The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
a ditch used for _ejecta_, which was in the most distant corner of the
court, and which stank most horribly during the summer heats, for it was
rarely seen to.
I think the poor beast understood the fate in store for him. It looked
at us one after another in a distressed, scrutinising way; at intervals
it gave a timid little wag with its bushy tail between its legs, as
though trying to reach our hearts by showing us every confidence. I
hastened away from the convicts, who finished their vile work without
hindrance.
As to the geese of the establishment, they had established themselves
there quite fortuitously. Who took care of them? To whom did they
belong? I really don’t know; but they were a huge delight to our
convicts, and acquired a certain fame throughout the town.
They had been hatched in the convict establishment somewhere, and their
head-quarters was the kitchen, whence they emerged in gangs of their
own, when the gangs of convicts went out to their work. But as soon as
the drum beat and the prisoners massed themselves at the great gate, out
ran the geese after them, cackling and flapping their wings, then they
jumped one after the other over the elevated threshold of the gateway;
while the convicts were at their work, the geese pecked about at a
little distance from them. As soon as they had done and set out for the
jail, again the geese joined the procession, and people who passed by
would cry out, “I say, there are the prisoners with their friends, the
geese!” “How did you teach them to follow you?” some one would ask.
“Here’s some money for your geese,” another said, putting his hand in
his pocket. In spite of their devotion to the convicts they had their
necks twisted to make a feast at the end of the Lent of some year, I
forget which.
Nobody would ever have made up his mind to kill our goat Vaska, unless
something particular had happened; as it did. I don’t know how it got
into our prison, or who had brought it. It was a white kid, and very
pretty. After some days it had won all hearts, it was diverting and
winning. As some excuse was needed for keeping it in the jail, it was
given out that it was quite necessary to have a goat in the stables; but
he didn’t live there, but in the kitchen principally; and after a while
he roamed about all over the place. The creature was full of grace and
as playful as could be, jumped on the tables, wrestled with the
convicts, came when it was called, and was always full of spirits and
fun.
One evening, the Lesghian Babaï, who was seated on the stone steps at
the doors of the barracks among a crowd of other convicts, took it into
his head to have a wrestling bout with Vaska, whose horns were pretty
long.
They butted their foreheads against one another--that was the way the
convicts amused themselves with him--when all of a sudden Vaska jumped
on the highest step, lifted himself up on his hind legs, drew his
fore-feet to him and managed to strike the Lesghian on the back of the
neck with all his might, and with such effect that Babaï went headlong
down the steps to the great delight of all who were by as well as of
Babaï himself.
In a word, we all adored our Vaska. When he attained the age of puberty,
a general and serious consultation was held, as the result of which, he
was subjected to an operation which one of the prison veterinaries
executed in a masterly manner.
“Well,” said the prisoners, “he won’t have any goat-smell about him,
that’s one comfort.”
Vaska then began to lay on fat in the most surprising way. I must say
that we fed him quite unconscionably. He became a most beautiful fellow,
with magnificent horns, corpulent beyond anything. Sometimes as he
walked, he rolled over on the ground heavily out of sheer fatness. He
went with us out to work too, which was very diverting to the convicts
and all others who saw; and everybody got to know Vaska, the jailbird.
When they worked at the river bank, the prisoners used to cut willow
branches and other foliage, and gather flowers in the ditches to
ornament Vaska. They used to twine the branches and flowers round his
horns and decorate his body with garlands. Vaska then came back at the
head of the gang in a splendid state of ornamentation, and we all came
after in high pride at seeing him such a beauty.
This love for our goat went so far that prisoners raised the question,
not a very wise one, whether Vaska ought not to have his horns gilded.
It was a vain idea; nothing came of it. I asked Akim Akimitch, the best
gilder in the jail, whether you really could gild a goat’s horns. He
examined Vaska’s quite closely, thought a bit, and then said that it
could be done, but that it would not last, and would be quite useless.
So nothing came of it. Vaska would have lived for many years more, and,
no doubt, have died of asthma at last, if, one day as he returned from
work at the head of the convicts, his path had not been crossed by the
Major, who was seated in his carriage. Vaska was in particularly
gorgeous array.
“Halt!” yelled the Major. “Whose goat is that?”
They told him.
“What! a goat in the prison! and that without my leave? Sub-officer!”
The sub-officer received orders to kill the goat without a moment’s
delay; flay him, and sell his skin; and put the proceeds to the
prisoners’ account. As to the meat, he ordered it to be cooked with the
convicts’ cabbage soup.
The occurrence was much discussed; the goat was much mourned; but nobody
dared to disobey the Major. Vaska was put to death close to the ditch I
spoke of just now. One of the convicts bought the carcase, paying a
rouble and fifty kopecks. With this money white bread was bought for
everybody. The man who had bought the goat sold him at retail in a
roasted state. The meat was delicious.
We had also, during some time, in our prison a steppe eagle; a quite
small species. A convict brought it in, wounded, half-dead. Everybody
came flocking around it; it could not fly, its right wing being quite
powerless; one of its legs was badly hurt. It gazed on the curious crowd
wrathfully, and opened its crooked beak, as if prepared to sell its life
dearly. When we had looked at him long enough, and the crowd dispersed,
the lamed bird went off, hopping on one paw and flapping his wing, and
hid himself in the most distant part of the place he could find; there
he huddled himself in a corner against the palings.
During the three months that he remained in our court-yard he never came
out of his corner. At first we went to look at him pretty often, and
sometimes they set Bull at him, who threw himself forward with fury, but
was frightened to go too near, which mightily amused the convicts. “A
wild chap that! He won’t stand any nonsense!” But Bull after a while got
over his fright, and began to worry him. When he was roused to it, the
dog would catch hold of the bird’s bad wing, and the creature defended
itself with beak and claws, and then got up closer into his corner with
a proud, savage sort of demeanour, like a wounded king, fixing his eyes
steadily on the fellows looking at his misery.
They tired of the sport after a while, and the eagle seemed quite
forgotten; but there was some one who, every day, put close to him a bit
of fresh meat and a vessel with some water. At first, and for several
days, the eagle would eat nothing; at last, he made up his mind to take
what was left for him, but he never could be got to take anything from
the hand, or in public. Sometimes I succeeded in watching his
proceedings at some distance.
When he saw nobody, and thought he was alone, he ventured upon leaving
his corner and limping along the palisade for a dozen steps or so, then
went back; and so forwards and backwards, precisely as if he were taking
exercise for his health under medical orders. As soon as ever he caught
sight of me he made for his corner as quickly as he possibly could,
limping and hopping. Then he threw his head back, opened his mouth,
ruffled himself, and seemed to make ready for fight.
In vain I tried to caress him. He bit and struggled as soon as he was
touched. Not once did he take the meat I offered him, and all the time I
remained by him he kept his wicked, piercing eye upon me. Lonely and
revengeful he waited for death, defying, refusing to be reconciled with
everything and everybody.
At last the convicts remembered him, after two months of complete
forgetfulness, and then they showed a sympathy I did not expect of
them. It was unanimously agreed to carry him out.
“Let him die, but let him die in freedom,” said the prisoners.
“Sure enough, a free and independent bird like that will never get used
to the prison,” added others.
“He’s not like us,” said some one.
“Oh well, he’s a bird, and we’re human beings.”
“The eagle, pals, is the king of the woods,” began Skouratof; but that
day nobody paid any attention to him.
One afternoon, when the drum beat for beginning work, they took the
eagle, tied his beak (for he struck a desperate attitude), and took him
out of the prison on to the ramparts. The twelve convicts of the gang
were extremely anxious to know where he would go to. It was a strange
thing: they all seemed as happy as though they had themselves got their
freedom.
“Oh, the wretched brute. One wants to do him a kindness, and he tears
your hand for you by way of thanks,” said the man who held him, looking
almost lovingly at the spiteful bird.
“Let him fly off, Mikitka!”
“It doesn’t suit _him_ being a prisoner; give him his freedom, his jolly
freedom.”
They threw him from the ramparts on to the steppe. It was just at the
end of autumn, a gray, cold day. The wind whistled on the bare steppe
and went groaning through the yellow dried-up grass. The eagle made off
directly, flapping his wounded wing, as if in a hurry to quit us and get
himself a shelter from our piercing eyes. The convicts watched him
intently as he went along with his head just above the grass.
“Do you see him, hey?” said one very pensively.
“He doesn’t look round,” said another; “he hasn’t looked behind once.”
“Did you happen to fancy he’d come back to thank us?” said a third.
“Sure enough, he’s free; he feels it. It’s _freedom_!”
“Yes, freedom.”
“You won’t see him any more, pals.”
“What are you about sticking there? March, march!” cried the escort, and
all went slowly to their work.
CHAPTER VII.
GRIEVANCES
At the outset of this chapter, the editor of the “Recollections” of the
late Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff thinks it his duty to
communicate what follows to his readers.
“In the first chapter of the ‘Recollections of the House of the Dead,’
something was said about a parricide, of noble birth, who was put
forward as an instance of the insensibility with which the convicts
speak of the crimes they have committed. It was also stated that he
refused altogether to confess to the authorities and the court; but
that, thanks to the statements of persons who knew all the details of
his case and history, his guilt was put beyond all doubt. These persons
had informed the author of the ‘Recollections,’ that the criminal had
been of dissolute life and overwhelmed with debts, and that he had
murdered his father to come into the property. Besides, the whole town
where this parricide was imprisoned told his story in precisely the same
way, a fact of which the editor of these ‘Recollections’ has fully
satisfied himself. It was further stated that this murderer, even when
in the jail, was of quite a joyous and cheerful frame of mind, a sort of
inconsiderate giddy-pated person, although intelligent, and that the
author of the ‘Recollections’ had never observed any particular signs of
cruelty about him, to which he added, ‘So I, for my part, never could