The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
on their track. This rumour was at first treated with contempt, but
towards evening there seemed to be more in it. The convicts became much
excited. Next morning it was said in the town that the runaways had been
caught, and were being brought back. After dinner there were further
details; the story was that they had been seized at a hamlet, seventy
versts away from the town. At last we had fully confirmed tidings. The
sergeant-major positively asserted, immediately after an interview with
the Major, that they would be brought into the guard-house that very
night. They were taken; there could be no doubt of it.
It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the way the convicts were
affected by the news. At first their rage was great, then they were
deeply dejected. Then they began to be bitter and sarcastic, pouring all
their scorn, not on the authorities, but on the runaways who had been
such fools as to get caught. A few began this, then nearly all joined,
except a small number of the more serious, thoughtful ones, who held
their tongues, and seemed to regard the thoughtless fellows with great
contempt.
Poor Koulikoff and A--v were now just as heartily abused as they had
been glorified before; the men seemed to take a delight in running them
down, as though in being caught they had done something wantonly
offensive to their mates. It was said, with high contempt, that the
fellows had probably got hungry and couldn’t stand it, and had gone into
a village to ask bread of the peasants, which, according to tramp
etiquette, it appears, is to come down very low in the world indeed. In
this supposition the men turned out to be quite mistaken; for what had
happened was that the tracks of the runaways out of the town were
discovered and followed up; they were ascertained to have got into a
wood, which was surrounded, so that the fugitives had no recourse but
to give themselves up.
They were brought in that night, tied hands and feet, under armed
escort. All the convicts ran hastily to the palisades to see what would
be done with them; but they saw nothing except the carriages of the
Governor and the Major, which were waiting in front of the guard-house.
The fugitives were ironed and locked up separately, their punishment
being adjourned till the next day. The prisoners began all to sympathise
with the unhappy fellows when they heard how they had been taken, and
learned that they could not help themselves, and the anxiety about the
issue was keen.
“They’ll get a thousand at least.”
“A thousand, is it? I tell you they’ll have it till the life is beaten
out of them. A--v may get off with a thousand, but the other they’ll
kill; why, he’s in the ‘special section.’”
They were wrong. A--v was sentenced to five hundred strokes, his
previous good conduct told in his favour, and this was his first prison
offence. Koulikoff, I believe, had fifteen hundred. The punishment, upon
the whole, was mild rather than severe.
The two men showed good sense and feeling, for they gave nobody’s name
as having helped them, and positively declared that they had made
straight for the woods without going into anybody’s house. I was very
sorry for Koulikoff; to say nothing of the heavy beating he got; he had
thrown away all his chances of having his lot as a prisoner lightened.
Later he was sent to another convict establishment. A--v did not get all
he was sentenced to; the physicians interfered, and he was let off. But
as soon as he was safe in the hospital he began blowing his trumpet
again, and said he would stick at nothing now, and that they should soon
see what he would do. Koulikoff was not changed a bit, as decorous as
ever, and gave himself just the same airs as ever; manner or words to
show that he had had such an adventure. But the convicts looked on him
quite differently; he seemed to have come down a good deal in their
estimation, and now to be on their own level every way, instead of being
a superior creature. So it was that poor Koulikoff’s star paled; success
is everything in this world.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The expression of the original is untranslatable; literally “you
killed a cattle-kill.” This phrase means murder of a peasant, male or
female, supposed to bewitch cattle. We had in our jail a murderer who
had done this cattle-kill.--DOSTOÏEFFSKY’S NOTE.
CHAPTER X.
FREEDOM!
This incident occurred during my last year of imprisonment. My
recollection of what occurred this last year is as keen as of the events
of the first years; but I have gone into detail enough. In spite of my
impatience to be out, this year was the least trying of all the years I
spent there. I had now many friends and acquaintances among the
convicts, who had by this time made up their minds very much in my
favour. Many of them, indeed, had come to feel a sincere and genuine
affection for me. The soldier who was assigned to accompany my friend
and myself--simultaneously discharged--out of the prison, very nearly
cried when the time for leaving came. And when we were at last in full
freedom, staying in the rooms of the Government building placed at our
disposal for the month we still spent in the town, this man came nearly
every day to see us. But there were some men whom I could never soften
or win any regard from--God knows why--and who showed just the same hard
aversion for me at the last as at the first; something we could not get
over stood between us.
I had more indulgences during the last year. I found among the military
functionaries of our town old acquaintances, and even some old
schoolfellows, and the renewal of these relations helped me. Thanks to
them I got permission to have some money, to write to my family, and
even to have some books. For some years I had not had a single volume,
and words would fail to tell the strange, deep emotion and excitement
which the first book I read at the jail caused me. I began to devour it
at night, when the doors were closed, and read it till the break of day.
It was a number of a review, and it seemed to me like a messenger from
the other world. As I read, my life before the prison days seemed to
rise up before me in sharp definition, as of some existence independent
of my own, which another soul had had. Then I tried to get some clear
idea of my relation to current events and things; whether my arrears of
knowledge and experience were too great to make up; whether the men and
women out of doors had lived and gone through many things and great
during the time I was away from them; and great was my desire to
thoroughly understand what was _now_ going on, _now_ that I could know
something about it all at last. All the words I read were as palpable
things, which I wanted rather to feel sensibly than get mere meaning out
of; I tried to see more in the text than _could_ be there. I imagined
some mysterious meanings that _must_ be in them, and tried at every page
to see allusions to the past, with which my mind was familiar, whether
they were there or not; at every turn of the leaf I sought for traces of
what had deeply moved people before the days of my bondage; and deep was
my dejection when it was forced on my mind that a new state of things
had arisen; a new life, among my kind, which was alien to my knowledge
and my sentiments. I felt as if I was a straggler, left behind and lost
in the onward march of mankind.
Yes, there were indeed arrears, if the word is not too weak.
For the truth is, that another generation had come up, and I knew it
not, and it knew not me. At the foot of one article I saw the name of
one who had been dear to me; with what avidity I flung myself on _that_
paper! But the other names were nearly all new to me; new workers had
come upon the scene, and I was eager to know their doings and
themselves. It made me feel nearly desperate to have so few books, and
to know how hard it would be to get more. At an earlier date, in the old
Major’s time, it was a dangerous thing indeed to bring books into the
jail. If one was found when the whole place was searched, as was
regularly done, great was the disturbance, and no efforts were spared to
find out how they got in, and who had helped in the offence. I did not
want to be subjected to insulting scrutiny, and, if I had, it would have
been useless. I _had_ to live without books, and did, shut up in myself,
tormenting myself with many a question and problem on which I had no
means of throwing any light. But I can _never_ tell it all.
It was in winter that I came in, so in winter I was to leave, on the
anniversary-day. Oh, with what impatience did I look forward to the
thrice-blessed winter! How gladly did I see the summer die out, the
leaves turn yellow on the trees, the grass turn dry over the wide
steppe! Summer is gone at last! the winds of autumn howl and groan, the
first snow falls in whirling flakes. The winter, so long, long-prayed
for, is come, come at last. Oh, how the heart beats with the thought
that freedom was really, at last, at last, close at hand. Yet it was
strange, as the time of times, the day of days, grew nearer and nearer,
so did my soul grow quieter and quieter. I was annoyed at myself,
reproached myself even with being cold, indifferent. Many of the
convicts, as I met them in the court-yard when the day’s work was done,
used to get out, and talk with me to wish me joy.
“Ah, little Father Alexander Petrovitch, you’ll soon be out now! And
here you’ll leave us poor devils behind!”
“Well, Mertynof, have you long to wait still?” I asked the man who
spoke.
“I! Oh, good Lord, I’ve seven years of it yet to weary through.”
Then the man sighed with a far-away, wandering look, as if he was gazing
into those intolerable days to come.... Yes, many of my companions
congratulated me in a way that showed they really felt what they said. I
saw, too, that there was more disposition to meet me as man to man, they
drew nearer to me as I was to leave them; the halo of freedom began to
surround me, and caring for that they cared more for me. It was in this
spirit they bade me farewell.
K--schniski, a young Polish noble, a sweet and amiable person, was very
fond, about this time, of walking in the court-yard with me. The
stifling nights in the barracks did him much harm, so he tried his best
to keep his health by getting all the exercise and fresh air he could.
“I am looking forward impatiently to the day when _you_ will be set
free,” he said with a smile one day, “for when you go I shall _realise_
that I have just one year more of it to undergo.”
Need I say what I can yet not help saying, that freedom in idea always
seemed to us who were there something _more_ free than it ever can be in
reality? That was because our fancy was always dwelling upon it.
Prisoners always exaggerate when they think of freedom and look on a
free man; we did certainly; the poorest servant of one of the officers
there seemed a sort of king to us, everything we could imagine in a free
man, compared with ourselves at least; he had no irons on his limbs, his
head was not shaven, he could go where and when he liked, with no
soldiers to watch and escort him.
The day before I was set free, as night fell I went _for the last time_
all through and all round the prison. How many a thousand times had I
made the circuit of those palisades during those ten years! There, at
the rear of the barracks, had I gone to and fro during the whole of that
first year, a solitary, despairing man. I remember how I used to reckon
up the days I had still to pass there--thousands, thousands! God! how
long ago it seemed. There’s the corner where the poor prisoned eagle
wasted away; Petroff used often to come to me at that place. It seemed
as if the man would never leave my side now; he would place himself by