The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
immense table-cloth.
Almazoff went to work silently, with a disagreeable air. We were ashamed
not to be able to help him more effectually, but he managed to do his
work without our assistance, and seemed to wish to make us understand
that we were acting unjustly towards him, and that we ought to repent
our uselessness. Our work consisted in heating the oven in order to
calcine the alabaster that we had got together in a heap.
The day following, when the alabaster was entirely calcined, we turned
it out. Each one filled a box of alabaster, which he afterwards crushed.
This work was not disagreeable. The fragile alabaster soon became a
white, brilliant dust. We brandished our heavy hammers, and dealt such
formidable blows, that we admired our own strength. When we were tired
we felt lighter, our cheeks were red, the blood circulated more rapidly
in our veins. Almazoff would then look at us in a condescending manner,
as he would have looked at little children. He smoked his pipe with an
indulgent air, unable, however, to prevent himself from grumbling. When
he opened his mouth he was never otherwise, and he was the same with
every one. At bottom I believe he was a kind man.
They gave me another kind of labour, which consisted in working the
turning wheel. This wheel was high and heavy, and great efforts were
necessary to make it go round, above all when the workmen from the
workshop of the engineers used to make the balustrade of a staircase or
the foot of a large table, which required almost the whole trunk. No one
man could have done the work alone. To two convicts, B---- (formerly
gentleman) and myself, this work was given nearly always for several
years, whenever there was anything to turn. B---- was weak, even still
young, and somewhat sympathetic. He had been sent to prison a year
before me, with two companions who were also of noble birth. One of
them, an old man, used to pray day and night. The prisoners respected
him greatly for it. He died in prison. The other one was quite a young
man, fresh-coloured, strong, and courageous. He had carried his
companion B---- for several hundred versts, seeing that at the end of
the first half-stage he had fallen down from fatigue. Their friendship
for one another was something to see.
B---- was a perfectly well-bred man, of noble and generous disposition,
but spoiled and irritated by illness. We used to turn the wheel well
together, and the work interested us. As for me, I found the exercise
most salutary.
I was very--too--fond of shovelling away the snow, which we generally
did after the hurricanes, so frequent in the winter. When the hurricane
had been raging for an entire day, more than one house would be buried
up to the windows, even if it was not covered over entirely. The
hurricane ceased, the sun reappeared, and we were ordered to disengage
the houses, barricaded as they were by heaps of snow.
We were sent in large bands, sometimes the whole of the convicts
together. Each of us received a shovel and had an appointed task to do,
which it sometimes seemed impossible to get through. But we all went to
work with a good-will. The light dust-like snow had not yet congealed,
and was frozen only on the surface. We removed it in enormous
shovelfuls, which were dispersed around us. In the air the snow-dust was
as brilliant as diamonds. The shovel sank easily into the white
glittering mass. The convicts did this work almost always with gaiety,
the cold winter air and the exercise animated them. Every one felt
himself in better spirits, laughter and jokes were heard, snowballs were
exchanged, which after a time excited the indignation of the
serious-minded convicts, who liked neither laughter nor gaiety.
Accordingly these scenes finished almost always in showers of insults.
Little by little the circle of my acquaintances increased, although I
never thought of making new ones. I was always restless, morose, and
mistrustful. Acquaintances, however, were made involuntarily. The first
who came to visit me was the convict Petroff. I say visit, and I retain
the word, for he lived in the special division which was at the farthest
end of the barracks from mine. It seemed as if no relations could exist
between him and me, for we had nothing in common.
Nevertheless, during the first period of my stay, Petroff thought it his
duty to come towards me nearly every day, or at least to stop me when,
after work, I went for a stroll at the back of the barracks as far as
possible from observation. His persistence was disagreeable to me; but
he managed so well that his visits became at last a pleasing diversion,
although he was by no means of a communicative disposition. He was
short, strongly built, agile, and skilful. He had rather an agreeable
voice, and high cheek-bones, a bold look, and white, regular teeth. He
had always a quid of tobacco in his mouth between the lower lip and the
gums. Many of the convicts had the habit of chewing. He seemed to me
younger than he really was, for he did not appear to be more than
thirty, and he was really forty. He spoke to me without any ceremony,
and behaved to me on a footing of equality with civility and attention.
If, for instance, he saw that I wished to be alone, he would talk to me
for about two minutes and then go away. He thanked me, moreover, each
time for my kindness in conversing with him, which he never did to any
one else. I must add that his relations underwent no change not only
during the first period of my story, but for several years, and that
they never became more intimate, although he was really my friend. I
never could say exactly what he looked for in my society, nor why he
came every day to see me. He robbed me sometimes, but almost
involuntarily. He never came to me to borrow money; so that what
attracted him was not personal interest.
It seemed to me, I know not why, that this man did not live in the same
prison with me, but in another house in the town, far away. It appeared
as though he had come to the convict prison by chance in order to pick
up news, to inquire for me, in short, to see how I was getting on. He
was always in a hurry, as though he had left some one for a moment who
was waiting for him, or as if he had given up for a time some matter of
business. And yet he never hurried himself. His look was strongly fixed,
with a slight air of levity and irony. He had a habit of looking into
the distance above the objects near him, as though he were endeavouring
to distinguish something behind the person to whom he was talking. He
always seemed absent-minded. I sometimes asked myself where he went when
he left me, where could Petroff be so anxiously expected? He would
simply go with a light step to one of the barracks or to the kitchen,
and sit down to hear the conversation. He listened attentively, and
joined in with animation; after which he would suddenly become silent.
But whether he spoke or kept silent, one could always see on his
countenance that he had business somewhere else, and that some one was
waiting for him in the town, not very far away. The most astonishing
thing was that he never had any business--apart, of course, from the
hard labour assigned to him. He knew no trade, and had scarcely ever any
money. But that did not seem to grieve him. Why did he speak to me? His
conversation was as strange as he himself was singular. When he noticed
that I was walking alone at the back of the barracks he made a stand,
and turned towards me. He walked very fast, and when I turned he was
suddenly on his heel. He approached me walking, but so quickly that he
seemed to be going at a run.
“Good-morning.”
“Good-morning.”
“I am not disturbing you?”
“No.”
“I wish to ask you something about Napoleon. I wanted to ask you if he
is not a relation of the one who came to us in the year 1812.”
Petroff was a soldier’s son, and knew how to read and write.
“Of course he is.”
“People say he is President. What President--and of what?”
His questions were always rapid and abrupt, as though he wished to know
as soon as possible what he asked. I explained to him of what Napoleon
was President, and I added that perhaps he would become Emperor.
“How will that be?”
I explained it to him as well as I could; Petroff listened with
attention. He understood perfectly all I told him, and added, as he
leant his ear towards me:
“Hem! Ah, I wished to ask you, Alexander Petrovitch, if there are really
monkeys who have hands instead of feet, and are as tall as a man?”
“Yes.”
“What are they like?”
I described them to him, and told him what I knew on the subject.
“And where do they live?”
“In warm climates. There are some to be found in the island of
Sumatra.”
“Is that in America? I have heard that people there walk with their
heads downwards.”
“No, no; you are thinking of the Antipodes.” I explained to him as well
as I could what America was, and what the Antipodes. He listened to me
as attentively as if the question of the Antipodes had alone caused him
to approach me.
“Ah, ah! I read last year the story of the Countess de la Vallière.
Arevieff had bought this book from the Adjutant. Is it true or is it an
invention? The work is by Dumas.”
“It is an invention, no doubt.”
“Ah, indeed. Good-bye. I am much obliged to you.”
And Petroff disappeared. The above may be taken as a specimen of our
ordinary conversation.
I made inquiries about him. M---- thought he had better speak to me on
the subject, when he learnt what an acquaintance I had made. He told me
that many convicts had excited his horror on their arrival; but not one
of them, not even Gazin, had produced upon him such a frightful
impression as this Petroff.
“He is the most resolute, most to be feared of all the convicts,” said
M----. “He is capable of anything, nothing stops him if he has a
caprice. He will assassinate you, if the fancy takes him, without
hesitation and without the least remorse. I often think he is not in his
right senses.”
This declaration interested me extremely; but M---- was never able to
tell me why he had such an opinion of Petroff. Strangely enough, for
many years together I saw this man and talked with him nearly every day.
He was always my sincere friend, though I could not at the time tell
why, and during the whole time he lived very quietly, and did nothing
extreme. I am moreover convinced that M---- was right, and that he was
perhaps a most intrepid man and the most difficult to restrain in the
whole prison. And why so, I can scarcely explain.
This Petroff was that very convict who, when he was called up to receive
his punishment, had wished to kill the Major. I have told you the latter
was saved by a miracle--that he had gone away one minute before the
punishment was inflicted.
Once when he was still a soldier--before his arrival at the convict
prison--his Colonel had struck him on parade. Probably he had often been
beaten before, but that day he was not in a humour to bear an insult, in
open day, before the battalion drawn up in line. He killed his Colonel.
I don’t know all the details of the story, for he never told it to me
himself. It must be understood that these explosions only took place
when the nature within him spoke too loudly, and these occasions were
rare; as a rule he was serious and even quiet. His strong, ardent
passions were not burnt out, but smouldering, like burning coals beneath
ashes.
I never noticed that he was vain, or given to bragging like so many
other convicts. He hardly ever quarrelled, but he was on friendly
relations with scarcely any one, except, perhaps, Sirotkin, and then
only when he had need of him. I saw him, however, one day seriously
irritated. Some one had offended him by refusing him something he