The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
the prisoners for all who were of gentle birth was so great that every
one of them was evidently pleased to see that we were in danger. But a
fortunate incident terminated this scene, which must have become tragic.
Gazin was about to let fly the enormous box, which he was turning and
twisting above his head, when a convict ran in from the barracks, and
cried out:
“Gazin, they have stolen your vodka!”
The horrible brigand let fall the box with a frightful oath, and ran out
of the kitchen.
“Well, God has saved them,” said the prisoners among themselves,
repeating the words several times.
I never knew whether his vodka had been stolen, or whether it was only a
stratagem invented to save us.
That same evening, before the closing of the barracks, when it was
already dark, I walked to the side of the palisade. A heavy feeling of
sadness weighed upon my soul. During all the time that I passed in the
convict prison I never felt myself so miserable as on that evening,
though the first day is always the hardest, whether at hard labour or in
the prison. One thought in particular had left me no respite since my
deportation--a question insoluble then and insoluble now. I reflected on
the inequality of the punishments inflicted for the same crimes. Often,
indeed, one crime cannot be compared even approximately to another. Two
murderers kill a man under circumstances which in each case are minutely
examined and weighed. They each receive the same punishment; and yet by
what an abyss are their two actions separated! One has committed a
murder for a trifle--for an onion. He has killed on the high-road a
peasant who was passing, and found on him an onion, and nothing else.
“Well, I was sent to hard labour for a peasant who had nothing but an
onion!”
“Fool that you are! an onion is worth a kopeck. If you had killed a
hundred peasants you would have had a hundred kopecks, or one rouble.”
The above is a prison joke.
Another criminal has killed a debauchee who was oppressing or
dishonouring his wife, his sister, or his daughter.
A third, a vagabond, half dead with hunger, pursued by a whole band of
police, was defending his liberty, his life. He is to be regarded as on
an equality with the brigand who assassinates children for his
amusement, for the pleasure of feeling their warm blood flow over his
hands, of seeing them shudder in a last bird-like palpitation beneath
the knife which tears their flesh!
They will all alike be sent to hard labour; though the sentence will
perhaps not be for the same number of years. But the variations in the
punishment are not very numerous, whereas different kinds of crimes may
be reckoned by thousands. As many characters, so many crimes.
Let us admit that it is impossible to get rid of this first inequality
in punishment, that the problem is insoluble, and that in connection
with penal matters it is the squaring of the circle. Let all that be
admitted; but even if this inequality cannot be avoided, there is
another thing to be thought of--the consequences of the punishment. Here
is a man who is wasting away like a candle; there is another one, on the
contrary, who had no idea before going into exile that there could be
such a gay, such an idle life, where he would find a circle of such
agreeable friends. Individuals of this latter class are to be found in
the convict prison.
Now take a man of heart, of cultivated mind, and of delicate conscience.
What he feels kills him more certainly than the material punishment. The
judgment which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than
that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives by
the side of another convict, who has not once reflected on the murder he
is expiating, during the whole time of his sojourn in the convict
prison. He, perhaps, even considers himself innocent. Are there not,
also, poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour,
and thus to escape the liberty which is much more painful than
confinement? A man’s life is miserable, he has never, perhaps, been able
to satisfy his hunger. He is worked to death in order to enrich his
master. In the convict prison his work will be less severe, less
crushing. He will eat as much as he wants, better than he could ever
have hoped to eat, had he remained free. On holidays he will have meat,
and fine people will give him alms, and his evening’s work will bring
him in some money. And the society one meets with in the convict prison,
is that to be counted for nothing? The convicts are clever, wide-awake
people, who are up to everything. The new arrival can scarcely conceal
the admiration he feels for his companions in labour. He has seen
nothing like it before, and he will consider himself in the best
company possible.
Is it possible that men so differently situated can feel in an equal
degree the punishment inflicted? But why think about questions that are
insoluble? The drum beats, let us go back to barracks.
CHAPTER V.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS (_continued_)
We were between walls once more. The doors of the barracks were locked,
each with a particular padlock, and the prisoners remained shut up till
the next morning.
The verification was made by a non-commissioned officer accompanied by
two soldiers. When by chance an officer was present, the convicts were
drawn up in the court-yard, but generally speaking they were identified
in the buildings. As the soldiers often made mistakes, they went out and
came back in order to count us again and again, until their reckoning
was satisfactory, then the barracks were closed. Each one contained
about thirty prisoners, and we were very closely packed in our camp
bedsteads. As it was too soon to go to sleep, the convicts occupied
themselves with work.
Besides the old soldier of whom I have spoken, who slept in our
dormitory, and represented there the administration of the prison, there
was in our barrack another old soldier wearing a medal as rewarded for
good conduct. It happened often enough, however, that the good-conduct
men themselves committed offences for which they were sentenced to be
whipped. They then lost their rank, and were immediately replaced by
comrades whose conduct was considered satisfactory.
Our good-conduct man was no other than Akim Akimitch. To my great
astonishment, he was very rough with the prisoners, but they only
replied by jokes. The other old soldier, more prudent, interfered with
no one, and if he opened his mouth, it was only as a matter of form, as
an affair of duty. For the most part he remained silent, seated on his
little bedstead, occupied in mending his own boots.
That day I could not help making to myself an observation, the accuracy
of which became afterwards apparent: that all those who are not convicts
and who have to deal with them, whoever they may be--beginning with the
soldiers of the escort and the sentinels--look upon the convicts in a
false and exaggerated light, expecting that for a yes or a no, these men
will throw themselves upon them knife in hand. The prisoners, perfectly
conscious of the fear they inspire, show a certain arrogance.
Accordingly, the best prison director is the one who experiences no
emotion in their presence. In spite of the airs they give themselves,
the convicts prefer that confidence should be placed in them. By such
means, indeed, they may be conciliated. I have more than once had
occasion to notice their astonishment at an official entering their
prison without an escort, and certainly their astonishment was not
unflattering. A visitor who is intrepid imposes respect. If anything
unfortunate happens, it will not be in his presence. The terror inspired
by the convicts is general, and yet I saw no foundation for it. Is it
the appearance of the prisoner, his brigand-like look, that causes a
certain repugnance? Is it not rather the feeling that invades you
directly you enter the prison, that in spite of all efforts, all
precautions, it is impossible to turn a living man into a corpse, to
stifle his feelings, his thirst for vengeance and for life, his
passions, and his imperious desire to satisfy them? However that may be,
I declare that there is no reason for fearing the convicts. A man does
not throw himself so quickly nor so easily upon his fellow-man, knife in
hand. Few accidents happen; sometimes they are so rare that the danger
may be looked upon as non-existent.
I speak, it must be understood, only of prisoners already condemned,
who are undergoing their punishment, and some of whom are almost happy
to find themselves in the convict prison; so attractive under all
circumstances is a new form of life. These latter live quiet and
contented. As for the turbulent ones, the convicts themselves keep them
in restraint, and their arrogance never goes too far. The prisoner,
audacious and reckless as he may be, is afraid of every official
connected with the prison. It is by no means the same with the accused
whose fate has not been decided. Such a one is quite capable of
attacking, no matter whom, without any motive of hatred, and solely
because he is to be whipped the next day. If, indeed, he commits a fresh
crime his offence becomes complicated. Punishment is delayed, and he
gains time. The act of aggression is explained; it has a cause, an
object. The convict wishes at all hazards to change his fate, and that
as soon as possible. In connection with this, I myself have witnessed a
physiological fact of the strangest kind.
In the section of military convicts was an old soldier who had been
condemned to two years’ hard labour, a great boaster, and at the same
time a coward. Generally speaking, the Russian soldier does not boast.
He has no time for doing so, even had he the inclination. When such a
one appears among a multitude of others, he is always a coward and a
rogue. Dutoff--that was the name of the prisoner of whom I am
speaking--underwent his punishment, and then went back to the same
battalion in the Line; but, like all who are sent to the convict prison
to be corrected, he had been thoroughly corrupted. A “return horse”
re-appears in the convict prison after two or three weeks’ liberty, not
for a comparatively short time, but for fifteen or twenty years. So it
happened in the case of Dutoff. Three weeks after he had been set at
liberty, he robbed one of his comrades, and was, moreover, mutinous. He
was taken before a court-martial and sentenced to a severe form of
corporal punishment. Horribly frightened, like the coward that he was,
at the prospect of punishment, he threw himself, knife in hand, on to
the officer of the guard, as he entered his dungeon on the eve of the
day that he was to run the gauntlet through the men of his company. He
quite understood that he was aggravating his offence, and that the
duration of his punishment would be increased; but all he wanted was to
postpone for some days, or at least for some hours, a terrible moment.
He was such a coward that he did not even wound the officer whom he had
attacked. He had, indeed, only committed this assault in order to add a
new crime to the last already against him, and thus defer the sentence.
The moment preceding the punishment is terrible for the man condemned to
the rods. I have seen many of them on the eve of the fatal day. I
generally met with them in the hospital when I was ill, which happened
often enough. In Russia the people who show most compassion for the
convicts are certainly the doctors, who never make between the prisoners
the distinctions observed by other persons brought into direct relations
with them. In this respect the common people can alone be compared with
the doctors, for they never reproach a criminal with the crime that he