The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
ourselves, had there been any place to do it. When things were at the
worst they brought in another. This one affected me very powerfully.
In the first year, or, to be more exact, during the first month of my
exile, I went to work with a gang of kiln men to the tileries situate at
two versts from our prison. We were set to repairing the kiln in which
the bricks were baked in summer. That morning, in which M--tski and B.
made me acquainted with the non-commissioned officer, superintendent of
the works. This was a Pole already well on in life, sixty years old at
least, of high stature, lean, of decent and even somewhat imposing
exterior. He had been a long time in service in Siberia, and although he
belonged to the lower orders he had been a soldier, and in the rising of
1830--M--tski and B. loved and esteemed him. He was always reading the
Vulgate. I spoke to him; his talk was agreeable and intelligent; he told
a story in a most interesting way; he was straightforward and of
excellent temper. For two years I never saw him again, all I heard was
that he had become a “case,” and that they were inquiring into it; and
then one fine day they brought him into our room; he had gone quite mad.
He came in yelling, uttering shouts of laughter, and began to dance in
the middle of the room with indecent gestures which recalled the dance
known as Kamarinskaïa.
The convicts were wild with enthusiasm; but, for my part, account for it
as you will, I felt utterly miserable. Three days after, we were all of
us upset with it; he got into violent disputes with everybody, fought,
groaned, sang in the dead of the night; his aberrations were so
inordinate and disgusting as to bring our very stomachs up.
He feared nobody. They put the strait-waistcoat on him; but we were no
whit better off for it, for he went on quarreling and fighting all
round. At the end of three weeks, the room put up an unanimous entreaty
to the head doctor that he might be removed to the other apartment
reserved for the convicts. But after two days, at the request of the
sick people in that other room, they brought him back to our infirmary.
As we had two madmen there at once, both rooms kept sending them back
and forward, and ended by taking one or the other of the two lunatics,
turn and turn about. Everybody breathed more freely when they took them
away from us, a good way off, somewhere or other.
There was another lunatic whom I remember--a very remarkable creature.
They had brought in, during the summer, a man under sentence, who
looked like a solid and vigorous fellow enough, of about forty-five
years. His face was sombre and sad, pitted with small-pox, with little
red and swollen eyes. He sat down by my side. He was extremely quiet;
spoke to nobody, and seemed utterly absorbed in his own deep
reflections.
Night fell; then he addressed me, and, without a word of preface, told
me in a hurried and excited way--as if it were a mighty secret he were
confiding--that he was to have two thousand strokes with the rod; but
that he had nothing to fear, as the daughter of Colonel G---- was taking
steps on his behalf.
I looked at him with surprise, and observed that, as I saw the affair,
the daughter of a Colonel could be of little use in such a case. I had
not yet guessed what sort of person I had to do with, for they had
brought him to the hospital as a bodily sick person, not mentally. I
then asked him what illness he was suffering from.
He answered that he knew nothing about it; that he had been sent among
us for something or other; but that he was in good health, and that the
Colonel’s daughter had fallen in love with him. Two weeks before she had
passed in a carriage before the guard-house, where he was looking
through the barred window, and she had gone head over ears in love at
the mere sight of him.
After that important moment she had come three times to the guard-house
on different pretexts. The first time with her father, ostensibly to
visit her brother, who was the officer on service; the second with her
mother, to distribute alms to the prisoners. As she passed in front of
him she had muttered that she loved him and would get him out of prison.
He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it
pure figment of his poor disordered head. He believed devoutly and
implicitly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke
very calmly, and with all assurance of the passionate love he had
inspired in this young lady.
This odd and romantic delusion about the love of quite a young girl of
good breeding, for a man nearly fifty years and afflicted with a face so
disfigured and gloomy, simply showed the fearful effect produced by the
fear of the punishment he was to have, upon the poor, timid creature.
It may be that he had really seen some one through the bars of the
window, and the insanity, germinating under excess of fear, had found
shape and form in the delusion in question.
This unfortunate soldier, who, it may be warranted, had never given a
thought to young ladies, had got this romance into his diseased fancy,
and clung convulsively to this wild hope. I heard him in silence, and
then told the story to the other convicts. When these questioned him in
their natural curiosity, he preserved a chastely discreet silence.
Next day the doctor examined him. As the madman averred that he was not
ill, he was put down on the list as qualified to be sent out. We learned
that the physician had scribbled “_Sanat. est_” on the page, when it was
quite too late to give him warning. Besides, we were ourselves not by
any means sure what was really the matter with the man.
The error was with the authorities who had sent him to us, without
specifying for what reason it was thought necessary to have him come
into the hospital--which was unpardonable negligence.
However, two days later the unhappy creature was taken out to be
scourged. We understood that he was dumbfounded by finding, contrary to
his fixed expectation, that he really was to have the punishment. To the
last moment he thought he would be pardoned, and when conducted to the
front of the battalion, he began to cry for help.
As there was no room or bedding-place now in our apartment they sent him
to the infirmary. I heard that for eight entire days he did not utter a
single word, and remained in stupid and misery-stricken mental
confusion. When his back was cured they took him off. I never heard a
single further word about him.
As to the treatment of the sick and the remedies prescribed, those who
were but slightly indisposed paid no attention whatever to the
directions of the doctors, and never took their medicines; while,
speaking generally, those really ill were very careful in following the
doctor’s orders; they took their mixtures and powders; they took all the
possible care they could of themselves; but they preferred external to
internal remedies.
Cupping-glasses, leeches, cataplasms, blood-lettings--in all which
things the populace has so blind a confidence--were held in high honour
in our hospital. Inflictions of that sort were regarded with
satisfaction.
There was one thing quite strange, and to me interesting. Fellows, who
stood without a murmur the frightful tortures caused by the rods and
scourges, howled, and grinned, and moaned for the least little ailment.
Whether it was all pretence or not, I really cannot say.
We had cuppings of a quite peculiar kind. The machine with which
instantaneous incisions in the skin are produced, was all out of order,
so they had to use the lancet.
For a cupping, twelve incisions are necessary; with a machine these are
not painful at all, for it makes them instantaneously; with the lancet
it is a different affair altogether--that cuts slowly, and makes the
patient suffer. If you have to make ten openings there will be about one
hundred and twenty pricks, and these very painful. I had to undergo it
myself; besides the pain itself, it caused great nervous irritation; but
the suffering was not so great that one could not contain himself from
groaning if he tried.
It was laughable to see great, hulking fellows wriggling and howling.
One couldn’t help comparing them to some men, firm and calm enough in
really serious circumstances, but all ill-temper or caprice in the bosom
of their families for nothing at all; if dinner is late or the like,
then they’ll scold and swear; everything puts them out; they go wrong
with everybody; the more comfortable they really are, the more
troublesome are they to other people. Characters of this sort, common
enough among the lower orders, were but too numerous in our prison, by
reason of our company being forced on one another.
Sometimes the prisoners chaffed or insulted the thin-skins I speak of,
and then they would leave off complaining directly; as if they only
wanted to be insulted to make them hold their tongues.
Oustiantsef was no friend of grimacings of this kind, and never let slip
an opportunity of bringing that sort of delinquent to his bearings.
Besides, he was fond of scolding; it was a sort of necessity with him,
engendered by illness and also his stupidity. He would first fix his
gaze upon you for some time, and then treat you to a long speech of
threatening and warning, and a tone of calm and impartial conviction. It
looked as though he thought his function in this world was to watch over
order and morality in general.
“He must poke his nose into everything,” the prisoners with a laugh used
to say; for they pitied, and did what they could to avoid conflicts with
him.
“Has he chattered enough? Three waggons wouldn’t be too much to carry
away all his talk.”
“Why need you put your oar in? One is not going to put himself about for
a mere idiot. What’s there to cry out about at a mere touch of a
lancet?”
“What harm in the world do you fancy _that_ is going to do you?”
“No, comrades,” a prisoner strikes in, “the cuppings are a mere nothing.
I know the taste of them. But the most horrid thing is when they pull
your ears for a long time together. That just shuts you up.”
All the prisoners burst out laughing.
“Have you had them pulled?”
“By Jove, yes, I should think he had.”
“That’s why they stick upright, like hop-poles.”
This convict, Chapkin by name, really had long and quite erect ears. He
had long led a vagabond life, was still quite young, intelligent, and
quiet, and used to talk with a dry sort of humour with much seriousness
on the surface, which made his stories very comical.
“How in the world was I to know you had had your ears pulled and
lengthened, brainless idiot?” began Oustiantsef, once more wrathfully
addressing Chapkin, who, however, vouchsafed no attention to his
companion’s obliging apostrophe.
“Well, who did pull your ears for you?” some one asked.
“Why, the police superintendent, by Jove, comrades! Our offence was
wandering about without fixed place of abode. We had just got into
K----, I and another tramp, Eptinie; he had no family name, that fellow.
On the way we had fixed ourselves up a little in the hamlet of Tolmina;
yes, there is a hamlet that’s got just that name--Tolmina. Well, we get
to the town, and are just looking about us a little to see if there’s a
good stroke of tramp-business to do, after which we mean to flit. You
know, out in the open country you’re as free as air; but it’s not
exactly the same thing in the town. First thing, we go into a
public-house; as we open the door we give a sharp look all round. What’s
there? A sunburnt fellow in a German coat all out at elbows, walks right
up to us. One thing and another comes up, when he says to us:
“‘Pray excuse me for asking if you have any papers [passport] with you?’
“‘No, we haven’t.’