The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
of the higher class may be, every soul there will hate and despise him
during long years; they will neither understand nor believe in him, not
one whit. He will be neither friend nor comrade in their eyes; if he
can get them to stop insulting him it will be as much as he can do, but
he will be alien to them from the first to the last, he will have to
feel the grief of a ceaseless, hopeless, causeless solitude and
sequestration. Sometimes it is the case that sheer ill-will on the part
of the prisoners has nothing to do with bringing about this state of
things, it simply cannot be helped; the nobleman is not one of the gang,
and there’s the whole secret.
There is nothing more horrible than to live out of the social sphere to
which you properly belong. The peasant, transported from Taganrog to
Petropavlosk, finds there Russian peasants like himself; between him and
them there can be mutual intelligence; in an hour they will be friends,
and live comfortably together in the same izba or the same barrack. With
the nobleman it is wholly otherwise; a bottomless abyss separates him
from the lower classes, _how_ deep and impassable is only seen when a
nobleman forfeits his position and becomes as one of the populace
himself. You may be your whole life in daily relations with the peasant,
forty years you may do business with him regularly as the day comes--let
us suppose it so, at all events--by the calls of official position or
administrative duty; you may be his benefactor, all but a father to
him--well, you’ll never know what is at the bottom of the man’s mind or
heart. You may think you know something about him, but it is all optical
illusion, nothing more. My readers will charge me with exaggeration, but
I am convinced I am quite right. I don’t go on theory or book-reading in
this; in my case the realities of life have given me only too ample time
and opportunity for reviewing and correcting my theoretic convictions,
which, as to this, are now fixed. Perhaps everybody will some day learn
how well founded I am in what I say about this.
All this was theory when I first went into the convict establishment,
but events, and things observed, soon came to confirm me in such views,
and what I experienced so affected my system as to undermine its
health. During the first summer I wandered about the place, so far as I
was free to move, a solitary, friendless man. My moral situation was
such that I could not distinguish those among the convicts who, in the
sequel, managed to care for me a little in spite of the distance that
always remained between us. There _were_ there men of my own position,
ex-nobles like myself, but their companionship was repugnant to me.
Here is one of the incidents which obliged me to see at the outset, how
solitary a creature I was, and all the strangeness of my position at the
place. One day in August, a fine warm day, about one o’clock in the
afternoon, a time when, as a rule, everybody took a nap before resuming
work, the convicts rose as one man and massed themselves in the
court-yard. I had not the slightest idea, up to that moment, that
anything was going on. So deeply had I been sunk in my own thoughts,
that I saw nearly nothing of what was happening about me of any kind.
But it seems that the convicts had been in a smouldering sort of unusual
agitation for three days. Perhaps it had begun sooner; so I thought
later when I remembered stray remarks, bits of talk that had come to my
ears, the palpable increase of ill-humour among the prisoners, their
unusual irritability for some time past. I had attributed it all to the
trying summer work, the insufferably long days; to their dreamings about
the woods, and freedom, which the season brought up; to the nights too
short for rest. It may be that all these things came together to form a
mass of discontent, that only wanted a tolerably good reason for
exploding; it was found in the food.
For several days the convicts had not concealed their dissatisfaction
with it in open talk in their barracks, and they showed it plainly when
assembled for dinner or supper; one of the cooks had been changed, but,
after a couple of days, the new comer was sent to the right-about, and
the old one brought back. The restlessness and ill-humour were general;
mischief was brewing.
“Here are we slaving to death, and they give us nothing but filth to
eat,” grumbled one in the kitchen.
“If you don’t like it, why don’t you order jellies and blanc-mange?”
said another.
“Sour cabbage soup, why, that’s _good_. I delight in it; there’s nothing
more juicy,” exclaimed a third.
“Well, if they gave you nothing but beef, beef, beef, for ever and ever,
would you like _that_?”
“Yes, yes; they ought to give us meat,” said a fourth; “one’s almost
killed at the workshops; and, by heaven! when one has got through with
work there one’s hungry, hungry; and you don’t get anything to satisfy
your hunger.”
“It’s true, the victuals are simply damnable.”
“He fills his pockets, don’t you fear!”
“It isn’t your business.”
“Whose business is it? My belly’s my own. If we were all to make a row
about it together, you’d soon see.”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t we been beaten enough for complaining, dolt that you are?”
“True enough! What’s done in a hurry is never well done. And how would
you set about making a raid over it, tell me that?”
“I’ll tell you, by God! If everybody will go, I’ll go too, for I’m just
dying of hunger. It’s all very well for those who eat at a better table,
apart, to keep quiet; but those who eat the regulation food----”
“There’s a fellow with eyes that do their work, bursting with envy _he_
is. Don’t his eyes glisten when he sees something that doesn’t belong to
him?”
“Well, pals, why don’t we make up our minds? Have we gone through
enough? They flay us, the brigands! Let’s go at them.”
“What’s the good? I tell you ye must chew what they give you, and stuff
your mouth full of it. Look at the fellow, he wants people to chew his
food for him. We’re in prison, and have got to stand it.”
“Yes, that’s it; we’re in prison.”
“That’s it always; the people die of hunger, and the Government fills
its belly.”
“That’s true. Our eight-eyes (_the Major_) has got finely fat over it;
he’s bought a pair of gray horses.”
“He don’t like his glass at all, that fellow,” said a convict
ironically.
“He had a bout at cards a little while ago with the vet; for two hours
he played without a half-penny in his pocket. Fedka told me so.”
“That’s why we get cabbage soup that’s fit for nothing.”
“You’re all idiots! It doesn’t matter; _nothing_ matters.”
“I tell you if we all join in complaining we shall see what he has to
say for himself. Let’s make up our minds.”
“_Say_ for himself? You’ll get his fist on your pate; that’s just all.”
“I tell you they’ll have him up, and try him.”
All the prisoners were in great agitation; the truth is, the food was
execrable. The general anguish, suffering, and suspense seemed to be
coming to a head. Convicts are, by disposition, or, as such, quarrelsome
and rebellious; but a general revolt is rare, for they can never agree
upon it; we all of us felt that since there was, as a rule, more violent
talk than doing.
This time, however, the agitation did not fall to the ground. The men
gathered in groups in their barracks, talking things over in a violent
way, and going over all the particulars of the Major’s misdoings, and
trying to get to the bottom of them. In all affairs of that sort there
are ringleaders and firebrands. The ringleaders on such occasions are
generally rather remarkable fellows, not only in convict
establishments, but among all large organisations of workmen, military
detachments, etc. They are always people of a peculiar type,
enthusiastic men, who have a thirst for justice, very naïve, simple, and
strong, convinced that their desires are fully capable of realisation;
they have as much sense as other people; some are of high intelligence;
but they are too full of warmth and zeal to measure their acts. When you
come across people who really do know how to direct the masses, and get
what they want, you find a quite different sort of popular leaders, and
one excessively rare among us Russians. The more usual type of leader,
the one I first alluded to, does certainly in some sense accomplish
their object, so far as bringing about a rising is concerned; but it all
ends in filling up the prisons and convict establishments. Thanks to
their impetuosity they always come off second-best; but it is this
impetuosity that gives them their influences over the masses; their
ardent, honest indignation does its work, and draws in the more
irresolute. Their blind confidence of success seduces even the most
hardened sceptics, although this confidence is generally based on such
uncertain, childish reasons that it is wonderful how people can put
faith in them.
The secret of their influence is that they put themselves at the head,
and _go_ ahead, without flinching. They dash forward, heads down, often
without the least knowledge worth the name of what they are about, and
have nothing about them of the jesuitical practical faculty by dint of
which a vile and worthless man often hits his mark and comes uppermost,
and will sometimes come all white out of a tub of ink. They _must_ dash
their skulls against stone walls. Under ordinary circumstances these
people are bilious, irascible, intolerant, contemptuous, often very
warm, which really after all is part of the secret of their strength.
The deplorable thing is that they never go at what is the essential, the
vital part of their task, they always go off at once into details
instead of going straight to their mark, and this is their ruin. But
they and the mob understand one another; that makes them formidable.
I must say a few words about this word “grievance.”
Some of the convicts had been transported in connection with a
“grievance;” these were the most excited among them, notably a certain
Martinoff, who had formerly served in the Hussars, an eager, restless,
and choleric, but a worthy and truthful, fellow. Another, Vassili
Antonoff, could work himself up into anger coolly and collectedly; he
had a generally impudent expression, and a sarcastic smile, but he, too,
was honest, and a man of his word, and of no little education. I won’t
enumerate; there were plenty of them. Petroff went about in a hurried
way from one group to another. He spoke few words, but he was quite as
highly excited as any one there, for he was the first to spring out of
the barrack when the others massed themselves in the court-yard.
Our sergeant, who acted as sergeant-major, came up very soon in quite a
fright. The convicts got into rank, and politely begged him to tell the
Major that they wanted to speak with him and put him a few questions.
Behind the sergeant came all the invalids, who ranked themselves in face
of the convicts. What they asked the sergeant to do frightened the man
out of his wits almost, but he dared not refuse to go and report to the
Major, for if the convicts mutinied, God only knows what might happen.
All the men set over us showed themselves great poltroons in handling
the prisoners; then, even if nothing further worse happened, if the
convicts thought better of it and dispersed, the sub-officer was still
in duty bound to inform the authorities of what had been going on. Pale,
and trembling with fright, he went headlong to the Major, without even
an effort to bring the convicts to reason. He saw that they were not
minded to put up with any of his talk, no doubt.
Without the least idea of what was going on, I went into rank myself
(it was only later that I heard the earlier details of the story). I