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:

FOOTNOTE:

[4] What I relate about corporal punishment took place during my time.

Now, as I am told, everything is changed, and is changing still.

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:

“‘What d’ye mean by lying in bed, you hound, you thief!’ She abused me

for some time, then she said, ‘Marry Akoulka. They’ll be glad to give

her to you, and they’ll give three hundred roubles with her.’

“‘But,’ says I, ‘all the world knows that she’s a bad girl----’

“‘Hist, the marriage ceremony cures all that; besides, she’ll always be

in fear of her life from you, so you’ll be in clover together. Their

money would make us comfortable; I’ve spoken about the marriage already

to Marie Stépanovna, we’re of one mind about it.’

“So I say, ‘Let’s have twenty roubles down on the spot, and I’ll have

her.’

“Well, you needn’t believe it unless you please, but I was drunk right

up to the wedding-day. Then Philka Marosof kept threatening me all the

time.

“‘I’ll break every bone in your body, a nice fellow you to be engaged,

and to Akoulka; if I like I’ll sleep every blessed night with her when

she’s your wife.’

“‘You’re a hound, and a liar,’ that’s what I said to him. But he

insulted me so in the street, before everybody, that I ran to Aukoudim’s

and said, ‘I won’t marry her unless I have fifty roubles down this

moment.’”

“And they really did give her to you in marriage?”

“Me? Why not, I should like to know? We were respectable people enough.

Father had been ruined by a fire a little before he died; he had been a

richer man than Aukoudim Trophimtych.

“‘A fellow without a shirt to his back like you ought to be only too

happy to marry my daughter;’ that’s what old Aukoudim said.

“‘Just you think of your door, and the pitch that went on it,’ I said to

him.

“‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said he, ‘there’s no proof whatever that the

girl’s gone wrong.’

“‘Please yourself. There’s the door, and you can go about your business;

but give back the money you’ve had!’

“Then Philka Marosof and I settled it together to send Mitri Bykoff to

Father Aukoudim to tell him that we’d insult him to his face before

everybody. Well, I had my skin as full as it could hold right up to the

wedding-day. I wasn’t sober till I got into the church. When they took

us home after church the girl’s uncle, Mitrophone Stépanytch, said:

“‘This isn’t a nice business; but it’s over and done now.’

“Old Aukoudim was sitting there crying, the tears rolled down on his

gray beard. Comrade, I’ll tell you what I had done: I had put a whip

into my pocket before we went to church, and I’d made up my mind to have

it out of her with that, so that all the world might know how I’d been

swindled into the marriage, and not think me a bigger fool than I am.”

“I see, and you wanted her to know what was in store for her. Ah,

was----?”

“Quiet, nunky, quiet! Among our people I’ll tell you how it is; directly

after the marriage ceremony they take the couple to a room apart, and

the others remain drinking till they return. So I’m left alone with

Akoulka; she was pale, not a bit of colour on her cheeks; frightened out

of her wits. She had fine hair, supple and bright as flax, and great big

eyes. She scarcely ever was known to speak; you might have thought she

was dumb; an odd creature, Akoulka, if ever there was one. Well, you can

just imagine the scene. My whip was ready on the bed. Well, she was as

pure a girl as ever was, not a word of it all was true.”

“Impossible!”

“True, I swear; as good a girl as any good family might wish.”

“Then, brother, why--why--why had she had to undergo all that torture?

Why had Philka Marosof slandered her so?”

“Yes, why, indeed?”

“Well, I got down from the bed, and went on my knees before her, and put

my hands together as if I were praying, and just said to her, ‘Little

mother, pet, Akoulka Koudimovna, forgive me for having been such an

idiot as to believe all that slander; forgive me. I’m a hound!’

“She was seated on the bed, and gazed at me fixedly. She put her two

hands on my shoulders and began to laugh; but the tears were running

all down her cheeks. She sobbed and laughed all at once.

“Then I went out and said to the people in the other room, ‘Let Philka

Marosof look to himself. If I come across him he won’t be long for this

world.’

“The old people were beside themselves with delight. Akoulka’s mother

was ready to throw herself at her daughter’s feet, and sobbed.

“Then the old man said, ‘If we had known really how it was, my dearest

child, we wouldn’t have given you a husband of that sort.’

“You ought to have seen how we were dressed the first Sunday after our

marriage--when we left church! I’d got a long coat of fine cloth, a fur

cap, with plush breeches. She had a pelisse of hareskin, quite new, and

a silk kerchief on her head. One was as fine as the other. Everybody

admired us. I must say I looked well, and pet Akoulka did too. One

oughtn’t to boast, but one oughtn’t to sing small. I tell you people

like us are not turned out by the dozen.”

“Not a doubt about it.”

“Just you listen, I tell you. The day after my marriage I ran off from

my guests, drunk as I was, and went about the streets crying, ‘Where’s

that scoundrel of a Philka Marosof? Just let him come near me, the

hound, that’s all!’ I went all over the market-place yelling that out. I

was as drunk as a man could be, and stand.

“They went after me and caught me close to Vlassof’s place. It took

three men to get me back again to the house.

“Well, nothing else was spoken about all over the village. The girls

said, when they met in the market-place, ‘Well, you’ve heard the

news--Akoulka was all right!’

“A little while after I do come across Philka Marosof, who said to me

before everybody, strangers to the place, too, ‘Sell your wife, and

spend the money on drink. Jackka the soldier only married for that; he

didn’t sleep one night with his wife; but he got enough to keep his skin

full for three years.’

“I answered him, ‘Hound!’

“‘But,’ says he, ‘you’re an idiot! You didn’t know what you were about

when you married--you were drunk. How could you tell all about it?’

“So off I went to the house, and cried out to them ‘You married me when

I was drunk.’

“Akoulka’s mother tried to fasten herself on me; but I cried, ‘Mother,

you don’t know about anything but money. You bring me Akoulka!’

“And didn’t I beat her! I tell you I beat her for two hours running,

till I rolled on the floor myself with fatigue. She couldn’t leave her

bed for three weeks.”

“It’s a dead sure thing,” said Tchérévine phlegmatically; “if you don’t

beat them they---- Did you find her with her lover?”

“No; to tell the truth, I never actually caught her,” said Chichkoff

after a pause, speaking with effort; “but I was hurt, a good deal hurt,

for every one made fun of me. The cause of it all was Philka. ‘Your wife

is just made for everybody to look at,’ said he.

“One day he invited us to see him, and then he went at it. ‘Do just look

what a good little wife he has! Isn’t she tender, fine, nicely brought

up, affectionate, full of kindness for all the world? I say, my lad,

have you forgotten how we daubed their door with pitch?’ I was full at

that moment, drunk as may be; then he seized me by the hair and had me

down upon the ground before I knew where I was. ‘Come along--dance;

aren’t you Akoulka’s husband? I’ll hold your hair for you, and you shall

dance; it will be good fun.’ ‘Dog!’ said I to him. ‘I’ll bring some

jolly fellows to your house,’ said he, ‘and I’ll whip your Akoulka

before your very eyes just as long as I please.’ Would you believe it?

For a whole month I daren’t go out of the house, I was so afraid he’d

come to us and drag my wife through the dirt. And how I did beat her for

it!”

“What was the use of beating her? You can tie a woman’s hands, but not

her tongue. You oughtn’t to give them a hiding too often. Beat ’em a

bit, then scold ’em well, then fondle ’em; that’s what a woman is made

for.”

Chichkoff remained quite silent for a few moments.

“I was very much hurt,” he went on; “I began it again just as before. I

beat her from morning till night for nothing; because she didn’t get up

from her seat the way I liked; because she didn’t walk to suit me. When

I wasn’t hiding her, time hung heavy on my hands. Sometimes she sat by

the window crying silently--it hurt my feelings sometimes to see her

cry, but I beat her all the same. Sometimes her mother abused me for it:

‘You’re a scoundrel, a gallows-bird!’ ‘Don’t say a word or I’ll kill

you; you made me marry her when I was drunk, you swindled me.’ Old

Aukoudim wanted at first to have his finger in the pie. Said he to me

one day: ‘Look here, you’re not such a tremendous fellow that one can’t

put you down;’ but he didn’t get far on that track. Marie Stépanovna had

become as sweet as milk. One day she came to me crying her eyes out and

said: ‘My heart is almost broken, Ivan Semionytch; what I’m going to ask

of you is a little thing for you, but it is a good deal to me; let her

go, let her leave you, daddy Ivan.’ Then she throws herself at my feet.

‘Do give up being so angry! Wicked people slander her; you know quite

well she was good when you married her.’ Then she threw herself at my

feet again and cried. But I was as hard as nails. ‘I won’t hear a word

you have to say; what I choose to do, I do, to you or anybody, for I’m

crazed with it all. As to Philka Marosof, he’s my best and dearest

friend.’”

“You’d begun to play your pranks together again, you and he?”

“No, by Jove! He was out of the way by this time; he was killing himself

with drink, nothing less. He had spent all he had on drink, and had

’listed for a soldier, as substitute for a citizen body in the town. In

our parts, when a lad makes up his mind to be substitute for another, he

is master of that house and everybody there till he’s called to the

ranks. He gets the sum agreed on the day he goes off, but up to then he

lives in the house of the man who buys him, sometimes six whole months,

and there isn’t a horror in the whole world those fellows are not guilty

of. It’s enough to make folks take the holy images out of the house.

From the moment he consents to be substitute for the son of the family

then he considers himself their patron and benefactor, and makes them

dance as he pipes, or else he goes off the bargain.

“So Philka Marosof played the very mischief at the home of this

townsman. He slept with the daughter, pulled the master of the house by

the beard after dinner, did anything that came into his head. They had

to heat the bath for him every day, and, what’s more, give him brandy

fumes with the steam of the bath: and he would have the women lead him

by the arms to the bath room.[6]

“When he came back to the man’s house after a revel elsewhere, he would

stop right in the middle of the road and cry out:

“‘I won’t go in by the door; pull down the fence!’

“And they actually _had_ to pull down the fence, though there was the

door right at it to let him in. That all came to an end though, the day

they took him to the regiment. That day he was sobered sufficiently. The

crowd gathered all through the street.

“‘They’re taking off Philka Marosof!’

“He made a salute on all sides, right and left. Just at that moment

Akoulka was returning from the kitchen-garden. Directly Philka saw her

he cried out to her:

“‘Stop!’ and down he jumped from the cart and threw himself down at her

feet.

“‘My soul, my sweet little strawberry, I’ve loved you two years long.

Now they’re taking me off to the regiment with the band playing. Forgive

me, good honest girl of a good honest father, for I’m nothing but a

hound, and all you’ve gone through is my fault.’

“Then he flings himself down before her a second time. At first Akoulka

was exceedingly frightened; but she made him a great bow, which nearly

bent her double.

“‘Forgive me, too, my good lad; but I am really not at all angry with

you.’

“As she went into the house I was at her heels.

“‘What did you say to him, you she-devil, you?’

“Now you may believe it or not as you like, but she looked at me as bold

as you please, and answered:

“‘I love him better than anything or anybody in this world.’

“‘I say!’

“That day I didn’t utter one single word. Only towards evening I said to

her: ‘Akoulka, I’m going to kill you now.’ I didn’t close an eye the

whole night. I went into the little room leading to ours and drank

kwass. At daybreak I went into the house again. ‘Akoulka, get ready and

come into the fields.’ I had arranged to go there before; my wife knew

it.

“‘You are right,’ said she. ‘It’s quite time to begin reaping. I’ve

heard that our labourer is ill and doesn’t work a bit.’

“I put to the cart without saying a word. As you go out of the town

there’s a forest fifteen versts in length. At the end of it is our

field. When we had gone about three versts through the wood I stopped

the horse.

“‘Come, get up, Akoulka; your end is come.’

“She looked at me all in a fright, and got up without a word.

“‘You’ve tormented me enough. Say your prayers.’

“I seized her by the hair--she had long, thick tresses--I rolled them

round my arm. I held her between my knees; took out my knife; threw her

head back, and cut her throat. She screamed; the blood spurted out. Then

I threw away my knife. I pressed her with all my might in my arms. I put

her on the ground and embraced her, yelling with all my might. She

screamed; I yelled; she struggled and struggled. The blood--her

blood--splashed my face, my hands. It was stronger than I was--stronger.

Then I took fright. I left her--left my horse and began to run; ran back

to the house.

“I went in the back way, and hid myself in the old ramshackle

bath-house, which we never used now. I lay myself down under the seat,

and remained hid till the dead of the night.”

“And Akoulka?”

“She got up to come back to the house; they found her later, a hundred

steps from the place.”

“So you hadn’t finished her?”

“No.” Chichkoff stopped a while.

“Yes,” said Tchérévine, “there’s a vein; if you don’t cut it at the

first the man will go on struggling; the blood may flow fast enough, but

he won’t die.”

“But she was dead all the same. They found her in the evening, and she

was cold. They told the police, and hunted me up. They found me in the

night in the old bath.

“And there you have it. I’ve been four years here already,” added he,

after a pause.

“Yes, if you don’t beat ’em you make no way at all,” said Tchérévine

sententiously, taking out his snuff-box once more. He took his pinches

very slowly, with long pauses. “For all that, my lad, you behaved like a

fool. Why, I myself--I came upon my wife with a lover. I made her come

into the shed, and then I doubled up a halter and said to her:

“‘To whom did you swear to be faithful?--to whom did you swear it in

church? Tell me that?’

“And then I gave it her with my halter--beat her and beat her for an

hour and a half; till at last she was quite spent, and cried out:

“‘I’ll wash your feet and drink the water afterwards.’

“Her name was Crodotia.”

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Daubing the door of a house, where a young girl lives, is done to

show that she is dishonoured.

[6] A mark of respect paid in Russia formerly, now disused.

CHAPTER V.

THE SUMMER SEASON

April is come; Holy Week is not far off. We set about our summer tasks.

The sun becomes hotter and more brilliant every day; the atmosphere has

the spring in it, and acts upon our nervous system powerfully. The

convict, in his chains, feels the trembling influence of the lovely days

like any other creature; they rouse desires in him, inexpressible

longings for his home, and many other things. I think that he misses his

liberty, yearns for freedom more when the day is filled with sunlight

than during the rainy and melancholy days of autumn and winter. You may

observe this positively among convicts; if they _do_ feel a little joy

on a beautiful clear day, they have a reaction into greater impatience

and irritability.

I noticed that in spring there was much more squabbling in our prison;

there was more noise, the yelling was greater, there were more fights;

during the working hours we would see a man sometimes fixed in a

meditative gaze, which seemed lost in the blue distance somewhere, the

other side of the Irtych, where stretched the boundless plain, with its

flight of hundreds of versts, the free Kirghiz Steppe. Long-drawn sighs

came to one’s ear, sighs breathed from the depths of the chest; it might

seem that the air of those wide and free regions, haunted by their

thought, forced the convicts to draw deep respirations, and was a sort

of solace to their crushed and fettered souls.

“Ah!” cries at last the poor prisoner all at once, with a long, sighing

cry; then he seizes his pick furiously, or picks up the bricks, which he

has to carry from one place to another. But after a brief minute he

seems to forget the passing impression, and begins laughing, or

insulting people near, so fitful is his humour; then he attacks the work

he has to do with unusual fire, labours with might and main, as if

trying to stifle by fatigue the grief that has him by the throat. You

see they are fellows of unimpaired vigour, all in the very flower of

life, with all their physical and other strength about them.

How heavy the irons are during this season! All this is not

sentimentality, it is the report of rigorous observation. During the hot

season, under a fiery sun, when all one’s being, all one’s soul, is

vividly conscious of, and intimately feels, the unspeakably strong

resurrection of nature going on everywhere, it is more difficult to

support the confinement, the perpetual surveillance, the tyranny of a

will other than one’s own.

Besides this, it is in spring with the first song of the lark that

throughout all Siberia and Russia men set out on the tramp; God’s

creatures, if they can, break their prison and escape into the woods.

After the stifling ditch where they work, after the boats, the irons,

the rods and whips, they go vagabondizing where they please, wherever

they can make it out best; they eat and drink what they can get, ’tis

all the time pot-luck with them; and by night they sleep undisturbed in

the woods or in a field, without a care, without the agony of knowing

themselves in prison, as if they were God’s own birds; their

“good-night” is said to the stars, and the eye that watches them is the

eye of God. Not altogether a rosy life, by any means; sometimes hunger

and fatigue are heavy on them “in the service of General Cuckoo.” Often

enough the wanderers have not a morsel of bread to keep their teeth

going for days and days. They have to hide from everybody, run to earth

like marmots; sometimes they are driven to robbery, pillage--nay, even

murder.

“Send a man there and he becomes a child, and just throws himself on all

he sees”; that is what people say of those transported to Siberia. This

saying may be applied even more fitly to the tramps. They are almost all

brigands and thieves, by necessity rather than inclination. Many of them

are hardened to the life, irreclaimable; there are convicts who go off

after having served their time, even after they have been put on some

land as their own. They ought to be happy in their new state, with their

daily bread assured them. Well, it is not so; an irresistible impulse

sends them wandering off.

This life in the woods, wretched and fearful as it is, but still free

and adventurous, has a mysterious seduction for those who have

experienced it; among these fugitives you may find to your surprise,

people of good habit of mind, peaceable temper, who had shown every

promise of becoming settled creatures--good tillers of the land. A

convict will marry, have children, live for five years in the same

place, then all of a sudden he will disappear one fine morning,

abandoning wife and children, to the stupefaction of his family and the

whole neighbourhood.

One day, I was shown at the convict establishment one of these deserters

of the family hearthstone. He had committed no crime--at least, he was

under suspicion of none--but all through his life he had been a

deserter, a deserter from every post. He had been to the southern

frontier of the empire, the other side of the Danube, in the Kirghiz

Steppe, in Eastern Siberia, the Caucasus, in a word, everywhere. Who

knows? under other conditions this man might have been a Robinson

Crusoe, with the passion of travel so on him. These details I have from

other convicts, for he did not like talk, and never opened his mouth

except when absolutely necessary. He was a peasant, of quite small size,

of some fifty years, very quiet in demeanour, with a face so still as to

seem quite without any sort of meaning, impassive almost to idiotcy.

His delight was to sit for hours in the sun humming a sort of song

between his teeth so softly, that five steps off he was inaudible. His

features were, so to speak, petrified; he ate little, principally black

bread; he never bought white bread or spirits; my belief is, he never

had had any money, and that he couldn’t have counted it if he had. He

was indifferent to everything. Sometimes he fed the prison dogs with his

own hand, a thing no one else was known to do; (speaking generally,

Russians don’t like giving dogs things to eat from the hand). People

said that he had been married, twice even, and that he had children

somewhere. Why he had been sent as a convict, I have not the least idea.

We fellows were always fancying that he would escape; but his hour did

not come, or perhaps had come and gone; anyhow, he went through with his

punishment without resistance. He seemed an element quite foreign to the

medium wherein he had his being, an alien, self-concentrated creature.

Still, there was nothing in this deep surface calm which could be

trusted; yet, after all, what good would it have been to him to escape

from the place?

Compared with life at the convict prison, the vagabond age of the

forests is as the joys of Paradise. The tramp’s lot is wretched enough,

but at least free. So it is that every prisoner all over the soil of

Russia, becomes restless with the first rays of the smiling spring.

Comparatively few form any settled plan for flight, they fear the

hindrances in the way and the punishment that may ensue; only one in a

hundred, not more, make up his mind to it, but how to do it is a thought

that never ceases to haunt the minds of the ninety-nine others. Filled

as they are with this longing, anything that looks like giving a chance

of success is a comfort to them; then they set about comparing the facts

with cases of successful escape. I speak only of prisoners after and

under sentence, for prisoners not yet tried and condemned, are much more

ready to try at an escape. And those who have been sentenced, rarely

get away unless they attempt it in early days. When they have spent two

or three years of their time, they put them to a sort of credit-account

in their minds, and conclude that it is better to finish with the law

and be put on land as a free man, rather than forfeit that time if they

fail in escaping, which is always a possibility. Certainly not more than

one convict in ten succeeds in _changing his lot_. Those who do, are

nearly always men sentenced to an extremely long punishment, or for

life. Fifteen, twenty years seem like an eternity to them. Then there is

the branding, which is a great difficulty in the way of complete escape.

_Changing your lot_ is a technical expression. When a convict is caught

trying to escape, he is subjected to formal interrogatory, and will say

he wanted to _change his lot_. This somewhat literary formula exactly

represents the act in question. No escaped prisoner ever hopes to become

a perfectly free man, for he knows that it is nearly impossible; what he

looks for is to be sent to some other convict establishment, or to be

put on the land, or to be tried again for some offence committed when on

the tramp; in a word, to be sent anywhere else, it matters not where, so

that he get out of his present prison which has become insufferable to

him. All these fugitives, unless they find some unexpected shelter for

the winter, unless they meet some one interested in concealing them, or

if--last resort--they cannot procure--and sometimes a murder does

it--the legal document, which enables them to go about unmolested

everywhere; all these fugitives present themselves in crowds, during the

autumn, in the towns and at the prisons; they confess themselves to be

escaped tramps, pass the winter in jail, and live in the secret hope of

getting away the following summer.

On me, as well as others, the spring exercised its influence. Well do I

remember the avidity with which my gaze fed upon the horizon through the

gaps in the palisades; long, long did I stand with my head glued to the

pickets, obstinately and insatiably gazing on the grass greening in the

ditch surrounding the fortress, and at the blue of the distant sky as it

grew denser and denser. My anguish, my melancholy, were heavier on me;

as each day wore away the jail became odious, detestable. Hatred for me,

as a man of the nobility, filled the hearts of the convicts during these

first years, and this feeling of theirs simply poisoned my life for me.

Often did I ask to be sent to the hospital, when there was no need of

it, merely to be out of the punishment part of the place, to feel myself

out of the range of this unrelenting and implacable hostility.

“You nobles have beaks of iron, and you tore us to pieces with your

beaks when we were serfs,” is what the convicts used to say to us. How I

envied the people of the lower class who came into the place as

prisoners! It was different with them, they were in comradeship with all

there from the very first moment. So was it that in the spring, Freedom

showing herself as a sort of phantom of the season, the joy diffused

throughout all Nature, translated themselves within my soul into a more

than doubled melancholy and nervous irritability.

As the sixth week of Lent came I had to go through my religious

exercises, for the convicts were divided by the sub-superintendent into

seven sections--answering to the weeks in Lent--and these had to attend

to their devotions according to this roster. Each section was composed

of about thirty men. This week was a great solace to me; we went two or

three times a day to the church, which was close to the prison. I had

not been in church for a long time. The Lenten services, familiar to me

from early childhood in my father’s house, the solemn prayers, the

prostrations--all stirred in me the fibres of the memory of things long,

long past, and woke my earliest impressions to fresh life. Well do I

remember how happy I was when at morn we went into God’s house, treading

the ground which had frozen in the night, under the escort of soldiers

with loaded guns; the escort remained outside the church.

Once within we were massed close to the door so that we could scarcely

hear anything except the deep voice of the ministering deacon; now and

again we caught a glimpse of a black chasuble or the bare head of the

priest. Then it came into my mind how, when a child, I used to look at

the common people who formed a compact mass at the door, and how they

would step back in a servile way before some important epauletted

fellow, or some nobleman with a big paunch, some lady splendidly dressed

and of high devotion who, in a hurry to get at the front benches, and

ready for a row if there was any difficulty as to their being honoured

with the best of places. As it seemed to me then, it was only _there_,

near the church door, not far from the entry, that prayer was put up

with genuine fervour and humility, only there that, when people did

prostrate themselves on the floor it was done with real abasement of

self and full sense of unworthiness.

And now I myself was in that place of the common people, no, not in

their place, for we who were there were in chains and degradation.

Everybody kept himself at a distance from us. We were feared, and alms

were put in our hands as if we were beggars; I remember that all this

gave me the strange sensation of a refined and subtle pleasure. “Let it

even be so!” such was my thought. The convicts prayed with deep fervour;

every one of them had with him his poor farthing for a little candle, or

for their collection for the church expenses. “I too, I am a man,” each

one of them perhaps said, as he made his offering; “before God we are

all equal.”

After the six o’clock mass we went up to communion. When the priest,

_ciforium_ in hand, recited the words, “Have mercy on me as Thou hadst

on the thief whom Thou didst save,” nearly all the convicts prostrated

themselves, and their chains clanked; I think they took these words

literally as applied to themselves, and not as being in Scripture.

Holy Week came. The authorities presented each of us with an Easter egg,

and a small piece of wheaten bread. The townspeople loaded us with

benevolences. As at Christmas there was the priest’s visitation with

the cross, inspecting visit of the heads of departments, larded cabbage,

general enlargement of soul, and unlimited lounging, the only difference

being, that one could now walk about in the court-yard, and warm oneself

in the sun. Everything seemed filled with more light, larger than in the

winter, but also more fraught with sadness. The long, endless, summer

days seemed peculiarly unbearable on Church holidays. Work days were at

least shortened to our sense by the fatigue of work.

Our summer labours were much more trying than the winter tasks; our

business was principally that of carrying out engineering works. The

convicts were set to building, digging, bricklaying, or repairing

Government buildings, locksmith’s work, or carpentering, or painting.

Others went into the brick-fields, and that was looked upon by us as the

hardest of all we had laid on us. The brick-fields were situated about

four versts from the fortress; through all the summer they sent there,

every morning at six o’clock, a gang of fifty convicts. For this gang

they used to pick out workmen who had learned no trade in particular.

The convicts took with them their bread for the day, the distance was

too great for them to come back, eight useless versts, for dinner with

the others, so they had a meal when they returned in the evening.

Work was assigned to each for the day, but there was so much of it that

it was all a man could do, nay, more, to get to the end of it. First, we

had to dig and carry the clay, moisten it, and mould it in the ditch,

and then make a goodly quantity of bricks, two hundred or so, sometimes

fifty more than that. I was only twice sent to the brick-field. The

convicts sent to this labour came back in the evening dead tired, and

every one of them complained of the others, that he had had the worst of

the work put on him. I believe that reproaches of this kind were a

pleasure, a consolation to them. Some of them, however, liked the

brick-field work, because they got away from the town, and to the banks

of the Irtych into open, agreeable country, with the sky overhead; the

surroundings were more agreeable than those frightful Government

buildings. They were allowed to smoke there in all freedom, and to

remain lying down for half-an-hour or so, which was a great pleasure.

As for me, I was sent to one of the shops, or else to pound up

alabaster, or to carry bricks, which last job I had for two months

together. I had to take my tale of bricks from the banks of the Irtych

to a distance of about 140 yards, and to pass the ditch of the fortress

before getting to the barrack which they were putting up. This work

suited me well enough, although the cord with which I carried my bricks

sawed my shoulders; what particularly pleased me was that my strength

increased sensibly. At the outset I could not carry more than eight

bricks at once; each of them weighed about twelve pounds. I got to be

able to carry twelve, or even fifteen, which delighted me much. You

wanted physical as well as moral strength to be able to bear all the

discomforts of that accursed life.

There was this, too: I wanted, when I left the place, really to live,

not to be half-dead. I took pleasure in carrying my bricks, then; it was

not merely that this labour strengthened my body, but because it took me

always to the banks of the Irtych. I speak often of this spot, it was

the only one where we saw God’s _own_ world, a pure and bright horizon,

the free desert steppes, whose bareness always produced a strange

impression on me. All the other workyards were in the fortress itself,

or in its neighbourhood; and the fortress, from the earliest days I was

there, was the object of my hatred, and, above all, its appurtenant

buildings. The house of the Major Commandant seemed to me a repulsive,

accursed place. I never could pass it without casting upon it a look of

detestation; while at the river-bank I could forget my miserable self as

I sent my gaze over the immense desert space, just as a prisoner may

when he looks at the world of freedom through the barred casement of his

dungeon. Everything in that place was dear and gracious to my eyes; the

sun shining in the infinite blue of heaven, the distant song of the

Kirghiz that came from the opposite bank.

Sometimes I would fix my sight for a long while upon the poor smoky

cabin of some _baïgouch_; I would study the bluish smoke as it curled in

the air, the Kirghiz woman busy with her two sheep.... The things I saw

were wild, savage, poverty-stricken; but they were free. I would follow

the flight of a bird threading its way in the pure transparent air; now

it skims the water, now disappears in the azure sky, now suddenly comes

to view again, a mere point in space. Even the poor wee floweret fading

in a cleft of the bank, which would show itself when spring began, fixed

my attention and would draw my tears.... The melancholy of this first

year of convict life and hard labour was unendurable, too much for my

strength. The anguish of it was so great, I could not notice my

immediate surroundings at all; I merely shut my eyes and would not see.

Among the creatures with spoiled lives with whom I had to live, I did

not yet note those who were capable of thinking and feeling, in spite of

their external repulsiveness. There came not to my ears (or if there did

I knew it not) one word of kindliness in the midst of the rain of

poisonous talk that came down all the time. Still one such utterance

there was, simple, straightforward, of pure motive, and it came from the

heart of a man who had suffered and endured more than myself. But it is

useless to enlarge on this.

The great fatigue I underwent was a source of satisfaction, it gave me

hope of sound sleep. During the summer sleep was torment, more

intolerable than the closeness and infection winter brought with it.

Some of the nights were certainly very beautiful. The sun, which had not

ceased to inundate the court-yard all the day, hid itself at last. The

air freshened, and the night, the night of the steppe, became

comparatively cold. The convicts, until shut up in their barracks,

walked about in groups, especially on the kitchen side; for that was the

place where questions of general interest were by preference discussed,

and comments were made upon the rumours from without, often absurd

indeed, but always keenly exciting to these men cut off from the world.

For example, we suddenly learn that our Major had been roughly dismissed

from his post. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know the news

to be false, or most unlikely, and that the fellow who brings it is a

past master in the art of lying, Kvassoff; for all that they clutch at

the nonsensical story, go into high delight over it, are much consoled,

and at last quite ashamed to have been duped by a Kvassoff.

“I should like to know who’ll show _him_ the door?” cries one convict;

“don’t you fear, he’s a fellow who knows how to stick on.”

“But,” says another, “he has his superiors over him.” This one is a warm

controversialist, and has seen the world.

“Wolves don’t feed on one another,” says a third gloomily, half to

himself. _This_ one is an old fellow, growing gray, and he always takes

his sour cabbage soup into a corner, and eats it there.

“Do you think his superiors will take _your_ advice whether they shall

show him the door or not?” adds a fourth, who doesn’t seem to care about

it at all, giving a stroke to his balalaïka.

“Well, why not?” replies the second angrily; “if you _are_ asked, answer

what’s in your mind. But no, with us fellows it’s all mere cry, and when

you ought to go at things with a will, everybody sneaks out.”

“That’s _so_!” says the one playing with the balalaïka. “Hard labour and

prison are just the things to cause _that_.”

“It was like that the other day,” says the second one, without hearing

the remark made to him. “There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a

mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money;

well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All

economy, you see. Was that _so_, and was it right--yes or no?”

“But whom can you complain to?”

“To whom? Why, the ’spector (_Inspector_) who’s coming.”

“What ’spector?”

“It’s true, pals, a ’spector is coming soon,” said a youthful convict,

who had got some sort of knowledge, had read the “Duchesse de la

Vallière,” or some book of that sort, and who had been Quartermaster in

a regiment; a bit of a wag, whom, as a man of information, the convicts

held in a sort of respect. Without paying the least attention to the

exciting debate, he goes straight to the cook, and asks him for some

liver. Our cooks often deal in victuals of that kind; they used to buy a

whole liver, cut it in pieces, and sell it to the other convicts.

“Two kopecks’ worth, or four?” asks cook.

“A four-kopeck cut; I’ll eat, the others shall look on and long,” says

this convict. “Yes, pals, a general, a real general, is coming from

Petersburg to ’spect all Siberia; it’s so, heard it at the Governor’s

place.”

This news produces an extraordinary effect. For a quarter of an hour

they ask each other who this General can be? what’s his title? whether

his grade is higher than that of the Generals of our town? The convicts

delight in discussing ranks and degrees, in finding out who’s at the

head of things, who can make the other officials crook their backs, and

to whom he crooks his own; so they get up an argument and quarrel about

their Generals, and rude words fly about, all in honour of these high

officers--fights, too, sometimes. What interest can _they_ possibly have

in it? When one hears convicts speaking of Generals and high officials

one gets a measure of their intelligence as they were while still in the

world before the prison days. It cannot be concealed that among our

people, even in much higher circles, talk about generals and high

officials is looked upon as the most serious and refined conversation.

“Well, you see, they _have_ sent our Major to the right about, don’t

ye?” observes Kvassoff, a little, rubicund, choleric, small-brained

fellow, the same who had announced the supersession of the Major.

“We’ll just grease their palm for them,” this, in staccato tones from

the morose old fellow in the corner who had finished his sour cabbage

soup.

“I should think he would grease their palms, by Jove,” says another; “he

has stolen money enough, the brigand. And, only think, he was only a

regimental Major before he came here. He’s feathered his nest. Why, a

little while ago he was engaged to the head priest’s daughter.”

“But he didn’t get married; they turned him off, and that shows he’s

poor. A pretty sort of fellow to get engaged! He’s got nothing but the

coat on his back; last year, Easter time, he lost all he had at cards.

Fedka told me so.”

“Well, well, pals, I’ve been married myself, but it’s a bad thing for a

poor devil; taking a wife is soon done, but the fun of it is more like

an inch than a mile,” observes Skouratoff, who had just joined in the

general talk.

“Do you fancy we’re going to amuse ourselves by discussing _you_?” says

the ex-quartermaster in a superior manner. “Kvassoff, I tell you you’re

a big idiot! If you fancy that the Major can grease the palm of an

Inspector-General you’ve got things finely muddled; d’ye fancy they send

a man from Petersburg just to inspect your Major? You’re a precious

dolt, my lad; take it from me that it is so.”

“And you fancy because he’s a General he doesn’t take what’s offered?”

said some one in the crowd in a sceptical tone.

“I should think he did indeed, and plenty of it whenever he can.”

“A dead sure thing that; gets bigger, and more, and worse, the higher

the rank.”

“A General _always_ has his palm greased,” says Kvassoff, sententiously.

“Did _you_ ever give them money, as you’re so sure of it?” asks

Baklouchin, suddenly striking in, in a tone of contempt; “come, now, did

you ever see a General in all your life?”

“Yes.”

“Liar!”

“Liar, yourself!”

“Well, boys, as he _has_ seen a General, let him say _which_. Come,

quick about it; I know ’em all, every man jack.”

“I’ve seen General Zibert,” says Kvassoff in tones far from sure.

“Zibert! There’s no General of that name. That’s the General, perhaps,

who was looking at your back when they gave you the cat. This Zibert

was, perhaps, a Lieutenant-Colonel; but you were in such a fright just

then, you took him for a General.”

“No! Just hear me,” cries Skouratoff, “for I’ve got a wife. There was

really a General of that name, a German, but a Russian subject. He

confessed to the Pope, every year, all about his peccadilloes with gay

women, and drank water like a duck, at least forty glasses of Moskva

water one after the other; that was the way he got cured of some

disease. I had it from his valet.”

“I say! And the carp didn’t swim in his belly?” this from the convict

with the balalaïka.

“Be quiet, fellows, can’t you--one’s talking seriously, and there they

are beginning their nonsense again. Who’s the ’spector that’s coming?”

This was put by a convict who always seemed full of business, Martinof,

an old man who had been in the Hussars.

“Set of lying fellows!” said one of the doubters. “Lord knows where they

get it all from; it’s all empty talk.”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” observes Koulikoff, majestically silent

hitherto, in dogmatic tones. “The man coming is big and fat, about fifty

years, with regular features, and proud, contemptuous manners, on which

he prides himself.”

Koulikoff is a Tsigan, a sort of veterinary surgeon, makes money by

treating horses in town, and sells wine in our prison. He’s no fool,

plenty of brain, memory well stocked, lets his words fall as carefully

as if every one of ’em was worth a rouble.

“It’s true,” he went on very calmly, “I heard of it only last week; it’s

a General with bigger epaulettes than most, and he’s going to inspect

all Siberia. They grease his palm well for him, that’s sure enough; but

not our Major with his eight eyes in his head. He won’t dare to creep in

about _him_, for you see, pals, there are Generals and Generals, as

there are fagots and fagots. It’s just this, and you may take it from

me, our Major will remain where he is. _We’re_ fellows with no tongue,

we’ve no right to speak; and as to our chiefs here, they’re not going to

say a word against him. The ’spector will come into our jail, give a

look round, and go off at once; he’ll say it was all right.”

“Yes, but the Major’s in a fright; he’s been drunk since morning.”

“And this evening he had two van-loads of things taken away; Fedka says

so.”

“You may scrub a nigger, he’ll never be white. Is it the first time

you’ve seen him drunk, hey?”

“No! It will be a devil of a shame if the General does nothing to him,”

said the convicts, who began to get highly excited.

The news of the arrival of the Inspector went through the prison. The

prisoners went everywhere about the court-yard retailing the important

fact. Some held their tongues and kept cool, trying to look important;

some were really indifferent to it. Some of the convicts sat down on the

steps of the doors to play the balalaïka, while some went on with their

gossip. Some groups were singing in a drawling voice, but the whole

court-yard was upset and excited generally.

About nine o’clock they counted us, and quartered us in our barracks,

which were closed for the night. A short summer night it was, so we were

roused up at five o’clock in the morning, yet nobody had managed to

sleep before eleven, for up to that hour there was conversation and all

sort of movement was going on; sometimes, too, games of cards were made

up, as in winter. The heat was intolerable, stifling. True, the open

window let in some of the cool night air, but the convicts kept tossing

themselves on their wooden beds as if delirious.

Fleas countless. There were enough of them in winter; but when spring

came they multiplied in proportions so formidable that I couldn’t

believe it before I had to endure them. And as the summer went on the

worse it was with them. I found out that one _could_ get used to fleas;

but for all that, the torment of them is so great that it throws you

into a fever; even when you get slumber you quite feel it is not sleep,

you are half delirious, and know it.

At last, towards morning, when the enemy is tired and you are

deliciously asleep in the freshness of the early hours, suddenly sounds

the pitiless morning drum-call. How you curse as you hear them, those

sharp, quick strokes; you cower in your semi-pelisse, and then--you

can’t help it--comes the thought that it will be so to-morrow, the day

after, for many, many years, till you are set at liberty. When _will_ it

come, this freedom, freedom? Where _is_ it in this world? _Where_ is it

hiding? You _have_ to get up, they are walking about you in all

directions. The usual noisy row begins. The convicts dress, and hurry

to their work. It’s true you have an hour you can spend in sleep at

noon.

What we had been told about the Inspector was really true. The reports

were more confirmed every day; and at last it became certain that a

General, high in office, was coming from Petersburg to inspect all

Siberia, that he was already at Tobolsk. Every day we learned something

fresh about it. These rumours came from the town. They told us that

there was alarm in all quarters, and that everybody was making

preparations to show himself in as favourable a light as might be. The

authorities were organising receptions, balls, fêtes of every kind.

Gangs of convicts were sent to level the ways in the fortress, smooth

away hummocks in the ground, paint the palings and other wood-work, to

plaster, do up, and generally repair everything that was conspicuous.

Our prisoners perfectly well understood the object of this labour, and

their discussions became all the more animated and excited. Their

imaginations passed all bounds. They even set about formulating some

demands to be set before the General on his arrival, but that did not

prevent their going on with their quarrels and violent speeches. Our

Major was on hot coals. He came continually to visit the jail, shouted,

and threw himself angrily on the fellows more than usual, sent them to

the guard-room and punishment for a mere nothing, and watched very

severely over the cleanliness and good order of the barracks. Just then,

there occurred a little event which did not at all painfully affect this

officer as one might have expected, but, on the contrary, caused him a

lively satisfaction. One of the convicts struck another with an awl

right in the chest, in a place quite near the heart.

The delinquent’s name was Lomof; the name the victim was known by in the

jail was Gavrilka. He was one of those seasoned tramps I’ve spoken about

earlier. Whether he had any other name, I don’t know; I never heard any

attributed to him, except that one, Gavrilka.

Lomof had been a peasant comfortably off in the Government of T----,

and district of K----. There were five of them living together, two

brothers Lomof, and three sons. They were quite rich peasants; the talk

throughout the district was that they had more than 300,000 roubles in

paper money. They worked at currying and tanning; but their chief

business was usury, harbouring tramps, and receiving stolen goods; all

sorts of petty irregular doings. Half the peasants of their district

owed them money, and so were in their clutches. They passed for being

intelligent and full of cunning, and gave themselves very great airs. A

great personage of their province had stopped on his way once at the

father Lomof’s house, and this official had taken a fancy to him,

because of his hardy and unscrupulous talk. Then they took it in their

heads they might do exactly as they pleased, and mixed themselves up

more and more with illegal doings. Everybody had a grievance against

them, and would like to have seen them a hundred feet under the ground;

but they got bolder and bolder every day. They were not afraid of the

local police or the district tribunals.

At last fortune betrayed them; their ruin came, not out of their secret

crimes, but from an accusation which was all calumny and falsehood. Ten

versts from their hamlet they had a farm where six Kirghiz labourers,

long since brought down by them to be no better than slaves, used to

pass the autumn. One fine day these Kirghiz were found murdered. An

inquiry was set on foot that lasted long, thanks to which no end of

atrocious things were brought to light. The Lomofs were accused of

having assassinated their workmen. They had themselves told their story

to the convicts, all the jail knew it perfectly; they were suspected of

owing a great deal of money to the Kirghiz, and, as they were full of

greed and avarice in spite of their large fortunes, it was believed they

had paid the debt by taking the lives of the poor fellows. While the

inquiry and trial went on, their property melted away utterly. The

father died, the sons were transported; one of these, with the uncle,

was condemned to fifteen years of hard labour.

Now, they were perfectly innocent of the crime imputed to them. One fine

day Gavrilka, a thorough-paced rascal, known as a tramp, but of very gay

and lively turn, avowed himself the author of the crime. As a matter of

fact I don’t know whether he actually made this avowal himself, but what

is sure is that the convicts held him to be the murderer of the Kirghiz.

This Gavrilka, while still tramping about, had been mixed up in some way

with the Lomofs (his confinement in one jail was for quite a short

sentence, for desertion from the army and tramping). He had cut the

throats of the Kirghiz--three other marauding fellows had been in it

with him--in the hope of setting themselves up a bit with the plunder of

the farm.

The Lomofs were no favourites with us, I really don’t know why. One of

them, the nephew, was a sturdy fellow, intelligent and sociable; but his

uncle, the one that struck Gavrilka with the awl, was a choleric, stupid

rustic, always quarrelling with the convicts, who knocked him about like

plaster. All the jail liked Gavrilka for his gaiety and good-humour. The

Lomofs got to know, like the rest, that he was the man who committed the

crime they were condemned for; but they never got into any quarrel with

him. Gavrilka paid no attention whatever to them.

The row with Uncle Lomof began about some disgusting girl they had

quarrelled over. Gavrilka had boasted of the favour she had shown him.

The peasant, mad with jealousy, ended by driving an awl into his chest.

Although the Lomofs had been ruined by their trial and sentence, they

passed in the jail for being very rich. They had money, a samovar, and

drank tea. Our Major knew all about it, and hated the two Lomofs,

sparing them no vexation. The victims of his hate explained it by a

desire to have them grease his palm well, but they could not, or would

not, bring themselves to do it.

If Uncle Lomof had struck his awl one hair’s breadth further in

Gavrilka’s breast he would certainly have killed him; as it was, the

wound did not much signify. The affair was reported to the Major. I

think I see him now as he came up out of breath, but with visible

satisfaction. He addressed Gavrilka in an affable, fatherly way:

“Tell me, lad, can you walk to the hospital or must they carry you

there? No, I think it will be better to have a horse; let them put a

horse to this moment!” he cried out to the sub-officer with a gasp.

“But I don’t feel it at all, your worship; he’s only given me a bit of a

prick, your worship.”

“You don’t know, my dear fellow, you don’t know; you’ll see. A nasty

place he’s struck you in. All depends upon the place. He has given it

you just below the heart, the scoundrel. Wait, wait!” he howled to

Lomof. “I’ve got you tight; take him to the guard-house.”

He kept his promise. Lomof was tried, and, though the wound was slight,

there was plainly malice aforethought; his sentence of hard labour was

extended for several years, and they gave him a thousand strokes with

the rod. The Major was delighted.

The Inspector arrived at last.

The day after he reached the town, he came to the convict establishment

to make his inspection. It was a regular fête-day. For some days

everything had been brilliantly clean, washed with great precision. The

convicts were all just shaven, their linen quite white and without a

stain. (According to the regulations, they wore in summer waistcoats and

pantaloons of canvas. Every one had a round black piece sown in at the

back, eight centimetres in diameter.) For a whole hour the prisoners had

been drilled as to what they should answer, the very words to be used,

particularly if the high functionary should take any notice of them.

There had been even regular rehearsals. The Major seemed to have lost

his head. An hour before the coming in of the Inspector, all the

convicts were at their posts, as stiff as statues, with their little

fingers on the seams of their pantaloons. At last, just about one

o’clock the Inspector made his entry. He was a General, with a most

self-sufficing bearing, so much so, that the mere sight of it must have

sent a tremor into the hearts of all the officials of West Siberia.

He came in with a stern and majestic air, followed by a crowd of

Generals and Colonels doing service in our town. There was a civilian,

too, of high stature and regular features, in frock-coat and shoes. This

personage bore himself very independently and airily, and the General

addressed him every moment with exquisite politeness. This civilian also

had come from Petersburg. All the convicts were terribly curious as to

who he could be, such an important General showing him such deference?

We learned who he was and what his office later, but he was a good deal

talked about before we knew.

Our Major, all spick and span, with orange-coloured collar, made no too

favourable impression upon the General; the blood-shot eyes and fiery

rubicund complexion plainly told their own story. Out of respect for his

superior he had taken off his spectacles, and stood some way off, as

straight as a dart, in feverish expectation that something would be

asked of him, that he might run and carry out His Excellency’s wishes;

but no particular need of his services seemed to be felt.

The General went all through the barracks without saying a word, threw a

glance into the kitchen, where he tasted the sour cabbage soup. They

pointed me out to him, telling him that I was an ex-nobleman, who had

done this, that, and the other.

“Ah!” answered the General. “And how does he conduct himself?”

“Satisfactorily for the time being, your Excellency, satisfactorily.”

The General nodded, and left the jail in a couple of minutes more. The

convicts were dazzled and disappointed, and did not know what to be at.

As to laying complaints against the Major, that was quite over, could

not be thought of. He had, no doubt, been quite well assured as to this

beforehand.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ANIMALS AT THE CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT

Gniedko, a bay horse, was bought a little while afterwards, and the

event furnished a much more agreeable and interesting diversion to the

convicts than the visit of the high personage I have been talking about.

We required a horse at the jail for carrying water, refuse matter, etc.

He was given to a convict to take care of and use; this man drove him,

under escort, of course. Our horse had plenty to do morning and night;

it was a worthy sort of beast, but a good deal worn, and had been in

service for a long time already.

One fine morning, the eve of St. Peter’s Day, Gniedko, our bay, who was

dragging a barrel of water, fell all of a heap, and gave up the ghost in

a few minutes. He was much regretted, so all the convicts gathered round

him to discuss his death. Those who had served in the cavalry, the

Tsigans, the veterinary fellows, and others, showed a profound knowledge

of horses in general and fiercely argued the question; but all that did

not bring our bay horse to life again; there he was stretched out and

dead, with his belly all swollen. Every one thought it incumbent on him

to feel about the poor thing with his hands; finally the Major was

informed of what Providence had done in the horse’s case, and it was

decided that another should be bought at once.

St. Peter’s Day, quite early after mass, all the convicts being

together, horses that were on sale were brought in. It was left to the

prisoners to choose an animal, for there were some thorough experts

among them, and it would have been difficult to take in 250 men, with

whom horse-dealing had been a speciality. Tsigans, Lesghians,

professional horse-dealers, townsmen, came in to deal. The convicts were

exceedingly eager about the matter as each fresh horse was brought up,

and were as amused as children about it all. It seemed to tickle their

fancy very much, that they had to buy a horse like free men, just as if

it was for themselves and the money was to come out of their own

pockets. Three horses were brought and taken away before purchase; the

fourth was settled on. The horse-dealers seemed astonished and a little

awed at the soldiers of the escort who watched the business. Two hundred

men, clean shaven, branded as they were, with chains on their feet, were

well calculated to inspire respect, all the more as they were in their

own place, at home so to speak, in their own convict’s den, where nobody

was ever allowed to come.

Our fellows seemed to be up to no end of tricks for finding out the real

value of a horse brought up; they carefully examined it, handled it with

the most serious demeanour, went on as if the welfare of the

establishment was bound up with the purchase of this beast. The

Circassians took the liberty of jumping upon his back: their eyes shone

wildly, they chatted rapidly in their incomprehensible dialect, showed

their white teeth, dilating the nostrils of their hooked copper-coloured

noses. There were some Russians who paid the most lively attention to

their discussion, and seemed ready to jump down their throats; they did

not understand a word, but it was plain they did what they could to

gather from the expression of the eyes of the fellows whether the horse

was good or not. But what could it matter to a convict, especially to

some of them, who were creatures altogether down and done for, who never

ventured to utter a single word to the others? What _could_ it matter to

such as these, whether one horse or another was bought? Yet it seemed as

if it did. The Circassians appeared to be most relied on for their

opinion, and besides these a foremost place in the discussion was given

to the Tsigans, and those who had formerly been horse-dealers.

There was a regular sort of duel between two convicts--the Tsigan

Koulikoff, who had been a horse-dealer and stealer, and another who had

been a professional veterinary, a tricky Siberian peasant, who had been

at the establishment and at hard labour for some time, and who had

succeeded in getting all Koulikoff’s practice in the town. I ought to

mention that the veterinary practitioners at the prison, though without

diploma, were very much sought after, and that not only the townspeople

and tradespeople, but high officials in the city, took their advice when

their horses fell ill, rather than that of several regularly

diplomatised veterinaries who were at the place.

Till Jolkin came, the Siberian peasant Koulikoff had had plenty of

clients from whom he had had fees in good hard cash. He was looked on as

quite at the head of his business. He was a Tsigan all over in his

doings, liar and cheat, and not at all the master of his art he boasted

of being. The income he made had raised him to be a sort of aristocrat

among our convicts; he was listened to and obeyed, but he spoke little,

and expressed an opinion only in great emergencies. He blew his own

trumpet loudly, but he really was a fellow of great energy; he was of

ripe age, and of quite marked intelligence. When he spoke to us of the

nobility, he did so with exquisite politeness and perfect dignity. I am

sure that if he had been suitably dressed, and introduced into a club at

the capital with the title of Count, he would have lived up to it;

played whist, talked to admiration like a man used to command, and one

who knew when to hold his tongue. I am sure that the whole evening would

have passed without any one guessing that the “Count” was nothing but a

vagabond. He had very probably had a very large and varied experience in

life; as to his past, it was quite unknown to us. They kept him among

the convicts who formed a special section reserved from the others.

But no sooner had Jolkin come--he was a simple peasant, one of the “old

believers,” but just as tricky as it was possible for a moujik to

be--the veterinary glory of Koulikoff paled sensibly. In less than two

months the Siberian had got from him all his town practice, for he cured

in a very short time horses Koulikoff had declared incurable, and which

had been given up by the regular veterinaries. This peasant had been

condemned and sent to hard labour for coining. It is an odd thing he

should ever have been tempted to go into that line of business. He told

us all about it himself, and joked about their wanting three coins of

genuine gold to make one false.

Koulikoff was not a little put out at this peasant’s success, while his

own glory so rapidly declined. There was he who had had a mistress in

the suburbs, who used to wear a plush jacket and top-boots, and here he

was now obliged to turn tavern-keeper; so everybody looked out for a

regular row when the new horse was bought. The thing was very

interesting, each of them had his partisans; the more eager among them

got to angry words about it on the spot. The cunning face of Jolkin was

all wrinkled into a sarcastic smile; but it turned out quite differently

from what was expected. Koulikoff had not the least desire for argument

or dispute, he managed cunningly without that. At first he gave way on

every point, and listened deferentially to his rival’s criticisms, then

he caught him up sharply on some remark or other, and pointed out to him

modestly but firmly that he was all wrong. In a word, Jolkin was utterly

discomfited in a surprisingly clever way, so Koulikoff’s side was quite

well pleased.

“I say, boys, it’s no use talking; you can’t trip _him_ up. He knows

what he is about,” said some.

“Jolkin knows more about the matter than he does,” said others; not

offensively, however. Both sides were ready to make concessions.

“Then, he’s got a lighter hand, besides having more in his head. I tell

you that when it comes to stock, horses, or anything else, Koulikoff

needn’t duck under to anybody.”

“Nor need Jolkin, I tell you.”

“There’s nobody like Koulikoff.”

The new horse was selected and bought. It was a capital gelding--young,

vigorous, and handsome; an irreproachable beast altogether. The

bargaining began. The owner asked thirty roubles; the convicts wouldn’t

give more than twenty-five. The higgling went on long and hotly. At

length the convicts began laughing.

“Does the money come out of your own purse?” said some. “What’s the good

of all this?”

“Do you want to save for the Government cashbox?” cried others.

“But it’s money that belongs to us all, pals,” said one.

“Us all! It’s plain enough that you needn’t trouble to grow idiots,

they’ll come up of themselves without it.”

At last the business was settled at twenty-eight roubles. The Major was

informed, the purchase sanctioned. Bread and salt were brought at once,

and the new boarder led in triumph into the jail. There was not one of

the convicts, I think, that did not pat his neck or caress his head.

The day we got him he was at once put to fetching water. All the

convicts gazed on him curiously as he pulled at his barrel.

Our waterman, the convict Roman, kept his eyes on the beast with a

stupid sort of satisfaction. He was formerly a peasant, about fifty

years of age, serious and silent, like all the Russian coachmen, whose

behaviour would really seem to acquire some extra gravity by reason of

their being always with horses.

Roman was a quiet creature, affable all round, said little, took snuff

from a box. He had taken care of the horses at the jail for some time

before that. The one just bought was the third given into his charge

since he came to the place.

The coachman’s office fell, as a matter of course, to Roman; nobody

would have dreamed of contesting his right to it. When the bay horse

dropped and died, nobody dreamed of accusing Roman of imprudence, not

even the Major. It was the will of God, that was all; as to Roman, he

knew his business.

That bay horse had become the pet of the jail at once. The convicts were

not particularly tender fellows; but they could not help coming to pet

him often.

Sometimes when Roman, returning from the river, shut the great gate

which the sub-officer had opened, Gniedko would stand quite still

waiting for his driver, and turning to him as for orders.

“Get along, you know the way,” Roman would cry to him. Then Gniedko

would go off peaceably to the kitchen and stop there, and the cooks and

other servants of the place would fill their buckets with water, which

Gniedko seemed to know all about.

“Gniedko, you’re a trump! He’s brought his water-barrel himself. He’s a

delight to see!” they would cry to him.

“That’s true; he’s only a beast, but he knows all that’s said to him.”

“No end of a horse is our Gniedko!”

Then the horse shook his head and snorted, just as if he really

understood all about his being praised; then some one would bring him

bread and salt; and when he had finished with them he would shake his

head again, as if to say, “I know you; I know you. I’m a good horse,

and you’re a good fellow.”

I was quite fond of regaling Gniedko with bread. It was quite a pleasure

to me to look at his nice mouth, and to feel his warm, moist lips

licking up the crumbs from the palm of my hand.

Our convicts were fond of live things, and if they had been allowed

would have filled the barracks with birds and domestic animals. What

could possibly have been better than attending to such creatures for

raising and softening the wild temper of the prisoners? But it was not

permitted; it was not in the regulations; and, truth to say, there was

no room there for many creatures.

However, in my time some animals had established themselves in the jail.

Besides Gniedko, we had some dogs, geese, a he-goat--Vaska--and an

eagle, which remained only a short time.

I think I have said before that _our_ dog was called Bull, and that he

and I had struck up a friendship; but as the lower orders regard dogs as

impure animals undeserving of attention, nobody minded him. He lived in

the jail itself; slept in the court-yard; ate the leavings of the

kitchen, and had no hold whatever on the sympathy of the convicts; all

of whom he knew, however, and regarded as masters and owners. When the

men assigned to work came back to the jail, at the cry of “Corporal,” he

used to run to the great gate and gaily welcome the gang, wagging his

tail and looking into every man’s eyes, as though he expected a caress.

But for several years his little ways were as useless as they were

engaging. Nobody but myself did caress him; so I was the one he

preferred to all others. Somehow--I don’t know in what way--we got

another dog. Snow he was called. As to the third, Koultiapka, I brought

him myself to the place when he was but a pup.

Our Snow was a strange creature. A telega had gone over him and driven

in his spine, so that it made a curve inside him. When you saw him

running at a distance, he looked like twin-dogs born with a ligament. He

was very mangy, too, with bleary eyes, and his tail was hairless, and

always hanging between his legs.

Victim of ill-fate as he was, he seemed to have made up his mind to be

always as impassive as possible; so he never barked at anybody, for he

seemed to be afraid of getting into some fresh trouble. He was nearly

always lurking at the back of the buildings; and if anybody came near he

rolled on his back at once, as though he meant to say, “Do what you like

with me; I’ve not the least idea of resisting you.” And every convict,

when the dog upset himself like that, would give him a passing

obligatory kick, with “Ouh! the dirty brute!” But Snow dared not so much

as give a groan; and if he was too much hurt, would only utter a little,

dull, strangled yelp. He threw himself down just the same way before

Bull or any other dog when he came to try his luck at the kitchen; and

he would stretch himself out flat if a mastiff or any other big dog came

barking at him. Dogs like submission and humility in other dogs; so the

angry brute quieted down at once, and stopped short reflectively before

the poor, humble beast, and then sniffed him curiously all over.

I wonder what poor Snow, trembling with fright, used to think at such

moments. “Is this brigand of a fellow going to bite me?”--no doubt

something like that. When he had sniffed enough at him, the big brute

left him at once, having probably discovered nothing in particular. Snow

used then to jump to his feet, and join a lot of four-footed fellows

like him who were running down some yutchka or other.

Snow knew quite well that no yutchka would ever condescend to the like

of him, that she was too proud for that, but it was some consolation to

him in his troubles to limp after her. As to decent behaviour, he had

but a very vague notion of any such thing. Being totally without any

hope in his future, his highest aim was to get a bellyful of victuals,

and he was cynical enough in showing that it was so.

Once I tried to caress him. This was such an unexpected and new thing to

him that he plumped down on the ground quite helplessly, and quivered

and whined in his delight. As I was really sorry for him I used to

caress him often, so as soon as he caught sight of me he began to whine

in a plaintive, tearful way. He came to his end at the back of the jail,

in the ditch; some dogs tore him to pieces.

Koultiapka was quite a different style of dog. I don’t know why I

brought him in from one of the workshops, where he was just born; but it

gave me pleasure to feed him, and see him grow big. Bull took Koultiapka

under his protection, and slept with him. When the young dog began to

grow up, Bull was remarkably complaisant with him. He allowed the pup to

bite his ears, and pull his skin with his teeth; he played with him as

mature dogs are in the habit of doing with the youngsters. It was a

strange thing, but Koultiapka never grew in height at all, only in

length and breadth. His hide was fluffy and mouse-coloured; one of his

ears hung down, while the other was always cocked up. He was, like all

young dogs, ardent and enthusiastic, yelping with pleasure when he saw

his master, and jumping up to lick his face precisely as if he said: “As

long as he sees how delighted I am, I don’t care; let etiquette go to

the devil!”

Wherever I was, at my call, “Koultiapka,” out he came from some corner,

dashing towards me with noisy satisfaction, making a ball of himself,

and rolling over and over. I was exceedingly fond of the little wretch,

and I used to fancy that destiny had reserved for him nothing but joy

and pleasure in this world of ours; but one fine day the convict

Neustroief, who made women’s shoes and prepared skins, cast his eye on

him; something had evidently struck him, for he called Koultiapka, felt

his skin, and turned him over on the ground in a friendly way. The

unsuspicious dog barked with pleasure, but next day he was nowhere to be

found. I hunted for him for some time, but in vain; at last, after two

weeks, all was explained. Koultiapka’s natural cloak had been too much

for Neustroief, who had flayed him to make up with the skin some boots

of fur-trimmed velvet ordered by the young wife of some official. He

showed them me when they were done, their inside lining was magnificent;

all Koultiapka, poor fellow!

A good many convicts worked at tanning, and often brought with them to

the jail dogs with a nice skin, which soon were seen no more. They stole

them or bought them. I remember one day I saw a couple of convicts

behind the kitchens laying their heads together. One of them held in a

leash a very fine black dog of particularly good breed. A scamp of a

footman had stolen it from his master, and sold it to our shoemakers for

thirty kopecks. They were going to hang it; that was their way of

disposing of them; then they took the skin off, and threw the body into

a ditch used for _ejecta_, which was in the most distant corner of the

court, and which stank most horribly during the summer heats, for it was

rarely seen to.

I think the poor beast understood the fate in store for him. It looked

at us one after another in a distressed, scrutinising way; at intervals

it gave a timid little wag with its bushy tail between its legs, as

though trying to reach our hearts by showing us every confidence. I

hastened away from the convicts, who finished their vile work without

hindrance.

As to the geese of the establishment, they had established themselves

there quite fortuitously. Who took care of them? To whom did they

belong? I really don’t know; but they were a huge delight to our

convicts, and acquired a certain fame throughout the town.

They had been hatched in the convict establishment somewhere, and their

head-quarters was the kitchen, whence they emerged in gangs of their

own, when the gangs of convicts went out to their work. But as soon as

the drum beat and the prisoners massed themselves at the great gate, out

ran the geese after them, cackling and flapping their wings, then they

jumped one after the other over the elevated threshold of the gateway;

while the convicts were at their work, the geese pecked about at a

little distance from them. As soon as they had done and set out for the

jail, again the geese joined the procession, and people who passed by

would cry out, “I say, there are the prisoners with their friends, the

geese!” “How did you teach them to follow you?” some one would ask.

“Here’s some money for your geese,” another said, putting his hand in

his pocket. In spite of their devotion to the convicts they had their

necks twisted to make a feast at the end of the Lent of some year, I

forget which.

Nobody would ever have made up his mind to kill our goat Vaska, unless

something particular had happened; as it did. I don’t know how it got

into our prison, or who had brought it. It was a white kid, and very

pretty. After some days it had won all hearts, it was diverting and

winning. As some excuse was needed for keeping it in the jail, it was

given out that it was quite necessary to have a goat in the stables; but

he didn’t live there, but in the kitchen principally; and after a while

he roamed about all over the place. The creature was full of grace and

as playful as could be, jumped on the tables, wrestled with the

convicts, came when it was called, and was always full of spirits and

fun.

One evening, the Lesghian Babaï, who was seated on the stone steps at

the doors of the barracks among a crowd of other convicts, took it into

his head to have a wrestling bout with Vaska, whose horns were pretty

long.

They butted their foreheads against one another--that was the way the

convicts amused themselves with him--when all of a sudden Vaska jumped

on the highest step, lifted himself up on his hind legs, drew his

fore-feet to him and managed to strike the Lesghian on the back of the

neck with all his might, and with such effect that Babaï went headlong

down the steps to the great delight of all who were by as well as of

Babaï himself.

In a word, we all adored our Vaska. When he attained the age of puberty,

a general and serious consultation was held, as the result of which, he

was subjected to an operation which one of the prison veterinaries

executed in a masterly manner.

“Well,” said the prisoners, “he won’t have any goat-smell about him,

that’s one comfort.”

Vaska then began to lay on fat in the most surprising way. I must say

that we fed him quite unconscionably. He became a most beautiful fellow,

with magnificent horns, corpulent beyond anything. Sometimes as he

walked, he rolled over on the ground heavily out of sheer fatness. He

went with us out to work too, which was very diverting to the convicts

and all others who saw; and everybody got to know Vaska, the jailbird.

When they worked at the river bank, the prisoners used to cut willow

branches and other foliage, and gather flowers in the ditches to

ornament Vaska. They used to twine the branches and flowers round his

horns and decorate his body with garlands. Vaska then came back at the

head of the gang in a splendid state of ornamentation, and we all came

after in high pride at seeing him such a beauty.

This love for our goat went so far that prisoners raised the question,

not a very wise one, whether Vaska ought not to have his horns gilded.

It was a vain idea; nothing came of it. I asked Akim Akimitch, the best

gilder in the jail, whether you really could gild a goat’s horns. He

examined Vaska’s quite closely, thought a bit, and then said that it

could be done, but that it would not last, and would be quite useless.

So nothing came of it. Vaska would have lived for many years more, and,

no doubt, have died of asthma at last, if, one day as he returned from

work at the head of the convicts, his path had not been crossed by the

Major, who was seated in his carriage. Vaska was in particularly

gorgeous array.

“Halt!” yelled the Major. “Whose goat is that?”

They told him.

“What! a goat in the prison! and that without my leave? Sub-officer!”

The sub-officer received orders to kill the goat without a moment’s

delay; flay him, and sell his skin; and put the proceeds to the

prisoners’ account. As to the meat, he ordered it to be cooked with the

convicts’ cabbage soup.

The occurrence was much discussed; the goat was much mourned; but nobody

dared to disobey the Major. Vaska was put to death close to the ditch I

spoke of just now. One of the convicts bought the carcase, paying a

rouble and fifty kopecks. With this money white bread was bought for

everybody. The man who had bought the goat sold him at retail in a

roasted state. The meat was delicious.

We had also, during some time, in our prison a steppe eagle; a quite

small species. A convict brought it in, wounded, half-dead. Everybody

came flocking around it; it could not fly, its right wing being quite

powerless; one of its legs was badly hurt. It gazed on the curious crowd

wrathfully, and opened its crooked beak, as if prepared to sell its life

dearly. When we had looked at him long enough, and the crowd dispersed,

the lamed bird went off, hopping on one paw and flapping his wing, and

hid himself in the most distant part of the place he could find; there

he huddled himself in a corner against the palings.

During the three months that he remained in our court-yard he never came

out of his corner. At first we went to look at him pretty often, and

sometimes they set Bull at him, who threw himself forward with fury, but

was frightened to go too near, which mightily amused the convicts. “A

wild chap that! He won’t stand any nonsense!” But Bull after a while got

over his fright, and began to worry him. When he was roused to it, the

dog would catch hold of the bird’s bad wing, and the creature defended

itself with beak and claws, and then got up closer into his corner with

a proud, savage sort of demeanour, like a wounded king, fixing his eyes

steadily on the fellows looking at his misery.

They tired of the sport after a while, and the eagle seemed quite

forgotten; but there was some one who, every day, put close to him a bit

of fresh meat and a vessel with some water. At first, and for several

days, the eagle would eat nothing; at last, he made up his mind to take

what was left for him, but he never could be got to take anything from

the hand, or in public. Sometimes I succeeded in watching his

proceedings at some distance.

When he saw nobody, and thought he was alone, he ventured upon leaving

his corner and limping along the palisade for a dozen steps or so, then

went back; and so forwards and backwards, precisely as if he were taking

exercise for his health under medical orders. As soon as ever he caught

sight of me he made for his corner as quickly as he possibly could,

limping and hopping. Then he threw his head back, opened his mouth,

ruffled himself, and seemed to make ready for fight.

In vain I tried to caress him. He bit and struggled as soon as he was

touched. Not once did he take the meat I offered him, and all the time I

remained by him he kept his wicked, piercing eye upon me. Lonely and

revengeful he waited for death, defying, refusing to be reconciled with

everything and everybody.

At last the convicts remembered him, after two months of complete

forgetfulness, and then they showed a sympathy I did not expect of

them. It was unanimously agreed to carry him out.

“Let him die, but let him die in freedom,” said the prisoners.

“Sure enough, a free and independent bird like that will never get used

to the prison,” added others.

“He’s not like us,” said some one.

“Oh well, he’s a bird, and we’re human beings.”

“The eagle, pals, is the king of the woods,” began Skouratof; but that

day nobody paid any attention to him.

One afternoon, when the drum beat for beginning work, they took the

eagle, tied his beak (for he struck a desperate attitude), and took him

out of the prison on to the ramparts. The twelve convicts of the gang

were extremely anxious to know where he would go to. It was a strange

thing: they all seemed as happy as though they had themselves got their

freedom.

“Oh, the wretched brute. One wants to do him a kindness, and he tears

your hand for you by way of thanks,” said the man who held him, looking

almost lovingly at the spiteful bird.

“Let him fly off, Mikitka!”

“It doesn’t suit _him_ being a prisoner; give him his freedom, his jolly

freedom.”

They threw him from the ramparts on to the steppe. It was just at the

end of autumn, a gray, cold day. The wind whistled on the bare steppe

and went groaning through the yellow dried-up grass. The eagle made off

directly, flapping his wounded wing, as if in a hurry to quit us and get

himself a shelter from our piercing eyes. The convicts watched him

intently as he went along with his head just above the grass.

“Do you see him, hey?” said one very pensively.

“He doesn’t look round,” said another; “he hasn’t looked behind once.”

“Did you happen to fancy he’d come back to thank us?” said a third.

“Sure enough, he’s free; he feels it. It’s _freedom_!”

“Yes, freedom.”

“You won’t see him any more, pals.”

“What are you about sticking there? March, march!” cried the escort, and

all went slowly to their work.

CHAPTER VII.

GRIEVANCES

At the outset of this chapter, the editor of the “Recollections” of the

late Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff thinks it his duty to

communicate what follows to his readers.