The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
more intelligent and skilful than he, assumed the right of swearing at
me if I went near him, under pretext that I interfered with him in his
work. At last one of the best of them said to me frankly, but coarsely:
“What do you want here? Be off with you! Why do you come when no one
calls you?”
“That is it,” added another.
“You would do better to take a pitcher,” said a third, “and carry water
to the house that is being built, or go to the tobacco factory. You are
no good here.”
I was obliged to keep apart. To remain idle while others were working
seemed a shame; but when I went to the other end of the barque I was
insulted anew.
“What men we have to work!” was the cry. “What can be done with fellows
of this kind?”
All this was said spitefully. They were pleased to have the opportunity
of laughing at a gentleman.
It will now be understood that my first thought on entering the convict
prison was to ask myself how I should ever get on with such people. I
foresaw that such incidents would often be repeated; but I resolved not
to change my conduct in any way, whatever might be the result. I had
decided to live simply and intelligently, without manifesting the least
desire to approach my companions; but also without repelling them, if
they themselves desired to approach me; in no way to fear their threats
or their hatred; and to pretend as much as possible not to be affected
by them. Such was my plan. I saw from the first that they would despise
me, if I adopted any other course.
When I returned in the evening to the convict prison, having finished my
afternoon’s work, fatigued and harassed, a deep sadness took possession
of me. “How many thousands of days have I to pass like this one?” Always
the same thought. I walked about alone and meditated as night fell,
when, suddenly, near the palisade behind the barracks, I saw my friend,
Bull, who ran towards me.
Bull was the dog of the prison; for the prison has its dog as companies
of infantry, batteries of artillery, and squadrons of cavalry have
theirs. He had been there for a long time, belonged to no one, looked
upon every one as his master, and lived on the remains from the kitchen.
He was a good-sized black dog, spotted with white, not very old, with
intelligent eyes, and a bushy tail. No one caressed him or paid the
least attention to him. As soon as I arrived I made friends with him by
giving him a piece of bread. When I patted him on the back he remained
motionless, looked at me with a pleased expression, and gently wagged
his tail.
That evening, not having seen me the whole day--me, the first person who
in so many years had thought of caressing him--he ran towards me,
leaping and barking. It had such an effect on me that I could not help
embracing him. I placed his head against my body. He placed his paws on
my shoulders and looked me in the face.
“Here is a friend sent to me by destiny,” I said to myself, and during
the first weeks, so full of pain, every time that I came back from work
I hastened, before doing anything else, to go to the back of the
barracks with Bull, who leaped with joy before me. I took his head in my
hands and kissed it. At the same time a troubled, bitter feeling pressed
my heart. I well remember thinking--and taking pleasure in the
thought--that this was my one, my only friend in the world--my faithful
dog, Bull.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW ACQUAINTANCES--PETROFF
Time went on, and little by little I accustomed myself to my new life.
The scenes I had daily before me no longer afflicted me so much. In a
word, the convict prison, its inhabitants, and its manners, left me
indifferent. To get reconciled to this life was impossible, but I had to
accept it as an inevitable fact. I had driven entirely away from me all
the anxiety by which I had at first been troubled. I no longer wandered
through the convict prison like a lost soul, and no longer allowed
myself to be subjugated by my anxiety. The wild curiosity of the
convicts had had its edge taken off, and I was no longer looked upon
with that affectation or insolence previously displayed. They had become
indifferent to me, and I was very glad of it. I began to feel at home in
the barracks. I knew where to go and sleep at night; gradually I became
accustomed to things the very idea of which would formerly have been
repugnant to me. I went every week regularly to have my head shaved. We
were called every Saturday one after another to the guard-house. The
regimental barbers lathered our skulls with cold water and soap, and
scraped us afterwards with their saw-like razors.
Merely the thought of this torture gives me a shudder. I soon found a
remedy for it--Akim Akimitch pointed it out to me--a prisoner in the
military section who for one kopeck shaved those who paid for it with
his own razor. This was his trade. Many of the prisoners were his
customers merely to avoid the military barbers, yet these were not men
of weak nerves. Our barber was called the “major,” why, I cannot say. As
far as I know he possessed no points of resemblance with any major. As I
write these lines I see clearly before me the “major” and his thin face.
He was a tall fellow, silent, rather stupid, absorbed entirely by his
business; he was never to be seen without a strop in his hand, on which
day and night he sharpened a razor, which was always in admirable
condition. He had certainly made this work the supreme object of his
life; he was really happy when his razor was quite sharp and his
services were in request; his soap was always warm, and he had a very
light hand--a hand of velvet. He was proud of his skill, and used to
take with a careless air the kopeck he received; one might have thought
that he worked from love of his art, and not in order to gain money.
A----f was soundly corrected by our real Major one day, because he had
the misfortune to say the “major” when he was speaking of the barber who
shaved him. The real Major was in a violent rage.
“Blackguard,” he cried, “do you know what a major is?” and according to
his habit he shook A----f violently. “The idea of calling a scoundrel of
a convict a ‘major’ in my presence.”
From the first day of my imprisonment I began to dream of my liberation.
My favourite occupation was to count thousands and thousands of times in
a thousand different manners the number of days that I should have to
pass in prison. I thought of that only, and every one deprived of his
liberty for a fixed time does the same; of that I am certain. I cannot
say that all the convicts had the same degree of hopefulness, but their
sanguine character often astonished me. The hopefulness of a prisoner
differs essentially from that of a free man. The latter may desire an
amelioration in his position, or a realisation of some enterprise which
he has undertaken, but meanwhile he lives, he acts; he is swept away in
the whirlwind of real life. Nothing of the kind takes place in the case
of the convict for life. He lives also in a way, but not being condemned
to a fixed number of years, he takes a vaguer view of his situation than
the one who is imprisoned for a definite term. The man condemned for a
comparatively short period feels that he is not at home; he looks upon
himself, so to say, as on a visit; he regards the twenty years of his
punishment as two years at most; he is sure that at fifty, when he has
finished his sentence, he will be as young and as lively as at
thirty-five. “We have time before us,” he thinks, and he strives
obstinately to dispel discouraging thoughts. Even a man sentenced for
life thinks that some day an order may arrive from St.
Petersburg--“Transport such a one to the mines at Nertchinsk and fix a
term for his detention.” It would be famous, first because it takes six
months to get to Nertchinsk, and the life on the road is a hundred times
preferable to the convict prison. He would finish his time at
Nertchinsk, and then--more than one gray-haired old man speculates in
this way.
At Tobolsk I have seen men fastened to the wall by a chain about two
yards long; by their side they have their bed. They are thus chained for
some terrible crime committed after their transportation to Siberia;
they are kept chained up for five, ten years. They are nearly all
brigands, and I only saw one of them who looked like a man of good
breeding; he had been in some branch of the Civil Service, and spoke in
a soft, lisping way; his smile was sweet but sickly; he showed us his
chain, and pointed out to us the most convenient way of lying down. He
must have been a nice person! All these poor wretches are perfectly
well-behaved; they all seem satisfied, and yet their desire to finish
their period of chains devours them. Why? it will be asked. Because then
they will leave their low, damp, stifling cells for the court-yard of
the convict prison, that is all. These last places of confinement they
will never leave; they know that those who have once been chained up
will never be liberated, and they will die in irons. They know all this,
and yet they are very anxious to be no longer chained up. Without this
hope could they remain five or six years fastened to a wall, and not die
or go mad?
I soon understood that work alone could save me, by fortifying my health
and my body, whereas incessant restlessness of mind, nervous irritation,
and the close air of the barracks would ruin them completely. I should
go out vigorous and full of elasticity. I did not deceive myself, work
and movement were very useful to me.
I saw one of my comrades, to my terror, melt away like a piece of wax;
and yet, when he was with me in the convict prison, he was young,
handsome, and vigorous; when he left his health was ruined, and his legs
could no longer support him. His chest, too, was oppressed by asthma.
“No,” I said to myself, as I gazed upon him; “I wish to live, and I will
live.”
My love for work exposed me in the first place to the contempt and
bitter laughter of my comrades; but I paid no attention to them, and
went away with a light heart wherever I was sent. Sometimes, for
instance, to break and pound alabaster. This work, the first that was
given to me, is easy. The engineers did their utmost to lighten the
task-work of all the gentlemen; this was not indulgence, but simple
justice. Would it not have been strange to require the same work from a
labourer as from a man whose strength was less by half, and who had
never worked with his hands? But we were not “spoilt” in this way for
ever, and we were only spared in secret, for we were severely watched.
As real severe work was by no means rare, it often happened that the
task given to us was beyond the strength of the gentlemen, who thus
suffered twice as much as their comrades.
Generally three or four men were sent to pound the alabaster, and
nearly always old men or feeble ones were chosen. We were of the latter
class. A man skilled in this particular kind of work was sent with us.
For several years it was always the same man, Almazoff by name. He was
severe, already in years, sunburnt, and very thin, by no means
communicative, moreover, and difficult to get on with. He despised us
profoundly; but he was of such a reserved disposition that he never
broke it sufficient to call us names. The shed in which we calcined the
alabaster was built on a sloping and deserted bank of the river. In
winter, on a foggy day, the view was sad, both on the river and on the
opposite shore, even to a great distance. There was something
heartrending in this dull, naked landscape, but it was still sadder when
a brilliant sun shone above the boundless white plain. How one would
have liked to fly away beyond this steppe, which began on the opposite
shore and stretched out for fifteen hundred versts to the south like an