Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (187 page)

‘Hear, hear!’ added another.

‘You’d do better to take a pitcher,’ said a third, ‘and carry water to the building site, or go to the tobacco factory. You’re no use here.’

I was obliged to keep apart. To remain idle while others were working seemed a shame; but when I moved to the opposite end of the barge I was insulted anew.

‘A fine crew we’ve got!’ they cried. ‘What can you do with fellows like him?’

Nor was this good-natured fun: they were delighted with the opportunity of scoffing at a gentleman.

The reader will now understand why in those early days I was at a loss to know how I should ever manage to get on with such people. I foresaw that such incidents would often recur; but I resolved not to alter my line of conduct in any way, whatever the result might be. I had decided to live simply and intelligently, without manifesting the least desire to be on familiar terms with my fellow prisoners, but also without repelling them if they sought my company; to appear indifferent to their hatred and their threats; and to pretend as far as possible not to notice them. Such was my plan for I realized from the outset that they would despise me if I adopted any other course.

When I returned to prison in the evening, fatigued and harassed at the end of an afternoon’s Work, a deep sadness took possession of me. How many thousand days must I pass like this one? That thought was constantly in my mind. Towards nightfall I was wandering about alone near the palisade at the rear of our barrack, deep in meditation, when I suddenly caught sight of my friend Bull running to meet me.

Bull was the prison dog. Every prison has its dog as companies of infantry, batteries of artillery, and squadrons of cavalry have theirs. He had been there for a long time, belonged to no one, looked upon everyone as his master, and lived on scraps from the kitchen. He was a large black-and-white dog, not very old, with intelligent eyes and a bushy tail. No one ever caressed him or paid the least attention to him; but as soon as I arrived I made friends with him by giving him a piece of bread. When I patted his back he stood motionless, looked at me with a pleased expression, and gently wagged his tail.

That evening, not having seen me the whole day-me, the first person who in so many years had thought of stroking him-
he ran towards me, leaping and barking. I was so deeply moved that I could not help embracing him. I laid his head against my body; he placed his paws on my shoulders and looked me in the face.

‘Here is a heaven-sent friend,’ I told myself, and during those first unhappy weeks my first act on returning from work was to hurry with Bull to the back of the barrack, where he leaped around me with joy. I took his head in my hands and kissed it. At the same time a troubled, bitter feeling pressed my heart. I well remember thinking (and taking pleasure in the thought) that this was my one, my only friend in the world-my faithful dog, Bull.

CHAPTER VIII

NEW ACQUAINTANCES-PETROFF

Time passed, and little by little I accustomed myself to my new life. The scenes I witnessed day by day no longer afflicted me so keenly. In a word, the prison, its inhabitants, and its manners left me indifferent. To grow completely reconciled to the life was impossible, but I had to accept it as an inevitable fact. I had thrown off my earlier anxiety: I no longer wandered about the prison like a lost soul, and no longer allowed myself to be obsessed with worry. The ill-mannered curiosity of the convicts had somewhat abated, and I was no longer looked upon with that affectation of insolence previously displayed. They were no longer interested in me, and I was very glad of it. I began to feel at home in the barrack. I knew where to he down and sleep at night; I gradually became accustomed to things the very idea of which would formerly have repelled me. I went regularly every week to have my head shaved. We were called every Saturday, one after another, to the guard-house, where the regimental barbers lathered our skulls with cold water and soap, and then scraped us with their saw-like razors.

The bare memory of this torture makes me shudder. However, I soon discovered a remedy, for Akim Akimitch introduced me to a prisoner in the military section who for one kopeck shaved his customers with his own razor. It was his trade. Many of the prisoners went to him merely to avoid the military barbers, though the latter were not men of weak nerves. Our barber was known as ‘the governor.’ Why, I cannot say; for so far as I could see he bore no resemblance whatever to any such official. As I write these Unes I can see him clearly with his thin, drawn face. He was a tall fellow, silent, rather stupid, and entirely absorbed in his business. He was never to be seen without a strop, upon which day and night he sharpened a razor which was always in admirable condition. He had certainly made this work the supreme object of his life; he was really happy when his razor was quite sharp and his services in demand. His lather was always warm, and he had a very light hand-a hand of velvet. He was proud of his skill, and used to take his kopeck with an air of nonchalance; one might have thought that he worked for love of his art, and not for material gain.

One Af was severely reprimanded by the prison governor because he had the misfortune to use the word ‘governor’ when referring to the barber who shaved him. The governor was in a violent rage.

‘ Blackguard,’ he shouted, ‘ don’t you know who is governor?’

and according to his habit he shook Af violently. ‘The idea of calling a low-down convict “governor” in my presence!’

From the first day of my imprisonment I began to dream of my release. My favourite occupation was to count thousands and thousands of times, in a thousand different ways, the number of days that I had still to spend in prison. To regain my freedom; that was my one ambition, as I am sure it is of every man deprived of his liberty. I cannot affirm that every convict entertained the same degree of hope, but their sanguine disposition often surprised me. Hope in a prisoner differs essentially from that enjoyed by a free man. The latter may desire to improve his condition, or to succeed in some enterprise which he has undertaken, but meanwhile he goes about his business and is swept away in the whirlwind of daily life. It is very different with a convict under life sentence. He too may be said to live, but having been condemned to an indefinite term, he takes a more indefinite view of his situation than does one who knows how many years he has to serve. The man condemned to a comparatively short period feels that he is temporarily away from home; he considers himself, so to speak, as on a visit; he regards the twenty years of his punishment as two years at most; he is sure that at fifty, when he has finished his sentence, he will be as young and as lively as at thirty-five. ‘I have time before me,’ he thinks, and strives obstinately to dispel discouraging thoughts. Even a man condemned for life believes that some day an order may arrive from St Petersburg: ‘Transport So-and-so to the mines at Nertchinsk and fix a term for his detention.’ That would be grand, first because it takes six months to get to Nertchinsk, and life on the road is a hundred times preferable to the prison. He will serve his time at Nertchinsk, and then. More than one grey-haired old man speculates in this way.

At Tobolsk I saw men fastened to the wall at the bedside by a chain about two yards long. That is the punishment for serious crime committed on the way to Siberia; they are kept chained up for five or even ten years. They are nearly all brigands, and I saw only one who looked like a man of good breeding. He had been in some branch of the civil service, and spoke softly with a lisp; his smile was sweet but sickly. He showed us his chain, and pointed out the most convenient way of lying down. He must have been a pleasant fellow! All these poor wretches are perfectly well-behaved; they all seem satisfied, and yet they are eaten up with desire to finish their period in chains. Why? it will be asked. Simply because they will then leave their low, damp, stifling cells for the prison courtyard. But they will never be released from prison; they are aware that those who have once been chained up will never regain their freedom and will die in irons. They know all this, and yet they look forward anxiously to the day when they are no longer chained. Without that hope they could never remain five or six years fastened to a wall, without dying or going mad.

I soon understood that work alone could save me, by fortifying my bodily health, whereas incessant restlessness of mind, nervous irritation, and the close air of the barrack would ruin it completely. I should leave prison vigorous and resilient. I did not deceive myself, work and movement were invaluable.

I was horrified to see one of my comrades melt away like a piece of wax. At the beginning of my sentence he was young, handsome, and full of vigour; yet when he left his health was ruined, and his legs could no longer support him. His chest, too, was oppressed by asthma.

‘No,’ I said to myself as I watched him. ‘I wish to live, and I will live.’

My love of work exposed me at first to the contempt and bitter sarcasm of my comrades; but I paid no attention to them, and went with a light heart to every task. Sometimes, for instance, I was ordered to calcine and pound alabaster. This work, the first I was given, is easy. The engineers did their utmost not to overtax a gentleman; it was not indulgence, but simple justice. It would have been ridiculous to expect the same work from a labourer as from a man whose strength was less by half, and who had never worked with his hands. But this never meant that we were spoilt, for the leniency was unofficial, and we were strictly supervised. As really heavy work was by no means uncommon, it often happened that the task was beyond the strength of a gentleman, who thus suffered twice as much as his comrades.

Generally three or four men were sent to pound the alabaster, and old, feeble men were nearly always chosen. We were of the latter class. A skilled workman accompanied us, and for several years he was always the same one, Almazoff. He was stern, already advanced in years, sunburnt, and very thin; by no means communicative, moreover, and difficult to get on with. He despised us profoundly, but was of such a reserved disposition that he never broke into open abuse.’ The shed in which we calcined the alabaster was built on a sloping and deserted bank of the river. On a foggy winter’s day the view on the river and far beyond the opposite bank; was gloomy. There was something heart-rending in this dull, naked landscape; but it was still more depressing when a brilliant sun shone above the boundless white plain. How! one would have liked to fly away beyond this steppe which, beginning on the opposite shore, stretched like a huge tablecloth for fifteen hundred versts to the south.

Almazoff went to work silently, with a disagreeable air. We were ashamed not to be able to help him more effectually, but he managed to do his work without our assistance, and seemed to wish us to understand that we were unfair towards him, and that we ought to repent our uselessness. Our work was to heat the oven for calcining the alabaster which we had gathered into heaps.

Next day, when the alabaster was fully calcined, we turned it out. Each man filled a box with the stuff which he then proceeded to crush; it was not an unpleasant job. The fragile stone soon became a brilliant white dust. We brandished our heavy hammers, and dealt such formidable blows that we admired our own strength. When we were tired we felt lighter, our cheeks were red, the blood circulated more rapidly in our veins. Almazoff would then look at us in a condescending manner, as he would have at little children. He smoked his pipe with an indulgent air, unable, however, to prevent himself from grumbling. He never opened his mouth except to complain; he was the same with everyone. At bottom, I believe, he was a kindly soul.

I had another job: it consisted in working the lathe wheel. This wheel was large and heavy; great strength was necessary to make it revolve, especially when the fellows in the engineering shop were making the balustrade of a staircase, or the foot of a large table, from a length of tree-trunk. No one man could have done the work alone. B(a gentleman) and I were regularly appointed to this task during several years.

B, though still young, was weak, but very friendly. He had been sent to prison a year before me, with two companions who were also of noble birth. One of them, an old man, used to pray day and night, and was greatly respected for it. He died in prison. The other was quite a young fellow, fresh-coloured, strong, and courageous. He had carried his companion B for several hundred versts, when, at the end of the first half-stage, he collapsed through fatigue. Their mutual love was worth seeing.

Bwas a perfectly well-bred man, of noble and generous disposition, but spoiled and irritated by illness. We used to turn the wheel well together, and the work interested us. Indeed, I found the exercise most beneficial.

I was, moreover, very fond of shovelling away the snow, which we generally did after the frequent gales of the winter. When a hurricane had been raging for an entire day, more than one house would be covered to the windows, if not completely buried. The wind died down, the sun reappeared, and we were ordered to dig out the buildings from the snowdrifts.

We were told off in large groups which sometimes consisted of the entire prison population. Each man received a shovel, and had to move a given quantity of snow, which sometimes appeared an impossible task. But we all set to work with a good will. The light powdery snow had not yet congealed, and was frozen only on the surface. We removed it in enormous shovelfuls, and scattered it over a wider area. In the air the snow-dust was as brilliant as diamonds; the shovel sank easily into the white glittering mass. The convicts almost always appeared happy at this work, animated by exercise and the cold wintry air. Everyone felt himself in better spirits, laughter and jokes were heard, snowballs were exchanged. After a time this excited the indignation of the serious-minded convicts, who liked neither laughter nor gaiety, and the performance was generally concluded in showers of abuse.

Little by little my circle increased, although I never intentionally made new acquaintances. I was always restless, morose, and mistrustful; but one seemed to make friends involuntarily. The first who came to visit me was a man named Petroff. I purposely say visit, because he belonged to the special division which was housed at the opposite end of the courtyard. It seemed as if no understanding could exist between us, for we had nothing in common.