Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (210 page)

That old man from Starodoub! He was extraordinarily subdued and quiet; but there were certain indications of what went on in his mind, indications which he could not hide and from which I could not but see that his inward life was one of intolerable anguish. Nevertheless, he had one source of help and consolation-prayer, and the belief in his own martyrdom. The convict who was always reading the Bible, of whom I spoke earlier-the one who went mad and attacked the governor with a brickbat-was also probably one of those whom hope had altogether abandoned; and, as it is quite impossible to go on living without hope of some sort, he threw away his life as a sort of voluntary sacrifice. He declared that he attacked the governor though he had no particular grievance; all he wanted was to suffer torment.

Now, what sort of psychological process had been going on in that man’s soul? No man lives, or can live, without having
some
object in view, and without making efforts to attain that object. But when there is no such object and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster. The object we all had in view was liberty, the remission of our confinement and hard labour.

I have tried to separate the convicts into sharply defined classes and categories, but it cannot be done satisfactorily. Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications in which we so delight. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and. differentiations. Every one of us in that prison had his own peculiar, interior, strictly personal life which lay altogether outside the world of regulations and official superintendence.

But, as I have said before, I could not penetrate the depths of this interior life in the early part of my prison career, for everything that met my eyes, or challenged my attention in any way, filled me with a sadness for which there are no words. Sometimes I felt nothing short of hatred for those poor creatures whose martyrdom was at least as great as mine. In those first days I envied them, because they were among persons of their own sort and understood one another; so I thought, but the truth was that their enforced companionship, their comradeship, where the word of command went with the whip or the rod, was as much an object of aversion to them as it was to me, and every one of them tried to keep himself as much as possible to himself. This envious hatred of them, which came to me in moments of irritation, was at least excusable, for those who tell you so confidently that a cultured man of the upper class does not suffer as a mere peasant does are utterly wrong. That is a thing I have often heard said, and read too. In the abstract, the notion seems correct and is founded in generous sentiment, for all convicts are human beings. But in reality it is different. At the heart of the problem lie a number of practical complications upon which experience alone can pronounce, experience which I have had. I do not mean to lay it down peremptorily that the nobleman and the man of culture feel more acutely, sensitively, deeply, because of their more highly developed conditions of being. On the other hand, it is impossible to reduce all souls alike to one common level or standard; neither the grade of education nor anything else furnishes a standard according to which punishment can be meted out.

It is a great satisfaction to me to be able to say that among those men who suffered so terribly under a vile and barbarous system, I found abundant proof that the elements of moral development were not wanting. In our prison there were men with whom I was familiar for several years, upon whom I looked as wild beasts and abhorred as such. Well, all of a sudden, when I least expected it, those very men would manifest such a wealth of fine feeling, so keen a comprehension of the sufferings of others, seen in the light of the consciousness of their own, that one could almost fancy that scales had fallen from one’s eyes. It was so sudden as to be astonishing; one could scarcely believe one’s eyes or ears. Sometimes, however, it was just the other way about: well bred and educated men would occasionally display a savage, cynical brutality which nearly turned one’s stomach. Their conduct was such that it could be neither excused nor justified, however charitably one might feel disposed.

I lay no stress on the fundamental change in habits of life, the food, etc. in respect of which a gentleman suffers so much more keenly than the peasant or working man, who often goes hungry when free, but whose belly is always filled in prison. I will not emphasize that, for it must be admitted that for a man with any strength of character these external things are trifling when compared with privations of a very different kind. None the less, such total change of material conditions and habits is neither inconsiderable nor easy to endure. On the other hand, the status of a convict involves considerations before which all other horrors pale, even the ubiquitous mud and filth, the scantiness and uncleanness of the food, the irons, and the suffocating sense of being always gripped as in a vice.

The capital, the most important point of all, is that after a couple of hours or so every newcomer from the lower classes shakes down into equality with the rest: he is
at home
among them, he has the ‘freedom’ of this city of slaves, this criminal community in which one man is superficially like every other man. He understands and is understood, he is looked upon by everybody as
one of themselves.
Now it is quite otherwise with a gentleman. However kindly, fair-minded, and intelligent such a man may be, he will be hated and despised by all for years; he will never be understood or trusted. He will be considered neither as friend nor comrade. If he can persuade the others to stop insulting him it will be as much as he can do, for he will be alien to them from first to last, he is doomed to experience the grief of unending, hopeless, causeless solitude and sequestration. It may sometimes be that this state of affairs is not due to any malice on the part of his fellow prisoners: it simple cannot be helped; the gentleman is not one of the gang, and therein lies the whole secret.

There is nothing more terrible than to have to live outside the social sphere to which you properly belong. The peasant, transported from Taganrog to Petropavlosk, finds there other Russian peasants like himself; between him and them there can be mutual understanding; within the hour they will be friends, and live comfortably together in the same izba or the same barrack. With the gentleman it is wholly otherwise: a great gulf separates him from the lower classes. How deep and impassible that gulf is appears only when he forfeits his position and becomes as one of the common herd. You may perhaps spend your whole life in daily contact with the peasant, during forty years your official position or other duties may lead you to do business with him as regularly as day follows night. You may be his benefactor, all but a father to him-but you will never know what lies at the bottom of the man’s mind or heart. You may think you know something about him, but it is all illusion, nothing more. My readers will no doubt charge me with exaggeration, but I am convinced that I speak the literal truth. I do not found my judgment upon theory or book-reading; the realities of life have given me only too ample time and opportunity to review and correct my ideas, which in this matter have become unshakable convictions. Perhaps my fellow men will some day learn how well founded are my assertions.

At the beginning of my imprisonment these truths still required demonstration, but events and close observation quickly confirmed my views, and what I experienced so affected me as to undermine my health. During the first summer I wandered about the place, so far as I was free to move, a solitary, friendless man. My moral situation was such that I could not distinguish those convicts who, in the sequel, managed to care for me a little in spite of the gulf that always remained between us. There
were
there men of my own position, ex-noblemen like myself, but I found their companionship repugnant.

Here is one incident which forced me to realize from the outset how solitary a creature I was, and all the strangeness of my position. On a fine, warm August day, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, a time when, as a rule, everyone took a nap before resuming work, the convicts rose as one man and assembled in the courtyard. I had not the slightest idea until then that anything unusual was afoot. So deeply had I been sunk in my own thoughts, that I had scarcely noticed what was going on around me. It seems, however, that the convicts had been smouldering with unwonted discontent for three days. It may have started even earlier; so, at any rate, I thought later when I recalled stray remarks, snatches of conversation that had reached my ears, the palpable increase of ill humour among the prisoners, and their unusual irritability for some time past. I had attributed it all to the trying summer work, the insufferably long days; to their dreaming about the woods and freedom, which the season revived; to the nights too short for rest. It may be that all these things combined to generate a ferment of discontent that only needed a tolerably good reason to explode. That reason was found in the food.

For several days a good deal of plain speaking in barracks had revealed their dissatisfaction, to which they gave voice when assembled for dinner or supper. One of the cooks had been changed, but after a couple of days the newcomer was sacked and his predecessor brought back. The restlessness and ill humour were general; mischief was brewing.

‘Here are we slaving to death, and they give us nothing but filth to eat,’ grumbled one in the kitchen.

‘If you don’t like it, why don’t you order jellies and blancmange?’ said another.

‘Sour cabbage soup, why, that’s
good.
I love it; there’s nothing more juicy,’ exclaimed a third.

‘Well, if they gave you nothing but beef, beef, beef, for ever and ever, would you like
that?’

‘ Yes, yes, they ought to give us meat,’ said a fourth. ‘One’s almost killed at the workshops; and, by heaven! when you’re through with the work there you’re hungry, hungry, and you don’t get anything to satisfy your hunger.’

‘It’s true, the food’s simply damnable.’

‘He fills his pockets, don’t you fear!’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Whose business is it, then? My belly’s my own. If we were all to make a row about it together, you’d soon see.’

‘Yes.’

‘ Haven’t we been beaten enough for complaining, you fool?’

‘ True enough! What’s done in a hurry is never well done. And how would you set about making a fuss, tell me that?’

‘ I’ll tell you, by God! If everybody will go, I’ll go too; I’m just dying of hunger. It’s all very well for those who eat apart at a better table to keep quiet, but those who eat the regulation food’

‘There’s a fellow with eyes that do their job, bursting with envy
he
is. Don’t his eyes glisten when he sees something that doesn’t belong to him?’

‘Well, pals, why don’t we make up our minds? Have we gone through enough? They flay us, the rogues! Let’s have a go at them.’

‘What’s the good? I tell you you must chew what they give you, and stuff your mouth full of it. Look at the fellow, he wants people to chew his food for him. We’re in prison, and have got to put up with it.’

‘Yes, that’s it; we’re in prison.’

‘That’s it always; the people die of hunger and the Government fills its belly.’

‘That’s true. Old Eight Eyes has got nice and fat on it; he’s bought a pair of grey horses.’

‘He doesn’t like his glass at all, that fellow,’ said a convict ironically.

‘He had a bout at cards a little while ago with the vet; for two hours he played without a halfpenny in his pocket. Fedka told me so.’

‘That’s why we get cabbage soup that’s fit for nothing.’

‘You’re all idiots! It doesn’t matter;
nothing
matters.’

‘I tell you if we all join in complaining we shall see what he has to say for himself. Let’s make up our minds.’

‘Speak for yourself! You’ll get his fist on your pate; that’s all.’

‘I tell you they’ll have him up, and try him.’

All the prisoners were in a state of acute agitation. The truth is, the food was execrable. The general anguish, suffering, and suspense seemed to be coming to a head. Convicts are naturally quarrelsome and rebellious, but a general revolt is rare, for they can never agree among themselves. We all of us felt that, because there was, as a rule, more violent talk than action.

This time, however, the agitation did not die down. The men gathered in groups in their barracks, talking things over excitedly, reciting in detail the governor’s misdeeds and trying to get to the bottom of them. In every affair of this kind there are ringleaders and firebrands. The ringleaders are generally rather remarkable fellows, not only in convict establishments, but among all large organizations of workmen, military detachments, etc. They are always people of a peculiar type, enthusiastic men with a thirst for justice, very naïve, simple, strong, and convinced that their ambitions can be fully realized. They have as much sense as other people, but some, though of high intelligence, are too full of warmth and zeal to exercise self-control. When you come across men who really know how to lead the masses and get what they want, you are face to face with a very different type: one that is extremely uncommon in Russia. The more usual type of leader, the one I first alluded to, does certainly in one sense fulfil his purpose, so far as instigating rebellion is concerned, but in the end he succeeds only in filling the prisons. Because of his impetuosity he always comes off second best, but it is this very impetuosity that gives him influence over the masses whose ardent, honest indignation does its work, and encourages the less resolute. His blind confidence of success seduces even the most hardened sceptics, although this confidence is generally based on such uncertain, childish reasons that it is wonderful how people can put faith in them.

The secret of such a man’s influence is that he takes the lead and forges ahead without flinching. He rushes forward, head down and often without any real understanding of what he is about. He has nothing about him of practical outlook in virtue of which a vile and worthless man often achieves his end, and even emerges white from a tub of ink. He inevitably dashes his skull against a stone wall. Under ordinary circumstances these fellows are bilious, irascible, intolerant, contemptuous, and often passionate, which, after all, is part of the secret of their strength. The deplorable thing is that they never aim at what is the essential, the vital part of their task; they invariably concern themselves from the outset with details instead of with essentials, and that is their ruin. But they and the mob understand one another, which makes them formidable.