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The house of the dead

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · English · Gutenberg #37536 · 704,879 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The house of the dead
        or, Prison life in Siberia

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Author of introduction, etc.: Julius Bramont


        
Release date: September 25, 2011 [eBook #37536]
                Most recently updated: June 19, 2023

Language: English

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FICTION

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIUS BRAMONT


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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
manœuvre, 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 

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