeable
impression--that I met an exile, Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff,
formerly a landed proprietor in Russia. He had been condemned to hard
labour of the second class for assassinating his wife. After undergoing
his punishment--ten years of hard labour--he lived quietly and unnoticed
as a colonist in the little town of K----. To tell the truth, he was
inscribed in one of the surrounding districts; but he resided at K----,
where he managed to get a living by giving lessons to children. In the
towns of Siberia one often meets with exiles who are occupied with
instruction. They are not looked down upon, for they teach the French
language, so necessary in life, and of which without them one would not,
in the distant parts of Siberia, have the least idea.
I saw Alexander Petrovitch the first time at the house of an official,
Ivan Ivanitch Gvosdikof, a venerable old man, very hospitable, and the
father of five daughters, of whom the greatest hopes were entertained.
Four times a week Alexander Petrovitch gave them lessons, at the rate of
thirty kopecks silver a lesson. His external appearance interested me.
He was excessively pale and thin, still young--about thirty-five years
of age--short and weak, always very neatly dressed in the European
style. When you spoke to him he looked at you in a very attentive
manner, listening to your words with strict politeness, and with a
reflective air, as though you had placed before him a problem or wished
to extract from him a secret. He replied clearly and shortly; but in
doing so, weighed each word, so that one felt ill at ease without
knowing why, and was glad when the conversation came to an end. I put
some questions to Ivan Gvosdikof in regard to him. He told me that
Goriantchikoff was of irreproachable morals, otherwise Gvosdikof would
not have entrusted him with the education of his children; but that he
was a terrible misanthrope, who kept apart from all society; that he was
very learned, a great reader, and that he spoke but little, and never
entered freely into a conversation. Certain persons told him that he was
mad; but that was not looked upon as a very serious defect. Accordingly,
the most important persons in the town were ready to treat Alexander
Petrovitch with respect, for he could be useful to them in writing
petitions. It was believed that he was well connected in Russia.
Perhaps, among his relations, there were some who were highly placed;
but it was known that since his exile he had broken off all relations
with them. In a word--he injured himself. Every one knew his story, and
was aware that he had killed his wife, through jealousy, less than a
year after his marriage; and that he had given himself up to justice;
which had made his punishment much less severe. Such crimes are always
looked upon as misfortunes, which must be treated with pity.
Nevertheless, this original kept himself obstinately apart, and never
showed himself except to give lessons. In the first instance I paid no
attention to him; then, without knowing why, I found myself interested
by him. He was rather enigmatic; to talk with him was quite impossible.
Certainly he replied to all my questions; he seemed to make it a duty to
do so; but when once he had answered, I was afraid to interrogate him
any longer.
After such conversations one could observe on his countenance signs of
suffering and exhaustion. I remember that, one fine summer evening, I
went out with him from the house of Ivan Gvosdikof. It suddenly occurred
to me to invite him to come in with me and smoke a cigarette. I can
scarcely describe the fright which showed itself in his countenance. He
became confused, muttered incoherent words, and suddenly, after looking
at me with an angry air, took to flight in an opposite direction. I was
very much astonished afterwards, when he met me. He seemed to
experience, on seeing me, a sort of terror; but I did not lose courage.
There was something in him which attracted me.
A month afterwards I went to see Petrovitch without any pretext. It is
evident that, in doing so, I behaved foolishly, and without the least
delicacy. He lived at one of the extreme points of the town with an old
woman whose daughter was in a consumption. The latter had a little child
about ten years old, very pretty and very lively.
When I went in Alexander Petrovitch was seated by her side, and was
teaching her to read. When he saw me he became confused, as if I had
detected him in a crime. Losing all self-command, he suddenly stood up
and looked at me with awe and astonishment. Then we both of us sat down.
He followed attentively all my looks, as if I had suspected him of some
mysterious intention. I understood he was horribly mistrustful. He
looked at me as a sort of spy, and he seemed to be on the point of
saying, "Are you not soon going away?"
I spoke to him of our little town, of the news of the day, but he was
silent, or smiled with an air of displeasure. I could see that he was
absolutely ignorant of all that was taking place in the town, and that
he was in no way curious to know. I spoke to him afterwards of the
country generally, and of its men. He listened to me still in silence,
fixing his eyes upon me in such a strange way that I became ashamed of
what I was doing. I was very nearly offending him by offering him some
books and newspapers which I had just received by post. He cast a greedy
look upon them; he then seemed to alter his mind, and declined my offer,
giving his want of leisure as a pretext.
At last I wished him good-bye, and I felt a weight fall from my
shoulders as I left the house. I regretted to have harassed a man whose
tastes kept him apart from the rest of the world. But the fault had been
committed. I had remarked that he possessed very few books. It was not
true, then, that he read so much. Nevertheless, on two occasions when I
drove past, I saw a light in his lodging. What could make him sit up so
late? Was he writing, and if that were so, what was he writing?
I was absent from our town for about three months. When I returned home
in the winter, I learned that Petrovitch was dead, and that he had not
even sent for a doctor. He was even now already forgotten, and his
lodging was unoccupied. I at once made the acquaintance of his landlady,
in the hope of learning from her what her lodger had been writing. For
twenty kopecks she brought me a basket full of papers left by the
defunct, and confessed to me that she had already employed four sheets
in lighting her fire. She was a morose and taciturn old woman. I could
not get from her anything that was interesting. She could tell me
nothing about her lodger. She gave me to understand all the same that he
scarcely ever worked, and that he remained for months together without
opening a book or touching a pen. On the other hand, he walked all night
up and down his room, given up to his reflections. Sometimes, indeed, he
spoke aloud. He was very fond of her little grandchild, Katia, above all
when he knew her name; on her name's-day--the day of St. Catherine--he
always had a requiem said in the church for some one's soul. He detested
receiving visits, and never went out except to give lessons. Even his
landlady he looked upon with an unfriendly eye when, once a week, she
came into his room to put it in order.
During the three years he had passed with her, he had scarcely ever
spoken to her. I asked Katia if she remembered him. She looked at me in
silence, and turned weeping to the wall. This man, then, was loved by
some one! I took away the papers, and passed the day in examining them.
They were for the most part of no importance, merely children's
exercises. At last I came to a rather thick packet, the sheets of which
were covered with delicate handwriting, which abruptly ceased. It had
perhaps been forgotten by the writer. It was the narrative--incoherent
and fragmentary--of the ten years Alexander Petrovitch had passed in
hard labour. This narrative was interrupted, here and there, either by
anecdotes, or by strange, terrible recollections thrown in convulsively
as if torn from the writer. I read some of these fragments again and
again, and I began to doubt whether they had not been written in moments
of madness; but these memories of the convict prison--"Recollections of
the Dead-House," as he himself called them somewhere in his
manuscript--seemed to me not without interest. They revealed quite a new
world unknown till then; and in the strangeness of his facts, together
with his singular remarks on this fallen people, there was enough to
tempt me to go on. I may perhaps be wrong, but I will publish some
chapters from this narrative, and the public shall judge for itself.
CHAPTER II.
THE DEAD-HOUSE
Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Looking
through the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeing
something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high
earthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day
sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first,
that whole years will pass during which one will see by the same
crevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the same
sentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the
prison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, two
hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by an
irregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into the
earth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one side
of the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watched
perpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convicts
go out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life of
free people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world,
fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, there
was no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were all
precisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this corner
that I undertake to describe.
On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On each
side of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, made
of trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts'
barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes.
At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as a
kitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building,
which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of the
enclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisoners
are drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and must
answer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several times
in the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious and
clever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildings
there remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisoners
who are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk about
when they are not at work. There they go turning over their favourite
thoughts, shielded from all observation.
When I met them during those walks of theirs, I took pleasure in
observing their sad, deeply-marked countenances, and in guessing their
thoughts. The favourite occupation of one of the convicts, during the
moments of liberty left to him from his hard labour, was to count the
palisades. There were fifteen hundred of them. He had counted them all,
and knew them nearly by heart. Every one of them represented to him a
day of confinement; but, counting them daily in this manner, he knew
exactly the number of days that he had still to pass in the prison. He
was sincerely happy when he had finished one side of the hexagon; yet he
had to wait for his liberation many long years. But one learns patience
in a prison.
One day I saw a prisoner, who had undergone his punishment, take leave
of his comrades. He had had twenty years' hard labour. More than one
convict remembered seeing him arrive, quite young, careless, thinking
neither of his crime nor of his punishment. He was now an old man with
gray hairs, with a sad and morose countenance. He walked in silence
through our six barracks. When he entered each of them he prayed before
the holy image, made a deep bow to his former companions, and begged
them not to keep a bad recollection of him.
I also remember one evening, a prisoner, who had been formerly a
well-to-do Siberian peasant, so called. Six years before he had had news
of his wife's remarrying, which had caused him great pain. That very
evening she had come to the prison, and had asked for him in order to
make him a present! They talked together for two minutes, wept together,
and then separated never to meet again. I saw the expression of this
prisoner's countenance when he re-entered the barracks. There, indeed,
one learns to support everything.
When darkness set in we had to re-enter the barrack, where we were shut
up for all the night. It was always painful for me to leave the
court-yard for the barrack. Think of a long, low, stifling room,
scarcely lighted by tallow candles, and full of heavy and disgusting
odours. I cannot now understand how I lived there for ten entire years.
My camp bedstead was made of three boards. This was the only place in
the room that belonged to me. In one single room we herded together,
more than thirty men. It was, above all, no wonder that we were shut up
early. Four hours at least passed before every one was asleep, and,
until then, there was a tumult and uproar of laughter, oaths, rattling
of chains, a poisonous vapour of thick smoke; a confusion of shaved
heads, stigmatised foreheads, and ragged clothes disgustingly filthy.
Yes, man is a pliable animal--he must be so defined--a being who gets
accustomed to everything! That would be, perhaps, the best definition
that could be given of him. There were altogether two hundred and fifty
of us in the same prison. This number was almost invariably the same.
Whenever some of them had undergone their punishment, other criminals
arrived, and a few of them died. Among them there were all sorts of
people. I believe that each region of Russia had furnished its
representatives. There were foreigners there, and even mountaineers from
the Caucasus.
All these people were divided into different classes, according to the
importance of the crime; and consequently the duration of the punishment
for the crime, whatever it might be, was there represented. The
population of the prison was composed for the most part of men condemned
to hard labour of the civil class--"strongly condemned," as the
prisoners used to say. They were criminals deprived of all civil rights,
men rejected by society, vomited forth by it, and whose faces were
marked by the iron to testify eternally to their disgrace. They were
incarcerated for different periods of time, varying from eight to ten
years. At the expiration of their punishment they were sent to the
Siberian districts in the character of colonists.
As to the criminals of the military section, they were not deprived of
their civil rights--as is generally the case in Russian disciplinary
companies--but were punished for a relatively short period. As soon as
they had undergone their punishment they had to return to the place
whence they had come, and became soldiers in the battalions of the
Siberian Line.[1]
Many of them came back to us afterwards, for serious crimes, this time
not for a small number of years, but for twenty at least. They then
formed part of the section called "for perpetuity." Nevertheless, the
perpetuals were not deprived of their right. There was another section
sufficiently numerous, composed of the worst malefactors, nearly all
veterans in crime, and which was called the special section. There were
sent convicts from all the Russias. They looked upon one another with
reason as imprisoned for ever, for the term of their confinement had not
been indicated. The law required them to receive double and treble
tasks. They remained in prison until work of the most painful character
had to be undertaken in Siberia.
"You are only here for a fixed time," they said to the other convicts;
"we, on the contrary, are here for all our life."
I have heard that this section has since been abolished. At the same
time, civil convicts are kept apart, in order that the military convicts
may be organised by themselves into a homogeneous "disciplinary
company." The administration, too, has naturally been changed;
consequently what I describe are the customs and practices of another
time, and of things which have since been abolished. Yes, it was a long
time ago; it seems to me that it is all a dream. I remember entering the
convict prison one December evening, as night was falling. The convicts
were returning from work. The roll-call was about to be made. An under
officer with large moustaches opened to me the gate of this strange
house, where I was to remain so many years, to endure so many emotions,
and of which I could not form even an approximate idea, if I had not
gone through them. Thus, for example, could I ever have imagined the
poignant and terrible suffering of never being alone even for one minute
during ten years? Working under escort in the barracks together with two
hundred "companions;" never alone, never!
However, I was obliged to get accustomed to it. Among them there were
murderers by imprudence, and murderers by profession, simple thieves,
masters in the art of finding money in the pockets of the passers-by, or
of wiping off no matter what from the table. It would have been
difficult, however, to say why and how certain prisoners found
themselves among the convicts. Each of them had his history, confused
and heavy, painful as the morning after a debauch.
The convicts, as a rule, spoke very little of their past life, which
they did not like to think of. They endeavoured, even, to dismiss it
from their memory.
Amongst my companions of the chain I have known murderers who were so
gay and so free from care, that one might have made a bet that their
conscience never made them the least reproach. But there were also men
of sombre countenance who remained almost always silent. It was very
rarely any one told his history. This sort of thing was not the fashion.
Let us say at once that it was not received. Sometimes, however, from
time to time, for the sake of change, a prisoner used to tell his life
to another prisoner, who would listen coldly to the narrative. No one,
to tell the truth, could have said anything to astonish his neighbour.
"We are not ignoramuses," they would sometimes say with singular pride.
I remember one day a ruffian who had got drunk--it was sometimes
possible for the convicts to get drink--relating how he had killed and
cut up a child of five. He had first tempted the child with a plaything,
and then taking it to a loft, had cut it up to pieces. The entire
barrack, which, generally speaking, laughed at his jokes, uttered one
unanimous cry. The ruffian was obliged to be silent. But if the convicts
had interrupted him, it was not by any means because his recital had
caused their indignation, but because it was not allowed to speak of
such things.
I must here observe that the convicts possessed a certain degree of
instruction. Half of them, if not more, knew how to read and write.
Where in Russia, in no matter what population, could two hundred and
fifty men be found able to read and write? Later on I have heard people
say, and conclude on the strength of these abuses, that education
demoralises the people. This is a mistake. Education has nothing
whatever to do with moral deterioration. It must be admitted,
nevertheless, that it develops a resolute spirit among the people. But
this is far from being a defect.
Each section had a different costume. The uniform of one was a cloth
vest, half brown and half gray, and trousers with one leg brown, the
other gray. One day while we were at work, a little girl who sold scones
of white bread came towards the convicts. She looked at them for a time
and then burst into a laugh. "Oh, how ugly they are!" she cried; "they
have not even enough gray cloth or brown cloth to make their clothes."
Every convict wore a vest made of gray cloth, except the sleeves, which
were brown. Their heads, too, were shaved in different styles. The
crown was bared sometimes longitudinally, sometimes latitudinally, from
the nape of the neck to the forehead, or from one ear to another.
This strange family had a general likeness so pronounced that it could
be recognised at a glance.
Even the most striking personalities, those who dominated involuntarily
the other convicts, could not help taking the general tone of the house.
Of the convicts--with the exception of a few who enjoyed childish
gaiety, and who by that alone drew upon themselves general contempt--all
the convicts were morose, envious, frightfully vain, presumptuous,
susceptible, and excessively ceremonious. To be astonished at nothing
was in their eyes the first and indispensable quality. Accordingly,
their first aim was to bear themselves with dignity. But often the most
composed demeanour gave way with the rapidity of lightning. With the
basest humility some, however, possessed genuine strength; these were
naturally all sincere. But strangely enough, they were for the most part
excessively and morbidly vain. Vanity was always their salient quality.
The majority of the prisoners were depraved and perverted, so that
calumnies and scandal rained amongst them like hail. Our life was a
constant hell, a perpetual damnation; but no one would have dared to
raise a voice against the internal regulations of the prison, or against
established usages. Accordingly, willingly or unwillingly, they had to
be submitted to. Certain indomitable characters yielded with difficulty,
but they yielded all the same. Prisoners who when at liberty had gone
beyond all measure, who, urged by their over-excited vanity, had
committed frightful crimes unconsciously, as if in a delirium, and had
been the terror of entire towns, were put down in a very short time by
the system of our prison. The "new man," when he began to reconnoitre,
soon found that he could astonish no one, and insensibly he submitted,
took the general tone, and assumed a sort of personal dignity which
almost every convict maintained, just as if the denomination of convict
had been a title of honour. Not the least sign of shame or of
repentance, but a kind of external submission which seemed to have been
reasoned out as the line of conduct to be pursued. "We are lost men,"
they said to themselves. "We were unable to live in liberty; we must now
go to Green Street."[2]
"You would not obey your father and mother; you will now obey thongs of
leather." "The man who would not sow must now break stones."
These things were said, and repeated in the way of morality, as
sentences and proverbs, but without any one taking them seriously. They
were but words in the air. There was not one man among them who admitted
his iniquity. Let a stranger not a convict endeavour to reproach him
with his crime, and the insults directed against him would be endless.
And how refined are convicts in the matter of insults! They insult
delicately, like artists; insult with the most delicate science. They
endeavour not so much to offend by the expression as by the meaning, the
spirit of an envenomed phrase. Their incessant quarrels developed
greatly this special art.
As they only worked under the threat of an immense stick, they were idle
and depraved. Those who were not already corrupt when they arrived at
the convict establishment, became perverted very soon. Brought together
in spite of themselves, they were perfect strangers to one another. "The
devil has worn out three pairs of sandals before he got us together,"
they would say. Intrigues, calumnies, scandal of all kinds, envy, and
hatred reigned above everything else. In this life of sloth, no ordinary
spiteful tongue could make head against these murderers, with insults
constantly in their mouths.
As I said before, there were found among them men of open character,
resolute, intrepid, accustomed to self-command. These were held
involuntarily in esteem. Although they were very jealous of their
reputation, they endeavoured to annoy no one, and never insulted one
another without a motive. Their conduct was on all points full of
dignity. They were rational, and almost always obedient, not by
principle, or from any respect for duty, but as if in virtue of a mutual
convention between themselves and the administration--a convention of
which the advantages were plain enough.
The officials, moreover, behaved prudently towards them. I remember that
one prisoner of the resolute and intrepid class, known to possess the
instincts of a wild beast, was summoned one day to be whipped. It was
during the summer, no work was being done. The Adjutant, the direct and
immediate chief of the convict prison, was in the orderly-room, by the
side of the principal entrance, ready to assist at the punishment. This
Major was a fatal being for the prisoners, whom he had brought to such a
state that they trembled before him. Severe to the point of insanity,
"he threw himself upon them," to use their expression. But it was above
all that his look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, was feared. It was
impossible to conceal anything from him. He saw, so to say, without
looking. On entering the prison, he knew at once what was being done.
Accordingly, the convicts, one and all, called him the man with the
eight eyes. His system was bad, for it had the effect of irritating men
who were already irascible. But for the Commandant, a well-bred and
reasonable man, who moderated the savage onslaughts of the Major, the
latter would have caused sad misfortunes by his bad administration. I do
not understand how he managed to retire from the service safe and sound.
It is true that he left after being called before a court-martial.
The prisoner turned pale when he was called; generally speaking, he lay
down courageously, and without uttering a word, to receive the terrible
rods, after which he got up and shook himself. He bore the misfortune
calmly, philosophically, it is true, though he was never punished
carelessly, nor without all sorts of precautions. But this time he
considered himself innocent. He turned pale, and as he walked quietly
towards the escort of soldiers he managed to conceal in his sleeve a
shoemaker's awl. The prisoners were severely forbidden to carry sharp
instruments about them. Examinations were frequently, minutely, and
unexpectedly made, and all infractions of the rule were severely
punished. But as it is difficult to take away from the criminal what he
is determined to conceal, and as, moreover, sharp instruments are
necessarily used in the prison, they were never destroyed. If the
official succeeded in taking them away from the convicts, the latter
procured new ones very soon.
On the occasion in question, all the convicts had now thrown themselves
against the palisade, with palpitating hearts, to look through the
crevices. It was known that this time Petroff would not allow himself to
be flogged, that the end of the Major had come. But at the critical
moment the latter got into his carriage, and went away, leaving the
direction of the punishment to a subaltern. "God has saved him!" said
the convicts. As for Petroff, he underwent his punishment quietly. Once
the Major had gone, his anger fell. The prisoner is submissive and
obedient to a certain point, but there is a limit which must not be
crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of
disobedience and rage. Often a man who has supported for many years the
most cruel punishment, will revolt for a trifle, for nothing at all. He
might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him.
I have already said that during many years I never remarked the least
sign of repentance, not even the slightest uneasiness with regard to the
crime committed; and that most of the convicts considered neither honour
nor conscience, holding that they had a right to act as they thought
fit. Certainly vanity, evil examples, deceitfulness, and false shame
were responsible for much. On the other hand, who can claim to have
sounded the depths of these hearts, given over to perdition, and to have
found them closed to all light? It would seem all the same that during
so many years I ought to have been able to notice some indication, even
the most fugitive, of some regret, some moral suffering. I positively
saw nothing of the kind. With ready-made opinions one cannot judge of
crime. Its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It
is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any
system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement
only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might
commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but
to develop with these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden
enjoyment, and frightful recalcitrations. On the other hand I am
convinced that the celebrated cellular system gives results which are
specious and deceitful. It deprives a criminal of his force, of his
energy, enervates his soul by weakening and frightening it, and at last
exhibits a dried up mummy as a model of repentance and amendment.
The criminal who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers
himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover,
undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his
own eyes. In spite of different opinions, every one will acknowledge
that there are crimes which everywhere, always, under no matter what
legislation, are beyond discussion crimes, and should be regarded as
such as long as man is man. It is only at the convict prison that I have
heard related, with a childish, unrestrained laugh, the strangest, most
atrocious offences. I shall never forget a certain parricide, formerly a
nobleman and a public functionary. He had given great grief to his
father--a true prodigal son. The old man endeavoured in vain to restrain
him by remonstrance on the fatal slope down which he was sliding. As he
was loaded with debts, and his father was suspected of having, besides
an estate, a sum of ready money, he killed him in order to enter more
quickly into his inheritance. This crime was not discovered until a
month afterwards. During all this time the murderer, who meanwhile had
informed the police of his father's disappearance, continued his
debauches. At last, during his absence, the police discovered the old
man's corpse in a drain. The gray head was severed from the trunk, but
replaced in its original position. The body was entirely dressed.
Beneath, as if by derision, the assassin had placed a cushion.
The young man confessed nothing. He was degraded, deprived of his
nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years' hard labour. As
long as I knew him I always found him to be careless of his position. He
was the most light-minded, inconsiderate man that I ever met, although
he was far from being a fool. I never observed in him any great tendency
to cruelty. The other convicts despised him, not on account of his
crime, of which there was never any question, but because he was without
dignity. He sometimes spoke of his father. One day for instance,
boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, he said: "My
father, for example, until his death was never ill."
Animal insensibility carried to such a point is most remarkable--it is,
indeed, phenomenal. There must have been in this case an organic defect
in the man, some physical and moral monstrosity unknown hitherto to
science, and not simply crime. I naturally did not believe in so
atrocious a crime; but people of the same town as himself, who knew all
the details of his history, related it to me. The facts were so clear
that it would have been madness not to accept them. The prisoners once
heard him cry out during his sleep: "Hold him! hold him! Cut his head
off, his head, his head!"
Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud, or were delirious in their sleep.
Insults, words of slang, knives, hatchets, seemed constantly present in
their dreams. "We are crushed!" they would say; "we are without
entrails; that is why we shriek in the night."
Hard labour in our fortress was not an occupation, but an obligation.
The prisoners accomplished their task, they worked the number of hours
fixed by the law, and then returned to the prison. They hated their
liberty. If the convict did not do some work on his own account
voluntarily, it would be impossible for him to support his confinement.
How could these persons, all strongly constituted, who had lived
sumptuously, and desired so to live again, who had been brought
together against their will, after society had cast them up--how could
they live in a normal and natural manner? Man cannot exist without work,
without legal, natural property. Depart from these conditions, and he
becomes perverted and changed into a wild beast. Accordingly, every
convict, through natural requirements and by the instinct of
self-preservation, had a trade--an occupation of some kind.
The long days of summer were taken up almost entirely by our hard
labour. The night was so short that we had only just time to sleep. It
was not the same in winter. According to the regulations, the prisoners
had to be shut up in the barracks at nightfall. What was to be done
during these long, sad evenings but work? Consequently each barrack,
though locked and bolted, assumed the appearance of a large workshop.
The work was not, it is true, strictly forbidden, but it was forbidden
to have tools, without which work is evidently impossible. But we
laboured in secret, and the administration seemed to shut its eyes. Many
prisoners arrived without knowing how to make use of their ten fingers;
but they learnt a trade from some of their companions, and became
excellent workmen.
We had among us cobblers, bootmakers, tailors, masons, locksmiths, and
gilders. A Jew named Esau Boumstein was at the same time a jeweller and
a usurer. Every one worked, and thus gained a few pence--for many orders
came from the town. Money is a tangible resonant liberty, inestimable
for a man entirely deprived of true liberty. If he feels some money in
his pocket, he consoles himself a little, even though he cannot spend
it--but one can always and everywhere spend money, the more so as
forbidden fruit is doubly sweet. One can often buy spirits in the
convict prison. Although pipes are severely forbidden, every one smokes.
Money and tobacco save the convicts from the scurvy, as work saves them
from crime--for without work they would mutually have destroyed one
another like spiders shut up in a close bottle. Work and money were all
the same forbidden. Often during the night severe examinations were
made, during which everything that was not legally authorised was
confiscated. However successfully the little hoards had been concealed,
they were sometimes discovered. That was one of the reasons why they
were not kept very long. They were exchanged as soon as possible for
drink, which explains how it happened that spirits penetrated into the
convict prison. The delinquent was not only deprived of his hoard, but
was also cruelly flogged.
A short time after each examination the convicts procured again the
objects which had been confiscated, and everything went on as before.
The administration knew it; and although the condition of the convicts
was a good deal like that of the inhabitants of Vesuvius, they never
murmured at the punishment inflicted for these peccadilloes. Those who
had no manual skill did business somehow or other. The modes of buying
and selling were original enough. Things changed hands which no one
expected a convict would ever have thought of selling or buying, or even
of regarding as of any value whatever. The least rag had its value, and
might be turned to account. In consequence, however, of the poverty of
the convicts, money acquired in their eyes a superior value to that
really belonging to it.
Long and painful tasks, sometimes of a very complicated kind, brought
back a few kopecks. Several of the prisoners lent by the week, and did
good business that way. The prisoner who was ruined and insolvent
carried to the usurer the few things belonging to him and pledged them
for some halfpence, which were lent to him at a fabulous rate of
interest. If he did not redeem them at the fixed time the usurer sold
them pitilessly by auction, and without the least delay.
Usury flourished so well in our convict prison that money was lent even
on things belonging to the Government: linen, boots, etc.--things that
were wanted at every moment. When the lender accepted such pledges the
affair took an unexpected turn. The proprietor went, immediately after
he had received his money, and told the under officer--chief
superintendent of the convict prison--that objects belonging to the
State were being concealed, on which everything was taken away from the
usurer without even the formality of a report to the superior
administration. But never was there any quarrel--and that is very
curious indeed--between the usurer and the owner. The first gave up in
silence, with a morose air, the things demanded from him, as if he had
been waiting for the request. Sometimes, perhaps, he confessed to
himself that, in the place of the borrower, he would not have acted
differently. Accordingly, if he was insulted after this restitution, it
was less from hatred than simply as a matter of conscience.
The convicts robbed one another without shame. Each prisoner had his
little box fitted with a padlock, in which he kept the things entrusted
to him by the administration. Although these boxes were authorised, that
did not prevent them from being broken into. The reader can easily
imagine what clever thieves were found among us. A prisoner who was
sincerely devoted to me--I say it without boasting--stole my Bible from
me, the only book allowed in the convict prison. He told me of it the
same day, not from repentance, but because he pitied me when he saw me
looking for it everywhere. We had among our companions of the chain
several convicts called "innkeepers," who sold spirits, and became
comparatively rich by doing so. I shall speak of this further on, for
the liquor traffic deserves special study.
A great number of prisoners had been deported for smuggling, which
explains how it was that drink was brought secretly into the convict
prison, under so severe a surveillance as ours was. In passing it may be
remarked that smuggling is an offence apart. Would it be believed that
money, the solid profit from the affair, possesses often only secondary
importance for the smuggler? It is all the same an authentic fact. He
works by vocation. In his style he is a poet. He risks all he possesses,
exposes himself to terrible dangers, intrigues, invents, gets out of a
scrape, and brings everything to a happy end by a sort of inspiration.
This passion is as violent as that of play.
I knew a prisoner of colossal stature who was the mildest, the most
peaceable, and most manageable man it was possible to see. We often
asked one another how he had been deported. He had such a calm, sociable
character, that during the whole time that he passed at the convict
prison, he never quarrelled with any one. Born in Western Russia, where
he lived on the frontier, he had been sent to hard labour for smuggling.
Naturally, then, he could not resist his desire to smuggle spirits into
the prison. How many times was he not punished for it, and heaven knows
how much he feared the rods. This dangerous trade brought him in but
slender profits. It was the speculator who got rich at his expense. Each
time he was punished he wept like an old woman, and swore by all that
was holy that he would never be caught at such things again. He kept his
vow for an entire month, but he ended by yielding once more to his
passion. Thanks to these amateurs of smuggling, spirits were always to
be had in the convict prison.
Another source of income which, without enriching the prisoners, was
constantly and beneficently turned to account, was alms-giving. The
upper classes of our Russian society do not know to what an extent
merchants, shopkeepers, and our people generally, commiserate the
"unfortunate!"[3] Alms were always forthcoming, and consisted generally
of little white loaves, sometimes of money, but very rarely. Without
alms, the existence of the convicts, and above all that of the accused,
who are badly fed, would be too painful. These alms are shared equally
between all the prisoners. If the gifts are not sufficient, the little
loaves are divided into halves, and sometimes into six pieces, so that
each convict may have his share. I remember the first alms, a small
piece of money, that I received. A short time after my arrival, one
morning, as I was coming back from work with a soldier escort, I met a
mother and her daughter, a child of ten, as beautiful as an angel. I had
already seen them once before.
The mother was the widow of a poor soldier, who, while still young, had
been sentenced by a court-martial, and had died in the infirmary of the
convict prison while I was there. They wept hot tears when they came to
bid him good-bye. On seeing me the little girl blushed, and murmured a
few words into her mother's ear, who stopped, and took from a basket a
kopeck which she gave to the little girl. The little girl ran after me.
"Here, poor man," she said, "take this in the name of Christ." I took
the money which she slipped into my hand. The little girl returned
joyfully to her mother. I preserved that kopeck a considerable time.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Goriantchikoff became himself a soldier in Siberia, when he had
finished his term of imprisonment.
[2] An allusion to the two rows of soldiers, armed with green rods,
between which convicts condemned to corporal punishment had and still
have to pass. But this punishment now exists only for convicts deprived
of all their civil rights. This subject will be returned to further on.
[3] Men condemned to hard labour, and exiles generally, are so called by
the Russian peasantry.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
During the first weeks, and naturally the early part of my imprisonment,
made a deep impression on my imagination. The following years on the
other hand are all mixed up together, and leave but a confused
recollection. Certain epochs of this life are even effaced from my
memory. I have kept one general impression of it, always the same;
painful, monotonous, stifling. What I saw in experience during the first
days of my imprisonment seems to me as if it had all taken place
yesterday. Such was sure to be the case. I remember perfectly that in
the first place this life astonished me by the very fact that it offered
nothing particular, nothing extraordinary, or to express myself better,
nothing unexpected. It was not until later on, when I had lived some
time in the convict prison, that I understood all that was exceptional
and unforeseen in such a life. I was astonished at the discovery. I will
avow that this astonishment remained with me throughout my term of
punishment. I could not decidedly reconcile myself to this existence.
First of all, I experienced an invincible repugnance on arriving; but
oddly enough the life seemed to me less painful than I had imagined on
the journey.
Indeed, prisoners, though embarrassed by their irons went to and fro in
the prison freely enough. They insulted one another, sang, worked,
smoked pipes, and drank spirits. There were not many drinkers all the
same. There were also regular card parties during the night. The labour
did not seem to me very trying; I fancied that it could not be the real
"hard labour." I did not understand till long afterwards why this labour
was really hard and excessive. It was less by reason of its difficulty,
than because it was forced, imposed, obligatory; and it was only done
through fear of the stick. The peasant works certainly harder than the
convict, for, during the summer, he works night and day. But it is in
his own interest that he fatigues himself. His aim is reasonable, so
that he suffers less than the convict who performs hard labour from
which he derives no profit. It once came into my head that if it were
desired to reduce a man to nothing--to punish him atrociously, to crush
him in such a manner that the most hardened murderer would tremble
before such a punishment, and take fright beforehand--it would be
necessary to give to his work a character of complete uselessness, even
to absurdity.
Hard labour, as it is now carried on, presents no interest to the
convict; but it has its utility. The convict makes bricks, digs the
earth, builds; and all his occupations have a meaning and an end.
Sometimes, even the prisoner takes an interest in what he is doing. He
then wishes to work more skilfully, more advantageously. But let him be
constrained to pour water from one vessel into another, or to transport
a quantity of earth from one place to another, in order to perform the
contrary operation immediately afterwards, then I am persuaded that at
the end of a few days the prisoner would strangle himself or commit a
thousand crimes, punishable with death, rather than live in such an
abject condition and endure such torments. It is evident that such
punishment would be rather a torture, an atrocious vengeance, than a
correction. It would be absurd, for it would have no natural end.
I did not, however, arrive until the winter--in the month of
December--and the labour was then unimportant in our fortress. I had no
idea of the summer labour--five times as fatiguing. The prisoners,
during the winter season, broke up on the Irtitch some old boats
belonging to the Government, found occupation in the workshops, took
away the snow blown by hurricanes against the buildings, or burned and
pounded alabaster. As the day was very short, the work ceased at an
early hour, and every one returned to the convict prison, where there
was scarcely anything to do, except the supplementary work which the
convicts did for themselves.
Scarcely a third of the convicts worked seriously, the others idled
their time and wandered about without aim in the barracks, scheming and
insulting one another. Those who had a little money got drunk on
spirits, or lost what they had saved at gambling. And all this from
idleness, weariness, and want of something to do.
I learned, moreover, to know one suffering which is perhaps the
sharpest, the most painful that can be experienced in a house of
detention apart from laws and liberty. I mean, "forced cohabitation."
Cohabitation is more or less forced everywhere and always; but nowhere
is it so horrible as in a prison. There are men there with whom no one
would consent to live. I am certain that every convict, unconsciously
perhaps, has suffered from this.
The food of the prisoners seemed to me passable; some declared even that
it was incomparably better than in any Russian prison. I cannot certify
to this, for I was never in prison anywhere else. Many of us, besides,
were allowed to procure whatever nourishment we wanted. As fresh meat
cost only three kopecks a pound, those who always had money allowed
themselves the luxury of eating it. The majority of the prisoners were
contented with the regular ration.
When they praised the diet of the convict prison, they were thinking
only of the bread, which was distributed at the rate of so much per
room, and not individually or by weight. This last condition would have
frightened the convicts, for a third of them at least would have
constantly suffered from hunger; while, with the system in vogue, every
one was satisfied. Our bread was particularly nice, and was even
renowned in the town. Its good quality was attributed to the excellent
construction of the prison ovens. As for our cabbage-soup, it was cooked
and thickened with flour. It had not an appetising appearance. On
working days it was clear and thin; but what particularly disgusted me
was the way it was served. The prisoners, however, paid no attention to
that.
During the three days that followed my arrival, I did not go to work.
Some respite was always given to prisoners just arrived, in order to
allow them to recover from their fatigue. The second day I had to go out
of the convict prison in order to be ironed. My chain was not of the
regulation pattern; it was composed of rings, which gave forth a clear
sound, so I heard other convicts say. I had to wear them externally over
my clothes, whereas my companions had chains formed, not of rings, but
of four links, as thick as the finger, and fastened together by three
links which were worn beneath the trousers. To the central ring was
fastened a strip of leather, tied in its turn to a girdle fastened over
the shirt.
I can see again the first morning that I passed in the convict prison.
The drum sounded in the orderly room, near the principal entrance. Ten
minutes afterwards the under officer opened the barracks. The convicts
woke up one after another and rose trembling with cold from their plank
bedsteads, by the dull light of a tallow candle. Nearly all of them were
morose; they yawned and stretched themselves. Their foreheads, marked by
the iron, were contracted. Some made the sign of the Cross; others began
to talk nonsense. The cold air from outside rushed in as soon as the
door was opened. Then the prisoners hurried round the pails full of
water, one after another, and took water in their mouths, and, letting
it out into their hands, washed their faces. Those pails had been
brought in the night before by a prisoner specially appointed, according
to the rules, to clean the barracks.
The convicts chose him themselves. He did not work with the others, for
it was his business to examine the camp bedsteads and the floors, to
fetch and carry water. This water served in the morning for the
prisoners' ablutions, and the rest during the day for ordinary drinking.
That very morning there were disputes on the subject of one of the
pitchers.
"What are you doing there with your marked forehead?" grumbled one of
the prisoners, tall, dry, and sallow.
He attracted attention by the strange protuberances with which his skull
was covered. He pushed against another convict round and small, with a
lively rubicund countenance.
"Just wait."
"What are you crying out about? You know that a fine must be paid when
the others are kept waiting. Off with you. What a monument, my
brethren!"
"A little calf," he went on muttering. "See, the white bread of the
prison has fattened him."
"For what do you take yourself? A fine bird, indeed."
"You are about right."
"What bird do you mean?"
"You don't require to be told."
"How so?"
"Find out."
They devoured one another with their eyes. The little man, waiting for a
reply, with clenched fists, was apparently ready to fight. I thought
that an encounter would take place. It was all quite new to me;
accordingly I watched the scene with curiosity. Later on I learnt that
such quarrels were very innocent, that they served for entertainment.
Like an amusing comedy, it scarcely ever ended in blows. This
characteristic plainly informed me of the manners of the prisoners.
The tall prisoner remained calm and majestic. He felt that some answer
was expected from him, if he was not to be dishonoured, covered with
ridicule. It was necessary for him to show that he was a wonderful bird,
a personage. Accordingly, he cast a side look on his adversary,
endeavouring, with inexpressible contempt, to irritate him by looking at
him over his shoulders, up and down, as he would have done with an
insect. At last the little fat man was so irritated that he would have
thrown himself upon his adversary had not his companions surrounded the
combatants to prevent a serious quarrel from taking place.
"Fight with your fists, not with your tongues," cried a spectator from a
corner of the room.
"No, hold them," answered another, "they are going to fight. We are fine
fellows, one against seven is our style."
Fine fighting men! One was here for having sneaked a pound of bread, the
other is a pot-stealer; he was whipped by the executioner for stealing a
pot of curdled milk from an old woman.
"Enough, keep quiet," cried a retired soldier, whose business it was to
keep order in the barrack, and who slept in a corner of the room on a
bedstead of his own.
"Water, my children, water for Nevalid Petrovitch, water for our little
brother, who has just woke up."
"Your brother! Am I your brother? Did we ever drink a roublesworth of
spirits together?" muttered the old soldier as he passed his arms
through the sleeves of his great-coat.
The roll was about to be called, for it was already late. The prisoners
were hurrying towards the kitchen. They had to put on their pelisses,
and were to receive in their bi-coloured caps the bread which one of the
cooks--one of the bakers, that is to say--was distributing among them.
These cooks, like those who did the household work, were chosen by the
prisoners themselves. There were two for the kitchen, making four in all
for the convict prison. They had at their disposal the only
kitchen-knife authorised in the prison, which was used for cutting up
the bread and meat. The prisoners arranged themselves in groups around
the tables as best they could in caps and pelisses, with leather girdles
round their waists, all ready to begin work. Some of the convicts had
kvas before them, in which they steeped pieces of bread. The noise was
insupportable. Many of the convicts, however, were talking together in
corners with a steady, tranquil air.
"Good-morning and good appetite, Father Antonitch," said a young
prisoner, sitting down by the side of an old man, who had lost his
teeth.
"If you are not joking, well, good-morning," said the latter, without
raising his eyes, and endeavouring to masticate a piece of bread with
his toothless gums.
"I declare I fancied you were dead, Antonitch."
"Die first, I will follow you."
I sat down beside them. On my right two convicts were conversing with an
attempt at dignity.
"I am not likely to be robbed," said one of them. "I am more afraid of
stealing myself."
"It would not be a good idea to rob me. The devil! I should pay the man
out."
"But what would you do, you are only a convict? We have no other name.
You will see that she will rob you, the wretch, without even saying,
'Thank you.' The money I gave her was wasted. Just fancy, she was here a
few days ago! Where were we to go? Shall I ask permission to go into the
house of Theodore, the executioner? He has still his house in the
suburb, the one he bought from that Solomon, you know, that scurvy Jew
who hung himself not long since."
"Yes, I know him, the one who sold liquor here three years ago, and who
was called Grichka--the secret-drinking shop."
"I know."
"_All_ brag. You don't know. In the first place it is another drinking
shop."
"What do you mean, another? You don't know what you are talking about. I
will bring you as many witnesses as you like."
"Oh, you will bring them, will you? Who are you? Do you know to whom you
are speaking?"
"Yes, indeed."
"I have often thrashed you, though I don't boast of it. Do not give
yourself airs then."
"You have thrashed me? The man who will thrash me is not yet born; and
the man who did thrash me is six feet beneath the ground."
"Plague-stricken rascal of Bender?"
"May the Siberian leprosy devour you with ulcers!"
"May a chopper cleave your dog of a head."
Insults were falling about like rain.
"Come, now, they are going to fight. When men have not been able to
conduct themselves properly they should keep silent. They are too glad
to come and eat the Government bread, the rascals!"
They were soon separated. Let them fight with the tongue as much as they
wish. That is permitted. It is a diversion at the service of every one;
but no blows. It is, indeed, only in extraordinary cases that blows were
exchanged. If a fight took place, information was given to the Major,
who ordered an inquiry or directed one himself; and then woe to the
convicts. Accordingly they set their faces against anything like a
serious quarrel; besides, they insulted one another chiefly to pass the
time, as an oratorical exercise. They get excited; the quarrel takes a
furious, ferocious character; they seem about to slaughter one another.
Nothing of the kind takes place. As soon as their anger has reached a
certain pitch they separate.
That astonished me much, and if I relate some of the conversations
between the convicts, I do so with a purpose. Could I have imagined that
people could have insulted one another for pleasure, that they could
find enjoyment in it?
We must not forget the gratification of vanity. A dialectician, who
knows how to insult artistically, is respected. A little more, and he
would be applauded like an actor.
Already, the night before, I noticed some glances in my direction. On
the other hand, several convicts hung around me as if they had suspected
that I had brought money with me. They endeavoured to get into my good
graces by teaching me how to carry my irons without being incommoded.
They also gave me--of course in return for money--a box with a lock, in
order to keep safe the things which had been entrusted to me by the
administration, and the few shirts that I had been allowed to bring with
me to the convict prison. Not later than next morning these same
prisoners stole my box, and drank the money which they had taken out of
it.
One of them became afterwards a great friend of mine, though he robbed
me whenever an opportunity offered itself. He was, all the same, vexed
at what he had done. He committed these thefts almost unconsciously, as
if in the way of a duty. Consequently I bore him no grudge.
These convicts let me know that one could have tea, and that I should do
well to get myself a teapot. They found me one, which I hired for a
certain time. They also recommended me a cook, who, for thirty kopecks a
month, would arrange the dishes I might desire, if it was my intention
to buy provisions and take my meals apart. Of course they borrowed money
from me. The day of my arrival they asked me for some at three different
times.
The noblemen degraded from their position, here incarcerated in the
convict prison, were badly looked upon by their fellow prisoners;
although they had lost all their rights like the other convicts, they
were not looked upon as comrades.
In this instinctive repugnance there was a sort of reason. To them we
were always gentlemen, although they often laughed at our fall.
"Ah! it's all over now. Mossieu's carriage formerly crushed the
passers-by at Moscow. Now Mossieu picks hemp!"
They knew our sufferings, though we hid them as much as possible. It
was, above all, when we were all working together that we had most to
endure, for our strength was not so great as theirs, and we were really
not of much assistance to them. Nothing is more difficult than to gain
the confidence of the common people; above all, such people as these!
There were only a few of us who were of noble birth in the whole prison.
First, there were five Poles--of whom further on I shall speak in
detail--they were detested by the convicts more, perhaps, than the
Russian nobles. The Poles--I speak only of the political
convicts--always behaved to them with a constrained and offensive
politeness, scarcely ever speaking to them, and making no endeavour to
conceal the disgust which they experienced in such company. The convicts
understood all this, and paid them back in their own coin.
Two years passed before I could gain the good-will of my companions; but
the greater part of them were attached to me, and declared that I was a
good fellow.
There were altogether--counting myself--five Russian nobles in the
convict prison. I had heard of one of them even before my arrival as a
vile and base creature, horribly corrupt, doing the work of spy and
informer. Accordingly, from the very first day I refused to enter into
relations with this man. The second was the parricide of whom I have
spoken in these memoirs. The third was Akimitch. I have scarcely ever
seen such an original; and I have still a lively recollection of him.
Tall, thin, weak-minded, and terribly ignorant, he was as argumentative
and as particular about details as a German. The convicts laughed at
him; but they feared him, on account of his susceptible, excitable, and
quarrelsome disposition. As soon as he arrived, he was on a footing of
perfect equality with them. He insulted them and beat them. Phenomenally
just, it was sufficient for him that there was injustice, to interfere
in an affair which did not concern him. He was, moreover, exceedingly
simple. When he quarrelled with the convicts, he reproached them with
being thieves, and exhorted them in all sincerity to steal no more. He
had served as a sub-lieutenant in the Caucasus. I made friends with him
the first day, and he related to me his "affair." He had begun as a
cadet in a Line regiment. After waiting some time to be appointed to his
commission as sub-lieutenant, he at last received it, and was sent into
the mountains to command a small fort. A small tributary prince in the
neighbourhood set fire to the fort, and made a night attack, which had
no success.
Akimitch was very cunning, and pretended not to know that he was the
author of the attack, which he attributed to some insurgents wandering
about the mountains. After a month he invited the prince, in a friendly
way, to come and see him. The prince arrived on horseback, without
suspecting anything. Akimitch drew up his garrison in line of battle,
and exposed to the soldiers the treason and villainy of his visitor. He
reproached him with his conduct; proved to him that to set fire to the
fort was a shameful crime; explained to him minutely the duties of a
tributary prince; and then, by way of peroration to his harangue, had
him shot. He at once informed his superior officers of this execution,
with all the details necessary. Thereupon Akimitch was brought to trial.
He appeared before a court-martial, and was condemned to death; but his
sentence was commuted, and he was sent to Siberia as a convict of the
second class--condemned, that is to say, to twelve years' hard labour
and imprisonment in a fortress. He admitted willingly that he had acted
illegally, and that the prince ought to have been tried in a civil
court, and not by a court-martial. Nevertheless, he could not understand
that his action was a crime.
"He had burned my fort; what was I to do? Was I to thank him for it?" he
answered to my objections.
Although the convicts laughed at Akimitch, and pretended that he was a
little mad, they esteemed him all the same by reason of his cleverness
and his precision.
He knew all possible trades, and could do whatever you wished. He was
cobbler, bootmaker, painter, carver, gilder, and locksmith. He had
acquired these talents at the convict prison, for it was sufficient for
him to see an object, in order to imitate it. He sold in the town, or
caused to be sold, baskets, lanterns, and toys. Thanks to his work, he
had always some money, which he employed in buying shirts, pillows, and
so on. He had himself made a mattress, and as he slept in the same room
as myself he was very useful to me at the beginning of my imprisonment.
Before leaving prison to go to work, the convicts were drawn up in two
ranks before the orderly-room, surrounded by an escort of soldiers with
loaded muskets. An officer of Engineers then arrived, with the
superintendent of the works and a few soldiers, who watched the
operations. The superintendent counted the convicts, and sent them in
bands to the places where they were to be occupied.
I went with some other prisoners to the workshop of the Engineers--a low
brick house built in the midst of a large court-yard full of materials.
There was a forge there, and carpenters', locksmiths', and painters'
workshops. Akimitch was assigned to the last. He boiled the oil for the
varnish, mixed the colours, and painted tables and other pieces of
furniture in imitation walnut.
While I was waiting to have additional irons put on, I communicated to
him my first impressions.
"Yes," he said, "they do not like nobles, above all those who have been
condemned for political offences, and they take a pleasure in wounding
their feelings. Is it not intelligible? We do not belong to them, we do
not suit them. They have all been serfs or soldiers. Tell me what
sympathy can they have for us. The life here is hard, but it is nothing
in comparison with that of the disciplinary companies in Russia. There
it is hell. The men who have been in them praise our convict prison. It
is paradise compared to their purgatory. Not that the work is harder. It
is said that with the convicts of the first class the administration--it
is not exclusively military as it is here--acts quite differently from
what it does towards us. They have their little houses there I have been
told, for I have not seen for myself. They wear no uniform, their heads
are not shaved, though, in my opinion, uniforms and shaved heads are not
bad things; it is neater, and also it is more agreeable to the eye, only
these men do not like it. Oh, what a Babel this place is! Soldiers,
Circassians, old believers, peasants who have left their wives and
families, Jews, Gypsies, people come from Heaven knows where, and all
this variety of men are to live quietly together side by side, eat from
the same dish, and sleep on the same planks. Not a moment's liberty, no
enjoyment except in secret; they must hide their money in their boots;
and then always the convict prison at every moment--perpetually convict
prison! Involuntarily wild ideas come to one."
As I already knew all this, I was above all anxious to question Akimitch
in regard to our Major. He concealed nothing, and the impression which
his story left upon me was far from being an agreeable one.
I had to live for two years under the authority of this officer. All
that Akimitch had told me about him was strictly true. He was a
spiteful, ill-regulated man, terrible above all things, because he
possessed almost absolute power over two hundred human beings. He looked
upon the prisoners as his personal enemies--first, and very serious
fault. His rare capacities, and, perhaps, even his good qualities, were
perverted by his intemperance and his spitefulness. He sometimes fell
like a bombshell into the barracks in the middle of the night. If he
noticed a prisoner asleep on his back or his left side, he awoke him and
said to him: "You must sleep as I ordered!" The convicts detested him
and feared him like the plague. His repulsive, crimson countenance made
every one tremble. We all knew that the Major was entirely in the hands
of his servant Fedka, and that he had nearly gone mad when his dog
"Treasure" fell ill. He preferred this dog to every other living
creature.
When Fedka told him that a convict, who had picked up some veterinary
knowledge, made wonderful cures, he sent for him directly and said to
him, "I entrust my dog to your care. If you cure 'Treasure' I will
reward you royally." The man, a very intelligent Siberian peasant, was
indeed a good veterinary surgeon, but he was above all a cunning
peasant. He used to tell his comrades long after the affair had taken
place the story of his visit to the Major.
"I looked at 'Treasure,' he was lying down on a sofa with his head on a
white cushion. I saw at once that he had inflammation, and that he
wanted bleeding. I think I could have cured him, but I said to myself,
'What will happen if the dog dies? It will be my fault.' 'No, your
noble highness,' I said to him, 'you have called me too late. If I had
seen your dog yesterday or the day before, he would now be restored to
health; but at the present moment I can do nothing. He will die.' And
'Treasure' died."
I was told one day that a convict had tried to kill the Major. This
prisoner had for several years been noticed for his submissive attitude
and also his silence. He was regarded even as a madman. As he possessed
some instruction he passed his nights reading the Bible. When everybody
was asleep he rose, climbed up on to the stove, lit a church taper,
opened his Gospel and began to read. He did this for an entire year.
One fine day he left the ranks and declared that he would not go to
work. He was reported to the Major, who flew into a rage, and hurried to
the barracks. The convict rushed forward and hurled at him a brick,
which he had procured beforehand; but it missed him. The prisoner was
seized, tried, and whipped--it was a matter of a few moments--carried to
the hospital, and died there three days afterwards. He declared during
his last moments that he hated no one; but that he had wished to suffer.
He belonged to no sect of fanatics. Afterwards, when people spoke of him
in the barracks, it was always with respect.
At last they put new irons on me. While they were being soldered a
number of young women, selling little white loaves, came into the forge
one after another. They were, for the most part, quite little girls who
came to sell the loaves that their mothers had baked. As they got older
they still continued to hang about us, but they no longer brought bread.
There were always some of them about. There were also married women.
Each roll cost two kopecks. Nearly all the prisoners used to have them.
I noticed a prisoner who worked as a carpenter. He was already getting
gray, but he had a ruddy, smiling complexion. He was joking with the
vendors of rolls. Before they arrived he had tied a red handkerchief
round his neck. A fat woman, much marked with the small-pox, put down
her basket on the carpenter's table. They began to talk.
"Why did you not come yesterday?" said the convict, with a
self-satisfied smile.
"I did come; but you had gone," replied the woman boldly.
"Yes; they made us go away, otherwise we should have met. The day before
yesterday they all came to see me."
"Who came?"
"Why, Mariashka, Khavroshka, Tchekunda, Dougrochva" (the woman of four
kopecks).
"What," I said to Akimitch, "is it possible that----?"
"Yes; it happens sometimes," he replied, lowering his eyes, for he was a
very proper man.
Yes; it happened sometimes, but rarely, and with unheard of
difficulties. The convicts preferred to spend their money in drink. It
was very difficult to meet these women. It was necessary to come to an
agreement about the place, and the time; to arrange a meeting, to find
solitude, and, what was most difficult of all, to avoid the
escorts--almost an impossibility--and to spend relatively prodigious
sums. I have sometimes, however, witnessed love scenes. One day three of
us were heating a brick-kiln on the banks of the Irtitch. The soldiers
of the escort were good-natured fellows. Two "blowers" (they were
so-called) soon appeared.
"Where were you staying so long?" said a prisoner to them, who had
evidently been expecting them. "Was it at the Zvierkoffs that you were
detained?"
"At the Zvierkoffs? It will be fine weather, and the fowls will have
teeth, when I go to see them," replied one of the women.
She was the dirtiest woman imaginable. She was called Tchekunda, and had
arrived in company with her friend, the "four kopecks," who was beneath
all description.
"It's a long time since we have seen anything of you," says the gallant
to her of the four kopecks; "you seem to have grown thinner."
"Perhaps; formerly I was good-looking and plump, whereas now one might
fancy I had swallowed eels."
"And you still run after the soldiers, is that so?"
"All calumny on the part of wicked people; and after all, if I was to be
flogged to death for it, I like soldiers."
"Never mind your soldiers, we're the people to love; we have money."
Imagine this gallant with his shaved crown, with fetters on his ankles,
dressed in a coat of two colours, and watched by an escort.
As I was now returning to the prison, my irons had been put on. I wished
Akimitch good-bye and went away, escorted by a soldier. Those who do
task work return first, and, when I got back to the barracks, a good
number of convicts were already there.
As the kitchen could not have held the whole barrack-full at once, we
did not all dine together. Those who came in first were first served. I
tasted the cabbage soup, but, not being used to it, could not eat it,
and I prepared myself some tea. I sat down at one end of the table, with
a convict of noble birth like myself. The prisoners were going in and
out. There was no want of room, for there were not many of them. Five of
them sat down apart from the large table. The cook gave them each two
ladles full of soup, and brought them a plate of fried fish. These men
were having a holiday. They looked at us in a friendly manner. One of
the Poles came in and took his seat by our side.
"I was not with you, but I know that you are having a feast," exclaimed
a tall convict who now came in.
He was a man of about fifty years, thin and muscular. His face indicated
cunning, and, at the same time, liveliness. His lower lip, fleshy and
pendant, gave him a soft expression.
"Well, have you slept well? Why don't you say how do you do? Well, now
my friends of Kursk," he said, sitting down by the side of the feasters,
"good appetite? Here's a new guest for you."
"We are not from the province of Kursk."
"Then my friends from Tambof, let me say?"
"We are not from Tambof either. You have nothing to claim from us; if
you want to enjoy yourself go to some rich peasant."
"I have Maria Ikotishna [from "ikot," hiccough] in my belly, otherwise I
should die of hunger. But where is your peasant to be found?"
"Good heavens! we mean Gazin; go to him."
"Gazin is on the drink to-day, he's devouring his capital."
"He has at least twenty roubles," says another convict. "It is
profitable to keep a drinking shop."
"You won't have me? Then I must eat the Government food."
"Will you have some tea? If so, ask these noblemen for some."
"Where do you see any noblemen? They're noblemen no longer. They're not
a bit better than us," said in a sombre voice a convict who was seated
in the corner, who hitherto had not risked a word.
"I should like a cup of tea, but I am ashamed to ask for it. I have
self-respect," said the convict with the heavy lip, looking at me with a
good-humoured air.
"I will give you some if you like," I said. "Will you have some?"
"What do you mean--will I have some? Who would not have some?" he said,
coming towards the table.
"Only think! When he was free he ate nothing but cabbage soup and black
bread, but now he is in prison he must have tea like a perfect
gentleman," continued the convict with the sombre air.
"Does no one here drink tea?" I asked him; but he did not think me
worthy of a reply.
"White rolls, white rolls; who'll buy?"
A young prisoner was carrying in a net a load of calachi (scones), which
he proposed to sell in the prison. For every ten that he sold, the baker
gave him one for his trouble. It was precisely on this tenth scone that
he counted for his dinner.
"White rolls, white rolls," he cried, as he entered the kitchen, "white
Moscow rolls, all hot. I would eat the whole of them, but I want money,
lots of money. Come, lads, there is only one left for any of you who has
had a mother."
This appeal to filial love made every one laugh, and several of his
white rolls were purchased.
"Well," he said, "Gazin has drunk in such a style, it is quite a sin. He
has chosen a nice moment too. If the man with the eight eyes should
arrive--we shall hide him."
"Is he very drunk?"
"Yes, and ill-tempered too--unmanageable."
"There will be some fighting, then?"
"Whom are they speaking of?" I said to the Pole, my neighbour.
"Of Gazin. He is a prisoner who sells spirits. When he has gained a
little money by his trade, he drinks it to the last kopeck; a cruel,
malicious animal when he has been drinking. When sober, he is quiet
enough, but when he is in drink he shows himself in his true character.
He attacks people with the knife until it is taken from him."
"How do they manage that?"
"Ten men throw themselves upon him and beat him like a sack without
mercy until he loses consciousness. When he is half dead with the
beating, they lay him down on his plank bedstead, and cover him over
with his pelisse."
"But they might kill him."
"Any one else would die of it, but not he. He is excessively robust; he
is the strongest of all the convicts. His constitution is so solid, that
the day after one of these punishments he gets up perfectly sound."
"Tell me, please," I continued, speaking to the Pole, "why these people
keep their food to themselves, and at the same time seem to envy me my
tea."
"Your tea has nothing to do with it. They are envious of you. Are you
not a gentleman? You in no way resemble them. They would be glad to pick
a quarrel with you in order to humiliate you. You don't know what
annoyances you will have to undergo. It is martyrdom for men like us to
be here. Our life is doubly painful, and great strength of character can
alone accustom one to it. You will be vexed and tormented in all sorts
of ways on account of your food and your tea. Although the number of men
who buy their own food and drink tea daily is large enough, they have a
right to do so, you have not."
He got up and left the table a few minutes later. His predictions were
already being fulfilled.
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_).
Hardly had M. --cki--the Pole to whom I had been speaking--gone out when
Gazin, completely drunk, threw himself all in a heap into the kitchen.
To see a convict drunk in the middle of the day, when every one was
about to be sent out to work--given the well-known severity of the
Major, who at any moment might come to the barracks, the watchfulness of
the under officer who never left the prison, the presence of the old
soldiers and the sentinels--all this quite upset the ideas I had formed
of our prison; and a long time passed before I was able to understand
and explain to myself the effects, which in the first instance were
enigmatic indeed.
I have already said that all the convicts had a private occupation, and
that this occupation was for them a natural and imperious one. They are
passionately fond of money, and think more of it than of anything
else--almost as much as of liberty. The convict is half-consoled if he
can ring a few kopecks in his pocket. On the contrary, he is sad,
restless, and despondent if he has no money. He is ready then to commit
no matter what crime in order to get some. Nevertheless, in spite of the
importance it possesses for the convicts, money does not remain long in
their pockets. It is difficult to keep it. Sometimes it is confiscated,
sometimes stolen. When the Major, in a sudden perquisition, discovered a
small sum amassed with great trouble, he confiscated it. It may be that
he laid it out in improving the food of the prisoners, for all the money
taken from them went into his hands. But generally speaking it was
stolen. A means of preserving it was, however, discovered. An old man
from Starodoub, one of the "old believers," took upon himself to conceal
the convicts' savings.
I cannot resist my desire to say some words about this man, although it
takes me away from my story. He was about sixty years old, thin, and
getting very gray. He excited my curiosity the first time I saw him, for
he was not like any of the others; his look was so tranquil and mild,
and I always saw with pleasure his clear and limpid eyes, surrounded by
a number of little wrinkles. I often talked with him, and rarely have I
met with so kind, so benevolent a being. He had been consigned to hard
labour for a serious crime. A certain number of the "old believers" at
Starodoub had been converted to the orthodox religion. The Government
had done everything to encourage them, and, at the same time, to convert
the other dissenters. The old man and some other fanatics had resolved
to "defend the faith." When the orthodox church was being constructed in
their town they set fire to the building. This offence had brought upon
its author the sentence of deportation. This well-to-do shopkeeper--he
was in trade--had left a wife and family whom he loved, and had gone off
courageously into exile, believing in his blindness that he was
"suffering for the faith."
When one had lived some time by the side of this kind old man, one could
not help asking the question, how could he have rebelled? I spoke to him
several times about his faith. He gave up none of his convictions, but
in his answers I never noticed the slightest hatred; and yet he had
destroyed a church, and was far from denying it. In his view, the
offence he had committed and his martyrdom were things to be proud of.
There were other "old believers" among the convicts--Siberians for the
most part--men of well-developed intelligence, and as cunning as all
peasants. Dialecticians in their way, they followed blindly their law,
and delighted in discussing it. But they had great faults; they were
haughty, proud, and very intolerant. The old man in no way resembled
them. With full more belief in religious exposition than others of the
same faith, he avoided all controversy. As he was of a gay and expansive
disposition he often laughed--not with the coarse cynical laugh of the
other convicts, but with a laugh of clearness and simplicity, in which
there was something of the child, and which harmonised perfectly with
his gray head. I may perhaps be in error, but it seems to me that a man
may be known by his laugh alone. If the laugh of a man you are
acquainted with inspires you with sympathy, be assured that he is an
honest man.
The old man had acquired the respect of all the prisoners without
exception; but he was not proud of it. The convicts called him
grandfather, and he took no offence. I then understood what an influence
he must have exercised on his co-religionists.
In spite of the firmness with which he supported his prison life, one
felt that he was tormented by a profound, incurable melancholy. I slept
in the same barrack with him. One night, towards three o'clock in the
morning, I woke up; I heard a slow, stifling sob. The old man was
sitting upon the stove--the same place where the convict who had wished
to kill the Major was in the habit of praying--and was reading from his
manuscript prayer-book. As he wept I heard him repeating: "Lord, do not
forsake me. Master, strengthen me. My poor little children, my dear
little children, we shall never see one another again." I cannot say how
much this moved me.
We used to give our money then to this old man. Heaven knows how the
idea got abroad in our barrack that he could not be robbed. It was well
known that he hid somewhere the savings deposited with him, but no one
had been able to discover his secret. He revealed it to us; to the
Poles, and myself. One of the stakes of the palisade bore a branch which
apparently belonged to it, but it could be taken away, and then replaced
in the stake. When the branch was removed a hole could be seen. This was
the hiding-place in question.
I now resume the thread of my narrative. Why does not the convict save
up his money? Not only is it difficult for him to keep it, but the
prison life, moreover, is so sad that the convict by his very nature
thirsts for freedom of action. By his position in society he is so
irregular a being that the idea of swallowing up his capital in orgies,
of intoxicating himself with revelry, seems to him quite natural if only
he can procure himself one moment's forgetfulness. It was strange to see
certain individuals bent over their labour only with the object of
spending in one day all their gains, even to the last kopeck. Then they
would go to work again until a new debauch, looked forward to months
beforehand. Certain convicts were fond of new clothes, more or less
singular in style, such as fancy trousers and waistcoats; but it was
above all for the coloured shirts that the convicts had a pronounced
taste; also for belts with metal clasps.
On holidays the dandies of the prison put on their Sunday best. They
were worth seeing as they strutted about their part of the barracks. The
pleasure of feeling themselves well dressed amounted with them to
childishness; indeed, in many things convicts are only children. Their
fine clothes disappeared very soon, often the evening of the very day on
which they had been bought. Their owners pledged them or sold them again
for a trifle.
The feasts were generally held at fixed times. They coincided with
religious festivals, or with the name's day of the drunken convict. On
getting up in the morning he would place a wax taper before the holy
image, then he said his prayer, dressed, and ordered his dinner. He had
bought beforehand meat, fish, and little patties; then he gorged like an
ox, almost always alone. It was very rare to see a convict invite
another convict to share his repast. At dinner the vodka was produced.
The convict would suck it up like the sole of a boot, and then walk
through the barracks swaggering and tottering. It was his desire to show
all his companions that he was drunk, that he was carrying on, and thus
obtain their particular esteem.
The Russian people feel always a certain sympathy for a drunken man;
among us it amounted really to esteem. In the convict prison
intoxication was a sort of aristocratic distinction.
As soon as he felt himself in spirits the convict ordered a musician. We
had among us a little fellow--a deserter from the army--very ugly, but
who was the happy possessor of a violin on which he could play. As he
had no trade he was always ready to follow the festive convict from
barrack to barrack grinding him out dance tunes with all his strength.
His countenance often expressed the fatigue and disgust which his
music--always the same--caused him; but when the prisoner called out to
him, "Go on playing, are you not paid for it?" he attacked his violin
more violently than ever. These drunkards felt sure that they would be
taken care of, and in case of the Major arriving would be concealed from
his watchful eyes. This service we rendered in the most disinterested
spirit. On their side the under officer, and the old soldiers who
remained in the prison to keep order, were perfectly reassured. The
drunkard would cause no disturbance. At the least scare of revolt or
riot he would have been quieted and then bound. Accordingly the inferior
officers closed their eyes; they knew that if vodka was forbidden all
would go wrong. How was this vodka procured?
It was bought in the convict prison itself from the drink-sellers, as
they were called, who followed this trade--a very lucrative
one--although the tipplers were not very numerous, for revelry was
expensive, especially when it is considered how hardly money was earned.
The drink business was begun, continued, and ended in rather an original
manner. The prisoner who knew no trade, would not work, and who,
nevertheless, desired to get speedily rich, made up his mind, when he
possessed a little money, to buy and sell vodka. The enterprise was
risky, it required great daring, for the speculator hazarded his skin as
well as liquor. But the drink-seller hesitated before no obstacles. At
the outset he brought the vodka himself to the prison and got rid of it
on the most advantageous terms. He repeated this operation a second and
a third time. If he had not been discovered by the officials, he now
possessed a sum which enabled him to extend his business. He became a
capitalist with agents and assistants, he risked much less and gained
much more. Then his assistants incurred risk in place of him.
Prisons are always abundantly inhabited by ruined men without the habit
of work, but endowed with skill and daring; their only capital is their
back. They often decide to put it into circulation, and propose to the
drink-seller to introduce vodka into the barracks. There is always in
the town a soldier, a shopkeeper, or some loose woman who, for a
stipulated sum--rather a small one--buys vodka with the drink-seller's
money, hides it in a place known to the convict-smuggler, near the
workshop where he is employed. The person who supplies the vodka, tastes
the precious liquid almost always as he is carrying it to the
hiding-place, and replaces relentlessly what he has drunk by pure water.
The purchaser may take it or leave it, but he cannot give himself airs.
He thinks himself very lucky that his money has not been stolen from
him, and that he has received some kind of vodka in exchange. The man
who is to take it into the prison--to whom the drink-seller has
indicated the hiding-place--goes to the supplier with bullock's
intestines which after being washed, have been filled with water, and
which thus preserves their softness and suppleness. When the intestines
have been filled with vodka, the smuggler rolls them round his body.
Now, all the cunning, the adroitness of this daring convict is shown.
The man's honour is at stake. It is necessary for him to take in the
escort and the man on guard; and he will take them in. If the carrier is
artful, the soldier of the escort--sometimes a recruit--does not notice
anything particular; for the prisoner has studied him thoroughly,
besides which he has artfully combined the hour and the place of
meeting. If the convict--a bricklayer for example--climbs up on the wall
that he is building, the escort will certainly not climb up after him to
watch his movements. Who then, will see what he is about? On getting
near the prison, he gets ready a piece of fifteen or twenty kopecks, and
waits at the gate for the corporal on guard.
The corporal examines, feels, and searches each convict on his return to
the barracks, and then opens the gate to him. The carrier of the vodka
hopes that he will be ashamed to examine him too much in detail; but if
the corporal is a cunning fellow, that is just what he will do; and in
that case he finds the contraband vodka. The convict has now only one
chance of salvation. He slips into the hand of the under officer the
piece of money he holds in readiness, and often, thanks to this
manoeuvre, the vodka arrives safely in the hands of the drink-seller.
But sometimes the trick does not succeed, and it is then that the sole
capital of the smuggler enters really into circulation. A report is made
to the Major, who sentences the unhappy culprit to a thorough flogging.
As for the vodka, it is confiscated. The smuggler undergoes his
punishment without betraying the speculator, not because such a
denunciation would disgrace him, but because it would bring him nothing.
He would be flogged all the same, the only consolation he could have
would be that the drink-seller would share his punishment; but as he
needs him, he does not denounce him, although having allowed himself to
be surprised, he will receive no payment from him.
Denunciation, however, flourishes in the convict prison. Far from
hating spies or keeping apart from them, the prisoners often make
friends of them. If any one had taken it into his head to prove to the
convicts all the baseness of mutual denunciation, no one in the prison
would have understood. The former nobleman of whom I have already
spoken, that cowardly and violent creature with whom I had already
broken off all relations immediately after my arrival in the fortress,
was the friend of Fedka, the Major's body-servant. He used to tell him
everything that took place in the convict prison, and this was naturally
carried back to the servant's master. Every one knew it, but no one had
the idea of showing any ill-will against the man, or of reproaching him
with his conduct. When the vodka arrived without accident at the prison,
the speculator paid the smuggler and made up his accounts. His
merchandise had already cost him sufficiently dear; and that the profit
might be greater, he diluted it by adding fifty per cent. of pure water.
He was ready, and had only to wait for customers.
The first holiday, perhaps even on a week-day, a convict would turn up.
He had been working like a negro for many months in order to save up,
kopeck by kopeck, a small sum which he was resolved to spend all at
once. These days of rejoicing had been looked forward to long
beforehand. He had dreamt of them during the endless winter nights,
during his hardest labour, and the perspective had supported him under
his severest trials. The dawn of this day so impatiently awaited, has
just appeared. He has some money in his pocket. It has been neither
stolen from him nor confiscated. He is free to spend it. Accordingly he
takes his savings to the drink-seller, who, to begin with, gives vodka
which is almost pure--it has been only twice baptized--but gradually, as
the bottle gets more and more empty, he fills it up with water.
Accordingly the convict pays for his vodka five or six times as much as
he would in a tavern.
It may be imagined how many glasses, and, above all, what sums of money
are required before the convict is drunk. However, as he has lost the
habit of drinking, the little alcohol which remains in the liquid
intoxicates him rapidly enough; he goes on drinking until there is
nothing left; he pledges or sells all his new clothes--for the
drink-seller is at the same time a pawnbroker. As his personal garments
are not very numerous he next pledges the clothes supplied to him by the
Government. When the drink has made away with his last shirt, his last
rag, he lies down and wakes up the next morning with a bad headache. In
vain he begs the drink-seller to give him credit for a drop of vodka in
order to remove his depression; he experiences a direct refusal. That
very day he sets to work again. For several months together, he will
weary himself out while looking forward to such a debauch as the one
which has now disappeared in the past. Little by little he regains
courage while waiting for such another day, still far off, but which
ultimately will arrive. As for the drink-seller, if he has gained a
large sum--some dozen of roubles--he procures some more vodka, but this
time he does not baptize it, because he intends it for himself. Enough
of trade! it is time for him to amuse himself. Accordingly he eats,
drinks, pays for a little music--his means allow him to grease the palm
of the inferior officers in the convict prison. This festival lasts
sometimes for several days. When his stock of vodka is exhausted, he
goes and drinks with the other drink-sellers who are waiting for him; he
then drinks up his last kopeck.
However careful the convicts may be in watching over their companions in
debauchery, it sometimes happens that the Major or the officer on guard
notices what is going on. The drunkard is then dragged to the
orderly-room, his money is confiscated if he has any left, and he is
flogged. The convict shakes himself like a beaten dog, returns to
barracks, and, after a few days, resumes his trade as drink-seller.
It sometimes happens that among the convicts there are admirers of the
fair sex. For a sufficiently large sum of money they succeed,
accompanied by a soldier whom they have corrupted, in getting secretly
out of the fortress into a suburb instead of going to work. There in an
apparently quiet house a banquet is held at which large sums of money
are spent. The convicts' money is not to be despised, accordingly the
soldiers will sometimes arrange these temporary escapes beforehand, sure
as they are of being generously recompensed. Generally speaking these
soldiers are themselves candidates for the convict prison. The escapades
are scarcely ever discovered. I must add that they are very rare, for
they are very expensive, and the admirers of the fair sex are obliged to
have recourse to other less costly means.
At the beginning of my stay, a young convict with very regular features
excited my curiosity; his name was Sirotkin, he was in many respects an
enigmatic being. His face had struck me, he was not more than
twenty-three years of age, and he belonged to the special section; that
is to say, he was condemned to hard labour in perpetuity. He accordingly
was to be looked upon as one of the most dangerous of military
criminals. Mild and tranquil, he spoke little and rarely laughed; his
blue eyes, his clear complexion, his fair hair gave him a soft
expression, which even his shaven crown did not destroy. Although he had
no trade, he managed to get himself money from time to time. He was
remarkably lazy, and always dressed like a sloven; but if any one was
generous enough to present him with a red shirt, he was beside himself
with joy at having a new garment, and he exhibited it everywhere.
Sirotkin neither drank nor played, and he scarcely ever quarrelled with
the other convicts. He walked about with his hands in his pockets
peacefully, and with a pensive air. What he was thinking of I cannot
say. When any one called to him, to ask him a question, he replied with
deference, precisely, without chattering like the others. He had in his
eyes the expression of a child of ten; when he had money he bought
nothing of what the others looked upon as indispensable. His vest might
be torn, he did not get it mended, any more than he bought himself new
boots. What particularly pleased him were the little white rolls and
gingerbread, which he would eat with the satisfaction of a child of
seven. When he was not at work he wandered about the barracks; when
every one else was occupied, he remained with his arms by his sides; if
any one joked with him, or laughed at him--which happened often
enough--he turned on his heel without speaking and went elsewhere. If
the pleasantry was too strong he blushed. I often asked myself for what
crime he could have been condemned to hard labour. One day when I was
ill, and lying in the hospital, Sirotkin was also there, stretched out
on a bedstead not far from me. I entered into conversation with him; he
became animated, and told me freely how he had been taken for a soldier,
how his mother had followed him in tears, and what treatment he had
endured in military service. He added that he had never been able to
accustom himself to this life; every one was severe and angry with him
about nothing, his officers were always against him.
"But why did they send you here?--and into the special section above
all! Ah, Sirotkin!"
"Yes, Alexander Petrovitch, although I was only one year with the
battalion, I was sent here for killing my captain, Gregory Petrovitch."
"I heard about that, but I did not believe it; how was it that you
killed him?"
"All that was told you was true; my life was insupportable."
"But the other recruits supported it well enough. It is very hard at the
beginning, but men get accustomed to it and end by becoming excellent
soldiers. Your mother must have pampered you and spoiled you. I am sure
that she fed you with gingerbread and with sweet milk until you were
eighteen."
"My mother, it is true, was very fond of me. When I left her she took
to her bed and remained there. How painful to me everything in my
military life was; after that all went wrong. I was perpetually being
punished, and why? I obeyed every one, I was exact, careful. I did not
drink, I borrowed from no one--it's all up with a man when he begins to
borrow--and yet every one around me was harsh and cruel. I sometimes hid
myself in a corner and did nothing but sob. One day, or rather one
night, I was on guard. It was autumn: there was a strong wind, and it
was so dark that you could not see a speck, and I was sad, so sad! I
took the bayonet from the end of my musket and placed it by my side.
Then I put the barrel to my breast and with my big toe--I had taken my
boot off--pressed the trigger. It missed fire. I looked at my musket and
loaded it with a charge of fresh powder. Then I broke off the corner of
my flint, and once more I placed the muzzle against my breast. Again
there was a misfire. What was I to do? I said to myself. I put my boot
on, I fastened my bayonet to the barrel, and walked up and down with my
musket on my shoulder. Let them do what they like, I said to myself; but
I will not be a soldier any longer. Half-an-hour afterwards the captain
arrived, making his rounds. He came straight upon me. 'Is that the way
you carry yourself when you are on guard?' I seized my musket, and stuck
the bayonet into his body. Then I had to walk forty-six versts. That is
how I came to be in the special section."
He was telling no falsehood, yet I did not understand how they could
have sent him there; such crimes deserve a much less severe punishment.
Sirotkin was the only one of the convicts who was really handsome. As
for his companions of the special section--to the number of
fifteen--they were frightful to behold with their hideous, disgusting
physiognomies. Gray heads were plentiful among them. I shall speak of
these men further on. Sirotkin was often on good terms with Gazin, the
drink-seller, of whom I have already spoken at the beginning of this
chapter.
This Gazin was a terrible being; the impression that he produced on
every one was confusing or appalling. It seemed to me that a more
ferocious, a more monstrous creature could not exist. Yet I have seen at
Tobolsk, Kameneff, the brigand, celebrated for his crimes. Later, I saw
Sokoloff, the escaped convict, formerly a deserter, who was a ferocious
creature; but neither of them inspired me with so much disgust as Gazin.
I often fancied that I had before my eyes an enormous, gigantic spider
of the size of a man. He was a Tartar, and there was no convict so
strong as he was. It was less by his great height and his herculean
construction, than by his enormous and deformed head, that he inspired
terror. The strangest reports were current about him. Some said that he
had been a soldier, others that he had escaped from Nertchinsk, and that
he had been exiled several times to Siberia, but had always succeeded in
getting away. Landing at last in our convict prison, he belonged there
to the special section. It appeared that he had taken a pleasure in
killing little children when he had attracted them to some deserted
place; then he frightened them, tortured them, and after having fully
enjoyed the terror and the convulsions of the poor little things, he
killed them resolutely and with delight. These horrors had perhaps been
imagined by reason of the painful impression that the monster produced
upon us; but they seemed probable, and harmonised with his physiognomy.
Nevertheless, when Gazin was not drunk, he conducted himself well
enough.
He was always quiet, never quarrelled, avoided all disputes as if from
contempt for his companions, just as though he had entertained a high
opinion of himself. He spoke very little, all his movements were
measured, calm, resolute. His look was not without intelligence, but its
expression was cruel and derisive like his smile. Of all the convicts
who sold vodka, he was the richest. Twice a year he got completely
drunk, and it was then that all his brutal ferocity exhibited itself.
Little by little he got excited, and began to tease the prisoners with
venomous satire prepared long beforehand. Finally when he was quite
drunk, he had attacks of furious rage, and, seizing a knife, would rush
upon his companions. The convicts who knew his herculean vigour, avoided
him and protected themselves against him, for he would throw himself on
the first person he met. A means of disarming him had been discovered.
Some dozen prisoners would rush suddenly upon Gazin, and give him
violent blows in the pit of the stomach, in the belly, and generally
beneath the region of the heart, until he lost consciousness. Any one
else would have died under such treatment, but Gazin soon got well. When
he had been well beaten they would wrap him up in his pelisse, and throw
him upon his plank bedstead, leaving him to digest his drink. The next
day he woke up almost well, and went to his work silent and sombre.
Every time that Gazin got drunk, all the prisoners knew how his day
would finish. He knew also, but he drank all the same. Several years
passed in this way. Then it was noticed that Gazin had lost his energy,
and that he was beginning to get weak. He did nothing but groan,
complaining of all kinds of illnesses. His visits to the hospital became
more and more frequent. "He is giving in," said the prisoners.
At one time Gazin had gone into the kitchen followed by the little
fellow who scraped the violin, and whom the convicts in their
festivities used to hire to play to them. He stopped in the middle of
the hall silently examining his companions one after another. No one
breathed a word. When he saw me with my companions, he looked at us in
his malicious, jeering style, and smiled horribly with the air of a man
who was satisfied with a good joke that he had just thought of. He
approached our table, tottering.
"Might I ask," he said, "where you get the money which allows you to
drink tea?"
I exchanged a look with my neighbour. I understood that the best thing
for us was to be silent, and not to answer. The least contradiction
would have put Gazin in a passion.
"You must have money," he continued, "you must have a good deal of money
to drink tea; but, tell me, are you sent to hard labour to drink tea? I
say, did you come here for that purpose? Please answer, I should like to
know."
Seeing that we were resolved on silence, and that we had determined not
to pay any attention to him, he ran towards us, livid and trembling with
rage. At two steps' distance, he saw a heavy box, which served to hold
the bread given for the dinner and supper of the convicts. Its contents
were sufficient for the meal of half the prisoners. At this moment it
was empty. He seized it with both hands and brandished it above our
heads. Although murder, or attempted, was an inexhaustible source of
trouble for the convicts--examinations, counter-examinations, and
inquiries without end would be the natural consequence--and though
quarrels were generally cut short, when they did not lead to such
serious results, yet every one remained silent and waited.
Not one word in our favour, not one cry against Gazin. The hatred of all
the prisoners for all who were of gentle birth was so great that every
one of them was evidently pleased to see that we were in danger. But a
fortunate incident terminated this scene, which must have become tragic.
Gazin was about to let fly the enormous box, which he was turning and
twisting above his head, when a convict ran in from the barracks, and
cried out:
"Gazin, they have stolen your vodka!"
The horrible brigand let fall the box with a frightful oath, and ran out
of the kitchen.
"Well, God has saved them," said the prisoners among themselves,
repeating the words several times.
I never knew whether his vodka had been stolen, or whether it was only a
stratagem invented to save us.
That same evening, before the closing of the barracks, when it was
already dark, I walked to the side of the palisade. A heavy feeling of
sadness weighed upon my soul. During all the time that I passed in the
convict prison I never felt myself so miserable as on that evening,
though the first day is always the hardest, whether at hard labour or in
the prison. One thought in particular had left me no respite since my
deportation--a question insoluble then and insoluble now. I reflected on
the inequality of the punishments inflicted for the same crimes. Often,
indeed, one crime cannot be compared even approximately to another. Two
murderers kill a man under circumstances which in each case are minutely
examined and weighed. They each receive the same punishment; and yet by
what an abyss are their two actions separated! One has committed a
murder for a trifle--for an onion. He has killed on the high-road a
peasant who was passing, and found on him an onion, and nothing else.
"Well, I was sent to hard labour for a peasant who had nothing but an
onion!"
"Fool that you are! an onion is worth a kopeck. If you had killed a
hundred peasants you would have had a hundred kopecks, or one rouble."
The above is a prison joke.
Another criminal has killed a debauchee who was oppressing or
dishonouring his wife, his sister, or his daughter.
A third, a vagabond, half dead with hunger, pursued by a whole band of
police, was defending his liberty, his life. He is to be regarded as on
an equality with the brigand who assassinates children for his
amusement, for the pleasure of feeling their warm blood flow over his
hands, of seeing them shudder in a last bird-like palpitation beneath
the knife which tears their flesh!
They will all alike be sent to hard labour; though the sentence will
perhaps not be for the same number of years. But the variations in the
punishment are not very numerous, whereas different kinds of crimes may
be reckoned by thousands. As many characters, so many crimes.
Let us admit that it is impossible to get rid of this first inequality
in punishment, that the problem is insoluble, and that in connection
with penal matters it is the squaring of the circle. Let all that be
admitted; but even if this inequality cannot be avoided, there is
another thing to be thought of--the consequences of the punishment. Here
is a man who is wasting away like a candle; there is another one, on the
contrary, who had no idea before going into exile that there could be
such a gay, such an idle life, where he would find a circle of such
agreeable friends. Individuals of this latter class are to be found in
the convict prison.
Now take a man of heart, of cultivated mind, and of delicate conscience.
What he feels kills him more certainly than the material punishment. The
judgment which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than
that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives by
the side of another convict, who has not once reflected on the murder he
is expiating, during the whole time of his sojourn in the convict
prison. He, perhaps, even considers himself innocent. Are there not,
also, poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour,
and thus to escape the liberty which is much more painful than
confinement? A man's life is miserable, he has never, perhaps, been able
to satisfy his hunger. He is worked to death in order to enrich his
master. In the convict prison his work will be less severe, less
crushing. He will eat as much as he wants, better than he could ever
have hoped to eat, had he remained free. On holidays he will have meat,
and fine people will give him alms, and his evening's work will bring
him in some money. And the society one meets with in the convict prison,
is that to be counted for nothing? The convicts are clever, wide-awake
people, who are up to everything. The new arrival can scarcely conceal
the admiration he feels for his companions in labour. He has seen
nothing like it before, and he will consider himself in the best
company possible.
Is it possible that men so differently situated can feel in an equal
degree the punishment inflicted? But why think about questions that are
insoluble? The drum beats, let us go back to barracks.
CHAPTER V.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_)
We were between walls once more. The doors of the barracks were locked,
each with a particular padlock, and the prisoners remained shut up till
the next morning.
The verification was made by a non-commissioned officer accompanied by
two soldiers. When by chance an officer was present, the convicts were
drawn up in the court-yard, but generally speaking they were identified
in the buildings. As the soldiers often made mistakes, they went out and
came back in order to count us again and again, until their reckoning
was satisfactory, then the barracks were closed. Each one contained
about thirty prisoners, and we were very closely packed in our camp
bedsteads. As it was too soon to go to sleep, the convicts occupied
themselves with work.
Besides the old soldier of whom I have spoken, who slept in our
dormitory, and represented there the administration of the prison, there
was in our barrack another old soldier wearing a medal as rewarded for
good conduct. It happened often enough, however, that the good-conduct
men themselves committed offences for which they were sentenced to be
whipped. They then lost their rank, and were immediately replaced by
comrades whose conduct was considered satisfactory.
Our good-conduct man was no other than Akim Akimitch. To my great
astonishment, he was very rough with the prisoners, but they only
replied by jokes. The other old soldier, more prudent, interfered with
no one, and if he opened his mouth, it was only as a matter of form, as
an affair of duty. For the most part he remained silent, seated on his
little bedstead, occupied in mending his own boots.
That day I could not help making to myself an observation, the accuracy
of which became afterwards apparent: that all those who are not convicts
and who have to deal with them, whoever they may be--beginning with the
soldiers of the escort and the sentinels--look upon the convicts in a
false and exaggerated light, expecting that for a yes or a no, these men
will throw themselves upon them knife in hand. The prisoners, perfectly
conscious of the fear they inspire, show a certain arrogance.
Accordingly, the best prison director is the one who experiences no
emotion in their presence. In spite of the airs they give themselves,
the convicts prefer that confidence should be placed in them. By such
means, indeed, they may be conciliated. I have more than once had
occasion to notice their astonishment at an official entering their
prison without an escort, and certainly their astonishment was not
unflattering. A visitor who is intrepid imposes respect. If anything
unfortunate happens, it will not be in his presence. The terror inspired
by the convicts is general, and yet I saw no foundation for it. Is it
the appearance of the prisoner, his brigand-like look, that causes a
certain repugnance? Is it not rather the feeling that invades you
directly you enter the prison, that in spite of all efforts, all
precautions, it is impossible to turn a living man into a corpse, to
stifle his feelings, his thirst for vengeance and for life, his
passions, and his imperious desire to satisfy them? However that may be,
I declare that there is no reason for fearing the convicts. A man does
not throw himself so quickly nor so easily upon his fellow-man, knife in
hand. Few accidents happen; sometimes they are so rare that the danger
may be looked upon as non-existent.
I speak, it must be understood, only of prisoners already condemned,
who are undergoing their punishment, and some of whom are almost happy
to find themselves in the convict prison; so attractive under all
circumstances is a new form of life. These latter live quiet and
contented. As for the turbulent ones, the convicts themselves keep them
in restraint, and their arrogance never goes too far. The prisoner,
audacious and reckless as he may be, is afraid of every official
connected with the prison. It is by no means the same with the accused
whose fate has not been decided. Such a one is quite capable of
attacking, no matter whom, without any motive of hatred, and solely
because he is to be whipped the next day. If, indeed, he commits a fresh
crime his offence becomes complicated. Punishment is delayed, and he
gains time. The act of aggression is explained; it has a cause, an
object. The convict wishes at all hazards to change his fate, and that
as soon as possible. In connection with this, I myself have witnessed a
physiological fact of the strangest kind.
In the section of military convicts was an old soldier who had been
condemned to two years' hard labour, a great boaster, and at the same
time a coward. Generally speaking, the Russian soldier does not boast.
He has no time for doing so, even had he the inclination. When such a
one appears among a multitude of others, he is always a coward and a
rogue. Dutoff--that was the name of the prisoner of whom I am
speaking--underwent his punishment, and then went back to the same
battalion in the Line; but, like all who are sent to the convict prison
to be corrected, he had been thoroughly corrupted. A "return horse"
re-appears in the convict prison after two or three weeks' liberty, not
for a comparatively short time, but for fifteen or twenty years. So it
happened in the case of Dutoff. Three weeks after he had been set at
liberty, he robbed one of his comrades, and was, moreover, mutinous. He
was taken before a court-martial and sentenced to a severe form of
corporal punishment. Horribly frightened, like the coward that he was,
at the prospect of punishment, he threw himself, knife in hand, on to
the officer of the guard, as he entered his dungeon on the eve of the
day that he was to run the gauntlet through the men of his company. He
quite understood that he was aggravating his offence, and that the
duration of his punishment would be increased; but all he wanted was to
postpone for some days, or at least for some hours, a terrible moment.
He was such a coward that he did not even wound the officer whom he had
attacked. He had, indeed, only committed this assault in order to add a
new crime to the last already against him, and thus defer the sentence.
The moment preceding the punishment is terrible for the man condemned to
the rods. I have seen many of them on the eve of the fatal day. I
generally met with them in the hospital when I was ill, which happened
often enough. In Russia the people who show most compassion for the
convicts are certainly the doctors, who never make between the prisoners
the distinctions observed by other persons brought into direct relations
with them. In this respect the common people can alone be compared with
the doctors, for they never reproach a criminal with the crime that he
has committed, whatever it may be. They forgive him in consideration of
the sentence passed upon him.
Is it not known that the common people throughout Russia call crime a
"misfortune," and the criminal an "unfortunate"? This definition is
expressive, profound, and, moreover, unconscious, instinctive. To the
doctor the convicts have naturally recourse, above all when they are to
undergo corporal punishment. The prisoner who has been before a
court-martial knows pretty well at what moment his sentence will be
executed. To escape it he gets himself sent to the hospital, in order to
postpone for some days the terrible moment. When he is declared restored
to health, he knows that the day after he leaves the hospital this
moment will arrive. Accordingly, on quitting the hospital the convict is
always in a state of agitation. Some of them may endeavour from vanity
to conceal their anxiety, but no one is taken in by that; every one
understands the cruelty of such a moment, and is silent from humane
motives.
I knew one young convict, an ex-soldier, sentenced for murder, who was
to receive the maximum of rods. The eve of the day on which he was to be
flogged, he had resolved to drink a bottle of vodka in which he had
infused a quantity of snuff.
The prisoner condemned to the rods always drinks, before the critical
moment arrives, a certain amount of spirits which he has procured long
beforehand, and often at a fabulous price. He would deprive himself of
the necessaries of life for six months rather than not be in a position
to swallow half a pint of vodka before the flogging. The convicts are
convinced that a drunken man suffers less from the sticks or whip than
one who is in cold blood.
I will return to my narrative. The poor devil felt ill a few moments
after he had swallowed his bottle of vodka. He vomited blood, and was
carried in a state of unconsciousness to the hospital. His lungs were so
much injured by this accident that phthisis declared itself, and carried
off the soldier in a few months. The doctors who had attended him never
knew the origin of his illness.
If examples of cowardice are not rare among the prisoners, it must be
added that there are some whose intrepidity is quite astounding. I
remember many instances of courage pushed to the extreme. The arrival in
the hospital of a terrible bandit remains fixed in my memory.
One fine summer day the report was spread in the infirmary that the
famous prisoner, Orloff, was to be flogged the same evening, and that he
would be brought afterwards to the hospital. The prisoners who were
already there said that the punishment would be a cruel one, and every
one--including myself I must admit--was awaiting with curiosity the
arrival of this brigand, about whom the most unheard-of things were
told. He was a malefactor of a rare kind, capable of assassinating in
cold blood old men and children. He possessed an indomitable force of
will, and was fully conscious of his power. As he had been guilty of
several crimes, they had condemned him to be flogged through the ranks.
He was brought, or, rather carried, in towards evening. The place was
already dark. Candles were lighted. Orloff was excessively pale, almost
unconscious, with his thick curly hair of dull black without the least
brilliancy. His back was skinned and swollen, blue, and stained with
blood. The prisoners nursed him throughout the night; they changed his
poultices, placed him on his side, prepared for him the lotion ordered
by the doctor; in a word, showed as much solicitude for him as for a
relation or benefactor.
Next day he had fully recovered his faculties, and took one or two turns
round the room. I was much astonished, for he was broken down and
powerless when he was brought in. He had received half the number of
blows ordered by the sentence. The doctor had stopped the punishment,
convinced that if it were continued Orloff's death would inevitably
ensue.
This criminal was of a feeble constitution, weakened by long
imprisonment. Whoever has seen prisoners after having been flogged, will
remember their thin, drawn-out features and their feverish looks. Orloff
soon recovered his powerful energy, which enabled him to get over his
physical weakness. He was no ordinary man. From curiosity I made his
acquaintance, and was able to study him at leisure for an entire week.
Never in my life did I meet a man whose will was more firm or
inflexible.
I had seen at Tobolsk a celebrity of the same kind--a former chief of
brigands. This man was a veritable wild beast; by being near him,
without even knowing him, it was impossible not to recognise in him a
dangerous creature. What above all frightened me was his stupidity.
Matter, in this man, had taken such an ascendant over mind, that one
could see at a glance that he cared for nothing in the world but the
brutal satisfaction of his physical wants. I was certain, however, that
Kareneff--that was his name--would have fainted on being condemned to
such rigorous corporal punishment as Orloff had undergone; and that he
would have murdered the first man near him without blinking.
Orloff, on the contrary, was a brilliant example of the victory of
spirit over matter. He had a perfect command over himself. He despised
punishment, and feared nothing in the world. His dominant characteristic
was boundless energy, a thirst for vengeance, and an immovable will when
he had some object to attain.
I was not astonished at his haughty air. He looked down upon all around
him from the height of his grandeur. Not that he took the trouble to
pose; his pride was an innate quality. I don't think that anything had
the least influence over him. He looked upon everything with the calmest
eye, as if nothing in the world could astonish him. He knew well that
the other prisoners respected him; but he never took advantage of it to
give himself airs.
Nevertheless, vanity and conceit are defects from which scarcely any
convict is exempt. He was intelligent and strangely frank in talking too
much about himself. He replied point-blank to all the questions I put to
him, and confessed to me that he was waiting impatiently for his return
to health in order to take the remainder of the punishment he was to
undergo.
"Now," he said to me with a wink, "it is all over. I shall have the
remainder, and shall be sent to Nertchinsk with a convoy of prisoners. I
shall profit by it to escape. I shall get away beyond doubt. If only my
back would heal a little quicker!"
For five days he was burning with impatience to be in a condition for
leaving the hospital At times he was gay and in the best of humours. I
profited by these rare occasions to question him about his adventures.
Then he would contract his eyebrows a little; but he always answered my
questions in a straightforward manner. When he understood that I was
endeavouring to see through him, and to discover in him some trace of
repentance, he looked at me with a haughty and contemptuous air, as if I
were a foolish little boy, to whom he did too much honour by conversing
with him.
I detected in his countenance a sort of compassion for me. After a
moment's pause he laughed out loud, but without the least irony. I fancy
he must, more than once, have laughed in the same manner, when my words
returned to his memory. At last he wrote down his name as cured,
although his back was not yet entirely healed. As I also was almost
well, we left the infirmary together and returned to the convict prison,
while he was shut up in the guard-room, where he had been imprisoned
before. When he left me he shook me by the hand, which in his eyes was a
great mark of confidence. I fancy he did so, because at that moment he
was in a good humour. But in reality he must have despised me, for I was
a feeble being, contemptible in all respects, and guilty above all of
resignation. The next day he underwent the second half of his
punishment.
When the gates of the barracks had been closed, it assumed, in less than
no time, quite another aspect--that of a private house, of quite a home.
Then only did I see my convict comrades at their ease. During the day
the under officers, or some of the other authorities, might suddenly
arrive, so that the prisoners were then always on the look-out. They
were only half at their ease. As soon, however, as the bolts had been
pushed and the gates padlocked, every one sat down in his place and
began to work. The barrack was lighted up in an unexpected manner. Each
convict had his candle and his wooden candlestick. Some of them stitched
boots, others sewed different kinds of garments. The air, already
mephitic, became more and more impure.
Some of the prisoners, huddled together in a corner, played at cards on
a piece of carpet. In each barrack there was a prisoner who possessed a
small piece of carpet, a candle, and a pack of horribly greasy cards.
The owner of the cards received from the players fifteen kopecks [about
sixpence] a night. They generally played at the "three leaves"--Gorka,
that is to say: a game of chance. Each player placed before him a pile
of copper money--all that he possessed--and did not get up until he had
lost it or had broken the bank.
Playing was continued until late at night; sometimes the dawn found the
gamblers still at their game. Often, indeed, it did not cease until a
few minutes before the opening of the gates. In our room--as in all the
others--there were beggars ruined by drink and play, or rather beggars
innate--I say innate, and maintain my expression. Indeed, in our
country, and in all classes, there are, and always will be, strange
easy-going people whose destiny it is to remain always beggars. They are
poor devils all their lives; quite broken down, they remain under the
domination or guardianship of some one, generally a prodigal, or a man
who has suddenly made his fortune. All initiative is for them an
insupportable burden. They only exist on condition of undertaking
nothing for themselves, and by serving, always living under the will of
another. They are destined to act by and through others. Under no
circumstances, even of the most unexpected kind, can they get rich; they
are always beggars. I have met these persons in all classes of society,
in all coteries, in all associations, including the literary world.
As soon as a party was made up, one of these beggars, quite
indispensable to the game, was summoned. He received five kopecks for a
whole night's employment; and what employment it was! His duty was to
keep guard in the vestibule, with thirty degrees (Réaumur) of frost, in
total darkness, for six or seven hours. The man on watch had to listen
for the slightest noise, for the Major or one of the other officers of
the guard would sometimes make a round rather late in the night. They
arrived secretly, and sometimes discovered the players and the watchers
in the act--thanks to the light of the candles, which could be seen from
the court-yard.
When the key was heard grinding in the padlock which closed the gate, it
was too late to put the lights out and lie down on the plank bedsteads.
Such surprises were, however, rare. Five kopecks was a ridiculous
payment even in our convict prison, and the exigency and hardness of the
gamblers astonished me in this as in many cases: "You are paid, you must
do what you are told." This was the argument, and it admitted of no
reply. To have paid a few kopecks to any one gave the right to turn him
to the best possible account, and even to claim his gratitude. More than
once it happened to me to see the convicts spend their money
extravagantly, throwing it away on all sides, and, at the same time,
cheat the man employed to watch. I have seen this in several barracks on
many occasions.
I have already said that, with the exception of the gamblers, every one
worked. Five only of the convicts remained completely idle, and went to
bed on the first opportunity. My sleeping place was near the door. Next
to me was Akim Akimitch, and when we were lying down our heads touched.
He used to work until ten or eleven at making, by pasting together
pieces of paper, multicolour lanterns, which some one living in the town
had ordered from him, and for which he used to be well paid. He excelled
in this kind of work, and did it methodically and regularly. When he had
finished he put away carefully his tools, unfolded his mattress, said
his prayers, and went to sleep with the sleep of the just. He carried
his love of order even to pedantry, and must have thought himself in his
inner heart a man of brains, as is generally the case with narrow,
mediocre persons. I did not like him the first day, although he gave me
much to think of. I was astonished that such a man could be found in a
convict prison. I shall speak of Akimitch further on in the course of
this book.
But I must now continue to describe the persons with whom I was to live
a number of years. Those who surrounded me were to be my companions
every minute, and it will be understood that I looked upon them with
anxious curiosity.
On my left slept a band of mountaineers from the Caucasus, nearly all
exiled for brigandage, but condemned to different punishments. There
were two Lesghians, a Circassian, and three Tartars from Daghestan. The
Circassian was a morose and sombre person. He scarcely ever spoke, and
looked at you sideways with a sly, sulky, wild-beast-like expression.
One of the Lesghians, an old man with an aquiline nose, tall and thin,
seemed to be a true brigand; but the other Lesghian, Nourra by name,
made a most favourable impression upon me. Of middle height, still
young, built like a Hercules, with fair hair and violet eyes; he had a
slightly turned up nose, while his features were somewhat of a Finnish
cast. Like all horsemen, he walked with his toes in. His body was
striped with scars, ploughed by bayonet wounds and bullets. Although he
belonged to the conquered part of the Caucasus, he had joined the
rebels, with whom he used to make continual incursions into our
territory. Every one liked him in the prison by reason of his gaiety and
affability. He worked without murmuring, always calm and peaceful.
Thieving, cheating, and drunkenness filled him with disgust, or put him
in a rage--not that he wished to quarrel with any one; he simply turned
away with indignation. During his confinement he committed no breach of
the rules. Fervently pious, he said his prayers religiously every
evening, observed all the Mohammedan fasts like a true fanatic, and
passed whole nights in prayer. Every one liked him, and looked upon him
as a thoroughly honest man. "Nourra is a lion," said the convicts; and
the name of "Lion" stuck to him. He was quite convinced that as soon as
he had finished his sentence he would be sent to the Caucasus. Indeed,
he only lived by this hope, and I believe he would have died had he been
deprived of it. I noticed it the very day of my arrival. How was it
possible not to distinguish this calm, honest face in the midst of so
many sombre, sardonic, repulsive countenances!
Before I had been half-an-hour in the prison, he passed by my side and
touched me gently on the shoulder, smiling at the same time with an
innocent air. I did not at first understand what he meant, for he spoke
Russian very badly; but soon afterwards he passed again, and, with a
friendly smile, again touched me on the shoulder. For three days running
he repeated this strange proceeding. As I soon found out, he wanted to
show me that he pitied me, and that he felt how painful the first moment
of imprisonment must be. He wanted to testify his sympathy, to keep up
my spirits, and to assure me of his good-will. Kind and innocent Nourra!
Of the three Tartars from Daghestan, all brothers, the two eldest were
well-developed men, while the youngest, Ali, was not more than
twenty-two, and looked younger. He slept by my side, and when I observed
his frank, intelligent countenance, thoroughly natural, I was at once
attracted to him, and thanked my fate that I had him for a neighbour in
place of some other prisoner. His whole soul could be read in his
beaming countenance. His confident smile had a certain childish
simplicity; his large black eyes expressed such friendliness, such
tender feeling, that I always took a pleasure in looking at him. It was
a relief to me in moments of sadness and anguish. One day his eldest
brother--he had five, of whom two were working in the mines of
Siberia--had ordered him to take his yataghan, to get on horseback, and
follow him. The respect of the mountaineers for their elders is so great
that young Ali did not dare to ask the object of the expedition. He
probably knew nothing about it, nor did his brothers consider it
necessary to tell him. They were going to plunder the caravan of a rich
Armenian merchant, and they succeeded in their enterprise. They
assassinated the merchant and stole his goods. Unhappily for them, their
act of brigandage was discovered. They were tried, flogged, and then
sent to hard labour in Siberia. The Court admitted no extenuating
circumstances, except in the case of Ali. He was condemned to the
minimum punishment--four years' confinement. These brothers loved him,
their affection being paternal rather than fraternal. He was the only
consolation of their exile. Dull and sad as a rule, they had always a
smile for him when they spoke to him, which they rarely did--for they
looked upon him as a child to whom it would be useless to speak
seriously--their forbidding countenances lightened up. I fancied they
always spoke to him in a jocular tone, as to an infant. When he replied,
the brothers exchanged glances, and smiled good-naturedly.
He would not have dared to speak to them first by reason of his respect
for them. How this young man preserved his tender heart, his native
honesty, his frank cordiality without getting perverted and corrupted
during his period of hard labour, is quite inexplicable. In spite of his
gentleness, he had a strong stoical nature, as I afterwards saw. Chaste
as a young girl, everything that was foul, cynical, shameful, or unjust
filled his fine black eyes with indignation, and made them finer than
ever. Without being a coward, he would allow himself to be insulted with
impunity. He avoided quarrels and insults, and preserved all his
dignity. With whom, indeed, was he to quarrel? Every one loved him,
caressed him.
At first he was only polite to me; but little by little we got into the
habit of talking together in the evening, and in a few months he had
learnt to speak Russian perfectly, whereas his brothers never gained a
correct knowledge of the language. He was intelligent, and at the same
time modest and full of delicate feeling.
Ali was an exceptional being, and I always think of my meeting him as
one of the lucky things in my life. There are some natures so
spontaneously good and endowed by God with such great qualities that the
idea of their getting perverted seems absurd. One is always at ease
about them. Accordingly I had never any fears about Ali. Where is he
now?
One day, a considerable time after my arrival at the convict prison, I
was stretched out on my camp-bedstead agitated by painful thoughts. Ali,
always industrious, was not working at this moment. His time for going
to bed had not arrived. The brothers were celebrating some Mussulman
festival, and were not working. Ali was lying down with his head between
his hands in a state of reverie. Suddenly he said to me:
"Well, you are very sad!"
I looked at him with curiosity. Such a remark from Ali, always so
delicate, so full of tact, seemed strange. But I looked at him more
attentively, and saw so much grief, so much repressed suffering in his
countenance--of suffering caused no doubt by sudden recollections--that
I understood in what pain he must be, and said so to him. He uttered a
deep sigh, and smiled with a melancholy air. I always liked his
graceful, agreeable smile. When he laughed, he showed two rows of teeth
which the first beauty in the world would have envied him.
"You were probably thinking, Ali, how this festival is celebrated in
Daghestan. Ah, you were happy there!"
"Yes," he replied with enthusiasm, and his eyes sparkled. "How did you
know I was thinking of such things?"
"How was I not to know? You were much better off than you are here."
"Why do you say that?"
"What beautiful flowers there are in your country! Is it not so? It is a
true paradise."
"Be silent, please."
He was much agitated.
"Listen, Ali. Had you a sister?"
"Yes; why do you ask me?"
"She must have been very beautiful if she is like you?"
"Oh, there is no comparison to make between us. In all Daghestan no such
beautiful girl is to be seen. My sister is, indeed, charming. I am sure
that you have never seen any one like her. My mother also is very
handsome."
"And your mother was fond of you?"
"What are you saying? Certainly she was. I am sure that she has died of
grief, she was so fond of me. I was her favourite child. Yes, she loved
me more than my sister, more than all the others. This very night she
has appeared to me in a dream, she shed tears for me."
He was silent, and throughout the rest of the night did not open his
mouth; but from this very moment he sought my company and my
conversation; although very respectful, he never allowed himself to
address me first. On the other hand he was happy when I entered into
conversation with him. He spoke often of the Caucasus, and of his past
life. His brothers did not forbid him to converse with me; I think even
that they encouraged him to do so. When they saw that I had formed an
attachment to him, they became more affable towards me.
Ali often helped me in my work. In the barrack he did whatever he
thought would be agreeable to me, and would save me trouble. In his
attentions to me there was neither servility nor the hope of any
advantage, but only a warm, cordial feeling, which he did not try to
hide. He had an extraordinary aptitude for the mechanical arts. He had
learnt to sew very tolerably, and to mend boots; he even understood a
little carpentering--everything in short that could be learnt at the
convict prison. His brothers were proud of him.
"Listen, Ali," I said to him one day, "why don't you learn to read and
write the Russian language, it might be very useful to you here in
Siberia?"
"I should like to do so, but who would teach me?"
"There are plenty of people here who can read and write. I myself will
teach you if you like."
"Oh, do teach me, I beg of you," said Ali, raising himself up in bed; he
joined his hands and looked at me with a suppliant air.
We went to work the very next evening. I had with me a Russian
translation of the New Testament, the only book that was not forbidden
in the prison. With this book alone, without an alphabet, Ali learnt to
read in a few weeks, and after a few months he could read perfectly. He
brought to his studies extraordinary zeal and warmth.
One day we were reading together the Sermon on the Mount. I noticed that
he read certain passages with much feeling; and I asked him if he was
pleased with what he read. He glanced at me, and his face suddenly
lighted up.
"Yes, yes, Jesus is a holy prophet. He speaks the language of God. How
beautiful it is!"
"But tell me what it is that particularly pleases you."
"The passage in which it is said, 'Forgive those that hate you!' Ah! how
divinely He speaks!"
He turned towards his brothers, who were listening to our conversation,
and said to them with warmth a few words. They talked together seriously
for some time, giving their approval of what their young brother had
said by a nodding of the head. Then with a grave, kindly smile, quite a
Mussulman smile (I liked the gravity of this smile), they assured me
that Isu [Jesus] was a great prophet. He had done great miracles. He had
created a bird with a little clay on which he breathed the breath of
life, and the bird had then flown away. That, they said, was written in
their books. They were convinced that they would please me much by
praising Jesus. As for Ali, he was happy to see that his brothers
approved of our friendship, and that they were giving me, what he
thought would be, grateful words. The success I had with my pupil in
teaching him to write, was really extraordinary. Ali had bought paper at
his own expense, for he would not allow me to purchase any, also pens
and ink; and in less than two months he had learnt to write. His
brothers were astonished at such rapid progress. Their satisfaction and
their pride were without bounds. They did not know how to show me enough
gratitude. At the workshop, if we happened to be together, there were
disputes as to which of them should help me. I do not speak of Ali, he
felt for me more affection than even for his brothers. I shall never
forget the day on which he was liberated. He went with me outside the
barracks, threw himself on my neck and sobbed. He had never embraced me
before, and had never before wept in my presence.
"You have done so much for me," he said; "neither my father nor my
mother have ever been kinder. You have made a man of me. God will bless
you, I shall never forget you, never!"
Where is he now, where is my good, kind, dear Ali?
Besides the Circassians, we had a certain number of Poles, who formed a
separate group. They had scarcely any relations with the other convicts.
I have already said that, thanks to their hatred for the Russian
prisoners, they were detested by every one. They were of a restless,
morbid disposition: there were six of them, some of them men of
education, of whom I shall speak in detail further on. It was from them
that during the last days of my imprisonment I obtained a few books. The
first work I read made a deep impression upon me. I shall speak further
on of these sensations, which I look upon as very curious, though it
will be difficult to understand them. Of this I am certain, for there
are certain things as to which one cannot judge without having
experienced them oneself. It will be enough for me to say that
intellectual privations are more difficult to support than the most
frightful, physical tortures.
A common man sent to hard labour finds himself in kindred society,
perhaps even in a more interesting society than he has been accustomed
to. He loses his native place, his family; but his ordinary surroundings
are much the same as before. A man of education, condemned by law to the
same punishment as the common man, suffers incomparably more. He must
stifle all his needs, all his habits, he must descend into a lower
sphere, must breathe another air. He is like a fish thrown upon the
sand. The punishment that he undergoes, equal for all criminals
according to the law, is ten times more severe and more painful for him
than for the common man. This is an incontestable truth, even if one
thinks only of the material habits that have to be sacrificed.
I was saying that the Poles formed a group by themselves. They lived
together, and of all the convicts in the prison, they cared only for a
Jew, and for no other reason than because he amused them. Our Jew was
generally liked, although every one laughed at him. We only had one, and
even now I cannot think of him without laughing. Whenever I looked at
him I thought of the Jew Jankel, whom Gogol describes in his Tarass
Boulba, and who, when undressed and ready to go to bed with his Jewess
in a sort of cupboard, resembled a fowl; but Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein and
a plucked fowl were as like one another as two drops of water. He was
already of a certain age--about fifty--small, feeble, cunning, and, at
the same time, very stupid, bold, and boastful, though a horrible
coward. His face was covered with wrinkles, his forehead and cheeks were
scarred from the burning he had received in the pillory. I never
understood how he had been able to support the sixty strokes he
received.
He had been sentenced for murder. He carried on his person a medical
prescription which had been given to him by other Jews immediately after
his exposure in the pillory. Thanks to the ointment prescribed, the
scars were to disappear in less than a fortnight. He had been afraid to
use it. He was waiting for the expiration of his twenty years (after
which he would become a colonist) in order to utilise his famous remedy.
"Otherwise I shall not be able to get married," he would say; "and I
must absolutely marry."
We were great friends: his good-humour was inexhaustible. The life of
the convict prison did not seem to disagree with him. A goldsmith by
trade, he received more orders than he could execute, for there was no
jeweller's shop in our town. He thus escaped his hard labour. As a
matter of course, he lent money on pledges to the convicts, who paid him
heavy interest. He arrived at the prison before I did. One of the Poles
related to me his triumphal entry. It is quite a history, which I shall
relate further on, for I shall often have to speak of Isaiah Fomitch
Bumstein.
As for the other prisoners there were, first of all, four "old
believers," among whom was the old man from Starodoub, two or three
Little Russians, very morose persons, and a young convict with delicate
features and a finely-chiselled nose, about twenty-three years of age,
who had already committed eight murders; besides a band of coiners, one
of whom was the buffoon of our barracks; and, finally, some sombre,
sour-tempered convicts, shorn and disfigured, always silent, and full of
envy. They looked askance at all who came near them, and must have
continued to do so during a long course of years. I saw all this
superficially on the first night of my arrival, in the midst of thick
smoke, in a mephitic atmosphere, amid obscene oaths, accompanied by the
rattling of chains, by insults, and cynical laughter. I stretched
myself out on the bare planks, my head resting on my coat, rolled up to
do duty in lieu of a pillow, not yet supplied to me. Then I covered
myself with my sheepskin, but, thanks to the painful impression of this
evening, I was unable for some time to get to sleep. My new life was
only just beginning. The future reserved for me many things which I had
not foreseen, and of which I had never the least idea.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST MONTH
Three days after my arrival I was ordered to go to work. The impression
left upon me to this day is still very clear, although there was nothing
very striking in it, unless one considers that my position was in itself
extraordinary. The first sensations count for a good deal, and I as yet
looked upon everything with curiosity. My first three days were
certainly the most painful of all my terms of imprisonment.
My wandering is at an end, I said to myself every moment. I am now in
the convict prison, my resting-place for many years. Here is where I am
to live. I come here full of grief, who knows that when I leave it I
shall not do so with regret? I said this to myself as one touches a
wound, the better to feel its pain. The idea that I might regret my stay
was terrible to me. Already I felt to what an intolerable degree man is
a creature of habit, but this was a matter of the future. The present,
meanwhile, was terrible enough.
The wild curiosity with which my convict companions examined me, their
harshness towards a former nobleman now entering into their corporation,
a harshness which sometimes took the form of hatred--all this tormented
me to such a degree that I felt obliged of my own accord to go to work
in order to measure at one stroke the whole extent of my misfortune,
that I might at once begin to live like the others, and fall with them
into the same abyss.
But convicts differ, and I had not yet disentangled from the general
hostility the sympathy here and there manifested towards me.
After a time the affability and good-will shown to me by certain
convicts gave me a little courage, and restored my spirits. Most
friendly among them was Akim Akimitch. I soon noticed some kind,
good-natured faces in the dark and hateful crowd. Bad people are to be
found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good,
I began to think, by way of consolation. Who knows? These persons are
perhaps not worse than others who are free. While making these
reflections I felt some doubts, and, nevertheless, how much I was in the
right!
The convict Suchiloff, for example; a man whose acquaintance I did not
make until long afterwards, although he was near me during nearly the
whole period of my confinement. Whenever I speak of the convicts who are
not worse than other men, my thoughts turn involuntarily to him. He
acted as my servant, together with another prisoner named Osip, whom
Akim Akimitch had recommended to me immediately after my arrival. For
thirty kopecks a month this man agreed to cook me a separate dinner, in
case I should not be able to put up with the ordinary prison fare, and
should be able to pay for my own food. Osip was one of the four cooks
chosen by the prisoners in our two kitchens. I may observe that they
were at liberty to refuse these duties, and give them up whenever they
might think fit. The cooks were men from whom hard labour was not
expected. They had to bake bread and prepare the cabbage soup. They were
called "cook-maids," not from contempt, for the men chosen were always
the most intelligent, but merely in fun. The name given to them did not
annoy them.
For many years past Osip had been constantly selected as "cook-maid." He
never refused the duty except when he was out of sorts, or when he saw
an opportunity of getting spirits into the barracks. Although he had
been sent to the convict prison as a smuggler, he was remarkably honest
and good-tempered (I have spoken of him before); at the same time he was
a dreadful coward, and feared the rod above all things. Of a peaceful,
patient disposition, affable with everybody, he never got into quarrels;
but he could never resist the temptation of bringing spirits in,
notwithstanding his cowardice, and simply from his love of smuggling.
Like all the other cooks he dealt in spirits, but on a much less
extensive scale than Gazin, because he was afraid of running the same
risks. I always lived on good terms with Osip. To have a separate table
it was not necessary to be very rich; it cost me only one rouble a month
apart from the bread, which was given to us. Sometimes when I was very
hungry I made up my mind to eat the cabbage soup, in spite of the
disgust with which it generally filled me. After a time this disgust
entirely disappeared. I generally bought one pound of meat a day, which
cost me two kopecks--[5 kopecks = 2 pence.]
The old soldiers, who watched over the internal discipline of the
barracks, were ready, good-naturedly, to go every day to the market to
make purchases for the convicts. For this they received no pay, except
from time to time a trifling present. They did it for the sake of their
peace; their life in the convict prison would have been a perpetual
torment had they refused. They used to bring in tobacco, tea,
meat--everything, in short, that was desired, always excepting spirits.
For many years Osip prepared for me every day a piece of roast meat. How
he managed to get it cooked was a secret. What was strangest in the
matter was, that during all this time I scarcely exchanged two words
with him. I tried many times to make him talk, but he was incapable of
keeping up a conversation. He would only smile and answer my questions
by "yes" or "no." He was a Hercules, but he had no more intelligence
than a child of seven.
Suchiloff was also one of those who helped me. I had never asked him to
do so, he attached himself to me on his own account, and I scarcely
remember when he began to do so. His principal duty consisted in washing
my linen. For this purpose there was a basin in the middle of the
court-yard, round which the convicts washed their clothes in prison
buckets.
Suchiloff had found means for rendering me a number of little services.
He boiled my tea-urn, ran right and left to perform various commissions
for me, got me all kinds of things, mended my clothes, and greased my
boots four times a month. He did all this in a zealous manner, with a
business-like air, as if he felt all the weight of the duties he was
performing. He seemed quite to have joined his fate to mine, and
occupied himself with all my affairs. He never said: "You have so many
shirts, or your waistcoat is torn;" but, "We have so many shirts, and
our waistcoat is torn." I had somehow inspired him with admiration, and
I really believe that I had become his sole care in life. As he knew no
trade whatever his only source of income was from me, and it must be
understood that I paid him very little; but he was always pleased,
whatever he might receive. He would have been without means had he not
been a servant of mine, and he gave me the preference because I was more
affable than the others, and, above all, more equitable in money
matters. He was one of those beings who never get rich, and never know
how to manage their affairs; one of those in the prison who were hired
by the gamblers to watch all night in the ante-chamber, listening for
the least noise that might announce the arrival of the Major. If there
was a night visit they received nothing, indeed their back paid for
their want of attention. One thing which marks this kind of men is their
entire absence of individuality, which they seem entirely to have lost.
Suchiloff was a poor, meek fellow; all the courage seemed to have been
beaten out of him, although he had in reality been born meek. For
nothing in the world would he have raised his hand against any one in
the prison. I always pitied him without knowing why. I could not look at
him without feeling the deepest compassion for him. If asked to explain
this, I should find it impossible to do so. I could never get him to
talk, and he never became animated, except when, to put an end to all
attempts at conversation, I gave him something to do, or told him to go
somewhere for me. I soon found that he loved to be ordered about.
Neither tall nor short, neither ugly nor handsome, neither stupid nor
intelligent, neither old nor young, it would be difficult to describe in
any definite manner this man, except that his face was slightly pitted
with the small-pox, and that he had fair hair. He belonged, as far as I
could make out, to the same company as Sirotkin. The prisoners sometimes
laughed at him because he had "exchanged." During the march to Siberia
he had exchanged for a red shirt and a silver rouble. It was thought
comical that he should have sold himself for such a small sum, to take
the name of another prisoner in place of his own, and consequently to
accept the other's sentence. Strange as it may appear it was
nevertheless true. This custom, which had become traditional, and still
existed at the time I was sent to Siberia, I, at first, refused to
believe, but found afterwards that it really existed. This is how the
exchange was effected:
A company of prisoners started for Siberia. Among them there are exiles
of all kinds, some condemned to hard labour, others to labour in the
mines, others to simple colonisation. On the way out, no matter at what
stage of the journey, in the Government of Perm, for instance, a
prisoner wishes to exchange with another man, who--we will say he is
named Mikhailoff--has been condemned to hard labour for a capital
offence, and does not like the prospect of passing long years without
his liberty. He knows, in his cunning, what to do. He looks among his
comrades for some simple, weak-minded fellow, whose punishment is less
severe, who has been condemned to a few years in the mines, or to hard
labour, or has perhaps been simply exiled. At last he finds such a man
as Suchiloff, a former serf, sentenced only to become a colonist. The
man has made fifteen hundred versts [about one thousand miles] without a
kopeck, for the good reason that a Suchiloff is always without money;
fatigued, exhausted, he can get nothing to eat beyond the fixed rations,
nothing to wear in addition to the convict uniform.
Mikhailoff gets into conversation with Suchiloff, they suit one another,
and they strike up a friendship. At last at some station Mikhailoff
makes his comrade drunk, then he will ask him if he will "exchange."
"My name is Mikhailoff," he says to him, "condemned to what is called
hard labour, but which, in my own case, will be nothing of the kind, as
I am to enter a particular special section. I am classed with the
hard-labour men, but in my special division the labour is not so
severe."
Before the special section was abolished, many persons in the official
world, even at St. Petersburg, were unaware even of its existence. It
was in such a retired corner of one of the most distant regions of
Siberia, that it was difficult to know anything about it. It was
insignificant, moreover, from the number of persons belonging to it. In
my time they numbered altogether only seventy. I have since met men who
have served in Siberia, and know the country well, and yet have never
heard of the "special section." In the rules and regulations there are
only six lines about this institution. Attached to the convict prison of
---- is a special section reserved for the most dangerous criminals,
while the severest labours are being prepared for them. The prisoners
themselves knew nothing of this special section. Did it exist
temporarily or constantly? Neither Suchiloff nor any of the prisoners
being sent out, not Mikhailoff himself could guess the significance of
those two words. Mikhailoff, however, had his suspicion as to the true
character of this section. He formed his opinion from the gravity of the
crime for which he was made to march three or four thousand versts on
foot. It was certain that he was not being sent to a place where he
would be at his ease. Suchiloff was to be a colonist. What could
Mikhailoff desire better than that?
"Won't you change?" he asks. Suchiloff is a little drunk, he is a
simple-minded man, full of gratitude to the comrade who entertains him,
and dare not refuse; he has heard, moreover, from other prisoners, that
these exchanges are made, and understands, therefore, that there is
nothing extraordinary, unheard-of, in the proposition made to him. An
agreement is come to, the cunning Mikhailoff, profiting by Suchiloff's
simplicity, buys his name for a red shirt, and a silver rouble, which
are given before witnesses. The next day Suchiloff is sober; but more
liquor is given to him. Then he drinks up his own rouble, and after a
while the red shirt has the same fate.
"If you don't like the bargain we made, give me back my money," says
Mikhailoff. But where is Suchiloff to get a rouble? If he does not give
it back, the "artel" [_i.e._, the association--in this case of convicts]
will force him to keep his promise. The prisoners are very sensitive on
such points: he must keep his promise. The "artel" requires it, and, in
case of disobedience, woe to the offender! He will be killed, or at
least seriously intimidated. If indeed the "artel" once showed mercy to
the men who had broken their word, there would be an end to its
existence. If the given word can be recalled, and the bargain put an end
to after the stipulated sum has been paid, who would be bound by such an
agreement? It is a question of life or death for the "artel."
Accordingly the prisoners are very severe on the point.
Suchiloff then finds that it is impossible to go back, that nothing can
save him, and he accordingly agrees to all that is demanded of him. The
bargain is then made known to all the convoy, and if denunciations are
feared, the men looked upon as suspicious are entertained. What,
moreover, does it matter to the others whether Mikhailoff or Suchiloff
goes to the devil? They have had gratuitous drinks, they have been
feasted for nothing, and the secret is kept by all.
At the next station the names are called. When Mikhailoff's turn
arrives, Suchiloff answers "present," Mikhailoff replies "present" for
Suchiloff, and the journey is continued. The matter is not now even
talked about. At Tobolsk the prisoners are told off. Mikhailoff will
become a colonist, while Suchiloff is sent to the special section under
a double escort. It would be useless now to cry out, to protest, for
what proof could be given? How many years would it take to decide the
affair, what benefit would the complainant derive? Where, moreover, are
the witnesses? They would deny everything, even if they could be found.
That is how Suchiloff, for a silver rouble and a red shirt, came to be
sent to the special section. The prisoners laughed at him, not because
he had exchanged--though in general they despised those who had been
foolish enough to exchange a work that was easy for a work that was
hard--but simply because he had received nothing for the bargain except
a red shirt and a rouble--certainly a ridiculous compensation.
Generally speaking, the exchanges are made for relatively large sums;
several ten-rouble notes sometimes change hands. But Suchiloff was so
characterless, so insignificant, so null, that he could scarcely even be
laughed at. We lived a considerable time together, he and I; I had got
accustomed to him, and he had formed an attachment for me. One day,
however--I can never forgive myself for what I did--he had not executed
my orders, and when he came to ask me for his money I had the cruelty to
say to him, "You don't forget to ask for your money, but you don't do
what you are told." Suchiloff remained silent and hastened to do as he
was ordered, but he suddenly became very sad. Two days passed. I could
not believe that what I had said to him could affect him so much. I knew
that a person named Vassilieff was claiming from him in a morose manner
payment of a small debt. Suchiloff was probably short of money, and did
not dare to ask me for any.
"Suchiloff, you wish, I think, to ask me for some money to pay
Vassilieff; take this."
I was seated on my camp-bedstead. Suchiloff remained standing up before
me, much astonished that I myself should propose to give him money, and
that I remembered his difficult position; the more so as latterly he had
asked me several times for money in advance, and could scarcely hope
that I should give him any more. He looked at the paper I held out to
him, then looked at me, turned sharply on his heel and went out. I was
as astonished as I could be. I went out after him, and found him at the
back of the barracks. He was standing up with his face against the
palisade and his arms resting on the stakes.
"What is the matter, Suchiloff?" I asked him.
He made no reply, and to my stupefaction I saw that he was on the point
of bursting into tears.
"You think, Alexander Petrovitch," he said, in a trembling voice, in
endeavouring not to look at me, "that I care only for your money, but
I----"
He turned away from me, and struck the palisade with his forehead and
began to sob. It was the first time in the convict prison that I had
seen a man weep. I had much trouble in consoling him; and he afterwards
served me, if possible, with more zeal than ever. He watched for my
orders, but by almost imperceptible indications I could see that his
heart would never forgive me for my reproach. Meanwhile other men
laughed at him and teased him whenever the opportunity presented itself,
and even insulted him without his losing his temper; on the contrary, he
still remained on good terms with them. It is indeed difficult to know a
man, even after having lived long years with him.
The convict prison had not at first for me the significance it was
afterwards to assume. I was at first, in spite of my attention, unable
to understand many facts which were staring me in the face. I was
naturally first struck by the most salient points, but I saw them from a
false point of view, and the only impression they made upon me was one
of unmitigated sadness. What contributed above all to this result was my
meeting with A----f, the convict who had come to the prison before me,
and who had astonished me in such a painful manner during the first few
days. The effect of his baseness was to aggravate my moral suffering,
already sufficiently cruel. He offered the most repulsive example of the
kind of degradation and baseness to which a man may fall when all
feeling of honour has perished within him. This young man of noble
birth--I have spoken of him before--used to repeat to the Major all that
was done in the barracks, and in doing so through the Major's
body-servant Fedka. Here is the man's history.
Arrived at St. Petersburg before he had finished his studies, after a
quarrel with his parents, whom his life of debauchery had terrified, he
had not shrunk for the sake of money from doing the work of an informer.
He did not hesitate to sell the blood of ten men in order to satisfy his
insatiable thirst for the grossest and most licentious pleasures. At
last he became so completely perverted in the St. Petersburg taverns and
houses of ill-fame, that he did not hesitate to take part in an affair
which he knew to be conceived in madness--for he was not without
intelligence. He was condemned to exile and ten years' hard labour in
Siberia. One might have thought that such a frightful blow would have
shocked him, that it would have caused some reaction and brought about a
crisis; but he accepted his new fate without the least confusion. It did
not frighten him; all that he feared in it was the necessity of working,
and of giving up for ever his habits of debauchery. The name of convict
had no effect but to prepare him for new acts of baseness, and more
hideous villainies than any he had previously perpetrated.
"I am now a convict, and can crawl at ease, without shame."
That was the light in which he looked upon his new position. I think of
this disgusting creature as of some monstrous phenomenon. During the
many years I have lived in the midst of murderers, debauchees, and
proved rascals, never in my life did I meet a case of such complete
moral abasement, determined corruption, and shameless baseness. Among us
there was a parricide of noble birth. I have already spoken of him; but
I could see by several signs that he was much better and more humane
than A----f. During the whole time of my punishment, he was never
anything more in my eyes than a piece of flesh furnished with teeth and
a stomach, greedy for the most offensive and ferocious animal
enjoyments, for the satisfaction of which he was ready to assassinate
anyone. I do not exaggerate in the least; I recognised in A----f one of
the most perfect specimens of animality, restrained by no principles, no
rule. How much I was disgusted by his eternal smile! He was a monster--a
moral Quasimodo. He was at the same time intelligent, cunning,
good-looking, had received some education, and possessed a certain
capacity. Fire, plague, famine, no matter what scourge, is preferable to
the presence of such a man in human society. I have already said that in
the convict prison espionage and denunciation flourished as the natural
product of degradation, without the convicts thinking much of it. On the
contrary, they maintained friendly relations with A----f. They were more
affable with him than with any one else. The kindly attitude towards him
of our drunken friend, the Major, gave him a certain importance, and
even a certain worth in the eyes of the convicts. Later on, this
cowardly wretch ran away with another convict and the soldier in charge
of them; but of this I shall speak in proper time and place. At first,
he hung about me, thinking I did not know his history. I repeat that he
poisoned the first days of my imprisonment so as to drive me nearly to
despair. I was terrified by the mass of baseness and cowardice in the
midst of which I had been thrown. I imagined that every one else was as
foul and cowardly as he. But I made a mistake in supposing that every
one resembled A----f.
During the first three days I did nothing but wander about the convict
prison, when I did not remain stretched out on my camp-bedstead. I
entrusted to a prisoner of whom I was sure, the piece of linen which had
been delivered to me by the administration, in order that he might make
me some shirts. Always on the advice of Akim Akimitch, I got myself a
folding mattress. It was in felt, covered with linen, as thin as a
pancake, and very hard to any one who was not accustomed to it. Akim
Akimitch promised to get me all the most essential things, and with his
own hands made me a blanket out of a piece of old cloth, cut and sewn
together from all the old trousers and waistcoats which I had bought
from various prisoners. The clothes delivered to them, when they have
been worn the regulation time, become the property of the prisoners.
They at once sell them, for however much worn an article of clothing may
be, it always possesses a certain value. I was very much astonished by
all this, above all at the outset, during my first relations with this
world. I became as low as my companions, as much a convict as they.
Their customs, their habits, their ideas influenced me thoroughly, and
externally became my own, without affecting my inner self. I was
astonished and confused as though I had never heard or suspected
anything of the kind before, and yet I knew what to expect, or at least
what had been told me. The thing itself, however, produced on me a
different impression from the mere description of it. How could I
suppose, for instance, that old rags possessed still some value? And,
nevertheless, my blanket was made up entirely of tatters. It would be
difficult to describe the cloth out of which the clothes of the convicts
were made. It was like the thick, gray cloth manufactured for the
soldiers, but as soon as it had been worn some little time it showed the
threads and tore with abominable ease. The uniform ought to have lasted
for a whole year, but it never went so long as that. The prisoner
labours, carries heavy burdens, and the cloth naturally wears out, and
gets into holes very quickly. Our sheepskins were intended to be worn
for three years. During the whole of that time they served as outer
garments, blankets, and pillows, but they were very solid. Nevertheless,
at the end of the third year, it was not rare to see them mended with
ordinary linen. Although they were now very much worn, it was always
possible to sell them at the rate of forty kopecks a piece, the best
preserved ones even at the price of sixty kopecks, which was a great sum
for the convict prison.
Money, as I have before said, has a sovereign value in such a place. It
is certain that a prisoner who has some pecuniary resources suffers ten
times less than the one who has nothing.
"When the Government supplies all the wants of the convict, what need
can he have for money?" reasoned our chief.
Nevertheless, I repeat that if the prisoners had been deprived of the
opportunity of possessing something of their own, they would have lost
their reason, or would have died like flies. They would have committed
unheard-of crimes; some from wearisomeness or grief, the others, in
order to get sooner punished, and, according to their expression, "have
a change." If the convict who has gained some kopecks by the sweat of
his brow, who has embarked in perilous undertakings in order to conquer
them, if he spends this money recklessly, with childish stupidity, that
does not the least in the world prove that he does not know its value,
as might at first sight be thought. The convict is greedy for money, to
the point of losing his reason, and, if he throws it away, he does so in
order to procure what he places far above money--liberty, or at least a
semblance of liberty.
Convicts are great dreamers; I will speak of that further on with more
detail. At present I will confine myself to saying that I have heard
men, who had been condemned to twenty years' hard labour, say, with a
quiet air, "when I have finished my time, if God wishes, then----" The
very words hard labour, or forced labour, indicate that the man has lost
his freedom; and when this man spends his money he is carrying out his
own will.
In spite of the branding and the chains, in spite of the palisade which
hides from his eyes the free world, and encloses him in a cage like a
wild beast, he can get himself spirits and other delights; sometimes
even (not always), corrupt his immediate superintendents, the old
soldiers and non-commissioned officers, and get them to close their eyes
to his infractions of discipline within the prison. He can,
moreover--what he adores--swagger; that is to say, impress his
companions and persuade himself for a time, that he enjoys more liberty
than he really possesses. The poor devil wishes, in a word, to convince
himself of what he knows to be impossible. This is why the prisoners
take such pleasure in boasting and exaggerating in burlesque fashion
their own unhappy personality.
Finally, they run some risk when they give themselves up to this
boasting; in which again they find a semblance of life and liberty--the
only thing they care for. Would not a millionaire with a rope round his
neck give all his millions for one breath of air? A prisoner has lived
quietly for several years in succession, his conduct has been so
exemplary that he has been rewarded by special exemptions. Suddenly, to
the great astonishment of his chiefs, this man becomes mutinous, plays
the very devil, and does not recoil from a capital crime such as
assassination, violation, etc. Every one is astounded at the cause of
this unexpected explosion on the part of a man thought incapable of such
a thing. It is the convulsive manifestation of his personality, an
instinctive melancholia, an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion,
all of which obscures his reason. It is a sort of epileptic attack, a
spasm. A man buried alive who suddenly wakes up must strike in a similar
manner against the lid of his coffin. He tries to rise up, to push it
from him, although his reason must convince him of the uselessness of
his efforts.
Reason, however, has nothing to do with this convulsion. It must not be
forgotten that almost every voluntary manifestation on the part of a
convict is looked upon as a crime. Accordingly, it is a perfect matter
of indifference to them whether this manifestation be important or
insignificant, debauch for debauch, danger for danger. It is just as
well to go to the end, even as far as a murder. The only difficulty is
the first step. Little by little the man becomes excited, intoxicated,
and can no longer contain himself. For that reason it would be better
not to drive him to extremities. Everybody would be much better for it.
But how can this be managed?
CHAPTER VII.
THE FIRST MONTH (_continued_)
When I entered the convict prison I possessed a small sum of money; but
I carried very little of it about with me, lest it should be
confiscated. I had gummed some banknotes into the binding of my New
Testament--the only book authorised in the convict prison. This New
Testament had been given to me at Tobolsk, by a person who had been
exiled some dozens of years, and who had got accustomed to see in other
"unfortunates" a brother.
There are in Siberia people who pass their lives in giving brotherly
assistance to the "unfortunates." They feel the same sympathy for them
that they would have for their own children. Their compassion is
something sacred and quite disinterested. I cannot help here relating in
some words a meeting which I had at this time.
In the town where we were then imprisoned lived a widow, Nastasia
Ivanovna. Naturally, none of us were in direct relations with this
woman. She had made it the object of her life to come to the assistance
of all the exiles; but, above all, of us convicts. Had there been some
misfortune in her family? Had some person dear to her undergone a
punishment similar to ours? I do not know. In any case, she did for us
whatever she could. It is true she could do very little, for she was
very poor. But we felt when we were shut up in the convict prison that,
outside, we had a devoted friend. She often brought us news, which we
were very glad to hear, for nothing of the kind reached us.
When I left the prison to be taken to another town, I had the
opportunity of calling upon her and making her acquaintance. She lived
in one of the suburbs, at the house of a near relation.
Nastasia Ivanovna was neither old nor young, neither pretty nor ugly. It
was difficult, impossible even, to know whether she was intelligent and
well-bred. But in her actions could be seen infinite compassion, an
irresistible desire to please, to solace, to be in some way agreeable.
All this could be read in the sweetness of her smile.
I passed an entire evening at her house, with other companions of my
imprisonment. She looked us straight in the face, laughed when we
laughed, did everything we asked her, in conversation was always of our
opinion, and did her best in every way to entertain us. She gave us tea
and various little delicacies. If she had been rich we felt sure she
would have been pleased, if only to be able to entertain us better and
offer for us some solid consolation.
When we wished her "good-bye," she gave us each a present of a cardboard
cigar-case as a souvenir. She had made them herself--Heaven knows
how--with coloured paper, the paper with which school-boys' copy-books
are covered. All round this cardboard cigar-case she had gummed, by way
of ornamentation, a thin edge of gilt paper.
"As you smoke, these cigar-cases will perhaps be of use to you," she
said, as if excusing herself for making such a present.
There are people who say, as I have read and heard, that a great love
for one's neighbour is only a form of selfishness. What selfishness
could there be in this? That I could never understand.
Although I had not much money when I entered the convict prison, I could
not nevertheless feel seriously annoyed with convicts who, immediately
on my arrival, after having deceived me once, came to borrow of me a
second, a third time, and even oftener. But I admitted frankly that what
did annoy me was the thought that all these people, with their smiling
knavery, must take me for a fool, and laugh at me just because I lent
the money for the fifth time. It must have seemed to them that I was the
dupe of their tricks and their deceit. If, on the contrary, I had
refused them and sent them away, I am certain that they would have had
much more respect for me. Still, though it vexed me very much, I could
not refuse them.
I was rather anxious during the first days to know what footing I should
hold in the convict prison, and what rule of conduct I should follow
with my companions. I felt and perfectly understood that the place being
in every way new to me, I was walking in darkness, and it would be
impossible for me to live for ten years in darkness. I decided to act
frankly, according to the dictates of my conscience and my personal
feeling. But I also knew that this decision might be very well in
theory, and that I should, in practice, be governed by unforeseen
events. Accordingly, in addition to all the petty annoyances caused to
me by my confinement in the convict prison, one terrible anguish laid
hold of me and tormented me more and more.
"The dead-house!" I said to myself when night fell, and I looked from
the threshold of our barracks at the prisoners just returned from their
labours and walking about in the court-yard, from the kitchen to the
barracks, and _vice versâ_. As I examined their movements and their
physiognomies I endeavoured to guess what sort of men they were, and
what their disposition might be.
They lounged about in front of me, some with lowered brows, others full
of gaiety--one of these expressions was seen on every convict's
face--exchanged insults or talked on indifferent matters. Sometimes,
too, they wandered about in solitude, occupied apparently with their own
reflections; some of them with a worn-out, pathetic look, others with a
conceited air of superiority. Yes, here, even here!--their cap balanced
on the side of their head, their sheepskin coat picturesquely over the
shoulder, insolence in their eyes and mockery on their lips.
"Here is the world to which I am condemned, in which, in spite of
myself, I must somehow live," I said to myself.
I endeavoured to question Akim Akimitch, with whom I liked to take my
tea, in order not to be alone, for I wanted to know something about the
different convicts. In parenthesis I must say that the tea, at the
beginning of my imprisonment, was almost my only food. Akim Akimitch
never refused to take tea with me, and he himself heated our tin
tea-urns, made in the convict prison and let out to me by M----.
Akim Akimitch generally drank a glass of tea (he had glasses of his own)
calmly and silently, then thanked me when he had finished, and at once
went to work on my blanket; but he had not been able to tell me what I
wanted to know, and did not even understand my desire to know the
dispositions of the people surrounding me. He listened to me with a
cunning smile which I have still before my eyes. No, I thought, I must
find out for myself; it is useless to interrogate others.
The fourth day, the convicts were drawn up in two ranks, early in the
morning, in the court-yard before the guard-house, close to the prison
gates. Before and behind them were soldiers with loaded muskets and
fixed bayonets.
The soldier has the right to fire on the convict if he tries to escape.
But, on the other hand, he is answerable for his shot, if there was no
absolute necessity for him to fire. The same thing applies to revolts.
But who would think of openly taking to flight?
The Engineer officer arrived accompanied by the so-called "conductor"
and by some non-commissioned officers of the Line, together with sappers
and soldiers told off to superintend the labours of the convicts.
The roll was called. Then the convicts who were going to the tailors'
workshop started first. These men worked inside the prison, and made
clothes for all the inmates. The other exiles went into the outer
workshops, until at last arrived the turn of the prisoners destined for
field labour. I was of this number--there were altogether twenty of us.
Behind the fortress on the frozen river were two barges belonging to the
Government, which were not worth anything, but which had to be taken to
pieces in order that the wood might not be lost. The wood was in itself
all but valueless, for firewood can be bought in the town at a nominal
price. The whole country is covered with forests.
This work was given to us in order that we might not remain with our
arms crossed. This was understood on both sides. Accordingly, we went to
it apathetically; though just the contrary happened when work had to be
done, which would be profitable, or when a fixed task was assigned to
us. In this latter case, although prisoners were to derive no profit
from their work, they tried to get it over as soon as possible, and took
a pride in doing it quickly. When such work as I am speaking of had to
be done as a matter of form, rather than because it was necessary, task
work could not be asked for. We had to go on until the beating of the
drum at eleven o'clock called back the convicts.
The day was warm and foggy, the snow was on the point of melting. Our
entire band walked towards the bank behind the fortress, shaking lightly
their chains hid beneath their garments: the sound came forth clear and
ringing. Two or three convicts went to get their tools from the dépôt.
I walked on with the others. I had become a little animated, for I
wanted to see and know in what this field labour consisted, to what sort
of work I was condemned, and how I should do it for the first time in my
life.
I remember the smallest particulars. We met, as we were walking along, a
townsman with a long beard, who stopped and slipped his hand into his
pocket. A prisoner left our party, took off his cap and received
alms--to the extent of five kopecks--then came back hurriedly towards
us. The townsman made the sign of the cross and went his way. The five
kopecks were spent the same morning in buying cakes of white bread
which were shared equally among us. In my squad some were gloomy and
taciturn, others indifferent and indolent. There were some who talked in
an idle manner. One of these men was extremely gay, heaven knows why. He
sang and danced as we went along, shaking and ringing his chains at each
step. This fat and corpulent convict was the very one who, on the very
day of my arrival during the general washing, had a quarrel with one of
his companions about the water, and had ventured to compare him to some
sort of bird. His name was Scuratoff. He finished by shouting out a
lively song of which I remember the burden:
They married me without my consent,
When I was at the mill.
Nothing was wanting but a balalaika [the Russian banjo].
His extraordinary good-humour was justly reproved by several of the
prisoners, who were offended by it.
"Listen to his hallooing," said one of the convicts, "though it doesn't
become him."
"The wolf has but one song; this Tuliak [inhabitant of Tula] is stealing
it from him," said another, who could be recognised by his accent as a
Little Russian.
"Of course I am from Tula," replied Scuratoff; "but we don't stuff
ourselves to bursting as you do in your Pultava."
"Liar! what did you eat yourself? Bark shoes and cabbage soup?"
"You talk as if the devil fed you on sweet almonds," broke in a third.
"I admit, my friend, that I am an effeminate man," said Scuratoff with a
gentle sigh, as though he were really reproaching himself for his
effeminacy. "From my most tender infancy I was brought up in luxury, fed
on plums and delicate cakes. My brothers even now have a large business
at Moscow. They are wholesale dealers in the wind that blows; immensely
rich men, as you may imagine."
"And what did you sell?"
"I was very successful, and when I received my first two hundred----"
"Roubles? impossible!" interrupted one of the prisoners, struck with
amazement at hearing of so large a sum.
"No, my good fellow, not two hundred roubles, two hundred blows of the
stick. Luka; I say Luka!"
"Some have the right to call me Luka, but for you I am Luka Kouzmitch,"
replied rather ill-temperedly a small, feeble convict with a pointed
nose.
"The devil take you, you are really not worth speaking to; yet I wanted
to be civil to you. But to continue my story; this is how it happened
that I did not remain any longer at Moscow. I received my fifteen last
strokes and was then sent off, and was at----"
"But what were you sent for?" asked a convict who had been listening
attentively.
"Don't ask stupid questions. I was explaining to you how it was I did
not make my fortune at Moscow; and yet how anxious I was to be rich, you
could scarcely imagine how much."
Many of the prisoners began to laugh. Scuratoff was one of those lively
persons, full of animal spirits, who take a pleasure in amusing their
graver companions, and who, as a matter of course, received no reward
except insults. He belonged to a type of men, to whose characteristics I
shall, perhaps, have to return.
"And what a fellow he is now!" observed Luka Kouzmitch. "His clothes
alone must be worth a hundred roubles."
Scuratoff had the oldest and greasiest sheepskin that could be seen. It
was mended in many different places with pieces that scarcely hung
together. He looked at Luka attentively from head to foot.
"It is my head, friend," he said, "my head that is worth money. When I
took farewell of Moscow, I was half consoled, because my head was to
make the journey on my shoulders. Farewell, Moscow, I shall never
forget your free air, nor the tremendous flogging I got. As for my
sheepskin, you are not obliged to look at it."
"You would like me, perhaps, to look at your head?"
"If it was really his own natural property, but it was given him in
charity," cried Luka Kouzmitch. "It was a gift made to him at Tumen,
when the convoy was passing through the town."
"Scuratoff, had you a workshop?"
"What workshop could he have? He was only a cobbler," said one of the
convicts.
"It is true," said Scuratoff, without noticing the caustic tone of the
speaker. "I tried to mend boots, but I never got beyond a single pair."
"And were you paid for them?"
"Well, I found a fellow who certainly neither feared God nor honoured
either his father or his mother, and as a punishment, Providence made
him buy the work of my hands."
The men around Scuratoff burst into a laugh.
"I also worked once at the convict prison," continued Scuratoff, with
imperturbable coolness. "I did up the boots of Stepan Fedoritch, the
lieutenant."
"And was he satisfied?"
"No, my dear fellows, indeed he was not; he blackguarded me enough to
last me for the rest of my life. He also pushed me from behind with his
knee. What a rage he was in! Ah! my life has deceived me. I see no fun
in the convict prison whatever." He began to sing again.
Akolina's husband is in the court-yard.
There he waits.
Again he sang, and again he danced and leaped.
"Most unbecoming!" murmured the Little Russian, who was walking by my
side.
"Frivolous man!" said another in a serious, decided tone.
I could not make out why they insulted Scuratoff, nor why they despised
those convicts who were light-hearted, as they seemed to do. I
attributed the anger of the Little Russian and the others to a feeling
of personal hostility, but in this I was wrong. They were vexed that
Scuratoff had not that puffed-up air of false dignity with which the
whole of the convict prison was impregnated.
They did not, however, get annoyed with all the jokers, nor treat them
all like Scuratoff. Some of them were men who would stand no nonsense,
and forgive no one voluntarily or involuntarily. It was necessary to
treat them with respect. There was in our band a convict of this very
kind, a good-natured, lively fellow, whom I did not see in his true
light until later on. He was a tall young fellow, with pleasant manners,
and not without good looks. There was at the same time a very comic
expression on his face.
He was called the Sapper, because he had served in the Engineers. He
belonged to the special section.
But all the serious-minded convicts were not so particular as the Little
Russian, who could not bear to see people gay.
We had in our prison several men who aimed at a certain pre-eminence,
either in virtue of skill at their work, of their general ingenuity, of
their character, or their wit. Many of them were intelligent and
energetic, and reached the point they were aiming at--pre-eminence, that
is to say, and moral influence over their companions. They often hated
one another, and they excited general envy. They looked upon other
convicts with a dignified air, that was full of condescension; and they
never quarrelled without a cause. Favourably looked upon by the
administration, they in some measure directed the work, and none of them
would have lowered himself so far as to quarrel with a man about his
songs. All these men were very polite to me during the whole time of my
imprisonment, but not at all communicative.
At last we reached the bank; a little lower down was the old hulk, which
we were to break up, stuck fast in the ice. On the other side of the
water was the blue steppe and the sad horizon. I expected to see every
one go to work at once. Nothing of the kind. Some of the convicts sat
down negligently on wooden beams that were lying near the shore, and
nearly all took from their pockets pouches containing native
tobacco--which was sold in leaf at the market at the rate of three
kopecks a pound--and short wooden pipes. They lighted them while the
soldiers formed a circle around them, and began to watch us with a tired
look.
"Who the devil had the idea of sinking this barque?" asked one of the
convicts in a loud voice, without speaking to any one in particular.
"Were they very anxious, then, to have it broken up?"
"The people were not afraid to give us work," said another.
"Where are all those peasants going to work?" said the first, after a
short silence.
He had not even heard his companion's answer. He pointed with his finger
to the distance, where a troop of peasants were marching in file across
the virgin snow.
All the convicts turned negligently towards this side, and began from
mere idleness to laugh at the peasants as they approached them. One of
them, the last of the line, walked very comically with his arms apart,
and his head on one side. He wore a tall pointed cap. His shadow threw
itself in clear lines on the white snow.
"Look how our brother Petrovitch is dressed," said one of my companions,
imitating the pronunciation of the peasants of the locality. One amusing
thing--the convicts looked down on peasants, although they were for the
most part peasants by origin.
"The last one, too, above all, looks as if he were planting radishes."
"He is an important personage, he has lots of money," said a third.
They all began to laugh without, however, seeming genuinely amused.
During this time a woman selling cakes came up. She was a brisk, lively
person, and it was with her that the five kopecks given by the townsman
were spent.
The young fellow who sold white bread in the convict prison took two
dozen of her cakes, and had a long discussion with the woman in order to
get a reduction in price. She would not, however, agree to his terms.
At last the non-commissioned officer appointed to superintend the work
came up with a cane in his hand.
"What are you sitting down for? Begin at once."
"Give us our tasks, Ivan Matveitch," said one of the "foremen" among us,
as he slowly got up.
"What more do you want? Take out the barque, that is your task."
Then ultimately the convicts got up and went to the river, but very
slowly. Different "directors" appeared, "directors," at least, in words.
The barque was not to be broken up anyhow. The latitudinal and
longitudinal beams were to be preserved, and this was not an easy thing
to manage.
"Draw this beam out, that is the first thing to do," cried a convict who
was neither a director nor a foreman, but a simple workman. This man,
very quiet and a little stupid, had not previously spoken. He now bent
down, took hold of a heavy beam with both hands, and waited for some one
to help him. No one, however, seemed inclined to do so.
"Not you, indeed, you will never manage it; not even your grandfather,
the bear, could do it," muttered some one between his teeth.
"Well, my friend, are we to begin? As for me, I can do nothing alone,"
said, with a morose air, the man who had put himself forward, and who
now, quitting the beam, held himself upright.
"Unless you are going to do all the work by yourself, what are you in
such a hurry about?"
"I was only speaking," said the poor fellow, excusing himself for his
forwardness.
"Must you have blankets to keep yourselves warm, or are you to be
heated for the winter?" cried a non-commissioned officer to the twenty
men who seemed to loathe to begin work. "Go on at once."
"It is never any use being in a hurry, Ivan Matveitch."
"But you are doing nothing at all, Savelieff. What are you casting your
eyes about for? Are they for sale, by chance? Come, go on."
"What can I do alone?"
"Set us tasks, Ivan Matveitch."
"I told you before that I had no task to give you. Attack the barque,
and when you have finished we will go back to the house. Come, begin."
The prisoners began work, but with no good-will, and very indolently.
The irritation of the chief at seeing these vigorous men remain so idle
was intelligible enough. While the first rivet was being removed it
suddenly snapped.
"It broke to pieces," said the convict in self-justification. It was
impossible, then, they suggested, to work in such a manner. What was to
be done? A long discussion took place between the prisoners, and little
by little they came to insults; nor did this seem likely to be the end
of it. The under officer cried out again as he agitated his stick, but
the second rivet snapped like the first. It was then agreed that
hatchets were of no use, and that other tools must be procured.
Accordingly, two prisoners were sent under escort to the fortress to get
the proper instruments. Waiting their return, the other convicts sat
down on the bank as calmly as possible, pulled out their pipes and began
again to smoke. Finally, the under officer spat with contempt.
"Well," he exclaimed, "the work you are doing will not kill you. Oh,
what people, what people!" he grumbled, with an ill-natured air. He then
made a gesture, and went away to the fortress, brandishing his cane.
After an hour the "conductor" arrived. He listened quietly to what the
convicts had to say, declared that the task he gave them was to get off
four rivets unbroken, and to demolish a good part of the barque. As
soon as this was done the prisoners could go back to the house. The task
was a considerable one, but, good heavens! how the convicts now went to
work! Where now was their idleness, their want of skill? The hatchets
soon began to dance, and soon the rivets were sprung. Those who had no
hatchets made use of thick sticks to push beneath the rivets, and thus
in due time and in artistic fashion, they got them out. The convicts
seemed suddenly to have become intelligent in their conversation. No
more insults were heard. Every one knew perfectly what to say, to do, to
advise. Just half-an-hour before the beating of the drum, the appointed
task was executed, and the prisoners returned to the convict prison
fatigued, but pleased to have gained half-an-hour from the working time
fixed by the regulations.
As regards myself, I have only one thing to say. Wherever I stood to
help the workers I was never in my place; they always drove me away, and
generally insulted me. Any one of the ragged lot, any miserable workman
who would not have dared to say a syllable to the other convicts, all
more intelligent and skilful than he, assumed the right of swearing at
me if I went near him, under pretext that I interfered with him in his
work. At last one of the best of them said to me frankly, but coarsely:
"What do you want here? Be off with you! Why do you come when no one
calls you?"
"That is it," added another.
"You would do better to take a pitcher," said a third, "and carry water
to the house that is being built, or go to the tobacco factory. You are
no good here."
I was obliged to keep apart. To remain idle while others were working
seemed a shame; but when I went to the other end of the barque I was
insulted anew.
"What men we have to work!" was the cry. "What can be done with fellows
of this kind?"
All this was said spitefully. They were pleased to have the opportunity
of laughing at a gentleman.
It will now be understood that my first thought on entering the convict
prison was to ask myself how I should ever get on with such people. I
foresaw that such incidents would often be repeated; but I resolved not
to change my conduct in any way, whatever might be the result. I had
decided to live simply and intelligently, without manifesting the least
desire to approach my companions; but also without repelling them, if
they themselves desired to approach me; in no way to fear their threats
or their hatred; and to pretend as much as possible not to be affected
by them. Such was my plan. I saw from the first that they would despise
me, if I adopted any other course.
When I returned in the evening to the convict prison, having finished my
afternoon's work, fatigued and harassed, a deep sadness took possession
of me. "How many thousands of days have I to pass like this one?" Always
the same thought. I walked about alone and meditated as night fell,
when, suddenly, near the palisade behind the barracks, I saw my friend,
Bull, who ran towards me.
Bull was the dog of the prison; for the prison has its dog as companies
of infantry, batteries of artillery, and squadrons of cavalry have
theirs. He had been there for a long time, belonged to no one, looked
upon every one as his master, and lived on the remains from the kitchen.
He was a good-sized black dog, spotted with white, not very old, with
intelligent eyes, and a bushy tail. No one caressed him or paid the
least attention to him. As soon as I arrived I made friends with him by
giving him a piece of bread. When I patted him on the back he remained
motionless, looked at me with a pleased expression, and gently wagged
his tail.
That evening, not having seen me the whole day--me, the first person who
in so many years had thought of caressing him--he ran towards me,
leaping and barking. It had such an effect on me that I could not help
embracing him. I placed his head against my body. He placed his paws on
my shoulders and looked me in the face.
"Here is a friend sent to me by destiny," I said to myself, and during
the first weeks, so full of pain, every time that I came back from work
I hastened, before doing anything else, to go to the back of the
barracks with Bull, who leaped with joy before me. I took his head in my
hands and kissed it. At the same time a troubled, bitter feeling pressed
my heart. I well remember thinking--and taking pleasure in the
thought--that this was my one, my only friend in the world--my faithful
dog, Bull.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF
Time went on, and little by little I accustomed myself to my new life.
The scenes I had daily before me no longer afflicted me so much. In a
word, the convict prison, its inhabitants, and its manners, left me
indifferent. To get reconciled to this life was impossible, but I had to
accept it as an inevitable fact. I had driven entirely away from me all
the anxiety by which I had at first been troubled. I no longer wandered
through the convict prison like a lost soul, and no longer allowed
myself to be subjugated by my anxiety. The wild curiosity of the
convicts had had its edge taken off, and I was no longer looked upon
with that affectation or insolence previously displayed. They had become
indifferent to me, and I was very glad of it. I began to feel at home in
the barracks. I knew where to go and sleep at night; gradually I became
accustomed to things the very idea of which would formerly have been
repugnant to me. I went every week regularly to have my head shaved. We
were called every Saturday one after another to the guard-house. The
regimental barbers lathered our skulls with cold water and soap, and
scraped us afterwards with their saw-like razors.
Merely the thought of this torture gives me a shudder. I soon found a
remedy for it--Akim Akimitch pointed it out to me--a prisoner in the
military section who for one kopeck shaved those who paid for it with
his own razor. This was his trade. Many of the prisoners were his
customers merely to avoid the military barbers, yet these were not men
of weak nerves. Our barber was called the "major," why, I cannot say. As
far as I know he possessed no points of resemblance with any major. As I
write these lines I see clearly before me the "major" and his thin face.
He was a tall fellow, silent, rather stupid, absorbed entirely by his
business; he was never to be seen without a strop in his hand, on which
day and night he sharpened a razor, which was always in admirable
condition. He had certainly made this work the supreme object of his
life; he was really happy when his razor was quite sharp and his
services were in request; his soap was always warm, and he had a very
light hand--a hand of velvet. He was proud of his skill, and used to
take with a careless air the kopeck he received; one might have thought
that he worked from love of his art, and not in order to gain money.
A----f was soundly corrected by our real Major one day, because he had
the misfortune to say the "major" when he was speaking of the barber who
shaved him. The real Major was in a violent rage.
"Blackguard," he cried, "do you know what a major is?" and according to
his habit he shook A----f violently. "The idea of calling a scoundrel of
a convict a 'major' in my presence."
From the first day of my imprisonment I began to dream of my liberation.
My favourite occupation was to count thousands and thousands of times in
a thousand different manners the number of days that I should have to
pass in prison. I thought of that only, and every one deprived of his
liberty for a fixed time does the same; of that I am certain. I cannot
say that all the convicts had the same degree of hopefulness, but their
sanguine character often astonished me. The hopefulness of a prisoner
differs essentially from that of a free man. The latter may desire an
amelioration in his position, or a realisation of some enterprise which
he has undertaken, but meanwhile he lives, he acts; he is swept away in
the whirlwind of real life. Nothing of the kind takes place in the case
of the convict for life. He lives also in a way, but not being condemned
to a fixed number of years, he takes a vaguer view of his situation than
the one who is imprisoned for a definite term. The man condemned for a
comparatively short period feels that he is not at home; he looks upon
himself, so to say, as on a visit; he regards the twenty years of his
punishment as two years at most; he is sure that at fifty, when he has
finished his sentence, he will be as young and as lively as at
thirty-five. "We have time before us," he thinks, and he strives
obstinately to dispel discouraging thoughts. Even a man sentenced for
life thinks that some day an order may arrive from St.
Petersburg--"Transport such a one to the mines at Nertchinsk and fix a
term for his detention." It would be famous, first because it takes six
months to get to Nertchinsk, and the life on the road is a hundred times
preferable to the convict prison. He would finish his time at
Nertchinsk, and then--more than one gray-haired old man speculates in
this way.
At Tobolsk I have seen men fastened to the wall by a chain about two
yards long; by their side they have their bed. They are thus chained for
some terrible crime committed after their transportation to Siberia;
they are kept chained up for five, ten years. They are nearly all
brigands, and I only saw one of them who looked like a man of good
breeding; he had been in some branch of the Civil Service, and spoke in
a soft, lisping way; his smile was sweet but sickly; he showed us his
chain, and pointed out to us the most convenient way of lying down. He
must have been a nice person! All these poor wretches are perfectly
well-behaved; they all seem satisfied, and yet their desire to finish
their period of chains devours them. Why? it will be asked. Because then
they will leave their low, damp, stifling cells for the court-yard of
the convict prison, that is all. These last places of confinement they
will never leave; they know that those who have once been chained up
will never be liberated, and they will die in irons. They know all this,
and yet they are very anxious to be no longer chained up. Without this
hope could they remain five or six years fastened to a wall, and not die
or go mad?
I soon understood that work alone could save me, by fortifying my health
and my body, whereas incessant restlessness of mind, nervous irritation,
and the close air of the barracks would ruin them completely. I should
go out vigorous and full of elasticity. I did not deceive myself, work
and movement were very useful to me.
I saw one of my comrades, to my terror, melt away like a piece of wax;
and yet, when he was with me in the convict prison, he was young,
handsome, and vigorous; when he left his health was ruined, and his legs
could no longer support him. His chest, too, was oppressed by asthma.
"No," I said to myself, as I gazed upon him; "I wish to live, and I will
live."
My love for work exposed me in the first place to the contempt and
bitter laughter of my comrades; but I paid no attention to them, and
went away with a light heart wherever I was sent. Sometimes, for
instance, to break and pound alabaster. This work, the first that was
given to me, is easy. The engineers did their utmost to lighten the
task-work of all the gentlemen; this was not indulgence, but simple
justice. Would it not have been strange to require the same work from a
labourer as from a man whose strength was less by half, and who had
never worked with his hands? But we were not "spoilt" in this way for
ever, and we were only spared in secret, for we were severely watched.
As real severe work was by no means rare, it often happened that the
task given to us was beyond the strength of the gentlemen, who thus
suffered twice as much as their comrades.
Generally three or four men were sent to pound the alabaster, and
nearly always old men or feeble ones were chosen. We were of the latter
class. A man skilled in this particular kind of work was sent with us.
For several years it was always the same man, Almazoff by name. He was
severe, already in years, sunburnt, and very thin, by no means
communicative, moreover, and difficult to get on with. He despised us
profoundly; but he was of such a reserved disposition that he never
broke it sufficient to call us names. The shed in which we calcined the
alabaster was built on a sloping and deserted bank of the river. In
winter, on a foggy day, the view was sad, both on the river and on the
opposite shore, even to a great distance. There was something
heartrending in this dull, naked landscape, but it was still sadder when
a brilliant sun shone above the boundless white plain. How one would
have liked to fly away beyond this steppe, which began on the opposite
shore and stretched out for fifteen hundred versts to the south like an
immense table-cloth.
Almazoff went to work silently, with a disagreeable air. We were ashamed
not to be able to help him more effectually, but he managed to do his
work without our assistance, and seemed to wish to make us understand
that we were acting unjustly towards him, and that we ought to repent
our uselessness. Our work consisted in heating the oven in order to
calcine the alabaster that we had got together in a heap.
The day following, when the alabaster was entirely calcined, we turned
it out. Each one filled a box of alabaster, which he afterwards crushed.
This work was not disagreeable. The fragile alabaster soon became a
white, brilliant dust. We brandished our heavy hammers, and dealt such
formidable blows, that we admired our own strength. When we were tired
we felt lighter, our cheeks were red, the blood circulated more rapidly
in our veins. Almazoff would then look at us in a condescending manner,
as he would have looked at little children. He smoked his pipe with an
indulgent air, unable, however, to prevent himself from grumbling. When
he opened his mouth he was never otherwise, and he was the same with
every one. At bottom I believe he was a kind man.
They gave me another kind of labour, which consisted in working the
turning wheel. This wheel was high and heavy, and great efforts were
necessary to make it go round, above all when the workmen from the
workshop of the engineers used to make the balustrade of a staircase or
the foot of a large table, which required almost the whole trunk. No one
man could have done the work alone. To two convicts, B---- (formerly
gentleman) and myself, this work was given nearly always for several
years, whenever there was anything to turn. B---- was weak, even still
young, and somewhat sympathetic. He had been sent to prison a year
before me, with two companions who were also of noble birth. One of
them, an old man, used to pray day and night. The prisoners respected
him greatly for it. He died in prison. The other one was quite a young
man, fresh-coloured, strong, and courageous. He had carried his
companion B---- for several hundred versts, seeing that at the end of
the first half-stage he had fallen down from fatigue. Their friendship
for one another was something to see.
B---- was a perfectly well-bred man, of noble and generous disposition,
but spoiled and irritated by illness. We used to turn the wheel well
together, and the work interested us. As for me, I found the exercise
most salutary.
I was very--too--fond of shovelling away the snow, which we generally
did after the hurricanes, so frequent in the winter. When the hurricane
had been raging for an entire day, more than one house would be buried
up to the windows, even if it was not covered over entirely. The
hurricane ceased, the sun reappeared, and we were ordered to disengage
the houses, barricaded as they were by heaps of snow.
We were sent in large bands, sometimes the whole of the convicts
together. Each of us received a shovel and had an appointed task to do,
which it sometimes seemed impossible to get through. But we all went to
work with a good-will. The light dust-like snow had not yet congealed,
and was frozen only on the surface. We removed it in enormous
shovelfuls, which were dispersed around us. In the air the snow-dust was
as brilliant as diamonds. The shovel sank easily into the white
glittering mass. The convicts did this work almost always with gaiety,
the cold winter air and the exercise animated them. Every one felt
himself in better spirits, laughter and jokes were heard, snowballs were
exchanged, which after a time excited the indignation of the
serious-minded convicts, who liked neither laughter nor gaiety.
Accordingly these scenes finished almost always in showers of insults.
Little by little the circle of my acquaintances increased, although I
never thought of making new ones. I was always restless, morose, and
mistrustful. Acquaintances, however, were made involuntarily. The first
who came to visit me was the convict Petroff. I say visit, and I retain
the word, for he lived in the special division which was at the farthest
end of the barracks from mine. It seemed as if no relations could exist
between him and me, for we had nothing in common.
Nevertheless, during the first period of my stay, Petroff thought it his
duty to come towards me nearly every day, or at least to stop me when,
after work, I went for a stroll at the back of the barracks as far as
possible from observation. His persistence was disagreeable to me; but
he managed so well that his visits became at last a pleasing diversion,
although he was by no means of a communicative disposition. He was
short, strongly built, agile, and skilful. He had rather an agreeable
voice, and high cheek-bones, a bold look, and white, regular teeth. He
had always a quid of tobacco in his mouth between the lower lip and the
gums. Many of the convicts had the habit of chewing. He seemed to me
younger than he really was, for he did not appear to be more than
thirty, and he was really forty. He spoke to me without any ceremony,
and behaved to me on a footing of equality with civility and attention.
If, for instance, he saw that I wished to be alone, he would talk to me
for about two minutes and then go away. He thanked me, moreover, each
time for my kindness in conversing with him, which he never did to any
one else. I must add that his relations underwent no change not only
during the first period of my story, but for several years, and that
they never became more intimate, although he was really my friend. I
never could say exactly what he looked for in my society, nor why he
came every day to see me. He robbed me sometimes, but almost
involuntarily. He never came to me to borrow money; so that what
attracted him was not personal interest.
It seemed to me, I know not why, that this man did not live in the same
prison with me, but in another house in the town, far away. It appeared
as though he had come to the convict prison by chance in order to pick
up news, to inquire for me, in short, to see how I was getting on. He
was always in a hurry, as though he had left some one for a moment who
was waiting for him, or as if he had given up for a time some matter of
business. And yet he never hurried himself. His look was strongly fixed,
with a slight air of levity and irony. He had a habit of looking into
the distance above the objects near him, as though he were endeavouring
to distinguish something behind the person to whom he was talking. He
always seemed absent-minded. I sometimes asked myself where he went when
he left me, where could Petroff be so anxiously expected? He would
simply go with a light step to one of the barracks or to the kitchen,
and sit down to hear the conversation. He listened attentively, and
joined in with animation; after which he would suddenly become silent.
But whether he spoke or kept silent, one could always see on his
countenance that he had business somewhere else, and that some one was
waiting for him in the town, not very far away. The most astonishing
thing was that he never had any business--apart, of course, from the
hard labour assigned to him. He knew no trade, and had scarcely ever any
money. But that did not seem to grieve him. Why did he speak to me? His
conversation was as strange as he himself was singular. When he noticed
that I was walking alone at the back of the barracks he made a stand,
and turned towards me. He walked very fast, and when I turned he was
suddenly on his heel. He approached me walking, but so quickly that he
seemed to be going at a run.
"Good-morning."
"Good-morning."
"I am not disturbing you?"
"No."
"I wish to ask you something about Napoleon. I wanted to ask you if he
is not a relation of the one who came to us in the year 1812."
Petroff was a soldier's son, and knew how to read and write.
"Of course he is."
"People say he is President. What President--and of what?"
His questions were always rapid and abrupt, as though he wished to know
as soon as possible what he asked. I explained to him of what Napoleon
was President, and I added that perhaps he would become Emperor.
"How will that be?"
I explained it to him as well as I could; Petroff listened with
attention. He understood perfectly all I told him, and added, as he
leant his ear towards me:
"Hem! Ah, I wished to ask you, Alexander Petrovitch, if there are really
monkeys who have hands instead of feet, and are as tall as a man?"
"Yes."
"What are they like?"
I described them to him, and told him what I knew on the subject.
"And where do they live?"
"In warm climates. There are some to be found in the island of
Sumatra."
"Is that in America? I have heard that people there walk with their
heads downwards."
"No, no; you are thinking of the Antipodes." I explained to him as well
as I could what America was, and what the Antipodes. He listened to me
as attentively as if the question of the Antipodes had alone caused him
to approach me.
"Ah, ah! I read last year the story of the Countess de la Vallière.
Arevieff had bought this book from the Adjutant. Is it true or is it an
invention? The work is by Dumas."
"It is an invention, no doubt."
"Ah, indeed. Good-bye. I am much obliged to you."
And Petroff disappeared. The above may be taken as a specimen of our
ordinary conversation.
I made inquiries about him. M---- thought he had better speak to me on
the subject, when he learnt what an acquaintance I had made. He told me
that many convicts had excited his horror on their arrival; but not one
of them, not even Gazin, had produced upon him such a frightful
impression as this Petroff.
"He is the most resolute, most to be feared of all the convicts," said
M----. "He is capable of anything, nothing stops him if he has a
caprice. He will assassinate you, if the fancy takes him, without
hesitation and without the least remorse. I often think he is not in his
right senses."
This declaration interested me extremely; but M---- was never able to
tell me why he had such an opinion of Petroff. Strangely enough, for
many years together I saw this man and talked with him nearly every day.
He was always my sincere friend, though I could not at the time tell
why, and during the whole time he lived very quietly, and did nothing
extreme. I am moreover convinced that M---- was right, and that he was
perhaps a most intrepid man and the most difficult to restrain in the
whole prison. And why so, I can scarcely explain.
This Petroff was that very convict who, when he was called up to receive
his punishment, had wished to kill the Major. I have told you the latter
was saved by a miracle--that he had gone away one minute before the
punishment was inflicted.
Once when he was still a soldier--before his arrival at the convict
prison--his Colonel had struck him on parade. Probably he had often been
beaten before, but that day he was not in a humour to bear an insult, in
open day, before the battalion drawn up in line. He killed his Colonel.
I don't know all the details of the story, for he never told it to me
himself. It must be understood that these explosions only took place
when the nature within him spoke too loudly, and these occasions were
rare; as a rule he was serious and even quiet. His strong, ardent
passions were not burnt out, but smouldering, like burning coals beneath
ashes.
I never noticed that he was vain, or given to bragging like so many
other convicts. He hardly ever quarrelled, but he was on friendly
relations with scarcely any one, except, perhaps, Sirotkin, and then
only when he had need of him. I saw him, however, one day seriously
irritated. Some one had offended him by refusing him something he
wanted. He was disputing on the point with a tall convict, as vigorous
as an athlete, named Vassili Antonoff, known for his nagging, spiteful
disposition. The man, however, who belonged to the class of civil
convicts, was far from being a coward. They shouted at one another for
some time, and I thought the quarrel would finish like so many others of
the same kind, by simple interchange of abuse. The affair took an
unexpected turn. Petroff only suddenly turned pale, his lips trembled,
and turned blue, his respiration became difficult. He got up, and
slowly, very slowly, and with imperceptible steps--he liked to walk
about with his feet naked--approached Antonoff; at once the noise of
shouting gave place to a death-like silence--a fly passing through the
air might have been heard--every one anxiously awaited the event.
Antonoff pointed to his adversary. His face was no longer human. I was
unable to endure the scene, and I left the prison. I was certain that
before I got to the staircase I should hear the shrieks of a man who was
being murdered; but nothing of the kind took place. Before Petroff had
succeeded in getting up to Antonoff, the latter threw him the object
which had caused the quarrel--a miserable rag, a worn-out piece of
lining.
Of course afterwards, Antonoff did not fail to call Petroff names,
merely as a matter of conscience, and from a feeling of what was right,
in order to show that he had not been too much afraid; but Petroff paid
no attention to his insults, he did not even answer him. Everything had
ended to his advantage, and the insults scarcely affected him; he was
glad to have got his piece of rag.
A quarter of an hour later he was strolling about the barracks quite
unoccupied, looking for some group whose conversation might possibly
gratify his curiosity. Everything seemed to interest him, and yet he
remained apparently indifferent to all he heard. He might have been
compared to a workman, a vigorous workman, whom the work fears; but who,
for the moment, has nothing to do, and condescends meanwhile to put out
his strength in playing with his children. I did not understand why he
remained in prison, why he did not escape. He would not have hesitated
to get away if he had really desired to do so. Reason has no power on
people like Petroff unless they are spurred on by will. When they desire
something there are no obstacles in their way. I am certain that he
would have been clever enough to escape, that he would have deceived
every one, that he would have remained for a time without eating, hid in
a forest, or in the bulrushes of the river; but the idea had evidently
not occurred to him. I never noticed in him much judgment or good sense.
People like him are born with one idea, which, without being aware of
it, pursues them all their life. They wander until they meet with some
object which apparently excites their desire, and then they do not mind
risking their head. I was sometimes astonished that a man who had
assassinated his Colonel for having been struck, would lie down without
opposition beneath the rods, for he was always flogged when he was
detected introducing spirits into the prison. Like all those who had no
settled occupation, he smuggled in spirits; then, if caught, he would
allow himself to be whipped as though he consented to the punishment,
and confessed himself in the wrong. Otherwise they would have killed him
rather than make him lie down. More than once I was astonished to see
that he was robbing me in spite of his affection for me; but he did so
from time to time. Thus he stole my Bible, which I had asked him to
carry to its place. He had only a few steps to go; but on his way he met
with a purchaser, to whom he sold the book, at once spending the money
he had received on vodka. Probably he felt that day a violent desire for
drink, and when he desired something it was necessary that he should
have it. A man like Petroff will assassinate any one for twenty-five
kopecks, simply to get himself a pint of vodka. On any other occasion he
will disdain hundreds and thousands of roubles. He told me the same
evening of the theft he had committed, but without showing the least
sign of repentance or confusion, in a perfectly indifferent tone, as
though he were speaking of an ordinary incident. I endeavoured to
reprove him as he deserved, for I regretted the loss of my Bible. He
listened to me without hesitation very calmly. He agreed that the Bible
was a very useful book, and sincerely regretted that I had it no longer;
but he was not for one moment sorry, though he had stolen it. He looked
at me with such assurance that I gave up scolding him. He bore my
reproaches because he thought I could not do otherwise than I was doing.
He knew that he ought to be punished for such an action, and
consequently thought I ought to abuse him for my own satisfaction, and
to console myself for my loss. But in his inner heart he considered
that it was all nonsense, to which a serious man ought to be ashamed to
descend. I believe even that he looked upon me as a child, an infant,
who does not yet understand the simplest things in the world. If I spoke
to him of anything, except books and matters of knowledge, he would
answer me, but only from politeness, and in laconic phrases. I wondered
what made him question me so much on the subject of books. I looked at
him carefully during our conversation to assure myself that he was not
laughing at me; but no, he listened seriously, and with an attention
which was genuine, though not always maintained. This latter
circumstance irritated me sometimes. The questions he put to me were
clear and precise, and he always seemed prepared for the answer. He had
made up his mind once for all that it was no use speaking to me as to
other matters, and that, apart from books, I understood nothing. I am
certain that he was attached to me, and much that fact astonished me;
but he looked upon me as a child, or as an imperfect man. He felt for me
that sort of compassion which every stronger being feels for a weaker;
he took me for--I do not know what he took me for. Although this
compassion did not prevent him from robbing me, I am sure that in doing
so he pitied me.
"What a strange person!" he must have said to himself, as he lay hands
on my property; "he does not even know how to take care of what he
possesses." That, I think, is why he liked me. One day he said to me as
if involuntarily:
"You are too good-natured, you are so simple, so simple that one cannot
help pitying you. Do not be offended at what I was saying to you,
Alexander Petrovitch," he added a minute afterwards, "it is not
ill-meant."
People like Petroff will sometimes, in times of trouble and excitement,
manifest themselves in a forcible manner; then they find the kind of
activity which suits them; they are not men of words; they could not be
instigators and chiefs of insurrections, but they are the men who
execute and act; they act simply without any fuss, and run just to throw
themselves against an obstacle with bared breast, neither thinking nor
fearing. Every one follows them to the foot of the wall, where they
generally leave their life. I do not think Petroff can have ended well,
he was marked for a violent end; and if he is not yet dead, that only
means that the opportunity has not yet presented itself. Who knows,
however? He will, perhaps, die of extreme old age, quite quietly, after
having wandered through life, here and there, without an object; but I
believe M---- was right, and that Petroff was the most determined man in
the whole convict prison.
CHAPTER IX.
MEN OF DETERMINATION--LUKA
It is difficult to speak of these men of determination. In the convict
prison, as elsewhere, they are rare. They can be known by the fear they
inspire; people beware of them. An irresistible feeling urged me first
of all to turn away from them, but I afterwards changed my point of
view, even in regard to the most frightful murderers. There are men who
have never killed any one, and who, nevertheless, are more atrocious
than those who have assassinated six persons. It is impossible to form
an idea of certain crimes, of so strange a nature are they.
A type of murderers that one often meets with is the following: A man
lives calmly and peacefully. His fate is a hard one, but he puts up with
it. He is a peasant attached to the soil, a domestic serf, a shopkeeper,
or a soldier. Suddenly he finds something give way within him; what he
has hitherto suffered he can bear no longer, and he plunges his knife
into the breast of his oppressor or his enemy. He then goes beyond all
measure. He has killed his oppressor, his enemy. That can be
understood--there was cause for that crime; but afterwards he does not
assassinate his enemies alone, but the first person he happens to meet
he kills for the pleasure of killing--for an abusive word, for a look,
to make an equal number, or only because some one is standing in his
way. He behaves like a drunken man--a man in a delirium. When once he
has passed the fatal line, he is himself astonished to find that nothing
sacred exists for him. He breaks through all laws, defies all powers,
and gives himself boundless license. He enjoys the agitation of his own
heart and the terror that he inspires. He knows all the same that a
frightful punishment awaits him. His sensations are probably like those
of a man who, looking down from a high tower on to the abyss yawning at
his feet, would be happy to throw himself head first into it in order to
bring everything to an end. That is what happens with even the most
quiet, the most commonplace individuals. There are some even who give
themselves airs in this extremity. The more they were quiet,
self-effacing before, the more they now swagger and seek to inspire
fear. The desperate men enjoy the horror they cause; they take pleasure
in the disgust they excite; they perform acts of madness from despair,
and care nothing how it must all end, or seem impatient that it should
end as soon as possible. The most curious thing is that their
excitement, their exaltation, will last until the pillory. After that
the thread is cut, the moment is fatal, and the man becomes suddenly
calm, or, rather, he becomes extinct, a thing without feeling. In the
pillory all his strength fails him, and he begs pardon of the people.
Once at the convict prison, he is quite different. No one would ever
imagine that this white-livered chicken had killed five or six men.
There are some men whom the convict prison does not easily subdue. They
preserve a certain swagger, a spirit of bravado.
"I say, I am not what you take me for; I have sent six fellows out of
the world," you will hear them boast; but sooner or later they have all
to submit. From time to time, the murderer will amuse himself by
recalling his audacity, his lawlessness when he was in a state of
despair. He likes at these moments to have some silly fellow before whom
he can brag, and to whom he will relate his heroic deeds, by pretending
not to have the least wish to astonish him. "That is the sort of man I
am," he says.
And with what a refinement of prudent conceit he watches him while he is
delivering his narrative! In his accent, in every word, this can be
perceived. Where did he acquire this particular kind of artfulness?
During the long evening of one of the first days of my confinement, I
was listening to one of these conversations. Thanks to my inexperience I
took the narrator for the malefactor, a man with an iron character, a
man to whom Petroff was nothing. The narrator, Luka Kouzmitch, had
"knocked over" a Major, for no other reason but that it pleased him to
do so. This Luka Kouzmitch was the smallest and thinnest man in all the
barracks. He was from the South. He had been a serf, one of those not
attached to the soil, but who serve their masters as domestics. There
was something cutting and haughty in his demeanour. He was a little
bird, but had a beak and nails. The convicts sum up a man instinctively.
They thought nothing of this one, he was too susceptible and too full of
conceit.
That evening he was stitching a shirt, seated on his camp-bedstead.
Close to him was a narrow-minded, stupid, but good-natured and obliging
fellow, a sort of Colossus, Kobylin by name. Luka often quarrelled with
him in a neighbourly way, and treated him with a haughtiness which,
thanks to his good-nature, Kobylin did not notice in the least. He was
knitting a stocking, and listening to Luka with an indifferent air. Luka
spoke in a loud voice and very distinctly. He wished every one to hear
him, though he was apparently speaking only to Kobylin.
"I was sent away," said Luka, sticking his needle in the shirt, "as a
brigand."
"How long ago?" asked Kobylin.
"When the peas are ripe it will be just a year. Well, we got to K----v,
and I was put into the convict prison. Around me there were a dozen men
from Little Russia, well-built, solid, robust fellows, like oxen, and
how quiet! The food was bad, the Major of the prison did what he liked.
One day passed, then another, and I soon saw that all these fellows were
cowards.
"'You are afraid of such an idiot?' I said to them.
"'Go and talk to him yourself,' and they burst out laughing like brutes
that they were. I held my tongue.
"There was one fellow so droll, so droll," added the narrator, now
leaving Kobylin to address all who chose to listen.
"This droll fellow was telling them how he had been tried, what he had
said, and how he had wept with hot tears.
"'There was a dog of a clerk there,' he said, 'who did nothing but write
and take down every word I said. I told him I wished him at the devil,
and he actually wrote that down. He troubled me so, that I quite lost my
head.'"
"Give me some thread, Vasili; the house thread is bad, rotten."
"There is some from the tailor's shop," replied Vasili, handing it over
to him.
"Well, but about this Major?" said Kobylin, who had been quite
forgotten.
Luka was only waiting for that. He did not go on at once with his story,
as though Kobylin were not worth such a mark of attention. He threaded
his needle quietly, bent his legs lazily beneath him, and at last
continued as follows:
"I excited the fellows to such an extent that they all called out
against the Major. That same morning I had borrowed the 'rascal' [prison
slang for knife] from my neighbour, and had hid it, so as to be ready
for anything. When the Major arrived, he was as furious as a madman.
'Come now, you Little Russians,' I whispered to them, 'this is not the
time for fear.' But, dear me, all their courage had slipped down to the
soles of their feet, they trembled! The Major came in, he was quite
drunk.
"'What is this, how do you dare? I am your Tzar, your God,' he cried.
"When he said that he was the Tzar and God, I went up to him with my
knife in my sleeve.
"'No,' I said to him, 'your high nobility,' and I got nearer and nearer
to him, 'that cannot be. Your "high nobility" cannot be our Tzar and our
God.'
"'Ah, you are the man, it is you,' cried the Major; 'you are the leader
of them.'
"'No,' I answered, and I got still nearer to him; 'no, your "high
nobility," as every one knows, and as you yourself know, the
all-powerful God present everywhere is alone in heaven. And we have only
one Tzar placed above every one else by God himself. He is our monarch,
your "high nobility." And, your "high nobility," you are as yet only
Major, and you are our chief only by the grace of the Tzar, and by your
merits.'
"'How? how? how?' stammered the Major. He could not speak, so astounded
was he.
"This is how I answered, and I threw myself upon him and thrust my knife
into his belly up to the hilt. It had been done very quickly; the Major
tottered, turned, and fell.
"I had thrown my life away.
"'Now, you fellows,' I cried, 'it is for you to pick him up.'"
I will here make a digression from my narrative. The expression, "I am
the Tzar! I am God!" and other similar ones were once, unfortunately,
too often employed in the good old times by many commanders. I must
admit that their number has seriously diminished, and perhaps even the
last has already disappeared. Let me observe that those who spoke in
this way were, above all, men promoted from the ranks. The grade of
officer had turned their brain upside down. After having laboured long
years beneath the knapsack, they suddenly found themselves officers,
commanders, and nobles above all. Thanks to their not being accustomed
to it, and to the first excitement caused by their promotion, they
contracted an exaggerated idea of their power and importance relatively
to their subordinates. Before their superiors such men are revoltingly
servile. The most fawning of them will even say to their superiors that
they have been common soldiers, and that they do not forget their place.
But towards their inferiors they are despots without mercy. Nothing
irritates the convicts so much as such abuses. These overweening
opinions of their own greatness; this exaggerated idea of their
immunity, causes hatred in the hearts of the most submissive men, and
drives the most patient to excesses. Fortunately, all this dates from a
time that is almost forgotten, and even then the superior authorities
used to deal very severely with abuses of power. I know more than one
example of it. What exasperates the convicts above all is disdain or
repugnance manifested by any one in dealing with them. Those who think
that it is only necessary to feed and clothe the prisoner, and to act
towards him in all things according to the law, are much mistaken.
However much debased he may be, a man exacts instinctively respect for
his character as a man. Every prisoner knows perfectly that he is a
convict and a reprobate, and knows the distance which separates him from
his superiors; but neither the branding irons nor chains will make him
forget that he is a man. He must, therefore, be treated with humanity.
Humane treatment may raise up one in whom the divine image has long been
obscured. It is with the "unfortunate," above all, that humane conduct
is necessary. It is their salvation, their only joy. I have met with
some chiefs of a kind and noble character, and I have seen what a
beneficent influence they exercised over the poor, humiliated men
entrusted to their care. A few affable words have a wonderful moral
effect upon the prisoners. They render them as happy as children, and
make them sincerely grateful towards their chiefs. One other
remark--they do not like their chiefs to be familiar and too much
hail-fellow-well-met with them. They wish to respect them, and
familiarity would prevent this. The prisoners will feel proud, for
instance, if their chief has a number of decorations; if he has good
manners; if he is well-considered by a powerful superior; if he is
severe, but at the same time just, and possesses a consciousness of
dignity. The convicts prefer such a man to all others. He knows what he
is worth, and does not insult others. Everything then is for the best.
"You got well skinned for that, I suppose," asked Kobylin.
"As for being skinned, indeed, there is no denying it. Ali, give me the
scissors. But, what next; are we not going to play at cards to-night?"
"The cards we drank up long ago," remarked Vassili. "If we had not sold
them to get drink they would be here now."
"If!---- Ifs fetch a hundred roubles a piece on the Moscow market."
"Well, Luka, what did you get for sticking him?" asked Kobylin.
"It brought me five hundred strokes, my friend. It did indeed. They did
all but kill me," said Luka, once more addressing the assembly and
without heeding his neighbour Kobylin. "When they gave me those five
hundred strokes, I was treated with great ceremony. I had never before
been flogged. What a mass of people came to see me! The whole town had
assembled to see the brigand, the murderer, receive his punishment. How
stupid the populace is!--I cannot tell you to what extent. Timoshka the
executioner undressed me and laid me down and cried out, 'Look out, I am
going to grill you!' I waited for the first stroke. I wanted to cry out,
but could not. It was no use opening my mouth, my voice had gone. When
he gave me the second stroke--you need not believe me unless you
please--I did not hear when they counted two. I returned to myself and
heard them count seventeen. Four times they took me down from the board
to let me breathe for half-an-hour, and to souse me with cold water. I
stared at them with my eyes starting from my head, and said to myself,
'I shall die here.'"
"But you did not die," remarked Kobylin innocently.
Luka looked at him with disdain, and every one burst out laughing.
"What an idiot! Is he wrong in the upper storey?" said Luka, as if he
regretted that he had condescended to speak to such an idiot.
"He is a little mad," said Vassili on his side.
Although Luka had killed six persons, no one was ever afraid of him in
the prison. He wished, however, to be looked upon as a terrible person.
CHAPTER X.
ISAIAH FOMITCH--THE BATH--BAKLOUCHIN.
But the Christmas holidays were approaching, and the convicts looked
forward to them with solemnity. From their mere appearance it was easy
to see that something extraordinary was about to arrive. Four days
before the holidays they were to be taken to the bath; every one was
pleased, and was making preparations. We were to go there after dinner.
On this occasion there was no work in the afternoon, and of all the
convicts the one who was most pleased, and showed the greatest activity,
was a certain Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein, a Jew, of whom I spoke in my
fifth chapter. He liked to remain stewing in the bath until he became
unconscious. Whenever I think of the prisoner's bath, which is a thing
not to be forgotten, the first thought that presents itself to my memory
is of that very glorious and eternally to be remembered, Isaiah Fomitch
Bumstein, my prison companion. Good Lord! what a strange man he was! I
have already said a few words about his face. He was fifty years of age,
his face wrinkled, with frightful scars on his cheeks and on his
forehead, and the thin, weak body of a fowl. His face expressed
perpetual confidence in himself, and, I may almost say, perfect
happiness. I do not think he was at all sorry to be condemned to hard
labour. He was a jeweller by trade, and as there was no other in the
town, he had always plenty of work to do, and was more or less well
paid. He wanted nothing, and lived, so to say, sumptuously, without
spending all that he gained, for he saved money and lent it out to the
other convicts at interest. He possessed a tea-urn, a mattress, a
tea-cup, and a blanket. The Jews of the town did not refuse him their
patronage. Every Saturday he went under escort to the synagogue (which
was authorised by the law); and he lived like a fighting cock.
Nevertheless, he looked forward to the expiration of his term of
imprisonment in order to get married. He was the most comic mixture of
simplicity, stupidity, cunning, timidity, and bashfulness; but the
strangest thing was that the convicts never laughed, or seriously mocked
him--they only teased him for amusement. Isaiah Fomitch was a subject of
distraction and amusement for every one.
"We have only one Isaiah Fomitch, we will take care of him," the
convicts seemed to say; and as if he understood this, he was proud of
his own importance. From the account given to me it appeared he had
entered the convict prison in the most laughable manner (it took place
before my arrival). Suddenly one evening a report was spread in the
convict prison that a Jew had been brought there, who at that moment was
being shaved in the guard-house, and that he was immediately afterwards
to be taken to the barracks. As there was not a single Jew in the
prison, the convicts looked forward to his entry with impatience, and
surrounded him as soon as he passed the great gates. The officer on
service took him to the civil prison, and pointed out the place where
his plank bedstead was to be.
Isaiah Fomitch held in his hand a bag containing the things given to
him, and some other things of his own. He put down his bag, took his
place at the plank bedstead, and sat down there with his legs crossed,
without daring to raise his eyes. People were laughing all round him.
The convicts ridiculed him by reason of his Jewish origin. Suddenly a
young convict left the others, and came up to him, carrying in his hand
an old pair of summer trousers, dirty, torn, and mended with old rags.
He sat down by the side of Isaiah Fomitch, and struck him on the
shoulder.
"Well, my dear fellow," said he, "I have been waiting for the last six
years; look up and tell me how much you will give for this article,"
holding up his rags before him.
Isaiah Fomitch was so dumbfounded that he did not dare to look at the
mocking crowd, with mutilated and frightful countenances, now grouped
around him, and did not speak a single word, so frightened was he. When
he saw who was speaking to him he shuddered, and began to examine the
rags carefully. Every one waited to hear his first words.
"Well, cannot you give me a silver rouble for it? It is certainly worth
that," said the would-be vendor smiling, and looking towards Isaiah
Fomitch with a wink.
"A silver rouble! no; but I will give you seven kopecks."
These were the first words pronounced by Isaiah Fomitch in the convict
prison. A loud laugh was heard from all sides.
"Seven kopecks! Well, give them to me; you are lucky, you are indeed.
Look! Take care of the pledge, you answer for it with your head."
"With three kopecks for interest; that will make ten kopecks you will
owe me," said the Jew, at the same time slipping his hand into his
pocket to get out the sum agreed upon.
"Three kopecks interest--for a year?"
"No, not for a year, for a month."
"You are a terrible screw, what is your name?"
"Isaiah Fomitch."
"Well, Isaiah Fomitch, you ought to get on. Good-bye."
The Jew examined once more the rags on which he had lent seven kopecks,
folded them up, and put them carefully away in his bag. The convicts
continued to laugh at him.
In reality every one laughed at him, but, although every prisoner owed
him money, no one insulted him; and when he saw that every one was well
disposed towards him, he gave himself haughty airs, but so comic that
they were at once forgiven.
Luka, who had known many Jews when he was at liberty, often teased him,
less from malice than for amusement, as one plays with a dog or a
parrot. Isaiah Fomitch knew this and did not take offence.
"You will see, Jew, how I will flog you."
"If you give me one blow I will return you ten," replied Isaiah Fomitch
valiantly.
"Scurvy Jew."
"As scurvy as you like; I have in any case plenty of money."
"Bravo! Isaiah Fomitch. We must take care of you. You are the only Jew
we have; but they will send you to Siberia all the same."
"I am already in Siberia."
"They will send you farther on."
"Is not the Lord God there?"
"Of course, he is everywhere."
"Well, then! With the Lord God, and money, one has all that is
necessary."
"What a fellow he is!" cries every one around him.
The Jew sees that he is being laughed at, but does not lose courage. He
gives himself airs. The flattery addressed to him causes him much
pleasure, and with a high, squealing falsetto, which is heard throughout
the barracks, he begins to sing, "la, la, la, la," to an idiotic and
ridiculous tune; the only song he was heard to sing during his stay at
the convict prison. When he made my acquaintance, he assured me solemnly
that it was the song, and the very air, that was sung by 600,000 Jews,
small and great, when they crossed the Red Sea, and that every Israelite
was ordered to sing it after a victory gained over an enemy.
The eve of each Saturday the convicts came from the other barracks to
ours, expressly to see Isaiah Fomitch celebrating his Sabbath. He was so
vain, so innocently conceited, that this general curiosity flattered him
immensely. He covered the table in his little corner with a pedantic
air of importance, opened a book, lighted two candles, muttered some
mysterious words, and clothed himself in a kind of chasuble, striped,
and with sleeves, which he preserved carefully at the bottom of his
trunk. He fastened to his hands leather bracelets, and finally attached
to his forehead, by means of a ribbon, a little box, which made it seem
as if a horn were starting from his head. He then began to pray. He read
in a drawling voice, cried out, spat, and threw himself about with wild
and comic gestures. All this was prescribed by the ceremonies of his
religion. There was nothing laughable or strange in it, except the airs
which Isaiah Fomitch gave himself before us in performing his
ceremonies. Then he suddenly covered his head with both hands, and began
to read with many sobs. His tears increased, and in his grief he almost
lay down upon the book his head with the ark upon it, howling as he did
so; but suddenly in the midst of his despondent sobs he burst into a
laugh, and recited with a nasal twang a hymn of triumph, as if he were
overcome by an excess of happiness.
"Impossible to understand it," the convicts would sometimes say to one
another. One day I asked Isaiah Fomitch what these sobs signified, and
why he passed so suddenly from despair to triumphant happiness. Isaiah
Fomitch was very pleased when I asked him these questions. He explained
to me directly that the sobs and tears were provoked by the loss of
Jerusalem, and that the law ordered the pious Jew to groan and strike
his breast; but at the moment of his most acute grief he was suddenly to
remember that a prophecy had foretold the return of the Jews to
Jerusalem, and he was then to manifest overflowing joy, to sing, to
laugh, and to recite his prayers with an expression of happiness in his
voice and on his countenance. This sudden passage from one phase of
feeling to another delighted Isaiah Fomitch, and he explained to me this
ingenious prescription of his faith with the greatest satisfaction.
One evening, in the midst of his prayers, the Major entered, followed by
the officer of the guard and an escort of soldiers. All the prisoners
got immediately into line before their camp-bedsteads. Isaiah Fomitch
alone continued to shriek and gesticulate. He knew that his worship was
authorised, and that no one could interrupt him, so that in howling in
the presence of the Major he ran no risk. It pleased him to throw
himself about beneath the eyes of the chief.
The Major approached within a few steps. Isaiah Fomitch turned his back
to the table, and just in front of the officer began to sing his hymn of
triumph, gesticulating and drawling out certain syllables. When he came
to the part where he had to assume an expression of extreme happiness,
he did so by blinking with his eyes, at the same time laughing and
nodding his head in the direction of the Major. The latter was at first
much astonished; then he burst into a laugh, called out, "Idiot!" and
went away, while the Jew still continued to shriek. An hour later, when
he had finished, I asked him what he would have done if the Major had
been wicked enough and foolish enough to lose his temper.
"What Major?"
"What Major! Did you not see him? He was only two steps from you, and
was looking at you all the time." But Isaiah Fomitch assured me as
seriously as possible that he had not seen the Major, for while he was
saying his prayers he was in such a state of ecstasy that he neither saw
nor heard anything that was taking place around him.
I can see Isaiah Fomitch wandering about on Saturday throughout the
prison, endeavouring to do nothing, as the law prescribes to every Jew.
What improbable anecdotes he told me! Every time he returned from the
synagogue he always brought me some news of St. Petersburg, and the most
absurd rumours imaginable from his fellow Jews of the town, who
themselves had received them at first hand. But I have already spoken
too much of Isaiah Fomitch.
In the whole town there were only two public baths. The first, kept by a
Jew, was divided into compartments, for which one paid fifty kopecks. It
was frequented by the aristocracy of the town.
The other bath, old, dirty, and close, was destined for the people. It
was there that the convicts were taken. The air was cold and clear. The
prisoners were delighted to get out of the fortress and have a walk
through the town. During the walk their laughter and jokes never ceased.
A platoon of soldiers, with muskets loaded, accompanied us. It was quite
a sight for the town's-people. When we had reached our destination, the
bath was so small that it did not permit us all to enter at once. We
were divided into two bands, one of which waited in the cold room while
the other one bathed in the hot one. Even then, so narrow was the room
that it was difficult for us to understand how half of the convicts
could stand together in it.
Petroff kept close to me. He remained by my side without my having
begged him to do so, and offered to rub me down. Baklouchin, a convict
of the special section, offered me at the same time his services. I
recollect this prisoner, who was called the "Sapper," as the gayest and
most agreeable of all my companions. We had become intimate friends.
Petroff helped me to undress, because I was generally a long time
getting my things off, not being yet accustomed to the operation; and it
was almost as cold in the dressing-room as outside the doors.
It is very difficult for a convict who is still a novice to get his
things off, for he must know how to undo the leather straps which fasten
on the chains. These leather straps are buckled over the shirt, just
beneath the ring which encloses the leg. One pair of straps costs sixty
kopecks, and each convict is obliged to get himself a pair, for it would
be impossible to walk without their assistance. The ring does not
enclose the leg too tightly. One can pass the finger between the iron
and the flesh; but the ring rubs against the calf, so that in a single
day the convict who walks without leather straps, gets his skin broken.
To take off the straps presents no difficulty. It is not the same with
the clothes. To get the trousers off is in itself a prodigious
operation, and the same may be said of the shirt whenever it has to be
changed. The first who gave us lessons in this art was Koreneff, a
former chief of brigands, condemned to be chained up for five years. The
convicts are very skilful at the work, and do it readily.
I gave a few kopecks to Petroff to buy soap and a bunch of the twigs
with which one rubs oneself in the bath. Bits of soap were given to the
convicts, but they were not larger than pieces of two kopecks. The soap
was sold in the dressing-room, as well as mead, cakes of white flour,
and boiling water; for each convict received but one pailful, according
to the agreement made between the proprietor of the bath and the
administration of the prison. The convicts who wished to make themselves
thoroughly clean, could for two kopecks buy another pailful, which the
proprietor handed to them through a window pierced in the wall for that
purpose. As soon as I was undressed, Petroff took me by the arm and
observed to me that I should find it difficult to walk with my chains.
"Drag them up on to your calves," he said to me, holding me by the arms
at the same time, as if I were an old man. I was ashamed at his care,
and assured him that I could walk well enough by myself, but he did not
believe me. He paid me the same attention that one gives to an awkward
child. Petroff was not a servant in any sense of the word. If I had
offended him, he would have known how to deal with me. I had promised
him nothing for his assistance, nor had he asked me for anything. What
inspired him with so much solicitude for me?
Represent to yourself a room of twelve feet long by as many broad, in
which a hundred men are all crowded together, or at least eighty, for we
were in all two hundred divided into two sections. The steam blinded us;
the sweat, the dirt, the want of space, were such that we did not know
where to put a foot down. I was frightened and wished to go out. Petroff
hastened to reassure me. With great trouble we succeeded in raising
ourselves on to the benches, by passing over the heads of the convicts,
whom we begged to bend down, in order to let us pass; but all the
benches were already occupied. Petroff informed me that I must buy a
place, and at once entered into negotiations with the convict who was
near the window. For a kopeck this man consented to cede me his place.
After receiving the money, which Petroff held tight in his hand, and
which he had prudently provided himself with beforehand, the man crept
just beneath me into a dark and dirty corner. There was there, at least,
half an inch of filth; even the places above the benches were occupied,
the convicts swarmed everywhere. As for the floor there was not a place
as big as the palm of the hand which was not occupied by the convicts.
They sent the water in spouts out of their pails. Those who were
standing up washed themselves pail in hand, and the dirty water ran all
down their body to fall on the shaved heads of those who were sitting
down. On the upper bench, and the steps which led to it, were heaped
together other convicts who washed themselves more thoroughly, but these
were in small number. The populace does not care to wash with soap and
water, it prefers stewing in a horrible manner, and then inundating
itself with cold water. That is how the common people take their bath.
On the floor could be seen fifty bundles of rods rising and falling at
the same time, the holders were whipping themselves into a state of
intoxication. The steam became thicker and thicker every minute, so that
what one now felt was not a warm but a burning sensation, as from
boiling pitch. The convicts shouted and howled to the accompaniment of
the hundred chains shaking on the floor. Those who wished to pass from
one place to another got their chains mixed up with those of their
neighbours, and knocked against the heads of the men who were lower down
than they. Then there were volleys of oaths as those who fell dragged
down the ones whose chains had become entangled in theirs. They were all
in a state of intoxication of wild exultation. Cries and shrieks were
heard on all sides. There was much crowding and crushing at the window
of the dressing-room through which the hot water was delivered, and
much of it got spilt over the heads of those who were seated on the
floor before it arrived at its destination. We seemed to be fully at
liberty; and yet from time to time, behind the window of the
dressing-room, or through the open door, could be seen the moustached
face of a soldier, with his musket at his feet, watching that no serious
disorder took place.
The shaved heads of the convicts, and their red bodies, which the steam
made the colour of blood, seemed more monstrous than ever. On their
backs, made scarlet by the steam, stood out in striking relief the scars
left by the whips and the rods, made long before, but so thoroughly that
the flesh seemed to have been quite recently torn. Strange scars. A
shudder passed through me at the mere sight of them. Again the volume of
steam increased, and the bath-room was now covered with a thick, burning
cloud, covering agitation and cries. From this cloud stood out torn
backs, shaved heads; and, to complete the picture, Isaiah Fomitch
howling with joy on the highest of the benches. He was saturating
himself with steam. Any other man would have fainted away, but no
temperature is too high for him; he engages the services of a rubber for
a kopeck, but after a few moments the latter is unable to continue,
throws away his bunch of twigs, and runs to inundate himself with cold
water. Isaiah Fomitch does not lose courage, he runs to hire a second
rubber, then a third; on these occasions he thinks nothing of expense,
and changes his rubber four or five times. "He stews well, the gallant
Isaiah Fomitch," cry the convicts from below. The Jew feels that he goes
beyond all the others, he has beaten them; he triumphs with his hoarse
falsetto voice, and sings out his favourite air which rises above the
general hubbub. It seemed to me that if ever we met in hell we should be
reminded of the place where we then were. I could not resist a wish to
communicate this idea to Petroff. He looked all round him, but made no
answer.
I wished to buy a place for him on the bench by my side; but he sat
down at my feet and declared that he felt quite at his ease. Baklouchin
meanwhile bought us some hot water which he would bring to us as soon as
we wanted it. Petroff offered to clean me from head to foot, and he
begged me to go through the preliminary stewing process. I could not
make up my mind to it. At last he rubbed me all over with soap. I wished
to make him understand that I could wash myself, but it was no use
contradicting him and I gave myself up to him.
When he had done with me he took me back to the dressing-room, holding
me up, and telling me at each step to take care, as if I had been made
of porcelain. He helped me to put on my clothes, and when he had
finished his kindly work he rushed back to the bath to have a thorough
stewing.
When we got back to the barracks I offered him a glass of tea, which he
did not refuse. He drank it and thanked me. I wished to go to the
expense of a glass of vodka in his honour, and I succeeded in getting it
on the spot. Petroff was exceedingly pleased. He swallowed his vodka
with a murmur of satisfaction, declared that I had restored him to life,
and then suddenly rushed to the kitchen, as if the people who were
talking there could not decide anything important without him.
Now another man came up for a talk. This was Baklouchin, of whom I have
already spoken, and whom I had also invited to take tea.
I never knew a man of a more agreeable disposition than Baklouchin. It
must be admitted that he never forgave a wrong, and that he often got
into quarrels. He could not, above all, endure people interfering with
his affairs. He knew, in a word, how to take care of himself; but his
quarrels never lasted long, and I believe that all the convicts liked
him. Wherever he went he was well received. Even in the town he was
looked upon as the most amusing man in the world. He was a man of lofty
stature, thirty years old, with a frank, determined countenance, and
rather good-looking, with his tuft of hair on his chin. He possessed the
art of changing his face in such a comic manner by imitating the first
person he happened to see, that the people around him were constantly in
a roar. He was a professed joker, but he never allowed himself to be
slighted by those who did not enjoy his fun. Accordingly, no one spoke
disparagingly of him. He was full of life and fire. He made my
acquaintance at the very beginning of my imprisonment, and related to me
his military career, when he was a sapper in the Engineers, where he had
been placed as a favour by people of influence. He put a number of
questions to me about St. Petersburg; he even read books when he came to
take tea with me. He amused the whole company by relating how roughly
Lieutenant K---- had that morning handled the Major. He told me,
moreover, with a satisfied air, as he took his seat by my side, that we
should probably have a theatrical representation in the prison. The
convicts proposed to get up a play during the Christmas holidays. The
necessary actors were found, and, little by little, the scenery was
prepared. Some persons in the town had promised to lend women's clothes
for the performance. Some hopes were even entertained of obtaining,
through the medium of an officer's servant, a uniform with epaulettes,
provided only the Major did not take it into his head to forbid the
performance, as he had done the previous year. He was at that time in
ill-humour through having lost at cards, and he had been annoyed at
something that had taken place in the prison. Accordingly, in a fit of
ill-humour, he had forbidden the performance. It was possible, however,
that this year he would not prevent it. Baklouchin was in a state of
exultation. It could be seen that he would be one of the principal
supporters of the meditated theatre. I made up my mind to be present at
the performance. The ingenuous joy which Baklouchin manifested in
speaking of the undertaking was quite touching. From whispering, we
gradually got to talk of the matter quite openly. He told me, among
other things, that he had not served at St. Petersburg alone. He had
been sent to R---- with the rank of non-commissioned officer in a
garrison battalion.
"From there they sent me on here," added Baklouchin.
"And why?" I asked him.
"Why? You would never guess, Alexander Petrovitch. Because I was in
love."
"Come now. A man is not exiled for that," I said, with a laugh.
"I should have added," continued Baklouchin, "that it made me kill a
German with a pistol-shot. Was it worth while to send me to hard labour
for killing a German? Only think."
"How did it happen? Tell me the story. It must be a strange one."
"An amusing story indeed, Alexander Petrovitch."
"So much the better. Tell me."
"You wish me to do so? Well, then, listen."
And he told me the story of his murder. It was not "amusing," but it was
indeed strange.
"This is how it happened," began Baklouchin; "I had been sent to Riga, a
fine, handsome city, which has only one fault, there are too many
Germans there. I was still a young man, and I had a good character with
my officers. I wore my cap cocked on the side of my head, and passed my
time in the most agreeable manner. I made love to the German girls. One
of them, named Luisa, pleased me very much. She and her aunt were
getters-up of fine linen. The old woman was a true caricature; but she
had money. First of all I merely passed under the young girl's windows;
but I soon made her acquaintance. Luisa spoke Russian well enough,
though with a slight accent. She was charming. I never saw any one like
her. I was most pressing in my advances; but she only replied that she
would preserve her innocence, that as a wife she might prove worthy of
me. She was an affectionate, smiling girl, and wonderfully neat. In
fact, I assure you, I never saw any one like her. She herself had
suggested that I should marry her, and how was I not to marry her?
Suddenly Luisa did not come to her appointment. This happened once, then
twice, then a third time. I sent her a letter, but she did not reply.
'What is to be done?' I said to myself. If she had been deceiving me she
could easily have taken me in. She could have answered my letter and
come all the same to the appointment; but she was incapable of
falsehood. She had simply broken off with me. 'This is a trick of the
aunt,' I said to myself. I was afraid to go to her house.
"Even though she was aware of our engagement, we acted as if she were
ignorant of it. I wrote a fine letter in which I said to Luisa, 'If you
don't come, I will come to your aunt's for you.' She was afraid and
came. Then she began to weep, and told me that a German named Schultz, a
distant relation of theirs, a clockmaker by trade, and of a certain age,
but rich, had shown a wish to marry her--in order to make her happy, as
he said, and that he himself might not remain without a wife in his old
age. He had loved her a long time, so she told me, and had been
nourishing this idea for years, but he had kept it a secret, and had
never ventured to speak out. 'You see, Sasha,' she said to me, 'that it
is a question of my happiness; for he is rich, and would you prevent my
happiness?' I looked her in the face, she wept, embraced me, clasped me
in her arms.
"'Well, she is quite right,' I said to myself, 'what good is there in
marrying a soldier--even a non-commissioned officer? Come, farewell,
Luisa. God protect you. I have no right to prevent your happiness.'
"'And what sort of a man is he? Is he good-looking?'
"'No, he is old, and he has such a long nose.'
"She here burst into a fit of laughter. I left her. 'It was my destiny,'
I said to myself. The next day I passed by Schultz' shop (she had told
me where he lived). I looked through the window and saw a German, who
was arranging a watch, forty-five years of age, an aquiline nose,
swollen eyes, a dress-coat with a very high collar. I spat with contempt
as I looked at him. At that moment I was ready to break the shop
windows, but 'What is the use of it?' I said to myself; 'there is
nothing more to be done: it is over, all over.' I got back to the
barracks as the night was falling, and stretched myself out on my bed,
and--will you believe it, Alexander Petrovitch?--began to sob--yes, to
sob. One day passed, then a second, then a third. I saw Luisa no more. I
had learned, however, from an old woman (she was also a washerwoman, and
the girl I loved used sometimes to visit her), that this German knew of
our relations, and that for that reason he had made up his mind to marry
her as soon as possible, otherwise he would have waited two years
longer. He had made Luisa swear that she would see me no more. It
appeared that on account of me he had refused to loosen his
purse-strings, and kept Luisa and her aunt very close. Perhaps he would
yet change his idea, for he was not very resolute. The old woman told me
that he had invited them to take coffee with him the next day, a Sunday,
and that another relation, a former shopkeeper, now very poor, and an
assistant in some liquor store, would also come. When I found that the
business was to be settled on Sunday, I was so furious that I could not
recover my cold blood, and the following day I did nothing but reflect.
I believe I could have devoured that German. On Sunday morning I had not
come to any decision. As soon as the service was over I ran out, got
into my great-coat, and went to the house of this German. I thought I
should find them all there. Why I went to the German, and what I meant
to say to him, I did not know myself.
"I slipped a pistol into my pocket to be ready for everything; a little
pistol which was not worth a curse, with an old-fashioned lock--a thing
I had used when I was a boy, and which was really fit for nothing. I
loaded it, however, because I thought they would try to kick me out, and
that the German would insult me, in which case I would pull out my
pistol to frighten them all. I arrived. There was no one on the
staircase; they were all in the work-room. No servant. The one girl who
waited upon them was absent. I crossed the shop and saw that the door
was closed--an old door fastened from the inside. My heart beat; I
stopped and listened. They were speaking German. I broke open the door
with a kick. I looked round. The table was laid; there was a large
coffee-pot on it, with a spirit lamp underneath, and a plate of
biscuits. On a tray there was a small decanter of brandy, herrings,
sausages, and a bottle of some wine. Luisa and her aunt, both in their
Sunday best, were seated on a sofa. Opposite them, the German was
exhibiting himself on a chair, got up like a bridegroom, and in his coat
with the high collar, and with his hair carefully combed. On the other
side, there was another German, old, fat, and gray. He was taking no
part in the conversation. When I entered, Luisa turned very pale. The
aunt sprang up with a bound and sat down again. The German became angry.
What a rage he was in! He got up, and walking towards me, said:
"'What do you want?'
"I should have lost my self-possession if anger had not supported me.
"'What do I want? Is this the way to receive a guest? Why do you not
offer him something to drink? I have come to pay you a visit.'
"The German reflected a moment, and then said, 'Sit down.'
"I sat down.
"'Here is some vodka. Help yourself, I beg.'
"'And let it be good,' I cried, getting more and more into a rage.
"'It is good.'
"I was enraged to see him looking at me from top to toe. The most
frightful part of it was, that Luisa was looking on. I took a drink and
said to him:
"'Look here, German, what business have you to speak rudely to me? Let
us be better acquainted. I have come to see you as friends.'
"'I cannot be your friend,' he replied. 'You are a private soldier.'
"Then I lost all self-command.
"'Oh, you German! You sausage-seller! You know how much you are in my
power. Look here; do you wish me to break your head with this pistol?'
"I drew out my pistol, got up, and struck him on the forehead. The
women were more dead than alive; they were afraid to breathe. The eldest
of the two men, quite white, was trembling like a leaf.
"The German seemed much astonished. But he soon recovered himself.
"'I am not afraid of you,' he said, 'and I beg of you, as a well-bred
man, to put an end to this pleasantry. I am not afraid of you!'
"'You are afraid! You dare not move while this pistol is presented at
you.'
"'You dare not do such a thing!' he cried.
"'And why should I not dare?'
"'Because you would be severely punished.'
"May the devil take that idiot of a German! If he had not urged me on,
he would have been alive now.
"'So you think I dare not?'
"'No.'
"'I dare not, you think?'
"'You would not dare!'
"'Wouldn't I, sausage-maker?' I fired the pistol, and down he sank on
his chair. The others uttered shrieks. I put back my pistol in my
pocket, and when I returned to the fortress, threw it among some weeds
near the principal entrance.
"Inside the barracks I laid on my bed, and said to myself, 'I shall be
taken away soon.' One hour passed, then another, but I was not arrested.
"Towards evening I felt so sad, I went out at all hazards to see Luisa;
I passed before the house of the clockmaker's. There were a number of
people there, including the police. I ran on to the old woman's and
said:
"'Call Luisa!'
"I had only a moment to wait. She came immediately, and threw herself on
my neck in tears.
"'It is my fault,' she said. 'I should not have listened to my aunt.'
"She then told me that her aunt, immediately after the scene, had gone
back home. She was in such a fright that she fell and did not speak a
word; she had uttered nothing. On the contrary, she ordered her niece
to be as silent as herself.
"'No one has seen her since,' said Luisa.
"The clockmaker had previously sent his servant away, for he was afraid
of her. She was jealous, and would have scratched his eyes out had she
known that he wished to get married.
"There were no workmen in the house, he had sent them all away; he had
himself prepared the coffee and collation. As for the relation, who had
scarcely spoken a word all his life, he took his hat, and, without
opening his mouth, went away.
"'He is quite sure to be silent,' added Luisa.
"So, indeed, he was. For two weeks no one arrested me nor suspected me
the least in the world.
"You need not believe me unless you choose, Alexander Petrovitch.
"These two weeks were the happiest in my life. I saw Luisa every day.
And how much she had become attached to me!
"She said to me through her tears: 'If you are exiled, I will go with
you. I will leave everything to follow you.'
"I thought of making away with myself, so much had she moved me; but
after two weeks I was arrested. The old man and the aunt had agreed to
denounce me."
"But," I interrupted, "Baklouchin, for that they would only have given
you from ten to twelve years' hard labour, and in the civil section; yet
you are in the special section. How does that happen?"
"That is another affair," said Baklouchin. "When I was taken before the
Council of War, the captain appointed to conduct the case began by
insulting me, and calling me names before the Tribunal. I could not
stand it, and shouted out to him: 'Why do you insult me? Don't you see,
you scoundrel! that you are only looking at yourself in the glass?'
"This brought a new charge against me. I was tried a second time, and
for the two things was condemned to four thousand strokes, and to the
special section. When I was taken out to receive my punishment in the
_Green Street_, the captain was at the same time sent away. He had been
degraded from his rank, and was despatched to the Caucasus as a private
soldier. Good-bye, Alexander Petrovitch. Don't fail to come to our
performance."
CHAPTER XI.
THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS
The holidays were approaching. On the eve of the great day the convicts
scarcely ever went to work. Those who had been assigned to the sewing
workshops, and a few others, went to work as usual; but they went back
almost immediately to the convict prison, separately, or in parties.
After dinner no one worked. From the early morning the greater part of
the convicts were occupied with their own affairs, and not with those of
the administration. Some were making arrangements for bringing in
spirits, while others were seeking permission to see their friends, or
to collect small accounts due to them for the work they had already
executed. Baklouchin, and the convicts who were to take part in the
performance, were endeavouring to persuade some of their acquaintances,
nearly all officers' servants, to procure for them the necessary
costumes. Some of them came and went with a business-like air, solely
because others were really occupied. They had no money to receive, and
yet seemed to expect a payment. Every one, in short, seemed to be
looking for a change of some kind. Towards evening the old soldiers,
who executed the convicts' commissions, brought them all kinds of
victuals--meat, sucking-pigs, and geese. Many prisoners, even the most
simple and most economical, after saving up their kopecks throughout the
year, thought they ought to spend some of them that day, so as to
celebrate Christmas Eve in a worthy manner. The day afterwards was for
the convicts a still greater festival, one to which they had a right, as
it was recognised by law. The prisoners could not be sent to work that
day. There were not three days like it in all the year.
And, moreover, what recollections must have been agitating the souls of
those reprobates at the approach of such a solemn day! The common people
from their childhood kept the great festival in their memory. They must
have remembered with anguish and torments these days which, work being
laid aside, are passed in the bosom of the family. The respect of the
convicts for that day had something imposing about it. The drunkards
were not at all numerous; nearly every one was serious, and, so to say,
preoccupied, though they had for the most part nothing to do. Even those
who feasted most preserved a serious air. Laughter seemed to be
forbidden. A sort of intolerant susceptibility reigned throughout the
prison; and if any one interfered with the general repose, even
involuntarily, he was soon put in his proper place, with cries and
oaths. He was condemned as though he had been wanting in respect to the
festival itself.
This disposition of the convicts was remarkable, and even touching.
Besides the innate veneration they have for this great day, they foresee
that in observing the festival they are in communion with the rest of
the world; that they are not altogether reprobates lost and cast off by
society. The usual rejoicings took place in the convict prison as well
as outside. They felt all that. I saw it, and understood it myself.
Akim Akimitch had made great preparations for the festival. He had no
family recollections, being an orphan, born in a strange house, and put
into the army at the age of fifteen. He could never have experienced any
great joys, having always lived regularly and uniformly in the fear of
infringing the rules imposed upon him, nor was he very religious; for
his acquired formality had stifled in him all human feeling, all
passions and likings, good or bad. He accordingly prepared to keep
Christmas without exciting himself about it. He was saddened by no
painful, useless recollection. He did everything with the punctuality
imposed upon him in the execution of his duties, and in order once for
all to get through the ceremony in a becoming manner. Moreover, he did
not care to reflect upon the importance of the day, had never troubled
his brain about it, even while he was executing his prescribed duties
with religious minuteness. If he had been ordered the day following to
do contrary to what he had done the evening before he would have done it
with equal submission. Once in life, once, and once only, he had wished
to act by his own impulse--and he had been sent to hard labour for it.
This lesson had not been lost upon him, although it was written that he
was never to understand his fault. He had yet become impressed with this
salutary moral principle: never to reason in any matter because his mind
was not equal to the task of judging. Blindly devoted to ceremonies, he
looked with respect at the sucking-pig which he had stuffed with
millet-seed, and which he had roasted himself (for he had some culinary
skill), just as if it had not been an ordinary sucking-pig which could
have been bought and roasted at any time, but a particular kind of
animal born specially for Christmas Day. Perhaps he had been accustomed
from his tender infancy to see that day a sucking-pig on the table, and
he may have concluded that a sucking-pig was indispensable for the
proper celebration of the festival. I am certain that if by ill-luck he
had not eaten this particular kind of meat on that day, he would have
been troubled with remorse all his life for not having done his duty.
Until Christmas morning he wore his old vest and his old trousers, which
had long been threadbare. I then learned that he kept carefully in his
box his new clothes which had been given to him four months before, and
that he had not put them on once, in order that he might wear them for
the first time on Christmas Day. He did so. The evening before he took
his new clothes out of his trunk, unfolded, examined them, cleaned them,
blew on them to remove the dust, and when he was convinced that they
were perfect, probably tried them on. The dress became him perfectly;
all the different garments suited one another. The waistcoat buttoned up
to the neck, the collar, straight and stiff like cardboard, kept his
chin in its proper place. There was a military cut about the dress; and
Akim Akimitch, as he wore it, smiled with satisfaction, turning himself
round and round, not without swagger, before a little mirror adorned
with a gilt border.
One of the waistcoat-buttons alone seemed out of place; Akim Akimitch
remarked it, and at once set it right. He tried on the vest again and
found it irreproachable. Then he folded up his things as before, and
with a satisfied mind locked them up in his box until the next day. His
skull was sufficiently shaved; but, after careful examination, Akim
Akimitch came to the conclusion that it was not in good condition, his
hair had imperceptibly sprung up. He accordingly went immediately to the
"Major" to be properly shaved according to the rules. In reality no one
would have dreamed of looking at him next day, but he was acting
conscientiously in order to fulfil all his duties. This care lest the
smallest button, the least thread of an epaulette, the slightest string
of a tassel should go wrong, was engraved in his mind as an imperious
duty, and in his heart as the image of the most perfect order that could
possibly be attained. As one of the "old hands" in the barracks, he saw
that hay was brought and strewed about on the floor; the same thing was
done in the other barracks. I do not know why, but hay was always
strewed on the ground at Christmas time.
As soon as Akim Akimitch had finished his work he said his prayers,
stretched himself on his bed, and went to sleep, with the sleep of a
child, in order to wake up as early as possible the next day. The other
convicts did the same. It must be added that all of them went to bed,
but sooner than usual. They gave up their ordinary evening work that
day. As for playing cards, no one would have dared even to speak of such
a thing; every one was anxiously expecting the next morning.
At last this morning arrived. At an early hour, even before it was
light, the drum was sounded, and the under officer, whose duty it was to
count the convicts, wished them a happy Christmas. The prisoners
answered him in an affable and amiable tone by expressing a like wish.
Akim Akimitch, and many others, who had their geese and their
sucking-pigs, went to the kitchen, after saying their prayers, in a
hurried manner to see where their victuals were and how they were being
cooked.
Through the little windows of our barracks, half hidden by the snow and
the ice, could be seen, flaring in the darkness, the bright fire of the
two kitchens where six stoves had been lighted. In the court-yard, where
it was still dark, the convicts, each with a half pelisse round his
shoulders, or perhaps fully dressed, were hurrying towards the kitchen.
Some of them, meanwhile--a very small number--had already visited the
drink-sellers. They were the impatient ones, but they behaved
becomingly, possibly much better than on ordinary days; neither quarrels
nor insults were heard, every one understood that it was a great day, a
great festival. The convicts went even to visit the other barracks in
order to wish the inmates a happy Christmas; that day a sort of
friendship seemed to exist between them all. I will remark in passing
that the convicts have scarcely ever any intimate friendships. It was
very rare to see a man on confidential terms with any other man, as, in
the outer world. We were generally harsh and abrupt in our mutual
relations. With some rare exceptions this was the general tone adopted
and maintained.
I went out of the barracks like the others. It was beginning to get
late. The stars were paling, a light, icy mist was rising from the
earth, and spirals of smoke were ascending in curls from the chimneys.
Several convicts whom I met wished me, with affability, a happy
Christmas. I thanked them and returned their wishes. Some of them had
never spoken to me before.
Near the kitchen, a convict from the military barracks, with his
sheepskin on his shoulder, came up to me. Recognising me, he called out
from the middle of the court-yard, "Alexander Petrovitch." He ran
towards me. I waited for him. He was a young fellow, with a round face
and soft eyes, and not at all communicative as a rule. He had not spoken
to me since my arrival, and seemed never to have noticed me. I did not
know on my side what his name was. When he came up, he remained planted
before me, smiling with a vacuous smile, but with a happy expression of
countenance.
"What do you want?" I asked, not without astonishment.
He remained standing before me, still smiling and staring, but without
replying to my question.
"Why, it is Christmas Day," he muttered.
He understood that he had nothing more to say, and now hastened into the
kitchen.
I must add that, after this we scarcely ever met, and that we never
spoke to one another again.
Round the flaming stoves of the kitchen the convicts were rubbing and
pushing against one another. Every one was watching his own property.
The cooks were preparing the dinner, which was to take place a little
earlier than usual. No one began to eat before the time, though a good
many wished to do so; but it was necessary to be well-behaved before the
others. We were waiting for the priest, and the fast preceding Christmas
would not be at an end until his arrival.
It was not yet perfectly light, when the corporal was already heard
shouting out from behind the principal gate of the prison:
"The kitchen; the kitchen."
These calls were repeated without interruption for about two hours. The
cooks were wanted in order to receive gifts brought from all parts of
the town in enormous numbers; loaves of white bread, scones, rusks,
pancakes, and pastry of various kinds. I do not think there was a
shop-keeper in the whole town who did not send something to the
"unfortunates." Amongst these gifts there were some magnificent ones,
including a good many cakes of the finest flour. There were also some
very poor ones, such as rolls worth two kopecks a piece, and a couple of
brown rolls, covered lightly over with sour cream. These were the
offerings of the poor to the poor, on which a last kopeck had often been
spent.
All these gifts were accepted with equal gratitude, without reference to
the value or the giver. The convicts, on receiving the offerings, took
off their caps and thanked the donors with low bows, wishing them a
happy Christmas, and then carried the things to the kitchen.
When a number of loaves and cakes had been collected, the elders of each
barrack were called, and it was for them to divide the whole in equal
portions among all the sections. The division excited neither protest
nor annoyance. It was made honestly, equitably. Akim Akimitch, helped by
another prisoner, divided between the convicts of our barracks the share
assigned to us, and gave to each of us what came to him. Every one was
satisfied. No objection was made by any one. There was not the least
manifestation of envy, and it occurred to no one to deceive another.
When Akim Akimitch had finished at the kitchen, he proceeded religiously
to dress himself, and did so with a solemn air. He buttoned up his
waistcoat button by button, in the most punctilious manner. Then, when
he had got his new clothes on, he went to pray, which occupied him a
considerable time. Numbers of convicts fulfilled their religious duties,
but these were for the most part old men. The young men scarcely ever
prayed. The most they did was to make the sign of the cross when they
rose from table, and that happened only on festival days.
Akim Akimitch came up to me as soon as he had finished his prayer, to
express to me the usual good wishes. I invited him to have some tea, and
he returned my politeness by offering me some of his sucking-pig. After
some time Petroff came up to address to me the usual compliments. I
think he had been already drinking, and although he seemed to have much
to say, he scarcely spoke. He stood up before me for some seconds, and
then went back to the kitchen. The priest was now expected in the
military section of the barracks. This section was not constructed like
the others. The camp-bedsteads were arranged all along the wall, and not
in the middle of the room as in all the others, so that it was the only
one in which the middle was not obstructed. It had been probably
arranged in this manner so that in case of necessity it might be easier
to assemble the convicts. A small table had been prepared in the middle
of the room, and a holy image placed upon it, before which burned a
little lamp.
At last the priest arrived, with the cross and holy water. He prayed and
chanted before the image, and then turned towards the convicts, who one
after the other came and kissed the cross. The priest then walked
through all the barracks, sprinkling them with holy water. When he got
to the kitchen he praised the bread of the convict prison, which had
quite a reputation in town. The convicts at once expressed a desire to
send him two loaves of new bread, still hot, which an old soldier was
ordered to take to his house forthwith. The convicts walked back after
the cross with the same respect as they had received it. Almost
immediately afterwards, the Major and the Commandant arrived. The
Commandant was liked, and even respected. He made the tour of the
barracks in company with the Major, wished the convicts a happy
Christmas, went into the kitchen, and tasted the cabbage soup. It was
excellent that day. Each convict was entitled to nearly a pound of meat,
besides which there was millet-seed in it, and certainly the butter had
not been spared. The Major saw the Commandant to the door, and then
ordered the convicts to begin dinner. Each endeavoured not to be under
the Major's eyes. They did not like his spiteful, inquisitorial look
from behind his spectacles as he wandered from right to left, seeking
apparently some disorder to repress, some crime to punish.
We dined. Akim Akimitch's sucking-pig was admirably roasted. I could
never understand how, five minutes after the Major left, there was a
mass of drunken prisoners, whereas as long as he remained every one was
perfectly calm. Red, radiant faces were now numerous, and the balalaiki
[Russian banjoes] soon appeared. Then came the little Pole, playing his
violin, a convivial prisoner having engaged him for the whole day to
play lively dance-tunes. The conversation became more animated and more
noisy, but the dinner ended without great disorders. Every one had had
enough. Some of the old men, serious-minded convicts, went immediately
to bed. So did Akim Akimitch, who probably thought it was a duty to go
to sleep after dinner on festival days.
The "old believer" from Starodoub, after having slumbered a little,
climbed up on to the top of the stove, opened his book, and prayed the
entire day until late in the evening without interruption. The spectacle
of so shameless an orgie was painful to him, he said. All the
Circassians left the table. They looked with curiosity, but with a touch
of disgust, at this drunken society. I met Nourra.
"Aman, aman," he said, with a burst of honest indignation, and shaking
his head. "What an offence to Allah!" Isaiah Fomitch lighted, with an
arrogant and obstinate air, a candle in his favourite corner, and went
to work in order to show that in his eyes this was no holiday. Here and
there card parties were arranged. The convicts did not fear the old
soldiers, but men were placed on the look-out in case the under officer
should suddenly come in. He made a point, however, of seeing nothing.
The officer of the guard made altogether three rounds. The prisoners, if
they were drunk, hid themselves at once. The cards disappeared in the
twinkling of an eye. I fancy that he had made up his mind not to notice
any contraventions of an unimportant kind. Drunkenness was not an
offence that day. Little by little every one became more or less gay.
Then there were some quarrels. The greater number of the prisoners,
however, remained calm, amusing themselves with the spectacle of those
who were intoxicated. Some of these drank without limit.
Gazin was triumphant. He walked about with a self-satisfied air, by the
side of his camp bedstead, beneath which he had concealed his spirits,
previously buried beneath the snow behind the barracks, in a secret
place. He smiled knowingly when he saw customers arrive in crowds. He
was perfectly calm. He had drunk nothing at all; for it was his
intention to regale himself the last day of the holidays, after he had
emptied the pockets of the other prisoners. Throughout the barracks the
drunkenness was becoming infernal. Singing was heard, and the songs were
giving way to tears. Some of the prisoners walked about in bands,
sheepskin on shoulder, striking with a haughty air the strings of their
balalaiki. A chorus of from eight to ten men had been formed in the
special section. The singing here was excellent, with its accompaniments
of balalaiki and guitars.
Songs of a truly popular kind were rare. I remember one which was
admirably sung:
Yesterday, I, a young girl,
Went to the feast.
A variation was introduced previously unknown to me. At the end of the
song these lines were added:
At my house, the house of a young girl,
Everything is in order.
I have washed the spoons,
I have turned out the cabbage-soup,
I have wiped down the panels of the door,
I have cooked the patties.
What they chiefly sang were prison songs; one of them, called "As it
happened," was very humorous. It related how a man amused himself, and
lived like a prince until he was sent to the convict prison, where he
fared very differently. Another song, only too popular, set forth how
the hero of it had formerly possessed capital, but had now nothing but
captivity. Here is a true convict's song:
The day breaks in the heavens,
We are waked up by the drum.
The old man opens the door,
The warder comes and calls us.
No one sees us behind the prison walls,
Nor how we live in this place.
But God, the Heavenly Creator, is with us
He will not let us perish.
Another still more melancholy, but with a superb melody, was sung to
tame and incorrect words. I can remember a few of the verses:
My eyes no more will see the land,
Where I was born;
To suffer torments undeserved,
Will be my punishment.
The owl will shriek upon the roof,
And raise the echoes of the forest.
My heart is broken down with grief.
No, never more shall I return.
This song is often sung; not as a chorus, but always as a solo. When the
work is over, a prisoner goes out of the barracks, sits down on the
threshold, meditates with his chin resting on his hand, and then drawls
out his song in a high falsetto. One listens to him, and the effect is
heart-breaking. Some of our convicts had beautiful voices.
Meanwhile it was getting dusk. Wearisomeness and general depression were
making themselves felt through the drunkenness and the debauchery. The
prisoner, who an hour beforehand was holding his sides with laughter,
now sobbed in a corner, exceedingly drunk; others were fighting, or
wandering in a tottering manner through the barracks, pale, very pale,
and seeking whom to quarrel with. These poor people had wished to pass
the great festival in the most joyous manner, but, gracious heaven, how
painful the day was for all of them! They had passed it in the vague
hope of a happiness that was not to be realised. Petroff came up to me
twice. As he had drunk very little he was calm; but until the last
moment he expected something which he made sure would happen, something
extraordinary, and highly diverting. Although he said nothing about it,
this could be seen from his looks. He ran from barrack to barrack
without fatigue. Nothing, however, happened; nothing except general
intoxication, idiotic insults from drunkards, and general giddiness of
heated heads.
Sirotkin wandered about also, dressed in a brand-new red shirt, going
from barrack to barrack, and good-looking as usual. He also was on the
watch for something to happen. The spectacle became insupportably
repulsive, indeed nauseating. There were some laughable things, but I
was too sad to be amused by them. I felt a deep pity for all these men,
and felt strangled, stifled, in the midst of them. Here two convicts
were disputing as to which should treat the other. The dispute lasts a
long time; they have almost come to blows. One of them has, for a long
time past, had a grudge against the other. He complains, stammering as
he does so, and tries to prove to his companion that he acted unjustly
when, a year before, he sold a pelisse and concealed the money. There
was more than this too. The complainant is a tall young fellow, with
good muscular development, quiet, by no means stupid, but who, when he
is drunk, wishes to make friends with every one, and to pour out his
grief into their bosom. He insults his adversary with the intention of
becoming reconciled to him later on. The other man, a big, massive
person, with a round face, as cunning as a fox, had perhaps drunk more
than his companion, but appeared only slightly intoxicated. This convict
has character, and passes for a rich man; he has probably no interest in
irritating his companion, and he accordingly leads him to one of the
drink-sellers. The expansive friend declares that his companion owes him
money, and that he is bound to stand him a drink "if he has any
pretensions to be considered an honest man."
The drink-seller, not without some respect for his customer, and with a
touch of contempt for the expansive friend (for he was drinking at the
expense of another man), took a glass and filled it with vodka.
"No, Stepka, you must pay, because you owe me money."
"I won't tire my tongue talking to you any longer," replied Stepka.
"No, Stepka, you lie," continues his friend, taking up a glass offered
to him by the drink-seller. "You owe me money, and you must be without
conscience. You have not a thing about you that you have not borrowed,
and I don't believe your very eyes are your own. In a word, Stepka, you
are a blackguard."
"What are you whining about? Look, you are spilling your vodka."
"If you are being treated, why don't you drink?" cries the drink-seller,
to the expansive friend. "I cannot wait here until to-morrow."
"I will drink, don't be frightened. What are you crying out about? My
best wishes for the day. My best wishes for the day, Stepan Doroveitch,"
replies the latter politely, as he bows, glass in hand, towards Stepka,
whom the moment before he had called a blackguard. "Good health to you,
and may you live a hundred years in addition to what you have lived
already." He drinks, gives a grunt of satisfaction, and wipes his mouth.
"What quantities of brandy I have drunk," he says, gravely speaking to
every one, without addressing any one in particular, "but I have
finished now. Thank me, Stepka Doroveitch."
"There is nothing to thank you for."
"Ah! you won't thank me. Then I will tell every one how you have treated
me, and, moreover, that you are a blackguard."
"Then I shall have something to tell you, drunkard that you are,"
interrupts Stepka, who at last loses patience. "Listen and pay
attention. Let us divide the world in two. You shall take one half, I
the other. Then I shall have peace."
"Then you will not give me back my money?"
"What money do you want, drunkard?"
"My money. It is the sweat of my brow; the labour of my hands. You will
be sorry for it in the other world. You will be roasted for those five
kopecks."
"Go to the devil."
"What are you driving me for? Am I a horse?"
"Be off, be off."
"Blackguard!"
"Convict!"
And the insults exchanged were worse than they had been before the visit
to the drink-seller.
Two friends are seated separately on two camp-bedsteads. One is tall,
vigorous, fleshy, with a red face--a regular butcher. He is on the point
of weeping; for he has been much moved. The other is tall, thin,
conceited, with an immense nose, which always seems to have a cold, and
little blue eyes fixed upon the ground. He is a clever, well-bred man,
and was formerly a secretary. He treats his friend with a little
disdain, which the latter cannot stand. They have been drinking together
all day.
"You have taken a liberty with me," cries the stout one, as with his
left hand he shakes the head of his companion. To take a liberty
signifies, in convict language, to strike. This convict, formerly a
non-commissioned officer, envies in secret the elegance of his
neighbour, and endeavours to make up for his material grossness by
refined conversation.
"I tell you, you are wrong," says the secretary, in a dogmatic tone,
with his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground, and without looking at
his companion.
"You struck me. Do you hear?" continues the other, still shaking his
dear friend. "You are the only man in the world I care for; but you
shall not take a liberty with me."
"Confess, my dear fellow," replies the secretary, "that all this is the
result of too much drink."
The corpulent friend falls back with a stagger, looks stupidly with his
drunken eyes at the secretary, and suddenly, with all his might, sends
his fist into the secretary's thin face. Thus terminates the day's
friendship.
The dear friend disappears beneath the camp-bedstead unconscious.
One of my acquaintances enters the barracks. He is a convict of the
special section, very good-natured, and gay, far from stupid, and
jocular without malice. He is the man who, on my arrival at the convict
prison, was looking out for a rich peasant, who spoke so much of his
self-respect, and ended by drinking my tea. He was forty years old, had
enormous lips, and a fat, fleshy, red nose. He held a balalaika, and
struck negligently its strings. He was followed by a little convict,
with a large head, whom I knew very little, and to whom no one paid any
attention. Now that he was drunk he had attached himself to Vermaloff,
and followed him like his shadow, at the same time gesticulating and
striking with his fist the wall and the camp-bedsteads. He was almost in
tears. Vermaloff did not notice him any more than if he had not existed.
The most curious point was that these two men in no way resembled one
another, neither by their occupations nor by their disposition. They
belonged to different sections, and lived in separate barracks. The
little convict was named Bulkin.
Vermaloff smiled when he saw me seated by the stove. He stopped at some
distance from me, reflected for a moment, tottered, and then came
towards me with an affected swagger. Then he swept the strings of his
instrument, and sung, or recited, tapping at the same time with his boot
on the ground, the following chant:
My darling!
With her full, fair face,
Sings like a nightingale;
In her satin dress,
With its brilliant trimming,
She is very fair.
This song excited Bulkin in an extraordinary manner. He agitated his
arms, and shrieked out to every one: "He lies, my friends; he lies like
a quack doctor. There is not a shadow of truth in what he sings."
"My respects to the venerable Alexander Petrovitch," said Vermaloff,
looking at me with a knowing smile. I fancied even he wished to embrace
me. He was drunk. As for the expression, "My respects to the venerable
so-and-so," it is employed by the common people throughout Siberia, even
when addressed to a young man of twenty. To call a man old is a sign of
respect, and may amount even to flattery.
"Well, Vermaloff, how are you?" I replied.
"So, so. Nothing to boast of. Those who really enjoy the holiday have
been drinking since early morning."
Vermaloff did not speak very distinctly.
"He lies; he lies again," said Bulkin, striking the camp-bedsteads with
a sort of despair.
One might have sworn that Vermaloff had given his word of honour not to
pay any attention to him. That was really the most comic thing about it;
for Bulkin had not quitted him for one moment since the morning. Always
with him, he quarrelled with Vermaloff about every word; wringing his
hands, and striking with his fists against the wall and the camp
bedsteads till he made them bleed, he suffered visibly from his
conviction that Vermaloff "lied like a quack doctor." If Bulkin had had
hair on his head, he would certainly have torn it in his grief, in his
profound mortification. One might have thought that he had made himself
responsible for Vermaloff's actions, and that all Vermaloff's faults
troubled his conscience. The amusing part of it was that Vermaloff
continued.
"He lies! He lies! He lies!" cried Bulkin.
"What can it matter to you?" replied the convicts, with a laugh.
"I must tell you, Alexander Petrovitch, that I was very good-looking
when I was a young man, and the young girls were very fond of me," said
Vermaloff suddenly.
"He lies! He lies!" again interrupted Bulkin, with a groan. The convicts
burst into a laugh.
"And well I got myself up to please them. I had a red shirt, and broad
trousers of cotton velvet. I was happy in those days. I got up when I
liked; did whatever I pleased. In fact----"
"He lies," declared Bulkin.
"I inherited from my father a stone house, two storeys high. Within two
years I made away with the two storeys; nothing remained to me but the
street door. Well, what of that. Money comes and goes like a bird."
"He lies!" declared Bulkin, more resolutely than before.
"Then when I had spent all, I sent a letter to my relations, that they
might send me some money. They said that I had set their will at naught,
that I was disrespectful. It is now seven years since I sent off my
letter."
"And any answer?" I asked, with a smile.
"No," he replied, also laughing, and almost putting his nose in my face.
He then informed me that he had a sweetheart.
"You a sweetheart?"
"Onufriel said to me the other day: 'My young woman is marked with
small-pox, and as ugly as you like; but she has plenty of dresses, while
yours, though she may be pretty, is a beggar.'"
"Is that true?"
"Certainly, she is a beggar," he answered.
He burst into a laugh, and the others laughed with him. Every one indeed
knew that he had a _liaison_ with a beggar woman, to whom he gave ten
kopecks every six months.
"Well, what do you want with me?" I said to him, wishing at last to get
rid of him.
He remained silent, and then, looking at me in the most insinuating
manner, said:
"Could not you let me have enough money to buy half-a-pint? I have drunk
nothing but tea the whole day," he added, as he took from me the money I
offered him; "and tea affects me in such a manner that I am afraid of
becoming asthmatic. It gives me the wind."
When he took the money I offered him, the despair of Bulkin went beyond
all bounds. He gesticulated like a man possessed.
"Good people all," he cried, "the man lies. Everything he
says--everything is a lie."
"What can it matter to you?" cried the convicts, astonished at his
goings on. "You are possessed."
"I will not allow him to lie," continued Bulkin, rolling his eyes, and
striking his fist with energy on the boards. "He shall not lie."
Every one laughed. Vermaloff bowed to me after receiving the money, and
hastened, with many grimaces, to go to the drink-seller. Then only he
noticed Bulkin.
"Come!" he said to him, as if the latter were indispensable for the
execution of some design. "Idiot!" he added, with contempt, as Bulkin
passed before him.
But enough about this tumultuous scene, which, at last, came to an end.
The convicts went to sleep heavily on their camp-bedsteads. They spoke
and raged during their sleep more than on the other nights. Here and
there they still continued to play at cards. The festival looked forward
to with such impatience was now over, and to-morrow the daily work, the
hard labour, will begin again.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PERFORMANCE.
On the evening of the third day of the holidays took place our first
theatrical performance. There had been much trouble about organising it.
But those who were to act had taken everything upon themselves, and the
other convicts knew nothing about the representation except that it was
to take place. We did not even know what was to be played. The actors,
while they were at work, were always thinking how they could get
together the greatest number of costumes. Whenever I met Baklouchin he
snapped his fingers with satisfaction, but told me nothing. I think the
Major was in a good humour; but we did not know for certain whether he
knew what was going on or not, whether he had authorised it, or whether
he had determined to shut his eyes and be silent, after assuring himself
that everything would take place quietly. He had heard, I fancy, of the
meditated representation, and said nothing about it, lest he should
spoil everything. The soldiers would be disorderly, or would get drunk,
unless they had something to divert them. Thus I think the Major must
have reasoned, for it will be only natural to do so. I may add that if
the convicts had not got up a performance during the holidays, or done
something of the kind, the administration would have been obliged to
organise some sort of amusement; but as our Major was distinguished by
ideas directly opposed to those of other people, I take a great
responsibility on myself in saying that he knew of our project and
authorised it. A man like him must always be crushing and stifling some
one, taking something away, depriving some one of a right--in a word,
for establishing order of this character he was known throughout the
town.
It mattered nothing to him that his exactions made the men rebellious.
For such offences there were suitable punishments (there are some people
who reason in this way), and with these rascals of convicts there was
nothing to do but to treat them very severely, deal with them strictly
according to law. These incapable executants of the law did not in the
least understand that to apply the law without understanding its spirit
is to provoke resistance. They are quite astonished that, in addition to
the execution of the law, good sense and a sound head should be expected
from them. The last condition would appear to them quite superfluous; to
require such a thing is vexatious, intolerant.
However this may be, the Sergeant-Major made no objection to the
performance, and that was all the convicts wanted. I may say in all
truth that if throughout the holidays there were no disorders in the
convict prison, no sanguinary quarrels, no robberies, that must be
attributed to the convicts being permitted to organise their
performance. I saw with my own eyes how they got out of the way of those
of their companions who had drunk too much, and how they prevented
quarrels on the ground that the representation would be forbidden. The
non-commissioned officer made the prisoners give their word of honour
that they would behave well, and that all would go off quietly. They
gave it with pleasure, and kept their promise religiously. They were
much flattered at finding their word of honour accepted. Let me add that
the representation cost nothing, absolutely nothing, to the
authorities, who were not called upon to spend a farthing. The theatre
could be put up and taken down within a quarter of an hour; and, in case
an order stopping the performance suddenly arrived, the scenery could
have been put away in a second. The costumes were concealed in the
convicts' boxes; but first of all let me say how our theatre was
constructed, what were the costumes, and what the bill, that is to say,
the pieces that were to be played. To tell the truth, there was no
written playbill, not, at least, for the first representation. It was
ready only for the second and third. Baklouchin composed it for the
officers and other distinguished visitors who might deign to honour the
performance with their presence, including the officer of the guard, the
officer of the watch, and an Engineer officer. It was in honour of these
that the playbill was written out.
It was supposed that the reputation of our theatre would extend to the
fortress, and even to the town, especially as there was no theatre at
N----: a few amateur performances, but nothing more. The convicts
delighted in the smallest success, and boasted of it like children.
"Who knows?" they said to one another; "when our chiefs hear of it they
will perhaps come and see. Then they will know what convicts are worth,
for this is not a performance given by soldiers, but a genuine piece
played by genuine actors; nothing like it could be seen anywhere in the
town. General Abrosimoff had a representation at his house, and it is
said he will have another. Well, they may beat us in the matter of
costumes, but as for the dialogue that is a very different thing. The
Governor himself will perhaps hear of it, and--who knows?--he may come
himself."
They had no theatre in the town. In a word, the imagination of the
convicts, above all after their first success, went so far as to make
them think that rewards would be distributed to them, and that their
period of hard labour would be shortened. A moment afterwards they were
the first to laugh at this fancy. In a word, they were children, true
children, when they were forty years of age. I knew in a general way the
subjects of the pieces that were to be represented, although there was
no bill. The title of the first was _Philatka and Miroshka Rivals_.
Baklouchin boasted to me, at least a week before the performance, that
the part of Philatka, which he had assigned to himself, would be played
in such a manner that nothing like it had ever been seen, even on the
St. Petersburg stage. He walked about in the barracks puffed up with
boundless importance. If now and then he declaimed a speech from his
part in the theatrical style, every one burst out laughing, whether the
speech was amusing or not; they laughed because he had forgotten
himself. It must be admitted that the convicts, as a body, were
self-contained and full of dignity; the only ones who got enthusiastic
at Baklouchin's tirades were the young ones, who had no false shame, or
those who were much looked up to, and whose authority was so firmly
established that they were not afraid to commit themselves. The others
listened silently, without blaming or contradicting, but they did their
best to show that the performance left them indifferent.
It was not until the very last moment, the very day of the
representation, that every one manifested genuine interest in what our
companions had undertaken. "What," was the general question, "would the
Major say? Would the performance succeed as well as the one given two
years before?" etc., etc. Baklouchin assured me that all the actors
would be quite at home on the stage, and that there would even be a
curtain. Sirotkin was to play a woman's part. "You will see how well I
look in women's clothes," he said. The Lady Bountiful was to have a
dress with skirts and trimmings, besides a parasol; while her husband,
the Lord of the Manor, was to wear an officer's uniform, with
epaulettes, and a cane in his hand.
The second piece that was to be played was entitled, _Kedril, the
Glutton_. The title puzzled me much, but it was useless to ask any
questions about it. I could only learn that the piece was not printed;
it was a manuscript copy obtained from a retired non-commissioned
officer in the town, who had doubtless formerly participated in its
representation on some military stage. We have, indeed, in the distant
towns and governments, a number of pieces of this kind, which, I
believe, are perfectly unknown and have never been printed, but which
appear to have grown up of themselves, in connection with the popular
theatre, in certain zones of Russia. I have spoken of the popular
theatre. It would be a good thing if our investigators of popular
literature would take the trouble to make careful researches as to this
popular theatre which exists, and which, perhaps, is not so
insignificant as may be thought.
I cannot think that everything I saw on the stage of our convict prison
was the work of our convicts. It must have sprung from old traditions
handed down from generation to generation, and preserved among the
soldiers, the workmen in industrial towns, and even the shopkeepers in
some poor, out-of-the-way places. These traditions have been preserved
in some villages and some Government towns by the servants of the large
landed proprietors. I even believe that copies of many old pieces have
been multiplied by these servants of the nobility.
The old Muscovite proprietors and nobles had their own theatres, in
which their servants used to play. Thence comes our popular theatre, the
originals of which are beyond discussion. As for _Kedril, the Glutton_,
in spite of my lively curiosity, I could learn nothing about it, except
that demons appeared on the stage and carried Kedril away to hell. What
did the name of Kedril signify? Why was he called Kedril and not Cyril?
Was the name Russian or foreign? I could not resolve this question.
It was announced that the representation would terminate with a musical
pantomime. All this promised to be very curious. The actors were
fifteen in number, all vivacious men. They were very energetic, got up a
number of rehearsals which sometimes took place behind the barracks,
kept away from the others, and gave themselves mysterious airs. They
evidently wished to surprise us with something extraordinary and
unexpected.
On work days the barracks were shut very early as night approached, but
an exception was made during the Christmas holidays, when the padlocks
were not put to the gates until the evening retreat--nine o'clock. This
favour had been granted specially in view of the play. During the whole
duration of the holidays a deputation was sent every evening to the
officer of the guard very humbly "to permit the representation and not
to shut at the usual hour." It was added that there had been previous
representations, and that nothing disorderly had occurred at any of
them.
The officer of the guard must have reasoned as follows: There was no
disorder, no infraction of discipline at the previous performance, and
the moment they give their word that to-night's performance shall take
place in the same manner, they mean to be their own police--the most
rigorous police of all. Moreover, he knew well that if he took it upon
himself to forbid the representation, these fellows (who knows, and with
convicts?) would have committed some offence which would have placed the
officer of the guard in a very difficult position. One final reason
insured his consent: To mount guard is horribly tiresome, and if he
authorised the performance he would see the play acted, not by soldiers,
but by convicts, a curious set of people. It would certainly be
interesting, and he had a right to be present at it.
In case the superior officer arrived and asked for the officer of the
guard, he would be told that the latter had gone to count the convicts
and close the barracks; an answer which could easily be made, and which
could not be disproved. That is why our superintendents authorised the
performance; and throughout the holidays the barracks were kept open
each evening until the retreat. The convicts had known beforehand that
they would meet with no opposition from the officer of the guard. They
were quite quiet about him.
Towards six o'clock Petroff came to look for me, and we went together to
the theatre. Nearly all the prisoners of our barracks were there, with
the exception of the "old believer" from Tchernigoff, and the Poles. The
latter did not decide to be present until the last day of the
representation, the 4th of January, after they had been assured that
everything would be managed in a becoming manner. The haughtiness of the
Poles irritated our convicts. Accordingly they were received on the 4th
of January with formal politeness, and conducted to the best places. As
for the Circassians and Isaiah Fomitch, the play was for them a genuine
delight. Isaiah Fomitch gave three kopecks each time, except the last,
when he placed ten kopecks on the plate; and how happy he looked!
The actors had decided that each spectator should give what he thought
fit. The receipts were to cover the expenses, and anything beyond was to
go to the actors. Petroff assured me that I should be allowed to have
one of the best places, however full the theatre might be; first,
because being richer than the others, there was a probability of my
giving more; and, secondly, because I knew more about acting than any
one else. What he had foreseen took place. But let me first describe the
theatre.
The barrack of the military section, which had been turned into the
theatre, was fifteen feet long. From the court-yard one entered, first
an ante-chamber, and afterwards the barrack itself. The building was
arranged, as I have already mentioned, in a particular manner, the beds
being placed against the wall, so as to leave an open space in the
middle. One half of the barrack was reserved for the spectators, while
the other, which communicated with the second building, formed the
stage. What astonished me directly I entered, was the curtain, which was
about ten feet long, and divided the barrack into two. It was indeed a
marvel, for it was painted in oil, and represented trees, tunnels,
ponds, and stars.
It was made of pieces of linen, old and new, given by the convicts;
shirts, the bandages which our peasants wrap round their feet in lieu of
socks, all sewn together well or ill, and forming together an immense
sheet. Where there was not enough linen, it had been replaced by writing
paper, taken sheet by sheet from the various office bureaus. Our
painters (among whom we had our Bruloff) had painted it all over, and
the effect was very remarkable.
This luxurious curtain delighted the convicts, even the most sombre and
most morose. These, however, like the others, as soon as the play began,
showed themselves mere children. They were all pleased and satisfied
with a certain satisfaction of vanity. The theatre was lighted with
candle ends. Two benches, which had been brought from the kitchen, were
placed before the curtain, together with three or four large chairs,
borrowed from the non-commissioned officers' room. These chairs were for
the officers, should they think fit to honour the performance. As for
the benches, they were for the non-commissioned officers, engineers,
clerks, directors of the works, and all the immediate superiors of the
convicts who had not officer's rank, and who had come perhaps to take a
look at the representation. In fact, there was no lack of visitors.
According to the days, they came in greater or smaller numbers, while
for the last representation there was not a single place unoccupied on
the benches.
At the back the convicts stood crowded together; standing up out of
respect to the visitors, and dressed in their vests, or in their short
pelisses, in spite of the suffocating heat. As might have been expected,
the place was too small; so all the prisoners stood up, heaped
together--above all in the last rows. The camp-bedsteads were all
occupied; and there were some amateurs who disputed constantly behind
the stage in the other barrack, and who viewed the performance from the
back. I was asked to go forward, and Petroff with me, close to the
benches, whence a good view could be obtained. They looked upon me as a
good judge, a connoisseur, who had seen many other theatres. The
convicts remarked that Baklouchin had often consulted me, and that he
had shown deference to my advice. Consequently they thought that I ought
to be treated with honour, and to have one of the best places. These men
are vain and frivolous, but only on the surface. They laughed at me when
I was at work, because I was a poor workman. Almazoff had a right to
despise us gentlemen, and to boast of his superior skill in pounding the
alabaster. His laughter and raillery were directed against our origin,
for we belonged by birth to the caste of his former masters, of whom he
could not preserve a good recollection; but here at the theatre these
same men made way for me; for they knew that about this matter I knew
more than they did. Those, even, who were not at all well disposed
towards me, were glad to hear me praise the performance, and gave way to
me without the least servility. I judged now by my impressions of that
time. I understood that in this new view of theirs there was no lowering
of themselves; rather a sentiment of their own dignity.
The most striking characteristic of our people is its conscientiousness,
and its love of justice; no false vanity, no sly ambition to reach the
first rank without being entitled to do so; such faults are foreign to
our people. Take it from its rough shell, and you will perceive, if you
study it without prejudice, attentively, and close at hand, qualities
which you would never have suspected. Our sages have very little to
teach our people. I will even say more; they might take lessons from it.
Petroff had told me innocently, on taking me into the theatre, that they
would pass me to the front, because they expected more money from me.
There were no fixed prices for the places. Each one gave what he liked,
and what he could. Nearly every one placed a piece of money in the plate
when it was handed round. Even if they had passed me forward in the hope
that I should give more than others, was there not in that a certain
feeling of personal dignity?
"You are richer than I am. Go to the first row. We are all equal here,
it is true; but you pay more, and the actors prefer a spectator like
you. Occupy the first place then, for we are not here with money, and
must arrange ourselves anyhow."
What noble pride in this mode of action! In final analysis not love of
money, but self-respect. There was little esteem for money among us. I
do not remember that one of us ever lowered himself to obtain money.
Some men used to make up to me, but from love of cunning and of fun
rather than in the hope of obtaining any benefit. I do not know whether
I explain myself clearly. I am, in any case, forgetting the performance.
Let me return to it.
Before the rise of the curtain, the room presented a strange and
animated look. In the first place, the crowd pressed, crushed, jammed
together on all sides, but impatient, full of expectation, every face
glowing with delight. In the last ranks was the grovelling, confused
mass of convicts. Many of them had brought with them logs of wood, which
they placed against the wall, on which they climbed up. In this
fatiguing position they paused to rest themselves by placing both hands
on the shoulders of their companions, who seemed quite at ease. Others
stood on their toes, with their heels against the stove, and thus
remained throughout the representation, supported by those around them.
Massed against the camp-bedsteads was another compact crowd; for here
were some of the best places of all. Five convicts had hoisted
themselves up to the top of the stove, whence they had a commanding
view. These fortunate ones were extremely happy. Elsewhere swarmed the
late arrivals, unable to find good places.
Every one conducted himself in a becoming manner, without making any
noise. Each one wished to show advantageously before the distinguished
persons who were visiting us. Simple and natural was the expression of
these red faces, damp with perspiration, as the rise of the curtain was
eagerly expected. What a strange look of infinite delight, of unmixed
pleasure, was painted on these scarred faces, these branded foreheads,
so dark and menacing at ordinary times! They were all without their
caps, and as I looked back at them from my place, it seemed to me that
their heads were entirely shaved.
Suddenly the signal is given, and the orchestra begins to play. This
orchestra deserves a special mention. It consisted of eight musicians:
two violins, one of which was the property of a convict, while the other
had been borrowed from outside; three balalaiki, made by the convicts
themselves; two guitars, and a tambourine. The violins sighed and
shrieked, and the guitars were worthless, but the balalaiki were
remarkably good; and the agile fingering of the artists would have done
honour to the cleverest executant.
They played scarcely anything but dance tunes. At the most exciting
passages they struck with their fingers on the body of their
instruments. The tone, the execution of the motive, were always original
and distinctive. One of the guitarists knew his instrument thoroughly.
It was the gentleman who had killed his father. As for the tambourinist,
he really did wonders. Now he whirled round the disk, balanced on one of
his fingers; now he rubbed the parchment with his thumb, and brought
from it a countless multitude of notes, now dull, now brilliant.
At last two harmonigers join the orchestra. I had no idea until then of
all that could be done with these popular and vulgar instruments. I was
astonished. The harmony, but, above all, the expression, the very
conception of the motive, were admirably rendered. I then understood
perfectly, and for the first time, the remarkable boldness, the
striking abandonment, which are expressed in our popular dance tunes,
and our village songs.
At last the curtain rose. Every one made a movement. Those who were at
the back raised themselves upon the point of their feet; some one fell
down from his log. At once there were looks that enjoined silence. The
performance now began.
I was seated not far from Ali, who was in the midst of the group formed
by his brothers and the other Circassians. They had a passionate love of
the theatre, and did not miss one of our evenings. I have remarked that
all the Mohammedans, Circassians, and so on, are fond of all kinds of
representations. Near them was Isaiah Fomitch, quite in a state of
ecstasy. As soon as the curtain rose he was all ears and eyes; his
countenance expressed an expectation of something marvellous. I should
have been grieved had he been disappointed. The charming face of Ali
shone with a childish joy, so pure that I was quite happy to behold it.
Involuntarily, whenever a general laugh echoed an amusing remark, I
turned towards him to see his countenance. He did not notice it, he had
something else to do.
Near him, placed on the left, was a convict, already old, sombre,
discontented, and always grumbling. He also had noticed Ali, and I saw
him cast furtive glances more than once towards him, so charming was the
young Circassian. The prisoners always called him Ali Simeonitch,
without my knowing why.
In the first piece, _Philatka and Miroshka_, Baklouchin, in the part of
Philatka, was really marvellous. He played his rôle to perfection. It
could be seen that he had weighed each speech, each movement. He managed
to give to each word, each gesture, a meaning which responded perfectly
to the character of the personage. Apart from the conscientious study he
had made of the character, he was gay, simple, natural, irresistible. If
you had seen Baklouchin you would certainly have said that he was a
genuine actor, an actor by vocation, and of great talent. I have seen
Philatka several times at the St. Petersburg and Moscow theatres, and I
declare that none of our celebrated actors was equal to Baklouchin in
this part. They were peasants, from no matter what country, and not true
Russian moujiks. Moreover, their desire to be peasant-like was too
apparent. Baklouchin was animated by emulation; for it was known that
the convict Potsiakin was to play the part of Kedril in the second
piece, and it was assumed--I do not know why--that the latter would show
more talent than Baklouchin. The latter was as vexed by this preference
as a child. How many times did he not come to me during the last days to
tell me all he felt! Two hours before the representation he was attacked
by fever. When the audience burst out laughing, and called out "Bravo,
Baklouchin! what a fellow you are!" his figure shone with joy, and true
inspiration could be read in his eyes. The scene of the kisses between
Kiroshka and Philatka, in which the latter calls out to the daughter,
"Wife, your mouth," and then wipes his own, was wonderfully comic. Every
one burst out laughing.
What interested me was the spectators. They were all at their ease, and
gave themselves up frankly to their mirth. Cries of approbation became
more and more numerous. A convict nudged his companion with his elbow,
and hastily communicated his impressions, without even troubling himself
to know who was by his side. When a comic song began, one man might be
seen agitating his arms violently, as if to engage his companions to
laugh; after which he turned suddenly towards the stage. A third smacked
his tongue against his palate, and could not keep quiet a moment; but as
there was not room for him to change his position, he hopped first on
one leg, then on the other; towards the end of the piece the general
gaiety attained its climax. I exaggerate nothing. Imagine the convict
prison, chains, captivity, long years of confinement, of task-work, of
monotonous life, falling away drop by drop like rain on an autumn day;
imagine all this despair in presence of permission given to the convicts
to amuse themselves, to breathe freely for an hour, to forget their
nightmare, and to organise a play--and what a play! one that excited the
envy and admiration of our town.
"Fancy those convicts!" people said: everything interested them, take
the costumes for instance. It seemed very strange, but then to see,
Nietsvitaeff, or Baklouchin, in a different costume from the one they
had worn for so many years.
He is a convict, a genuine convict, whose chains ring when he walks; and
there he is, out on the stage with a frock-coat, and a round hat, and a
cloak, like any ordinary civilian. He has put on hair, moustaches. He
takes a red handkerchief from his pocket and shakes it, like a real
nobleman. What enthusiasm is created! The "good landlord" arrives in an
aide-de-camp uniform, a very old one, it is true, but with epaulettes,
and a cocked hat. The effect produced was indescribable. There had been
two candidates for this costume, and--will it be believed?--they had
quarrelled like two little schoolboys as to which of them should play
the part. Both wanted to appear in military uniform with epaulettes. The
other actors separated them, and, by a majority of voices, the part was
entrusted to Nietsvitaeff; not because he was more suited to it than the
other, and that he bore a greater resemblance to a nobleman, but only
because he had assured them all that he would have a cane, and that he
would twirl it and rap it out grand, like a true nobleman--a dandy of
the latest fashion--which was more than Vanka and Ospiety could do,
seeing they have never known any noblemen. In fact, when Nietsvitaeff
went to the stage with his wife, he did nothing but draw circles on the
floor with his light bamboo cane, evidently thinking that this was the
sign of the best breeding, of supreme elegance. Probably in his
childhood, when he was still a barefooted child, he had been attracted
by the skill of some proprietor in twirling his cane, and this
impression had remained in his memory, although thirty years afterwards.
Nietsvitaeff was so occupied with his process that he saw no one, he
gave the replies in his dialogue without even raising his eyes. The most
important thing for him was the end of his cane, and the circles he drew
with it. The Lady Bountiful was also very remarkable; she came on in an
old worn-out muslin dress, which looked like a rag. Her arms and neck
were bare. She had a little calico cap on her head, with strings under
her chin, an umbrella in one hand, and in the other a fan of coloured
paper, with which she constantly fanned herself. This great lady was
welcomed with a wild laugh; she herself, too, was unable to restrain
herself, and burst out more than once. The part was filled by the
convict Ivanoff. As for Sirotkin, in his girl's dress, he looked
exceedingly well. The couplets were all well sung. In a word, the piece
was played to the satisfaction of every one; not the least hostile
criticism was passed--who, indeed, was there to criticise? The air,
"Sieni moi Sieni," was played again by way of overture, and the curtain
again went up.
_Kedril, the Glutton_, was now to be played. Kedril is a sort of Don
Juan. This comparison may justly be made, for the master and the servant
are both carried away by devils at the end of the piece; and the piece,
as the convicts had it, was played quite correctly; but the beginning
and the end must have been lost, for it had neither head nor tail. The
scene is laid in an inn somewhere in Russia. The innkeeper introduces
into a room a nobleman wearing a cloak and a battered round hat; the
valet, Kedril, follows his master; he carries a valise, and a fowl
rolled up in blue paper; he wears a short pelisse and a footman's cap.
It is this fellow who is the glutton. The convict Potsiakin, the rival
of Baklouchin, played this part, while the part of the nobleman was
filled by Ivanoff, the same who played the great lady in the first
piece. The innkeeper (Nietsvitaeff) warns the nobleman that the room is
haunted by demons, and goes away; the nobleman is interested and
preoccupied; he murmurs aloud that he has known that for a long time,
and orders Kedril to unpack his things and to get supper ready.
Kedril is a glutton and a coward. When he hears of devils he turns pale
and trembles like a leaf; he would like to run away, but is afraid of
his master; besides, he is hungry, he is voluptuous, he is sensual,
stupid, though cunning in his way, and, as before said, a poltroon; he
cheats his master every moment, though he fears him like fire. This type
of servant is a remarkable one in which may be recognised the principal
features of the character of Leporello, but indistinct and confused. The
part was played in really superior style by Potsiakin, whose talent was
beyond discussion, surpassing as it did in my opinion that of Baklouchin
himself. But when the next day I spoke to Baklouchin I concealed my
impression from him, knowing that it would give him bitter pain.
As for the convict who played the part of the nobleman, it was not bad.
Everything he said was without meaning, incomparable to anything I had
ever heard before; but his enunciation was pure and his gestures
becoming. While Kedril occupies himself with the valise, his master
walks up and down, and announces that from that day forth he means to
lead a quiet life. Kedril listens, makes grimaces, and amuses the
spectators by his reflections "aside." He has no pity for his master,
but he has heard of devils, would like to know what they are like, and
thereupon questions him. The nobleman replies that some time ago, being
in danger of death, he asked succour from hell. Then the devils aided
and delivered him, but the term of his liberty has expired; and if the
devils come that evening, it will be to exact his soul, as has been
agreed in their compact. Kedril begins to tremble in earnest, but his
master does not lose courage, and orders him to prepare the supper.
Hearing of victuals, Kedril revives. Taking out a bottle of wine, he
taps it on his own account. The audience expands with laughter; but the
door grates on its hinges, the winds shakes the shutters, Kedril
trembles, and hastily, almost without knowing what he is doing, puts
into his mouth an enormous piece of fowl, which he is unable to swallow.
There is another gust of wind.
"Is it ready?" cries the master, still walking backwards and forwards in
his room.
"Directly, sir. I am preparing it," says Kedril, who sits down, and,
taking care that his master does not see him, begins to eat the supper
himself. The audience is evidently charmed with the cunning of the
servant, who so cleverly makes game of the nobleman; and it must be
admitted that Poseikin, the representative of the part, deserved high
praise. He pronounced admirably the words: "Directly, sir.
I--am--preparing--it."
Kedril eats gradually, and at each mouthful trembles lest his master
shall see him. Every time that the nobleman turns round Kedril hides
under the table, holding the fowl in his hand. When he has appeased his
hunger, he begins to think of his master.
"Kedril, will it soon be ready?" cries the nobleman.
"It is ready now," replies Kedril boldly, when all at once he perceives
that there is scarcely anything left. Nothing remains but one leg. The
master, still sombre and pre-occupied, notices nothing, and takes his
seat, while Kedril places himself behind him with a napkin on his arm.
Every word, every gesture, every grimace from the servant, as he turns
towards the audience to laugh at his master's expense, excites the
greatest mirth among the convicts. Just at the moment when the young
nobleman begins to eat, the devils arrive. They resemble nothing human
or terrestrial. The side-door opens, and the phantom appears dressed
entirely in white, with a lighted lantern in lieu of a head, and with a
scythe in its hand. Why the white dress, scythe, and lantern? No one
could tell me, and the matter did not trouble the convicts. They were
sure that this was the way it ought to be done. The master comes
forward courageously to meet the apparitions, and calls out to them that
he is ready, and that they can take him. But Kedril, as timid as a hare,
hides under the table, not forgetting, in spite of his fright, to take a
bottle with him. The devils disappear, Kedril comes out of his
hiding-place, and the master begins to eat his fowl. Three devils enter
the room, and seize him to take him to hell.
"Save me, Kedril," he cries. But Kedril has something else to think of.
He has now with him in his hiding-place not only the bottle, but also
the plate of fowl and the bread. He is now alone. The demons are far
away, and his master also. Kedril gets from under the table, looks all
round, and suddenly his face beams with joy. He winks, like the rogue he
is, sits down in his master's place, and whispers to the audience: "I
have now no master but myself."
Every one laughs at seeing him masterless; and he says, always in an
under-tone and with a confidential air: "The devils have carried him
off!"
The enthusiasm of the spectators is now without limits. The last phrase
was uttered with such roguery, with such a triumphant grimace, that it
was impossible not to applaud. But Kedril's happiness does not last
long. Hardly has he taken up the bottle of wine, and poured himself out
a large glass, which he carries to his lips, than the devils return,
slip behind, and seize him. Kedril howls like one possessed, but he dare
not turn round. He wishes to defend himself, but cannot, for in his
hands he holds the bottle and the glass, from which he will not
separate. His eyes starting from his head, his mouth gaping with horror,
he remains for a moment looking at the audience with a comic expression
of cowardice that might have been painted. At last he is dragged,
carried away. His arms and legs are agitated in every direction, but he
still sticks to his bottle. He also shrieks, and his cries are still
heard when he has been carried from the stage.
The curtain falls amid general laughter, and every one is delighted.
The orchestra now attacks the famous dance tune Kamarinskaia. First it
is played softly, pianissimo; but little by little, the motive is
developed and played more lightly. The time is quickened, and the wood,
as well as the strings of the balalaiki, is made to sound. The musicians
enter thoroughly into the spirit of the dance. Glinka [who has arranged
the Kamarinskaia in the most ingenious manner, and with harmonies of his
own devising, for full orchestra] should have heard it as it was
executed in our Convict Prison.
The pantomimic musical accompaniment is begun; and throughout the
Kamarinskaia is played. The stage represents the interior of a hut. A
miller and his wife are sitting down, one mending clothes, the other
spinning flax. Sirotkin plays the part of the wife, and Nietsvitaeff
that of the husband. Our scenery was very poor. In this piece, as in the
preceding ones, imagination had to supply what was wanting in reality.
Instead of a wall at the back of the stage, there was a carpet or a
blanket; on the right, shabby screens; while on the left, where the
stage was not closed, the camp-bedsteads could be seen; but the
spectators were not exacting, and were willing to imagine all that was
wanting. It was an easy task for them; all convicts are great dreamers.
Directly they are told "this is a garden," it is for them a garden.
Informed that "this is a hut," they accept the definition without
difficulty. To them it is a hut. Sirotkin was charming in a woman's
dress. The miller finishes his work, takes his cap and his whip, goes up
to his wife, and gives her to understand by signs, that if during his
absence she makes the mistake of receiving any one, she will have to
deal with him--and he shows her his whip. The wife listens, and nods
affirmatively her head. The whip is evidently known to her; the hussey
has often deserved it. The husband goes out. Hardly has he turned upon
his heel, than his wife shakes her fist at him. There is a knock; the
door opens, and in comes a neighbour, miller also by trade. He wears a
beard, is in a kuftan, and he brings as a present a red handkerchief.
The woman smiles. Another knock is heard at the door. Where shall she
hide him? She conceals him under the table, and takes up her distaff
again. Another admirer now presents himself--a farrier in the uniform of
a non-commissioned officer.
Until now the pantomime had gone on capitally; the gestures of the
actors being irreproachable. It was astounding to see these improvised
players going through their parts in so correct a manner; and
involuntarily one said to oneself:
"What a deal of talent is lost in our Russia, left without use in our
prisons and places of exile!"
The convict who played the part of the farrier had, doubtless, taken
part in a performance at some provincial theatre, or had played with
amateurs. It seemed to me, in any case, that our actors knew nothing of
acting as an art, and bore themselves in the meanest manner. When it was
his turn to appear, he came on like one of the classical heroes of the
old repertory--taking a long stride with one foot before he raised the
other from the ground, throwing back his head on the upper part of his
body and casting proud looks around him. If such a gait was ridiculous
on the part of classical heroes, still more so was it when the actor was
representing a comic character. But the audience thought it quite
natural, and accepted the actor's triumphant walk as a necessary fact,
without criticising it.
A moment after the entry of the second admirer there is another knock at
the door. The wife loses her head. Where is the farrier to be concealed?
In her big box. It fortunately is open. The farrier disappears within it
and the lid falls upon him.
The new arrival is a Brahmin, in full costume. His entry is hailed by
the spectators with a formidable laugh. This Brahmin is represented by
the convict Cutchin, who plays the part perfectly, thanks, in a great
measure, to a suitable physiognomy. He explains in the pantomime his
love of the miller's wife, raises his hands to heaven, and then clasps
them on his breast.
There is now another knock at the door--a vigorous one this time. There
could be no mistake about it. It is the master of the house. The
miller's wife loses her head; the Brahmin runs wildly on all sides,
begging to be concealed. She helps him to slip behind the cupboard, and
begins to spin, and goes on spinning without thinking of opening the
door. In her fright she gets the thread twisted, drops the spindle, and,
in her agitation, makes the gesture of turning it when it is lying on
the ground. Sirotkin represented perfectly this state of alarm.
Then the miller kicks open the door and approaches his wife, whip in
hand. He has seen everything, for he was spying outside; and he
indicates by signs to his wife that she has three lovers concealed in
the house. Then he searches them out.
First, he finds the neighbour, whom he drives out with his fist. The
frightened farrier tries to escape. He raises, with his head, the cover
of the chest, and is at once seen. The miller thrashes him with his
whip, and for once this gallant does not march in the classical style.
The only one now remaining is the Brahmin, whom the husband seeks for
some time without finding him. At last he discovers him in his corner
behind the cupboard, bows to him politely, and then draws him by his
beard into the middle of the stage. The Brahmin tries to defend himself,
and cries out, "Accursed, accursed!"--the only words pronounced
throughout the pantomime. But the husband will not listen to him, and,
after settling accounts with him, turns to his wife. Seeing that her
turn has come, she throws away both wheel and spindle, and runs out,
causing an earthen pot to fall as she shakes the room in her fright. The
convicts burst into a laugh, and Ali, without looking at me, takes my
hand, and calls out, "See, see the Brahmin!" He cannot hold himself
upright, so overpowering is his laugh. The curtain falls, and another
song begins.
There were two or three more, all broadly humorous and very droll. The
convicts had not composed them themselves, but they had contributed
something to them. Every actor improvised to such purpose that the part
was a different one each evening. The pantomime ended with a ballet, in
which there was a burial. The Brahmin went through various incantations
over the corpse, and with effect. The dead man returns to life, and, in
their joy, all present begin to dance. The Brahmin dances in Brahminical
style with the dead man. This was the final scene. The convicts now
separated, happy, delighted, and full of praise for the actors and
gratitude towards the non-commissioned officers. There was not the least
quarrel, and they all went to bed with peaceful hearts, to sleep with a
sleep by no means familiar to them.
This is no fantasy of my imagination, but the truth, the very truth.
These unhappy men had been permitted to live for some moments in their
own way, to amuse themselves in a human manner, to escape for a brief
hour from their sad position as convicts; and a moral change was
effected, at least for a time.
The night is already quite dark. Something makes me shudder, and I
awake. The "old believer" is still on the top of the high porcelain
stove praying, and he will continue to pray until dawn. Ali is sleeping
peacefully by my side. I remember that when he went to bed he was still
laughing and talking about the theatre with his brothers. Little by
little I began to remember everything; the preceding day, the Christmas
holidays, and the whole month. I raised my head in fright and looked at
my companions, who were sleeping by the trembling light of the candle
provided by the authorities. I look at their unhappy countenances, their
miserable beds; I view this nakedness, the wretchedness, and then
convince myself that it is not a frightful night there, but a simple
reality. Yes, it is a reality. I hear a groan. Some one has moved his
arm and made his chains rattle. Another one is agitated in his dreams
and speaks aloud, while the old grandfather is praying for the "Orthodox
Christians." I listened to his prayer, uttered with regularity, in
soft, rather drawling tones: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon us."
"Well, I am not here for ever, but only for a few years," I said to
myself, and I again laid my head down on my pillow.
Part II.
CHAPTER I.
THE HOSPITAL
Shortly after the Christmas holidays I felt ill, and had to go to our
military hospital, which stood apart at about half a verst (one-third of
a mile) from the fortress. It was a one-storey building, very long, and
painted yellow. Every summer a great quantity of ochre was expended in
brightening it up. In the immense court-yard stood buildings, including
those where the chief physicians lived, while the principal building
contained only wards intended for the patients. There were a good many
of them, but as only two were reserved for the convicts, these latter
were nearly always full, above all in summer, so that it was often
necessary to bring the beds closer together. These wards were occupied
by "unfortunates" of all kinds: first by our own, then by military
prisoners, previously incarcerated in the guard-houses. There were
others, again, who had not yet been tried, or who were passing through.
In this hospital, too, were invalids from the Disciplinary Company, a
melancholy institution for bringing together soldiers of bad conduct,
with a view to their correction. At the end of a year or two, they come
back the most thorough-going rascals that the earth can endure.
When a convict felt that he was ill, he told the non-commissioned
officer, who wrote the man's name down on a card, which he then gave to
him and sent him to the hospital under the escort of a soldier. On his
arrival he was examined by a doctor, who authorised the convict to
remain at the hospital if he was really ill. My name was duly written
down, and towards one o'clock, when all my companions had started for
their afternoon work, I went to the hospital. Every prisoner took with
him such money and bread as he could (for food was not to be expected
the first day), a little pipe, and pouch containing tobacco, with flint,
steel, and match-paper. The convicts concealed these objects in their
boots. On entering the hospital I experienced a feeling of curiosity,
for a new aspect of life was now presented.
The day was hot, cloudy, sad--one of those days when places like a
hospital assume a particularly disagreeable and repulsive look. Myself
and the soldier escorting me went into the entrance room, where there
were two copper baths. There were two convicts waiting there with their
warders. An assistant surgeon came in, looked at us with a careless and
patronising air, and went away still more carelessly to announce our
arrival to the physician on duty. Soon the physician arrived. He
examined me, treating me in a very affable manner, and gave me a paper
on which my name was inscribed. The ordinary physician of the wards
reserved for the convicts was to make the diagnosis of my illness, to
prescribe the fitting remedies, together with the necessary diet. I had
already heard the convicts say that their doctors could not be too much
praised. "They are fathers to us," they would say.
I took my clothes off to put on another costume. Our clothes and linen
were taken away, and we were given hospital linen instead, to which were
added long stockings, slippers, cotton nightcaps, and a dressing-gown of
a very thick brown cloth, which was lined, not with linen, but with
filth. The dressing-gown was indeed very filthy, but I soon understood
its utility. We were afterwards taken to the convict wards, which were
at the head of a long corridor, very high, and very clean. The external
cleanliness was quite satisfactory. Everything that could be seen shone;
so, at least, it seemed to me, after the dirtiness of the convict
prison.
The two prisoners, whom I had found in the entrance hall, went to the
left of the corridor, while I entered a room. Before the padlocked door
walked a sentinel, musket on shoulder; and not far off was the soldier
who was to replace him. The sergeant of the hospital guard ordered him
to let me pass, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a long
narrow room, with beds to the number of twenty-two arranged against the
walls. Three or four of them were still unoccupied. These wooden beds
were painted green, and, as is notoriously the case with all hospital
beds in Russia, were doubtless inhabited by bugs. I went into a corner
by the side of the windows. There were very few prisoners dangerously
ill and confined to their beds.
The inmates of the hospital were, for the most part, convalescents, or
men who were slightly indisposed. My new companions were stretched out
on their couches, or walking about up and down between the rows of beds.
There was just space enough for them to come and go. The atmosphere of
the ward was stifling with the odour peculiar to hospitals. It was
composed of various emanations, each more disagreeable than the other,
and of the smell of drugs; though the stove was kept well heated all day
long, my bed was covered with a counterpane, which I took off. The bed
itself consisted of a cloth blanket lined with linen, and coarse sheets
of more than doubtful cleanliness. By the side of the bed was a little
table with a pitcher and a pewter mug, together with a diminutive
napkin, which had been given to me. The table could, moreover, hold a
tea-urn for those patients who were rich enough to drink tea. These men
of means, however, were not very numerous. The pipes and the tobacco
pouches--for all the patients smoked, even the consumptive ones--could
be concealed beneath the mattress. The doctors and the other officials
scarcely ever made searches, and when they surprised a patient with a
pipe in his mouth, they pretended not to see. The patients, however,
were very prudent, and smoked always at the back of the stove. They
never smoked in their beds except at night, when no rounds were made by
the officers commanding the hospital.
Until then I had not been in any hospital in the character of patient,
so that everything was quite new to me. I noticed that my entry had
mystified some of the prisoners. They had heard of me, and all the
inmates now looked upon me with that slight shade of superiority which
recognised members of no matter what society show to one newly admitted
among them. On my right was lying down a man committed for trial--an
ex-secretary and the illegitimate son of a retired captain--accused of
having made false money. He had been in the hospital nearly a year. He
was not in the least ill, but he assured the doctors that he had an
aneurism, and he so thoroughly convinced them that he escaped both the
hard labour and the corporal punishment to which he had been sentenced.
He was sent a year later to T----k, where he was attached to an asylum.
He was a vigorous young fellow of eight-and-twenty, cunning, a
self-confessed rogue, and something of a lawyer. He was intelligent, had
easy manners, but was very presumptuous, and suffered from morbid
self-esteem. Convinced that there was no one in the world a bit more
honest or more just than himself, he did not consider himself at all
guilty, and never kept this assurance to himself.
This personage was the first to address me, and he questioned me with
much curiosity. He initiated me into the ways of the hospital; and, of
course, began by telling me that he was the son of a captain. He was
very anxious that I should take him for a noble, or at least, for some
one connected with the nobility.
Soon afterwards an invalid from the Disciplinary Company came and told
me that he knew a great many nobles who had been exiled; and, to
convince me, he repeated to me their christian names and their
patronymics. It was only necessary to see the face of this soldier to
understand that he was lying abominably. He was named Tchekounoff, and
came to pay court to me, because he suspected me of having money. When
he saw a packet of tea and sugar, he at once offered me his services to
make the water boil and to get me a tea-urn. M. D. S. K---- had promised
to send me my own by one of the prisoners who worked in the hospital,
but Tchekounoff arranged to get me one forthwith. He got me a tin
vessel, in which he made the water boil; and, in a word, he showed such
extraordinary zeal, that it drew down upon him bitter laughter from one
of the patients, a consumptive man, whose bed was just opposite mine,
Usteantseff by name. This was the soldier condemned to the rods, who,
from fear, had swallowed a bottle of vodka, in which he had infused
tobacco, this bringing on lung disease.
I have spoken of him above. He had remained silent until now, stretched
out on his bed, and breathing with difficulty. He looked at me all the
time with a very serious air. He did not take his eyes from Tchekounoff,
whose civility irritated him. His extraordinary gravity rendered his
indignation comic. At last he could stand it no longer.
"Look at this fellow! He has found his master," he said, stammering out
the words with a voice strangled by weakness, for he had now not long to
live.
Tchekounoff, much annoyed, turned round.
"Who is the fellow?" he asked, looking at Usteantseff, with contempt.
"Why, you are a flunkey," replied Usteantseff, as confidently as if he
had possessed the right of calling Tchekounoff to order.
"I a fellow?"
"Yes, you are a flunkey; a true flunkey. Listen, my good friends. He
won't believe me. He is quite astonished, the brave fellow."
"What can that matter to you? You see when they don't know how to make
use of their hands that they are not accustomed to be without servants.
Why should I not serve him, buffoon with a hairy snout?"
"Who has a hairy snout?"
"You!"
"I have a hairy snout?"
"Yes; certainly you have."
"You are a nice fellow, you are. If I have a hairy snout, you have a
face like a crow's egg."
"Hairy snout! The merciful Lord has settled your account. You would do
much better to keep quiet and die."
"Why? I would rather prostrate myself before a boot than before a
slipper. My father never prostrated himself, and never made me do so."
He would have continued, but an attack of coughing convulsed him for
some minutes. He spat blood, and a cold sweat broke out on his low
forehead. If his cough had not prevented him from speaking, he would
have continued to declaim. One could see that from his look; but in his
powerlessness he could only move his hand, the result of which was that
Tchekounoff spoke no more about the matter.
I quite understood that the consumptive patient hated me much more than
Tchekounoff. No one would have thought of being angry with him or of
looking down upon him by reason of the services he was rendering me, and
the few kopecks that he tried to get from me. Every one understood that
he did it all in order to get himself a little money.
The Russian people are not at all susceptible on such points, and know
perfectly well how to take them.
I had displeased Usteantseff, as my tea had also displeased him. What
irritated him was that, in spite of all, I was a gentleman, even with my
chains; that I could not do without a servant, though I neither asked
for nor desired one. In reality I tried to do everything for myself, in
order not to appear a white-handed, effeminate person, and not to play
the part which excited so much envy.
I even felt a little pride on this point; but, in spite of every
thing--I do not know why--I was always surrounded by officious,
complaisant people, who attached themselves to me of their own free
will, and who ended by governing me. It was I rather who was their
servant; so that, whether I liked it or not, I was made to appear to
every one a noble, who could not do without the services of others, and
who gave himself airs. This exasperated me.
Usteantseff was consumptive, and, therefore, irascible. The other
patients only showed me indifference, tinged with a shade of contempt.
They were occupied with a circumstance which now presents itself to my
memory.
I learned, as I listened to their conversation, that there was to be
brought into the hospital that evening a convict who, at that moment,
was receiving the rods. The prisoners were looking forward to this new
arrival with some curiosity. They said, however, that his punishment was
but slight--only five hundred strokes.
I looked round. The greater number of genuine patients were, as far as I
could observe, affected by scurvy and diseases of the eyes--both
peculiar to this country. The others suffered from fever, lung disease,
and other illnesses. The different illnesses were not separated; all the
patients were together in the same room.
I have spoken of genuine patients, for certain convicts had come in
merely to get a little rest. The doctors admitted them from pure
compassion, above all, if there were any vacant beds. Life in the
guard-house and in the prison was so hard compared with that of the
hospital, that many persons preferred to remain lying down in spite of
the stifling atmosphere and the rules against leaving the room.
There were even men who took pleasure in this kind of life. They
belonged nearly all to the Disciplinary Company. I examined my new
companions with curiosity. One of them puzzled me very much. He was
consumptive, and was dying. His bed was a little further on than that of
Usteantseff, and was nearly beside mine. He was named Mikhailoff. I had
seen him in the Convict Prison two weeks before, when he was already
seriously ill. He ought to have been under treatment long before, but
he bore up against his malady with surprising courage. He did not go to
the hospital until about the Christmas holidays, to die three weeks
afterwards of galloping consumption. He seemed to have burned out like a
candle. What astonished me most was the terrible change in his
countenance. I had noticed him the very first day of my imprisonment. By
his side was lying a soldier of the Disciplinary Company--an old man
with a bad expression on his face, whose general appearance was
disgusting.
But I am not going to enumerate all the patients. I just remember this
old man simply because he made an impression on me, and initiated me at
once into certain peculiarities of the ward. He had a severe cold in the
head, which made him sneeze at every moment, even during his sleep, as
if firing salutes, five or six times running, while each time he called
out, "My God, what torture!"
Seated on his bed he stuffed his nose eagerly with snuff, which he took
from a paper bag, in order to sneeze more strongly, and with greater
regularity. He sneezed into a checked cotton pocket-handkerchief which
belonged to him, and which had lost its colour through perpetual
washing. His little nose then became wrinkled in a most peculiar manner
with a multitude of wrinkles, and his open mouth exhibited broken teeth,
decayed and black, and red gums moist with saliva. When he sneezed into
his handkerchief he unfolded it and wiped it on the lining of his
dressing-gown. His proceedings disgusted me so much that involuntarily I
examined the dressing-gown I had just put on myself. It exhaled a most
offensive odour, which contact with my body helped to bring out. It
smelt of plasters and medicaments of all kinds. It seemed as though it
had been worn by patients from time immemorial. The lining had, perhaps,
been washed once, but I would not swear to it. Certainly, at the time I
put it on, it was saturated with lotions, and stained by contact with
poultices and plasters of all imaginable kinds.
The men condemned to the rods, having undergone their punishment, were
brought straight to the hospital, their backs still bleeding. As
compresses and as poultices were placed on their wounds, the
dressing-gown they wore over their wet shirt received and retained the
droppings.
During all the time of my hard labour I had to go to the hospital, which
often happened, I always put on, with mistrust and abhorrence, the
dressing-gown that was delivered to me. As soon as Tchekounoff had given
me my tea (I will say, in parenthesis, that the water brought in in the
morning, and not renewed throughout the day, was soon corrupted, soon
poisoned by the fetid air), the door opened, and the soldier, who had
just received the rods, was brought in under a double escort. I saw, for
the first time, a man who had just been whipped. Later on many were
brought in, and whenever this happened it caused great distress to the
patients. These unfortunate men were received with grave composure, but
the nature of the reception depended nearly always on the enormity of
the crime committed, and, consequently, the number of strokes
administered.
The criminals most cruelly whipped, and who were celebrated as brigands
of the first order, enjoyed more respect and attention than a simple
deserter, a recruit, like the one who had just been brought in. But in
neither case was any particular sympathy manifested, nor were any
annoying remarks made. The unhappy man was attended to in silence, above
all if he was incapable of attending to himself. The assistant-surgeons
knew that they were entrusting their patients to skilful and experienced
hands. The usual treatment consisted in applying very often to the back
of the man who had been whipped a shirt or a piece of linen steeped in
cold water. It was also necessary to withdraw skilfully from the wounds
the twigs left by the rods which had been broken on the criminal's back.
This last operation was particularly painful to the patients. The
extraordinary stoicism with which they supported their sufferings
astonished me greatly.
I have seen many convicts who had been whipped, and cruelly, I can tell
you. Well, I do not remember one of them uttering a groan. Only after
such an experience, the countenance becomes pale, decomposed, the eyes
glitter, the look wanders, and the lips tremble so that the patient
sometimes bites them till they bleed.
The soldier who had just come in was twenty-three years of age; he had a
good muscular development, and was rather a fine man, tall, well-made,
with a bronzed skin. His back, uncovered down to the waist, had been
seriously beaten, and his body now trembled with fever beneath the damp
sheet with which his back was covered. For about an hour and a half he
did nothing but walk backwards and forwards in the room. I looked at his
face: he seemed to be thinking of nothing; his eyes had a strange
expression, at once wild and timid; they seemed to fix themselves with
difficulty on the various objects. I fancied I saw him looking
attentively at my hot tea; the steam was rising from the full cup, and
the poor devil was shivering and clattering his teeth. I invited him to
have some; he turned towards me without saying a word, and taking up the
cup, swallowed the tea at one gulp, without putting sugar in it. He
tried not to look at me, and when he had finished he put the cup back in
silence without making a sign, and then began to walk up and down as
before. He was in too much pain to think of speaking to me or thanking
me. As for the other prisoners, they abstained from questioning him;
when once they had applied compresses they paid no more attention to
him, thinking probably it would be better to leave him alone, and not to
worry him by their questions and compassion. The soldier seemed quite
satisfied with this view.
Meanwhile, night came on and the lamp was lighted; some of the patients
possessed candlesticks of their own, but these were not numerous. In the
evening the doctor came round, after which a non-commissioned officer on
guard counted the patients and closed the room.
The prisoners could not speak in too high terms of their doctors. They
looked upon them truly as fathers and respected them. These doctors had
always something pleasant to say, a kind word even for reprobates, who
appreciated it all the more because they knew it was said in all
sincerity.
Yes, these kind words were really sincere, for no one would have thought
of blaming the doctors had they shown themselves cross and inhuman; they
were kind purely from humanity. They understood perfectly that a convict
who is sick has as much right to breathe pure air as any other person,
even though the latter might be a great personage. The convalescents
there had a right to walk freely through the corridors to take exercise,
and to breathe air less pestilential than that of our infirmary, which
was close and saturated with deleterious emanations. In our ward, when
once the doors had been closed in the evening, they had to remain closed
throughout the night, and under no pretext was one of the inmates
allowed to go out.
For many years an inexplicable fact troubled me like an insoluble
problem. I must speak of it before going on with my description. I am
thinking of the chains which every convict is obliged to wear, however
ill he may be; even consumptives have died beneath my eyes with their
legs loaded with irons.
Everybody was accustomed to it, and regarded it as an inevitable fact. I
do not think any one, even the doctors, would have thought of demanding
the removal of the irons from convicts who were seriously ill, not even
from the consumptive ones. The chains, it is true, were not exceedingly
heavy; they did not in general weigh more than eight or ten pounds,
which is a supportable burden for a man in good health. I have been
told, however, that after some years the legs of the convicts dry up and
waste away. I do not know whether it is true. I am inclined to think it
is; the weight, however light it may be (say not more than ten pounds),
if it is fixed to the leg for ever, increases the general weight in an
abnormal manner, and at the end of a certain time must have a disastrous
effect on its development.
For a convict in good health this is nothing, but the same cannot be
said of one who is sick. For the convicts who were seriously ill, for
the consumptive ones whose arms and legs dry up of themselves, this last
straw is insupportable. Even if the medical authorities claimed
alleviation for the consumptive patients alone, it would be an immense
benefit, I assure you. I shall be told convicts are malefactors,
unworthy of compassion; but ought increased severity to be shown towards
him on whom the finger of God already weighs? No one will believe that
the object of this aggravation is to reform the criminal. The
consumptive prisoners are exempted from corporal punishment by the
tribunal.
There must be some mysterious, important reason for all this, but what
it is, it is impossible to understand. No one believes--it is impossible
to believe--that a consumptive man will run away. Who can think of such
a thing, especially if the illness has reached a certain degree of
intensity? It is impossible to deceive the doctors and make them mistake
a convict in good health for one who is in a consumption, for this
malady is one that can be recognised at the first glance. Moreover, can
the irons prevent the convict not in good health from escaping? Not in
the least. The irons are a degradation and shame, a physical and moral
burden; but they would not hinder any one attempting to escape. The most
awkward and least intelligent convict can saw through them, or break the
rivets by hammering at them with a stone. Chains, then, are a useless
precaution; and if the convicts wear them as a punishment, should not
this punishment be spared to dying men?
As I write these lines, a face stands out from my memory: that of a
dying man, a man who died in consumption, this same Mikhailoff, whose
bed was nearly opposite me, and who expired, I think, four days after my
arrival at the hospital. When I spoke above of the consumptive patients,
I was only reproducing involuntarily the sensations and ideas which
occurred to me on the occasion of this death. I knew Mikhailoff very
little; he was a young man of twenty-five at most, not very tall, thin,
and with a fine face; he belonged to the "special section," and was
remarkable for his strange, but soft and sad taciturnity; he seemed to
have "dried up" in the convict prison, to use an expression employed by
the convicts who had a good recollection of him. I remember he had very
fine eyes. I really cannot tell why I think of that.
He died at three o'clock in the afternoon on a clear, dry day. The sun
was darting its brilliant rays obliquely through the greenish, frozen
panes of our room. A torrent of light inundated the unhappy patient, who
had lost all consciousness, and was several hours dying. From the early
morning his sight became confused; he was unable to recognise those who
approached him. The convicts would gladly have done anything to relieve
him, for they saw he was in great suffering. His respiration was
painful, deep, and irregular; his breast rose and fell violently, as
though he were in want of air; he cast his blanket and his clothes far
from him. Then he began to tear up his shirt, which seemed to him a
terrible burden. It was taken off. Then it was frightful to see this
immensely long body, with fleshless arms and legs, with beating breast,
and ribs which were as clearly marked as those of a skeleton. There was
nothing now on this skeleton but a cross and the irons, from which his
dried-up legs might easily have freed themselves. A quarter of an hour
before his death everything was silent in our ward, and the inmates
spoke only in whispers. The convicts walked on the tips of their toes.
From time to time they exchanged remarks on other subjects, and cast a
furtive glance at the dying man. The rattling in his throat grew more
and more painful. At last, with a trembling hand, he felt the cross on
his breast and endeavoured to tear it off; it was also weighing upon
him, suffocating him. It was taken off. Ten minutes afterwards, he died.
Some one then knocked at the door in order to give notice to the
sentinel; the warder entered, looked at the dead man with a vacant air,
and went away to get the assistant-surgeon. The assistant-surgeon was a
good fellow enough, but a little too much occupied with his personal
appearance, otherwise very agreeable; he soon arrived, went up to the
corpse with long strides which made a noise in the silent ward, and
felt the dead man's pulse with an unconcerned air which seemed to have
been put on for the occasion. He then made a vague gesture with his hand
and went out.
Information was given at the guard-house; for the criminal was an
important one (he belonged to the special section), and in order to
register his death it was necessary to go through some formalities.
While we were waiting for the hospital guard to come, one of the
prisoners said in a whisper, "The eyes of the defunct might as well be
closed." Another one profited by this remark, and approaching Mikhailoff
in silence, closed his eyes; then perceiving on the pillow the cross
which had been taken from his neck, he took it and looked at it, put it
down, and crossed himself. The face of the dead man was becoming
ossified; a ray of white light was playing on the surface and
illuminated two rows of white, good teeth which sparkled between his
thin lips, glued to the gums by the mouth.
The non-commissioned officer on guard arrived at last, musket on
shoulder, helmet on head, accompanied by two soldiers; he approached the
corpse, slackening his pace with an air of uncertainty. Then he examined
with a side glance the silent prisoners, who looked at him with a sombre
expression. At one step from the dead man he stopped short, as if
suddenly nailed to the spot; the naked, dried-up body, loaded with
irons, had impressed him; he undid his chin-strap, removed his helmet
(which was not at all necessary for him to do), and made the sign of the
cross; he had a gray head, the head of a soldier who had seen much
service. I remember that by his side stood Tchekounoff, an old man who
was also gray. He looked all the time at the non-commissioned officer,
and followed all his movements with strange attention. They glanced
across, and I saw that Tchekounoff also trembled. He bit and closed his
teeth, and said to the non-commissioned officer, as if involuntarily, at
the same time nodding his head in the direction of the dead man, "He had
a mother, too!"
These words went to my heart. Why had he said them? and how did this
idea occur to him? The corpse was raised with the mattress; the straw
creaked, the chains dragged along the ground with a sharp ring; they
were taken up and the body was carried out. Suddenly all spoke once more
in a loud voice. The non-commissioned officer in the corridor could well
be heard crying out to some one to go for the blacksmith. It was
necessary to take the dead man's irons off. But I have digressed from my
subject.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOSPITAL (_continued_).
The doctors used to visit the wards in the morning, towards eleven
o'clock; they appeared all together, forming a procession, which was
headed by the chief physician. An hour and a half before, the ordinary
physician had made his round. He was a quiet young man, always affable
and kind, much liked by the prisoners, and thoroughly versed in his art;
they only found one fault with him, that he was "too soft." He was, in
fact, by no means communicative, he seemed confused in our presence,
blushed sometimes, and changed the quantity of food at the first
representation of the patient. I think he would have consented to give
them any medicine they desired: in other respects an excellent young
man.
A doctor in Russia often enjoys the affection and respect of the people,
and with reason, as far as I have been able to see. I know that my words
would seem a paradox, above all when the mistrust of this same people
for foreign drugs and foreign doctors is taken into account; in fact,
they prefer, even when suffering from a serious illness, to address
themselves year after year to a witch, or employ old women's remedies
(which, however, ought not to be despised), rather than consult a
doctor, or go into the hospital. In truth, these prejudices may be
above all attributed to causes which have nothing to do with medicine,
namely, the mistrust of the people for anything which bears an official
and administrative character; nor must it be forgotten that the common
people are frightened and prejudiced in regard to the hospitals, by the
stories, often absurd, of fantastic horrors said to take place within
them. Perhaps, however, these stories have a basis of truth.
But what repels them above all, is the Germanism of the hospitals, the
idea that during their illness they will be attended to by foreigners,
the severity of the diet, the heartlessness of the surgeons and doctors,
the dissection and autopsy of the bodies, etc. The common people
reflect, moreover, that they will be attended by nobles--for in their
view the doctors belong to the nobility. Once they have made
acquaintance with them (there are exceptions, no doubt, but they are
rare), their fears vanish. This success must be attributed to our
doctors, especially the young ones, who, for the most part, know how to
gain the respect and affection of the people. I speak now of what I
myself have seen and experienced in many cases and in different parts,
and I think matters are the same everywhere. In some distant localities
the doctors receive presents, make profit out of their hospitals, and
neglect the patients; sometimes they forget even their art. This
happens, no doubt; but I am speaking of the majority, inspired as it is
by that spirit, that generous tendency which is regenerating the medical
art. As for the apostates, the wolves in the sheep-fold, they may excuse
themselves, and cast the blame on the circumstances amid which they
live; but they are absurd, inexcusable, especially if they are no longer
humane; it is precisely the humanity, affability, and brotherly
compassion of the doctor which prove most efficacious remedies for the
patients. It is time to stop these apathetic lamentations on the
circumstances surrounding us. There may be truth in the lament, but a
cunning rogue who knows how to take care of himself never fails to
blame the circumstances around him when he wishes his faults to be
forgiven--above all, if he writes or speaks with eloquence.
I have again departed from my subject; I wish only to say that the
common people mistrust and dislike officialism and the Government
doctors, rather than the doctors themselves; but on personal
acquaintance many prejudices disappear.
Our doctor generally stopped before the bed of each patient, questioned
him seriously and attentively, then prescribed the remedies, potions,
etc. He sometimes noticed that the pretended invalid was not ill at all;
he had come to take rest after his hard work, and to sleep on a mattress
in a warm room, far preferable to the naked planks in a damp guard-house
among a mass of pale, broken-down men, waiting for their trial. In
Russia the prisoners in the House of Detention are almost always broken
down, which shows that their moral and material condition is worse even
than those of the convicts.
In cases of feigned sickness our doctor would describe the patient as
suffering from _febris catharalis_, and sometimes allowed him to remain
a week in the hospital. Every one laughed at this _febris catharalis_,
for it was known to be a formula agreed upon between the doctor and the
patient to indicate no malady at all. Often the robust invalid who
abused the doctor's compassion remained in the hospital until he was
turned out by force. Our doctor was worth seeing then. Confused by the
prisoner's obstinacy, he did not like to tell him plainly that he was
cured and offer him his leaving ticket, although he had the right to
send him away without the least explanation on writing the words,
_sanat. est_. First he would hint to him that it was time to go, and
then would beg him to leave.
"You must go, you know you are cured now, and we have no place for you,
we are very much cramped here, etc."
At last, ashamed to remain any longer, the patient would consent to go.
The physician-in-chief, although compassionate and just (the patients
were much attached to him), was incomparably more severe and more
decided than our ordinary physician. In certain cases he showed
merciless severity which only gained for him the respect of the
convicts. He always came into the room accompanied by all the doctors of
the hospital, when his assistants visited all the beds and diagnosed on
each particular case; he stopped longest at the beds of those who were
seriously ill, and had an encouraging word for them. He never sent back
the convicts who arrived with _febris catharalis_; but if one of them
was determined to remain in the hospital, he certified that the man was
cured. "Come," he would say, "you have had your rest; now go, you must
not take liberties."
Those who insisted upon remaining, were, above all, the convicts who
were worn out by field labour, performed during the great summer heat,
or prisoners who had been sentenced to be whipped. I remember that they
were obliged to be particularly severe, merely in order to get rid of
one of them. He had come to be cured of some disease of the eyes, which
were red all over; he complained of suffering a sharp pain in the
eyelids. He was incurable; plasters, blisters, leeches, nothing did him
any good; and the diseased organ remained in the same condition.
Then it occurred to the doctors that the illness was feigned, for the
inflammation neither became worse nor better; and they soon understood
that a comedy was being played, although the patient would not admit it.
He was a fine young fellow, not ill-looking, though he produced a
disagreeable impression upon all his companions; he was suspicious,
sombre, full of dissimulation, and never looked any one straight in the
face; he also kept himself apart as if he mistrusted us all. I remember
that many persons were afraid that he would do some one harm.
When he was a soldier he had committed some small theft, he had been
arrested and condemned to receive a thousand strokes, and afterwards to
pass into a disciplinary company.
To put off the moment of punishment, the prisoners, as I have already
said, will do incredible things. On the eve of the fatal day, they will
stick a knife into one of their chiefs, or into a comrade, in order that
they may be tried again for this new offence, which will delay their
punishment for a month or two. It matters little to them that their
punishment be doubled or tripled, if they can escape this time. What
they desire is to put off temporarily the terrible minute at whatever
cost, so utterly does their heart fail them.
Many of the patients thought the man with the sore eyes ought to be
watched, lest in his despair he should assassinate some one during the
night; but no precaution was taken, not even by those who slept next to
him. It was remarked, however, that he rubbed his eyes with plaster from
the wall, and with something else besides, in order that they might
appear red when the doctor came round; at last the doctor-in-chief
threatened to cure him by-means of a seton.
When the malady resists all ordinary treatment, the doctors determine to
try some heroic, however painful, remedy. But the poor devil did not
wish to get well, he was either too obstinate or too cowardly; for,
however painful the proposed operation may be, it cannot be compared to
the punishment of the rods.
The operation consists in seizing the patient by the nape of the neck,
taking up the skin, drawing it back as much as possible, and making in
it a double incision, through which is passed a skein of cotton about as
thick as the finger. Every day at a fixed hour this skein is pulled
backwards and forwards in order that the wound may continually suppurate
and may not heal; the poor devil endured this torture which caused him
horrible suffering, for several days.
At last he consented to quit the hospital. In less than a day his eyes
became quite well; and, as soon as his neck was healed, he was sent to
the guard-house which he left next day to receive the first thousand
strokes.
Painful is the minute which precedes such a punishment; so painful, that
perhaps I am wrong in taxing with cowardice those convicts who fear it.
It must be terrible; for the convicts to risk a double or triple
punishment, merely to postpone it. I have spoken, however, of convicts
who have thus wished to quit the hospital before the wounds caused by
the first part of the flogging were healed, in order to receive the last
part and make an end of it. For life in a guard-room is certainly worse
than in a convict prison.
The habit of receiving floggings helps in some cases to give intrepidity
and decision to convicts. Those who have been often flogged, are
hardened both in body and mind, and have at last looked upon such a
punishment as merely a disagreeable incident no longer to be feared.
One of our convicts of the special section was a converted Tartar, who
was named Alexander, or Alexandrina, as they called him in fun at the
convict prison; who told me how he had received 4,000 strokes. He never
spoke of this punishment except with amusement and laughter; but he
swore very seriously that if he had not been brought up in his horde,
from his most tender infancy, on whipping and flogging--and as the scars
which covered his back, and which refused to disappear, were there to
testify--he would never have been able to support those 4,000 strokes.
He blessed the education of sticks that he had received.
"I was beaten for the least thing, Alexander Petrovitch," he said one
evening, when we were sitting down before the fire. "I was beaten
without reason for fifteen years, as long as I can ever remember, and
several times a day. Any one who liked beat me; so that, at last, it
made no impression upon me."
I do not know how it was he became a soldier, for perhaps he lied, and
had always been a deserter and vagabond. But I remember his telling me
one day of the fright he was seized with when he was condemned to
receive 4,000 strokes for having killed one of his officers.
"I know that they will punish me severely," he said to himself, "that,
accustomed as I am to be whipped, I shall perhaps die on the spot. The
devil! 4,000 strokes is not a trifle; and then all my officers were in a
fearful temper with me on account of this affair. I knew well that it
would not be 'rose-water.' I even believed that I should die under the
rods. I determined to get baptized. I said to myself, that perhaps they
would not then flog me, at any rate it was worth trying, my comrades had
told me that it would be of no good. But,' I said to myself, 'who knows?
perhaps they will pardon me, they will have more compassion on a
Christian than on a Mohammedan. They baptized me, and give me the name
of Alexander; but, in spite of that, I had to take my flogging; they did
not let me off a single stroke; I was, however, very savage. 'Wait a
bit,' I said to myself, 'and I will take you all in'; and, would you
believe it, Alexander? I did take them all in. I knew how to look like a
dead man; not that I appeared altogether without life, but I looked as
if I were on the point of breathing my last. They led me in front of the
battalion to receive my first thousand; my skin was burning, I began to
howl. They gave me my second thousand, and I said to myself, 'It's all
over now.' I had lost my head, my legs seemed broken, so I fell to the
ground, with the eyes of a dead man. My face blue, my mouth full of
froth, I no longer breathed. When the doctor came he said I was on the
point of death. I was carried to the hospital, and at once returned to
life. Twice again they flogged me. What a rage they were in! I took them
all in on each occasion. I received my third thousand, and died again.
On my word, when they gave me the last thousand each stroke ought to
have counted for three, it was like a knife in my heart. Oh, how they
did beat me! They were so severe with me. Oh, that cursed fourth
thousand! it was well worth three firsts put together. If I had
pretended to be dead when I had still 200 to receive, I think they would
have finished me; but they did not get the better of me. I had them
again and again, for they always thought it was all over with me, and
how could they have thought otherwise? The doctor was sure of it. But as
for the 200 which I had still to receive, they might have struck as hard
as they liked--they were worth 2,000; I only laughed at them. Why?
Because, when I was a youngster, I had grown up under the whip. Well, I
am well, and alive now; but I have been beaten in the course of my
life," he repeated, with a passive air, as he brought his story to an
end. As he did so, he seemed to recollect and count anew the blows he
had received.
After a brief silence, he said: "I cannot count them, nor can any one
else; there are not figures enough." He looked at me, and burst into a
laugh, so simple and natural, that I could not help smiling in return.
"Do you know, Alexander Petrovitch, when I dream at night, I always
dream that I am being flogged. I dream of nothing else." He, in fact,
talked in his sleep, and woke up the other prisoners.
"What are you yelling about, you demon?" they would say to him.
This strong, robust fellow, short in stature, about forty-four years of
age, active, good-looking, lived on good terms with every one, though he
was very fond of taking what did not belong to him, and afterwards got
beaten for it. But each of our convicts who stole got beaten for their
thefts.
I will add to these remarks that I was always surprised at the
extraordinary good-nature, the absence of rancour with which these
unhappy men spoke of their punishment, and of the chiefs superintending
it. In these stories, which often gave me palpitation of the heart, not
a shadow of hatred or rancour could be detected; they laughed at what
they had suffered like children.
It was not the same, however, with M--tçki, when he told me of his
punishment. As he was not a noble, he had been sentenced to be flogged.
He had never spoken to me of it, and when I asked him if it were true,
he replied affirmatively in two brief words, but with evident suffering,
and without looking at me. He at the same time turned red, and when he
raised his eyes, I saw flames burning in them, while his lips trembled
with indignation. I felt that he would not forget, that he could never
forget this page of his history. Our companions generally on the other
hand (though theirs might have been exceptions), looked upon their
adventures with quite another eye. It is impossible, I sometimes
thought, that they can be conscious of their guilt, and not acknowledge
the justice of their punishment; above all, when their offences were
against their companions and not against some chief. The greater part of
them did not acknowledge their guilt. I have already said that I never
observed in them the least remorse, even when the crime had been
committed against people of their own station. As for the crimes
committed against a chief, they did not even speak of them. It seems to
me that for those cases, they had special views of their own. They
looked upon them as accidents caused by destiny, by fatality, into which
they had fallen unconsciously as the result of some extraordinary
impulse. The convict always justifies the crimes he has committed
against his chief; he does not trouble himself about the matter. But he
admits that the chief cannot share his view, and consequently, that he
must naturally be punished, and then he will be quits with him.
The struggle between the administration and the prisoner is of the
severest character on both sides. What in a great measure justifies the
criminal in his own eyes, is his conviction that the people among whom
he has been born and has lived will acquit him. He is certain that the
common people will not look upon him as a lost man, unless, indeed, his
crime has bean committed against persons of his own class, against his
brethren. He is quite calm about that; supported by his conscience, he
will not lose his moral tranquillity, and that is the principal thing.
He feels himself on firm ground, and has no particular hatred for the
knout, when once it has been administered to him. He knows that it was
inevitable, and consoles himself by thinking that he was neither the
first nor the last to receive it. Does the soldier detest the Turk whom
he fights? Not in the least! yet he sabres him, hacks him to pieces,
kills him.
It must not be thought, moreover, that all of these stories were told
with indifference and in cold blood.
When the name of Jerebiatnikof was mentioned, it was always with
indignation. I made the acquaintance of this officer during my first
stay in the hospital--only by the convicts' stories, it must be
understood. I afterwards saw him one day when he was commanding the
guard at the convict prison; he was about thirty years old, very stout
and very strong, with red cheeks hanging down on each side, white teeth,
and a formidable laugh. One could see in a moment that he was in no way
given to reflection. He took the greatest pleasure in whipping and
flogging, when he had to superintend the punishment. I must hasten to
say that the other officers looked upon Jerebiatnikof as a monster, and
the convicts did the same. This was in the good old time, which is not
very very far off, but in which it is already difficult to believe
executioners delighted in their office. But, generally speaking, the
strokes were administered without enthusiasm.
This lieutenant was an exception, and he took a real pleasure and
delight in punishment. He had a passion for it, and liked it for its own
sake; he looked to this art for unnatural delights in order to tickle
and excite his base soul. A prisoner is conducted to the place of
punishment. Jerebiatnikof is the officer superintending the execution.
Arranging a long line of soldiers, armed with heavy rods, he walks along
the front with a satisfied air, and encourages each one to do his duty,
conscientiously or otherwise--the soldiers know before what "otherwise"
means. The criminal is brought out. If he does not yet know
Jerebiatnikof, if he is not in the secret of the mystery, the Lieutenant
plays him the following trick--one of the inventions of Jerebiatnikof,
very ingenious in this style of thing. The prisoner, whose back has been
bared, and whom the non-commissioned officers have fastened to the butt
end of a musket in order to drag him afterwards through the whole length
of the "Green Street." He begs the officer in charge, with a plaintive
and tearful voice, not to have him struck too hard, not to double the
punishment by any undue severity.
"Your nobility!" cries the unhappy wretch, "have pity on me, treat me
fraternally, so that I may pray God throughout my life for you. Do not
destroy me, show mercy!"
Jerebiatnikof had waited for this. He now suspended the execution, and
engaged the prisoner in conversation, speaking to him in a sentimental,
compassionate tone.
"But, my good fellow," he would say, "what am I to do? It is the law
that punishes you--it is the law."
"Your nobility! You can make it everything; have pity upon me."
"Do you really think that I have no pity on you? Do you think it is any
pleasure to me to see you whipped? I am a man, am I not? Answer me, am I
not a man?"
"Certainly, your nobility. We know that the officers are our fathers and
we their children. Be to me a venerable father," the prisoner would cry,
seeing some possibility of escaping punishment.
"Then, my friend, judge for yourself. You have a brain to think with,
you know I am human, I ought to take compassion on you, sinner though
you be."
"Your nobility says the absolute truth."
"Yes, I ought to be merciful to you however guilty you may be. But it
is not I who punish you, it is the law. I serve God and my country, and
consequently I commit a grave sin if I mitigate the punishment fixed by
the law. Only think of that!"
"Your nobility!"
"Well, what am I to do? Only think, I know that I am doing wrong, but it
shall be as you wish; I will have mercy upon you, you shall be punished
lightly. But if I really do this on one occasion, if I show mercy, if I
punish you lightly, you will think that at another time I shall be
merciful, and you will recommence your follies. What do you say to
that?"
"Your nobility, preserve me! Before the throne of the heavenly Creator,
I----"
"No, no; you swear that you will behave yourself."
"May the Lord cause me to die this moment and in the next world."
"Do not swear in that way, it is a sin; I shall believe you if you will
give me your word."
"Your nobility."
"Well, listen, I will have mercy on you on account of your tears, your
orphan's tears, for you are an orphan, are you not?"
"Orphan on both sides, your nobility, I am alone in the world."
"Well, on account of your orphan's tears I have pity on you," he added,
in a voice so full of emotion, that the prisoner could not sufficiently
thank God for having sent him so good an officer.
The procession went out, the drum rolled, the soldiers brandished their
arms. "Flog him," Jerebiatnikof would roar from the bottom of his lungs,
"flog him! burn him! skin him alive! Harder! harder! Give it harder to
this orphan! Give it him, the rogue."
The soldiers lay on the strokes with all their might on the back of the
unhappy wretch, whose eyes dart fire, and who howls while Jerebiatnikof
runs after him in front of the line, holding his sides with
laughter--he puffs and blows so that he can scarcely hold himself
upright. He is happy. He thinks it droll. From time to time his
formidable resonant laugh is heard, as he keeps on repeating, "Flog him!
thrash him! this brigand! this orphan!"
He had composed variation on this motive. The prisoner has been brought
to undergo his punishment. He begs the lieutenant to have pity on him.
This time Jerebiatnikof does not play the hypocrite; he is frank with
the prisoner.
"Look, my dear fellow, I will punish you as you deserve, but I can show
you one act of mercy. I will not attach you to the butt end of the
musket, you shall go along in a new style, you have only to run as hard
as you can along the front, each rod will strike you as a matter of
course, but it will be over sooner. What do you say to that, will you
try?"
The prisoner, who has listened, full of mistrust and doubt, says to
himself: Perhaps this way will not be so bad as the other. If I run with
all my might, it will not last quite so long, and perhaps all the rods
will not touch me.
"Well, your nobility, I consent."
"I also consent. Come, mind your business," cries the lieutenant to the
soldiers. He knew beforehand that not one rod would spare the back of
the unfortunate wretch; the soldier who failed to hit him would know
what to expect.
The convict tries to run along the "Green Street," but he does not go
beyond fifteen men before the rods rain upon his poor spine like hail;
so that the unfortunate man shrieks out, and falls as if he had been
struck by a bullet.
"No, your nobility, I prefer to be flogged in the ordinary way," he
says, managing to get up, pale and frightened. While Jerebiatnikof, who
knew beforehand how this affair would end, held his sides and burst into
a laugh.
But I cannot relate all the diversions invented by him, and all that
was told about him.
My companions also spoke of a Lieutenant Smekaloff, who fulfilled the
functions of Commandant before the arrival of our present Major. They
spoke of Jerebiatnikof with indifference, without hatred, but also
without exalting his high achievements. They did not praise him, they
simply despised him, whilst at the name of Smekaloff the whole prison
burst into a chorus of laudation. The Lieutenant was by no means fond of
administering the rods; there was nothing in him of Jerebiatnikof's
disposition. How did it happen that the convicts remembered his
punishments, severe as they were, with sweet satisfaction. How did he
manage to please them. How did he gain the popularity he certainly
enjoyed?
Our companions, like Russian people in general, were ready to forget
their tortures if a kind word was said to them; I speak of the effect
itself without analysing or examining it. It is not difficult, then, to
gain the affections of such a people and become popular. Lieutenant
Smekaloff had gained such popularity, and when the punishments he had
directed were spoken of, they were always mentioned with a certain
sympathy.
"He was as kind as a father," the convicts would sometimes say, as, with
a sigh, they compared him with their present chief, the Major who had
replaced him.
He was a simple-minded man, and kind in a manner. There are chiefs who
are naturally kind and merciful, but who are not at all liked and are
laughed at; whereas, Smekaloff had so managed that all the prisoners had
a special regard for him; this was due to innate qualities, which those
who possess them do not understand. Strange thing! There are men who are
far from being kind, and who have yet the talent of making themselves
popular; they do not despise the people who are beneath their rule.
That, I think, is the cause of this popularity. They do not give
themselves lordly airs; they have no feeling of "caste;" they have a
certain odour of the people; they are men of birth, and the people at
once sniff it. They will do anything for such men; they will gladly
change the mildest and most humane man for a very severe chief, if the
latter possesses this sort of odour, and especially if the man is also
genial in his way. Oh! then he is beyond price.
Lieutenant Smekaloff, as I have said, ordered sometimes very severe
punishments. But he seemed to inflict them in such a way, that the
prisoners felt no rancour against him. On the contrary, they recalled
his whipping affairs with laughter; he did not punish frequently, for he
had no artistic imagination. He had invented only one practical joke, a
single one which amused him for nearly a year in our convict prison.
This joke was dear to him, probably, because it was his only one, and it
was not without humour.
Smekaloff assisted himself at the executions, joking all the time, and
laughing at the prisoner as he questioned him about the most
out-of-the-way things, such, for instance, as his private affairs. He
did this without any bad motive, and simply because he really wished to
know something about the man's affairs. A chair was brought to him,
together with the rods which were to be used for chastising the
prisoner. The Lieutenant sat down and lighted his long pipe; the
prisoner implored him.
"No, comrade, lie down. What is the matter with you?"
The convict stretched himself on the ground with a sigh.
"Can you read fluently?"
"Of course, your nobility; I am baptized, and I was taught to read when
I was a child."
"Then read this."
The convict knows beforehand what he is to read, and knows how the
reading will end, because this joke has been repeated more than thirty
times; but Smekaloff knows also that the convict is not his dupe any
more than the soldier who now holds the rods suspended over the back of
the unhappy victim. The convict begins to read; the soldiers armed with
the rods await motionless. Smekaloff ceases even to smoke, raises his
hand, and waits for a word fixed upon beforehand. At the word, which
from some double meaning might be interpreted as the order to start, the
Lieutenant raises his hand, and the flogging begins. The officer bursts
into a laugh, and the soldiers around him also laugh; the man who is
whipping laughs, and the man who is being whipped also.
CHAPTER III.
THE HOSPITAL[4] (_continued_).
I have spoken here of punishments and of those who have administered
them, because I got a very clear idea on the subject during my stay in
the hospital. Until then I knew of them only by general report. In our
room were confined all the prisoners from the battalion who were to
receive the spitzruten [rods], as well as those from the military
establishment in our town and in the district surrounding it.
During my first few days I looked at all that surrounded me with such
greedy eyes that these strange manners, these men who had just been
flogged or were about to be flogged, left upon me a terrible impression.
I was agitated, frightened.
As I listened to the conversation or narratives of the other prisoners
on this subject, I put to myself questions which I endeavoured in vain
to solve. I wished to know all the degrees of the sentences; the
punishments, and their shades; and to learn the opinion of the convicts
themselves. I tried to represent to myself the psychological condition
of the men flogged.
It rarely happened, as I have already said, that the prisoner approached
the fatal moment in cold blood, even if he had been beaten several times
before. The condemned man experiences a fear which is very terrible, but
purely physical--an unconscious fear which upsets his moral nature.
During my several years' stay in the convict prison I was able to study
at leisure the prisoners who wished to leave the hospital, where they
had remained some time to have their damaged backs cured before
receiving the second half of their punishment. This interruption in the
punishment is always called for by the doctor who assists at the
execution.
If the number of strokes to be received is too great for them to be
administered all at once, it is divided according to advice given by the
doctor on the spot. It is for him to see if the prisoner is in a
condition to undergo the whole of his punishment, or if his life is in
danger.
Five hundred, one thousand, and even one thousand five hundred strokes
with the stick are administered at once. But if it is two or three
thousand the punishment is divided into two or three doses.
Those whose back had been cured after the first administration, and who
are to undergo a second, were sad, sombre and silent the day they went
out, and the evening before. They were almost in a state of torpor. They
engaged in no conversation, and remained perfectly silent.
It is worthy of remark that the prisoners avoid addressing those who are
about to be punished, and, above all, never make any allusion to the
subject, neither in consolation nor in superfluous words. No attention
whatever is paid to them, which is certainly the best thing for the
prisoner.
There are exceptions, however.
The convict Orloff, of whom I have already spoken, was sorry that his
back did not get more quickly cured, for he was anxious to get his
leave-ticket in order that he might take the rest of his flogging, and
then be assigned to a convoy of prisoners, when he meant to escape
during the journey. He had a passionate, ardent nature, and with only
that object in view.
A cunning rascal, he seemed very pleased when he first came; but he was
in a state of abnormal excitement, though he endeavoured to conceal it.
He had been afraid of being left on the ground, and dying before half of
his punishment had been undergone. He had heard steps taken in his case,
by the authorities, when he was still being tried, and he thought he
could not survive the punishment. But when he had received his first
dose he recovered his courage.
When he came to the hospital I had never seen such wounds as his; but he
was in the best spirits. He now hoped to be able to live. The stories
which had reached him were untrue, or the execution would not have been
interrupted.
He now began to think of a long Siberian journey, possibly of escaping
to liberty, fields, and forests.
Two days after he had left the hospital he came back to die--on the very
couch which he had occupied during my stay there.
He had been unable to support the second half of his punishment; but I
have already spoken of this man.
All the prisoners without exception, even the most pusillanimous, even
those who were beforehand tormented night and day, supported it
courageously when it came. I scarcely ever heard groans during the night
following the execution; our people, as a rule, knew how to endure pain.
I questioned my companion often in reference to this pain, that I might
know to what kind of suffering it might be compared. It was no idle
curiosity which urged me. I repeat that I was moved and frightened; but
it was in vain, I could get no satisfactory reply.
"It burns like fire!" was the general answer; they all said the same
thing.
First I tried to question M--tski. "It burns like fire! like hell! It
seems as if one's back were in a furnace."
I made one day a strange observation, which may or may not have been
well founded, although the opinion of the convicts themselves confirms
my views; namely, that the rods are the most terrible punishment in use
among us.
At first it seems absurd, impossible, yet five hundred strokes of the
rods, four hundred even, are enough to kill a man. Beyond five hundred
death is almost certain; the most robust man will be unable to support a
thousand rods, whereas five hundred sticks are endured without much
inconvenience, and without the least risk in the world of losing one's
life. A man of ordinary build supports a thousand sticks without danger;
even two thousand sticks will not kill a man of ordinary strength and
constitution. All the convicts declared that rods were worse than sticks
or ramrods.
"Rods hurt more and torture more!" they said.
They must torture more than sticks, that is certain, that is evident;
for they irritate much more forcibly the nervous system, which they
excite beyond measure. I do not know whether any person still exists,
but such did a short time ago, to whom the whipping of a victim procured
a delight which recalls the Marquis de Sade and the Marchioness
Brinvilliers. I think this delight must consist in the sinking of the
heart, and that these nobles must have experienced pain and delight at
the same time.
There are people who, like tigers, are greedy for blood. Those who have
possessed unlimited power over the flesh, blood, and soul of their
fellow-creatures, of their brethren according to the law of Christ,
those who have possessed this power and who have been able to degrade
with a supreme degradation, another being made in the image of God;
these men are incapable of resisting their desires and their thirst for
sensations. Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last
becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become
hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish
him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the
development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable
of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the
citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human
dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.
That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the
whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such
things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In a
word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his
fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the means
of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ the
elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition.
Society despises an executioner by trade, but not a lordly executioner.
Every manufacturer, every master of works, must feel an irritating
pleasure when he reflects that the workman he has beneath his orders is
dependent upon him with the whole of his family. A generation does not,
I am sure, extirpate so quickly what is hereditary in it. A man cannot
renounce what is in his blood, what has been transmitted to him with his
mother's milk; these revolutions are not accomplished so quickly. It is
not enough to confess one's fault. That is very little! Very little
indeed! It must be rooted out, and that is not done so quickly.
I have spoken of the executioners. The instincts of an executioner are
in germ in nearly every one of our contemporaries; but the animal
instincts of the man have not developed themselves in a uniform manner.
When they stifle all other faculties, the man becomes a hideous monster.
There are two kinds of executioners, those who of their own will are
executioners and those who are executioners by duty, by reason of
office. He who, by his own will, is an executioner, is in all respects
below the salaried executioner, whom, however, the people look upon with
repugnance, and who inspires them with disgust, with instinctive
mystical fear. Whence comes this almost superstitious horror for the
latter, when one is only indifferent and indulgent to the former?
I know strange examples of honourable men, kind, esteemed by all their
friends, who found it necessary that a culprit should be whipped until
he would implore and beg for mercy; it seemed to them a natural thing, a
thing recognised as indispensable. If the victim did not choose to cry
out, his executioner, whom in other respects I should consider a good
man, looked upon it as a personal offence; he meant, in the first
instance, to inflict only a light punishment, but directly he failed to
hear the habitual supplications, "Your nobility!" "Have mercy!" "Be a
father to me!" "Let me thank God all my life!" he became furious, and
ordered that fifty more blows should be administered, hoping thus, at
last, to obtain the necessary cries and supplications; and at last they
came.
"Impossible! he is too insolent," cried the man in question, very
seriously.
As for the executioner by office, he is a convict who has been chosen
for this function. He passes an apprenticeship with an old hand, and as
soon as he knows his trade remains in the convict prison, where he lives
by himself. He has a room, which he shares with no one. Sometimes,
indeed, he has a separate establishment, but he is always under guard. A
man is not a machine. Although he whips by virtue of his office, he
sometimes becomes furious, and beats with a certain pleasure.
Notwithstanding he has no hatred for his victim, a desire to show his
skill in the art of whipping may sharpen his vanity. He works as an
artist; he knows well that he is a reprobate, and that he excites
everywhere superstitious dread. It is impossible that this should
exercise no influence upon him, and not irritate his brutal instincts.
Even little children say that this man has neither father nor mother.
Strange thing!
All the executioners I have known were intelligent men, possessing a
certain degree of conceit. This conceit became developed in them through
the contempt which they everywhere met with, and was strengthened,
perhaps, by the consciousness of the fear with which they inspired their
victims, and of the power over unfortunate wretches.
The theatrical paraphernalia surrounding them developed, perhaps, in
them a certain arrogance. I had for some time an opportunity of meeting
and observing at close quarters an ordinary executioner. He was a man
about forty, muscular, dry, with an agreeable, intelligent face,
surrounded by long curly hair. His manners were quiet and grave, his
general demeanour becoming. He replied clearly and sensibly to all
questions put to him, but with a sort of condescension as if he were in
some way my superior. The officers of the guard spoke to him with a
certain respect, which he fully appreciated, for which reason, in
presence of his chiefs, he became polite, and more dignified than ever.
He never departed from the most refined politeness. I am sure that, when
I was speaking to him, he felt incomparably superior to the man who was
addressing him. I could read that in his countenance. Sometimes he was
sent under escort, in summer, when it was very hot, to kill the dogs of
the town with a long, very thin spear. These wandering dogs increased in
numbers with such prodigious rapidity, and became so dangerous during
the dog days, that, by the decision of the authorities, the executioner
was ordered to destroy them. This degrading duty did not in any way
humiliate him. It should have been seen with what gravity he walked
through the streets of the town, accompanied by a soldier escorting him;
how, with a single glance, he frightened the women and children; and
how, from the height of his grandeur, he looked down upon the passers-by
generally.
Executioners live at their ease. They have money to travel comfortably,
and drink vodka. They derive most of their income from presents which
the prisoners condemned to be flogged slip into their hands before the
execution. When they have to do with convicts who are rich, they then
fix a sum to be paid in proportion to the means of the victim. They will
exact thirty roubles, sometimes more. The executioner has no right to
spare his victim; and he does so at the risk of his own back. But for a
suitable present he agrees not to strike too hard. People almost always
give what he asks; should they in any case refuse, he would strike like
a savage; and it is in his power to do so. He sometimes exacts a heavy
sum from a man who is very poor. Then all the relations of the victim
are put in movement. They bargain, try and beat him down, supplicate
him; but it will not be well if they do not succeed in satisfying him.
In such a case the superstitious fear inspired by the executioner stands
them in good part. I had been told the most wonderful things--that at
one blow the executioner can kill his man.
"Is this your experience?" I asked.
Perhaps so. Who knows? Their tone seemed to decide, if there could be
any doubt about it. They also told me that he can strike a criminal in
such a way that he will not feel the least pain, and without leaving a
scar.
Even when the executioner receives a present not to whip too severely,
he gives the first blow with all his strength. It is the custom! Then he
administers the other blows with less severity, above all if he has been
well paid.
I do not know why this is done. Is it to prepare the victim for the
succeeding blows, which will appear less painful after the first cruel
one; or do they want to frighten the criminal, so that he may know with
whom he has to deal; or do they simply wish to display their vigour from
vanity? In any case the executioner is slightly excited before the
execution, and he is conscious of his strength and of his power. He is
acting at the time; the public admires him, and is filled with terror.
Accordingly, it is not without satisfaction that he cries out to his
victim, "Look out! you are going to have it!"--customary and fatal words
which precede the first blow.
It is difficult to imagine a human being degraded to such a point.
The first day of my stay at the hospital I listened attentively to the
stories of the convicts, which broke the monotony of the long days.
In the morning, the doctor's visit was the first diversion. Then came
dinner, which it will be believed was the most important affair of our
daily life. The portions were different according to the nature of the
illness: some of the prisoners received nothing but broth with groats in
it; others nothing but gruel; others a kind of semolina, which was much
liked. The convicts ended by becoming effeminate and fastidious. The
convalescents received a piece of boiled beef. The best food, which was
reserved for the scorbutic patients, consisted of roast beef with
onions, horseradish, and sometimes a small glass of spirits. The bread
was, according to the illness, black or brown; the precision preserved
in distributing the rations would make the patients laugh.
There were some who took absolutely nothing; the portions were exchanged
in such a way that the food intended for one patient was eaten by
another: those who were being kept on low diet, who received only small
rations, bought those of the scorbutic patients; others would give any
price for meat. There were some who ate two entire portions; it cost
them a good deal, for they were generally sold at five kopecks each. If
one had no meat to sell in our room the warder was sent to another
section, and if he could not find any there he was asked to get some
from the military "infirmary"--the free infirmary, as we called it.
There were always patients ready to sell their rations; poverty was
general, and those who possessed a few kopecks used to send out to buy
cakes and white bread, or other delicacies, at the market. Warders
executed these commissions in a disinterested manner. The most painful
moment was that which followed the dinner; some went to sleep, if they
had no other way of passing their time; others either wrangled or told
stories in a loud voice.
When no new patients were brought in, everything became very dull. The
arrival of a new patient caused always a certain excitement, above all,
if no one knew anything about him; he was questioned about his past
life.
The most interesting ones were the birds of passage: they had always
something to tell.
Of course they never spoke of their own little faults. If the prisoner
did not enter upon this subject himself, no one questioned him about it.
The only thing he was asked was, what quarter he came from? who were
with him on the road? what state the road was in? where he was being
taken to? etc. Stimulated by the stories of the new comers, our comrades
in their turn began to tell what they had seen and done; what was most
talked about was the convoys, those in command of them, the men who
carried the sentences into execution.
About this time, too, towards evening, the convicts who had been
scourged came up; they always made a rather strong impression, as I have
said; but it was not every day that any of these were brought to us, and
everybody was bored to extinction, when nothing happened to give a
fillip to the general relaxed and indolent state of feeling. It seemed,
then, as though the sick themselves were exasperated at the very sight
of those near them. Sometimes they squabbled violently.
Our convicts were in high glee when a madman was taken off for medical
examination; sometimes those who were sentenced to be scourged, feigned
insanity that they might get off. The trick was found out, or it would
sometimes be that they voluntarily gave up the pretence. Prisoners, who
during two or three days had done all sorts of wild things, suddenly
became steady and sensible people, quieted down, and, with a gloomy
smile, asked to be taken out of the hospital. Neither the other convicts
nor the doctors said a word of remonstrance to them about the deceit, or
brought up the subject of their mad pranks. Their names were put down on
a list without a word being said, and they were simply taken elsewhere;
after the lapse of some days they came back to us with their backs all
wounds and blood.
On the other hand, the arrival of a genuine lunatic was a miserable
thing to see all through the place. Those of the mentally unsound who
were gay, lively, who uttered cries, danced, sang, were greeted at first
with enthusiasm by the convicts.
"Here's fun!" said they, as they looked on the grins and contortions of
the unfortunates. But the sight was horribly painful and sad. I have
never been able to look upon the mad calmly or with indifference. There
was one who was kept three weeks in our room: we would have hidden
ourselves, had there been any place to do it. When things were at the
worst they brought in another. This one affected me very powerfully.
In the first year, or, to be more exact, during the first month of my
exile, I went to work with a gang of kiln men to the tileries situate at
two versts from our prison. We were set to repairing the kiln in which
the bricks were baked in summer. That morning, in which M--tski and B.
made me acquainted with the non-commissioned officer, superintendent of
the works. This was a Pole already well on in life, sixty years old at
least, of high stature, lean, of decent and even somewhat imposing
exterior. He had been a long time in service in Siberia, and although he
belonged to the lower orders he had been a soldier, and in the rising of
1830--M--tski and B. loved and esteemed him. He was always reading the
Vulgate. I spoke to him; his talk was agreeable and intelligent; he told
a story in a most interesting way; he was straightforward and of
excellent temper. For two years I never saw him again, all I heard was
that he had become a "case," and that they were inquiring into it; and
then one fine day they brought him into our room; he had gone quite mad.
He came in yelling, uttering shouts of laughter, and began to dance in
the middle of the room with indecent gestures which recalled the dance
known as Kamarinskaïa.
The convicts were wild with enthusiasm; but, for my part, account for it
as you will, I felt utterly miserable. Three days after, we were all of
us upset with it; he got into violent disputes with everybody, fought,
groaned, sang in the dead of the night; his aberrations were so
inordinate and disgusting as to bring our very stomachs up.
He feared nobody. They put the strait-waistcoat on him; but we were no
whit better off for it, for he went on quarreling and fighting all
round. At the end of three weeks, the room put up an unanimous entreaty
to the head doctor that he might be removed to the other apartment
reserved for the convicts. But after two days, at the request of the
sick people in that other room, they brought him back to our infirmary.
As we had two madmen there at once, both rooms kept sending them back
and forward, and ended by taking one or the other of the two lunatics,
turn and turn about. Everybody breathed more freely when they took them
away from us, a good way off, somewhere or other.
There was another lunatic whom I remember--a very remarkable creature.
They had brought in, during the summer, a man under sentence, who
looked like a solid and vigorous fellow enough, of about forty-five
years. His face was sombre and sad, pitted with small-pox, with little
red and swollen eyes. He sat down by my side. He was extremely quiet;
spoke to nobody, and seemed utterly absorbed in his own deep
reflections.
Night fell; then he addressed me, and, without a word of preface, told
me in a hurried and excited way--as if it were a mighty secret he were
confiding--that he was to have two thousand strokes with the rod; but
that he had nothing to fear, as the daughter of Colonel G---- was taking
steps on his behalf.
I looked at him with surprise, and observed that, as I saw the affair,
the daughter of a Colonel could be of little use in such a case. I had
not yet guessed what sort of person I had to do with, for they had
brought him to the hospital as a bodily sick person, not mentally. I
then asked him what illness he was suffering from.
He answered that he knew nothing about it; that he had been sent among
us for something or other; but that he was in good health, and that the
Colonel's daughter had fallen in love with him. Two weeks before she had
passed in a carriage before the guard-house, where he was looking
through the barred window, and she had gone head over ears in love at
the mere sight of him.
After that important moment she had come three times to the guard-house
on different pretexts. The first time with her father, ostensibly to
visit her brother, who was the officer on service; the second with her
mother, to distribute alms to the prisoners. As she passed in front of
him she had muttered that she loved him and would get him out of prison.
He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it
pure figment of his poor disordered head. He believed devoutly and
implicitly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke
very calmly, and with all assurance of the passionate love he had
inspired in this young lady.
This odd and romantic delusion about the love of quite a young girl of
good breeding, for a man nearly fifty years and afflicted with a face so
disfigured and gloomy, simply showed the fearful effect produced by the
fear of the punishment he was to have, upon the poor, timid creature.
It may be that he had really seen some one through the bars of the
window, and the insanity, germinating under excess of fear, had found
shape and form in the delusion in question.
This unfortunate soldier, who, it may be warranted, had never given a
thought to young ladies, had got this romance into his diseased fancy,
and clung convulsively to this wild hope. I heard him in silence, and
then told the story to the other convicts. When these questioned him in
their natural curiosity, he preserved a chastely discreet silence.
Next day the doctor examined him. As the madman averred that he was not
ill, he was put down on the list as qualified to be sent out. We learned
that the physician had scribbled "_Sanat. est_" on the page, when it was
quite too late to give him warning. Besides, we were ourselves not by
any means sure what was really the matter with the man.
The error was with the authorities who had sent him to us, without
specifying for what reason it was thought necessary to have him come
into the hospital--which was unpardonable negligence.
However, two days later the unhappy creature was taken out to be
scourged. We understood that he was dumbfounded by finding, contrary to
his fixed expectation, that he really was to have the punishment. To the
last moment he thought he would be pardoned, and when conducted to the
front of the battalion, he began to cry for help.
As there was no room or bedding-place now in our apartment they sent him
to the infirmary. I heard that for eight entire days he did not utter a
single word, and remained in stupid and misery-stricken mental
confusion. When his back was cured they took him off. I never heard a
single further word about him.
As to the treatment of the sick and the remedies prescribed, those who
were but slightly indisposed paid no attention whatever to the
directions of the doctors, and never took their medicines; while,
speaking generally, those really ill were very careful in following the
doctor's orders; they took their mixtures and powders; they took all the
possible care they could of themselves; but they preferred external to
internal remedies.
Cupping-glasses, leeches, cataplasms, blood-lettings--in all which
things the populace has so blind a confidence--were held in high honour
in our hospital. Inflictions of that sort were regarded with
satisfaction.
There was one thing quite strange, and to me interesting. Fellows, who
stood without a murmur the frightful tortures caused by the rods and
scourges, howled, and grinned, and moaned for the least little ailment.
Whether it was all pretence or not, I really cannot say.
We had cuppings of a quite peculiar kind. The machine with which
instantaneous incisions in the skin are produced, was all out of order,
so they had to use the lancet.
For a cupping, twelve incisions are necessary; with a machine these are
not painful at all, for it makes them instantaneously; with the lancet
it is a different affair altogether--that cuts slowly, and makes the
patient suffer. If you have to make ten openings there will be about one
hundred and twenty pricks, and these very painful. I had to undergo it
myself; besides the pain itself, it caused great nervous irritation; but
the suffering was not so great that one could not contain himself from
groaning if he tried.
It was laughable to see great, hulking fellows wriggling and howling.
One couldn't help comparing them to some men, firm and calm enough in
really serious circumstances, but all ill-temper or caprice in the bosom
of their families for nothing at all; if dinner is late or the like,
then they'll scold and swear; everything puts them out; they go wrong
with everybody; the more comfortable they really are, the more
troublesome are they to other people. Characters of this sort, common
enough among the lower orders, were but too numerous in our prison, by
reason of our company being forced on one another.
Sometimes the prisoners chaffed or insulted the thin-skins I speak of,
and then they would leave off complaining directly; as if they only
wanted to be insulted to make them hold their tongues.
Oustiantsef was no friend of grimacings of this kind, and never let slip
an opportunity of bringing that sort of delinquent to his bearings.
Besides, he was fond of scolding; it was a sort of necessity with him,
engendered by illness and also his stupidity. He would first fix his
gaze upon you for some time, and then treat you to a long speech of
threatening and warning, and a tone of calm and impartial conviction. It
looked as though he thought his function in this world was to watch over
order and morality in general.
"He must poke his nose into everything," the prisoners with a laugh used
to say; for they pitied, and did what they could to avoid conflicts with
him.
"Has he chattered enough? Three waggons wouldn't be too much to carry
away all his talk."
"Why need you put your oar in? One is not going to put himself about for
a mere idiot. What's there to cry out about at a mere touch of a
lancet?"
"What harm in the world do you fancy _that_ is going to do you?"
"No, comrades," a prisoner strikes in, "the cuppings are a mere nothing.
I know the taste of them. But the most horrid thing is when they pull
your ears for a long time together. That just shuts you up."
All the prisoners burst out laughing.
"Have you had them pulled?"
"By Jove, yes, I should think he had."
"That's why they stick upright, like hop-poles."
This convict, Chapkin by name, really had long and quite erect ears. He
had long led a vagabond life, was still quite young, intelligent, and
quiet, and used to talk with a dry sort of humour with much seriousness
on the surface, which made his stories very comical.
"How in the world was I to know you had had your ears pulled and
lengthened, brainless idiot?" began Oustiantsef, once more wrathfully
addressing Chapkin, who, however, vouchsafed no attention to his
companion's obliging apostrophe.
"Well, who did pull your ears for you?" some one asked.
"Why, the police superintendent, by Jove, comrades! Our offence was
wandering about without fixed place of abode. We had just got into
K----, I and another tramp, Eptinie; he had no family name, that fellow.
On the way we had fixed ourselves up a little in the hamlet of Tolmina;
yes, there is a hamlet that's got just that name--Tolmina. Well, we get
to the town, and are just looking about us a little to see if there's a
good stroke of tramp-business to do, after which we mean to flit. You
know, out in the open country you're as free as air; but it's not
exactly the same thing in the town. First thing, we go into a
public-house; as we open the door we give a sharp look all round. What's
there? A sunburnt fellow in a German coat all out at elbows, walks right
up to us. One thing and another comes up, when he says to us:
"'Pray excuse me for asking if you have any papers [passport] with you?'
"'No, we haven't.'
"'Nor have we either. I have two comrades besides these with me who are
in the service of General Cuckoo [forest tramps, _i.e._, who hear the
birds sing]. We have been seeing life a bit, and just now haven't a
penny to bless ourselves with. May I take the liberty of requesting you
to be so obliging as to order a quart of brandy?'
"'With the greatest pleasure,' that's what we say to him. So we drink
together. Then they tell us of a place where there's a real good stroke
of business to be done--a house at the end of the town belonging to a
wealthy merchant fellow; lots of good things there, so we make up our
minds to try the job during the night; five of us, and the very moment
we are going at it they pounce on us, take us to the station-house, and
then before the head of the police. He says, 'I shall examine them
myself.' Out he goes with his pipe, and they bring in for him a cup of
tea; a sturdy fellow it was, with whiskers. Besides us five, there were
three other tramps, just brought in. You know, comrades, that there's
nothing in this world more funny than a tramp, because he always forgets
everything he's done. You may thump his head till you're tired with a
cudgel; all the same, you'll get but one answer, that he has forgotten
all about everything.
"The police superintendent then turns to me and asks me squarely,
"'Who may you be?'
"I answer just like all the rest of them:
"'I've forgotten all about it, your worship.'
"'Just you wait; I've a word or two more to say to you. I know your
phiz.'
"Then he gives me a good long stare. But I hadn't seen him anywhere
before, that's a fact.
"Then he asks another of them, 'Who are you?'
"'Mizzle-and-scud, your worship.'
"'They call you Mizzle-and-scud?'
"'Precisely that, your worship.'
"'Well and good, you're Mizzle-and-scud! And you?' to a third.
"'Along-of-him, your worship.'
"'But what's your name--your name?'
"'Me? I'm called Along-of-him, your worship.'
"'Who gave you that name, hound?'
"'Very worthy people, your worship. There are lots of worthy people
about; nobody knows that better than your worship.'
"'And who may these "worthy people" be?'
"'Oh, Lord, it has slipped my memory, your worship. Do be so kind and
gracious as to overlook it.'
"'So you've forgotten them, all of them, these "worthy people"?'
"'Every mother's son of them, your worship.'
"'But you must have had relations--a father, a mother. Do you remember
them?'
"'I suppose I must have had, your worship; but I've forgotten about 'em,
my memory is so bad. Now I come to think about it, I'm sure I had some,
your worship.'
"'But where have you been living till now?'
"'In the woods, your worship.'
"'Always in the woods?'
"'Always in the woods!'
"'Winter too?'
"'Never saw any winter, your worship.'
"'Get along with you! And you--what's your name?'
"'Hatchets-and-axes, your worship.'
"'And yours?'
"'Sharp-and-mum, your worship.'
"'And you?'
"'Keen-and-spry, your worship.'
"'And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.'
"'Not a mother's son of us anything whatever.'
"He couldn't help it; he laughed out loud. All the rest began to laugh
at seeing him laugh! But the thing does not always go off like that.
Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till you
get every tooth in your jaw smashed. Devilish big and strong these
fellows, I can tell you.
"'Take them off to the lock-up,' said he. 'I'll see to them in a bit. As
for you, stop here!'
"That's me.
"'Just you go and sit down there.'
"Where he pointed to there was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I,
'What's he up to now?'
"'Sit down,' he says again; 'take the pen and write.'
"And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I
looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest.
"'I can't write, your worship.'
"'Write, write!'
"'Have mercy on me, your worship!'
"'Write your best; write, write!'
"And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals,
I'd rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was
hell.
"'Write, write!' that was all he said."
"Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it?
"Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of
business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with
the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact
all over the country. I answered to that description; that's why he
tormented me with his 'Write, write!' He wanted to find out if I could
write, and to see my hand.
"'A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?'
"'Oh, Lord, don't say a word about it, I beg.'
"Everybody burst out laughing.
"'Well, you did write?'
"'What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper,
and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just
gave me a dozen thumps, regulation allowance, and then let me go about
my business: to prison, that is.'
"'Do you really know how to write?'
"'Of course I did. What d'ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the
whole blessed thing, though, ever since they began to use pens for it.'"
Thanks to the gossip talk of the convicts who filled the hospital, time
was somewhat quickened for us. But still, Almighty God, how wearied and
bored we were! Long, long were the days, suffocating in their monotony,
one absolutely the same as another. If only I had had a single book.
For all that I went often to the infirmary, especially in the early days
of my banishment, either because I was ill or because I needed rest,
just to get out of the worse parts of the prison. In those life was
indeed made a burden to us, worse even than in the hospital, especially
as regards the effect upon moral sentiment and good feeling. We of the
nobility were the never-ceasing objects of envious dislike, quarrels
picked with us all the time, something done every moment to put us in
the wrong, looks filled with menacing hatred unceasingly directed on us!
Here, in the sick-rooms, one lived on a sort of footing of equality,
there was something of comradeship.
The most melancholy moment of the twenty-four hours was evening, when
night set in. We went to bed very early. A smoky lamp just gave us one
point of light at the very end of the room, near the door. In our corner
we were almost in complete darkness. The air was pestilential, stifling.
Some of the sick people could not get to sleep, would rise up, and
remain sitting for an hour together on their beds, with their heads
bent, as though they were in deep reflection. These I would look at
steadily, trying to guess what they might be thinking of; thus I tried
to kill time. Then I became lost in my own reveries; the past came up to
me again, showing itself to my imagination in large powerful outlines
filled with high lights and massive shadows, details that at any other
time would have remained in oblivion, presented themselves in vivid
force, making on me an impression impossible under any other
circumstances.
Then I would begin to muse dreamily on the future. When shall I leave
this place of restraint, this dreadful prison? Whither betake myself?
What will then befall me? Shall I return to the place of my birth? So I
brood, and brood, until hope lives once again in my soul.
Another time I would begin to count, one, two, three, etc., to see if
sleep could be won that way. I would set sometimes as far as three
thousand, and was as wakeful as ever. Then somebody would turn in his
bed.
Then there's Oustiantsef coughing, that cough of the hopelessly-gone
consumptive, and then he would groan feebly, and stammer, "My God, I've
sinned, I've sinned!"
How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying
voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner
there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice,
stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his
life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for
ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world, of his children,
his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man's
voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he
is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there
is another, listening intently to what he is saying. A weak, feeble sort
of muttering and murmuring comes to one's ear from far-off in the dreary
room, a sound as of far-off water flowing somewhere.... I remember that
one time, during a winter night that seemed as if it would never end, I
heard a story which at first seemed as if it were the stammerings of a
creature in nightmare, or the delirium of fever. Here it is:
FOOTNOTE:
[4] What I relate about corporal punishment took place during my time.
Now, as I am told, everything is changed, and is changing still.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA
It was late at night, about eleven o'clock. I had been sleeping some
time and woke up with a start. The wan and weak light of the distant
lamp barely lit the room. Nearly everybody was fast asleep, even
Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his difficult breathing,
and the rattlings in his throat with every respiration. In the
ante-chamber sounded the heavy and distant footsteps of the patrol as
the men came up. The butt of a gun struck the floor with its low and
heavy sound.
The door of the room was opened, and the corporal counted the sick,
stepping softly about the place. After a minute or so he closed the door
again, leaving a fresh sentinel there; the patrol went off, silence
reigned again. It was only then that I observed two prisoners, not far
from me, who were not sleeping, and who seemed to be holding a muttered
conversation. Sometimes, in fact, it would happen that a couple of sick
people, whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks,
would all of a sudden break out into conversation with one another, in
the middle of the night, and one of them would tell the other his
history.
Probably they had been speaking for some considerable time. I did not
hear the beginning of it, and could not at first seize upon their words,
but little by little I got familiar with the muttered sounds, and
understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire for sleep
on me, so what could I do but listen.
One of them was telling his story with some warmth, half-lying on his
bed, with his head lifted and stretched towards his companion. He was
plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was on him.
The man listening was sitting up on his pallet, with a gloomy and
indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress, and now
and again murmured some words in reply, more out of politeness than
interest, and kept stuffing his nose with snuff from a horn box. This
was the soldier Techérévin, one of the company of discipline; a morose,
cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of _amour propre_; while the
narrator was Chichkof, about thirty years old; this was a civilian
convict, whom up to that time I had not at all observed; and during the
whole time I was at the prison I never could get up the smallest
interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow.
Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky
and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would strike
into anything that was going on, behave insufferably, go into a white
heat about nothing at all, and tell you long stories with nothing in
them whatever about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the
world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then some one would give
him a hiding, and he would have another fit of silence. He was a mean
and cowardly fellow, and the object of general contempt. His stature
was low, he had little flesh on him, he had wandering eyes, though they
sometimes got mixed and seemed filled with a stupid sort of thinking.
When he told you anything he worked himself into a fever, gesticulated
wildly, suddenly broke off and went to another subject, lost himself in
fresh details, and at last forgot altogether what he was talking about.
He often got into squabbles, this Chichkof, and when he poured insult on
his adversary, he spoke with a sentimental whine and was affected nearly
to tears. He was not a bad hand at playing the _balalaika_, and had a
weakness for it; on fête days he would show you his dancing powers when
others set him at it, and he danced by no means badly. You could easily
enough make him do what you wanted ... not that he was of a complying
turn, but he liked to please and to get intimate with fellows.
For some considerable time I couldn't understand the story Chichkoff was
telling; that night I mean. It seemed to me as though he were constantly
rambling from the point to talk of something else. Perhaps he had
observed that Tchérévine was paying little attention to the narrative,
but I fancy that he was minded to overlook this indifference, so as not
to take offence.
"When he went out on business," he continued, "every one saluted him
politely, paid him every respect ... a fellow with money that."
"You say that he was in some trade or other."
"Yes; trade indeed! The trading class in my country is wretchedly
ill-off; just poverty-stricken. The women go to the river and fetch
water from ever such a distance to water their gardens. They wear
themselves to the very bone, and, for all that, when winter comes, they
haven't got enough to make a mere cabbage soup. I tell you it's
starvation. But that fellow had a good lump of land, which his labourers
cultivated; he had three. Then he had hives, and sold his honey; he was
a cattle-dealer too; a much respected man in our parts. He was very old
and quite gray, his seventy years lay heavy on his old bones. When he
came to the market-place with his fox-skin pelisse, everybody saluted
him.
"'Good-day, daddy Aukoudim Trophimtych!'
"'Good-day,' he'd return.
"'How are you getting along;' he never looked down on any one.
"'God keep you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'
"'How goes business with you?'
"'Business is as good as tallow's white with me; and how's yours,
daddy?'
"'We've just got enough of a livelihood to pay the price of sin; always
sweating over our bit of land.'
"'Lord preserve you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'
"He never looked down on anybody. All his advice was always worth
having; every one of his words was worth a rouble. A great reader he
was, quite a man of learning; but he stuck to religious books. He would
call his old wife and say to her, 'Listen, woman, take well in what I
say;' then he would explain things. His old Marie Stépanovna was not
exactly an old woman, if you please; it was his second wife; he had
married her to have children, his first wife had not brought him any. He
had two boys still quite young, for the second of them was born when his
father was close on sixty; Akoulka, his daughter, was eighteen years
old, she was the eldest."
"Your wife? Isn't it so?"
"Wait a bit, wait. Then Philka Marosof begins to kick up a row. Says he
to Aukoudim: 'Let's split the difference. Give me back my four hundred
roubles. I'm not your beast of burden; I don't want to do any more
business with you, and I don't want to marry your Akoulka. I want to
have my fling now that my parents are dead. I'll liquor away my money,
then I'll engage myself, 'list for a soldier; and in ten years I'll come
back here a field-marshal!' Aukoudim gave him back his money--all he
had of his. You see he and Philka's father had both put in money and
done business together.
"'You're a lost man,' that's what he said to Philka.
"'Whether I'm a lost man or not, old gray-beard, you're the biggest
cheat I know. You'd try to screw a fortune out of four farthings, and
pick up all the dirt about to do it with. I spit upon it. There you are
piling up here, digging deep there, the devil only knows why. I've got a
will of my own, I tell you. All the same I won't take your Akoulka; I've
slept with her already.'
"'How dare you insult a respectable father--a respectable girl? When did
you sleep with her, you spawn of the sucker, you dog, you hound,
you----?' said Aukoudim shaking with passion. (Philka told us all this
later).
"'I'll not only not marry your daughter, but I'll take good care that
nobody marries her, not even Mikita Grigoritch, for she's a disreputable
girl. We had a fine time together, she and I, all last autumn. I don't
want her at any price. All the money in the world wouldn't make me take
her.'
"Then the fellow went and had high jinks for a while. All the town was
as one man in sending up a cry against him. He got a lot of other
fellows round him, for he had a heap of money. Three months he had of
it. Such recklessness as you never heard of. Every penny went.
"'I want to see the end of this money. I'll sell the house; everything;
then I'll 'list or go on the tramp.'
"He was drunk from morning to evening, and went about with a carriage
and pair.
"The girls liked him well, I tell you, for he played the guitar very
nicely."
"Then it is true that he had been too well with this Akoulka?"
"Wait, wait, can't you? I had just buried my father. My mother lived by
baking gingerbread. We got our livelihood by working for Aukoudim;
barely enough to eat, a precious hard life it was. We had a bit of land
the other side of the woods, and grew corn there; but when my father
died I went on a spree. I made my mother give me money; but I had to
give her a good hiding first."
"You were very wrong to beat her; a great sin that?"
"Sometimes I was drunk the whole blessed day. We had a house that was
just tumbling to pieces with dry rot, still it was our own; we were as
near famished as could be; for weeks together we had nothing but rags to
chew. Mother nearly killed me with one stupid trick or another, but I
didn't care a curse. Philka Marosof and I were always together day and
night. 'Play the guitar to me,' he'd say, 'and I'll lie in bed the
while. I'll throw money to you, for I'm the richest chap in the world!'
The fellow could not speak without lying. There was only one thing. He
wouldn't touch a thing if it had been stolen. 'I'm no thief, I'm an
honest man. Let's go and daub Akoulka's door with pitch,[5] for I won't
have her marry Mikita Grigoritch, I'll stick to that.'
"The old man had long meant to give his daughter to this Mikita
Grigoritch. He was a man well on in life, in trade too, and wore
spectacles. When he heard the story of Akoulka's bad conduct, he said to
the old father, 'That would be a terrible disgrace for me, Aukoudim
Trophimtych; on the whole, I've made up my mind not to marry; it's to
late.'
"So we went and daubed Akoulka's door all over with pitch. When we'd
done that her folks beat her so that they nearly killed her.
"Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried, 'I shall die of it,' while the old
man said, 'If we were in the days of the patriarchs, I'd have hacked
her to pieces on a block. But now everything is rottenness and
corruption in this world.' Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the
street to the other heard Akoulka's screams. She was whipped from
morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the market-place before
everybody:
"Akoulka's a jolly girl to get drunk with. I've given it those people
between the eyes, they won't forget me in a hurry.'
"Well, one day, I met Akoulka, she was going for water with her bucket,
so I cried out to her: 'A fine morning, pet Akoulka Koudimovna! you're
the girl who knows how to please fellows. Who's living with you now, and
where do you get your money for your finery?' That's just what I said to
her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her
than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother
thought she was larking with me, and cried from her door-step, 'Impudent
hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?' And from that
moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they hided her for an
hour together. The mother said, 'I give her the whip because she isn't
my daughter any more.'"
"She was then as bad as they said?"
"Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, we used to get
drunk all the time with Philka. One day when I was abed, mother comes
and says:
"'What d'ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief!' She abused me
for some time, then she said, 'Marry Akoulka. They'll be glad to give
her to you, and they'll give three hundred roubles with her.'
"'But,' says I, 'all the world knows that she's a bad girl----'
"'Hist, the marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she'll always be
in fear of her life from you, so you'll be in clover together. Their
money would make us comfortable; I've spoken about the marriage already
to Marie Stépanovna, we're of one mind about it.'
"So I say, 'Let's have twenty roubles down on the spot, and I'll have
her.'
"Well, you needn't believe it unless you please, but I was drunk right
up to the wedding-day. Then Philka Marosof kept threatening me all the
time.
"'I'll break every bone in your body, a nice fellow you to be engaged,
and to Akoulka; if I like I'll sleep every blessed night with her when
she's your wife.'
"'You're a hound, and a liar,' that's what I said to him. But he
insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim's
and said, 'I won't marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this
moment.'"
"And they really did give her to you in marriage?"
"Me? Why not, I should like to know? We were respectable people enough.
Father had been ruined by a fire a little before he died; he had been a
richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.
"'A fellow without a shirt to his back like you ought to be only too
happy to marry my daughter;' that's what old Aukoudim said.
"'Just you think of your door, and the pitch that went on it,' I said to
him.
"'Stuff and nonsense,' said he, 'there's no proof whatever that the
girl's gone wrong.'
"'Please yourself. There's the door, and you can go about your business;
but give back the money you've had!'
"Then Philka Marosof and I settled it together to send Mitri Bykoff to
Father Aukoudim to tell him that we'd insult him to his face before
everybody. Well, I had my skin as full as it could hold right up to the
wedding-day. I wasn't sober till I got into the church. When they took
us home after church the girl's uncle, Mitrophone Stépanytch, said:
"'This isn't a nice business; but it's over and done now.'
"Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolled down on his
gray beard. Comrade, I'll tell you what I had done: I had put a whip
into my pocket before we went to church, and I'd made up my mind to have
it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I'd been
swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am."
"I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Ah,
was----?"
"Quiet, nunky, quiet! Among our people I'll tell you how it is; directly
after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and
the others remain drinking till they return. So I'm left alone with
Akoulka; she was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out
of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big
eyes. She scarcely ever was known to speak; you might have thought she
was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can
just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as
pure a girl as ever was, not a word of it all was true."
"Impossible!"
"True, I swear; as good a girl as any good family might wish."
"Then, brother, why--why--why had she had to undergo all that torture?
Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?"
"Yes, why, indeed?"
"Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put
my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her, 'Little
mother, pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an
idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I'm a hound!'
"She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. She put her two
hands on my shoulders and began to laugh; but the tears were running
all down her cheeks. She sobbed and laughed all at once.
"Then I went out and said to the people in the other room, 'Let Philka
Marosof look to himself. If I come across him he won't be long for this
world.'
"The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka's mother
was ready to throw herself at her daughter's feet, and sobbed.
"Then the old man said, 'If we had known really how it was, my dearest
child, we wouldn't have given you a husband of that sort.'
"You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our
marriage--when we left church! I'd got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur
cap, with plush breeches. She had a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and
a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody
admired us. I must say I looked well, and pet Akoulka did too. One
oughtn't to boast, but one oughtn't to sing small. I tell you people
like us are not turned out by the dozen."
"Not a doubt about it."
"Just you listen, I tell you. The day after my marriage I ran off from
my guests, drunk as I was, and went about the streets crying, 'Where's
that scoundrel of a Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the
hound, that's all!' I went all over the market-place yelling that out. I
was as drunk as a man could be, and stand.
"They went after me and caught me close to Vlassof's place. It took
three men to get me back again to the house.
"Well, nothing else was spoken about all over the village. The girls
said, when they met in the market-place, 'Well, you've heard the
news--Akoulka was all right!'
"A little while after I do come across Philka Marosof, who said to me
before everybody, strangers to the place, too, 'Sell your wife, and
spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he
didn't sleep one night with his wife; but he got enough to keep his skin
full for three years.'
"I answered him, 'Hound!'
"'But,' says he, 'you're an idiot! You didn't know what you were about
when you married--you were drunk. How could you tell all about it?'
"So off I went to the house, and cried out to them 'You married me when
I was drunk.'
"Akoulka's mother tried to fasten herself on me; but I cried, 'Mother,
you don't know about anything but money. You bring me Akoulka!'
"And didn't I beat her! I tell you I beat her for two hours running,
till I rolled on the floor myself with fatigue. She couldn't leave her
bed for three weeks."
"It's a dead sure thing," said Tchérévine phlegmatically; "if you don't
beat them they---- Did you find her with her lover?"
"No; to tell the truth, I never actually caught her," said Chichkoff
after a pause, speaking with effort; "but I was hurt, a good deal hurt,
for every one made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. 'Your wife
is just made for everybody to look at,' said he.
"One day he invited us to see him, and then he went at it. 'Do just look
what a good little wife he has! Isn't she tender, fine, nicely brought
up, affectionate, full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad,
have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?' I was full at
that moment, drunk as may be; then he seized me by the hair and had me
down upon the ground before I knew where I was. 'Come along--dance;
aren't you Akoulka's husband? I'll hold your hair for you, and you shall
dance; it will be good fun.' 'Dog!' said I to him. 'I'll bring some
jolly fellows to your house,' said he, 'and I'll whip your Akoulka
before your very eyes just as long as I please.' Would you believe it?
For a whole month I daren't go out of the house, I was so afraid he'd
come to us and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I did beat her for
it!"
"What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman's hands, but not
her tongue. You oughtn't to give them a hiding too often. Beat 'em a
bit, then scold 'em well, then fondle 'em; that's what a woman is made
for."
Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments.
"I was very much hurt," he went on; "I began it again just as before. I
beat her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn't get up
from her seat the way I liked; because she didn't walk to suit me. When
I wasn't hiding her, time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by
the window crying silently--it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her
cry, but I beat her all the same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it:
'You're a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!' 'Don't say a word or I'll kill
you; you made me marry her when I was drunk, you swindled me.' Old
Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me
one day: 'Look here, you're not such a tremendous fellow that one can't
put you down;' but he didn't get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had
become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me crying her eyes out and
said: 'My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch; what I'm going to ask
of you is a little thing for you, but it is a good deal to me; let her
go, let her leave you, daddy Ivan.' Then she throws herself at my feet.
'Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her; you know quite
well she was good when you married her.' Then she threw herself at my
feet again and cried. But I was as hard as nails. 'I won't hear a word
you have to say; what I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I'm
crazed with it all. As to Philka Marosof, he's my best and dearest
friend.'"
"You'd begun to play your pranks together again, you and he?"
"No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself
with drink, nothing less. He had spent all he had on drink, and had
'listed for a soldier, as substitute for a citizen body in the town. In
our parts, when a lad makes up his mind to be substitute for another, he
is master of that house and everybody there till he's called to the
ranks. He gets the sum agreed on the day he goes off, but up to then he
lives in the house of the man who buys him, sometimes six whole months,
and there isn't a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty
of. It's enough to make folks take the holy images out of the house.
From the moment he consents to be substitute for the son of the family
then he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them
dance as he pipes, or else he goes off the bargain.
"So Philka Marosof played the very mischief at the home of this
townsman. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by
the beard after dinner, did anything that came into his head. They had
to heat the bath for him every day, and, what's more, give him brandy
fumes with the steam of the bath: and he would have the women lead him
by the arms to the bath room.[6]
"When he came back to the man's house after a revel elsewhere, he would
stop right in the middle of the road and cry out:
"'I won't go in by the door; pull down the fence!'
"And they actually _had_ to pull down the fence, though there was the
door right at it to let him in. That all came to an end though, the day
they took him to the regiment. That day he was sobered sufficiently. The
crowd gathered all through the street.
"'They're taking off Philka Marosof!'
"He made a salute on all sides, right and left. Just at that moment
Akoulka was returning from the kitchen-garden. Directly Philka saw her
he cried out to her:
"'Stop!' and down he jumped from the cart and threw himself down at her
feet.
"'My soul, my sweet little strawberry, I've loved you two years long.
Now they're taking me off to the regiment with the band playing. Forgive
me, good honest girl of a good honest father, for I'm nothing but a
hound, and all you've gone through is my fault.'
"Then he flings himself down before her a second time. At first Akoulka
was exceedingly frightened; but she made him a great bow, which nearly
bent her double.
"'Forgive me, too, my good lad; but I am really not at all angry with
you.'
"As she went into the house I was at her heels.
"'What did you say to him, you she-devil, you?'
"Now you may believe it or not as you like, but she looked at me as bold
as you please, and answered:
"'I love him better than anything or anybody in this world.'
"'I say!'
"That day I didn't utter one single word. Only towards evening I said to
her: 'Akoulka, I'm going to kill you now.' I didn't close an eye the
whole night. I went into the little room leading to ours and drank
kwass. At daybreak I went into the house again. 'Akoulka, get ready and
come into the fields.' I had arranged to go there before; my wife knew
it.
"'You are right,' said she. 'It's quite time to begin reaping. I've
heard that our labourer is ill and doesn't work a bit.'
"I put to the cart without saying a word. As you go out of the town
there's a forest fifteen versts in length. At the end of it is our
field. When we had gone about three versts through the wood I stopped
the horse.
"'Come, get up, Akoulka; your end is come.'
"She looked at me all in a fright, and got up without a word.
"'You've tormented me enough. Say your prayers.'
"I seized her by the hair--she had long, thick tresses--I rolled them
round my arm. I held her between my knees; took out my knife; threw her
head back, and cut her throat. She screamed; the blood spurted out. Then
I threw away my knife. I pressed her with all my might in my arms. I put
her on the ground and embraced her, yelling with all my might. She
screamed; I yelled; she struggled and struggled. The blood--her
blood--splashed my face, my hands. It was stronger than I was--stronger.
Then I took fright. I left her--left my horse and began to run; ran back
to the house.
"I went in the back way, and hid myself in the old ramshackle
bath-house, which we never used now. I lay myself down under the seat,
and remained hid till the dead of the night."
"And Akoulka?"
"She got up to come back to the house; they found her later, a hundred
steps from the place."
"So you hadn't finished her?"
"No." Chichkoff stopped a while.
"Yes," said Tchérévine, "there's a vein; if you don't cut it at the
first the man will go on struggling; the blood may flow fast enough, but
he won't die."
"But she was dead all the same. They found her in the evening, and she
was cold. They told the police, and hunted me up. They found me in the
night in the old bath.
"And there you have it. I've been four years here already," added he,
after a pause.
"Yes, if you don't beat 'em you make no way at all," said Tchérévine
sententiously, taking out his snuff-box once more. He took his pinches
very slowly, with long pauses. "For all that, my lad, you behaved like a
fool. Why, I myself--I came upon my wife with a lover. I made her come
into the shed, and then I doubled up a halter and said to her:
"'To whom did you swear to be faithful?--to whom did you swear it in
church? Tell me that?'
"And then I gave it her with my halter--beat her and beat her for an
hour and a half; till at last she was quite spent, and cried out:
"'I'll wash your feet and drink the water afterwards.'
"Her name was Crodotia."
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Daubing the door of a house, where a young girl lives, is done to
show that she is dishonoured.
[6] A mark of respect paid in Russia formerly, now disused.
CHAPTER V.
THE SUMMER SEASON
April is come; Holy Week is not far off. We set about our summer tasks.
The sun becomes hotter and more brilliant every day; the atmosphere has
the spring in it, and acts upon our nervous system powerfully. The
convict, in his chains, feels the trembling influence of the lovely days
like any other creature; they rouse desires in him, inexpressible
longings for his home, and many other things. I think that he misses his
liberty, yearns for freedom more when the day is filled with sunlight
than during the rainy and melancholy days of autumn and winter. You may
observe this positively among convicts; if they _do_ feel a little joy
on a beautiful clear day, they have a reaction into greater impatience
and irritability.
I noticed that in spring there was much more squabbling in our prison;
there was more noise, the yelling was greater, there were more fights;
during the working hours we would see a man sometimes fixed in a
meditative gaze, which seemed lost in the blue distance somewhere, the
other side of the Irtych, where stretched the boundless plain, with its
flight of hundreds of versts, the free Kirghiz Steppe. Long-drawn sighs
came to one's ear, sighs breathed from the depths of the chest; it might
seem that the air of those wide and free regions, haunted by their
thought, forced the convicts to draw deep respirations, and was a sort
of solace to their crushed and fettered souls.
"Ah!" cries at last the poor prisoner all at once, with a long, sighing
cry; then he seizes his pick furiously, or picks up the bricks, which he
has to carry from one place to another. But after a brief minute he
seems to forget the passing impression, and begins laughing, or
insulting people near, so fitful is his humour; then he attacks the work
he has to do with unusual fire, labours with might and main, as if
trying to stifle by fatigue the grief that has him by the throat. You
see they are fellows of unimpaired vigour, all in the very flower of
life, with all their physical and other strength about them.
How heavy the irons are during this season! All this is not
sentimentality, it is the report of rigorous observation. During the hot
season, under a fiery sun, when all one's being, all one's soul, is
vividly conscious of, and intimately feels, the unspeakably strong
resurrection of nature going on everywhere, it is more difficult to
support the confinement, the perpetual surveillance, the tyranny of a
will other than one's own.
Besides this, it is in spring with the first song of the lark that
throughout all Siberia and Russia men set out on the tramp; God's
creatures, if they can, break their prison and escape into the woods.
After the stifling ditch where they work, after the boats, the irons,
the rods and whips, they go vagabondizing where they please, wherever
they can make it out best; they eat and drink what they can get, 'tis
all the time pot-luck with them; and by night they sleep undisturbed in
the woods or in a field, without a care, without the agony of knowing
themselves in prison, as if they were God's own birds; their
"good-night" is said to the stars, and the eye that watches them is the
eye of God. Not altogether a rosy life, by any means; sometimes hunger
and fatigue are heavy on them "in the service of General Cuckoo." Often
enough the wanderers have not a morsel of bread to keep their teeth
going for days and days. They have to hide from everybody, run to earth
like marmots; sometimes they are driven to robbery, pillage--nay, even
murder.
"Send a man there and he becomes a child, and just throws himself on all
he sees"; that is what people say of those transported to Siberia. This
saying may be applied even more fitly to the tramps. They are almost all
brigands and thieves, by necessity rather than inclination. Many of them
are hardened to the life, irreclaimable; there are convicts who go off
after having served their time, even after they have been put on some
land as their own. They ought to be happy in their new state, with their
daily bread assured them. Well, it is not so; an irresistible impulse
sends them wandering off.
This life in the woods, wretched and fearful as it is, but still free
and adventurous, has a mysterious seduction for those who have
experienced it; among these fugitives you may find to your surprise,
people of good habit of mind, peaceable temper, who had shown every
promise of becoming settled creatures--good tillers of the land. A
convict will marry, have children, live for five years in the same
place, then all of a sudden he will disappear one fine morning,
abandoning wife and children, to the stupefaction of his family and the
whole neighbourhood.
One day, I was shown at the convict establishment one of these deserters
of the family hearthstone. He had committed no crime--at least, he was
under suspicion of none--but all through his life he had been a
deserter, a deserter from every post. He had been to the southern
frontier of the empire, the other side of the Danube, in the Kirghiz
Steppe, in Eastern Siberia, the Caucasus, in a word, everywhere. Who
knows? under other conditions this man might have been a Robinson
Crusoe, with the passion of travel so on him. These details I have from
other convicts, for he did not like talk, and never opened his mouth
except when absolutely necessary. He was a peasant, of quite small size,
of some fifty years, very quiet in demeanour, with a face so still as to
seem quite without any sort of meaning, impassive almost to idiotcy.
His delight was to sit for hours in the sun humming a sort of song
between his teeth so softly, that five steps off he was inaudible. His
features were, so to speak, petrified; he ate little, principally black
bread; he never bought white bread or spirits; my belief is, he never
had had any money, and that he couldn't have counted it if he had. He
was indifferent to everything. Sometimes he fed the prison dogs with his
own hand, a thing no one else was known to do; (speaking generally,
Russians don't like giving dogs things to eat from the hand). People
said that he had been married, twice even, and that he had children
somewhere. Why he had been sent as a convict, I have not the least idea.
We fellows were always fancying that he would escape; but his hour did
not come, or perhaps had come and gone; anyhow, he went through with his
punishment without resistance. He seemed an element quite foreign to the
medium wherein he had his being, an alien, self-concentrated creature.
Still, there was nothing in this deep surface calm which could be
trusted; yet, after all, what good would it have been to him to escape
from the place?
Compared with life at the convict prison, the vagabond age of the
forests is as the joys of Paradise. The tramp's lot is wretched enough,
but at least free. So it is that every prisoner all over the soil of
Russia, becomes restless with the first rays of the smiling spring.
Comparatively few form any settled plan for flight, they fear the
hindrances in the way and the punishment that may ensue; only one in a
hundred, not more, make up his mind to it, but how to do it is a thought
that never ceases to haunt the minds of the ninety-nine others. Filled
as they are with this longing, anything that looks like giving a chance
of success is a comfort to them; then they set about comparing the facts
with cases of successful escape. I speak only of prisoners after and
under sentence, for prisoners not yet tried and condemned, are much more
ready to try at an escape. And those who have been sentenced, rarely
get away unless they attempt it in early days. When they have spent two
or three years of their time, they put them to a sort of credit-account
in their minds, and conclude that it is better to finish with the law
and be put on land as a free man, rather than forfeit that time if they
fail in escaping, which is always a possibility. Certainly not more than
one convict in ten succeeds in _changing his lot_. Those who do, are
nearly always men sentenced to an extremely long punishment, or for
life. Fifteen, twenty years seem like an eternity to them. Then there is
the branding, which is a great difficulty in the way of complete escape.
_Changing your lot_ is a technical expression. When a convict is caught
trying to escape, he is subjected to formal interrogatory, and will say
he wanted to _change his lot_. This somewhat literary formula exactly
represents the act in question. No escaped prisoner ever hopes to become
a perfectly free man, for he knows that it is nearly impossible; what he
looks for is to be sent to some other convict establishment, or to be
put on the land, or to be tried again for some offence committed when on
the tramp; in a word, to be sent anywhere else, it matters not where, so
that he get out of his present prison which has become insufferable to
him. All these fugitives, unless they find some unexpected shelter for
the winter, unless they meet some one interested in concealing them, or
if--last resort--they cannot procure--and sometimes a murder does
it--the legal document, which enables them to go about unmolested
everywhere; all these fugitives present themselves in crowds, during the
autumn, in the towns and at the prisons; they confess themselves to be
escaped tramps, pass the winter in jail, and live in the secret hope of
getting away the following summer.
On me, as well as others, the spring exercised its influence. Well do I
remember the avidity with which my gaze fed upon the horizon through the
gaps in the palisades; long, long did I stand with my head glued to the
pickets, obstinately and insatiably gazing on the grass greening in the
ditch surrounding the fortress, and at the blue of the distant sky as it
grew denser and denser. My anguish, my melancholy, were heavier on me;
as each day wore away the jail became odious, detestable. Hatred for me,
as a man of the nobility, filled the hearts of the convicts during these
first years, and this feeling of theirs simply poisoned my life for me.
Often did I ask to be sent to the hospital, when there was no need of
it, merely to be out of the punishment part of the place, to feel myself
out of the range of this unrelenting and implacable hostility.
"You nobles have beaks of iron, and you tore us to pieces with your
beaks when we were serfs," is what the convicts used to say to us. How I
envied the people of the lower class who came into the place as
prisoners! It was different with them, they were in comradeship with all
there from the very first moment. So was it that in the spring, Freedom
showing herself as a sort of phantom of the season, the joy diffused
throughout all Nature, translated themselves within my soul into a more
than doubled melancholy and nervous irritability.
As the sixth week of Lent came I had to go through my religious
exercises, for the convicts were divided by the sub-superintendent into
seven sections--answering to the weeks in Lent--and these had to attend
to their devotions according to this roster. Each section was composed
of about thirty men. This week was a great solace to me; we went two or
three times a day to the church, which was close to the prison. I had
not been in church for a long time. The Lenten services, familiar to me
from early childhood in my father's house, the solemn prayers, the
prostrations--all stirred in me the fibres of the memory of things long,
long past, and woke my earliest impressions to fresh life. Well do I
remember how happy I was when at morn we went into God's house, treading
the ground which had frozen in the night, under the escort of soldiers
with loaded guns; the escort remained outside the church.
Once within we were massed close to the door so that we could scarcely
hear anything except the deep voice of the ministering deacon; now and
again we caught a glimpse of a black chasuble or the bare head of the
priest. Then it came into my mind how, when a child, I used to look at
the common people who formed a compact mass at the door, and how they
would step back in a servile way before some important epauletted
fellow, or some nobleman with a big paunch, some lady splendidly dressed
and of high devotion who, in a hurry to get at the front benches, and
ready for a row if there was any difficulty as to their being honoured
with the best of places. As it seemed to me then, it was only _there_,
near the church door, not far from the entry, that prayer was put up
with genuine fervour and humility, only there that, when people did
prostrate themselves on the floor it was done with real abasement of
self and full sense of unworthiness.
And now I myself was in that place of the common people, no, not in
their place, for we who were there were in chains and degradation.
Everybody kept himself at a distance from us. We were feared, and alms
were put in our hands as if we were beggars; I remember that all this
gave me the strange sensation of a refined and subtle pleasure. "Let it
even be so!" such was my thought. The convicts prayed with deep fervour;
every one of them had with him his poor farthing for a little candle, or
for their collection for the church expenses. "I too, I am a man," each
one of them perhaps said, as he made his offering; "before God we are
all equal."
After the six o'clock mass we went up to communion. When the priest,
_ciforium_ in hand, recited the words, "Have mercy on me as Thou hadst
on the thief whom Thou didst save," nearly all the convicts prostrated
themselves, and their chains clanked; I think they took these words
literally as applied to themselves, and not as being in Scripture.
Holy Week came. The authorities presented each of us with an Easter egg,
and a small piece of wheaten bread. The townspeople loaded us with
benevolences. As at Christmas there was the priest's visitation with
the cross, inspecting visit of the heads of departments, larded cabbage,
general enlargement of soul, and unlimited lounging, the only difference
being, that one could now walk about in the court-yard, and warm oneself
in the sun. Everything seemed filled with more light, larger than in the
winter, but also more fraught with sadness. The long, endless, summer
days seemed peculiarly unbearable on Church holidays. Work days were at
least shortened to our sense by the fatigue of work.
Our summer labours were much more trying than the winter tasks; our
business was principally that of carrying out engineering works. The
convicts were set to building, digging, bricklaying, or repairing
Government buildings, locksmith's work, or carpentering, or painting.
Others went into the brick-fields, and that was looked upon by us as the
hardest of all we had laid on us. The brick-fields were situated about
four versts from the fortress; through all the summer they sent there,
every morning at six o'clock, a gang of fifty convicts. For this gang
they used to pick out workmen who had learned no trade in particular.
The convicts took with them their bread for the day, the distance was
too great for them to come back, eight useless versts, for dinner with
the others, so they had a meal when they returned in the evening.
Work was assigned to each for the day, but there was so much of it that
it was all a man could do, nay, more, to get to the end of it. First, we
had to dig and carry the clay, moisten it, and mould it in the ditch,
and then make a goodly quantity of bricks, two hundred or so, sometimes
fifty more than that. I was only twice sent to the brick-field. The
convicts sent to this labour came back in the evening dead tired, and
every one of them complained of the others, that he had had the worst of
the work put on him. I believe that reproaches of this kind were a
pleasure, a consolation to them. Some of them, however, liked the
brick-field work, because they got away from the town, and to the banks
of the Irtych into open, agreeable country, with the sky overhead; the
surroundings were more agreeable than those frightful Government
buildings. They were allowed to smoke there in all freedom, and to
remain lying down for half-an-hour or so, which was a great pleasure.
As for me, I was sent to one of the shops, or else to pound up
alabaster, or to carry bricks, which last job I had for two months
together. I had to take my tale of bricks from the banks of the Irtych
to a distance of about 140 yards, and to pass the ditch of the fortress
before getting to the barrack which they were putting up. This work
suited me well enough, although the cord with which I carried my bricks
sawed my shoulders; what particularly pleased me was that my strength
increased sensibly. At the outset I could not carry more than eight
bricks at once; each of them weighed about twelve pounds. I got to be
able to carry twelve, or even fifteen, which delighted me much. You
wanted physical as well as moral strength to be able to bear all the
discomforts of that accursed life.
There was this, too: I wanted, when I left the place, really to live,
not to be half-dead. I took pleasure in carrying my bricks, then; it was
not merely that this labour strengthened my body, but because it took me
always to the banks of the Irtych. I speak often of this spot, it was
the only one where we saw God's _own_ world, a pure and bright horizon,
the free desert steppes, whose bareness always produced a strange
impression on me. All the other workyards were in the fortress itself,
or in its neighbourhood; and the fortress, from the earliest days I was
there, was the object of my hatred, and, above all, its appurtenant
buildings. The house of the Major Commandant seemed to me a repulsive,
accursed place. I never could pass it without casting upon it a look of
detestation; while at the river-bank I could forget my miserable self as
I sent my gaze over the immense desert space, just as a prisoner may
when he looks at the world of freedom through the barred casement of his
dungeon. Everything in that place was dear and gracious to my eyes; the
sun shining in the infinite blue of heaven, the distant song of the
Kirghiz that came from the opposite bank.
Sometimes I would fix my sight for a long while upon the poor smoky
cabin of some _baïgouch_; I would study the bluish smoke as it curled in
the air, the Kirghiz woman busy with her two sheep.... The things I saw
were wild, savage, poverty-stricken; but they were free. I would follow
the flight of a bird threading its way in the pure transparent air; now
it skims the water, now disappears in the azure sky, now suddenly comes
to view again, a mere point in space. Even the poor wee floweret fading
in a cleft of the bank, which would show itself when spring began, fixed
my attention and would draw my tears.... The melancholy of this first
year of convict life and hard labour was unendurable, too much for my
strength. The anguish of it was so great, I could not notice my
immediate surroundings at all; I merely shut my eyes and would not see.
Among the creatures with spoiled lives with whom I had to live, I did
not yet note those who were capable of thinking and feeling, in spite of
their external repulsiveness. There came not to my ears (or if there did
I knew it not) one word of kindliness in the midst of the rain of
poisonous talk that came down all the time. Still one such utterance
there was, simple, straightforward, of pure motive, and it came from the
heart of a man who had suffered and endured more than myself. But it is
useless to enlarge on this.
The great fatigue I underwent was a source of satisfaction, it gave me
hope of sound sleep. During the summer sleep was torment, more
intolerable than the closeness and infection winter brought with it.
Some of the nights were certainly very beautiful. The sun, which had not
ceased to inundate the court-yard all the day, hid itself at last. The
air freshened, and the night, the night of the steppe, became
comparatively cold. The convicts, until shut up in their barracks,
walked about in groups, especially on the kitchen side; for that was the
place where questions of general interest were by preference discussed,
and comments were made upon the rumours from without, often absurd
indeed, but always keenly exciting to these men cut off from the world.
For example, we suddenly learn that our Major had been roughly dismissed
from his post. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know the news
to be false, or most unlikely, and that the fellow who brings it is a
past master in the art of lying, Kvassoff; for all that they clutch at
the nonsensical story, go into high delight over it, are much consoled,
and at last quite ashamed to have been duped by a Kvassoff.
"I should like to know who'll show _him_ the door?" cries one convict;
"don't you fear, he's a fellow who knows how to stick on."
"But," says another, "he has his superiors over him." This one is a warm
controversialist, and has seen the world.
"Wolves don't feed on one another," says a third gloomily, half to
himself. _This_ one is an old fellow, growing gray, and he always takes
his sour cabbage soup into a corner, and eats it there.
"Do you think his superiors will take _your_ advice whether they shall
show him the door or not?" adds a fourth, who doesn't seem to care about
it at all, giving a stroke to his balalaïka.
"Well, why not?" replies the second angrily; "if you _are_ asked, answer
what's in your mind. But no, with us fellows it's all mere cry, and when
you ought to go at things with a will, everybody sneaks out."
"That's _so_!" says the one playing with the balalaïka. "Hard labour and
prison are just the things to cause _that_."
"It was like that the other day," says the second one, without hearing
the remark made to him. "There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a
mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money;
well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All
economy, you see. Was that _so_, and was it right--yes or no?"
"But whom can you complain to?"
"To whom? Why, the 'spector (_Inspector_) who's coming."
"What 'spector?"
"It's true, pals, a 'spector is coming soon," said a youthful convict,
who had got some sort of knowledge, had read the "Duchesse de la
Vallière," or some book of that sort, and who had been Quartermaster in
a regiment; a bit of a wag, whom, as a man of information, the convicts
held in a sort of respect. Without paying the least attention to the
exciting debate, he goes straight to the cook, and asks him for some
liver. Our cooks often deal in victuals of that kind; they used to buy a
whole liver, cut it in pieces, and sell it to the other convicts.
"Two kopecks' worth, or four?" asks cook.
"A four-kopeck cut; I'll eat, the others shall look on and long," says
this convict. "Yes, pals, a general, a real general, is coming from
Petersburg to 'spect all Siberia; it's so, heard it at the Governor's
place."
This news produces an extraordinary effect. For a quarter of an hour
they ask each other who this General can be? what's his title? whether
his grade is higher than that of the Generals of our town? The convicts
delight in discussing ranks and degrees, in finding out who's at the
head of things, who can make the other officials crook their backs, and
to whom he crooks his own; so they get up an argument and quarrel about
their Generals, and rude words fly about, all in honour of these high
officers--fights, too, sometimes. What interest can _they_ possibly have
in it? When one hears convicts speaking of Generals and high officials
one gets a measure of their intelligence as they were while still in the
world before the prison days. It cannot be concealed that among our
people, even in much higher circles, talk about generals and high
officials is looked upon as the most serious and refined conversation.
"Well, you see, they _have_ sent our Major to the right about, don't
ye?" observes Kvassoff, a little, rubicund, choleric, small-brained
fellow, the same who had announced the supersession of the Major.
"We'll just grease their palm for them," this, in staccato tones from
the morose old fellow in the corner who had finished his sour cabbage
soup.
"I should think he would grease their palms, by Jove," says another; "he
has stolen money enough, the brigand. And, only think, he was only a
regimental Major before he came here. He's feathered his nest. Why, a
little while ago he was engaged to the head priest's daughter."
"But he didn't get married; they turned him off, and that shows he's
poor. A pretty sort of fellow to get engaged! He's got nothing but the
coat on his back; last year, Easter time, he lost all he had at cards.
Fedka told me so."
"Well, well, pals, I've been married myself, but it's a bad thing for a
poor devil; taking a wife is soon done, but the fun of it is more like
an inch than a mile," observes Skouratoff, who had just joined in the
general talk.
"Do you fancy we're going to amuse ourselves by discussing _you_?" says
the ex-quartermaster in a superior manner. "Kvassoff, I tell you you're
a big idiot! If you fancy that the Major can grease the palm of an
Inspector-General you've got things finely muddled; d'ye fancy they send
a man from Petersburg just to inspect your Major? You're a precious
dolt, my lad; take it from me that it is so."
"And you fancy because he's a General he doesn't take what's offered?"
said some one in the crowd in a sceptical tone.
"I should think he did indeed, and plenty of it whenever he can."
"A dead sure thing that; gets bigger, and more, and worse, the higher
the rank."
"A General _always_ has his palm greased," says Kvassoff, sententiously.
"Did _you_ ever give them money, as you're so sure of it?" asks
Baklouchin, suddenly striking in, in a tone of contempt; "come, now, did
you ever see a General in all your life?"
"Yes."
"Liar!"
"Liar, yourself!"
"Well, boys, as he _has_ seen a General, let him say _which_. Come,
quick about it; I know 'em all, every man jack."
"I've seen General Zibert," says Kvassoff in tones far from sure.
"Zibert! There's no General of that name. That's the General, perhaps,
who was looking at your back when they gave you the cat. This Zibert
was, perhaps, a Lieutenant-Colonel; but you were in such a fright just
then, you took him for a General."
"No! Just hear me," cries Skouratoff, "for I've got a wife. There was
really a General of that name, a German, but a Russian subject. He
confessed to the Pope, every year, all about his peccadilloes with gay
women, and drank water like a duck, at least forty glasses of Moskva
water one after the other; that was the way he got cured of some
disease. I had it from his valet."
"I say! And the carp didn't swim in his belly?" this from the convict
with the balalaïka.
"Be quiet, fellows, can't you--one's talking seriously, and there they
are beginning their nonsense again. Who's the 'spector that's coming?"
This was put by a convict who always seemed full of business, Martinof,
an old man who had been in the Hussars.
"Set of lying fellows!" said one of the doubters. "Lord knows where they
get it all from; it's all empty talk."
"It's nothing of the sort," observes Koulikoff, majestically silent
hitherto, in dogmatic tones. "The man coming is big and fat, about fifty
years, with regular features, and proud, contemptuous manners, on which
he prides himself."
Koulikoff is a Tsigan, a sort of veterinary surgeon, makes money by
treating horses in town, and sells wine in our prison. He's no fool,
plenty of brain, memory well stocked, lets his words fall as carefully
as if every one of 'em was worth a rouble.
"It's true," he went on very calmly, "I heard of it only last week; it's
a General with bigger epaulettes than most, and he's going to inspect
all Siberia. They grease his palm well for him, that's sure enough; but
not our Major with his eight eyes in his head. He won't dare to creep in
about _him_, for you see, pals, there are Generals and Generals, as
there are fagots and fagots. It's just this, and you may take it from
me, our Major will remain where he is. _We're_ fellows with no tongue,
we've no right to speak; and as to our chiefs here, they're not going to
say a word against him. The 'spector will come into our jail, give a
look round, and go off at once; he'll say it was all right."
"Yes, but the Major's in a fright; he's been drunk since morning."
"And this evening he had two van-loads of things taken away; Fedka says
so."
"You may scrub a nigger, he'll never be white. Is it the first time
you've seen him drunk, hey?"
"No! It will be a devil of a shame if the General does nothing to him,"
said the convicts, who began to get highly excited.
The news of the arrival of the Inspector went through the prison. The
prisoners went everywhere about the court-yard retailing the important
fact. Some held their tongues and kept cool, trying to look important;
some were really indifferent to it. Some of the convicts sat down on the
steps of the doors to play the balalaïka, while some went on with their
gossip. Some groups were singing in a drawling voice, but the whole
court-yard was upset and excited generally.
About nine o'clock they counted us, and quartered us in our barracks,
which were closed for the night. A short summer night it was, so we were
roused up at five o'clock in the morning, yet nobody had managed to
sleep before eleven, for up to that hour there was conversation and all
sort of movement was going on; sometimes, too, games of cards were made
up, as in winter. The heat was intolerable, stifling. True, the open
window let in some of the cool night air, but the convicts kept tossing
themselves on their wooden beds as if delirious.
Fleas countless. There were enough of them in winter; but when spring
came they multiplied in proportions so formidable that I couldn't
believe it before I had to endure them. And as the summer went on the
worse it was with them. I found out that one _could_ get used to fleas;
but for all that, the torment of them is so great that it throws you
into a fever; even when you get slumber you quite feel it is not sleep,
you are half delirious, and know it.
At last, towards morning, when the enemy is tired and you are
deliciously asleep in the freshness of the early hours, suddenly sounds
the pitiless morning drum-call. How you curse as you hear them, those
sharp, quick strokes; you cower in your semi-pelisse, and then--you
can't help it--comes the thought that it will be so to-morrow, the day
after, for many, many years, till you are set at liberty. When _will_ it
come, this freedom, freedom? Where _is_ it in this world? _Where_ is it
hiding? You _have_ to get up, they are walking about you in all
directions. The usual noisy row begins. The convicts dress, and hurry
to their work. It's true you have an hour you can spend in sleep at
noon.
What we had been told about the Inspector was really true. The reports
were more confirmed every day; and at last it became certain that a
General, high in office, was coming from Petersburg to inspect all
Siberia, that he was already at Tobolsk. Every day we learned something
fresh about it. These rumours came from the town. They told us that
there was alarm in all quarters, and that everybody was making
preparations to show himself in as favourable a light as might be. The
authorities were organising receptions, balls, fêtes of every kind.
Gangs of convicts were sent to level the ways in the fortress, smooth
away hummocks in the ground, paint the palings and other wood-work, to
plaster, do up, and generally repair everything that was conspicuous.
Our prisoners perfectly well understood the object of this labour, and
their discussions became all the more animated and excited. Their
imaginations passed all bounds. They even set about formulating some
demands to be set before the General on his arrival, but that did not
prevent their going on with their quarrels and violent speeches. Our
Major was on hot coals. He came continually to visit the jail, shouted,
and threw himself angrily on the fellows more than usual, sent them to
the guard-room and punishment for a mere nothing, and watched very
severely over the cleanliness and good order of the barracks. Just then,
there occurred a little event which did not at all painfully affect this
officer as one might have expected, but, on the contrary, caused him a
lively satisfaction. One of the convicts struck another with an awl
right in the chest, in a place quite near the heart.
The delinquent's name was Lomof; the name the victim was known by in the
jail was Gavrilka. He was one of those seasoned tramps I've spoken about
earlier. Whether he had any other name, I don't know; I never heard any
attributed to him, except that one, Gavrilka.
Lomof had been a peasant comfortably off in the Government of T----,
and district of K----. There were five of them living together, two
brothers Lomof, and three sons. They were quite rich peasants; the talk
throughout the district was that they had more than 300,000 roubles in
paper money. They worked at currying and tanning; but their chief
business was usury, harbouring tramps, and receiving stolen goods; all
sorts of petty irregular doings. Half the peasants of their district
owed them money, and so were in their clutches. They passed for being
intelligent and full of cunning, and gave themselves very great airs. A
great personage of their province had stopped on his way once at the
father Lomof's house, and this official had taken a fancy to him,
because of his hardy and unscrupulous talk. Then they took it in their
heads they might do exactly as they pleased, and mixed themselves up
more and more with illegal doings. Everybody had a grievance against
them, and would like to have seen them a hundred feet under the ground;
but they got bolder and bolder every day. They were not afraid of the
local police or the district tribunals.
At last fortune betrayed them; their ruin came, not out of their secret
crimes, but from an accusation which was all calumny and falsehood. Ten
versts from their hamlet they had a farm where six Kirghiz labourers,
long since brought down by them to be no better than slaves, used to
pass the autumn. One fine day these Kirghiz were found murdered. An
inquiry was set on foot that lasted long, thanks to which no end of
atrocious things were brought to light. The Lomofs were accused of
having assassinated their workmen. They had themselves told their story
to the convicts, all the jail knew it perfectly; they were suspected of
owing a great deal of money to the Kirghiz, and, as they were full of
greed and avarice in spite of their large fortunes, it was believed they
had paid the debt by taking the lives of the poor fellows. While the
inquiry and trial went on, their property melted away utterly. The
father died, the sons were transported; one of these, with the uncle,
was condemned to fifteen years of hard labour.
Now, they were perfectly innocent of the crime imputed to them. One fine
day Gavrilka, a thorough-paced rascal, known as a tramp, but of very gay
and lively turn, avowed himself the author of the crime. As a matter of
fact I don't know whether he actually made this avowal himself, but what
is sure is that the convicts held him to be the murderer of the Kirghiz.
This Gavrilka, while still tramping about, had been mixed up in some way
with the Lomofs (his confinement in one jail was for quite a short
sentence, for desertion from the army and tramping). He had cut the
throats of the Kirghiz--three other marauding fellows had been in it
with him--in the hope of setting themselves up a bit with the plunder of
the farm.
The Lomofs were no favourites with us, I really don't know why. One of
them, the nephew, was a sturdy fellow, intelligent and sociable; but his
uncle, the one that struck Gavrilka with the awl, was a choleric, stupid
rustic, always quarrelling with the convicts, who knocked him about like
plaster. All the jail liked Gavrilka for his gaiety and good-humour. The
Lomofs got to know, like the rest, that he was the man who committed the
crime they were condemned for; but they never got into any quarrel with
him. Gavrilka paid no attention whatever to them.
The row with Uncle Lomof began about some disgusting girl they had
quarrelled over. Gavrilka had boasted of the favour she had shown him.
The peasant, mad with jealousy, ended by driving an awl into his chest.
Although the Lomofs had been ruined by their trial and sentence, they
passed in the jail for being very rich. They had money, a samovar, and
drank tea. Our Major knew all about it, and hated the two Lomofs,
sparing them no vexation. The victims of his hate explained it by a
desire to have them grease his palm well, but they could not, or would
not, bring themselves to do it.
If Uncle Lomof had struck his awl one hair's breadth further in
Gavrilka's breast he would certainly have killed him; as it was, the
wound did not much signify. The affair was reported to the Major. I
think I see him now as he came up out of breath, but with visible
satisfaction. He addressed Gavrilka in an affable, fatherly way:
"Tell me, lad, can you walk to the hospital or must they carry you
there? No, I think it will be better to have a horse; let them put a
horse to this moment!" he cried out to the sub-officer with a gasp.
"But I don't feel it at all, your worship; he's only given me a bit of a
prick, your worship."
"You don't know, my dear fellow, you don't know; you'll see. A nasty
place he's struck you in. All depends upon the place. He has given it
you just below the heart, the scoundrel. Wait, wait!" he howled to
Lomof. "I've got you tight; take him to the guard-house."
He kept his promise. Lomof was tried, and, though the wound was slight,
there was plainly malice aforethought; his sentence of hard labour was
extended for several years, and they gave him a thousand strokes with
the rod. The Major was delighted.
The Inspector arrived at last.
The day after he reached the town, he came to the convict establishment
to make his inspection. It was a regular fête-day. For some days
everything had been brilliantly clean, washed with great precision. The
convicts were all just shaven, their linen quite white and without a
stain. (According to the regulations, they wore in summer waistcoats and
pantaloons of canvas. Every one had a round black piece sown in at the
back, eight centimetres in diameter.) For a whole hour the prisoners had
been drilled as to what they should answer, the very words to be used,
particularly if the high functionary should take any notice of them.
There had been even regular rehearsals. The Major seemed to have lost
his head. An hour before the coming in of the Inspector, all the
convicts were at their posts, as stiff as statues, with their little
fingers on the seams of their pantaloons. At last, just about one
o'clock the Inspector made his entry. He was a General, with a most
self-sufficing bearing, so much so, that the mere sight of it must have
sent a tremor into the hearts of all the officials of West Siberia.
He came in with a stern and majestic air, followed by a crowd of
Generals and Colonels doing service in our town. There was a civilian,
too, of high stature and regular features, in frock-coat and shoes. This
personage bore himself very independently and airily, and the General
addressed him every moment with exquisite politeness. This civilian also
had come from Petersburg. All the convicts were terribly curious as to
who he could be, such an important General showing him such deference?
We learned who he was and what his office later, but he was a good deal
talked about before we knew.
Our Major, all spick and span, with orange-coloured collar, made no too
favourable impression upon the General; the blood-shot eyes and fiery
rubicund complexion plainly told their own story. Out of respect for his
superior he had taken off his spectacles, and stood some way off, as
straight as a dart, in feverish expectation that something would be
asked of him, that he might run and carry out His Excellency's wishes;
but no particular need of his services seemed to be felt.
The General went all through the barracks without saying a word, threw a
glance into the kitchen, where he tasted the sour cabbage soup. They
pointed me out to him, telling him that I was an ex-nobleman, who had
done this, that, and the other.
"Ah!" answered the General. "And how does he conduct himself?"
"Satisfactorily for the time being, your Excellency, satisfactorily."
The General nodded, and left the jail in a couple of minutes more. The
convicts were dazzled and disappointed, and did not know what to be at.
As to laying complaints against the Major, that was quite over, could
not be thought of. He had, no doubt, been quite well assured as to this
beforehand.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT
Gniedko, a bay horse, was bought a little while afterwards, and the
event furnished a much more agreeable and interesting diversion to the
convicts than the visit of the high personage I have been talking about.
We required a horse at the jail for carrying water, refuse matter, etc.
He was given to a convict to take care of and use; this man drove him,
under escort, of course. Our horse had plenty to do morning and night;
it was a worthy sort of beast, but a good deal worn, and had been in
service for a long time already.
One fine morning, the eve of St. Peter's Day, Gniedko, our bay, who was
dragging a barrel of water, fell all of a heap, and gave up the ghost in
a few minutes. He was much regretted, so all the convicts gathered round
him to discuss his death. Those who had served in the cavalry, the
Tsigans, the veterinary fellows, and others, showed a profound knowledge
of horses in general and fiercely argued the question; but all that did
not bring our bay horse to life again; there he was stretched out and
dead, with his belly all swollen. Every one thought it incumbent on him
to feel about the poor thing with his hands; finally the Major was
informed of what Providence had done in the horse's case, and it was
decided that another should be bought at once.
St. Peter's Day, quite early after mass, all the convicts being
together, horses that were on sale were brought in. It was left to the
prisoners to choose an animal, for there were some thorough experts
among them, and it would have been difficult to take in 250 men, with
whom horse-dealing had been a speciality. Tsigans, Lesghians,
professional horse-dealers, townsmen, came in to deal. The convicts were
exceedingly eager about the matter as each fresh horse was brought up,
and were as amused as children about it all. It seemed to tickle their
fancy very much, that they had to buy a horse like free men, just as if
it was for themselves and the money was to come out of their own
pockets. Three horses were brought and taken away before purchase; the
fourth was settled on. The horse-dealers seemed astonished and a little
awed at the soldiers of the escort who watched the business. Two hundred
men, clean shaven, branded as they were, with chains on their feet, were
well calculated to inspire respect, all the more as they were in their
own place, at home so to speak, in their own convict's den, where nobody
was ever allowed to come.
Our fellows seemed to be up to no end of tricks for finding out the real
value of a horse brought up; they carefully examined it, handled it with
the most serious demeanour, went on as if the welfare of the
establishment was bound up with the purchase of this beast. The
Circassians took the liberty of jumping upon his back: their eyes shone
wildly, they chatted rapidly in their incomprehensible dialect, showed
their white teeth, dilating the nostrils of their hooked copper-coloured
noses. There were some Russians who paid the most lively attention to
their discussion, and seemed ready to jump down their throats; they did
not understand a word, but it was plain they did what they could to
gather from the expression of the eyes of the fellows whether the horse
was good or not. But what could it matter to a convict, especially to
some of them, who were creatures altogether down and done for, who never
ventured to utter a single word to the others? What _could_ it matter to
such as these, whether one horse or another was bought? Yet it seemed as
if it did. The Circassians appeared to be most relied on for their
opinion, and besides these a foremost place in the discussion was given
to the Tsigans, and those who had formerly been horse-dealers.
There was a regular sort of duel between two convicts--the Tsigan
Koulikoff, who had been a horse-dealer and stealer, and another who had
been a professional veterinary, a tricky Siberian peasant, who had been
at the establishment and at hard labour for some time, and who had
succeeded in getting all Koulikoff's practice in the town. I ought to
mention that the veterinary practitioners at the prison, though without
diploma, were very much sought after, and that not only the townspeople
and tradespeople, but high officials in the city, took their advice when
their horses fell ill, rather than that of several regularly
diplomatised veterinaries who were at the place.
Till Jolkin came, the Siberian peasant Koulikoff had had plenty of
clients from whom he had had fees in good hard cash. He was looked on as
quite at the head of his business. He was a Tsigan all over in his
doings, liar and cheat, and not at all the master of his art he boasted
of being. The income he made had raised him to be a sort of aristocrat
among our convicts; he was listened to and obeyed, but he spoke little,
and expressed an opinion only in great emergencies. He blew his own
trumpet loudly, but he really was a fellow of great energy; he was of
ripe age, and of quite marked intelligence. When he spoke to us of the
nobility, he did so with exquisite politeness and perfect dignity. I am
sure that if he had been suitably dressed, and introduced into a club at
the capital with the title of Count, he would have lived up to it;
played whist, talked to admiration like a man used to command, and one
who knew when to hold his tongue. I am sure that the whole evening would
have passed without any one guessing that the "Count" was nothing but a
vagabond. He had very probably had a very large and varied experience in
life; as to his past, it was quite unknown to us. They kept him among
the convicts who formed a special section reserved from the others.
But no sooner had Jolkin come--he was a simple peasant, one of the "old
believers," but just as tricky as it was possible for a moujik to
be--the veterinary glory of Koulikoff paled sensibly. In less than two
months the Siberian had got from him all his town practice, for he cured
in a very short time horses Koulikoff had declared incurable, and which
had been given up by the regular veterinaries. This peasant had been
condemned and sent to hard labour for coining. It is an odd thing he
should ever have been tempted to go into that line of business. He told
us all about it himself, and joked about their wanting three coins of
genuine gold to make one false.
Koulikoff was not a little put out at this peasant's success, while his
own glory so rapidly declined. There was he who had had a mistress in
the suburbs, who used to wear a plush jacket and top-boots, and here he
was now obliged to turn tavern-keeper; so everybody looked out for a
regular row when the new horse was bought. The thing was very
interesting, each of them had his partisans; the more eager among them
got to angry words about it on the spot. The cunning face of Jolkin was
all wrinkled into a sarcastic smile; but it turned out quite differently
from what was expected. Koulikoff had not the least desire for argument
or dispute, he managed cunningly without that. At first he gave way on
every point, and listened deferentially to his rival's criticisms, then
he caught him up sharply on some remark or other, and pointed out to him
modestly but firmly that he was all wrong. In a word, Jolkin was utterly
discomfited in a surprisingly clever way, so Koulikoff's side was quite
well pleased.
"I say, boys, it's no use talking; you can't trip _him_ up. He knows
what he is about," said some.
"Jolkin knows more about the matter than he does," said others; not
offensively, however. Both sides were ready to make concessions.
"Then, he's got a lighter hand, besides having more in his head. I tell
you that when it comes to stock, horses, or anything else, Koulikoff
needn't duck under to anybody."
"Nor need Jolkin, I tell you."
"There's nobody like Koulikoff."
The new horse was selected and bought. It was a capital gelding--young,
vigorous, and handsome; an irreproachable beast altogether. The
bargaining began. The owner asked thirty roubles; the convicts wouldn't
give more than twenty-five. The higgling went on long and hotly. At
length the convicts began laughing.
"Does the money come out of your own purse?" said some. "What's the good
of all this?"
"Do you want to save for the Government cashbox?" cried others.
"But it's money that belongs to us all, pals," said one.
"Us all! It's plain enough that you needn't trouble to grow idiots,
they'll come up of themselves without it."
At last the business was settled at twenty-eight roubles. The Major was
informed, the purchase sanctioned. Bread and salt were brought at once,
and the new boarder led in triumph into the jail. There was not one of
the convicts, I think, that did not pat his neck or caress his head.
The day we got him he was at once put to fetching water. All the
convicts gazed on him curiously as he pulled at his barrel.
Our waterman, the convict Roman, kept his eyes on the beast with a
stupid sort of satisfaction. He was formerly a peasant, about fifty
years of age, serious and silent, like all the Russian coachmen, whose
behaviour would really seem to acquire some extra gravity by reason of
their being always with horses.
Roman was a quiet creature, affable all round, said little, took snuff
from a box. He had taken care of the horses at the jail for some time
before that. The one just bought was the third given into his charge
since he came to the place.
The coachman's office fell, as a matter of course, to Roman; nobody
would have dreamed of contesting his right to it. When the bay horse
dropped and died, nobody dreamed of accusing Roman of imprudence, not
even the Major. It was the will of God, that was all; as to Roman, he
knew his business.
That bay horse had become the pet of the jail at once. The convicts were
not particularly tender fellows; but they could not help coming to pet
him often.
Sometimes when Roman, returning from the river, shut the great gate
which the sub-officer had opened, Gniedko would stand quite still
waiting for his driver, and turning to him as for orders.
"Get along, you know the way," Roman would cry to him. Then Gniedko
would go off peaceably to the kitchen and stop there, and the cooks and
other servants of the place would fill their buckets with water, which
Gniedko seemed to know all about.
"Gniedko, you're a trump! He's brought his water-barrel himself. He's a
delight to see!" they would cry to him.
"That's true; he's only a beast, but he knows all that's said to him."
"No end of a horse is our Gniedko!"
Then the horse shook his head and snorted, just as if he really
understood all about his being praised; then some one would bring him
bread and salt; and when he had finished with them he would shake his
head again, as if to say, "I know you; I know you. I'm a good horse,
and you're a good fellow."
I was quite fond of regaling Gniedko with bread. It was quite a pleasure
to me to look at his nice mouth, and to feel his warm, moist lips
licking up the crumbs from the palm of my hand.
Our convicts were fond of live things, and if they had been allowed
would have filled the barracks with birds and domestic animals. What
could possibly have been better than attending to such creatures for
raising and softening the wild temper of the prisoners? But it was not
permitted; it was not in the regulations; and, truth to say, there was
no room there for many creatures.
However, in my time some animals had established themselves in the jail.
Besides Gniedko, we had some dogs, geese, a he-goat--Vaska--and an
eagle, which remained only a short time.
I think I have said before that _our_ dog was called Bull, and that he
and I had struck up a friendship; but as the lower orders regard dogs as
impure animals undeserving of attention, nobody minded him. He lived in
the jail itself; slept in the court-yard; ate the leavings of the
kitchen, and had no hold whatever on the sympathy of the convicts; all
of whom he knew, however, and regarded as masters and owners. When the
men assigned to work came back to the jail, at the cry of "Corporal," he
used to run to the great gate and gaily welcome the gang, wagging his
tail and looking into every man's eyes, as though he expected a caress.
But for several years his little ways were as useless as they were
engaging. Nobody but myself did caress him; so I was the one he
preferred to all others. Somehow--I don't know in what way--we got
another dog. Snow he was called. As to the third, Koultiapka, I brought
him myself to the place when he was but a pup.
Our Snow was a strange creature. A telega had gone over him and driven
in his spine, so that it made a curve inside him. When you saw him
running at a distance, he looked like twin-dogs born with a ligament. He
was very mangy, too, with bleary eyes, and his tail was hairless, and
always hanging between his legs.
Victim of ill-fate as he was, he seemed to have made up his mind to be
always as impassive as possible; so he never barked at anybody, for he
seemed to be afraid of getting into some fresh trouble. He was nearly
always lurking at the back of the buildings; and if anybody came near he
rolled on his back at once, as though he meant to say, "Do what you like
with me; I've not the least idea of resisting you." And every convict,
when the dog upset himself like that, would give him a passing
obligatory kick, with "Ouh! the dirty brute!" But Snow dared not so much
as give a groan; and if he was too much hurt, would only utter a little,
dull, strangled yelp. He threw himself down just the same way before
Bull or any other dog when he came to try his luck at the kitchen; and
he would stretch himself out flat if a mastiff or any other big dog came
barking at him. Dogs like submission and humility in other dogs; so the
angry brute quieted down at once, and stopped short reflectively before
the poor, humble beast, and then sniffed him curiously all over.
I wonder what poor Snow, trembling with fright, used to think at such
moments. "Is this brigand of a fellow going to bite me?"--no doubt
something like that. When he had sniffed enough at him, the big brute
left him at once, having probably discovered nothing in particular. Snow
used then to jump to his feet, and join a lot of four-footed fellows
like him who were running down some yutchka or other.
Snow knew quite well that no yutchka would ever condescend to the like
of him, that she was too proud for that, but it was some consolation to
him in his troubles to limp after her. As to decent behaviour, he had
but a very vague notion of any such thing. Being totally without any
hope in his future, his highest aim was to get a bellyful of victuals,
and he was cynical enough in showing that it was so.
Once I tried to caress him. This was such an unexpected and new thing to
him that he plumped down on the ground quite helplessly, and quivered
and whined in his delight. As I was really sorry for him I used to
caress him often, so as soon as he caught sight of me he began to whine
in a plaintive, tearful way. He came to his end at the back of the jail,
in the ditch; some dogs tore him to pieces.
Koultiapka was quite a different style of dog. I don't know why I
brought him in from one of the workshops, where he was just born; but it
gave me pleasure to feed him, and see him grow big. Bull took Koultiapka
under his protection, and slept with him. When the young dog began to
grow up, Bull was remarkably complaisant with him. He allowed the pup to
bite his ears, and pull his skin with his teeth; he played with him as
mature dogs are in the habit of doing with the youngsters. It was a
strange thing, but Koultiapka never grew in height at all, only in
length and breadth. His hide was fluffy and mouse-coloured; one of his
ears hung down, while the other was always cocked up. He was, like all
young dogs, ardent and enthusiastic, yelping with pleasure when he saw
his master, and jumping up to lick his face precisely as if he said: "As
long as he sees how delighted I am, I don't care; let etiquette go to
the devil!"
Wherever I was, at my call, "Koultiapka," out he came from some corner,
dashing towards me with noisy satisfaction, making a ball of himself,
and rolling over and over. I was exceedingly fond of the little wretch,
and I used to fancy that destiny had reserved for him nothing but joy
and pleasure in this world of ours; but one fine day the convict
Neustroief, who made women's shoes and prepared skins, cast his eye on
him; something had evidently struck him, for he called Koultiapka, felt
his skin, and turned him over on the ground in a friendly way. The
unsuspicious dog barked with pleasure, but next day he was nowhere to be
found. I hunted for him for some time, but in vain; at last, after two
weeks, all was explained. Koultiapka's natural cloak had been too much
for Neustroief, who had flayed him to make up with the skin some boots
of fur-trimmed velvet ordered by the young wife of some official. He
showed them me when they were done, their inside lining was magnificent;
all Koultiapka, poor fellow!
A good many convicts worked at tanning, and often brought with them to
the jail dogs with a nice skin, which soon were seen no more. They stole
them or bought them. I remember one day I saw a couple of convicts
behind the kitchens laying their heads together. One of them held in a
leash a very fine black dog of particularly good breed. A scamp of a
footman had stolen it from his master, and sold it to our shoemakers for
thirty kopecks. They were going to hang it; that was their way of
disposing of them; then they took the skin off, and threw the body into
a ditch used for _ejecta_, which was in the most distant corner of the
court, and which stank most horribly during the summer heats, for it was
rarely seen to.
I think the poor beast understood the fate in store for him. It looked
at us one after another in a distressed, scrutinising way; at intervals
it gave a timid little wag with its bushy tail between its legs, as
though trying to reach our hearts by showing us every confidence. I
hastened away from the convicts, who finished their vile work without
hindrance.
As to the geese of the establishment, they had established themselves
there quite fortuitously. Who took care of them? To whom did they
belong? I really don't know; but they were a huge delight to our
convicts, and acquired a certain fame throughout the town.
They had been hatched in the convict establishment somewhere, and their
head-quarters was the kitchen, whence they emerged in gangs of their
own, when the gangs of convicts went out to their work. But as soon as
the drum beat and the prisoners massed themselves at the great gate, out
ran the geese after them, cackling and flapping their wings, then they
jumped one after the other over the elevated threshold of the gateway;
while the convicts were at their work, the geese pecked about at a
little distance from them. As soon as they had done and set out for the
jail, again the geese joined the procession, and people who passed by
would cry out, "I say, there are the prisoners with their friends, the
geese!" "How did you teach them to follow you?" some one would ask.
"Here's some money for your geese," another said, putting his hand in
his pocket. In spite of their devotion to the convicts they had their
necks twisted to make a feast at the end of the Lent of some year, I
forget which.
Nobody would ever have made up his mind to kill our goat Vaska, unless
something particular had happened; as it did. I don't know how it got
into our prison, or who had brought it. It was a white kid, and very
pretty. After some days it had won all hearts, it was diverting and
winning. As some excuse was needed for keeping it in the jail, it was
given out that it was quite necessary to have a goat in the stables; but
he didn't live there, but in the kitchen principally; and after a while
he roamed about all over the place. The creature was full of grace and
as playful as could be, jumped on the tables, wrestled with the
convicts, came when it was called, and was always full of spirits and
fun.
One evening, the Lesghian Babaï, who was seated on the stone steps at
the doors of the barracks among a crowd of other convicts, took it into
his head to have a wrestling bout with Vaska, whose horns were pretty
long.
They butted their foreheads against one another--that was the way the
convicts amused themselves with him--when all of a sudden Vaska jumped
on the highest step, lifted himself up on his hind legs, drew his
fore-feet to him and managed to strike the Lesghian on the back of the
neck with all his might, and with such effect that Babaï went headlong
down the steps to the great delight of all who were by as well as of
Babaï himself.
In a word, we all adored our Vaska. When he attained the age of puberty,
a general and serious consultation was held, as the result of which, he
was subjected to an operation which one of the prison veterinaries
executed in a masterly manner.
"Well," said the prisoners, "he won't have any goat-smell about him,
that's one comfort."
Vaska then began to lay on fat in the most surprising way. I must say
that we fed him quite unconscionably. He became a most beautiful fellow,
with magnificent horns, corpulent beyond anything. Sometimes as he
walked, he rolled over on the ground heavily out of sheer fatness. He
went with us out to work too, which was very diverting to the convicts
and all others who saw; and everybody got to know Vaska, the jailbird.
When they worked at the river bank, the prisoners used to cut willow
branches and other foliage, and gather flowers in the ditches to
ornament Vaska. They used to twine the branches and flowers round his
horns and decorate his body with garlands. Vaska then came back at the
head of the gang in a splendid state of ornamentation, and we all came
after in high pride at seeing him such a beauty.
This love for our goat went so far that prisoners raised the question,
not a very wise one, whether Vaska ought not to have his horns gilded.
It was a vain idea; nothing came of it. I asked Akim Akimitch, the best
gilder in the jail, whether you really could gild a goat's horns. He
examined Vaska's quite closely, thought a bit, and then said that it
could be done, but that it would not last, and would be quite useless.
So nothing came of it. Vaska would have lived for many years more, and,
no doubt, have died of asthma at last, if, one day as he returned from
work at the head of the convicts, his path had not been crossed by the
Major, who was seated in his carriage. Vaska was in particularly
gorgeous array.
"Halt!" yelled the Major. "Whose goat is that?"
They told him.
"What! a goat in the prison! and that without my leave? Sub-officer!"
The sub-officer received orders to kill the goat without a moment's
delay; flay him, and sell his skin; and put the proceeds to the
prisoners' account. As to the meat, he ordered it to be cooked with the
convicts' cabbage soup.
The occurrence was much discussed; the goat was much mourned; but nobody
dared to disobey the Major. Vaska was put to death close to the ditch I
spoke of just now. One of the convicts bought the carcase, paying a
rouble and fifty kopecks. With this money white bread was bought for
everybody. The man who had bought the goat sold him at retail in a
roasted state. The meat was delicious.
We had also, during some time, in our prison a steppe eagle; a quite
small species. A convict brought it in, wounded, half-dead. Everybody
came flocking around it; it could not fly, its right wing being quite
powerless; one of its legs was badly hurt. It gazed on the curious crowd
wrathfully, and opened its crooked beak, as if prepared to sell its life
dearly. When we had looked at him long enough, and the crowd dispersed,
the lamed bird went off, hopping on one paw and flapping his wing, and
hid himself in the most distant part of the place he could find; there
he huddled himself in a corner against the palings.
During the three months that he remained in our court-yard he never came
out of his corner. At first we went to look at him pretty often, and
sometimes they set Bull at him, who threw himself forward with fury, but
was frightened to go too near, which mightily amused the convicts. "A
wild chap that! He won't stand any nonsense!" But Bull after a while got
over his fright, and began to worry him. When he was roused to it, the
dog would catch hold of the bird's bad wing, and the creature defended
itself with beak and claws, and then got up closer into his corner with
a proud, savage sort of demeanour, like a wounded king, fixing his eyes
steadily on the fellows looking at his misery.
They tired of the sport after a while, and the eagle seemed quite
forgotten; but there was some one who, every day, put close to him a bit
of fresh meat and a vessel with some water. At first, and for several
days, the eagle would eat nothing; at last, he made up his mind to take
what was left for him, but he never could be got to take anything from
the hand, or in public. Sometimes I succeeded in watching his
proceedings at some distance.
When he saw nobody, and thought he was alone, he ventured upon leaving
his corner and limping along the palisade for a dozen steps or so, then
went back; and so forwards and backwards, precisely as if he were taking
exercise for his health under medical orders. As soon as ever he caught
sight of me he made for his corner as quickly as he possibly could,
limping and hopping. Then he threw his head back, opened his mouth,
ruffled himself, and seemed to make ready for fight.
In vain I tried to caress him. He bit and struggled as soon as he was
touched. Not once did he take the meat I offered him, and all the time I
remained by him he kept his wicked, piercing eye upon me. Lonely and
revengeful he waited for death, defying, refusing to be reconciled with
everything and everybody.
At last the convicts remembered him, after two months of complete
forgetfulness, and then they showed a sympathy I did not expect of
them. It was unanimously agreed to carry him out.
"Let him die, but let him die in freedom," said the prisoners.
"Sure enough, a free and independent bird like that will never get used
to the prison," added others.
"He's not like us," said some one.
"Oh well, he's a bird, and we're human beings."
"The eagle, pals, is the king of the woods," began Skouratof; but that
day nobody paid any attention to him.
One afternoon, when the drum beat for beginning work, they took the
eagle, tied his beak (for he struck a desperate attitude), and took him
out of the prison on to the ramparts. The twelve convicts of the gang
were extremely anxious to know where he would go to. It was a strange
thing: they all seemed as happy as though they had themselves got their
freedom.
"Oh, the wretched brute. One wants to do him a kindness, and he tears
your hand for you by way of thanks," said the man who held him, looking
almost lovingly at the spiteful bird.
"Let him fly off, Mikitka!"
"It doesn't suit _him_ being a prisoner; give him his freedom, his jolly
freedom."
They threw him from the ramparts on to the steppe. It was just at the
end of autumn, a gray, cold day. The wind whistled on the bare steppe
and went groaning through the yellow dried-up grass. The eagle made off
directly, flapping his wounded wing, as if in a hurry to quit us and get
himself a shelter from our piercing eyes. The convicts watched him
intently as he went along with his head just above the grass.
"Do you see him, hey?" said one very pensively.
"He doesn't look round," said another; "he hasn't looked behind once."
"Did you happen to fancy he'd come back to thank us?" said a third.
"Sure enough, he's free; he feels it. It's _freedom_!"
"Yes, freedom."
"You won't see him any more, pals."
"What are you about sticking there? March, march!" cried the escort, and
all went slowly to their work.
CHAPTER VII.
GRIEVANCES
At the outset of this chapter, the editor of the "Recollections" of the
late Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff thinks it his duty to
communicate what follows to his readers.
"In the first chapter of the 'Recollections of the House of the Dead,'
something was said about a parricide, of noble birth, who was put
forward as an instance of the insensibility with which the convicts
speak of the crimes they have committed. It was also stated that he
refused altogether to confess to the authorities and the court; but
that, thanks to the statements of persons who knew all the details of
his case and history, his guilt was put beyond all doubt. These persons
had informed the author of the 'Recollections,' that the criminal had
been of dissolute life and overwhelmed with debts, and that he had
murdered his father to come into the property. Besides, the whole town
where this parricide was imprisoned told his story in precisely the same
way, a fact of which the editor of these 'Recollections' has fully
satisfied himself. It was further stated that this murderer, even when
in the jail, was of quite a joyous and cheerful frame of mind, a sort of
inconsiderate giddy-pated person, although intelligent, and that the
author of the 'Recollections' had never observed any particular signs of
cruelty about him, to which he added, 'So I, for my part, never could
bring myself to believe him guilty.'
"Some time ago the editor of the 'Recollections of the House of the
Dead,' had intelligence from Siberia of the discovery of the innocence
of this 'parricide,' and that he had undergone ten years of the
imprisonment with hard labour for nothing; this was recognised and
avowed by the authorities. The real criminals had been discovered and
had confessed, and the unfortunate man in question set at liberty. All
this stands upon unimpeachable and authoritative grounds."
To say more would be useless. The tragical facts speak too clearly for
themselves. All words are weak in such a case, where a life has been
ruined by such an accusation. Such mistakes as these are among the
dreadful possibilities of life, and such possibilities impart a keener
and more vivid interest to the "Recollections of the House of the Dead,"
which dreadful place we see may contain innocent as well as guilty men.
To continue. I have said that I became at last, in some sense,
accustomed, if not reconciled, to the conditions of convict life; but it
was a long and dreadful time before I was. It took me nearly a year to
get used to the prison, and I shall always regard this year as the most
dreadful of my life, it is graven deep in my memory, down to the very
least details. I think that I could minutely recall the events and
feelings of each successive hour in it.
I have said that the other prisoners, too, found it as difficult as I
did to get used to the life they had to lead. During the whole of this
first year, I used to ask myself whether they were really as calm as
they seemed to be. Questions of this kind pressed themselves upon me. As
I have mentioned before, all the convicts felt themselves in an alien
element to which they could not reconcile themselves. The sense of home
was an impossibility; they felt as if they were staying, as a stage
upon a journey, in an evil sort of inn. These men, exiles for and from
life, seemed either in a perpetual smouldering agitation, or else in
deep depression; but there was not one who had not his ordinary ideas of
one thing or another. This restlessness, which, if it did not come to
the surface, was still unmistakable; those vague hopes of the poor
creatures which existed in spite of themselves, hopes so ill-founded
that they were more like the promptings of incipient insanity than aught
else; all this stamped the place with a character, an originality,
peculiarly its own. One could not but feel when one went there that
there was nothing like it anywhere else in the whole world. There
everybody went about in a sort of waking dream; nor was there anything
to relieve or qualify the impressions the place made on the system of
every man; so that all seemed to suffer from a sort of hyperæsthetic
neurosis, and this dreaming of impossibilities gave to the majority of
the convicts a sombre and morose aspect, for which the word morbid is
not strong enough. Nearly all were taciturn and irascible, preferring to
keep to themselves the hopes they secretly and vainly cherished. The
result was, that anything like ingenuousness or frank statement was the
object of general contempt. Precisely because these wild hopings were
impossible, and, despite themselves, were felt to be so, confessed to
their more lucid selves to be so, they kept them jealously concealed in
the most secret recesses of their souls; while to renounce them was
beyond their powers of self-control. It may be they were ashamed of
their imagination. God knows. The Russian character is, in its normal
conditions, so positive and sober in its way of looking at life, so
pitiless in criticism of its own weaknesses.
Perhaps it was this inward misery of self-dissatisfaction which was at
the bottom of the impatience and intolerance the convicts showed among
themselves, and of the cruel biting things they said to each other. If
one of them, more naïve or impartial than the rest, put into words what
every one of them had in his mind, painted his castles in the air, told
his dreams of liberty, or plans of escape, they shut him up with brutal
promptitude, and made the poor fellow's life a burden to him with their
sarcasms and jests. And I think those did it most unscrupulously who had
perhaps themselves gone furthest in cherishing futile hopes, and
indulging in senseless expectations. I have said, more than once, that
those among them who were marked by simplicity and candour were looked
on rather as being stupid and idiotic; there was nothing but contempt
for them. The convicts were so soured and, in the wrong sense,
sensitive, that they positively hated anything like amiability or
unselfishness. I should be disposed to classify them all broadly, as
either good or bad men, morose or cheerful, putting by themselves, as a
sort of separate creatures, the ingenious fellows who could not hold
their tongues. But the sour-tempered were in far the greatest majority;
some of these were talkative, but these were usually of slanderous and
envious disposition, always poking their noses into other people's
business, though they took good care not to let anybody have a glimpse
of the secret thoughts of their _own_ souls; that would have been
against the fashions and conventions of this strange, little world. As
to the fellows who were really good--very few indeed were they--these
were always very quiet and peaceable, and buried their hopes, if they
had any, in strict silence; but more of real faith went with their hopes
than was the case with the gloomy-minded among the convicts. Stay, there
was one category further among our convicts, which ought not to be
forgotten; the men who had lost all hope, who were despairing and
desperate, like the old man of Starodoub; but these were very few
indeed.
The old man of Starodoub! This was a very subdued, quiet, old man; but
there were some indications of what went on in him, which he could not
help giving, and from which, I could not help seeing, that his inward
life was one of intolerable horror; still he had _something_ to fall
back upon for help and consolation--prayer, and the notion that he was a
martyr. The convict who was always reading the Bible, of whom I spoke
earlier, the one that went mad and threw himself, brick in hand, upon
the Major, was also probably one of those whom hope had altogether
abandoned; and, as it is perfectly impossible to go on living without
hope of some sort, he threw away his life as a sort of voluntary
sacrifice. He declared that he attacked the Major though he had no
grievance in particular; all he wanted was to have some torments
inflicted on himself.
Now, what sort of psychological operation had been going on in _that_
man's soul? No man lives, can live, without having _some_ object in
view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is
none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a
monster. The object _we_ all had in view was liberty, and getting out of
our place of confinement and hard labour.
So I try to place our convicts in separately-defined classes and
categories; but it cannot well be done. Reality is a thing of infinite
diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of
abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications we
so delight in. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and
truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations. Every one
of us who were there had his own peculiar, interior, strictly personal
life, which lay altogether outside of the world of regulations and our
official superintendence.
But, as I have said before, I could not penetrate the depths of this
interior life in the early part of my prison career, for everything that
met my eyes, or challenged my attention in any way, filled me with a
sadness for which there are no words. Sometimes I felt nothing short of
hatred for poor creatures whose martyrdom was at least as great as mine.
In those first days I envied them, because they were among persons of
their own sort, and understood one another; so I thought, but the truth
was that their enforced companionship, the comradeship where the word of
command went with the whip or the rod, was as much an object of aversion
to them as it was to myself, and every one of them tried to keep himself
as much to himself as possible. This envious hatred of them, which came
to me in moments of irritation, was not without its reasonable cause,
for those who tell you so confidently that a cultivated man of the
higher class does not suffer as a mere peasant does, are utterly in the
wrong. That is a thing I have often heard said, and read too. In the
abstract, the notion seems correct, and it is founded in generous
sentiment, for all convicts are human beings alike; but in reality it is
different. In the real living facts of the problem there come in a
quantity of practical complications, and only experience can pronounce
upon these: experience which I have had. I do not mean to lay it down
peremptorily, that the nobleman and the man of culture feel more
acutely, sensitively, deeply, because of their more highly developed
conditions of being. On the other hand, it is impossible to bring all
souls to one common level or standard; neither the grade of education,
nor any other thing, furnishes a standard according to which punishment
can be meted out.
It is a great satisfaction to me to be able to say that among these
dreadful sufferers, in a state of things so barbarous and abject, I
found abundant proof that the elements of moral development were not
wanting. In our convict establishment there were men whom I was familiar
with for several years, and whom I looked upon as wild beasts and
abhorred as such; well, all of a sudden, when I least expected it, these
very men would exhibit such an abundance of feeling of the best kind, so
keen a comprehension of the sufferings of others, seen in the light of
the consciousness of their own, that one might almost fancy scales had
fallen from their eyes. So sudden was it as to cause stupefaction; one
could scarcely believe one's eyes or ears. Sometimes it was just the
other way: educated men, well brought up, would occasionally display a
savage, cynical brutality which nearly turned one's stomach, conduct of
a kind impossible to excuse or justify, however much you might be
charitably inclined to do so.
I lay no stress on the entire change in the habits of life, the food,
etc., as to which there come in points where the man of the higher
classes suffers so much more keenly than the peasant or working man, who
often goes hungry when free, while he always has his stomach-full in
prison. We will leave all that out. Let it be admitted that for a man
with some force of character these external things are a trifle in
comparison with privations of a quite different kind; for all that, such
total change of material conditions and habits is neither an easy nor a
slight thing. But in the convict's _status_ there are elements of horror
before which all other horrors pale, even the mud and filth everywhere
about, the scantiness and uncleanness of the food, the irons on your
limbs, the suffocating sense of being always held tight, as in a vice.
The capital, the most important point of all is, that after a couple of
hours or so, every new-comer to a convict establishment, who is of the
lower class, shakes down into equality with the rest; he is _at home_
among them, he has his "freedom" of this city of the enslaved, this
community of convicted scoundrels, in which one man is superficially
like every other man; he understands and is understood, he is looked
upon by everybody as _one of themselves_. Now all this is _not_ so in
the case of the nobleman. However kindly, just-minded, intelligent a man
of the higher class may be, every soul there will hate and despise him
during long years; they will neither understand nor believe in him, not
one whit. He will be neither friend nor comrade in their eyes; if he
can get them to stop insulting him it will be as much as he can do, but
he will be alien to them from the first to the last, he will have to
feel the grief of a ceaseless, hopeless, causeless solitude and
sequestration. Sometimes it is the case that sheer ill-will on the part
of the prisoners has nothing to do with bringing about this state of
things, it simply cannot be helped; the nobleman is not one of the gang,
and there's the whole secret.
There is nothing more horrible than to live out of the social sphere to
which you properly belong. The peasant, transported from Taganrog to
Petropavlosk, finds there Russian peasants like himself; between him and
them there can be mutual intelligence; in an hour they will be friends,
and live comfortably together in the same izba or the same barrack. With
the nobleman it is wholly otherwise; a bottomless abyss separates him
from the lower classes, _how_ deep and impassable is only seen when a
nobleman forfeits his position and becomes as one of the populace
himself. You may be your whole life in daily relations with the peasant,
forty years you may do business with him regularly as the day comes--let
us suppose it so, at all events--by the calls of official position or
administrative duty; you may be his benefactor, all but a father to
him--well, you'll never know what is at the bottom of the man's mind or
heart. You may think you know something about him, but it is all optical
illusion, nothing more. My readers will charge me with exaggeration, but
I am convinced I am quite right. I don't go on theory or book-reading in
this; in my case the realities of life have given me only too ample time
and opportunity for reviewing and correcting my theoretic convictions,
which, as to this, are now fixed. Perhaps everybody will some day learn
how well founded I am in what I say about this.
All this was theory when I first went into the convict establishment,
but events, and things observed, soon came to confirm me in such views,
and what I experienced so affected my system as to undermine its
health. During the first summer I wandered about the place, so far as I
was free to move, a solitary, friendless man. My moral situation was
such that I could not distinguish those among the convicts who, in the
sequel, managed to care for me a little in spite of the distance that
always remained between us. There _were_ there men of my own position,
ex-nobles like myself, but their companionship was repugnant to me.
Here is one of the incidents which obliged me to see at the outset, how
solitary a creature I was, and all the strangeness of my position at the
place. One day in August, a fine warm day, about one o'clock in the
afternoon, a time when, as a rule, everybody took a nap before resuming
work, the convicts rose as one man and massed themselves in the
court-yard. I had not the slightest idea, up to that moment, that
anything was going on. So deeply had I been sunk in my own thoughts,
that I saw nearly nothing of what was happening about me of any kind.
But it seems that the convicts had been in a smouldering sort of unusual
agitation for three days. Perhaps it had begun sooner; so I thought
later when I remembered stray remarks, bits of talk that had come to my
ears, the palpable increase of ill-humour among the prisoners, their
unusual irritability for some time past. I had attributed it all to the
trying summer work, the insufferably long days; to their dreamings about
the woods, and freedom, which the season brought up; to the nights too
short for rest. It may be that all these things came together to form a
mass of discontent, that only wanted a tolerably good reason for
exploding; it was found in the food.
For several days the convicts had not concealed their dissatisfaction
with it in open talk in their barracks, and they showed it plainly when
assembled for dinner or supper; one of the cooks had been changed, but,
after a couple of days, the new comer was sent to the right-about, and
the old one brought back. The restlessness and ill-humour were general;
mischief was brewing.
"Here are we slaving to death, and they give us nothing but filth to
eat," grumbled one in the kitchen.
"If you don't like it, why don't you order jellies and blanc-mange?"
said another.
"Sour cabbage soup, why, that's _good_. I delight in it; there's nothing
more juicy," exclaimed a third.
"Well, if they gave you nothing but beef, beef, beef, for ever and ever,
would you like _that_?"
"Yes, yes; they ought to give us meat," said a fourth; "one's almost
killed at the workshops; and, by heaven! when one has got through with
work there one's hungry, hungry; and you don't get anything to satisfy
your hunger."
"It's true, the victuals are simply damnable."
"He fills his pockets, don't you fear!"
"It isn't your business."
"Whose business is it? My belly's my own. If we were all to make a row
about it together, you'd soon see."
"Yes."
"Haven't we been beaten enough for complaining, dolt that you are?"
"True enough! What's done in a hurry is never well done. And how would
you set about making a raid over it, tell me that?"
"I'll tell you, by God! If everybody will go, I'll go too, for I'm just
dying of hunger. It's all very well for those who eat at a better table,
apart, to keep quiet; but those who eat the regulation food----"
"There's a fellow with eyes that do their work, bursting with envy _he_
is. Don't his eyes glisten when he sees something that doesn't belong to
him?"
"Well, pals, why don't we make up our minds? Have we gone through
enough? They flay us, the brigands! Let's go at them."
"What's the good? I tell you ye must chew what they give you, and stuff
your mouth full of it. Look at the fellow, he wants people to chew his
food for him. We're in prison, and have got to stand it."
"Yes, that's it; we're in prison."
"That's it always; the people die of hunger, and the Government fills
its belly."
"That's true. Our eight-eyes (_the Major_) has got finely fat over it;
he's bought a pair of gray horses."
"He don't like his glass at all, that fellow," said a convict
ironically.
"He had a bout at cards a little while ago with the vet; for two hours
he played without a half-penny in his pocket. Fedka told me so."
"That's why we get cabbage soup that's fit for nothing."
"You're all idiots! It doesn't matter; _nothing_ matters."
"I tell you if we all join in complaining we shall see what he has to
say for himself. Let's make up our minds."
"_Say_ for himself? You'll get his fist on your pate; that's just all."
"I tell you they'll have him up, and try him."
All the prisoners were in great agitation; the truth is, the food was
execrable. The general anguish, suffering, and suspense seemed to be
coming to a head. Convicts are, by disposition, or, as such, quarrelsome
and rebellious; but a general revolt is rare, for they can never agree
upon it; we all of us felt that since there was, as a rule, more violent
talk than doing.
This time, however, the agitation did not fall to the ground. The men
gathered in groups in their barracks, talking things over in a violent
way, and going over all the particulars of the Major's misdoings, and
trying to get to the bottom of them. In all affairs of that sort there
are ringleaders and firebrands. The ringleaders on such occasions are
generally rather remarkable fellows, not only in convict
establishments, but among all large organisations of workmen, military
detachments, etc. They are always people of a peculiar type,
enthusiastic men, who have a thirst for justice, very naïve, simple, and
strong, convinced that their desires are fully capable of realisation;
they have as much sense as other people; some are of high intelligence;
but they are too full of warmth and zeal to measure their acts. When you
come across people who really do know how to direct the masses, and get
what they want, you find a quite different sort of popular leaders, and
one excessively rare among us Russians. The more usual type of leader,
the one I first alluded to, does certainly in some sense accomplish
their object, so far as bringing about a rising is concerned; but it all
ends in filling up the prisons and convict establishments. Thanks to
their impetuosity they always come off second-best; but it is this
impetuosity that gives them their influences over the masses; their
ardent, honest indignation does its work, and draws in the more
irresolute. Their blind confidence of success seduces even the most
hardened sceptics, although this confidence is generally based on such
uncertain, childish reasons that it is wonderful how people can put
faith in them.
The secret of their influence is that they put themselves at the head,
and _go_ ahead, without flinching. They dash forward, heads down, often
without the least knowledge worth the name of what they are about, and
have nothing about them of the jesuitical practical faculty by dint of
which a vile and worthless man often hits his mark and comes uppermost,
and will sometimes come all white out of a tub of ink. They _must_ dash
their skulls against stone walls. Under ordinary circumstances these
people are bilious, irascible, intolerant, contemptuous, often very
warm, which really after all is part of the secret of their strength.
The deplorable thing is that they never go at what is the essential, the
vital part of their task, they always go off at once into details
instead of going straight to their mark, and this is their ruin. But
they and the mob understand one another; that makes them formidable.
I must say a few words about this word "grievance."
Some of the convicts had been transported in connection with a
"grievance;" these were the most excited among them, notably a certain
Martinoff, who had formerly served in the Hussars, an eager, restless,
and choleric, but a worthy and truthful, fellow. Another, Vassili
Antonoff, could work himself up into anger coolly and collectedly; he
had a generally impudent expression, and a sarcastic smile, but he, too,
was honest, and a man of his word, and of no little education. I won't
enumerate; there were plenty of them. Petroff went about in a hurried
way from one group to another. He spoke few words, but he was quite as
highly excited as any one there, for he was the first to spring out of
the barrack when the others massed themselves in the court-yard.
Our sergeant, who acted as sergeant-major, came up very soon in quite a
fright. The convicts got into rank, and politely begged him to tell the
Major that they wanted to speak with him and put him a few questions.
Behind the sergeant came all the invalids, who ranked themselves in face
of the convicts. What they asked the sergeant to do frightened the man
out of his wits almost, but he dared not refuse to go and report to the
Major, for if the convicts mutinied, God only knows what might happen.
All the men set over us showed themselves great poltroons in handling
the prisoners; then, even if nothing further worse happened, if the
convicts thought better of it and dispersed, the sub-officer was still
in duty bound to inform the authorities of what had been going on. Pale,
and trembling with fright, he went headlong to the Major, without even
an effort to bring the convicts to reason. He saw that they were not
minded to put up with any of his talk, no doubt.
Without the least idea of what was going on, I went into rank myself
(it was only later that I heard the earlier details of the story). I
thought that the muster-roll was to be called, but I did not see the
soldiers who verify the lists, so I was surprised, and began to look
about me a little. The men's faces were working with emotion, and some
were ghostly pale. They were sternly silent, and seemed to be thinking
of what they should say to the Major. I observed that many of the
convicts seemed to wonder at seeing me among them, but they turned their
glances away from me. No doubt they thought it strange that I should
come into the ranks with them, and join in their remonstrances, and
could not quite believe it. Then they turned round to me again in a
questioning sort of way.
"What are you doing here?" said Vassili Antonoff, in a loud, rude voice;
he happened to be close to me, and a little way from the rest; the man
had always hitherto been scrupulously polite to me.
I looked at him in perplexity, trying to understand what he meant by it;
I began to see that something extraordinary was up in our prison.
"Yes, indeed, what are you about here? Go off into the barrack," said a
young fellow, a soldier-convict, whom I did not know till then, and who
was a good, quiet lad, "this is none of _your_ business."
"Have we not fallen into rank," I answered, "aren't we going to be
mustered?"
"Why, _he's_ come, too," cried one of them.
"Iron-nose,"[7] said another.
"Fly-killer," added a third, with inexpressible contempt for me in his
tone. This new nickname caused a general burst of laughter.
"These fellows are in clover everywhere. We are in prison, with hard
labour, I rather fancy; they get wheat-bread and sucking-pig, like great
lords as they are. Don't you get your victuals by yourself? What are you
doing here?"
"Your place is not here," said Koulikoff to me brusquely, taking me by
the hand and leading me out of the ranks.
He was himself very pale; his dark eyes sparkled with fire, he had
bitten his under lip till the blood came; he wasn't one of those who
expected the Major without losing self-possession.
I liked to look at Koulikoff when he was in trying circumstances like
these; then he showed himself just what he was in his strong points and
weak. He attitudinised, but he knew how to act, too. I think he would
have gone to his death with a certain affected elegance. While everybody
was insulting me in words and tones, his politeness was greater than
ever; but he spoke in a firm and resolved tone which admitted of no
reply.
"We are here on business of our own, Alexander Petrovitch, and you've
got to keep out of it. Go where you like and wait till it's over ...
here, your people are in the kitchens, go there."
"They're in hot quarters down there."
I did in fact see our Poles at the open window of the kitchen, in
company with a good many other convicts. I did not well know what to be
at; but went there followed by laughter, insulting remarks, and that
sort of muttered growling which is the prison substitute for the
hissings and cat-calls of the world of freedom.
"He doesn't like it at all! Chu, chu, chu! Seize him!"
I had never been so bitterly insulted since I was in the place. It was a
very painful moment, but just what was to be expected in the excessive
excitement the men were labouring under. In the ante-room I met T--vski,
a young nobleman of not much information, but of firm, generous
character; the convicts excepted him from the hatred they felt for the
convicts of noble birth; they were almost fond of him; every one of his
gestures denoted the brave and energetic man.
"What are you about, Goriantchikoff?" he cried to me; "come here, come
here!"
"But what is _it_ all about?"
"They are going to make a formal complaint, don't you know it? It won't
do them a bit of good; who'll pay any attention to convicts? They'll try
to find out the ringleaders, and if we are among them they'll lay it all
on us. Just remember what we have been transported for. They'll only get
a whipping, but we shall be put regularly to trial. The Major detests us
all, and will be only too happy to ruin us; all his sins will fall on
our shoulders."
"The convicts would tie us hands and feet and sell us directly," added
M--tski, when we got into the kitchen.
"They'll never have mercy on _us_," added T--vski.
Besides the nobles there were in the kitchen about thirty other
prisoners who did not want to join in the general complaints, some
because they were afraid, others because of their conviction that the
whole proceeding would prove quite useless. Akim Akimitch, who was a
decided opponent of everything that savoured of complaint, or that could
interfere with discipline and the usual routine, waited with great
phlegm to see the end of the business, about which he did not care a
jot. He was perfectly convinced that the authorities would put it all
down immediately.
Isaiah Fomitch's nose drooped visibly as he listened in a sort of
frightened curiosity to what we said about the affair; he was much
disturbed. With the Polish nobles were some inferior persons of the same
nation, as well as some Russians, timid, dull, silent fellows, who had
not dared to join the rest, and who waited in a melancholy way to see
what the issue would be. There were also some morose, discontented
convicts, who remained in the kitchen, not because they were afraid, but
that they thought this half-revolt an absurdity which could not
succeed; it seemed to me that these were not a little disturbed, and
their faces were quite unsteady. They saw clearly that they were in the
right, and that the issue of the movement would be what they had
foretold, but they had a sort of feeling that they were traitors who had
sold their comrades to the Major. Jolkin--the long-headed Siberian
peasant sent to hard labour for coining, the man who got Koulikoff's
town practice from him--was there also, as well as the old man of
Starodoub. None of the cooks had left their post, perhaps because they
looked upon themselves as belonging specially to the authorities of the
place, whom it would be unbecoming, therefore, to join in opposing.
"For all that," said I to M--tski, "except these fellows, all the
convicts are in it," and no doubt I said it in a way that showed
misgivings.
"I wonder what in the world _we_ have to do with it?" growled B----.
"We should have risked a good deal more than they had we gone with them;
and why? _Je hais ces brigands._[8] Why, do you think that they'll bring
themselves up to the scratch after all? I can't see what they want
putting their heads in the lion's mouth, the fools."
"It'll all come to nothing," said some one, an obstinate, sour-tempered
old fellow. Almazoff, who was with us too, agreed heartily in this.
"Some fifty of them will get a good beating, and that's all the good
they'll all get out of it."
"Here's the Major!" cried one; everybody ran to the windows.
The Major had come up, spectacles and all, looking as wicked as might
be, towering with passion, red as a turkey-cock. He came on without a
word, and in a determined manner, right up to the line of the convicts.
In conjunctures of this sort he showed uncommon pluck and presence of
mind; but it ought not to be overlooked that he was nearly always
half-seas over. Just then his greasy cap, with its yellow border, and
his tarnished silver epaulettes, gave him a Mephistophelic look in my
excited fancy. Behind him came the quartermaster, Diatloff, who was
quite a personage in the establishment, for he was really at the bottom
of all the authorities did. He was an exceedingly capable and cunning
fellow, and wielded great influence with the Major. He was not by any
means a bad sort of man, and the convicts were, in a general way, not
ill-inclined towards him. Our sergeant followed him with three or four
soldiers, no more; he had already had a tremendous wigging, and there
was plenty more of the same to come, if he knew it. The convicts, who
had remained uncovered, cap in hand, from the moment they sent for the
Major, stiffened themselves, every man shifting his weight to the other
leg; then they remained motionless, and waited for the first word, or
the first shout rather, to come from him.
They had not long to wait. Before he had got more than one word out, the
Major began to shout at the top of his voice; he was beside himself with
rage. We saw him from the windows running all along the line of
convicts, dashing at them here and there with angry questions. As we
were a pretty good distance off, we could not hear what he said or their
replies. We only heard his shouts, or rather what seemed shouting,
groaning, and grunting beautifully mingled.
"Scoundrels! mutineers! to the cat with ye! Whips and sticks! The
ringleaders? _You're_ one of the ringleaders!" throwing himself on one
of them.
We did not hear the answer; but a minute after we saw this convict leave
the ranks and make for the guard-house.
Another followed, then a third.
"I'll have you up, every man of you. I'll---- Who's in the kitchen
there?" he bawled, as he saw us at the open windows. "Here with all of
you! Drive 'em all out, every man!"
Diatloff, the quartermaster, came towards the kitchens. When we had
told him that _we_ were not complaining of any grievance, he returned,
and reported to the Major at once.
"Ah, those fellows are not in it," said he, lowering his tone a bit, and
much pleased. "Never mind, bring them along here."
We left the kitchen. I could not help feeling humiliation; all of us
went along with our heads down.
"Ah, Prokofief! Jolkin too; and you, Almazof! Here, come here, all the
lump of you!" cried the Major to us, with a gasp; but he was somewhat
softened, his tone was even obliging. "M--tski, you're here too?... Take
down the names. Diatloff, take down all the names, the grumblers in one
list and the contented ones in another--all, without exception; you'll
give me the list. I'll have you all before the Committee of
Superintendence.... I'll ... brigands!"
This word "_list_" told.
"We've nothing to complain of!" cried one of the malcontents, in a
half-strangled sort of voice.
"Ah, you've nothing to complain of! _Who's_ that? Let all those who have
nothing to complain of step out of the ranks."
"All of us, all of us!" came from some others.
"Ah, the food is all right, then? You've been put up to it. Ringleaders,
mutineers, eh? So much the worse for them."
"But, what do you mean by that?" came from a voice in the crowd.
"Where is the fellow that said that?" roared the Major, throwing himself
to where the voice came from. "It was you, Rastorgouïef, you; to the
guard-house with you."
Rastorgouïef, a young, chubby fellow of high stature, left the ranks and
went with slow steps to the guard-house. It was not he who had said it,
but, as he was called out, he did not venture to contradict.
"You fellows are too fat, that's what makes you unruly!" shouted the
Major. "You wait, you hulking rascal, in three days you'd---- Wait! I'll
have it out with you all. Let all those who have nothing to complain of
come out of the ranks, I say----"
"We're not complaining of anything, your worship," said some of the
convicts with a sombre air; the rest preserved an obstinate silence. But
the Major wanted nothing further; it was his interest to stop the thing
with as little friction as might be.
"Ah, _now_ I see! _Nobody_ has anything to complain of," said he. "I
knew it, I saw it all. It's ringleaders, there are ringleaders, by God,"
he went on, speaking to Diatloff. "We must lay our hands on them, every
man of them. And now--now--it's time to go to your work. Drummer, there;
drummer, a roll!"
He told them off himself in small detachments. The convicts dispersed
sadly and silently, only too glad to get out of his sight. Immediately
after the gangs went off, the Major betook himself to the guard-house,
where he began to make his dispositions as to the "ringleaders," but he
did not push matters far. It was easy to see that he wanted to be done
with the whole business as soon as possible. One of the men charged told
us later that he had begged for forgiveness, and that the officer had
let him go immediately. There can be no doubt that our Major did not
feel firm in the saddle; he had had a fright, I fancy, for a mutiny is
always a ticklish thing, and although this complaint of the convicts
about the food did not amount really to mutiny (only the Major had been
reported to about it, and the Governor himself), yet it was an
uncomfortable and dangerous affair. What gave him most anxiety was that
the prisoners had been unanimous in their movement, so their discontent
had to be got over somehow, at any price. The ringleaders were soon set
free. Next day the food was passable, but this improvement did not last
long; on the days ensuing the disturbance, the Major went about the
prison much more than usual, and always found something irregular to be
stopped and punished. Our sergeant came and went in a puzzled, dazed
sort of way, as if he could not get over his stupefaction at what had
happened. As to the convicts, it took long for them to quiet down again,
but their agitation seemed to wear quite a different character; they
were restless and perplexed. Some went about with their heads down,
without saying a word; others discussed the event in a grumbling,
helpless kind of way. A good many said biting things about their own
proceedings as though they were quite out of conceit with themselves.
"I say, pal, take and eat!" said one.
"Where's the mouse that was so ready to bell the cat?"
"Let's think ourselves lucky that he did not have us all well beaten."
"It would be a good deal better if you thought more and chattered less."
"What do _you_ mean by lecturing me? Are you schoolmaster here, I'd like
to know?"
"Oh, you want putting to the right-about."
"Who are you, I'd like to know?"
"I'm a man! What are you?"
"A man! You're----"
"You're----"
"I say! Shut up, do! What's the good of all this row?" was the cry from
all sides.
On the evening of the day the "mutiny" took place, I met Petroff behind
the barracks after the day's work. He was looking for me. As he came
near me, I heard him exclaim something, which I didn't understand, in a
muttering sort of way; then he said no more, and walked by my side in a
listless, mechanical fashion.
"I say, Petroff, your fellows are not vexed with us, are they?"
"Who's vexed?" he asked, as if coming to himself.
"The convicts with us--with us nobles."
"Why should they be vexed?"
"Well, because we did not back them up."
"Oh, why should you have kicked up a dust?" he answered, as if trying to
enter into my meaning: "you have a table to yourselves, you fellows."
"Oh, well, there are some of you, not nobles, who don't eat the
regulation food, and who went in with you. We ought to back you up,
we're in the same place; we ought to be comrades."
"Oh, I _say_. Are you our comrades?" he asked, with unfeigned
astonishment.
I looked at him; it was clear that he had not the least comprehension of
my meaning; but I, on the other hand, entered only too thoroughly into
his. I saw now, quite thoroughly, something of which I had before only a
confused idea; what I had before guessed at was now sad certainty.
It was forced on my perceptions that any sort of real fellowship between
the convicts and myself could never be; not even were I to remain in the
place as long as life should last. I was a convict of the "special
section," a creature for ever apart. The expression of Petroff when he
said, "are we comrades, how can that be?" remains, and will always
remain before my eyes. There was a look of such frank, naïve surprise in
it, such ingenuous astonishment that I could not help asking myself if
there was not some lurking irony in the man, just a little spiteful
mockery. Not at all, it was simply meant. I was not their comrade, and
could not be; that was all. Go you to the right, we'll go to the left!
your business is yours, ours is ours.
I really fancied that, after the mutiny, they would attack us
mercilessly so far as they dared and could, and that our life would
become a hell. But nothing of the sort happened; we did not hear the
slightest reproach, there was not even an unpleasant allusion to what
had happened, it was all simply passed over. They went on teasing us as
before when opportunity served, no more. Nobody seemed to bear malice
against those who would not join in, but remained in the kitchens, or
against those who were the first to cry out that they had nothing to
complain of. It was all passed over without a word, to my exceeding
astonishment.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] An insulting phrase which is untranslatable.
[8] French in the original Russian.
CHAPTER VIII.
MY COMPANIONS
As will be understood, those to whom I was most drawn were people of my
own sort, that is, those of "noble" birth, especially in the early days;
but of the three ex-nobles in the place, who were Russians, I knew and
spoke to but one, Akim Akimitch; the other two were the spy A----n, and
the supposed parricide. Even with Akim I never exchanged a word except
when in extremity, in moments when the melancholy on me was simply
unendurable, and when I thought I really never should have the chance of
getting close to any other human being again.
In the last chapter I have tried to show that the convicts were of
different types, and tried to classify them; but when I think of Akim
Akimitch I don't know how to place him, he was quite _sui generis_, so
far as I could observe, in that establishment.
There may be, elsewhere, men like him, to whom it seemed as absolutely a
matter of indifference whether he was a free man, or in jail at hard
labour; at that place he stood alone in this curious impartiality of
temperament. He had settled down in the jail as if he was going to pass
his whole life, and didn't mind it at all. All his belongings, mattress,
cushions, utensils, were so ordered as to give the impression that he
was living in a furnished house of his own; there was nothing
provisional, temporary, bivouac-like, about him, or his words, or his
habits. He had a good many years still to spend in punishment, but I
much doubt whether he ever gave a thought to the time when he would get
out. He was entirely reconciled to his condition, not because he had
made any effort to be so, but simply out of natural submissiveness; but,
as far as his comfort went, it came to the same thing. He was not at all
a bad fellow, and in the early days his advice and help were quite
useful to me; but sometimes, I can't help saying it, his peculiarities
deepened my natural melancholy until it became almost intolerable
anguish.
When I became desperate with silence and solitude of soul, I would get
into talk with him; I wanted to hear, and reply to _some_ words falling
from a living soul, and the more filled with gall and hatred with all
our surroundings they had been, the more would they have been in
sympathy with my wretched mood; but he would just barely talk, quietly
go on sizing his lanterns, and then begin to tell me some story as to
how he had been at a review of troops in 18--, that their general of
division was so-and-so, that the manoeuvring had been very pretty, that
there had been a change in the skirmisher's system of signalling, and
the like; all of it in level imperturbable tones, like water falling
drop by drop. He did not put any life into them even when he told me of
a sharp affair in which he had been, in the Caucasus, for which his
sword had got the decoration of the Riband of St. Anne. The only
difference was, that his voice became a little more measured and grave;
he lowered his tones when he pronounced the name "St. Anne," as though
he were telling a great secret, and then, for three minutes at least,
did not utter a word, but only looked solemn.
During all that first year I had strange passages of feeling, in which I
hated Akim Akimitch with a bitter hatred, I am sure I cannot say why,
moments when I would despairingly curse the fate which made him my next
neighbour on my camp-bed, so close indeed that our heads nearly touched.
An hour afterwards I bitterly reproached myself for such extravagance.
It was, however, only during my first year of confinement that these
violent feelings overpowered me. As time went on, I got used to Akim
Akimitch's singular character, and was ashamed of my former explosions.
I don't remember that he and I ever got into anything like an open
quarrel.
Besides the three Russian nobles of whom I have spoken, there were eight
others there during my time; with some of whom I came to be on a footing
of intimate friendship. Even the best of them were morbid in mind,
exclusive, and intolerant to the very last degree; with two of them I
was obliged to discontinue all spoken intercourse. There were only three
who had any education, B--ski, M--tski, and the old man, J--ski, who had
formerly been a professor of mathematics, an excellent fellow, highly
eccentric, and of very narrow mental horizon in spite of his learning.
M--tski and B--ski were of a mould quite different from his. Between
M--tski and myself there was an excellent understanding from the first
set-off. He and I never once got into any sort of dispute; I respected
him highly, but could never become sincerely attached to him, though I
tried to. He was sour, embittered, and mistrustful, with much
self-control; this was quite antipathetic to me; the man had a closed
soul, closed to everybody, and he made you feel it. I felt it so
strongly that perhaps I was wrong about it. After all, his character, I
must say, was stamped with both nobleness and strength. His inveterate
scepticism made him very prudent in his relations with everybody about
him, and in conducting these he gave proof of remarkable tact and skill.
Sceptic as he was, there was another and a reverse side in his nature,
for in some things he was a profound and unalterable believer with faith
and hope unshakable. In spite of his tact in dealing with men, he got
into open hostilities with B--ski and his friend T--ski.
The first of these, B--ski, was a man of infirm health, of consumptive
tendency, irascible, and of a weak, nervous system; but a good and
generous man. His nervous irritability went so far that he was as
capricious as a child; a temperament of that kind was too much for me
there, so I soon saw as little of B--ski as I could possibly help,
though I never ceased to like him much. It was just the other way so far
as M--tski was concerned; with him I always was on easy terms, though I
did not like him at all. When I edged away from B--ski, I had to break
also, more or less, with T--ski, of whom I spoke in the last chapter,
which I much regretted, for, though of little education, he had an
excellent heart; a worthy, very spiritual man. He loved and respected
B--ski so much that those who broke with that friend of his he regarded
as his personal enemies. He quarrelled with M--tski on account of
B--ski, and they kept up the difference a long while. All these people
were as bilious as they could be, humoursome, mistrustful, the victims
of a moral and physical supersensitiveness. It is not to be wondered at;
their position was trying indeed, much more so than ours; they were all
exiled, transported, for ten or twelve years; and what made their
sojourn in the prison most distressing to them was their rooted,
ingrained prejudice, especially their unfortunate way of regarding the
convicts, which they could not get over; in their eyes the unhappy
fellows were mere wild beasts, without a single recognisable human
quality. Everything in their previous career and their present
circumstances combined to produce this unhappy feeling in them.
Their life at the jail was perpetual torment to them. They were kindly
and conversible with the Circassians, with the Tartars, with Isaiah
Fomitch; but for the other prisoners they had nothing but contempt and
aversion. The only one they had any real respect for was the aged "old
believer." For all this, during all the time I spent at the convict
establishment, I never knew a single prisoner to reproach them with
either their birth, or religious opinions, or convictions, as is so
usual with our common people in their relations with people of different
condition, especially if these happen to be foreigners. The fact is,
they cannot take the foreigner seriously; to the Russian common people
he seems a merely grotesque, comical creature. Our convicts had and
showed much more respect for the Polish nobles than for us Russians, but
I don't think the Poles cared about the matter, or took any notice of
the difference.
I spoke just now of T--ski, and have something more to say of him. When
he had with his friend to leave the first place assigned to them as
residence in their banishment to come to our fortress, he carried his
friend B---- nearly the whole way. B---- was of quite a weak frame, and
in bad health, and became exhausted before half of the first march was
accomplished. They had first been banished to Y--gorsk, where they lived
in tolerable comfort; life was much less hard there than in our
fortress. But in consequence of a correspondence with the exiles in one
of the other towns--a quite innocent exchange of letters--it was thought
necessary to remove them to our jail to be under the more direct
surveillance of the government. Until they came M--tski had been quite
alone, and dreadful must have been his sufferings in that first year of
his banishment.
J--ski was the old man always deep in prayer, of whom I spoke a little
earlier. All the political convicts were quite young men while J--ski
was at least fifty years old. He was a worthy, gentlemanlike person, if
eccentric. T--ski and B--ski detested him, and never spoke to him; they
insisted upon it that he was too obstinate and troublesome to put up
with, and I was obliged to admit it was so. I believe that at a convict
establishment--as in every place where people have to be together,
whether they like it or not--people are more ready to quarrel with and
detest one another than under other circumstances. Many causes
contributed to the squabbles that were, unfortunately, always going on.
J--ski was really disagreeable and narrow-minded; not one of those about
him was on good terms with him. He and I did not come to a rupture, but
we were never on a really friendly footing. I fancy that he was a strong
mathematician. One day he explained to me in his half-Russian,
half-Polish jargon, a system of astronomy of his own; I have been told
that he had written a work upon the subject which the learned world had
received with derision; I fancy his reasonings on some things had got
twisted. He used to be on his knees praying for a whole day sometimes,
which made the convicts respect him exceedingly during the remnant of
life he had to pass there; he died under my eyes at the jail after a
very trying illness. He had won the consideration of the prisoners, from
the first moment of his coming in, on account of what had happened with
the Major and him. When they were brought afoot from Y--gorsk to our
fortress, they were not shaved on the road at all, their hair and beards
had grown to great lengths when they were brought before the Major. That
worthy foamed like a madman; he was wild with indignation at such
infraction of discipline, though it was none of their fault.
"My God! did you ever see anything like it?" he roared; "they are
vagabonds, brigands."
J--ski knew very little Russian, and fancied that he was asking them if
they were brigands or vagabonds, so he answered:
"We are political prisoners, not rogues and vagabonds."
"So-o-o! You mean impudence! Clod!" howled the Major. "To the
guard-house with him; a hundred strokes of the rod at once, this
instant, I say!"
They gave the old man the punishment; he lay flat on the ground under
the strokes without the slightest resistance, kept his hand in his
teeth, and bore it all without a murmur, and without moving a muscle.
B--ski and T--ski arrived at the jail as this was all going on, and
M--ski was waiting for them at the principal gate, knowing that they
were just coming in; he threw himself on their neck, although he had
never seen them before. Utterly disgusted at the way the Major had
received them, they told M--ski all about the cruel business that had
just occurred. M--ski told me later that he was quite beside himself
with rage when he heard it.
"I could not contain myself for passion," he said, "I shook as though
with ague. I waited for J--ski at the great gate, for he would come
straight that way from the guard-house after his punishment. The gate
was opened, and there I saw pass before me J--ski, his lips all white
and trembling, his face pale as death; he did not look at a single
person, and passed through the groups of convicts assembled in the
court-yard--they knew a noble had just been subjected to
punishment--went into the barrack, went straight to his place, and,
without a word, dropped down on his knees for prayer. The prisoners were
surprised and even affected. When I saw this old man with white hairs,
who had left behind him at home a wife and children, kneeling and
praying after that scandalous treatment, I rushed away from the barrack,
and for a couple of hours felt as if I had gone stark, staring, raving
mad, or blind drunk.... From that first moment the convicts were full of
deference and consideration for J--ski; what particularly pleased them,
was that he did not utter a cry when undergoing the punishment."
But one must be fair and tell the truth about this sort of thing; this
sad story is not an instance of what frequently occurs in the treatment
by the authorities of transported noblemen, Russian or Polish; and this
isolated case affords no basis for passing judgment upon that treatment.
My anecdote merely shows that you may light upon a bad man anywhere and
everywhere. And if it happen that such a one is in absolute command of a
jail, and if he happen to have a grudge against one of the prisoners,
the lot of such a one will be indeed very far from enviable. But the
administrative chiefs who regulate and supervise convict labour in
Siberia, and from whom subordinates take their tone as well as their
orders, are careful to exercise a discriminating treatment in the case
of persons of noble birth, and, in some cases, grant them special
indulgences as compared with the lot of convicts of lower condition.
There are obvious reasons for this; these heads of departments are
nobles themselves, they know that men of that class must not be driven
to extremity; cases have been known where nobles have refused to submit
to corporal punishment, and flung themselves desperately on their
tormentors with very grave and serious consequences indeed;
moreover--and this, I think, is the leading cause of the good
treatment--some time ago, thirty-five years at least, there were
transported to Siberia quite a crowd of noblemen;[9] these were of such
correct and irreproachable demeanour, and held themselves so high, that
the heads of departments fell into the way, which they never afterwards
left, of regarding criminals of noble birth and ordinary convicts in
quite a different manner; and men in lower place took their cue from
them.
Many of these, no doubt, were little pleased with that disposition in
their superiors; such persons were pleased enough when they could do
exactly as they liked in the matter, but this did not often happen, they
were kept well within bounds; I have reason to be satisfied of this and
I will say why. I was put in the second category, a classification of
those condemned to hard labour, which was primarily and principally
composed of convicts who had been serfs, under military superintendence;
now this second category, or class, was much harder than the first (of
the mines) or the third (manufacturing work). It was harder, not only
for the nobles but for the other convicts too, because the governing and
administrative methods and _personnel_ in it were wholly military, and
were pretty much the same in type as those of the convict establishments
in Russia. The men in official position were severer, the general
treatment more rigorous than in the two other classes; the men were
never out of irons, an escort of soldiers was always present, you were
always, or nearly so, within stone walls; and things were quite
different in the other classes, at least so the convicts said, and there
were those among them who had every reason to know. They would all have
gladly gone off to the mines, which the law classified as the worst and
last punishment, it was their constant dream and desire to do so. All
those who had been in the Russian convict establishments spoke with
horror of them, and declared that there was no hell like them, that
Siberia was a paradise compared with confinement in the fortresses in
Russia.
If, then, it is the case that we nobles were treated with special
consideration in the establishment I was confined in, which was under
direct control of the Governor-General, and administered entirely on
military principles, there must have been some greater kindliness in the
treatment of the convicts of the first and third category or class. I
think I can speak with some authority about what went on throughout
Siberia in these respects, and I based my views, as to this, upon all
that I heard from convicts of these classes. We, in our prison, were
under much more rigorous surveillance than was elsewhere practised; we
were favoured with no sort of exemptions from the ordinary rules as
regards work and confinement, and the wearing of chains; we could not do
anything for ourselves to get immunity from the rules, for I, at least,
knew quite well that, _in the good old time which was quite of
yesterday_, there had been so much intriguing to undermine the credit of
officials that the authorities were greatly afraid of informers, and
that, as things stood, to show indulgence to a convict was regarded as a
crime. Everybody, therefore, authorities and convicts alike, was in fear
of what might happen; we of the nobles were thus quite down to the level
of the other convicts; the only point we were favoured in was in regard
to corporal punishment--but I think that we should have had even that
inflicted on us had we done anything for which it was prescribed, for
equality as to punishment was strictly enjoined or practised; what I
mean is, that we were not wantonly, causelessly, mishandled like the
other prisoners.
When the Governor got to know of the punishment inflicted on J--ski, he
was seriously angry with the Major, and ordered him to be more careful
for the future. The thing got very generally known. We learned also that
the Governor-General, who had great confidence in our Major, and who
liked him because of his exact observance of legal bounds, and thought
highly of his qualities in the service, gave him a sharp scolding. And
our Major took the lesson to heart. I have no doubt it was this
prevented his having M--ski beaten, which he would much have liked to
do, being much influenced by the slanderous things A--f said about
M----; but the Major could never get a fair pretext for doing so,
however much he persecuted and set spies upon his proposed victim; so he
had to deny himself that pleasure. The J--ski affair became known all
through the town, and public opinion condemned the Major; some persons
reproached him openly for what he had done, and some even insulted him.
The first occasion on which the man crossed my path may as well be
mentioned. We had alarming things reported to us--to me and another
nobleman under sentence--about the abominable character of this man,
while we were still at Tobolsk. Men who had been sentenced a long while
back to twenty-five years of the misery, nobles as we were, and who had
visited us so kindly during our provisional sojourn in the first
prison, had warned us what sort of man we were to be under; they had
also promised to do all they could for us with their friends to see that
he hurt us as little as possible. And, in fact, they did write to the
three daughters of the Governor-General, who, I believe, interceded on
our behalf with their father. But what could he do? No more, of course,
than tell the Major to be fair in applying the rules and regulations to
our case. It was about three in the afternoon that my companion and
myself arrived in the town; our escort took us at once to our tyrant. We
remained waiting for him in the ante-chamber while they went to find the
next-in-command at the prison. As soon as the latter had come, in walked
the Major. We saw an inflamed scarlet face that boded no good, and
affected us quite painfully; he seemed like a sort of spider about to
throw itself on a poor fly wriggling in its web.
"What's your name, man?" said he to my companion. He spoke with a harsh,
jerky voice, as if he wanted to overawe us.
My friend gave his name.
"And you?" said he, turning to me and glaring at me behind his
spectacles.
I gave mine.
"Sergeant! take 'em to the prison, and let 'em be shaved at the
guard-house, civilian-fashion, hair off half their skulls, and let 'em
be put in irons to-morrow. Why, what sort of cloaks have you got there?"
said he brutally, when he saw the gray cloaks with yellow sewn at the
back which they had given to us at Tobolsk. "Why, that's a new uniform,
begad--a new uniform! They're always getting up something or other.
That's a Petersburg trick," he said, as he inspected us one after the
other. "Got anything with them?" he said abruptly to the gendarme who
escorted us.
"They've got their own clothes, your worship," replied he; and the man
carried arms, just as if on parade, not without a nervous tremor.
Everybody knew the fellow, and was afraid of him.
"Take their clothes away from them. They can't keep anything but their
linen, their white things; take away all their coloured things if
they've got any, and sell them off at the next sale, and put the money
to the prison account. A convict has no property," said he, looking
severely at us. "Hark ye! Behave prettily; don't let me have any
complaining. If I do--cat-o'-nine-tails! The smallest offence, and to
the sticks you go!"
This way of receiving me, so different from anything I had ever known,
made me nearly ill that night. It was a frightful thing to happen at the
very moment of entering the infernal place. But I have already told that
part of my story.
Thus we had no sort of exemption or immunity from any of the miseries
inflicted there, no lightening of our labours when with the other
convicts; but friends tried to help us by getting us sent for three
months, B--ski and me, to the bureau of the Engineers, to do copying
work. This was done quietly, and as much as possible kept from being
talked about or observed. This piece of kindness was done for us by the
head engineers, during the short time that Lieutenant-Colonel G--kof was
Governor at our prison. This gentleman had command there only for six
short months, for he soon went back to Russia. He really seemed to us
all like an angel of goodness sent from heaven, and the feeling for him
among the convicts was of the strongest kind; it was not mere love, it
was something like adoration. I cannot help saying so. How he did it I
don't know, but their hearts went out to him from the moment they first
set eyes on him.
"He's more like a father than anything else," the prisoners kept
continually saying during all the time he was there at the head of the
engineering department. He was a brilliant, joyous fellow. He was of low
stature, with a bold, confident expression, and he was all gracious
kindness to the convicts, for whom he really did seem to entertain a
fatherly sort of affection. How was it he was so fond of them? It is
hard to say, but he seemed never to be able to pass a prisoner without a
bit of pleasant talk and a little laughing and joking together. There
was nothing that smacked of authority in his pleasantries, nothing that
reminded them of his position over them. He behaved just as if he was
one of themselves. In spite of this kind condescension, I don't remember
any one of the convicts ever failing in respect to him or taking the
slightest liberty--quite the other way. The convict's face would light
up in a wonderful, sudden way when he met the Governor; it was odd to
see how the face smiled all over, and the hand went to the cap, when the
Governor was seen in the distance making for the poor man. A word from
him was regarded as a signal honour. There are some people like that,
who know how to win all hearts.
G--kof had a bold, jaunty air, walked with long strides, holding himself
very straight; "a regular eagle," the convicts used to call him. He
could not do much to lighten their lot materially, for his office was
that of superintending the engineering work, which had to be done in
ways and quantities, settled absolutely and unalterably by the
regulations. But if he happened to come across a gang of convicts who
had actually got through their work, he allowed them to go back to
quarters before beat of drum, without waiting for the regulation moment.
The prisoners loved him for the confidence he showed in them, and
because of his aversion for all mean, trifling interferences with them,
which are so irritating when prison superiors are addicted to that sort
of thing. I am absolutely certain that if he had lost a thousand roubles
in notes, there was not a thief in the prison, however hardened, who
would not have brought them to him, if the man lit on them. I am sure of
it.
How the prisoners all felt for him, and with him when they learned that
he was at daggers drawn with our detested Major. That came about a
month after his arrival. Their delight knew no bounds. The Major had
formerly served with him in the same detachment; so, when they met,
after a long separation, they were at first boon companions, but the
intimacy could not and did not last. They came to
blows--figuratively--and G--kof became the Major's sworn enemy. Some
would have it that it was _more_ than figuratively, that they came to
actual fisticuffs, a likely thing enough as far as the Major was
concerned, for the man had no objection to a scrimmage.
When the convicts heard of the quarrel they really could not contain
their delight.
"Old Eight-eyes and the Commandant get on finely together! _He's_ an
eagle; but the other's a _bad 'un_!"
Those who believed in the fight were mighty curious to know which of the
two had had the worst of it, and got a good drubbing. If it had been
proved there had been no fighting our convicts, I think, would have been
bitterly disappointed.
"The Commandant gave him fits, you may bet your life on it," said they;
"he's a little 'un, but as bold as a lion; the other one got into a blue
funk, and hid under the bed from him."
But G--kof went away only too soon, and keenly was he regretted in the
prison.
Our engineers were all most excellent fellows; we had three or four
fresh batches of them while I was there.
"Our eagles never remain very long with us," said the prisoners;
"especially when they are good and kind fellows."
It was this G--kof who sent B--ski and myself to work in his bureau, for
he was partial to exiled nobles. When he left, our condition was still
fairly endurable, for there was another engineer there who showed us
much sympathy and friendship. We copied reports for some time, and our
handwriting was getting to be very good, when an order came from the
authorities that we were to be sent back to hard labour as before; some
spiteful person had been at work. At bottom we were rather pleased, for
we were quite tired of copying.
For two whole years I worked in company with B--ski, all the time in the
shops, and many a gossip did we have about our hopes for the future and
our notions and convictions. Good B--ski had a very odd mind, which
worked in a strange, exceptional way. There are some people of great
intelligence who indulge in paradox unconscionably; but when they have
undergone great and constant sufferings for their ideas and made great
sacrifices for them, you can't drive their notions out of their heads,
and it is cruel to try it. When you objected something to B--ski's
propositions, he was really hurt, and gave you a violent answer. He was,
perhaps, more in the right than I was as to some things wherein we
differed, but we were obliged to give one another up, very much to my
regret, for we had many thoughts in common.
As years went on M--tski became more and more sombre and melancholy; he
became a prey to despair. During the earliest part of my imprisonment he
was communicative enough, and let us see what was going on in him. When
I arrived at the prison he had just finished his second year. At first
he took a lively interest in the news I brought, for he knew nothing of
what had been going on in the outer world; he put questions to me,
listened eagerly, showed emotion, but, bit by bit, his reserve grew on
him and there was no getting at his thoughts. The glowing coals were all
covered up with ashes. Yet it was plain that his temper grew sourer and
sourer. "_Je hais ces brigands_,"[10] he would say, speaking of convicts
I had got to know something of; I never could make him see any good in
them. He really did not seem to fully enter into the meaning of anything
I said on their behalf, though he would sometimes seem to agree in a
listless sort of way. Next day it was just as before: "_je hais ces
brigands_." (We used often to speak French with him; so one of the
overseers of the works, the soldier, Dranichnikof, used always to call
us _aides chirurgiens_, God knows why!) M--tski never seemed to shake
off his usual apathy except when he spoke of his mother.
"She is old and infirm," he said; "she loves me better than anything in
the world, and I don't even know if she's still living. If she learns
that I've been whipped----"
M--tski was not a noble, and had been whipped before he was transported.
When the recollection of this came up in his mind he gnashed his teeth,
and could not look anybody in the face. In the latest days of his
imprisonment he used to walk to and fro, quite alone for the most part.
One day, at noon, he was summoned to the Governor, who received him with
a smile on his lips.
"Well, M--tski, what were your dreams last night?" asked the Governor.
Said M--tski to me later, "When he said that to me a shudder ran through
me; I felt struck at the heart."
His answer was, "I dreamed that I had a letter from my mother."
"Better than that, better!" replied the Governor. "You are free; your
mother has petitioned the Emperor, and he has granted her prayer. Here,
here's her letter, and the order for your dismissal. You are to leave
the jail without delay."
He came to us pale, scarcely able to believe in his good fortune.
We congratulated him. He pressed our hands with his own, which were
quite cold, and trembled violently. Many of the convicts wished him joy;
they were really glad to see his happiness.
He settled in Siberia, establishing himself in our town, where a little
after that they gave him a place. He used often to come to the jail to
bring us news, and tell us all that was going on, as often as he could
talk with us. It was political news that interested him chiefly.
Besides the four Poles, the political convicts of whom I spoke just now,
there were two others of that nation, who were sentenced for very short
periods; they had not much education, but were good, simple,
straightforward fellows. There was another, A--tchoukooski, quite a
colourless person; one more I must mention, B--in, a man well on in
years, who impressed us all very unfavourably indeed. I don't know what
he had been sentenced for, although he used to tell us some story or
other about it pretty frequently. He was a person of a vulgar, mean
type, with the coarse manner of an enriched shopkeeper. He was quite
without education, and seemed to take interest in nothing except what
concerned his trade, which was that of a painter, a sort of
scene-painter he was; he showed a good deal of talent in his work, and
the authorities of the prison soon came to know about his abilities, so
he got employment all through the town in decorating walls and ceilings.
In two years he beautified the rooms of nearly all the prison officials,
who remunerated him handsomely, so he lived pretty comfortably. He was
sent to work with three other prisoners, two of whom learned the
business thoroughly; one of these, T--jwoski, painted nearly as well as
B--in himself. Our Major, who had rooms in one of the government
buildings, sent for B--in, and gave him a commission to decorate the
walls and ceilings there, which he did so effectively, that the suite of
rooms of the Governor-General were quite put out of countenance by those
of the Major. The house itself was a ramshackle old place, while the
interior, thanks to B--in, was as gay as a palace. Our worthy Major was
hugely delighted, went about rubbing his hands, and told everybody that
he should look out for a wife at once, "a fellow _can't_ remain single
when he lives in a place like that;" he was quite serious about it. The
Major's satisfaction with B--in and his assistants went on increasing.
They occupied a month in the work at the Major's house. During those
memorable days the Major seemed to get into a different frame of mind
about us, and began to be quite kind to us political prisoners. One day
he sent for J--ski.
"J--ski," said he, "I've done you wrong; I had you beaten for nothing.
I'm very sorry. Do you understand? I'm very sorry. I, Major ----"
J--ski answered that he understood perfectly.
"Do you understand? I, who am set over you, I have sent for you to ask
your pardon. You can hardly realise it, I suppose. What are you to me,
fellow? A worm, less than a crawling worm; you're a convict, while I, by
God's grace,[11] am a Major; Major ----, _do_ you understand?"
J--ski answered that he quite well understood it all.
"Well, I want to be friends with you. But can you appreciate what I'm
doing? Can you feel the greatness of soul I'm showing--feel and
appreciate it? Just think of it; I, I, the Major!" etc. etc.
J--ski told me of this scene. There was, then, some human feeling left
in this drunken, unruly, and tormenting brute. Allowing for the man's
notions of things, and feeble faculties, one cannot deny that this was a
generous proceeding on his part. Perhaps he was a little less drunk than
usual, perhaps more; who can tell?
The Major's glorious idea of marrying came to nothing; the rooms got all
their bravery, but the wife was not forthcoming. Instead of going to the
altar in that agreeable way, he was pulled up before the authorities and
sent to trial. He received orders to send in his resignation. Some of
his old sins had found him out, it seems; things done when he had been
superintendent of police in our town. This crushing blow came down upon
him without notice, quite suddenly. All the convicts were greatly
rejoiced when they heard the great news; it was high day and holiday all
through the jail. The story went abroad that the Major sobbed, and
cried, and howled like an old woman. But he was helpless in the matter.
He was obliged to leave his place, sell his two gray horses, and
everything he had in the world; and he fell into complete destitution.
We came across him occasionally afterwards in civilian, threadbare
clothes, and wearing a cap with a cockade; he glanced at us convicts as
spitefully and maliciously as you please. But without his Major's
uniform, all the man's glory was gone. While placed over us, he gave
himself the airs of a being higher than human, who had got into coat and
breeches; now it was all over, he looked like the lackey he was, and a
disgraced lackey to boot.
With fellows of this sort, the uniform is the only saving grace; that
gone, all's gone.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The Decembrists.
[10] French in the original Russian.
[11] Our Major was not the only officer who spoke of himself in that
lofty way; a good many officers did the same, men who had risen from the
ranks chiefly.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ESCAPE
A little while after the Major resigned, our prison was subjected to a
thorough reorganization. The "hard labour" hitherto inflicted, and the
other regulations, were abolished, and the place put upon the footing of
the military convict establishments of Russia. As a result of this,
prisoners of the second category were no longer sent there; this class
was, for the future, to be composed of prisoners who were regarded as
still on the military footing, that is to say, men who, in spite of
sentence, did not forfeit for ever their civic _status_. They were
soldiers still, but had undergone corporal punishment; they were
sentenced for comparatively short periods, six years at most; when they
had served their time, or in case of pardon, they went into the ranks
again, as before. Men guilty of a second offence were sentenced to
twenty years of imprisonment. Up to the time I speak of, we had a
section of soldier-prisoners among us, but only because they did not
know where else to dispose of them. Now the place was to be occupied by
soldiers exclusively. As to the civilian convicts, who were stripped of
all civic rights, branded, cropped, and shaven, these were to remain in
the fortress to finish their time; but as no fresh prisoners of this
class were to come in, and those there would get their discharge
successively, at the end of ten years there would be no civilian
convicts left in the place, according to the arrangements. The line of
division between the classes of prisoners there was maintained; from
time to time there came in other military criminals of high position,
sent to our place for security, before being forwarded to Eastern
Siberia, for the more aggravated penalties that awaited them there.
There was no change in our general way of life. The work we had to do
and the discipline observed were the same as before; but the
administrative system was entirely altered, and made more complex. An
officer, commandant of companies, was assigned to be at the head of the
prison; he had under his orders four subaltern officers who mounted
guard by turns. The "invalids" were superseded by twelve
non-commissioned officers, and an arsenal superintendent. The convicts
were divided into sections of ten, and corporals chosen among them; the
power of these over the others was, as may be supposed, nominal. As
might be expected, Akim Akimitch got this promotion.
All these new arrangements were confided to the Governor to carry out,
who remained in superior command over the whole establishment. The
changes did not go further than this. At first the convicts were not a
little excited by this movement, and discussed their new guardians a
good deal among themselves, trying to make out what sort of fellows they
were; but when they saw that everything went on pretty much as usual
they quieted down, and things resumed their ordinary course. We had got
rid of the Major, and that was something; everybody took fresh breath
and fresh courage. The fear that was in all hearts grew less; we had
some assurance that in case of need we could go to our superiors and
lodge our complaint, and that a man could not be punished without cause,
and would not, unless by mistake.
Brandy was brought in as before, although we had subaltern officers now
where "invalids" were before. These subalterns were all worthy, careful
men, who knew their place and business. There were some among them who
had the idea that they might give themselves grand airs, and treat us
like common soldiers, but they soon gave it up and behaved like the
others. Those who did not seem to be well able to get into their heads
what the ways of our prison really were, had sharp lessons about it from
the convicts themselves, which led to some lively scenes. One
sub-officer was confronted with brandy, which was of course too much for
him; when he was sober again we had a little explanation with him; we
pointed out that he had been drinking with the prisoners, and that,
accordingly, etc. etc.; he became quite tractable. The end of it was
that the subalterns closed their eyes to the brandy business. They went
to market for us, just as the invalids used to, and brought the
prisoners white bread, meat, anything that could be got in without too
much risk. So I never could understand why they had gone to the trouble
of turning the place into a military prison. The change was made two
years before I left the place; I had two years to bear of it still.
I see little use in recording all I saw and went through later at the
convict establishment day by day. If I were to tell it all, all the
daily and hourly occurrences, I might write twice or thrice as many
chapters as this book ought to contain, but I should simply tire the
reader and myself. Substantially all that I might write has been already
embodied in the narrative as it stands so far; and the reader has had
the opportunity of getting a tolerable idea of what the life of a
convict of the second class really was. My wish has been to portray the
state of things at the establishment, and as it affected myself,
accurately and yet forcibly; whether I have done so others must judge. I
cannot pronounce upon my own work, but I think I may well draw it to a
close; as I move among these recollections of a dreadful past, the old
suffering comes up again and all but strangles me.
Besides, I cannot be sure of my memory as to all I saw in these last
years, for the faculty seems blunted as regards the later compared with
the earlier period of my imprisonment, there is a good deal I am sure I
have quite forgotten. But I remember only too well how very, very slow
these last two years were, how very sad, how the days seemed as if they
never would come to evening, something like water falling drop by drop.
I remember, too, that I was filled with a mighty longing for my
resurrection from that grave which gave me strength to bear up, to wait,
and to hope. And so I got to be hardened and enduring; I lived on
expectation, I counted every passing day; if there were a thousand more
of them to pass at the prison I found satisfaction in thinking that one
of them was gone, and only nine hundred and ninety-nine to come. I
remember, too, that though I had round me a hundred persons in like
case, I felt myself more and more solitary, and though the solitude was
awful I came to love it. Isolated thus among the convict-crowd I went
over all my earlier life, analysing its events and thoughts minutely; I
passed my former doings in review, and sometimes was pitiless in
condemnation of myself; sometimes I went so far as to be grateful to
fate for the privilege of such loneliness, for only that could have
caused me so severely to scrutinise my past, so searchingly to examine
its inner and outer life. What strong and strange new germs of hope came
in those memorable hours up in my soul! I weighed and decided all sorts
of issues, I entered into a compact with myself to avoid the errors of
former years, and the rocks on which I had been wrecked; I laid down a
programme for my future, and vowed that I would stick to it; I had a
sort of blind and complete conviction that, once away from that place, I
should be able to carry out everything I made my mind up to; I looked
for my freedom with transports of eager desire; I wanted to try my
strength in a renewed struggle with life; sometimes I was clutched, as
by fangs, by an impatience which rose to fever heat. It is painful to go
back to these things, most painful; nobody, I know, can care much about
it at all except myself; but I write because I think people will
understand, and because there are those who have been, those who yet
will be, like myself, condemned, imprisoned, cut off from life, in the
flower of their age, and in the full possession of all their strength.
But all this is useless. Let me end my memoirs with a narrative of
something interesting, for I must not close them too abruptly.
What shall it be? Well, it may occur to some to ask whether it was quite
impossible to escape from the jail, and if during the time I spent there
no attempt of the kind was made. I have already said that a prisoner who
has got through two or three years thinks a good deal of it, and, as a
rule, concludes that it is best to finish his time without running more
risks, so that he may get his settlement, on the land or otherwise, when
set at liberty. But those who reckon in this way are convicts sentenced
for comparatively short times; those who have many years to serve are
always ready to run some chances. For all that the attempts at escape
were quite infrequent. Whether that was attributable to the want of
spirit in the convicts, the severity of the military discipline
enforced, or, after all, to the situation of the town, little favourable
to escapes, for it was in the midst of the open steppe, I really cannot
say. All these motives no doubt contributed to give pause. It was
difficult enough to get out of the prison at all; in my time two
convicts tried it; they were criminals of importance.
When our Major had been got rid of, A--v, the spy, was quite alone with
nobody to back him up. He was still quite young, but his character grew
in force with every year; he was a bold, self-asserting fellow, of
considerable intelligence. I think if they had set him at liberty he
would have gone on spying and getting money in every sort of shameful
way, but I don't think he would have let himself be caught again; he
would have turned his experiences as a convict to far too much good for
that. One trick he practised was that of forging passports, at least so
I heard from some of the convicts. I think this fellow was ready to risk
everything for a change in his position. Circumstances gave me the
opportunity of getting to the bottom of this man's disposition and
seeing how ugly it was; he was simply revolting in his cold, deep
wickedness, and my disgust with him was more than I could get over. I do
believe that if he wanted a drink of brandy, and could only have got it
by killing some one, he would not have hesitated one moment if it was
pretty certain the crime would not come out. He had learned there, in
that jail, to look on everything in the coolest calculating way. It was
on him that the choice of Koulikoff--of the special section--fell, as we
are to see.
I have spoken before of Koulikoff. He was no longer young, but full of
ardour, life, and vigour, and endowed with extraordinary faculties. He
felt his strength, and wanted still to have a life of his own; there are
some men who long to live in a rich, abounding life, even when old age
has got hold of them. I should have been a good deal surprised if
Koulikoff had _not_ tried to escape; but he did. Which of the two,
Koulikoff and A--v, had the greater influence over the other I really
cannot say; they were a goodly couple, and suited each other to a hair,
so they soon became as thick as possible. I fancy that Koulikoff
reckoned on A--v to forge a passport for him; besides, the latter was of
the noble class, belonged to good society, a circumstance out of which a
good deal could be made if they managed to get back into Russia. Heaven
only knows what compacts they made, or what plans and hopes they formed;
if they got as far as Russia they would at all events leave behind them
Siberia and vagabondage. Koulikoff was a versatile man, capable of
playing many a part on the stage of life, and had plenty of ability to
go upon, whatever direction his efforts took. To such persons the jail
is strangulation and suffocation. So the two set about plotting their
escape.
But to get away without a soldier to act as escort was impossible; so a
soldier had to be won. In one of the battalions stationed at our
fortress was a Pole of middle life--an energetic fellow worthy of a
better fate--serious, courageous. When he arrived first in Siberia,
quite young, he had deserted, for he could not stand his sufferings from
nostalgia. He was captured and whipped. During two years he formed part
of the disciplinary companies to which offenders are sent; then he
rejoined his battalion, and, showing himself zealous in the service, had
been rewarded by promotion to the rank of corporal. He had a good deal
of self-love, and spoke like a man who had no small conceit of himself.
I took particular notice of the man sometimes when he was among the
soldiers who had charge of us, for the Poles had spoken to me about him;
and I got the idea that his longing for his native country had taken the
form of a chill, fixed, deadly hatred for those who kept him away from
it. He was the sort of man to stick at nothing, and Koulikoff showed
that his scent was good, when he pitched on this man to be an accomplice
in his flight. This corporal's name was Kohler. Koulikoff and he settled
their plans and fixed the day. It was the month of June, the hottest of
the year. The climate of our town and neighbourhood was pretty equable,
especially in summer, which is a very good thing for tramps and
vagabonds. To make off far after leaving the fortress was quite out of
the question, it being situated on rising ground and in uncovered
country, for though surrounded by woods, these are a considerable
distance away. A disguise was indispensable, and to procure it they must
manage to get into the outskirts of the town, where Koulikoff had taken
care some time before to prepare a den of some sort. I don't know
whether his worthy friends in that part of the town were in the secret.
It may be presumed they were, though there is no evidence. That year,
however, a young woman who led a gay life and was very pretty, settled
down in a nook of that same part of the city, near the county. This
young person attracted a good deal of notice, and her career promised to
be something quite remarkable; her nickname was "Fire and Flame." I
think that she and the fugitives concerted the plans of escape together,
for Koulikoff had lavished a good deal of attention and money on her for
more than a year. When the gangs were formed each morning, the two
fellows, Koulikoff and A--v, managed to get themselves sent out with the
convict Chilkin, whose trade was that of stove-maker and plasterer, to
do up the empty barracks when the soldiers went into camp. A--v and
Koulikoff were to help in carrying the necessary materials. Kohler got
himself put into the escort on the occasion; as the rules required three
soldiers to act as escort for two prisoners, they gave him a young
recruit whom he was doing corporal's duty upon, drilling and training
him. Our fugitives must have exercised a great deal of influence over
Kohler to deceive him, to cast his lot in with them, serious,
intelligent, and reflective man as he was, with so few more years of
service to pass in the army.
They arrived at the barracks about six o'clock in the morning; there was
nobody with them. After having worked about an hour, Koulikoff and A--v
told Chilkin that they were going to the workshop to see some one, and
fetch a tool they wanted. They had to go carefully to work with Chilkin,
and speak in as natural a tone as they could. The man was from Moscow,
by trade a stove-maker, sharp and cunning, keen-sighted, not talkative,
fragile in appearance, with little flesh on his bones. He was the sort
of person who might have been expected to pass his life in honest
working dress, in some Moscow shop, yet here he was in the "special
section," after many wanderings and transfers among the most formidable
military criminals; so fate had ordered.
What had he done to deserve such severe punishment? I had not the least
idea; he never showed the least resentment or sour feeling, and went on
in a quiet, inoffensive way; now and then he got as drunk as a lord;
but, apart from that, his conduct was perfectly good. Of course he was
not in the secret, so he had to be thrown off the scent. Koulikoff told
him, with a wink, that they were going to get some brandy, which had
been hidden the day before in the workshop, which suited Chilkin's book
perfectly; he had not the least notion of what was up, and remained
alone with the young recruit, while Koulikoff, A--v, and Kohler betook
themselves to the suburbs of the town.
Half-an-hour passed; the men did not come back. Chilkin began to think,
and the truth dawned upon him. He remembered that Koulikoff had not
seemed at all like himself, that he had seen him whispering and winking
to A--v; he was sure of that, and the whole thing seemed suspicious to
him. Kohler's behaviour had struck him, too; when he went off with the
two convicts, the corporal had given the recruit orders what he was to
do in his absence, which he had never known him do before. The more
Chilkin thought over the matter the less he liked it. Time went on; the
convicts did not return; his anxiety was great; for he saw that the
authorities would suspect him of connivance with the fugitives, so that
his own skin was in danger. If he made any delay in giving information
of what had occurred, suspicion of himself would grow into conviction
that he knew what the men intended when they left him, and he would be
dealt with as their accomplice. There was no time to lose.
It came into his mind, then, that Koulikoff and A--v had become
markedly intimate for some time, and that they had been often seen
laying their heads together behind the barracks, by themselves. He
remembered, too, that he had more than once fancied that they were up to
something together.
He looked attentively at the soldier with him as escort; the fellow was
yawning, leaning on his gun, and scratching his nose in the most
innocent manner imaginable; so Chilkin did not think it necessary to
speak of his anxieties to this man: he told him simply to come with him
to the engineers' workshops. His object was to ask if anybody there had
seen his companions; but nobody there had, so Chilkin's suspicions grew
stronger and stronger. If only he could think that they had gone to get
drunk and have a spree in the outskirts of the town, as Koulikoff often
did. No, thought Chilkin, that was _not_ so. They would have told him,
for there was no need to make a mystery of that. Chilkin left his work,
and went straight back to the jail.
It was about nine o'clock when he reached the sergeant-major, to whom he
mentioned his suspicions. That officer was frightened, and at first
could not believe there was anything in it all. Chilkin had, in fact,
expressed no more than a vague misgiving that all was not as it should
be. The sergeant-major ran to the Major, who in his turn ran to the
Governor. In a quarter-of-an-hour all necessary measures were taken. The
Governor-General was communicated with. As the convicts in question were
persons of importance, it might be expected that the matter would be
seriously viewed at St. Petersburg. A--v was classed among political
prisoners, by a somewhat random official proceeding, it would seem;
Koulikoff was a convict of the "special section," that is to say, as a
criminal of the blackest dye, and, what was worse, was an ex-soldier. It
was then brought to notice that according to the regulations each
convict of the "special section" ought to have two soldiers assigned as
escort when he went to work; the regulations had not been observed as
to this, so that everybody was exposed to serious trouble. Expresses
were sent off to all the district offices of the municipality, and all
the little neighbouring towns, to warn the authorities of the escape of
the two convicts, and a full description furnished of their persons.
Cossacks were sent out to hunt them up, letters sent to the authorities
of all adjoining Governmental districts. And everybody was frightened to
death.
The excitement was quite as great all through the prison; as the
convicts returned from work, they heard the tremendous news, which
spread rapidly from man to man; all received it with deep, though secret
satisfaction. Their emotion was as natural as it was great. The affair
broke the monotony of their lives, and gave them something to think of;
but, above all, it was an escape, and as such, something to sympathise
with deeply, and stirred fibres in the poor fellows which had long been
without any exciting stimulus; something like hope and a disposition to
confront their fate set their hearts beating, for the incident seemed to
show that their hard lot was not hopelessly unchangeable.
"Well, you see they've got off in spite of them! Why shouldn't we?"
The thought came into every man's mind, and made him stiffen his back
and look at his neighbours in a defiant sort of way. All the convicts
seemed to grow an inch taller on the strength of it, and to look down a
bit upon the sub-officers. The heads of the place soon came running up,
as you may imagine. The Governor now arrived in person. We fellows
looked at them all with some assurance, with a touch of contempt, and
with a very set expression of face, as though to say: "Well, you there?
We can get out of your clutches when we've a mind to."
All the men were quite sure there would be a general searching of
everything and everybody; so everything that was at all contraband was
carefully hidden; for the authorities would want to show that precious
wisdom of theirs which may be reckoned on after the event. The
expectation was verified; there was a mighty turning of everything
upside down and topsy-turvy, a general rummage, with the discovery of
exactly nothing, as they might have known.
When the time came for going out to work after dinner the usual escorts
were doubled. When night came, the officers and sub-officers on service
came pouncing on us at every moment to see if we were off our guard, and
if anything could be got out of us; the lists were gone over once more
than the usual number of times, which extra mustering only gave more
trouble for nothing; we were hunted out of the court-yard that our names
might be gone through again. Then, when in barrack, they reckoned us up
another time, as if they never could be done with the exercise.
The convicts were not at all disturbed by all this bustling absurdity.
They put on a very unconcerned demeanour, and, as is always the case in
such a conjuncture, behaved in the prettiest manner all that evening and
night. "We won't give them any handle anyhow," was the general feeling.
The question with the authorities was whether some among us were not in
complicity with those who had got away, so a careful watch was kept over
our doings, and a careful ear for our conversations; but nothing came of
it.
"Not such fools, those fellows, as to leave anybody behind who was in
the secret!"
"When you go at that sort of thing you lie low and play low!"
"Koulikoff and A--v know enough to have covered up their tracks. They've
done the trick in first-rate style, keeping things to themselves;
they've mizzled, the rascals; clever chaps, those, they could get
through shut doors!"
The glory of Koulikoff and A--v had grown a hundred cubits higher than
it was. Everybody was proud of them. Their exploit, it was felt, would
be handed down to the most distant posterity, and outlive the jail
itself.
"Rattling fellows, those!" said one.
"Can't get away from here, eh? _That's_ their notion, is it? Just look
at those chaps!"
"Yes," said a third, looking very superior, "but who _is_ it that has
got away? Tip-top fellows. _You_ can't hold a candle to them."
At any other time the man to whom anything of that sort was said would
have replied angrily enough, and defended himself; now the observation
was met with modest silence.
"True enough," was said. "Everybody's not a Koulikoff or an A--v, you've
got to show what you're made of before you've a right to speak."
"I say, pals, after all, why do we remain in the place?" struck in a
prisoner seated by the kitchen window; he spoke drawlingly, but the man,
you could see, enjoyed it all; he slowly rubbed his cheek with the palm
of his hand. "Why do we stop? It's no life at all, we've been buried,
though we're alive and kicking. Now _isn't_ it so?"
"Oh, curse it, you can't get out of prison as easy as shaking off an old
boot. I tell you it sticks to your calves. What's the good of pulling a
long face over it?"
"But, look here; there is Koulikoff now," began one of the most eager, a
mere lad.
"Koulikoff!" exclaimed another, looking askance at the young fellow.
"Koulikoff! They don't turn out Koulikoffs by the dozen."
"And A--v, pals, there's a lad for you!"
"Aye, aye, he'll get Koulikoff just where he wants him, as often as he
wants him. He's up to everything, he is."
"I wonder how far they've got; that's what _I_ want to know," said one.
Then the talk went off into details: Had they got far from the town?
What direction did they go off in? _Which_ gave them the best chance?
Then they discussed distances, and as there were convicts who knew the
neighbourhood well, these were attentively listened to.
Next, they talked over the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, of
whom they seemed to think as badly as possible. There was nobody in the
neighbourhood, the convicts believed, who would hesitate at all as to
the course to be pursued; nothing would induce them to help the
runaways; quite the other way, these people would hunt them down.
"If you only knew what bad fellows these peasants are! Rascally brutes!"
"Peasants, indeed! Worthless scamps!"
"These Siberians are as bad as bad can be. They think nothing of killing
a man."
"Oh, well, our fellows----"
"Yes, that's it, they may come off second best. Our fellows are as
plucky as plucky can be."
"Well, if we live long enough, we shall hear something about them soon."
"Well, now, what do you _think_? Do you think they really will get clean
away?"
"I am sure, as I live, that they'll never be caught," said one of the
most excited, giving the table a great blow with his fist.
"Hm! That's as things turn out."
"I'll tell you what, friends," said Skouratof, "if I once got out, I'd
stake my life they'd never get me again."
"_You?_"
Everybody burst out laughing. They would hardly condescend to listen to
him; but Skouratof was not to be put down.
"I tell you I'd stake my life on it!" with great energy. "Why, I made my
mind up to _that_ long ago. I'd find means of going through a key-hole
rather than let them lay hands on me."
"Oh, don't you fear, when your belly got empty you'd just go creeping
to a peasant and ask him for a morsel of something."
Fresh laughter.
"I ask him for victuals? You're a liar!"
"Hold your jaw, can't you? We know what you were sent here for. You and
your Uncle Vacia killed some peasant for bewitching your cattle."[12]
More laughter. The more serious among them seemed very angry and
indignant.
"You're a liar," cried Skouratof; "it's Mikitka who told you that; I
wasn't in that at all, it was Uncle Vacia; don't you mix my name up in
it. I'm a Moscow man, and I've been on the tramp ever since I was a very
small thing. Look here, when the priest taught me to read the liturgy,
he used to pinch my ears, and say, 'Repeat this after me: Have pity on
me, Lord, out of Thy great goodness;' and he used to make me say with
him, 'They've taken me up and brought me to the police-station out of
Thy great goodness,' and the like. I tell you that went on when I was
quite a little fellow."
All laughed heartily again; that was what Skouratof wanted; he liked
playing clown. Soon the talk became serious again, especially among the
older men and those who knew a good deal about escapes. Those among the
younger convicts who could keep themselves quiet enough to listen,
seemed highly delighted. A great crowd was assembled in and about the
kitchen. There were none of the warders about; so everybody could give
vent to his feelings in talk or otherwise. One man I noticed who was
particularly enjoying himself, a Tartar, a little fellow with high
cheek-bones, and a remarkably droll face. His name was Mametka, he could
scarcely speak Russian at all, but it was odd to see the way he craned
his neck forward into the crowd, and the childish delight he showed.
"Well, Mametka, my lad, _iakchi_."
"_Iakchi, ouk, iakchi!_" said Mametka as well as he could, shaking his
grotesque head. "_Iakchi._"
"They'll never catch them, eh? _Iok._"
"_Iok, iok!_" and Mametka waggled his head and threw his arms about.
"You're a liar, then, and I don't know what you're talking about. Hey!"
"That's it, that's it, _iakchi_!" answered poor Mametka.
"All right, good, _iakchi_ it is!"
Skouratof gave him a thump on the head, which sent his cap down over his
eyes, and went out in high glee, and Mametka was quite chapfallen.
For a week or so a very tight hand was kept on everybody in the jail,
and the whole neighbourhood was repeatedly and carefully searched. How
they managed it I cannot tell, but the prisoners always seemed to know
all about the measures taken by the authorities for recovering the
runaways. For some days, according to all we heard, things went very
favourably for them; no traces whatever of them could be found. Our
convicts made very light of all the authorities were about, and were
quite at their ease about their friends, and kept saying that nothing
would ever be found out about them.
All the peasants round about were roused, we were told, and watching all
the likely places, woods, ravines, etc.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said our fellows, who had a grin on their faces
most of the time, "they're hidden at somebody's place who's a friend."
"That's certain; they're not the fellows to chance things, they've made
all sure."
The general idea was, in fact, that they were still concealed in the
suburbs of the town, in a cellar, waiting till the hue and cry was over,
and for their hair to grow; that they would remain there perhaps six
months at least, and then quietly go off. All the prisoners were in the
most fanciful and romantic state of mind about the things. Suddenly,
eight days after the escape, a rumour spread that the authorities were
on their track. This rumour was at first treated with contempt, but
towards evening there seemed to be more in it. The convicts became much
excited. Next morning it was said in the town that the runaways had been
caught, and were being brought back. After dinner there were further
details; the story was that they had been seized at a hamlet, seventy
versts away from the town. At last we had fully confirmed tidings. The
sergeant-major positively asserted, immediately after an interview with
the Major, that they would be brought into the guard-house that very
night. They were taken; there could be no doubt of it.
It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the way the convicts were
affected by the news. At first their rage was great, then they were
deeply dejected. Then they began to be bitter and sarcastic, pouring all
their scorn, not on the authorities, but on the runaways who had been
such fools as to get caught. A few began this, then nearly all joined,
except a small number of the more serious, thoughtful ones, who held
their tongues, and seemed to regard the thoughtless fellows with great
contempt.
Poor Koulikoff and A--v were now just as heartily abused as they had
been glorified before; the men seemed to take a delight in running them
down, as though in being caught they had done something wantonly
offensive to their mates. It was said, with high contempt, that the
fellows had probably got hungry and couldn't stand it, and had gone into
a village to ask bread of the peasants, which, according to tramp
etiquette, it appears, is to come down very low in the world indeed. In
this supposition the men turned out to be quite mistaken; for what had
happened was that the tracks of the runaways out of the town were
discovered and followed up; they were ascertained to have got into a
wood, which was surrounded, so that the fugitives had no recourse but
to give themselves up.
They were brought in that night, tied hands and feet, under armed
escort. All the convicts ran hastily to the palisades to see what would
be done with them; but they saw nothing except the carriages of the
Governor and the Major, which were waiting in front of the guard-house.
The fugitives were ironed and locked up separately, their punishment
being adjourned till the next day. The prisoners began all to sympathise
with the unhappy fellows when they heard how they had been taken, and
learned that they could not help themselves, and the anxiety about the
issue was keen.
"They'll get a thousand at least."
"A thousand, is it? I tell you they'll have it till the life is beaten
out of them. A--v may get off with a thousand, but the other they'll
kill; why, he's in the 'special section.'"
They were wrong. A--v was sentenced to five hundred strokes, his
previous good conduct told in his favour, and this was his first prison
offence. Koulikoff, I believe, had fifteen hundred. The punishment, upon
the whole, was mild rather than severe.
The two men showed good sense and feeling, for they gave nobody's name
as having helped them, and positively declared that they had made
straight for the woods without going into anybody's house. I was very
sorry for Koulikoff; to say nothing of the heavy beating he got; he had
thrown away all his chances of having his lot as a prisoner lightened.
Later he was sent to another convict establishment. A--v did not get all
he was sentenced to; the physicians interfered, and he was let off. But
as soon as he was safe in the hospital he began blowing his trumpet
again, and said he would stick at nothing now, and that they should soon
see what he would do. Koulikoff was not changed a bit, as decorous as
ever, and gave himself just the same airs as ever; manner or words to
show that he had had such an adventure. But the convicts looked on him
quite differently; he seemed to have come down a good deal in their
estimation, and now to be on their own level every way, instead of being
a superior creature. So it was that poor Koulikoff's star paled; success
is everything in this world.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The expression of the original is untranslatable; literally "you
killed a cattle-kill." This phrase means murder of a peasant, male or
female, supposed to bewitch cattle. We had in our jail a murderer who
had done this cattle-kill.--DOSTOÏEFFSKY'S NOTE.
CHAPTER X.
FREEDOM!
This incident occurred during my last year of imprisonment. My
recollection of what occurred this last year is as keen as of the events
of the first years; but I have gone into detail enough. In spite of my
impatience to be out, this year was the least trying of all the years I
spent there. I had now many friends and acquaintances among the
convicts, who had by this time made up their minds very much in my
favour. Many of them, indeed, had come to feel a sincere and genuine
affection for me. The soldier who was assigned to accompany my friend
and myself--simultaneously discharged--out of the prison, very nearly
cried when the time for leaving came. And when we were at last in full
freedom, staying in the rooms of the Government building placed at our
disposal for the month we still spent in the town, this man came nearly
every day to see us. But there were some men whom I could never soften
or win any regard from--God knows why--and who showed just the same hard
aversion for me at the last as at the first; something we could not get
over stood between us.
I had more indulgences during the last year. I found among the military
functionaries of our town old acquaintances, and even some old
schoolfellows, and the renewal of these relations helped me. Thanks to
them I got permission to have some money, to write to my family, and
even to have some books. For some years I had not had a single volume,
and words would fail to tell the strange, deep emotion and excitement
which the first book I read at the jail caused me. I began to devour it
at night, when the doors were closed, and read it till the break of day.
It was a number of a review, and it seemed to me like a messenger from
the other world. As I read, my life before the prison days seemed to
rise up before me in sharp definition, as of some existence independent
of my own, which another soul had had. Then I tried to get some clear
idea of my relation to current events and things; whether my arrears of
knowledge and experience were too great to make up; whether the men and
women out of doors had lived and gone through many things and great
during the time I was away from them; and great was my desire to
thoroughly understand what was _now_ going on, _now_ that I could know
something about it all at last. All the words I read were as palpable
things, which I wanted rather to feel sensibly than get mere meaning out
of; I tried to see more in the text than _could_ be there. I imagined
some mysterious meanings that _must_ be in them, and tried at every page
to see allusions to the past, with which my mind was familiar, whether
they were there or not; at every turn of the leaf I sought for traces of
what had deeply moved people before the days of my bondage; and deep was
my dejection when it was forced on my mind that a new state of things
had arisen; a new life, among my kind, which was alien to my knowledge
and my sentiments. I felt as if I was a straggler, left behind and lost
in the onward march of mankind.
Yes, there were indeed arrears, if the word is not too weak.
For the truth is, that another generation had come up, and I knew it
not, and it knew not me. At the foot of one article I saw the name of
one who had been dear to me; with what avidity I flung myself on _that_
paper! But the other names were nearly all new to me; new workers had
come upon the scene, and I was eager to know their doings and
themselves. It made me feel nearly desperate to have so few books, and
to know how hard it would be to get more. At an earlier date, in the old
Major's time, it was a dangerous thing indeed to bring books into the
jail. If one was found when the whole place was searched, as was
regularly done, great was the disturbance, and no efforts were spared to
find out how they got in, and who had helped in the offence. I did not
want to be subjected to insulting scrutiny, and, if I had, it would have
been useless. I _had_ to live without books, and did, shut up in myself,
tormenting myself with many a question and problem on which I had no
means of throwing any light. But I can _never_ tell it all.
It was in winter that I came in, so in winter I was to leave, on the
anniversary-day. Oh, with what impatience did I look forward to the
thrice-blessed winter! How gladly did I see the summer die out, the
leaves turn yellow on the trees, the grass turn dry over the wide
steppe! Summer is gone at last! the winds of autumn howl and groan, the
first snow falls in whirling flakes. The winter, so long, long-prayed
for, is come, come at last. Oh, how the heart beats with the thought
that freedom was really, at last, at last, close at hand. Yet it was
strange, as the time of times, the day of days, grew nearer and nearer,
so did my soul grow quieter and quieter. I was annoyed at myself,
reproached myself even with being cold, indifferent. Many of the
convicts, as I met them in the court-yard when the day's work was done,
used to get out, and talk with me to wish me joy.
"Ah, little Father Alexander Petrovitch, you'll soon be out now! And
here you'll leave us poor devils behind!"
"Well, Mertynof, have you long to wait still?" I asked the man who
spoke.
"I! Oh, good Lord, I've seven years of it yet to weary through."
Then the man sighed with a far-away, wandering look, as if he was gazing
into those intolerable days to come.... Yes, many of my companions
congratulated me in a way that showed they really felt what they said. I
saw, too, that there was more disposition to meet me as man to man, they
drew nearer to me as I was to leave them; the halo of freedom began to
surround me, and caring for that they cared more for me. It was in this
spirit they bade me farewell.
K--schniski, a young Polish noble, a sweet and amiable person, was very
fond, about this time, of walking in the court-yard with me. The
stifling nights in the barracks did him much harm, so he tried his best
to keep his health by getting all the exercise and fresh air he could.
"I am looking forward impatiently to the day when _you_ will be set
free," he said with a smile one day, "for when you go I shall _realise_
that I have just one year more of it to undergo."
Need I say what I can yet not help saying, that freedom in idea always
seemed to us who were there something _more_ free than it ever can be in
reality? That was because our fancy was always dwelling upon it.
Prisoners always exaggerate when they think of freedom and look on a
free man; we did certainly; the poorest servant of one of the officers
there seemed a sort of king to us, everything we could imagine in a free
man, compared with ourselves at least; he had no irons on his limbs, his
head was not shaven, he could go where and when he liked, with no
soldiers to watch and escort him.
The day before I was set free, as night fell I went _for the last time_
all through and all round the prison. How many a thousand times had I
made the circuit of those palisades during those ten years! There, at
the rear of the barracks, had I gone to and fro during the whole of that
first year, a solitary, despairing man. I remember how I used to reckon
up the days I had still to pass there--thousands, thousands! God! how
long ago it seemed. There's the corner where the poor prisoned eagle
wasted away; Petroff used often to come to me at that place. It seemed
as if the man would never leave my side now; he would place himself by
my side and walk along without ever saying a word, as though he knew all
my thoughts as well as myself, and there was always a strange,
inexplicable sort of wondering look on the man's face.
How many a mental farewell did I take of the black, squared beams in our
barracks! Ah, me! How much joyless youth, how much strength for which
use there was none, was buried, lost in those walls!--youth and strength
of which the world might surely have made _some_ use. For I must speak
my thoughts as to this: the hapless fellows there were perhaps the
strongest, and, in one way or another, the most gifted of our people.
There was all that strength of body and of mind lost, hopelessly lost.
Whose fault is that?
Yes; whose fault _is_ that?
The next day, at an early hour, before the men were mustered for work, I
went through all the barracks to bid the men a last farewell. Many a
vigorous, horny hand was held out to me with right good-will. Some
grasped and shook my hand as though all their hearts went with the act;
but these were the more generous souls. Most of the poor fellows seemed
so much to feel that, for them, I was already a man changed by what was
coming, that they could feel scarce anything else. They knew that I had
friends in the town, that I was going away at once to _gentlemen_, that
I should sit at their table as their equal. This the poor fellows felt;
and, although they did their best as they took my hand, that hand could
not be the hand of an equal. No; I, too, was a gentleman now. Some
turned their backs on me, and made no reply to my parting words. I
think, too, that I saw looks of aversion on some faces.
The drum beat; all the convicts went to their work; and I was left to
myself. Souchiloff had got up before everybody that morning, and now set
himself tremblingly to the task of getting ready for me a last cup of
tea. Poor Souchiloff! How he cried when I gave him my clothes, my
shirts, my trouser-straps, and some money.
"'Tain't that, 'tain't that," he said, and he bit his trembling lips,
"it's that I am going to lose you, Alexander Petrovitch! What _shall_ I
do without you?"
There was Akim Akimitch, too; him, also, I bade farewell.
"Your turn to go will come soon, I pray," said I.
"Ah, no! I shall remain here long, long, very long yet," he just managed
to say, as he pressed my hand. I threw myself on his neck; we kissed.
Ten minutes after the convicts had gone out, my companion and myself
left the jail _for ever_. We went to the blacksmith's shop, where our
irons were struck off. We had no armed escort, we went there attended by
a single sub-officer. It was convicts who struck off our irons in the
engineers' workshop. I let them do it for my friend first, then went to
the anvil myself. The smiths made me turn round, seized my leg, and
stretched it on the anvil. Then they went about the business
methodically, as though they wanted to make a very neat job of it
indeed.
"The rivet, man, turn the rivet first," I heard the master smith say;
"there, so, so. Now, a stroke of the hammer!"
The irons fell. I lifted them up. Some strange impulse made me long to
have them in my hands for one last time. I couldn't realise that, only a
moment before, they had been on my limbs.
"Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!" said the convicts in their broken
voices; but they seemed pleased as they said it.
Yes, farewell!
Liberty! New life! Resurrection from the dead!
Unspeakable moment!
THE END
THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia - with and introduction by Julius Bramont" ***
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