The House of the Dead/Part 1/Chapter 2
The first month and all the early days of my prison life rise vividly before my imagination now. My other prison years flit far more dimly through my memory. Some seem to have sunk completely into the background, to have melted together, leaving only one collective impression—oppressive, monotonous, suffocating.
But all I went through during my first days in Siberia is as vivid to me now as though it had happened yesterday. And this is bound to be so.
I remember clearly that from the first step what struck me most in this life was that I found in it nothing striking, nothing exceptional or, rather, nothing unexpected. It seemed as though I had had glimpses of it in my imagination when, on my way to Siberia, I tried to conjecture what lay in store for me. But soon I began to find a mass of the strangest surprises, the most monstrous facts awaiting me at every step. And it was only later, after I had been some time in the prison, that I realized fully the exceptional, the surprising nature of such an existence, and I marvelled at it more and more. I must confess that this wonder did not leave me throughout the long years of my imprisonment; I never could get used to it.
My first impression on entering the prison was most revolting, and yet strange to say it seemed to me that life in prison was much easier than on the journey I had fancied it would be. Though the prisoners wore fetters, they walked freely about the prison, swore, sang songs, did work on their own account, smoked, even drank vodka (though very few of them) and at night some of them played cards. The labour, for instance, seemed to me by no means so hard, so penal, and only long afterwards I realized that the hardness, the penal character of the work lay not so much in its being difficult and uninterrupted as in its being compulsory, obligatory, enforced. The peasant in freedom works, I dare say, incomparably harder, sometimes even all night, especially in the summer; but he is working for himself, he is working with a rational object, and it makes it much easier for him than for the convict working at forced labour which is completely useless to himself. The idea has occurred to me that if one wanted to crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible of punishments so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it and dread it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character. Though the hard labour now enforced is uninteresting and wearisome for the prisoner, yet in itself as work it is rational; the convict makes bricks, digs, does plastering, building; there is sense and meaning in such work. The convict worker sometimes even grows keen over it, tries to work more skilfully, faster, better. But if he had to pour water from one vessel into another and back, over and over again, to pound sand, to move a heap of earth from one place to another and back again—I believe the convict would hang himself in a few days or would commit a thousand crimes, preferring rather to die than endure such humiliation, shame and torture. Of course such a punishment would become a torture, a form of vengeance, and would be senseless, as it would achieve no rational object. But as something of such torture, senselessness, humiliation and shame is an inevitable element in all forced labour, penal labour is incomparably more painful than any free labour—just because it is forced.
I entered the prison in winter, however, in December, and had as yet no conception of the summer work, which was five times as hard. In winter compulsory work was generally scarce in our prison. The convicts used to go to the River Irtish to break up old government barges, to work in the workshops, to shovel away snow-drifts from government buildings, to bake and pound alabaster and so on. The winter day was short, the work was soon over and all of us returned early to the prison, where there was scarcely anything for us to do, if one did not happen to have work of one’s own. But only a third of the prisoners, perhaps, were occupied in work of their own. The others were simply idle, wandered aimlessly all over the prison, swore at one another, got up intrigues and rows, got drunk if they could scrape up a little money, at night staked their last shirt at cards, and all this from boredom, from idleness, from having nothing to do. Later on I realized that besides the loss of freedom, besides the forced labour, there is another torture in prison life, almost more terrible than any other—that is, compulsory life in common. Life in common is to be found of course in other places, but there are men in prison whom not every one would care to associate with and I am certain that every convict felt this torture, though of course in most cases unconsciously.
The food too seemed to me fairly sufficient. The convicts used to declare that it was not so good in disciplinary battalions in European Russia. That I cannot undertake to pronounce upon: I have not been in them. Moreover, many of the convicts were able to have food of their own. Beef cost a halfpenny a pound, in summer three farthings. But only those who always had money used to buy food for themselves; the majority of the convicts ate only what was provided. But when the convicts praised the prison fare they referred only to the bread and they blessed the fact that it was given us all together and was not served out in rations. The latter system horrified them; had the bread been served out by weight, a third of the people would have been hungry; but served in common there was plenty for every one. Our bread was particularly nice and was celebrated throughout the town. It was ascribed to the successful construction of the prison oven. But the cabbage soup was very unattractive. It was cooked in a common cauldron, was slightly thickened with grain and, particularly on working days, was thin and watery. I was horrified at the immense number of cockroaches in it. The convicts took absolutely no notice of them.
The first three days I did not go to work; it was the custom with every prisoner on arrival to give him a rest after the journey. But I had to go out next day to have my fetters changed. My fetters were not the right pattern, they were made of rings, “tinklers,” as the convicts called them. They were worn outside the clothes. The regulation prison fetters that did not prevent the prisoner from working were not made of rings, but of four iron rods almost as thick as a finger, joined together by three rings. They had to be put on under the trousers. A strap was fastened to the middle ring and this strap was fastened to the prisoner’s belt which he wore next to his shirt.
I remember my first morning in the prison. In the guardhouse at the prison gates the drum beat for daybreak and ten minutes later the sergeant on duty began unlocking the prison wards. We began to wake up. By the dim light of a tallow candle the prisoners got up from their sleeping platform, shivering with cold. Most of them were silent and sleepily sullen. They yawned, stretched and wrinkled up their branded foreheads. Some were crossing themselves, others had already begun to quarrel. The stuffiness was awful. The fresh winter air rushed in at the door as soon as it was opened and floated in clouds of steam through the barracks. The prisoners crowded round the buckets of water; in turns they took the dipper, filled their mouths with water and washed their hands and faces from their mouths. Water was brought in overnight by the parashnik or slop-pail man. In every room there was by regulation a prisoner elected by the others to do the work of the room. He was called the parashnik and did not go out to work. His duty was to keep the room clean, to wash and scrub the platform beds and the floor, to bring in and remove the night pail and to bring in two buckets of fresh water—in the morning for washing and in the daytime for drinking. They began quarrelling at once over the dipper; there was only one for all of us.
“Where are you shoving, you roach head!” grumbled a tall surly convict, lean and swarthy with strange protuberances on his shaven head, as he pushed another, a stout, squat fellow with a merry, ruddy face. “Stay there!”
“What are you shouting for? Folks pay for their stay, you know! You get along yourself! There he stands like a monument. There isn’t any fortikultiapnost about him, brothers!”
This invented word produced a certain sensation. Many of them laughed. That was all the cheery fat man wanted. He evidently played the part of a gratuitous jester in the room. The tall convict looked at him with the deepest contempt.
“You great sow!” he said as though to himself. “He’s grown fat on the prison bread. Glad he’ll give us a litter of twelve sucking pigs by Christmas.”
The fat man got angry at last.
“But what sort of queer bird are you?” he cried, suddenly turning crimson.
“Just so, a bird.”
“What sort?”
“That sort.”
“What sort’s that sort?”
“Why, that sort, that’s all.”
“But what sort?”
They fixed their eyes on each other. The fat man waited for an answer and clenched his fists as though he meant to fall to fighting at once. I really thought there would be a fight. All this was new to me and I looked on with curiosity. But afterwards I found out that such scenes were extremely harmless; that they were played by way of a farce for the general entertainment and hardly ever ended in fights. It was all a fairly typical specimen of prison manners.
The tall convict stood calm and majestic. He felt that they were looking at him and waiting to see whether he would discredit himself by his answer or not; that he must keep up his reputation and show that he really was a bird and what sort of bird he was. He looked with inexpressible contempt at his opponent, trying to insult him to the utmost by looking down upon him as it were over his shoulder, as though he were examining him like an insect, and slowly and distinctly he brought out:
“Cocky-locky!”
Meaning that that was the bird he was. A loud roar of laughter greeted the convict’s readiness.
“You are a rascal not a cocky-locky!” roared the fat man, feeling he had been done at every point and flying into a violent rage.
But as soon as the quarrel became serious the combatants were at once pulled up.
“What are you shouting about!” the whole room roared at them.
“You’d better fight than split your throats!” some one called from a corner.
“Likely they’d fight!” sounded in reply. “We are a bold saucy lot; when we are seven against one we are not frightened.”
“They are both fine fellows! One was sent here for a pound of bread, and the other is a plate-licking jade; he guzzled a country woman’s junket, that’s what he got the knout for!”
“Come, come, come, shut up!” cried the veteran soldier who had to be in the room to keep order and so slept on a special bedstead in the corner.
“Water, lads! Old Petrovitch has waked up. Good morning, old veteran Petrovitch, dear brother!”
“Brother . . . brother indeed! I never drank a rouble with you and I am brother, am I!” grumbled the old soldier putting his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat.
They were making ready for inspection; it began to get light; a dense, closely packed crowd had gathered in the kitchen. The convicts in their sheepskins and particoloured caps were crowding round the bread which one of the cooks was cutting up for them. The cooks were chosen by the prisoners, two for each kitchen. They kept the knife, one only for each kitchen, to cut up the bread and meat.
In every corner and all about the tables there were convicts with their caps and sheepskins on, their belts fastened, ready to go out to work at once. Before some of them stood wooden cups of kvas. They crumbled the bread into the kvas and sipped that. The noise and uproar were insufferable; but some were talking quietly and sensibly in the corners.
“A good breakfast to old man Antonitch, good morning!” said a young convict sitting down by a frowning and toothless prisoner.
“Well, good morning, if you mean it,” said the other, not raising his eyes and trying to munch the bread with his toothless gums.
“I thought you were dead, Antonitch, I really did.”
“No, you may die first, I’ll come later.”
I sat down beside them. Two steady-looking convicts were talking on my right, evidently trying to keep up their dignity with one another.
“They won’t steal from me, no fear,” said one. “There’s more chance of my stealing something from them.”
“I am a prickly customer too.”
“Are you though? You are a jail-bird like every one else; there’s no other name for us. . . . She’ll strip you and not say thank you. That’s where my money went, brother. She came herself the other day. Where could I go with her? I began asking to go to Fedka-Hangman’s, he’s got a house at the end of the town, he bought it from the Jew, Scabby-Solomon, the fellow who hanged himself afterwards.”
“I know. He used to sell vodka here three years ago and was nicknamed Grishka Black Pot-house. I know.”
“No, you don’t know. That was another fellow, Black Pot-house.”
“Another! You know a fat lot. I’ll bring you ever so many witnesses.”
“You’ll bring witnesses! Where do you come from and who am I?”
“Who are you? Why, I used to beat you and I don’t boast of it and you ask who are you!”
“You used to beat me! Why, the man’s not born who’ll beat me, and the man who did is underground.”
“You Bender pest!”“Siberian plague take you!”
“And I hope a Turkish sabre will have something to say to you!”
A storm of abuse followed.
“Come, come! They are at it again!” people shouted round them. “They couldn’t live in freedom; they may be glad they’ve bread to eat here. . . .”
They quieted them down at once. Swearing, “wagging your tongue” is allowed. It is to some extent an entertainment for all. But they don’t always let it come to a fight, and it is only rarely, in exceptional cases, that enemies fight. Fights are reported to the major; investigations follow, the major himself comes—in short, every one has to suffer for it, and so fights are not allowed. And indeed the combatants swear at one another rather for entertainment, for the exercise of their linguistic powers. Often they deceive themselves, they begin very hot and exasperated. One fancies they will fall on one another in a minute; not a bit of it: they go on to a certain point and then separate at once. All this surprised me immensely at first. I have intentionally quoted here a typical specimen of convict conversation. I could not imagine at first how they could abuse one another for pleasure, find in it amusement, pleasant exercise, enjoyment. But one must not forget their vanity. A connoisseur in abuse was respected. He was almost applauded like an actor.
The evening before, I had noticed that they looked askance at me.
I had caught several dark looks already. On the other hand some of the convicts hung about me suspecting I had brought money with me. They began making up to me at once, began showing me how to wear my new fetters, got me—for money of course—a box with a lock on it, for me to put away the prison belongings already served out to me, as well as some underclothes I brought with me into the prison. Next day they stole it from me and sold it for drink. One of them became most devoted to me later on, though he never gave up robbing me at every convenient opportunity. He did this without the slightest embarrassment, almost unconsciously, as though fulfilling a duty, and it was impossible to be angry with him.
Among other things, they told me that I ought to have tea of my own, that it would be a good thing for me to have a teapot too, and meanwhile they got me one on hire, and recommended a cook, saying that for thirty kopecks a month he would cook me anything I liked if I cared to eat apart and buy my own provisions. . . . They borrowed money from me of course, and every one of them came to borrow from me three times the first day.
As a rule, convicts who have been gentlemen are looked at with hostility and dislike.
In spite of the fact that they are deprived of all the rights of their rank and are put on exactly the same level as the other prisoners, the convicts never consider them their comrades. This is not the result of conscious prejudice but comes about of itself, quite sincerely and unconsciously. They genuinely looked upon us as gentlemen, though they liked to taunt us with our downfall.
“No, now it’s time to pull up! In Moscow, Pyotr drove like a lord, but now Pyotr sits and twists a cord,” and similar amenities were frequent.
They looked with enjoyment at our sufferings which we tried to conceal from them. We used to have a particularly bad time at work because we had not as much strength as they had and could not do our full share in helping them. Nothing is harder than to win the people’s confidence (especially such people’s) and to gain their love.
There were several men belonging to the upper classes in the prison. To begin with there were five or six Poles. I will speak of them separately later on. The convicts particularly disliked the Poles, even more than those who had been Russian gentlemen. The Poles (I am speaking only of the political prisoners) were elaborately, offensively polite and exceedingly uncommunicative with them. They never could conceal from the convicts their aversion for them, and the latter saw it very clearly and paid the Poles back in the same coin.
I spent nearly two years in the prison before I could succeed in gaining the goodwill of some of the convicts. But in the end most of them grew fond of me and recognized me as a “good” man.
There were four other Russians of the upper class besides me. One was a mean abject little creature, terribly depraved, a spy and informer by vocation. I had heard about him before I came to the prison, and broke off all relations with him after the first few days. Another was the parricide of whom I have spoken already. The third was Akim Akimitch; I have rarely met such a queer fellow as this Akim Akimitch. I have still a vivid recollection of him. He was tall, lean, dull-witted, awfully illiterate, very prosy and as precise as a German. The convicts used to laugh at him, but some of them were positively afraid to have anything to do with him, owing to his fault-finding, his exactingness and his readiness to take offence. He got on to familiar terms with them from the first, he quarrelled and even fought with them. He was phenomenally honest. If he noticed any injustice he always interfered, though it might have nothing to do with him. He was naïve in the extreme; when he quarrelled with the convicts he sometimes reproached them with being thieves and seriously exhorted them not to steal. He had been a lieutenant in the Caucasus. We were friendly from the first day, and he immediately told me about his case. He began as a cadet in an infantry regiment in the Caucasus, plodded on steadily for a long time, was promoted to be an officer at last, and was sent as senior in command to a fortress. One of the allied chieftains burnt his fortress and made a night assault upon it. This was unsuccessful. Akim Akimitch was wily and gave no sign of knowing who had done it. The attack was attributed to the hostile tribes, and a month later Akim Akimitch invited the chieftain to visit him in a friendly way. The latter came, suspecting nothing. Akim Akimitch drew up his company, proved the chieftain’s guilt and upbraided him before them all, pointing out to him that it was shameful to burn fortresses. He discoursed to him in great detail on the way allied chiefs should behave in the future, and, in conclusion, shot him and at once sent in a full report of the proceedings to the authorities. For all this he was court martialled and condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted and he was sent to Siberia to penal servitude in the second division for twelve years. He fully recognized that he had acted irregularly. He told me he knew it even before he shot the chieftain, he knew that an ally ought to be legally tried; but, although he knew this, he seemed unable to see his guilt in its true light.
“Why, upon my word! Hadn’t he burnt my fortress? Was I to say thank you to him for it?” he said to me in reply to my objections.
But, although the convicts laughed at Akim Akimitch’s foolishness, they respected him for his preciseness and practical ability.
There was no handicraft which Akim Akimitch did not understand. He was a cabinet-maker, a cobbler, a shoemaker, a painter, a gilder, a locksmith, and he had learnt all this in the prison. He was self-taught in everything: he would take one look at a thing and do it. He used to make all sorts of little boxes, baskets, lanterns, children’s toys, and sold them in the town. In that way he made a little money and he immediately spent it on extra underclothes, on a softer pillow or a folding mattress. He was in the same room as I was, and was very helpful to me during my first days in prison.
When they went out from prison to work the convicts used to be drawn up in two rows before the guard-house; in front of them and behind them, the soldiers were drawn up, with loaded muskets. An officer of the Engineers, the foreman and several engineers of the lower rank, who used to superintend our work, came out. The foreman grouped the convicts and sent them to work in parties where they were needed.
I went with the others to the engineers’ workshop. It was a low-pitched stone building standing in a large courtyard which was heaped up with all sorts of materials; there was a smithy, a locksmith’s shop, a carpenter’s, a painter’s and so on. Akim Akimitch used to come here and work at painting; he boiled the oil, mixed the colours and stained tables and other furniture to look like walnut.
While I was waiting for my fetters to be changed, I was talking to Akim Akimitch about my first impressions in prison.
“Yes, they are not fond of gentlemen,” he observed, “especially politicals; they are ready to devour them; no wonder. To begin with you are a different sort of people, unlike them; besides, they’ve all been serfs or soldiers. Judge for yourself whether they would be likely to be fond of you. It’s a hard life here, I can tell you. And in the Russian disciplinary battalions it’s worse still. Some of these fellows come from them and they are never tired of praising our prison, they say it’s like coming from hell to paradise. It’s not the work that’s the trouble. There in the first division they say the authorities are not all military, anyhow they behave very differently from here. There they say the convicts can have little homes of their own. I haven’t been there, but that’s what they say. They don’t have their heads shaved, they don’t wear a uniform, though it’s a good thing they do wear a uniform and have their heads shaved here; it’s more orderly, anyway, and it’s pleasanter to the eye. Only they don’t like it. And look what a mixed rabble they are! One will be a Kantonist,[1] another will be a Circassian, a third an Old Believer, a fourth will be an orthodox peasant who has left a wife and dear little children behind in Russia, the fifth will be a Jew, the sixth a gipsy, and the seventh God knows who; and they’ve all got to live together, they’ve all got to get on together somehow, eat out of the same bowl, sleep on the same bed. And no sort of freedom. If you want an extra crust you must eat it on the sly; every farthing you’ve to hide in your boots and nothing before you but prison and more prison. . . . You can’t help all sorts of nonsense coming into your head.”
But I knew that already. I particularly wanted to question him about our major. Akim Akimitch made no secret of things and I remember my impression was not altogether agreeable.
But I had to live for two years under his rule. All that Akim Akimitch told me about him turned out to be perfectly true with the only difference that the impression made by the reality is always stronger than that made by description. The man was terrible, just because being such a man he had almost unlimited power over two hundred souls, In himself he was simply a spiteful and ill-regulated man, nothing more; he looked on the convicts as his natural enemies and that was his first and great mistake. He really had some ability, but everything, even what was good in him, came out in a distorted form. Unrestrained and ill-tempered, he would sometimes burst into the prison even at night, and if he noticed that a convict was sleeping on his left side or on his back he would have him punished next day: “You’ve to sleep on your right side, as I’ve ordered you.” In the prison he was hated and feared like the plague. His face was purplish crimson and ferocious. Every one knew that he was completely in the hands of his orderly, Fedka. What he loved most in the world was his poodle Trezorka, and he almost went mad with grief when Trezorka fell ill. They say he sobbed over him as though it had been his own son; he drove away one veterinary surgeon, and, after his usual fashion, almost beat him. Hearing from Fedka that one of the convicts in the prison was a self-taught “vet.” who was very successful in curing animals, he called him in at once.
“Help me! I’ll load you with gold, cure Trezorka!” he shouted to the convict.
The man was a Siberian peasant, crafty, clever, really a very skilful vet., though a peasant in every sense of the word.
“I looked at Trezorka,” he told the convicts afterwards, long after his visit to the major, however, when the whole story was forgotten. “I looked—the dog was lying on a white cushion on the sofa and I saw it was inflammation, that it ought to be bled and the dog would get well, yes indeed! And I thinks to myself—what if I don’t cure it, what if it dies? ‘No, your honour,’ said I, ‘you called me in too late; if it had been yesterday or the day before, I could have cured the dog, but now I can’t.’”
So Trezorka died.
I was told in detail of an attempt to kill the major. There was a convict in the prison who had been there several years and was distinguished for his mild behaviour. It was observed, too, that he hardly ever spoke to anyone. He was looked upon as a bit queer in the religious way. He could read and write and during the last year he was continually reading the Bible, he read it day and night. When every one was asleep he would get up at midnight, light a church wax candle, climb on to the stove, open the book and read till morning. One day he went up and told the sergeant that he would not go to work. It was reported to the major; he flew into a rage, and rushed into the prison at once himself. The convict threw himself upon him with a brick he had got ready beforehand, but he missed his aim. He was seized, tried and punished. It all happened very quickly. Three days later he died in the hospital. As he lay dying he said that he meant no harm to anyone, but was only seeking suffering. He did not, however, belong to any dissenting sect. In the prison he was remembered with respect.
At last my fetters were changed. Meanwhile several girls selling rolls had come into the workshop. Some of them were quite little girls. They used to come with the rolls till they were grown up; their mothers baked them and they brought them for sale. When they were grown up they still came, but not to sell bread; this was almost always the case. There were some who were not little girls. The rolls cost a halfpenny and almost all the convicts bought them.
I noticed one of the convicts, a grey-headed but ruddy cabinetmaker, smiling and flirting with the baker girls. Just before they came in he had tied a red handkerchief round his neck. A fat peasant woman whose face was covered with pock-marks put her tray on his bench. Conversation began between them.“Why didn’t you turn up yesterday?” said the convict with a self-satisfied smile.
“Upon my word I did, but not a sign to be seen of you,” answered the lively woman.
"I was wanted, or you may be sure I’d have been there. . . . The day before yesterday all your lot came to see me."
“Who did?”
“Maryashka came, Havroshka came, Tchekunda came, Twopenny-halfpenny came.”
“What does it mean?” I asked Akim Akimitch. “Is it possible?”
“It does happen,” he answered, dropping his eyes discreetly, for he was an extremely chaste man.
It certainly did happen, but very rarely, and in spite of immense difficulties. On the whole, men were much more keen on drinking, for instance, than on that sort of thing, in spite of its being naturally difficult for them to live in the way they were forced to do. Women were difficult to get hold of. The time and place had to be found, arrangements had to be made, meetings had to be fixed, seclusion had to be sought, which was particularly difficult, the guards had to be won over, which was still more difficult, and altogether a sum of money—immense, relatively speaking—had to be spent. Yet I happened sometimes, later on, to be a witness of amatory scenes. I remember one day in the summer we were three of us in a shed on the bank of the Irtish, heating some sort of kiln; the guards were good-natured fellows. At last two “frillies,” as the convicts called them, made their appearance.
“Well, where have you been so long? I bet you’ve been at the Zvyerkovs,” was how they were greeted by the convict whom they had come to see and who had been expecting them a long time.
“I’ve been so long? Why, I haven’t been there longer than a magpie on a pole,” the girl answered gaily.
She was the dirtiest girl imaginable. She was the one called Tchekunda. With her came Twopenny-halfpenny. The latter was beyond all description.
“I’ve not seen you for a long time either,” the gallant went on, addressing Twopenny-halfpenny; “how is it you seem to be thinner?”
“Maybe. I used to be ever so fat, but now one would think I’d swallowed a needle.”“Always being with the soldiers, eh?”
“No, that’s a lie that spiteful tongues have told you; though what of it? Though I’m thin as any rake, the soldier-lads I’ll ne’er forsake!”
“You chuck them and love us; we’ve got cash. . . .”
To complete the picture, imagine this gallant with a shaven head, in parti-coloured clothes, guarded and in fetters.
I took leave of Akim Akimitch, and hearing that I might go back to the prison, I went back escorted by a guard. The convicts were already coming home. The men on piece-work are the first to return. The only way of making a convict work hard is to put him on piece-work. Sometimes huge tasks are set them, but they always do the work twice as quickly as when they are working by the day. When he finishes his task the convict goes home without hindrance and no one prevents his doing so.
They don’t dine altogether, but as they come in, just as it happens; indeed there would not have been room for them all at once in the kitchen. I tried the soup, but not being used to it I could not eat it, and I made myself some tea. We sat down at the end of the table. With me was a comrade of the same social class as myself.
Convicts kept going and coming. There was plenty of room however; they were not yet all in. A group of five men sat down together at the big table. The cook poured them out two bowls of soup and put on the table a whole dish of fried fish. They were keeping some sort of fête and eating their own food. They cast unfriendly glances in our direction. One of the Poles came in and sat down beside us.
“I’ve not been at home, but I know all the news,” a tall convict shouted aloud as he walked into the kitchen and looked round at every one present.
He was a thin muscular man of fifty. There was something sly, and at the same time merry, about his face. What was particularly striking about him was his thick protruding lower lip; it gave a peculiarly comic look to his face.
“Well, have you had a good night? Why don’t you say good morning? Hullo, my Kursk friends!” he added, sitting down beside the group who were eating their own food. “A good appetite to you! Give a welcome to a friend.”
“We are not Kursk men, brother.”
“Tambov, then?”“But we are not from Tambov either. You’ll get nothing from us, brother. You go and ask a rich peasant.”
“I’ve colliwobbles and rumble-tumbles in my belly to-day. And where is he living, your rich peasant?”
“Why, Gazin yonder is a rich peasant, you go to him.”
“Gazin’s having a spree to-day, lads, he is drinking; he is drinking all his money.”
“He’s worth a good twenty roubles,” observed another. “It’s a good business, lads, selling vodka.”
“Well, won’t you welcome a friend? I must have a sup of regulation fare then.”
“You go and ask for some tea. The gentlemen there have got some.”
“Gentlemen? There are no gentlemen here. They are the same as we are now,” a convict sitting in the corner brought out gloomily. He had not said a word till then.
“I should like some tea, but I am ashamed to ask; we have our pride!” observed the convict with the protruding lip, looking good-naturedly at us.
“I’ll give you some, if you like,” I said, inviting the convict to have tea, “would you like some?”
“Like it? To be sure I’d like it.”
He came up to the table.
“At home he ate broth out of a shoe, but here he’s learnt to like tea; and wants to drink it like the gentry,” the gloomy convict pronounced.
“Why, does no one drink tea here?” I asked him. But he did not deign to answer me.
“Here they are bringing rolls. Mayn’t we have a roll too?” Rolls were brought in. A young convict brought in a whole bundle and was selling them in the prison. The baker girl used to give him one roll out of every ten he sold; he was reckoning on that tenth roll.
“Rolls, rolls!” he cried, entering the kitchen. “Moscow rolls, all hot! I’d eat them myself, but I haven’t the money. Come, lads, the last roll is left; surely some one, for his mother’s sake?”
This appeal to filial affection amused every one and several rolls were bought.
“I say, lads,” he announced, “Gazin will get into trouble, the way he’s carrying on! Upon my word, he has pitched on a time to drink! Ten to one, Eight-Eyes will be round.”“They’ll hide him. Why, is he very drunk?”
“Rather! He is wild, he is pestering every one.”
“Oh, it will end in a fight then. . . .”
“Of whom are they talking?” I asked the Pole, who had sat down beside me.
“It’s Gazin, a convict. He does a trade in vodka here. When he’s saved up money enough, he spends it in drink. He is spiteful and cruel; when he is sober he is quiet, though; when he is drunk it all comes out; he flies at people with a knife. Then they have to restrain him.”
“How do they restrain him?”
“A dozen convicts fall upon him and begin beating him horribly until he loses consciousness, they beat him till he is half dead. Then they lay him on the bed and cover him with a sheepskin.”
“But they may kill him!”
“Anyone else would have been killed by now but not he. He is awfully strong, stronger than anyone in the prison and of the healthiest constitution. Next day he is perfectly well.”
“Tell me, please,” I went on questioning the Pole; “here they are eating their own food while I drink my tea. And yet they look as though they were envious of the tea. What does it mean?”
“It’s not because of the tea,” answered the Pole. “They are ill-disposed to you because you are a gentleman and not like them. Many of them would like to pick a quarrel with you. They would dearly like to insult you, to humiliate you. You will meet with a lot of unpleasantness here. We have an awfully hard time. It’s harder for us than for any of them. One needs to be philosophical to get used to it. You will meet unpleasantness and abuse again and again for having your own food and tea, though very many of them here frequently have their own food, and some have tea every day. They may, but you mustn’t.”
He got up and went away from the table: a few minutes later his words came true.
- ↑ Kantonists were soldiers’ sons brought up in a military settlement and bound to serve in the army—a special class no longer existing.—Translator’s Note.