The House of the Dead: or, Prison Life in Siberia

He feared nobody. They put the strait-waistcoat on him; but we were no whit better off for it, for he went on quarreling and fighting all round. At the end of three weeks, the room put up an unanimous entreaty to the head doctor that he might be removed to the other apartment reserved for the convicts. But after two days, at the request of the sick people in that other room, they brought him back to our infirmary. As we had two madmen there at once, both rooms kept sending them back and forward, and ended by taking one or the other of the two lunatics, turn and turn about. Everybody breathed more freely when they took them away from us, a good way off, somewhere or other.

There was another lunatic whom I remember – a very remarkable creature. They had brought in, during the summer, a man under sentence, who looked like a solid and vigorous fellow enough, of about forty-five years. His face was sombre and sad, pitted with small-pox, with little red and swollen eyes. He sat down by my side. He was extremely quiet; spoke to nobody, and seemed utterly absorbed in his own deep reflections.

Night fell; then he addressed me, and, without a word of preface, told me in a hurried and excited way – as if it were a mighty secret he were confiding – that he was to have two thousand strokes with the rod; but that he had nothing to fear, as the daughter of Colonel G – was taking steps on his behalf.

I looked at him with surprise, and observed that, as I saw the affair, the daughter of a Colonel could be of little use in such a case. I had not yet guessed what sort of person I had to do with, for they had brought him to the hospital as a bodily sick person, not mentally. I then asked him what illness he was suffering from.

He answered that he knew nothing about it; that he had been sent among us for something or other; but that he was in good health, and that the Colonel's daughter had fallen in love with him. Two weeks before she had passed in a carriage before the guard-house, where he was looking through the barred window, and she had gone head over ears in love at the mere sight of him.

After that important moment she had come three times to the guard-house on different pretexts. The first time with her father, ostensibly to visit her brother, who was the officer on service; the second with her mother, to distribute alms to the prisoners. As she passed in front of him she had muttered that she loved him and would get him out of prison.

He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it pure figment of his poor disordered head. He believed devoutly and implicitly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke very calmly, and with all assurance of the passionate love he had inspired in this young lady.

This odd and romantic delusion about the love of quite a young girl of good breeding, for a man nearly fifty years and afflicted with a face so disfigured and gloomy, simply showed the fearful effect produced by the fear of the punishment he was to have, upon the poor, timid creature.

It may be that he had really seen some one through the bars of the window, and the insanity, germinating under excess of fear, had found shape and form in the delusion in question.

This unfortunate soldier, who, it may be warranted, had never given a thought to young ladies, had got this romance into his diseased fancy, and clung convulsively to this wild hope. I heard him in silence, and then told the story to the other convicts. When these questioned him in their natural curiosity, he preserved a chastely discreet silence.

Next day the doctor examined him. As the madman averred that he was not ill, he was put down on the list as qualified to be sent out. We learned that the physician had scribbled "Sanat. est" on the page, when it was quite too late to give him warning. Besides, we were ourselves not by any means sure what was really the matter with the man.

The error was with the authorities who had sent him to us, without specifying for what reason it was thought necessary to have him come into the hospital – which was unpardonable negligence.

However, two days later the unhappy creature was taken out to be scourged. We understood that he was dumbfounded by finding, contrary to his fixed expectation, that he really was to have the punishment. To the last moment he thought he would be pardoned, and when conducted to the front of the battalion, he began to cry for help.

As there was no room or bedding-place now in our apartment they sent him to the infirmary. I heard that for eight entire days he did not utter a single word, and remained in stupid and misery-stricken mental confusion. When his back was cured they took him off. I never heard a single further word about him.

As to the treatment of the sick and the remedies prescribed, those who were but slightly indisposed paid no attention whatever to the directions of the doctors, and never took their medicines; while, speaking generally, those really ill were very careful in following the doctor's orders; they took their mixtures and powders; they took all the possible care they could of themselves; but they preferred external to internal remedies.

Cupping-glasses, leeches, cataplasms, blood-lettings – in all which things the populace has so blind a confidence – were held in high honour in our hospital. Inflictions of that sort were regarded with satisfaction.

There was one thing quite strange, and to me interesting. Fellows, who stood without a murmur the frightful tortures caused by the rods and scourges, howled, and grinned, and moaned for the least little ailment. Whether it was all pretence or not, I really cannot say.

We had cuppings of a quite peculiar kind. The machine with which instantaneous incisions in the skin are produced, was all out of order, so they had to use the lancet.

For a cupping, twelve incisions are necessary; with a machine these are not painful at all, for it makes them instantaneously; with the lancet it is a different affair altogether – that cuts slowly, and makes the patient suffer. If you have to make ten openings there will be about one hundred and twenty pricks, and these very painful. I had to undergo it myself; besides the pain itself, it caused great nervous irritation; but the suffering was not so great that one could not contain himself from groaning if he tried.

It was laughable to see great, hulking fellows wriggling and howling. One couldn't help comparing them to some men, firm and calm enough in really serious circumstances, but all ill-temper or caprice in the bosom of their families for nothing at all; if dinner is late or the like, then they'll scold and swear; everything puts them out; they go wrong with everybody; the more comfortable they really are, the more troublesome are they to other people. Characters of this sort, common enough among the lower orders, were but too numerous in our prison, by reason of our company being forced on one another.

Sometimes the prisoners chaffed or insulted the thin-skins I speak of, and then they would leave off complaining directly; as if they only wanted to be insulted to make them hold their tongues.

Oustiantsef was no friend of grimacings of this kind, and never let slip an opportunity of bringing that sort of delinquent to his bearings. Besides, he was fond of scolding; it was a sort of necessity with him, engendered by illness and also his stupidity. He would first fix his gaze upon you for some time, and then treat you to a long speech of threatening and warning, and a tone of calm and impartial conviction. It looked as though he thought his function in this world was to watch over order and morality in general.

"He must poke his nose into everything," the prisoners with a laugh used to say; for they pitied, and did what they could to avoid conflicts with him.

"Has he chattered enough? Three waggons wouldn't be too much to carry away all his talk."

"Why need you put your oar in? One is not going to put himself about for a mere idiot. What's there to cry out about at a mere touch of a lancet?"

"What harm in the world do you fancy that is going to do you?"

"No, comrades," a prisoner strikes in, "the cuppings are a mere nothing. I know the taste of them. But the most horrid thing is when they pull your ears for a long time together. That just shuts you up."

All the prisoners burst out laughing.

"Have you had them pulled?"

"By Jove, yes, I should think he had."

"That's why they stick upright, like hop-poles."

This convict, Chapkin by name, really had long and quite erect ears. He had long led a vagabond life, was still quite young, intelligent, and quiet, and used to talk with a dry sort of humour with much seriousness on the surface, which made his stories very comical.

"How in the world was I to know you had had your ears pulled and lengthened, brainless idiot?" began Oustiantsef, once more wrathfully addressing Chapkin, who, however, vouchsafed no attention to his companion's obliging apostrophe.

"Well, who did pull your ears for you?" some one asked.

"Why, the police superintendent, by Jove, comrades! Our offence was wandering about without fixed place of abode. We had just got into K – , I and another tramp, Eptinie; he had no family name, that fellow. On the way we had fixed ourselves up a little in the hamlet of Tolmina; yes, there is a hamlet that's got just that name – Tolmina. Well, we get to the town, and are just looking about us a little to see if there's a good stroke of tramp-business to do, after which we mean to flit. You know, out in the open country you're as free as air; but it's not exactly the same thing in the town. First thing, we go into a public-house; as we open the door we give a sharp look all round. What's there? A sunburnt fellow in a German coat all out at elbows, walks right up to us. One thing and another comes up, when he says to us:

"'Pray excuse me for asking if you have any papers [passport] with you?'

"'No, we haven't.'

"'Nor have we either. I have two comrades besides these with me who are in the service of General Cuckoo [forest tramps, i. e., who hear the birds sing]. We have been seeing life a bit, and just now haven't a penny to bless ourselves with. May I take the liberty of requesting you to be so obliging as to order a quart of brandy?'

"'With the greatest pleasure,' that's what we say to him. So we drink together. Then they tell us of a place where there's a real good stroke of business to be done – a house at the end of the town belonging to a wealthy merchant fellow; lots of good things there, so we make up our minds to try the job during the night; five of us, and the very moment we are going at it they pounce on us, take us to the station-house, and then before the head of the police. He says, 'I shall examine them myself.' Out he goes with his pipe, and they bring in for him a cup of tea; a sturdy fellow it was, with whiskers. Besides us five, there were three other tramps, just brought in. You know, comrades, that there's nothing in this world more funny than a tramp, because he always forgets everything he's done. You may thump his head till you're tired with a cudgel; all the same, you'll get but one answer, that he has forgotten all about everything.

"The police superintendent then turns to me and asks me squarely,

"'Who may you be?'

"I answer just like all the rest of them:

"'I've forgotten all about it, your worship.'

"'Just you wait; I've a word or two more to say to you. I know your phiz.'

"Then he gives me a good long stare. But I hadn't seen him anywhere before, that's a fact.

"Then he asks another of them, 'Who are you?'

"'Mizzle-and-scud, your worship.'

"'They call you Mizzle-and-scud?'

"'Precisely that, your worship.'

"'Well and good, you're Mizzle-and-scud! And you?' to a third.

"'Along-of-him, your worship.'

"'But what's your name – your name?'

"'Me? I'm called Along-of-him, your worship.'

"'Who gave you that name, hound?'

"'Very worthy people, your worship. There are lots of worthy people about; nobody knows that better than your worship.'

"'And who may these "worthy people" be?'

"'Oh, Lord, it has slipped my memory, your worship. Do be so kind and gracious as to overlook it.'

"'So you've forgotten them, all of them, these "worthy people"?'

"'Every mother's son of them, your worship.'

"'But you must have had relations – a father, a mother. Do you remember them?'

"'I suppose I must have had, your worship; but I've forgotten about 'em, my memory is so bad. Now I come to think about it, I'm sure I had some, your worship.'

"'But where have you been living till now?'

"'In the woods, your worship.'

"'Always in the woods?'

"'Always in the woods!'

"'Winter too?'

"'Never saw any winter, your worship.'

"'Get along with you! And you – what's your name?'

"'Hatchets-and-axes, your worship.'

"'And yours?'

"'Sharp-and-mum, your worship.'

"'And you?'

"'Keen-and-spry, your worship.'

"'And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.'

"'Not a mother's son of us anything whatever.'

"He couldn't help it; he laughed out loud. All the rest began to laugh at seeing him laugh! But the thing does not always go off like that. Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till you get every tooth in your jaw smashed. Devilish big and strong these fellows, I can tell you.

"'Take them off to the lock-up,' said he. 'I'll see to them in a bit. As for you, stop here!'

"That's me.

"'Just you go and sit down there.'

"Where he pointed to there was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I, 'What's he up to now?'

"'Sit down,' he says again; 'take the pen and write.'

"And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest.

"'I can't write, your worship.'

"'Write, write!'

"'Have mercy on me, your worship!'

"'Write your best; write, write!'

"And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I'd rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell.

"'Write, write!' that was all he said."

"Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it?

"Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that's why he tormented me with his 'Write, write!' He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand.

"'A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?'

"'Oh, Lord, don't say a word about it, I beg.'

"Everybody burst out laughing.

"'Well, you did write?'

"'What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper, and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just gave me a dozen thumps, regulation allowance, and then let me go about my business: to prison, that is.'

"'Do you really know how to write?'

"'Of course I did. What d'ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the whole blessed thing, though, ever since they began to use pens for it.'"

Thanks to the gossip talk of the convicts who filled the hospital, time was somewhat quickened for us. But still, Almighty God, how wearied and bored we were! Long, long were the days, suffocating in their monotony, one absolutely the same as another. If only I had had a single book.

For all that I went often to the infirmary, especially in the early days of my banishment, either because I was ill or because I needed rest, just to get out of the worse parts of the prison. In those life was indeed made a burden to us, worse even than in the hospital, especially as regards the effect upon moral sentiment and good feeling. We of the nobility were the never-ceasing objects of envious dislike, quarrels picked with us all the time, something done every moment to put us in the wrong, looks filled with menacing hatred unceasingly directed on us! Here, in the sick-rooms, one lived on a sort of footing of equality, there was something of comradeship.

The most melancholy moment of the twenty-four hours was evening, when night set in. We went to bed very early. A smoky lamp just gave us one point of light at the very end of the room, near the door. In our corner we were almost in complete darkness. The air was pestilential, stifling. Some of the sick people could not get to sleep, would rise up, and remain sitting for an hour together on their beds, with their heads bent, as though they were in deep reflection. These I would look at steadily, trying to guess what they might be thinking of; thus I tried to kill time. Then I became lost in my own reveries; the past came up to me again, showing itself to my imagination in large powerful outlines filled with high lights and massive shadows, details that at any other time would have remained in oblivion, presented themselves in vivid force, making on me an impression impossible under any other circumstances.

Then I would begin to muse dreamily on the future. When shall I leave this place of restraint, this dreadful prison? Whither betake myself? What will then befall me? Shall I return to the place of my birth? So I brood, and brood, until hope lives once again in my soul.

Another time I would begin to count, one, two, three, etc., to see if sleep could be won that way. I would set sometimes as far as three thousand, and was as wakeful as ever. Then somebody would turn in his bed.

Then there's Oustiantsef coughing, that cough of the hopelessly-gone consumptive, and then he would groan feebly, and stammer, "My God, I've sinned, I've sinned!"

How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice, stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world, of his children, his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man's voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there is another, listening intently to what he is saying. A weak, feeble sort of muttering and murmuring comes to one's ear from far-off in the dreary room, a sound as of far-off water flowing somewhere… I remember that one time, during a winter night that seemed as if it would never end, I heard a story which at first seemed as if it were the stammerings of a creature in nightmare, or the delirium of fever. Here it is:

CHAPTER IV. THE HUSBAND OF AKOULKA

It was late at night, about eleven o'clock. I had been sleeping some time and woke up with a start. The wan and weak light of the distant lamp barely lit the room. Nearly everybody was fast asleep, even Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his difficult breathing, and the rattlings in his throat with every respiration. In the ante-chamber sounded the heavy and distant footsteps of the patrol as the men came up. The butt of a gun struck the floor with its low and heavy sound.

The door of the room was opened, and the corporal counted the sick, stepping softly about the place. After a minute or so he closed the door again, leaving a fresh sentinel there; the patrol went off, silence reigned again. It was only then that I observed two prisoners, not far from me, who were not sleeping, and who seemed to be holding a muttered conversation. Sometimes, in fact, it would happen that a couple of sick people, whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks, would all of a sudden break out into conversation with one another, in the middle of the night, and one of them would tell the other his history.

Probably they had been speaking for some considerable time. I did not hear the beginning of it, and could not at first seize upon their words, but little by little I got familiar with the muttered sounds, and understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire for sleep on me, so what could I do but listen.

One of them was telling his story with some warmth, half-lying on his bed, with his head lifted and stretched towards his companion. He was plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was on him.

The man listening was sitting up on his pallet, with a gloomy and indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress, and now and again murmured some words in reply, more out of politeness than interest, and kept stuffing his nose with snuff from a horn box. This was the soldier Techérévin, one of the company of discipline; a morose, cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of amour propre; while the narrator was Chichkof, about thirty years old; this was a civilian convict, whom up to that time I had not at all observed; and during the whole time I was at the prison I never could get up the smallest interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow.

Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would strike into anything that was going on, behave insufferably, go into a white heat about nothing at all, and tell you long stories with nothing in them whatever about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then some one would give him a hiding, and he would have another fit of silence. He was a mean and cowardly fellow, and the object of general contempt. His stature was low, he had little flesh on him, he had wandering eyes, though they sometimes got mixed and seemed filled with a stupid sort of thinking. When he told you anything he worked himself into a fever, gesticulated wildly, suddenly broke off and went to another subject, lost himself in fresh details, and at last forgot altogether what he was talking about. He often got into squabbles, this Chichkof, and when he poured insult on his adversary, he spoke with a sentimental whine and was affected nearly to tears. He was not a bad hand at playing the balalaika, and had a weakness for it; on fête days he would show you his dancing powers when others set him at it, and he danced by no means badly. You could easily enough make him do what you wanted … not that he was of a complying turn, but he liked to please and to get intimate with fellows.

For some considerable time I couldn't understand the story Chichkoff was telling; that night I mean. It seemed to me as though he were constantly rambling from the point to talk of something else. Perhaps he had observed that Tchérévine was paying little attention to the narrative, but I fancy that he was minded to overlook this indifference, so as not to take offence.

"When he went out on business," he continued, "every one saluted him politely, paid him every respect … a fellow with money that."

"You say that he was in some trade or other."

"Yes; trade indeed! The trading class in my country is wretchedly ill-off; just poverty-stricken. The women go to the river and fetch water from ever such a distance to water their gardens. They wear themselves to the very bone, and, for all that, when winter comes, they haven't got enough to make a mere cabbage soup. I tell you it's starvation. But that fellow had a good lump of land, which his labourers cultivated; he had three. Then he had hives, and sold his honey; he was a cattle-dealer too; a much respected man in our parts. He was very old and quite gray, his seventy years lay heavy on his old bones. When he came to the market-place with his fox-skin pelisse, everybody saluted him.

"'Good-day, daddy Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

"'Good-day,' he'd return.

"'How are you getting along;' he never looked down on any one.

"'God keep you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

"'How goes business with you?'

"'Business is as good as tallow's white with me; and how's yours, daddy?'

"'We've just got enough of a livelihood to pay the price of sin; always sweating over our bit of land.'

"'Lord preserve you, Aukoudim Trophimtych!'

"He never looked down on anybody. All his advice was always worth having; every one of his words was worth a rouble. A great reader he was, quite a man of learning; but he stuck to religious books. He would call his old wife and say to her, 'Listen, woman, take well in what I say;' then he would explain things. His old Marie Stépanovna was not exactly an old woman, if you please; it was his second wife; he had married her to have children, his first wife had not brought him any. He had two boys still quite young, for the second of them was born when his father was close on sixty; Akoulka, his daughter, was eighteen years old, she was the eldest."

"Your wife? Isn't it so?"

"Wait a bit, wait. Then Philka Marosof begins to kick up a row. Says he to Aukoudim: 'Let's split the difference. Give me back my four hundred roubles. I'm not your beast of burden; I don't want to do any more business with you, and I don't want to marry your Akoulka. I want to have my fling now that my parents are dead. I'll liquor away my money, then I'll engage myself, 'list for a soldier; and in ten years I'll come back here a field-marshal!' Aukoudim gave him back his money – all he had of his. You see he and Philka's father had both put in money and done business together.

"'You're a lost man,' that's what he said to Philka.

"'Whether I'm a lost man or not, old gray-beard, you're the biggest cheat I know. You'd try to screw a fortune out of four farthings, and pick up all the dirt about to do it with. I spit upon it. There you are piling up here, digging deep there, the devil only knows why. I've got a will of my own, I tell you. All the same I won't take your Akoulka; I've slept with her already.'

"'How dare you insult a respectable father – a respectable girl? When did you sleep with her, you spawn of the sucker, you dog, you hound, you – ?' said Aukoudim shaking with passion. (Philka told us all this later).

"'I'll not only not marry your daughter, but I'll take good care that nobody marries her, not even Mikita Grigoritch, for she's a disreputable girl. We had a fine time together, she and I, all last autumn. I don't want her at any price. All the money in the world wouldn't make me take her.'

"Then the fellow went and had high jinks for a while. All the town was as one man in sending up a cry against him. He got a lot of other fellows round him, for he had a heap of money. Three months he had of it. Such recklessness as you never heard of. Every penny went.

"'I want to see the end of this money. I'll sell the house; everything; then I'll 'list or go on the tramp.'

"He was drunk from morning to evening, and went about with a carriage and pair.

"The girls liked him well, I tell you, for he played the guitar very nicely."

"Then it is true that he had been too well with this Akoulka?"

"Wait, wait, can't you? I had just buried my father. My mother lived by baking gingerbread. We got our livelihood by working for Aukoudim; barely enough to eat, a precious hard life it was. We had a bit of land the other side of the woods, and grew corn there; but when my father died I went on a spree. I made my mother give me money; but I had to give her a good hiding first."

"You were very wrong to beat her; a great sin that?"

"Sometimes I was drunk the whole blessed day. We had a house that was just tumbling to pieces with dry rot, still it was our own; we were as near famished as could be; for weeks together we had nothing but rags to chew. Mother nearly killed me with one stupid trick or another, but I didn't care a curse. Philka Marosof and I were always together day and night. 'Play the guitar to me,' he'd say, 'and I'll lie in bed the while. I'll throw money to you, for I'm the richest chap in the world!' The fellow could not speak without lying. There was only one thing. He wouldn't touch a thing if it had been stolen. 'I'm no thief, I'm an honest man. Let's go and daub Akoulka's door with pitch,⁵ for I won't have her marry Mikita Grigoritch, I'll stick to that.'

"The old man had long meant to give his daughter to this Mikita Grigoritch. He was a man well on in life, in trade too, and wore spectacles. When he heard the story of Akoulka's bad conduct, he said to the old father, 'That would be a terrible disgrace for me, Aukoudim Trophimtych; on the whole, I've made up my mind not to marry; it's to late.'

"So we went and daubed Akoulka's door all over with pitch. When we'd done that her folks beat her so that they nearly killed her.

"Her mother, Marie Stépanovna, cried, 'I shall die of it,' while the old man said, 'If we were in the days of the patriarchs, I'd have hacked her to pieces on a block. But now everything is rottenness and corruption in this world.' Sometimes the neighbours from one end of the street to the other heard Akoulka's screams. She was whipped from morning to evening, and Philka would cry out in the market-place before everybody:

"Akoulka's a jolly girl to get drunk with. I've given it those people between the eyes, they won't forget me in a hurry.'

"Well, one day, I met Akoulka, she was going for water with her bucket, so I cried out to her: 'A fine morning, pet Akoulka Koudimovna! you're the girl who knows how to please fellows. Who's living with you now, and where do you get your money for your finery?' That's just what I said to her; she opened her eyes as wide as you please. No more flesh on her than on a log of wood. She had only just given me a look, but her mother thought she was larking with me, and cried from her door-step, 'Impudent hussy, what do you mean by talking with that fellow?' And from that moment they began to beat her again. Sometimes they hided her for an hour together. The mother said, 'I give her the whip because she isn't my daughter any more.'"

"She was then as bad as they said?"

"Now you just listen to my story, nunky, will you? Well, we used to get drunk all the time with Philka. One day when I was abed, mother comes and says: