The House of the Dead/Part 1/Chapter 1
Our prison stood at the edge of the fortress grounds, close to the fortress wall. One would sometimes, through a chink in the fence, take a peep into God’s world to try and see something; but one could see only a strip of the sky and the high earthen wall overgrown with coarse weeds, and on the wall sentinels pacing up and down day and night. And then one would think that there are long years before one, and that one will go on coming to peep through the chink in the same way, and will see the same wall, the same sentinels and the same little strip of sky, not the sky that stood over the prison, but a free, faraway sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred paces long and a hundred and fifty wide, in the form of an irregular hexagon, all shut in by a paling, that is, a fence of high posts stuck deeply into the earth, touching one another, strengthened by crossway planks and pointed at the top; this was the outer fence of the prison. On one side of the fence there is a strong gate, always closed, always, day and night, guarded by sentinels; it is opened on occasion to let us out to work. Outside that gate is the world of light and freedom, where men live like the rest of mankind. But those living on this side of the fence picture that world as some unattainable fairyland. Here there is a world apart, unlike everything else, with laws of its own, its own dress, its own manners and customs, and here is the house of the living dead—life as nowhere else and a people apart. It is this corner apart that I am going to describe.
When you come into the enclosure you see several buildings within it. On both sides of the large inner court run two long log-houses of one storey. These are the prison barracks. Here the convicts live, distributed in divisions. Then at the further end of the enclosure another similar log-house: this is the kitchen, divided in two for the use of two messes. Beyond it another building, where are the cellars, the storehouses and stables, all under one roof. The middle of the courtyard is empty and forms a fairly large level square. Here the convicts fall in, here they are mustered, and their names are called over in the morning, at midday, and in the evening, and on occasion several times a day as well—if the sentinels are suspicious and not very clever at counting. A fairly wide space is left all round between the buildings and the fence. Here behind the buildings prisoners of an unsociable and gloomy disposition like to walk in their spare time, to think their own thoughts, hidden from all eyes. Meeting them as they walked there, I used to like looking into their grim, branded faces, and guessing what they were thinking about. There was a prisoner whose favourite occupation in his spare time was counting the posts in the fence. There were fifteen hundred of them, and he had counted and noted them all. Every post stood for a day with him; he marked off one post every day, and in that way could see at a glance from the number of posts uncounted how many days he had left in prison before his term was out. He was genuinely glad every time one side of the hexagon was finished. He had many years yet to wait, but one had time in prison to learn patience. I once saw a convict who had been twenty years in prison and was being released, take leave of his fellow prisoners. There were men who remembered his first coming into the prison, when he was young, careless, heedless of his crime and his punishment. He went out a grey-headed, elderly man, with a sad sullen face. He walked in silence through our six barrack-rooms. As he entered each room he prayed to the ikons, and then bowing low to his fellow prisoners he asked them not to remember evil against him. I remember too how a prisoner who had been a well-to-do peasant in Siberia was one evening summoned to the gate. Six months before, he had heard that his former wife had married again, and he was terribly downcast about it. Now she herself had come to the prison, asked for him, and given him alms. They talked for a couple of minutes, both shed tears and parted for ever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks. . . .Yes, in that place one might learn to be patient.
When it got dark we used all to be taken to the barracks, and to be locked up for the night. I always felt depressed at coming into our barrack-room from outside. It was a long, low-pitched, stuffy room, dimly lighted by tallow candles, full of a heavy stifling smell. I don’t understand now how I lived through ten years in it. I had three planks on the wooden platform; that was all I had to myself. On this wooden platform thirty men slept side by side in our room alone. In the winter we were locked up early; it was fully four hours before every one was asleep. And before that—noise, uproar, laughter, swearing, the clank of chains, smoke and grime, shaven heads, branded faces, ragged clothes, everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
There were two hundred and fifty of us in the prison, and the number scarcely varied. Some came, others completed their sentence and went away, others died. And there were some of all sorts. I imagine every province, every region of Russia had some representative there. There were some aliens, and there were some prisoners even from the mountains of Caucasus. They were all divided according to the degree of their criminality, and consequently according to the number of years they had to serve. I believe there was no sort of crime that had not sent some prisoner there. The bulk of the prison population were exiled convicts or sylno-katorzhny of the civilian division (the silno-katorzhny, or heavily punished convicts, as the prisoners naïvely mispronounced it).
These were criminals entirely deprived of all rights of property, fragments cut off from society, with branded faces to bear witness for ever that they were outcasts. They were sentenced to hard labour for terms varying from eight to twelve years, and afterwards they were sent to live as settlers in some Siberian village. There were prisoners of the military division, too, who were not deprived of rights, as is usual in Russian disciplinary battalions. They were sentenced for brief terms; at the expiration of their sentence they were sent back whence they had come, to serve in the Siberian line regiments. Many of them returned almost at once to the prison for some second serious offence, this time not for a short term, but for twenty years: this division was called the “lifers.” But even these “lifers” were not deprived of all rights. Finally there was one more, fairly numerous, special division of the most terrible criminals, principally soldiers. It was called “the special section.” Criminals were sent to it from all parts of Russia. They considered themselves in for life, and did not know the length of their sentence. According to law they had to perform double or treble tasks. They were kept in the prison until some works involving very severe hard labour were opened in Siberia. “You are in for a term, but we go onwards into servitude,” they used to say to other prisoners. I have heard that this class has since been abolished. The civilian division, too, has been removed from our prison also, and a single disciplinary battalion of convicts has been formed. Of course, the officials in control of the prison were all changed at the same time. So I am describing the past, things long bygone.
It was long ago; it all seems like a dream to me now. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening, in January. It was already dark, the men were returning from their work, and they were getting ready for the roll-call. A non-commissioned officer with moustaches at last opened for me the door of this strange house in which I was to spend so many years, and to endure sensations of which I could never have formed the faintest idea if I had not experienced them. I could never have imagined, for instance, how terrible and agonizing it would be, never once for a single minute to be alone for the ten years of my imprisonment. At work to be always with, a guard, at home with two hundred fellow prisoners; not once, not once alone! Yet this was not the worst I had to get used to!
There were here men who were murderers by mischance and men who were murderers by trade, brigands and brigand chiefs. There were simple thieves, and tramps who were pickpockets or burglars.
There were people about whom it was difficult to guess why they had come. Yet each had his own story, confused and oppressive as the heaviness that follows a day’s drinking. As a rule they spoke little of their past, they did not like talking about it and evidently tried not to think of bygone days. I knew some among them, even murderers, so gay, so heedless of everything that one might bet with certainty that their consciences never reproached them. But there were gloomy faces, too, men who were almost always silent. As a rule it was rare for anyone to talk of his life, and curiosity was not the fashion; it was somehow not the custom and not correct. Only on rare occasions, from want of something better to do, some prisoner would grow talkative, and another would listen coldly and gloomily. No one could astonish anyone here. “We are men who can read,” they would often say with strange satisfaction. I remember how a robber began once when he was drunk (it was sometimes possible to get drunk in prison) telling how he had murdered a boy of five, how he had enticed him at first with a toy, led him away to an empty shed, and there had murdered him. The whole roomful of men, who had till then been laughing at his jokes, cried out like one man, and the brigand was forced to be silent; it was not from indignation they cried out, but simply because there is no need to talk about that, because talking about that is not the correct thing. I may mention in parenthesis that they were “men who could read,” and not in the slang, but in the literal sense. Probably more than half of them actually could read and write. In what other place in which Russian peasants are gathered together in numbers can you find two hundred and fifty men, half of whom can read and write? I have heard since that some one deduces from such facts that education is detrimental to the people. That is a mistake; there are quite other causes at work here, though it must be admitted that education develops self-reliance in the people. But this is far from being a defect.
The divisions were distinguished from one another by their dress: some had half their jackets brown and half grey, and the same with their trousers—one leg dark brown and one grey. One day when we were at work a girl who was selling rolls looked at me intently for some time and then suddenly burst outlaughing. “Ugh, how horrid,” she cried, “they had not enough grey cloth and they had not enough black!” There were others whose jackets were all grey, and only the sleeves were blackish-brown. Our heads were shaved in different ways too: some had half the head shaved lengthways and others transversely.
At the first glance one could discover one conspicuous trait, common to all this strange family; even the most prominent and original personalities, who unconsciously dominated the others, tried to adopt the common tone of the prison. Speaking generally, I may say that, with the exception of a few indefatigably cheerful fellows who were consequently regarded with contempt by every one, they were all sullen, envious, dreadfully vain, boastful people, prone to take offence and great sticklers for good form. Not to be surprised at anything was regarded as the greatest merit. They were all mad on keeping up to their standard of good form. But often the most aggressive conceit was followed in a flash by the most cringing feebleness. There were some genuinely strong characters; they were simple and unaffected. But strange to say, among these really strong people there were some who were vain to the most exaggerated degree, to a morbid point. As a rule vanity and regard for appearances were most conspicuous. The majority of them were corrupt and horribly depraved. Slander and backbiting went on incessantly; it was hell, outer darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the self-imposed rules and the accepted customs of the prison; all submitted to them. There were exceptional characters who found it hard and difficult to submit, but still they did submit. Some who came to the prison were men who had lost their heads, had become too reckless when at liberty, so that at last they committed their crimes, as it were irresponsibly, as it were without an object, as it were in delirium, in intoxication, often from vanity excited to the highest pitch. But they were quickly suppressed, though some had been the terror of whole villages and towns before they came to prison. Looking about him, the new-comer soon realized that he had come to the wrong place, that there was no one he could impress here, and he gradually submitted and fell in with the general tone. This general tone was apparent externally in a certain peculiar personal dignity of which almost every inmate of the prison was acutely conscious. It was as though the status of a convict, of a condemned prisoner, was a sort of rank, and an honourable one too. There was no sign of shame or repentance! Yet there was an external, as it were, official resignation, a sort of philosophic calm. “We are a lost lot,” they used to say; “since we didn’t know how to get on in freedom, now we must walk the Green Street,[1] and count the ranks.” “Since we disobeyed our fathers and mothers, now we must obey the drum tap.” “We wouldn’t embroider with gold, so now we break stones on the road.” Such things were often said by way of moral reflections and proverbial sayings, but never seriously. They were all words. I doubt whether one of the convicts ever inwardly admitted his lawlessness. If anyone, not a prisoner, were to try reproaching the criminal for his crime, upbraiding him (though it is not the Russian way to reproach a criminal), an endless stream of oaths would follow. And what masters of abuse they were! They swore elaborately, artistically. Abuse was carried to a science with them; they tried to score not so much by insulting words as by insulting meaning, spirit, ideas—and that is subtler and more malignant. This science was developed to a higher point by their incessant quarrels. All these people were kept at work by force, consequently they were idle, consequently they were demoralized; if they had not been depraved beforehand, they became so in prison. They had all been brought together here apart from their own will; they were all strangers to one another.
“The devil must have worn out three pairs of shoes before he brought us all here,” they used to say of themselves, and so backbiting, intrigues, womanish slander, envy, quarrelling, hatred were always conspicuous in this hellish life. No old women could be such old women as some of these cut-throats. I repeat, there were strong characters even among them, men who had been accustomed all their lives to go ahead and to dominate, hardy and fearless. These men were instinctively respected; yet though they for their part were often very jealous over their prestige, as a rule they tried not to oppress the others, did not pick quarrels over trifles, behaved with exceptional dignity, were reasonable and almost always obeyed the authorities—not from any principle of obedience, nor from a sense of duty, but as though it were a sort of contract with the authorities for the mutual advantage of both. On the other hand they were treated with consideration.
I remember how one of these convicts, a fearless and determined man, well known to the authorities for his brutal propensities, was once summoned to be punished for some offence. It was a summer day and not in working hours. The officer who was immediately responsible for the management of the prison came himself to the guard-house which was close to our gate, to be present at the punishment. This major was, so to speak, a fateful being for the prisoners; he had reduced them to trembling before him. He was insanely severe, “flew at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most in him was his penetrating lynx-like eyes, from which nothing could be concealed. He seemed to see without looking. As soon as he came into the prison he knew what was being done at the furthest end of it. The prisoners used to call him “eight eyes.” His system was a mistaken one. By his ferocious spiteful actions he only exasperated people who were already exasperated, and if he had not been under the governor of the prison, a generous and sensible man who sometimes moderated his savage outbursts, his rule might have led to great trouble. I can’t understand how it was he did not come to a bad end; he retired and is alive and well, though he was brought to trial for his misdeeds.
The convict turned pale when his name was called. As a rule he lay down to be flogged resolutely and without a word, endured his punishment in silence and got up again quite lively, looking calmly and philosophically at the mishap that had befallen him. He was always, however, handled with caution. But this time he thought himself for some reason in the right. He turned pale and managed, unseen by the guard, to slip into his sleeve a sharp English knife. Knives and all sharp instruments were sternly forbidden in prison. Searches were made frequently and unexpectedly, and they were no joking matter for the penalties were severe; but as it is difficult to find what a thief particularly means to hide, and as knives and instruments were always indispensable in the prison, in spite of searches they were always there. And if they were taken away, new ones were immediately obtained. All the convicts rushed to the fence and looked through the crevices with beating hearts. They all knew that this time Petrov did not mean to lie down to be flogged, and that it would be the end of the major. But at the critical moment our major got into his droshki and drove away, leaving the execution of the punishment to another officer. “God himself delivered him!” the convicts said afterwards. As for Petrov, he bore his punishment quite calmly. His wrath passed off with the departure of the major. The convict is obedient and submissive to a certain point; but there is a limit which must not be overstepped. By the way, nothing can be more curious than these strange outbreaks of impatience and revolt. Often a man is patient for several years, is resigned, endures most cruel punishment, and suddenly breaks out over some little thing, some trifle, a mere nothing. From a certain point of view he might be called mad, and people do call him so in fact.
I have said already that in the course of several years I never saw one sign of repentance among these people, not a trace of despondent brooding over their crime, and that the majority of them inwardly considered themselves absolutely in the right. This is a fact. No doubt vanity, bad example, brag, false shame are responsible for a great deal of this. On the other side, who can say that he has sounded the depths of these lost hearts, and has read what is hidden from all the world in them? Yet surely it would have been possible during all those years to have noticed, to have detected something, to have caught some glimpse which would have borne witness to some inner anguish and suffering in those hearts. But it was not there, it certainly was not there. No, it seems crime cannot be interpreted from preconceived conventional points of view, and the philosophy of it is a little more difficult than is supposed. Of course, prisons and penal servitude do not reform the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks on its security. In the criminal, prison and the severest hard labour only develop hatred, lust for forbidden pleasures, and a fearful levity. But I am firmly convinced that the belauded system of solitary confinement attains only false, deceptive, external results. It drains the man’s vital sap, enervates his soul, cows and enfeebles it, and then holds up the morally withered mummy, half imbecile, as a model of penitence and reformation. Of course, the criminal who revolts against society hates it, and almost always considers himself in the right and society in the wrong. Moreover, he has already endured punishment at its hands, and for that reason almost considers himself purged and quits with society. There are points of view, in fact, from which one is almost brought to justify the criminal. But in spite of all possible points of view every one will admit that there are crimes which always and everywhere from the beginning of the world, under all legal systems, have unhesitatingly been considered crimes, and will be considered so as long as man remains human. Only in prison I have heard stories of the most terrible, the most unnatural actions, of the most monstrous murders told with the most spontaneous, childishly merry laughter.
I am particularly unable to forget one parricide. He was of the upper class and in the service, and had been something like a prodigal son. He was thoroughly dissipated in his behaviour, and made debts everywhere. His father, an old man of sixty, tried to influence and restrain him; but the father had a house, a small estate, and, it was suspected, money, and the son killed the father, through greed for his inheritance. The crime was only discovered a month later. The murderer himself gave information to the police that his father had disappeared, he knew not where. He spent all that month in the most profligate way. At last in his absence the police found the body. There was running right across the yard a ditch covered with planks for carrying off refuse water. The body was lying in this ditch. It was dressed and tidy, the grey head which had been cut off had been put on the body, and under the head the murderer laid a pillow. He did not confess, was deprived of his rank and rights, and sent to penal servitude for twenty years. All the time I spent with him, he was in the liveliest, merriest spirits. He was an unaccountable, feather-brained fellow, irresponsible in the highest degree, though by no means stupid. I never noticed any special cruelty in him. The convicts despised him—not on account of his crime, which was never mentioned, but for his foolishness, for his not knowing how to behave. In conversation he sometimes referred to his father. Once talking to me about the healthy constitution hereditary in their family, he added: “My parent, for instance, never complained of any illness right up to the end.” Such savage insensibility seems impossible. It is phenomenal; it is not a case of simple crime, but of some constitutional defect, some mental and bodily monstrosity not yet understood by science. Of course I did not believe this criminal’s story. But people who came from the same town and must have known every detail of his history told me about the whole case. The facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe in them.
The convicts heard him cry out one night in his sleep, “Hold him, hold him! Chop off his head his head, his head!!!”
Almost all the convicts raved and talked in their sleep. Oaths, thieves’ slang, knives, axes were what came most frequently to their tongues in their sleep. “We are a beaten lot,” they used to say; “our guts have been knocked out, that’s why we shout at night.”
Forced and penal labour was not an occupation, but a compulsory task: the convict completed his task or worked the allotted hours and returned to the prison. The work was looked upon with hatred. If it were not for his own private work to which he was devoted with his whole mind, his whole interest, a man could not live in prison. And, indeed, how else could all that mass of men, who had had experiences, lived keenly and desired to live, who had been forcibly brought together here, forcibly torn away from society and normal existence, be expected to live a normal and regular life here of their own free will? Idleness alone would have developed in the convict here criminal propensities of which he had no idea before. Without labour, without lawful normal property man cannot live; he becomes depraved, and is transformed into a beast. And so, in obedience to a natural craving and a sort of sense of self-preservation, every one in the prison had his special craft and pursuit. The long summer day was almost filled up with the compulsory work; there was hardly time in the brief night for sleep. But in the winter the convict had by regulation to be locked up in prison as soon as it got dark. What could he do in the long dull hours of the winter evenings? And so in spite of prohibition almost every prison ward was transformed into a huge workshop. Work, occupation, were not formally forbidden; but it was strictly forbidden to have in one’s possession in prison any tools, and without these work was impossible. But they worked by stealth, and I fancy that in some cases the authorities shut their eyes to it. Many convicts came to the prison knowing nothing, but they learnt from others, and afterwards went back into the world skilled workmen, There were cobblers there, shoemakers, tailors, cabinetmakers, locksmiths, woodcarvers and gilders. There was one Jew, Isay Bumshtein, a jeweller and pawnbroker. They all worked and earned something. They got orders for work from the town. Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all. Even vodka could be got in prison. Pipes were strictly forbidden, but every one smoked them. Money and tobacco saved them from scurvy and other diseases. Work saved them from crime; without work the convicts would have devoured one another like spiders in a glass jar. In spite of this, both work and money were forbidden. From time to time a sudden search was made at night and all forbidden articles were carried off, and however carefully money was hidden, it was sometimes found by the searchers. This was partly why it was not saved but was quickly spent on drink; that was how vodka came to be brought into prison. After every search the guilty, in addition to losing their property, were severely punished. But after every search all they had lost was immediately replaced, new articles were promptly procured, and everything went on as before. The authorities knew this and the convicts did not grumble at the punishments, though such a life was like living on Vesuvius.
Those who did not know a craft carried on some other sort of trade. Some ways of doing so were rather original. Some, for instance, were only occupied in buying and retailing, and they sometimes sold things which it would never occur to any one outside the walls of the prison to buy or sell, or, indeed, to consider as things at all. But the prisoners were very poor and had great commercial ability The poorest rag had its price and was turned to account. They were so poor that money had quite a different value in prison. A great and complicated piece of work was paid for in farthings. Some practised moneylending with success. Convicts who had been extravagant or unlucky carried their last possessions to the moneylender and got from him a few copper coins at a fearful rate of interest. If the articles were not redeemed at the time fixed, they were sold without delay or remorse; the moneylending flourished to such an extent that even prison property liable to inspection was accepted as a pledge; for instance, the prison clothes, boots, and so on—things which were essential for every convict at every moment. But such transactions sometimes took a different though not altogether unexpected turn: the pawner after receiving the money would sometimes, without further talk, go straight to the senior sergeant in command, and inform him of the pawning of prison property, and it would be immediately taken back from the pawnbroker without even a report on the subject to the higher authorities. It is a curious fact that sometimes this was not followed by a quarrel: the moneylender returned what was required in sullen silence, and seemed even to expect what had happened. Perhaps he could not help admitting that in the pawner’s place he would have done the same. And so even if he sometimes swore afterwards, it would be without malice, simply to appease his conscience.
Generally speaking, they stole from one another dreadfully. Almost every one had a box of his own, with a lock on it to keep his prison belongings in. This was allowed; but boxes were no security. One may imagine that there were skilful thieves among them. A convict who was sincerely attached to me (this is no exaggeration) stole from me a Bible, the only book which one was allowed to have in the prison; he confessed it to me himself the same day, not from repentance, but feeling sorry for me because I spent such a long time looking for it.
There were convicts who traded in vodka and soon grew rich. Of this trade I will speak more in detail later: it was rather remarkable. There were many convicts who were in prison for smuggling, and so it was scarcely to be wondered at that vodka was brought.into the prison in spite of guards and supervision. Smuggling, by the way, is a crime of a peculiar character. Would it be believed, for instance, that gain is only a secondary consideration with some smugglers, and is never in the foreground of their minds? Yet there are cases of this kind. A smuggler works from inclination, from passion. He is on one side an artist. He risks everything, runs terrible dangers; he is cunning, invents dodges, and gets out of scrapes, and sometimes acts with a sort of inspiration. It is a passion as strong as gambling. I knew a convict in the prison, of colossal proportions physically, but so quiet, gentle and meek that it was impossible to imagine how he had got into prison. He was so mild and easy to get on with that all the while he was in prison he never quarrelled with anyone. But he was a smuggler who came from the western frontier, and, of course, he could not resist smuggling vodka into the prison. How often he was punished for doing this, and how he dreaded the lash! And for bringing in the vodka he was paid the merest trifle. No one made money out of it but the dealer. The queer fellow loved art for art’s sake. He was as lachrymose as a woman, and how often after being punished he swore and vowed not to smuggle. He manfully controlled himself sometimes for a whole month, but yet in the end he broke down. . . .Thanks to men like him, there was no stint of vodka in the prison.
Finally there was another source of income for the convicts, which, though it did not enrich them, was constant and very welcome. This was charity. The higher classes in Russia have no idea how deeply our merchants, tradespeople and peasants concern themselves about “the unfortunates.” Almsgiving is almost continual, usually in the form of bread, fancy loaves and rolls, far more rarely in money. But for these gifts, in many places prisoners, especially those who are awaiting trial and are much worse treated than convicts, would fare badly. The alms are divided with religious exactitude among the convicts. If there is not enough for all, the loaves are cut up equally, sometimes even into six portions, and every prisoner invariably receives his piece.
I remember the first time I received money alms. It was soon after my arrival in the prison. I was returning from my morning work alone with the guard. There came to meet me a mother and her child, a little girl of ten, pretty as an angel. I had seen them once already, the mother was the widow of a soldier. Her husband, a young soldier, had died in hospital in the convict ward while awaiting his trial, at the time when I, too, was lying ill there. The mother and daughter came to say good-bye to him, both cried terribly. Seeing me the little girl flushed and whispered something, to her mother. The latter at once stopped short, found a farthing in her bag and gave it to the child. The latter flew running after me. “There, poor man, take a farthing, for Christ’s sake!” she cried, overtaking me and thrusting the coin into my hand. I took her farthing, and the girl returned to her mother quite satisfied. I treasured that farthing for a long time.
- ↑ The torture of palki or the “sticks,” described on page 178 is meant. It was a favourite form of punishment under Nicholas I, who was nicknamed Nicholas Palka or the “stick.” Why it was called the “Green Street" I have not been able to discover.—Translator’s Note.