The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia

was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as pure a girl as ever was, not a word of it all was true.” “Impossible!” “True, I swear; as good a girl as any good family might wish.” “Then, brother, why--why--why had she had to undergo all that torture? Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?” “Yes, why, indeed?” “Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her, ‘Little mother, pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I’m a hound!’ “She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. She put her two hands on my shoulders and began to laugh; but the tears were running all down her cheeks. She sobbed and laughed all at once. “Then I went out and said to the people in the other room, ‘Let Philka Marosof look to himself. If I come across him he won’t be long for this world.’ “The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka’s mother was ready to throw herself at her daughter’s feet, and sobbed. “Then the old man said, ‘If we had known really how it was, my dearest child, we wouldn’t have given you a husband of that sort.’ “You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our marriage--when we left church! I’d got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur cap, with plush breeches. She had a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody admired us. I must say I looked well, and pet Akoulka did too. One oughtn’t to boast, but one oughtn’t to sing small. I tell you people like us are not turned out by the dozen.” “Not a doubt about it.” “Just you listen, I tell you. The day after my marriage I ran off from my guests, drunk as I was, and went about the streets crying, ‘Where’s that scoundrel of a Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the hound, that’s all!’ I went all over the market-place yelling that out. I was as drunk as a man could be, and stand. “They went after me and caught me close to Vlassof’s place. It took three men to get me back again to the house. “Well, nothing else was spoken about all over the village. The girls said, when they met in the market-place, ‘Well, you’ve heard the news--Akoulka was all right!’ “A little while after I do come across Philka Marosof, who said to me before everybody, strangers to the place, too, ‘Sell your wife, and spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he didn’t sleep one night with his wife; but he got enough to keep his skin full for three years.’ “I answered him, ‘Hound!’ “‘But,’ says he, ‘you’re an idiot! You didn’t know what you were about when you married--you were drunk. How could you tell all about it?’ “So off I went to the house, and cried out to them ‘You married me when I was drunk.’ “Akoulka’s mother tried to fasten herself on me; but I cried, ‘Mother, you don’t know about anything but money. You bring me Akoulka!’ “And didn’t I beat her! I tell you I beat her for two hours running, till I rolled on the floor myself with fatigue. She couldn’t leave her bed for three weeks.” “It’s a dead sure thing,” said Tchérévine phlegmatically; “if you don’t beat them they---- Did you find her with her lover?” “No; to tell the truth, I never actually caught her,” said Chichkoff after a pause, speaking with effort; “but I was hurt, a good deal hurt, for every one made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. ‘Your wife is just made for everybody to look at,’ said he. “One day he invited us to see him, and then he went at it. ‘Do just look what a good little wife he has! Isn’t she tender, fine, nicely brought up, affectionate, full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad, have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?’ I was full at that moment, drunk as may be; then he seized me by the hair and had me down upon the ground before I knew where I was. ‘Come along--dance; aren’t you Akoulka’s husband? I’ll hold your hair for you, and you shall dance; it will be good fun.’ ‘Dog!’ said I to him. ‘I’ll bring some jolly fellows to your house,’ said he, ‘and I’ll whip your Akoulka before your very eyes just as long as I please.’ Would you believe it? For a whole month I daren’t go out of the house, I was so afraid he’d come to us and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I did beat her for it!” “What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman’s hands, but not her tongue. You oughtn’t to give them a hiding too often. Beat ’em a bit, then scold ’em well, then fondle ’em; that’s what a woman is made for.” Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments. “I was very much hurt,” he went on; “I began it again just as before. I beat her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn’t get up from her seat the way I liked; because she didn’t walk to suit me. When I wasn’t hiding her, time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by the window crying silently--it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her cry, but I beat her all the same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it: ‘You’re a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!’ ‘Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you; you made me marry her when I was drunk, you swindled me.’ Old Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me one day: ‘Look here, you’re not such a tremendous fellow that one can’t put you down;’ but he didn’t get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me crying her eyes out and said: ‘My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch; what I’m going to ask of you is a little thing for you, but it is a good deal to me; let her go, let her leave you, daddy Ivan.’ Then she throws herself at my feet. ‘Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her; you know quite well she was good when you married her.’ Then she threw herself at my feet again and cried. But I was as hard as nails. ‘I won’t hear a word you have to say; what I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I’m crazed with it all. As to Philka Marosof, he’s my best and dearest friend.’” “You’d begun to play your pranks together again, you and he?” “No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself with drink, nothing less. He had spent all he had on drink, and had ’listed for a soldier, as substitute for a citizen body in the town. In our parts, when a lad makes up his mind to be substitute for another, he is master of that house and everybody there till he’s called to the ranks. He gets the sum agreed on the day he goes off, but up to then he lives in the house of the man who buys him, sometimes six whole months, and there isn’t a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty of. It’s enough to make folks take the holy images out of the house. From the moment he consents to be substitute for the son of the family then he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them dance as he pipes, or else he goes off the bargain. “So Philka Marosof played the very mischief at the home of this townsman. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by the beard after dinner, did anything that came into his head. They had to heat the bath for him every day, and, what’s more, give him brandy fumes with the steam of the bath: and he would have the women lead him by the arms to the bath room.[6] “When he came back to the man’s house after a revel elsewhere, he would stop right in the middle of the road and cry out: “‘I won’t go in by the door; pull down the fence!’ “And they actually _had_ to pull down the fence, though there was the door right at it to let him in. That all came to an end though, the day they took him to the regiment. That day he was sobered sufficiently. The crowd gathered all through the street. “‘They’re taking off Philka Marosof!’ “He made a salute on all sides, right and left. Just at that moment Akoulka was returning from the kitchen-garden. Directly Philka saw her he cried out to her: “‘Stop!’ and down he jumped from the cart and threw himself down at her feet. “‘My soul, my sweet little strawberry, I’ve loved you two years long. Now they’re taking me off to the regiment with the band playing. Forgive me, good honest girl of a good honest father, for I’m nothing but a hound, and all you’ve gone through is my fault.’ “Then he flings himself down before her a second time. At first Akoulka was exceedingly frightened; but she made him a great bow, which nearly bent her double. “‘Forgive me, too, my good lad; but I am really not at all angry with you.’ “As she went into the house I was at her heels. “‘What did you say to him, you she-devil, you?’ “Now you may believe it or not as you like, but she looked at me as bold as you please, and answered: “‘I love him better than anything or anybody in this world.’ “‘I say!’ “That day I didn’t utter one single word. Only towards evening I said to her: ‘Akoulka, I’m going to kill you now.’ I didn’t close an eye the whole night. I went into the little room leading to ours and drank kwass. At daybreak I went into the house again. ‘Akoulka, get ready and come into the fields.’ I had arranged to go there before; my wife knew it. “‘You are right,’ said she. ‘It’s quite time to begin reaping. I’ve heard that our labourer is ill and doesn’t work a bit.’ “I put to the cart without saying a word. As you go out of the town there’s a forest fifteen versts in length. At the end of it is our field. When we had gone about three versts through the wood I stopped the horse. “‘Come, get up, Akoulka; your end is come.’ “She looked at me all in a fright, and got up without a word. “‘You’ve tormented me enough. Say your prayers.’ “I seized her by the hair--she had long, thick tresses--I rolled them round my arm. I held her between my knees; took out my knife; threw her head back, and cut her throat. She screamed; the blood spurted out. Then I threw away my knife. I pressed her with all my might in my arms. I put her on the ground and embraced her, yelling with all my might. She screamed; I yelled; she struggled and struggled. The blood--her blood--splashed my face, my hands. It was stronger than I was--stronger. Then I took fright. I left her--left my horse and began to run; ran back to the house. “I went in the back way, and hid myself in the old ramshackle bath-house, which we never used now. I lay myself down under the seat, and remained hid till the dead of the night.” “And Akoulka?” “She got up to come back to the house; they found her later, a hundred steps from the place.” “So you hadn’t finished her?” “No.” Chichkoff stopped a while. “Yes,” said Tchérévine, “there’s a vein; if you don’t cut it at the first the man will go on struggling; the blood may flow fast enough, but he won’t die.” “But she was dead all the same. They found her in the evening, and she was cold. They told the police, and hunted me up. They found me in the night in the old bath. “And there you have it. I’ve been four years here already,” added he, after a pause. “Yes, if you don’t beat ’em you make no way at all,” said Tchérévine sententiously, taking out his snuff-box once more. He took his pinches very slowly, with long pauses. “For all that, my lad, you behaved like a fool. Why, I myself--I came upon my wife with a lover. I made her come into the shed, and then I doubled up a halter and said to her: “‘To whom did you swear to be faithful?--to whom did you swear it in church? Tell me that?’ “And then I gave it her with my halter--beat her and beat her for an hour and a half; till at last she was quite spent, and cried out: