The House of the Dead/Part 2/Chapter 5
But now it is the beginning of April, and Easter is drawing near. Little by little the summer work begins. Every day the sun is warmer and more brilliant; the air is fragrant with spring and has a disquieting influence on the nerves. The coming of spring agitates even the man in fetters, arouses even in him vague desires, cravings and a yearning melancholy. I think one pines for liberty more in the bright sunshine than in dull winter or autumn days, and that may be noticed in all prisoners. Although they seem glad of the fine days, yet at the same time their impatience and restlessness is intensified. In fact I have noticed that quarrels in prison become more frequent in the spring. Noise, shouting and uproar are heard more often, rows are more common; yet sometimes at work one suddenly notices dreamy eyes fixed on the blue distance, where far away beyond the Irtish stretch the free Kirghiz steppes, a boundless plain for a thousand miles. One hears a man heave a deep sigh from a full heart, as though he yearned to breathe that far-away free air and to ease with it his stifled and fettered soul. “Ech-ma!” the convict exclaims at last and suddenly, as though shaking off dreams and brooding, he sullenly and impatiently snatches up the spade or the bricks he has to move from place to place. A minute later he has forgotten his sudden feeling and begun laughing or swearing according to his disposition. Or he suddenly sets to his task, if he has one, with extraordinary and quite superfluous zeal, and begins working with all his might, as though trying to stifle in himself something which is cramping and oppressing him within. They are all vigorous, men for the most part in the flower of their age and their strength. . . . Fetters are hard to bear at this season! I am not poetizing and am convinced of the truth of what I say. Apart from the fact that in the warmth, in the brilliant sunshine, when, in all your soul, in all your being, you feel nature with infinite force springing into life again around you, prison doors, guards and bondage are harder to bear than ever: apart from that, with the coming of spring and the return of the lark, tramping begins all over Siberia and Russia; God’s people escape from prison and take refuge in the forests. After stifling dungeons, law courts, fetters and beatings, they wander at their own free will wherever they please, wherever it seems fair and free to them they eat and drink what they find, what God sends them, and at night they fall asleep peacefully under God’s eye in the forest, or the fields, troubling little for the future, and free from the sadness of prison, like the birds of the forest, with none to say good night to but the stars. There is no denying that one may have to face hardship, hunger and exhaustion “in the service of General Cuckoo.” One may have to go for days together without bread; one must keep in hiding, out of sight of every one; one may be driven to steal, to rob and sometimes even to murder. “A convict free is like a baby, what he wants he takes,” is what they say in Siberia of the convict settlers. This saying applies in full force and even with some additions to the tramp. It is rare for a tramp not to be a robber and he is always a thief, more from necessity than from vocation, of course.
There are inveterate tramps. Some, after their imprisonment is over, run away from settlements. One would have thought that a man would be satisfied in the settlement and free from anxiety, but no! something lures him, beckons him away. Life in the forest, a life poor and terrible, but free and adventurous, has a fascination, a mysterious charm for those who have once known it, and one may sometimes see a sedate precise man, who was promising to become a capable farmer and a good settled inhabitant, run away to the forest. Sometimes a man will marry and have children, live for five years in one place, and suddenly one fine day disappear somewhere, leaving his wife, his children and the whole parish in amazement. A wanderer of this kind was pointed out to me in prison. He had never committed any special crime, at least I never heard anything of the kind spoken of, but he was always running away, he had been running away all his life. He had been on the southern frontier of Russia beyond the Danube, and in the Kirghiz steppes, and in Eastern Siberia and in the Caucasus—he had been everywhere. Who knows, perhaps in other circumstances, with his passion for travelling he might have been another Robinson Crusoe. But I was told all this about him by other people; he spoke very little in prison himself and then only of necessity. He was a little peasant of fifty, extremely meek, with an extremely calm and even vacant face, calm to the point of idiocy. In the summer he was fond of sitting in the sun, always humming some song to himself, but so quietly that five steps away he was inaudible. His features were somehow wooden; he ate little and chiefly bread; he never bought a roll or a glass of vodka and I doubt whether he ever had any money or knew how to count. He was perfectly unconcerned about everything. He sometimes fed the prison dogs with his own hands and no one else ever did. Indeed, Russians in general are not given to feeding dogs. They said he had been married, twice indeed; it was said that he had children somewhere. . . . How he got into prison I have no idea. The convicts all expected him to give us the slip too, but either the time had not come or he was too old for it, for he went on living amongst us, calmly contemplating the strange environment in which he found himself. However, there was no reckoning on him, though one would have thought that he had nothing to run away for, that he would gain nothing by it.
Yet, on the whole, the life of a tramp in the forest is paradise compared with prison. That is easy to understand and indeed there can be no comparison. Though it’s a hard life, it is freedom. That is why every convict in Russia, whatever prison he may be in, grows restless in the spring with the first kindly rays of sunshine. Though by no means every one intends to run away; one may say with certainty, indeed, that owing to the difficulty of escape and the penalties attaching to it, not more than one in a hundred ventures upon it; yet the other ninety-nine dream at least of how they might escape and where they would escape to and comfort their hearts with the very desire, with the very imagination of its being possible. Some recall how they have run away in the past. . . . I am speaking now only of those who are serving their sentence. But of course those who are awaiting sentence take the risks of flight far more frequently than other prisoners. Convicts condemned for a term only run away at the beginning of their imprisonment, if at all. When a convict has been two or three years in prison, those years begin to have a value in his mind and by degrees he makes up his mind that he would rather finish his term in the legal way and become a settler than run such risks, and take the chances of ruin if he fails. And failure is so possible. Scarcely one in ten succeeds in changing his luck. Another class of convicts, who more frequently take the hazards of flight, consists of those who are condemned to very long terms. Fifteen or twenty years seem an eternity, and a man condemned for such lengthy periods is always ready to dream of changing his luck, even if he has passed ten years in prison.
The branding does something to prevent prisoners attempting flight.To change one’s luck is a technical expression, so much so that even in cross examination a prisoner caught trying to escape will answer that he wanted to change his luck. This rather bookish expression is exactly what is meant. Every fugitive looks forward, not exactly to complete freedom—he knows that is almost impossible—but either to getting into another institution or being sent as a settler, or being tried again for a fresh offence committed when he was tramping; in fact he does not care what becomes of him, so long as he is not sent back to the old place he is sick of, his former prison. If these fugitives do not, in the course of the summer, succeed in finding some exceptional place in which to spend the winter, if for instance they do not chance upon some one willing for interested motives to shelter a fugitive, if they do not, sometimes by means of murder, obtain a passport of some sort with which they can live anywhere they like, they are all either caught by the police or go in autumn of their own accord in crowds into the towns and the prisons and remain there for the winter, not, of course, without hopes of escaping again in the summer.
Spring had an influence on me too. I remember how eagerly I sometimes peeped through the chinks in the fence and how long I used to stand with my head against the fence looking obstinately and insatiably at the greenness of the grass on our prison rampart, and the deeper and deeper blue of the sky in the distance. My restlessness and depression grew stronger every day, and the prison became more and more hateful to me. The dislike with which as a “gentleman” I was continually regarded by the convicts during my first few years, became intolerable, poisoning my whole life. During those first few years I often used to go into the hospital, though I had no illness, simply to avoid being in prison, simply to escape from this obstinate, irreconcilable hatred. “You have beaks of iron, you’ve pecked us to death,” the convicts used to say to us, and how I used to envy the peasants who were brought to the prison! They were looked upon as comrades by every one at once. And so the spring, the phantom of freedom, the general rejoicing of nature affected me with melancholy and nervous restlessness. At the end of Lent, I think in the sixth week, I took the sacrament. All the prisoners had been at the beginning of Lent divided by the senior sergeant into seven relays, one to take the sacrament during each week of the fast. Each of the relays consisted of about thirty men. I very much liked the week of the preparation for the sacrament. We were relieved of work. We went to the church, which was not far from the prison, twice or three times a day. It was long since I had been to church. The Lenten service so familiar to me from far-away days of childhood in my father’s house, the solemn prayers, the prostrations—all this stirred in my heart the far, far-away past, bringing back the days of my childhood, and I remember how pleasant it was walking over the frozen ground in the early morning to the house of God, escorted by guards with loaded guns. The guards did not, however, go into the church. We stood all together in a group close to the church door, so far back that we could only hear the loud-voiced deacon and from time to time catch a glimpse of the black cope and the bald head of the priest through the crowd. I remembered how sometimes standing in church as a child I looked at the peasants crowding near the entrance and slavishly parting to make way for a thickly epauletted officer, a stout gentleman, or an over-dressed but pious lady, who invariably made for the best places and were ready to quarrel over them. I used to fancy then that at the church door they did not pray as we did, that they prayed humbly, zealously, abasing themselves and fully conscious of their humble state.
Now I, too, had to stand in the background, and not only in the background; we were fettered and branded as felons; every one avoided us, every one seemed to be even afraid of us, alms were always given to us, and I remember that this was positively pleasing to me in a way; there was a special subtlety in this strange pleasure. “So be it,” I thought. The convicts prayed very earnestly and every one of them brought his poor farthing to the church every time to buy a candle, or to put in the collection. “I, too, am a man,” he thought, and felt perhaps as he gave it; “in God’s eyes we are all equal. . . .” We took the sacrament at the early mass. When with the chalice in his hands the priest read the words, “. . . accept me, O Lord, even as the thief,” almost all of them bowed down to the ground with a clanking of chains, apparently applying the words literally to themselves.
And now Easter had come. We received from the authorities an egg each and a piece of white bread made with milk and eggs. Loads of offerings for the prisoners were brought from the town again. Again there was a visit from the priest with a cross, again a visit of the authorities, again a cabbage soup with plenty of meat in it, again drinking and desultory idleness—exactly as at Christmas, except that now one could walk about the prison yard and warm oneself in the sun. There was more light, more space than in the winter, but yet it was more melancholy. The long endless summer day seemed particularly unbearable in the holidays. On ordinary days, at least, it was shortened by work.
The summer tasks turned out to be far harder than our work in winter. All were chiefly employed upon building. The convicts dug out the earth, laid the bricks; some were employed as carpenters, locksmiths or painters in doing up the government buildings. Others went to the brickyard to make bricks. This was considered the hardest work of all. The brickyard was two or three miles from the fortress. At six o’clock, every summer morning, a whole party of convicts, some fifty in number, set off for the brickyard. For this work they chose unskilled labourers, that is men who had no special craft or trade. They took bread with them for, as the place was so far off, it was waste of time going six miles home to dinner and back, so they had dinner on their return in the evening. The tasks were set for the whole day and we could only just get through them by working all day long. To begin with, one had to dig and carry the clay, to fetch water, to pound the clay in a pit, and finally to make a great number of bricks out of it, I believe it was two hundred, or perhaps even two hundred and fifty a day. I only went twice to the brickyard. The brickyard men returned in the evening, worn out and exhausted, and all the summer they were continually throwing it up against the others, declaring that they were doing the hardest work. That seemed to be their consolation. Yet some of them were very ready to go to the brickyard: in the first place, it was outside the town, it was a free open space on the banks of the Irtish. It was a relief to look about one, anyway—to see something not the regulation prison surroundings! One could smoke freely and even lie down for half an hour with great satisfaction.
I used to go as before to pound alabaster, or to the workshop, or I was employed to carry bricks on the building. I once had to carry bricks a distance of about a hundred and sixty yards, from the bank of the Irtish to the barracks that were being built on the other side of the fortress rampart, and I had to go on doing this every day for two months. I positively liked the work, though the cord in which I had to carry the bricks always cut my shoulder. But I liked to feel that I was obviously gaining muscular strength through the work. At first I could only carry eight bricks and each brick weighed nearly eleven pounds. But I got up to twelve and even fifteen bricks later on and that was a great joy to me. In prison physical strength is no less necessary than moral strength to enable one to endure the hardships of that accursed manner of life.
And I wanted to go on living when I got out of prison.
I liked carrying bricks not only because it strengthened my muscles but also because the work took me to the bank of the Irtish. I speak of the river-bank so often because it was only from there one had a view of God’s world, of the pure clear distance, of the free solitary steppes, the emptiness of which made a strange impression on me. It was only on the bank of the Irtish that one could stand with one’s back to the fortress and not see it. All our other tasks were done either in the fortress or close by it. From the very first days I hated that fortress, some of the buildings particularly. The major’s house seemed to me a damnable, loathsome place, and I always looked at it with hatred every time I passed by. On the river-bank one might forget oneself one would look at that boundless solitary vista as a prisoner looks out to freedom from his window. Everything there was sweet and precious in my eyes, the hot brilliant sun in the fathomless blue sky and the far-away song of the Kirghiz floating from the further bank. One gazes into the distance and makes out at last the poor smoke-blackened tent of some Kirghiz. One discerns the smoke rising from the tent, the Kirghiz woman busy with her two sheep. It is all poor and barbarous, but it is free. One descries a bird in the limpid blue air and for a long time one watches its flight: now it darts over the water, now it vanishes in the blue depths, now it reappears again, a speck flitting in the distance. . . . Even the poor sickly flower which I found early in spring in a crevice of the rocky bank drew my attention almost painfully.
The misery of all that first year in prison was intolerable, and it had an irritating, bitter effect on me. During that first year I failed to notice many things in my misery. I shut my eyes and did not want to look. Among my spiteful and hostile companions in prison, I did not observe the good ones—the men who were capable of thought and feeling in spite of their repellent outer husk. In the midst of ill-natured sayings, I sometimes failed to notice kind and friendly words, which were the more precious because they were uttered with no interested motives, and often came straight from a heart which had suffered and endured more than mine. But why enlarge on this? I was very glad to get thoroughly tired: I might go to sleep when I got home. For the nights were an agony in the summer, almost worse than in the winter. The evenings, it is true, were sometimes very nice. The sun, which had been on the prison yard all day, set at last. Then followed the cool freshness of evening and then the comparatively cold night of the steppes. The convicts wandered in groups about the yard, waiting to be locked in. The chief mass, it is true, were crowding into the kitchen. There some burning question of the hour was always being agitated; they argued about this and that, sometimes discussed some rumour, often absurd, though it aroused extraordinary interest in these men cut off from the outer world; a report came for instance that our major was being turned out. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know themselves that the story is ridiculous, that it has been brought by a notorious gossip, an “absurd person”—the convict Kvasov whom it had long been an accepted rule not to believe, and who could never open his mouth without telling a lie; yet every one pounced on his story, talked it over and discussed it, amusing themselves and ending by being angry with themselves and ashamed of themselves for having believed Kvasov.
“Why, who’s going to send him away?” shouted one. “No fear, his neck is thick, he can hold his own.”
“But there are others over him, surely!” protested another, an eager and intelligent fellow who had seen something of life, but was the most argumentative man in the world.
“One raven won’t pick out another’s eyes!” a third, a grey-headed old man who was finishing his soup in the corner in solitude, muttered sullenly as though to himself.
“I suppose his superior officers will come to ask you whether they’re to sack him?” a fourth added casually, strumming lightly on the balalaika.
“And why not?” answered the second furiously. “All the poor people could petition for it, you must all come forward if they begin questioning. To be sure, with us it’s all outcry, but when it comes to deeds we back out.”
“What would you have?” said the balalaika player. “That’s what prison’s for!”
“The other day,” the excited speaker went on, not heeding him, “there was some flour left. We scraped together what little there was and were sending it to be sold. But no, he heard of it; our foreman let him know; it was taken away; he wanted to make something out of it, to be sure. Was that fair now?”
“But who is it you want to complain to?”
“Who? Why, the inspector that’s coming.”
“What inspector?”
“That’s true, lads, that an inspector’s coming,” said a lively young fellow of some education who had been a clerk and was reading “The Duchess la Vallière,” or something of the kind. He was always merry and amusing, but he was respected for having a certain knowledge of life and of the world. Taking no notice of the general interest aroused by the news that an inspector was coming, he went straight up to one of the cooks and asked for some liver. Our cooks often used to sell such things. They would for instance buy a large piece of liver at their own expense, cook it, and sell it in small pieces to the convicts.
“One ha’p’orth or two ha’p’orths!” asked the cook.
“Cut me two ha’p’orths, let folks envy me,” answered the convict. “There’s a general, lads, a general coming from Petersburg; he’ll inspect all Siberia. That’s true. They said so at the commander’s.”
This news produced an extraordinary sensation. For a quarter of an hour there was a stream of questions: who was it, what general, what was his rank, was he superior to the generals here! Convicts are awfully fond of discussing rank, officials, which of them takes precedence, which can lord it over the other, and which has to give way; they even quarrel and dispute and almost fight over the generals. One wonders what difference it can make to them. But a minute knowledge of generals and the authorities altogether is the criterion of a man’s knowledge, discrimination and previous importance in the world. Talk about the higher authorities is generally considered the most refined and important conversation in prison.
“Then it turns out to be true, lads, that they are coming to sack the major,” observes Kvasov, a little red-faced man, excitable and remarkably muddle-headed. He had been the first to bring the news about the major.
“He’ll bribe them,” the grim, grey-headed convict, who had by now finished his soup, brought out jerkily.
“To be sure he will,” said another. “He’s grabbed money enough! He had a battalion before he came to us. The other day he was wanting to marry the head priest’s daughter.”
But he didn’t—they showed him the door, he was too poor. He’s not much of a match! When he gets up from a chair he takes all he’s got with him. He lost all his money gambling at Easter. Fedka said so.”
“Yes; the lad’s not one to spend, but he gets through cash no end.”
“Ah, brother, I was married too. It’s no use for a man to be married: when you are married the night’s too short,” remarked Skuratov, putting his word in.
“Oh, indeed! It was you we were talking about, of course,” observed the free-and-easy youth who had been a clerk. “But you are a silly fool, Kvasov, let me tell you. Do you suppose the major could bribe a general like that, and that such a general would come all the way from Petersburg to inspect the major? You are a fool, my lad, let me tell you.”
“Why, because he’s a general won’t he take it?” some one in the crowd observed sceptically.
“Of course he won’t, if he does, he’ll take a jolly big one.”
“To be sure, he will; to match his rank.”
“A general will always take bribes,” Kvasov observed with decision.
“You’ve tried it on, I suppose?” said Baklushin suddenly coming in and speaking contemptuously. “I don’t believe you’ve ever seen a general.”
“I have, though!”
“You are lying!”
“Lie yourself!”
“Lads, if he has seen one, let him tell us all directly what general he knows. Come, speak away—for I know all the generals.”
“I’ve seen General Ziebert,” Kvasov answered with strange hesitation.
“Ziebert? There isn’t such a general. He looked at your back, I suppose, your Ziebert, when he was a lieutenant-colonel maybe, and you fancied in your fright he was a general!”
“No, listen to me!” cried Skuratov, “for I am a married man. There really was such a general at Moscow, Ziebert, of German family, though he was a Russian. He used to confess to a Russian priest every year, at the fast of the Assumption, and he was always drinking water, lads, like a duck. Every day he’d drink forty glasses of Moscow river water. They said that he took it for some disease, his valet told me so himself.”
“He bred carp in his belly, I bet, with all that water,” observed the convict with the balalaika.
“Come, do shut up! We are talking business and they. . . . What is this inspector, brothers?” a fussy old convict, called Martinov, who had been a hussar, anxiously inquired.
“What nonsense people talk!” observed a sceptic. “Where do they get it from and how do they fit it in? And it’s all nonsense!”
“No, it’s not nonsense,” Kulikov, who had hitherto been majestically silent, observed dogmatically. He was a man of some consequence, about fifty, with an exceptionally prepossessing countenance and disdainfully dignified manners. He was aware of the fact, and was proud of it. He was a veterinary surgeon, partly of gipsy descent, who used to earn money by doctoring horses in the town, and sold vodka in prison. He was a clever fellow and had seen a good deal. He dropped his words as though he were bestowing roubles.
“That’s the truth, lads,” he went on calmly. “I heard it last week. There’s a general coming, a very important one, he’ll inspect the whole of Siberia. We all know he will be bribed too, but not by our old Eight-eyes; he wouldn’t dare to come near him. There are generals and generals, brothers. There are some of all sorts. Only I tell you our major will stay where he is, anyway. That’s a sure thing. We can’t speak, and none of the officers will speak against one of their own lot. The inspector will look into the prison and then he’ll go away and report that he found everything all right. . . .”
“That's right, lads, but the major's in a funk he's drunk from morning till night.”
“But in the evening he drives a different sort of cart. Fedka was saying so.”
“You'll never wash a black dog white. It's not the first time he's drunk, is it?”
“I say, what if the general really does nothing? It is high time they took notice of their goings on!” the convicts said to each other in excitement.
The news about the inspector was all over the prison in a moment; men wandered about the yard, impatiently, repeating the news to one another though some were purposely silent and maintained an indifferent air, evidently trying to increase their importance by so doing. Others remained genuinely unconcerned. Convicts with balalaikas were sitting on the barrack steps. Some went on gossiping. Others struck up songs, but all were in a state of great excitement that evening.Between nine and ten we were all counted over, driven into the barracks and looked up for the night. The nights were short, we were waked between four and five, and we were never all asleep before eleven. There was always noise and talking till that hour and sometimes, as in winter, there were card parties. It became insufferably hot and stifling in the night. Though there were wafts of the cool night air from the open window, the convicts tossed about on their beds all night as though in delirium. The fleas swarmed in myriads. There were fleas in the winter too, and in considerable numbers, but from the beginning of spring they swarmed in multitudes. Though I had been told of it before, I could not believe in the reality till I experienced it. And as the summer advanced, they grew more and more ferocious. It is true that one can get used to fleas; I have learnt this by experience; but still one has a bad time of it. They torment one so much that one lies at last as though in a fever, feeling that one is not asleep but in delirium. When at last, towards morning, the fleas desist, and as it were subside, and when one really drops into a sweet sleep in the cool of dawn, the pitiless tattoo of the drum booms out at the prison gate and the morning watch begins. Rolled up in your sheepskin you hear with a curse the loud distinct sounds, as it were counting them, while, through your sleep there creeps into your mind the insufferable thought that it will be the same to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and for years together, right on to the day of freedom. But when, one wonders, will that freedom be, and where is it? Meanwhile one must wake up; the daily movement and bustle begins . . . men dress and hurry out to work. It is true one can sleep for an hour at midday.
The story of the inspector was true. The rumour received more and more confirmation each day, and at last we all knew for a fact that an important general was coming from Petersburg to inspect the whole of Siberia, that he had already arrived, that he was by now at Tobolsk. Every day fresh reports reached the prison. News came too from the town. We heard that every one was frightened and fluttered, and trying to show things the best side up. It was said that the higher officers were preparing receptions, balls, festivities. The convicts were sent out in parties to level the road to the fortress, to remove hillocks, to paint the fences and posts, to repair the stucco, to whitewash; in fact they tried all in a minute to set right everything that had to be shown.
The convicts understood all this very well, and talked with more immense flights. They even prepared to make a complaint when the general should inquire whether they were satisfied. Meanwhile they quarrelled and abused each other.
The major was in great excitement. He used to visit the prison more frequently, he shouted at people, and fell upon them, sent prisoners to the guard-house more frequently and was more zealous about cleanliness and decency. It was just at that time, as luck would have it, that a little incident took place which did not however, as might have been expected, disturb the major at all, but on the contrary, gave him positive satisfaction. A convict stuck an awl into another’s chest, just over the heart.
The convict who committed this crime was called Lomov: the man who was wounded was called Gavrilka among us; he was an inveterate tramp. I don’t know if he had any other name; among us he was called Gavrilka.
Lomov had been a prosperous peasant from the K. district of T. province. All the Lomovs lived together in one family, the old father with his brother and three sons. They were well-to-do peasants. It was rumoured all over the province that they were worth as much as a hundred thousand roubles. They tilled the land, tanned skins, traded, but did more in the way of money-lending, sheltering tramps, receiving stolen goods, and such arts. Half the peasants in the district were in their debt and in bondage to them. They were reputed to be shrewd and crafty peasants, but at last they became puffed up with pride, especially when one important person in the district took to putting up at their house when he travelled, saw the old father and took to him for his quick-wittedness and practical ability. They began to think they could do what they liked, and ran greater and greater risks in illegal undertakings of all sorts. Every one was complaining of them, every one was wishing the earth would swallow them up; but they held their heads higher and higher. They cared nothing for police captains and excise officials. At last they came to grief and were ruined, but not for any wrong doing, not for their secret crimes, but for something of which they were not guilty. They had a big outlying farm some seven miles from the village. Once they had living there in the autumn six Kirghiz, who had worked for them as bondsmen under a contract for many years. One night all these Kirghiz labourers were murdered. An inquiry was made. It lasted a long while. Many other misdeeds were discovered in the course of the inquiry. The Lomovs were accused of murdering their labourers. They told the tale themselves, and every one in the prison knew about it; it was suspected that they owed a great deal to their labourers, and, as they were greedy and miserly in spite of their wealth, they had murdered the Kirghiz to escape paying them the arrears of their wages. During the trial and legal proceedings they lost all their property. The old father died. The sons were scattered. One of the sons and his uncle were sent to our prison for twelve years. And after all they were completely innocent as far as the death of the Kirghiz was concerned. There afterwards turned up in our prison a notorious rogue and tramp called Gavrilka, a brisk and lively fellow, who was responsible for the crime. I did not hear, however, whether he admitted it himself but the whole prison was convinced that he had a share in the murder. Gavrilka had had dealings with the Lomovs when he had been a tramp. He had come to the prison for a short term as a deserter from the army and a tramp. He had murdered the Kirghiz with the help of three other tramps; they had hoped to plunder the farm and carry off a lot of booty.
The Lomovs were not liked among us, why I don’t know. One of them, the nephew, was a fine fellow, clever and easy to get on with; but his uncle, who stuck the awl into Gavrilka, was a stupid and quarrelsome man. He had quarrelled with many of the prisoners before and had been often soundly beaten. Gavrilka every one liked for his cheerful and easy temper. Though the Lomovs knew that he was the criminal and that they were suffering for his crime, they did not quarrel with him, although they were never friendly with him; and he took no notice of them either. And suddenly a quarrel broke out between Gavrilka and the uncle Lomov over a most disgusting girl. Gavrilka began boasting of her favours; Lomov was jealous and one fine day he stabbed him with the awl.
Though the Lomovs had been ruined by their trial, yet they lived in comfort in prison. They evidently had money. They had a samovar, drank tea. Our major knew of it and hated the two Lomovs intensely. Every one could see that he was always finding fault with them and trying to get them into trouble. The Lomovs put this down to the major’s desire to get a bribe out of them. But they never offered him a bribe.
Of course, if Lomov had driven the awl a very little further in, he would have killed Gavrilka. But the assault ended in nothing worse than a scratch. It was reported to the major. I remember how he pranced in, out of breath, and obviously delighted. He treated Gavrilka with wonderful gentleness, quite as if he had been his own son.
“Well, my boy, can you walk to the hospital or not? No, you’d better drive. Get the horse out at once!” he shouted in excited haste to the sergeant.
“But I don’t feel anything, your honour. He only gave me a little prick, your honour.”
“You don’t know, you don’t know, my dear boy; we shall see. . . . It’s a dangerous place; it all depends on the place; he struck you just over the heart, the ruffian! And you, you,” he roared, addressing Lomov, “now I’ll make you smart! . . . To the guard-house!”
And he certainly did make him smart. Lomov was tried and, though the wound turned out to be the slightest of pricks, the intent was unmistakable. The criminal’s term of imprisonment was increased and he was given a thousand strokes. The major was thoroughly satisfied.
At last the inspector arrived. The day after he arrived in the town he visited our prison. It was on a holiday. For some days before everything in the prison had been scrubbed, polished, cleaned. The prisoners were freshly shaven. Their clothes were white and clean. In the summer the regulation dress for the prisoners was white linen jacket and trousers. Every one of them had a black circle about four inches in diameter sown on the back of their jackets. A whole hour was spent in drilling the convicts to answer properly if the great man should greet them. There were rehearsals. The major bustled about like one possessed. An hour before the general’s appearance the convicts were all standing in their places like posts with their arms held stiffly to their sides. At last, at one o’clock, the general arrived. He was a general of great consequence, of such consequence that I believe all official hearts must have throbbed all over Western Siberia at his arrival. He walked in sternly and majestically, followed by a great suite of the local authorities in attendance on him, several generals and colonels among them. There was one civilian, a tall and handsome gentleman in a swallowtail coat and low shoes, who had come from Petersburg too, and who behaved with extreme freedom and independence. The general frequently turned to him and with marked courtesy. This interested the convicts immensely—a civilian and treated with such esteem and by such a general, too! Later on they found out his surname and who he was, but there were numbers of theories. Our major, wearing a tight uniform with an orange-coloured collar, with his bloodshot eyes and crimson pimply face, did not, I fancy, make a particularly agreeable impression on the general. As a sign of special respect to the distinguished visitor, he had taken off his spectacles. He stood at a little distance, stiffly erect and his whole figure seemed feverishly anticipating the moment when he might be wanted to fly to carry out his excellency’s wishes. But he was not wanted. The general walked through the prison-ward in silence, he glanced into the kitchen; I believe he tried the soup. I was pointed out to him, they told him my story, and that I was of the educated class.
“Ah!” answered the general. “And how is he behaving himself now?”
“So far, satisfactorily, your excellency,” they answered him.
The general nodded, and two minutes later he went out of the prison. The convicts were, of course, dazzled and bewildered, but yet they remained in some perplexity. Complaints against the major were, of course, out of the question. And the major was perfectly certain of that beforehand.