The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
remember how happy I was when at morn we went into God’s house, treading
the ground which had frozen in the night, under the escort of soldiers
with loaded guns; the escort remained outside the church.
Once within we were massed close to the door so that we could scarcely
hear anything except the deep voice of the ministering deacon; now and
again we caught a glimpse of a black chasuble or the bare head of the
priest. Then it came into my mind how, when a child, I used to look at
the common people who formed a compact mass at the door, and how they
would step back in a servile way before some important epauletted
fellow, or some nobleman with a big paunch, some lady splendidly dressed
and of high devotion who, in a hurry to get at the front benches, and
ready for a row if there was any difficulty as to their being honoured
with the best of places. As it seemed to me then, it was only _there_,
near the church door, not far from the entry, that prayer was put up
with genuine fervour and humility, only there that, when people did
prostrate themselves on the floor it was done with real abasement of
self and full sense of unworthiness.
And now I myself was in that place of the common people, no, not in
their place, for we who were there were in chains and degradation.
Everybody kept himself at a distance from us. We were feared, and alms
were put in our hands as if we were beggars; I remember that all this
gave me the strange sensation of a refined and subtle pleasure. “Let it
even be so!” such was my thought. The convicts prayed with deep fervour;
every one of them had with him his poor farthing for a little candle, or
for their collection for the church expenses. “I too, I am a man,” each
one of them perhaps said, as he made his offering; “before God we are
all equal.”
After the six o’clock mass we went up to communion. When the priest,
_ciforium_ in hand, recited the words, “Have mercy on me as Thou hadst
on the thief whom Thou didst save,” nearly all the convicts prostrated
themselves, and their chains clanked; I think they took these words
literally as applied to themselves, and not as being in Scripture.
Holy Week came. The authorities presented each of us with an Easter egg,
and a small piece of wheaten bread. The townspeople loaded us with
benevolences. As at Christmas there was the priest’s visitation with
the cross, inspecting visit of the heads of departments, larded cabbage,
general enlargement of soul, and unlimited lounging, the only difference
being, that one could now walk about in the court-yard, and warm oneself
in the sun. Everything seemed filled with more light, larger than in the
winter, but also more fraught with sadness. The long, endless, summer
days seemed peculiarly unbearable on Church holidays. Work days were at
least shortened to our sense by the fatigue of work.
Our summer labours were much more trying than the winter tasks; our
business was principally that of carrying out engineering works. The
convicts were set to building, digging, bricklaying, or repairing
Government buildings, locksmith’s work, or carpentering, or painting.
Others went into the brick-fields, and that was looked upon by us as the
hardest of all we had laid on us. The brick-fields were situated about
four versts from the fortress; through all the summer they sent there,
every morning at six o’clock, a gang of fifty convicts. For this gang
they used to pick out workmen who had learned no trade in particular.
The convicts took with them their bread for the day, the distance was
too great for them to come back, eight useless versts, for dinner with
the others, so they had a meal when they returned in the evening.
Work was assigned to each for the day, but there was so much of it that
it was all a man could do, nay, more, to get to the end of it. First, we
had to dig and carry the clay, moisten it, and mould it in the ditch,
and then make a goodly quantity of bricks, two hundred or so, sometimes
fifty more than that. I was only twice sent to the brick-field. The
convicts sent to this labour came back in the evening dead tired, and
every one of them complained of the others, that he had had the worst of
the work put on him. I believe that reproaches of this kind were a
pleasure, a consolation to them. Some of them, however, liked the
brick-field work, because they got away from the town, and to the banks
of the Irtych into open, agreeable country, with the sky overhead; the
surroundings were more agreeable than those frightful Government
buildings. They were allowed to smoke there in all freedom, and to
remain lying down for half-an-hour or so, which was a great pleasure.
As for me, I was sent to one of the shops, or else to pound up
alabaster, or to carry bricks, which last job I had for two months
together. I had to take my tale of bricks from the banks of the Irtych
to a distance of about 140 yards, and to pass the ditch of the fortress
before getting to the barrack which they were putting up. This work
suited me well enough, although the cord with which I carried my bricks
sawed my shoulders; what particularly pleased me was that my strength
increased sensibly. At the outset I could not carry more than eight
bricks at once; each of them weighed about twelve pounds. I got to be
able to carry twelve, or even fifteen, which delighted me much. You
wanted physical as well as moral strength to be able to bear all the
discomforts of that accursed life.
There was this, too: I wanted, when I left the place, really to live,
not to be half-dead. I took pleasure in carrying my bricks, then; it was
not merely that this labour strengthened my body, but because it took me
always to the banks of the Irtych. I speak often of this spot, it was
the only one where we saw God’s _own_ world, a pure and bright horizon,
the free desert steppes, whose bareness always produced a strange
impression on me. All the other workyards were in the fortress itself,
or in its neighbourhood; and the fortress, from the earliest days I was
there, was the object of my hatred, and, above all, its appurtenant
buildings. The house of the Major Commandant seemed to me a repulsive,
accursed place. I never could pass it without casting upon it a look of
detestation; while at the river-bank I could forget my miserable self as
I sent my gaze over the immense desert space, just as a prisoner may
when he looks at the world of freedom through the barred casement of his
dungeon. Everything in that place was dear and gracious to my eyes; the
sun shining in the infinite blue of heaven, the distant song of the
Kirghiz that came from the opposite bank.
Sometimes I would fix my sight for a long while upon the poor smoky
cabin of some _baïgouch_; I would study the bluish smoke as it curled in
the air, the Kirghiz woman busy with her two sheep.... The things I saw
were wild, savage, poverty-stricken; but they were free. I would follow
the flight of a bird threading its way in the pure transparent air; now
it skims the water, now disappears in the azure sky, now suddenly comes
to view again, a mere point in space. Even the poor wee floweret fading
in a cleft of the bank, which would show itself when spring began, fixed
my attention and would draw my tears.... The melancholy of this first
year of convict life and hard labour was unendurable, too much for my
strength. The anguish of it was so great, I could not notice my
immediate surroundings at all; I merely shut my eyes and would not see.
Among the creatures with spoiled lives with whom I had to live, I did
not yet note those who were capable of thinking and feeling, in spite of
their external repulsiveness. There came not to my ears (or if there did
I knew it not) one word of kindliness in the midst of the rain of
poisonous talk that came down all the time. Still one such utterance
there was, simple, straightforward, of pure motive, and it came from the
heart of a man who had suffered and endured more than myself. But it is
useless to enlarge on this.
The great fatigue I underwent was a source of satisfaction, it gave me
hope of sound sleep. During the summer sleep was torment, more
intolerable than the closeness and infection winter brought with it.
Some of the nights were certainly very beautiful. The sun, which had not
ceased to inundate the court-yard all the day, hid itself at last. The
air freshened, and the night, the night of the steppe, became
comparatively cold. The convicts, until shut up in their barracks,
walked about in groups, especially on the kitchen side; for that was the
place where questions of general interest were by preference discussed,
and comments were made upon the rumours from without, often absurd
indeed, but always keenly exciting to these men cut off from the world.
For example, we suddenly learn that our Major had been roughly dismissed
from his post. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know the news
to be false, or most unlikely, and that the fellow who brings it is a
past master in the art of lying, Kvassoff; for all that they clutch at
the nonsensical story, go into high delight over it, are much consoled,
and at last quite ashamed to have been duped by a Kvassoff.
“I should like to know who’ll show _him_ the door?” cries one convict;
“don’t you fear, he’s a fellow who knows how to stick on.”
“But,” says another, “he has his superiors over him.” This one is a warm
controversialist, and has seen the world.
“Wolves don’t feed on one another,” says a third gloomily, half to
himself. _This_ one is an old fellow, growing gray, and he always takes
his sour cabbage soup into a corner, and eats it there.
“Do you think his superiors will take _your_ advice whether they shall
show him the door or not?” adds a fourth, who doesn’t seem to care about
it at all, giving a stroke to his balalaïka.
“Well, why not?” replies the second angrily; “if you _are_ asked, answer
what’s in your mind. But no, with us fellows it’s all mere cry, and when
you ought to go at things with a will, everybody sneaks out.”
“That’s _so_!” says the one playing with the balalaïka. “Hard labour and
prison are just the things to cause _that_.”
“It was like that the other day,” says the second one, without hearing
the remark made to him. “There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a
mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money;
well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All
economy, you see. Was that _so_, and was it right--yes or no?”
“But whom can you complain to?”
“To whom? Why, the ’spector (_Inspector_) who’s coming.”
“What ’spector?”
“It’s true, pals, a ’spector is coming soon,” said a youthful convict,
who had got some sort of knowledge, had read the “Duchesse de la
Vallière,” or some book of that sort, and who had been Quartermaster in
a regiment; a bit of a wag, whom, as a man of information, the convicts
held in a sort of respect. Without paying the least attention to the
exciting debate, he goes straight to the cook, and asks him for some
liver. Our cooks often deal in victuals of that kind; they used to buy a
whole liver, cut it in pieces, and sell it to the other convicts.
“Two kopecks’ worth, or four?” asks cook.
“A four-kopeck cut; I’ll eat, the others shall look on and long,” says
this convict. “Yes, pals, a general, a real general, is coming from
Petersburg to ’spect all Siberia; it’s so, heard it at the Governor’s
place.”
This news produces an extraordinary effect. For a quarter of an hour
they ask each other who this General can be? what’s his title? whether
his grade is higher than that of the Generals of our town? The convicts
delight in discussing ranks and degrees, in finding out who’s at the
head of things, who can make the other officials crook their backs, and