The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia

“‘Nor have we either. I have two comrades besides these with me who are in the service of General Cuckoo [forest tramps, _i.e._, who hear the birds sing]. We have been seeing life a bit, and just now haven’t a penny to bless ourselves with. May I take the liberty of requesting you to be so obliging as to order a quart of brandy?’ “‘With the greatest pleasure,’ that’s what we say to him. So we drink together. Then they tell us of a place where there’s a real good stroke of business to be done--a house at the end of the town belonging to a wealthy merchant fellow; lots of good things there, so we make up our minds to try the job during the night; five of us, and the very moment we are going at it they pounce on us, take us to the station-house, and then before the head of the police. He says, ‘I shall examine them myself.’ Out he goes with his pipe, and they bring in for him a cup of tea; a sturdy fellow it was, with whiskers. Besides us five, there were three other tramps, just brought in. You know, comrades, that there’s nothing in this world more funny than a tramp, because he always forgets everything he’s done. You may thump his head till you’re tired with a cudgel; all the same, you’ll get but one answer, that he has forgotten all about everything. “The police superintendent then turns to me and asks me squarely, “‘Who may you be?’ “I answer just like all the rest of them: “‘I’ve forgotten all about it, your worship.’ “‘Just you wait; I’ve a word or two more to say to you. I know your phiz.’ “Then he gives me a good long stare. But I hadn’t seen him anywhere before, that’s a fact. “Then he asks another of them, ‘Who are you?’ “‘Mizzle-and-scud, your worship.’ “‘They call you Mizzle-and-scud?’ “‘Precisely that, your worship.’ “‘Well and good, you’re Mizzle-and-scud! And you?’ to a third. “‘Along-of-him, your worship.’ “‘But what’s your name--your name?’ “‘Me? I’m called Along-of-him, your worship.’ “‘Who gave you that name, hound?’ “‘Very worthy people, your worship. There are lots of worthy people about; nobody knows that better than your worship.’ “‘And who may these “worthy people” be?’ “‘Oh, Lord, it has slipped my memory, your worship. Do be so kind and gracious as to overlook it.’ “‘So you’ve forgotten them, all of them, these “worthy people”?’ “‘Every mother’s son of them, your worship.’ “‘But you must have had relations--a father, a mother. Do you remember them?’ “‘I suppose I must have had, your worship; but I’ve forgotten about ’em, my memory is so bad. Now I come to think about it, I’m sure I had some, your worship.’ “‘But where have you been living till now?’ “‘In the woods, your worship.’ “‘Always in the woods?’ “‘Always in the woods!’ “‘Winter too?’ “‘Never saw any winter, your worship.’ “‘Get along with you! And you--what’s your name?’ “‘Hatchets-and-axes, your worship.’ “‘And yours?’ “‘Sharp-and-mum, your worship.’ “‘And you?’ “‘Keen-and-spry, your worship.’ “‘And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.’ “‘Not a mother’s son of us anything whatever.’ “He couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. All the rest began to laugh at seeing him laugh! But the thing does not always go off like that. Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till you get every tooth in your jaw smashed. Devilish big and strong these fellows, I can tell you. “‘Take them off to the lock-up,’ said he. ‘I’ll see to them in a bit. As for you, stop here!’ “That’s me. “‘Just you go and sit down there.’ “Where he pointed to there was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I, ‘What’s he up to now?’ “‘Sit down,’ he says again; ‘take the pen and write.’ “And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest. “‘I can’t write, your worship.’ “‘Write, write!’ “‘Have mercy on me, your worship!’ “‘Write your best; write, write!’ “And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I’d rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell. “‘Write, write!’ that was all he said.” “Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it? “Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that’s why he tormented me with his ‘Write, write!’ He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand. “‘A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?’ “‘Oh, Lord, don’t say a word about it, I beg.’ “Everybody burst out laughing. “‘Well, you did write?’ “‘What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper, and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just gave me a dozen thumps, regulation allowance, and then let me go about my business: to prison, that is.’ “‘Do you really know how to write?’ “‘Of course I did. What d’ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the whole blessed thing, though, ever since they began to use pens for it.’” Thanks to the gossip talk of the convicts who filled the hospital, time was somewhat quickened for us. But still, Almighty God, how wearied and bored we were! Long, long were the days, suffocating in their monotony, one absolutely the same as another. If only I had had a single book. For all that I went often to the infirmary, especially in the early days of my banishment, either because I was ill or because I needed rest, just to get out of the worse parts of the prison. In those life was indeed made a burden to us, worse even than in the hospital, especially as regards the effect upon moral sentiment and good feeling. We of the nobility were the never-ceasing objects of envious dislike, quarrels picked with us all the time, something done every moment to put us in the wrong, looks filled with menacing hatred unceasingly directed on us! Here, in the sick-rooms, one lived on a sort of footing of equality, there was something of comradeship. The most melancholy moment of the twenty-four hours was evening, when night set in. We went to bed very early. A smoky lamp just gave us one point of light at the very end of the room, near the door. In our corner we were almost in complete darkness. The air was pestilential, stifling. Some of the sick people could not get to sleep, would rise up, and remain sitting for an hour together on their beds, with their heads bent, as though they were in deep reflection. These I would look at steadily, trying to guess what they might be thinking of; thus I tried to kill time. Then I became lost in my own reveries; the past came up to me again, showing itself to my imagination in large powerful outlines filled with high lights and massive shadows, details that at any other time would have remained in oblivion, presented themselves in vivid force, making on me an impression impossible under any other circumstances. Then I would begin to muse dreamily on the future. When shall I leave this place of restraint, this dreadful prison? Whither betake myself? What will then befall me? Shall I return to the place of my birth? So I brood, and brood, until hope lives once again in my soul. Another time I would begin to count, one, two, three, etc., to see if sleep could be won that way. I would set sometimes as far as three thousand, and was as wakeful as ever. Then somebody would turn in his bed. Then there’s Oustiantsef coughing, that cough of the hopelessly-gone consumptive, and then he would groan feebly, and stammer, “My God, I’ve sinned, I’ve sinned!” How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice, stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world, of his children, his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man’s voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there is another, listening intently to what he is saying. A weak, feeble sort of muttering and murmuring comes to one’s ear from far-off in the dreary room, a sound as of far-off water flowing somewhere.... I remember that one time, during a winter night that seemed as if it would never end, I heard a story which at first seemed as if it were the stammerings of a creature in nightmare, or the delirium of fever. Here it is: FOOTNOTE: [4] What I relate about corporal punishment took place during my time. Now, as I am told, everything is changed, and is changing still. CHAPTER IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA It was late at night, about eleven o’clock. I had been sleeping some time and woke up with a start. The wan and weak light of the distant lamp barely lit the room. Nearly everybody was fast asleep, even Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his difficult breathing, and the rattlings in his throat with every respiration. In the ante-chamber sounded the heavy and distant footsteps of the patrol as the men came up. The butt of a gun struck the floor with its low and heavy sound. The door of the room was opened, and the corporal counted the sick, stepping softly about the place. After a minute or so he closed the door again, leaving a fresh sentinel there; the patrol went off, silence reigned again. It was only then that I observed two prisoners, not far from me, who were not sleeping, and who seemed to be holding a muttered conversation. Sometimes, in fact, it would happen that a couple of sick people, whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks, would all of a sudden break out into conversation with one another, in the middle of the night, and one of them would tell the other his history. Probably they had been speaking for some considerable time. I did not hear the beginning of it, and could not at first seize upon their words, but little by little I got familiar with the muttered sounds, and understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire for sleep on me, so what could I do but listen. One of them was telling his story with some warmth, half-lying on his bed, with his head lifted and stretched towards his companion. He was plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was on him. The man listening was sitting up on his pallet, with a gloomy and indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress, and now and again murmured some words in reply, more out of politeness than interest, and kept stuffing his nose with snuff from a horn box. This was the soldier Techérévin, one of the company of discipline; a morose, cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of _amour propre_; while the narrator was Chichkof, about thirty years old; this was a civilian convict, whom up to that time I had not at all observed; and during the whole time I was at the prison I never could get up the smallest interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow. Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would strike into anything that was going on, behave insufferably, go into a white heat about nothing at all, and tell you long stories with nothing in them whatever about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then some one would give