The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
principle, or from any respect for duty, but as if in virtue of a mutual
convention between themselves and the administration--a convention of
which the advantages were plain enough.
The officials, moreover, behaved prudently towards them. I remember that
one prisoner of the resolute and intrepid class, known to possess the
instincts of a wild beast, was summoned one day to be whipped. It was
during the summer, no work was being done. The Adjutant, the direct and
immediate chief of the convict prison, was in the orderly-room, by the
side of the principal entrance, ready to assist at the punishment. This
Major was a fatal being for the prisoners, whom he had brought to such a
state that they trembled before him. Severe to the point of insanity,
“he threw himself upon them,” to use their expression. But it was above
all that his look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, was feared. It was
impossible to conceal anything from him. He saw, so to say, without
looking. On entering the prison, he knew at once what was being done.
Accordingly, the convicts, one and all, called him the man with the
eight eyes. His system was bad, for it had the effect of irritating men
who were already irascible. But for the Commandant, a well-bred and
reasonable man, who moderated the savage onslaughts of the Major, the
latter would have caused sad misfortunes by his bad administration. I do
not understand how he managed to retire from the service safe and sound.
It is true that he left after being called before a court-martial.
The prisoner turned pale when he was called; generally speaking, he lay
down courageously, and without uttering a word, to receive the terrible
rods, after which he got up and shook himself. He bore the misfortune
calmly, philosophically, it is true, though he was never punished
carelessly, nor without all sorts of precautions. But this time he
considered himself innocent. He turned pale, and as he walked quietly
towards the escort of soldiers he managed to conceal in his sleeve a
shoemaker’s awl. The prisoners were severely forbidden to carry sharp
instruments about them. Examinations were frequently, minutely, and
unexpectedly made, and all infractions of the rule were severely
punished. But as it is difficult to take away from the criminal what he
is determined to conceal, and as, moreover, sharp instruments are
necessarily used in the prison, they were never destroyed. If the
official succeeded in taking them away from the convicts, the latter
procured new ones very soon.
On the occasion in question, all the convicts had now thrown themselves
against the palisade, with palpitating hearts, to look through the
crevices. It was known that this time Petroff would not allow himself to
be flogged, that the end of the Major had come. But at the critical
moment the latter got into his carriage, and went away, leaving the
direction of the punishment to a subaltern. “God has saved him!” said
the convicts. As for Petroff, he underwent his punishment quietly. Once
the Major had gone, his anger fell. The prisoner is submissive and
obedient to a certain point, but there is a limit which must not be
crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of
disobedience and rage. Often a man who has supported for many years the
most cruel punishment, will revolt for a trifle, for nothing at all. He
might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him.
I have already said that during many years I never remarked the least
sign of repentance, not even the slightest uneasiness with regard to the
crime committed; and that most of the convicts considered neither honour
nor conscience, holding that they had a right to act as they thought
fit. Certainly vanity, evil examples, deceitfulness, and false shame
were responsible for much. On the other hand, who can claim to have
sounded the depths of these hearts, given over to perdition, and to have
found them closed to all light? It would seem all the same that during
so many years I ought to have been able to notice some indication, even
the most fugitive, of some regret, some moral suffering. I positively
saw nothing of the kind. With ready-made opinions one cannot judge of
crime. Its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It
is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any
system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement
only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might
commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but
to develop with these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden
enjoyment, and frightful recalcitrations. On the other hand I am
convinced that the celebrated cellular system gives results which are
specious and deceitful. It deprives a criminal of his force, of his
energy, enervates his soul by weakening and frightening it, and at last
exhibits a dried up mummy as a model of repentance and amendment.
The criminal who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers
himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover,
undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his
own eyes. In spite of different opinions, every one will acknowledge
that there are crimes which everywhere, always, under no matter what
legislation, are beyond discussion crimes, and should be regarded as
such as long as man is man. It is only at the convict prison that I have
heard related, with a childish, unrestrained laugh, the strangest, most
atrocious offences. I shall never forget a certain parricide, formerly a
nobleman and a public functionary. He had given great grief to his
father--a true prodigal son. The old man endeavoured in vain to restrain
him by remonstrance on the fatal slope down which he was sliding. As he
was loaded with debts, and his father was suspected of having, besides
an estate, a sum of ready money, he killed him in order to enter more
quickly into his inheritance. This crime was not discovered until a
month afterwards. During all this time the murderer, who meanwhile had
informed the police of his father’s disappearance, continued his
debauches. At last, during his absence, the police discovered the old
man’s corpse in a drain. The gray head was severed from the trunk, but
replaced in its original position. The body was entirely dressed.
Beneath, as if by derision, the assassin had placed a cushion.
The young man confessed nothing. He was degraded, deprived of his
nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years’ hard labour. As
long as I knew him I always found him to be careless of his position. He
was the most light-minded, inconsiderate man that I ever met, although
he was far from being a fool. I never observed in him any great tendency
to cruelty. The other convicts despised him, not on account of his
crime, of which there was never any question, but because he was without
dignity. He sometimes spoke of his father. One day for instance,
boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, he said: “My
father, for example, until his death was never ill.”
Animal insensibility carried to such a point is most remarkable--it is,
indeed, phenomenal. There must have been in this case an organic defect
in the man, some physical and moral monstrosity unknown hitherto to
science, and not simply crime. I naturally did not believe in so
atrocious a crime; but people of the same town as himself, who knew all
the details of his history, related it to me. The facts were so clear
that it would have been madness not to accept them. The prisoners once
heard him cry out during his sleep: “Hold him! hold him! Cut his head
off, his head, his head!”
Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud, or were delirious in their sleep.
Insults, words of slang, knives, hatchets, seemed constantly present in
their dreams. “We are crushed!” they would say; “we are without
entrails; that is why we shriek in the night.”
Hard labour in our fortress was not an occupation, but an obligation.
The prisoners accomplished their task, they worked the number of hours
fixed by the law, and then returned to the prison. They hated their
liberty. If the convict did not do some work on his own account
voluntarily, it would be impossible for him to support his confinement.
How could these persons, all strongly constituted, who had lived
sumptuously, and desired so to live again, who had been brought
together against their will, after society had cast them up--how could
they live in a normal and natural manner? Man cannot exist without work,
without legal, natural property. Depart from these conditions, and he
becomes perverted and changed into a wild beast. Accordingly, every
convict, through natural requirements and by the instinct of
self-preservation, had a trade--an occupation of some kind.
The long days of summer were taken up almost entirely by our hard
labour. The night was so short that we had only just time to sleep. It
was not the same in winter. According to the regulations, the prisoners
had to be shut up in the barracks at nightfall. What was to be done
during these long, sad evenings but work? Consequently each barrack,
though locked and bolted, assumed the appearance of a large workshop.
The work was not, it is true, strictly forbidden, but it was forbidden
to have tools, without which work is evidently impossible. But we
laboured in secret, and the administration seemed to shut its eyes. Many
prisoners arrived without knowing how to make use of their ten fingers;
but they learnt a trade from some of their companions, and became
excellent workmen.
We had among us cobblers, bootmakers, tailors, masons, locksmiths, and
gilders. A Jew named Esau Boumstein was at the same time a jeweller and
a usurer. Every one worked, and thus gained a few pence--for many orders
came from the town. Money is a tangible resonant liberty, inestimable
for a man entirely deprived of true liberty. If he feels some money in
his pocket, he consoles himself a little, even though he cannot spend
it--but one can always and everywhere spend money, the more so as
forbidden fruit is doubly sweet. One can often buy spirits in the
convict prison. Although pipes are severely forbidden, every one smokes.
Money and tobacco save the convicts from the scurvy, as work saves them
from crime--for without work they would mutually have destroyed one
another like spiders shut up in a close bottle. Work and money were all
the same forbidden. Often during the night severe examinations were
made, during which everything that was not legally authorised was
confiscated. However successfully the little hoards had been concealed,
they were sometimes discovered. That was one of the reasons why they
were not kept very long. They were exchanged as soon as possible for
drink, which explains how it happened that spirits penetrated into the
convict prison. The delinquent was not only deprived of his hoard, but
was also cruelly flogged.
A short time after each examination the convicts procured again the
objects which had been confiscated, and everything went on as before.
The administration knew it; and although the condition of the convicts
was a good deal like that of the inhabitants of Vesuvius, they never
murmured at the punishment inflicted for these peccadilloes. Those who
had no manual skill did business somehow or other. The modes of buying
and selling were original enough. Things changed hands which no one
expected a convict would ever have thought of selling or buying, or even
of regarding as of any value whatever. The least rag had its value, and
might be turned to account. In consequence, however, of the poverty of
the convicts, money acquired in their eyes a superior value to that
really belonging to it.