The house of the dead or, Prison life in Siberia
politeness, scarcely ever speaking to them, and making no endeavour to
conceal the disgust which they experienced in such company. The convicts
understood all this, and paid them back in their own coin.
Two years passed before I could gain the good-will of my companions; but
the greater part of them were attached to me, and declared that I was a
good fellow.
There were altogether--counting myself--five Russian nobles in the
convict prison. I had heard of one of them even before my arrival as a
vile and base creature, horribly corrupt, doing the work of spy and
informer. Accordingly, from the very first day I refused to enter into
relations with this man. The second was the parricide of whom I have
spoken in these memoirs. The third was Akimitch. I have scarcely ever
seen such an original; and I have still a lively recollection of him.
Tall, thin, weak-minded, and terribly ignorant, he was as argumentative
and as particular about details as a German. The convicts laughed at
him; but they feared him, on account of his susceptible, excitable, and
quarrelsome disposition. As soon as he arrived, he was on a footing of
perfect equality with them. He insulted them and beat them. Phenomenally
just, it was sufficient for him that there was injustice, to interfere
in an affair which did not concern him. He was, moreover, exceedingly
simple. When he quarrelled with the convicts, he reproached them with
being thieves, and exhorted them in all sincerity to steal no more. He
had served as a sub-lieutenant in the Caucasus. I made friends with him
the first day, and he related to me his “affair.” He had begun as a
cadet in a Line regiment. After waiting some time to be appointed to his
commission as sub-lieutenant, he at last received it, and was sent into
the mountains to command a small fort. A small tributary prince in the
neighbourhood set fire to the fort, and made a night attack, which had
no success.
Akimitch was very cunning, and pretended not to know that he was the
author of the attack, which he attributed to some insurgents wandering
about the mountains. After a month he invited the prince, in a friendly
way, to come and see him. The prince arrived on horseback, without
suspecting anything. Akimitch drew up his garrison in line of battle,
and exposed to the soldiers the treason and villainy of his visitor. He
reproached him with his conduct; proved to him that to set fire to the
fort was a shameful crime; explained to him minutely the duties of a
tributary prince; and then, by way of peroration to his harangue, had
him shot. He at once informed his superior officers of this execution,
with all the details necessary. Thereupon Akimitch was brought to trial.
He appeared before a court-martial, and was condemned to death; but his
sentence was commuted, and he was sent to Siberia as a convict of the
second class--condemned, that is to say, to twelve years’ hard labour
and imprisonment in a fortress. He admitted willingly that he had acted
illegally, and that the prince ought to have been tried in a civil
court, and not by a court-martial. Nevertheless, he could not understand
that his action was a crime.
“He had burned my fort; what was I to do? Was I to thank him for it?” he
answered to my objections.
Although the convicts laughed at Akimitch, and pretended that he was a
little mad, they esteemed him all the same by reason of his cleverness
and his precision.
He knew all possible trades, and could do whatever you wished. He was
cobbler, bootmaker, painter, carver, gilder, and locksmith. He had
acquired these talents at the convict prison, for it was sufficient for
him to see an object, in order to imitate it. He sold in the town, or
caused to be sold, baskets, lanterns, and toys. Thanks to his work, he
had always some money, which he employed in buying shirts, pillows, and
so on. He had himself made a mattress, and as he slept in the same room
as myself he was very useful to me at the beginning of my imprisonment.
Before leaving prison to go to work, the convicts were drawn up in two
ranks before the orderly-room, surrounded by an escort of soldiers with
loaded muskets. An officer of Engineers then arrived, with the
superintendent of the works and a few soldiers, who watched the
operations. The superintendent counted the convicts, and sent them in
bands to the places where they were to be occupied.
I went with some other prisoners to the workshop of the Engineers--a low
brick house built in the midst of a large court-yard full of materials.
There was a forge there, and carpenters’, locksmiths’, and painters’
workshops. Akimitch was assigned to the last. He boiled the oil for the
varnish, mixed the colours, and painted tables and other pieces of
furniture in imitation walnut.
While I was waiting to have additional irons put on, I communicated to
him my first impressions.
“Yes,” he said, “they do not like nobles, above all those who have been
condemned for political offences, and they take a pleasure in wounding
their feelings. Is it not intelligible? We do not belong to them, we do
not suit them. They have all been serfs or soldiers. Tell me what
sympathy can they have for us. The life here is hard, but it is nothing
in comparison with that of the disciplinary companies in Russia. There
it is hell. The men who have been in them praise our convict prison. It
is paradise compared to their purgatory. Not that the work is harder. It
is said that with the convicts of the first class the administration--it
is not exclusively military as it is here--acts quite differently from
what it does towards us. They have their little houses there I have been
told, for I have not seen for myself. They wear no uniform, their heads
are not shaved, though, in my opinion, uniforms and shaved heads are not
bad things; it is neater, and also it is more agreeable to the eye, only
these men do not like it. Oh, what a Babel this place is! Soldiers,
Circassians, old believers, peasants who have left their wives and
families, Jews, Gypsies, people come from Heaven knows where, and all
this variety of men are to live quietly together side by side, eat from
the same dish, and sleep on the same planks. Not a moment’s liberty, no
enjoyment except in secret; they must hide their money in their boots;
and then always the convict prison at every moment--perpetually convict
prison! Involuntarily wild ideas come to one.”
As I already knew all this, I was above all anxious to question Akimitch
in regard to our Major. He concealed nothing, and the impression which
his story left upon me was far from being an agreeable one.
I had to live for two years under the authority of this officer. All
that Akimitch had told me about him was strictly true. He was a
spiteful, ill-regulated man, terrible above all things, because he
possessed almost absolute power over two hundred human beings. He looked
upon the prisoners as his personal enemies--first, and very serious
fault. His rare capacities, and, perhaps, even his good qualities, were
perverted by his intemperance and his spitefulness. He sometimes fell
like a bombshell into the barracks in the middle of the night. If he
noticed a prisoner asleep on his back or his left side, he awoke him and
said to him: “You must sleep as I ordered!” The convicts detested him
and feared him like the plague. His repulsive, crimson countenance made
every one tremble. We all knew that the Major was entirely in the hands
of his servant Fedka, and that he had nearly gone mad when his dog
“Treasure” fell ill. He preferred this dog to every other living
creature.
When Fedka told him that a convict, who had picked up some veterinary
knowledge, made wonderful cures, he sent for him directly and said to
him, “I entrust my dog to your care. If you cure ‘Treasure’ I will
reward you royally.” The man, a very intelligent Siberian peasant, was
indeed a good veterinary surgeon, but he was above all a cunning
peasant. He used to tell his comrades long after the affair had taken
place the story of his visit to the Major.
“I looked at ‘Treasure,’ he was lying down on a sofa with his head on a
white cushion. I saw at once that he had inflammation, and that he
wanted bleeding. I think I could have cured him, but I said to myself,
‘What will happen if the dog dies? It will be my fault.’ ‘No, your
noble highness,’ I said to him, ‘you have called me too late. If I had
seen your dog yesterday or the day before, he would now be restored to
health; but at the present moment I can do nothing. He will die.’ And
‘Treasure’ died.”
I was told one day that a convict had tried to kill the Major. This
prisoner had for several years been noticed for his submissive attitude
and also his silence. He was regarded even as a madman. As he possessed
some instruction he passed his nights reading the Bible. When everybody
was asleep he rose, climbed up on to the stove, lit a church taper,
opened his Gospel and began to read. He did this for an entire year.
One fine day he left the ranks and declared that he would not go to
work. He was reported to the Major, who flew into a rage, and hurried to
the barracks. The convict rushed forward and hurled at him a brick,
which he had procured beforehand; but it missed him. The prisoner was
seized, tried, and whipped--it was a matter of a few moments--carried to
the hospital, and died there three days afterwards. He declared during
his last moments that he hated no one; but that he had wished to suffer.
He belonged to no sect of fanatics. Afterwards, when people spoke of him
in the barracks, it was always with respect.
At last they put new irons on me. While they were being soldered a
number of young women, selling little white loaves, came into the forge
one after another. They were, for the most part, quite little girls who
came to sell the loaves that their mothers had baked. As they got older
they still continued to hang about us, but they no longer brought bread.
There were always some of them about. There were also married women.
Each roll cost two kopecks. Nearly all the prisoners used to have them.
I noticed a prisoner who worked as a carpenter. He was already getting
gray, but he had a ruddy, smiling complexion. He was joking with the
vendors of rolls. Before they arrived he had tied a red handkerchief
round his neck. A fat woman, much marked with the small-pox, put down
her basket on the carpenter’s table. They began to talk.
“Why did you not come yesterday?” said the convict, with a
self-satisfied smile.
“I did come; but you had gone,” replied the woman boldly.
“Yes; they made us go away, otherwise we should have met. The day before
yesterday they all came to see me.”
“Who came?”
“Why, Mariashka, Khavroshka, Tchekunda, Dougrochva” (the woman of four
kopecks).
“What,” I said to Akimitch, “is it possible that----?”
“Yes; it happens sometimes,” he replied, lowering his eyes, for he was a
very proper man.
Yes; it happened sometimes, but rarely, and with unheard of
difficulties. The convicts preferred to spend their money in drink. It
was very difficult to meet these women. It was necessary to come to an
agreement about the place, and the time; to arrange a meeting, to find
solitude, and, what was most difficult of all, to avoid the
escorts--almost an impossibility--and to spend relatively prodigious
sums. I have sometimes, however, witnessed love scenes. One day three of
us were heating a brick-kiln on the banks of the Irtitch. The soldiers
of the escort were good-natured fellows. Two “blowers” (they were
so-called) soon appeared.
“Where were you staying so long?” said a prisoner to them, who had
evidently been expecting them. “Was it at the Zvierkoffs that you were
detained?”
“At the Zvierkoffs? It will be fine weather, and the fowls will have