After such conversations one could observe on his countenance signs ofsuffering and exhaustion. I remember that, one fine summer evening, Iwent out with him from the house of Ivan Gvosdikof. It suddenly occurredto me to invite him to come in with me and smoke a cigarette. I canscarcely describe the fright which showed itself in his countenance. Hebecame confused, muttered incoherent words, and suddenly, after lookingat me with an angry air, took to flight in an opposite direction. I wasvery much astonished afterwards, when he met me. He seemed toexperience, on seeing me, a sort of terror; but I did not lose courage.There was something in him which attracted me.
download House of the Dead
At last I wished him good-bye, and I felt a weight fall from myshoulders as I left the house. I regretted to have harassed a man whosetastes kept him apart from the rest of the world. But the fault had beencommitted. I had remarked that he possessed very few books. It was nottrue, then, that he read so much. Nevertheless, on two occasions when Idrove past, I saw a light in his lodging. What could make him sit up solate? Was he writing, and if that were so, what was he writing?
Our prison was at the end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Lookingthrough the crevices between the palisade in the hope of seeingsomething, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a highearthwork, covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and daysentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one perceives from the first,that whole years will pass during which one will see by the samecrevices between the palisades, upon the same earthwork, always the samesentinels and the same little corner of the sky, not just above theprison, but far and far away. Represent to yourself a court-yard, twohundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad, enclosed by anirregular hexagonal palisade, formed of stakes thrust deep into theearth. So much for the external surroundings of the prison. On one sideof the palisade is a great gate, solid, and always shut; watchedperpetually by the sentinels, and never opened, except when the convictsgo out to work. Beyond this, there are light and liberty, the life offree people! Beyond the palisade, one thought of the marvellous world,fantastic as a fairy tale. It was not the same on our side. Here, therewas no resemblance to anything. Habits, customs, laws, were allprecisely fixed. It was the house of living death. It is this cornerthat I undertake to describe.
On penetrating into the enclosure one sees a few buildings. On eachside of a vast court are stretched forth two wooden constructions, madeof trunks of trees, and only one storey high. These are convicts'barracks. Here the prisoners are confined, divided into several classes.At the end of the enclosure may be seen a house, which serves as akitchen, divided into two compartments. Behind it is another building,which serves at once as cellar, loft, and barn. The centre of theenclosure, completely barren, is a large open space. Here the prisonersare drawn up in ranks, three times a day. They are identified, and mustanswer to their names, morning, noon, and evening, besides several timesin the course of the day if the soldiers on guard are suspicious andclever at counting. All around, between the palisades and the buildingsthere remains a sufficiently large space, where some of the prisonerswho are misanthropes, or of a sombre turn of mind, like to walk aboutwhen they are not at work. There they go turning over their favouritethoughts, shielded from all observation.
I have heard that this section has since been abolished. At the sametime, civil convicts are kept apart, in order that the military convictsmay be organised by themselves into a homogeneous "disciplinarycompany." The administration, too, has naturally been changed;consequently what I describe are the customs and practices of anothertime, and of things which have since been abolished. Yes, it was a longtime ago; it seems to me that it is all a dream. I remember entering theconvict prison one December evening, as night was falling. The convictswere returning from work. The roll-call was about to be made. An underofficer with large moustaches opened to me the gate of this strangehouse, where I was to remain so many years, to endure so many emotions,and of which I could not form even an approximate idea, if I had notgone through them. Thus, for example, could I ever have imagined thepoignant and terrible suffering of never being alone even for one minuteduring ten years? Working under escort in the barracks together with twohundred "companions;" never alone, never!
I learned, moreover, to know one suffering which is perhaps thesharpest, the most painful that can be experienced in a house ofdetention apart from laws and liberty. I mean, "forced cohabitation."Cohabitation is more or less forced everywhere and always; but nowhereis it so horrible as in a prison. There are men there with whom no onewould consent to live. I am certain that every convict, unconsciouslyperhaps, has suffered from this.
"But what would you do, you are only a convict? We have no other name.You will see that she will rob you, the wretch, without even saying,'Thank you.' The money I gave her was wasted. Just fancy, she was here afew days ago! Where were we to go? Shall I ask permission to go into thehouse of Theodore, the executioner? He has still his house in thesuburb, the one he bought from that Solomon, you know, that scurvy Jewwho hung himself not long since."
"Ten men throw themselves upon him and beat him like a sack withoutmercy until he loses consciousness. When he is half dead with thebeating, they lay him down on his plank bedstead, and cover him overwith his pelisse."
It sometimes happens that among the convicts there are admirers of thefair sex. For a sufficiently large sum of money they succeed,accompanied by a soldier whom they have corrupted, in getting secretlyout of the fortress into a suburb instead of going to work. There in anapparently quiet house a banquet is held at which large sums of moneyare spent. The convicts' money is not to be despised, accordingly thesoldiers will sometimes arrange these temporary escapes beforehand, sureas they are of being generously recompensed. Generally speaking thesesoldiers are themselves candidates for the convict prison. The escapadesare scarcely ever discovered. I must add that they are very rare, forthey are very expensive, and the admirers of the fair sex are obliged tohave recourse to other less costly means.
A third, a vagabond, half dead with hunger, pursued by a whole band ofpolice, was defending his liberty, his life. He is to be regarded as onan equality with the brigand who assassinates children for hisamusement, for the pleasure of feeling their warm blood flow over hishands, of seeing them shudder in a last bird-like palpitation beneaththe knife which tears their flesh!
I passed an entire evening at her house, with other companions of myimprisonment. She looked us straight in the face, laughed when welaughed, did everything we asked her, in conversation was always of ouropinion, and did her best in every way to entertain us. She gave us teaand various little delicacies. If she had been rich we felt sure shewould have been pleased, if only to be able to entertain us better andoffer for us some solid consolation.
"The dead-house!" I said to myself when night fell, and I looked fromthe threshold of our barracks at the prisoners just returned from theirlabours and walking about in the court-yard, from the kitchen to thebarracks, and vice versâ. As I examined their movements and theirphysiognomies I endeavoured to guess what sort of men they were, andwhat their disposition might be.
The fourth day, the convicts were drawn up in two ranks, early in themorning, in the court-yard before the guard-house, close to the prisongates. Before and behind them were soldiers with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets.
After an hour the "conductor" arrived. He listened quietly to what theconvicts had to say, declared that the task he gave them was to get offfour rivets[Pg 107] unbroken, and to demolish a good part of the barque. Assoon as this was done the prisoners could go back to the house. The taskwas a considerable one, but, good heavens! how the convicts now went towork! Where now was their idleness, their want of skill? The hatchetssoon began to dance, and soon the rivets were sprung. Those who had nohatchets made use of thick sticks to push beneath the rivets, and thusin due time and in artistic fashion, they got them out. The convictsseemed suddenly to have become intelligent in their conversation. Nomore insults were heard. Every one knew perfectly what to say, to do, toadvise. Just half-an-hour before the beating of the drum, the appointedtask was executed, and the prisoners returned to the convict prisonfatigued, but pleased to have gained half-an-hour from the working timefixed by the regulations.
Time went on, and little by little I accustomed myself to my new life.The scenes I had daily before me no longer afflicted me so much. In aword, the convict prison, its inhabitants, and its manners, left meindifferent. To get reconciled to this life was impossible, but I had toaccept it as an inevitable fact. I had driven entirely away from me allthe anxiety by which I had at first been troubled. I no longer wanderedthrough the convict prison like a lost soul, and no longer allowedmyself to be subjugated by my anxiety. The wild curiosity of theconvicts had had its edge taken off, and I was no longer looked uponwith that affectation or insolence previously displayed. They had becomeindifferent to me, and I was very glad of it. I began to feel at home inthe barracks. I knew where to go and sleep at night; gradually I becameaccustomed to things the very idea of which would formerly have beenrepugnant to me. I went every week regularly to have my head shaved. Wewere called every Saturday one after another to the guard-house. Theregimental barbers lathered our skulls with cold water and soap, andscraped us afterwards with their saw-like razors. 2ff7e9595c
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