Chapter Chapter 7 · THE FIRST MONTH

Three days after my arrival I was ordered to go to work. The impression

left upon me to this day is still very clear, although there was nothing

very striking in it, unless one considers that my position was in itself

extraordinary. The first sensations count for a good deal, and I as yet

looked upon everything with curiosity. My first three days were

certainly the most painful of all my terms of imprisonment.

My wandering is at an end, I said to myself every moment. I am now in

the convict prison, my resting-place for many years. Here is where I am

to live. I come here full of grief, who knows that when I leave it I

shall not do so with regret? I said this to myself as one touches a

wound, the better to feel its pain. The idea that I might regret my stay

was terrible to me. Already I felt to what an intolerable degree man is

a creature of habit, but this was a matter of the future. The present,

meanwhile, was terrible enough.

The wild curiosity with which my convict companions examined me, their

harshness towards a former nobleman now entering into their corporation,

a harshness which sometimes took the form of hatred--all this tormented

me to such a degree that I felt obliged of my own accord to go to work

in order to measure at one stroke the whole extent of my misfortune,

that I might at once begin to live like the others, and fall with them

into the same abyss.

But convicts differ, and I had not yet disentangled from the general

hostility the sympathy here and there manifested towards me.

After a time the affability and good-will shown to me by certain

convicts gave me a little courage, and restored my spirits. Most

friendly among them was Akim Akimitch. I soon noticed some kind,

good-natured faces in the dark and hateful crowd. Bad people are to be

found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good,

I began to think, by way of consolation. Who knows? These persons are

perhaps not worse than others who are free. While making these

reflections I felt some doubts, and, nevertheless, how much I was in the

right!

The convict Suchiloff, for example; a man whose acquaintance I did not

make until long afterwards, although he was near me during nearly the

whole period of my confinement. Whenever I speak of the convicts who are

not worse than other men, my thoughts turn involuntarily to him. He

acted as my servant, together with another prisoner named Osip, whom

Akim Akimitch had recommended to me immediately after my arrival. For

thirty kopecks a month this man agreed to cook me a separate dinner, in

case I should not be able to put up with the ordinary prison fare, and

should be able to pay for my own food. Osip was one of the four cooks

chosen by the prisoners in our two kitchens. I may observe that they

were at liberty to refuse these duties, and give them up whenever they

might think fit. The cooks were men from whom hard labour was not

expected. They had to bake bread and prepare the cabbage soup. They were

called “cook-maids,” not from contempt, for the men chosen were always

the most intelligent, but merely in fun. The name given to them did not

annoy them.

For many years past Osip had been constantly selected as “cook-maid.” He

never refused the duty except when he was out of sorts, or when he saw

an opportunity of getting spirits into the barracks. Although he had

been sent to the convict prison as a smuggler, he was remarkably honest

and good-tempered (I have spoken of him before); at the same time he was

a dreadful coward, and feared the rod above all things. Of a peaceful,

patient disposition, affable with everybody, he never got into quarrels;

but he could never resist the temptation of bringing spirits in,

notwithstanding his cowardice, and simply from his love of smuggling.

Like all the other cooks he dealt in spirits, but on a much less

extensive scale than Gazin, because he was afraid of running the same

risks. I always lived on good terms with Osip. To have a separate table

it was not necessary to be very rich; it cost me only one rouble a month

apart from the bread, which was given to us. Sometimes when I was very

hungry I made up my mind to eat the cabbage soup, in spite of the

disgust with which it generally filled me. After a time this disgust

entirely disappeared. I generally bought one pound of meat a day, which

cost me two kopecks--[5 kopecks = 2 pence.]

The old soldiers, who watched over the internal discipline of the

barracks, were ready, good-naturedly, to go every day to the market to

make purchases for the convicts. For this they received no pay, except

from time to time a trifling present. They did it for the sake of their

peace; their life in the convict prison would have been a perpetual

torment had they refused. They used to bring in tobacco, tea,

meat--everything, in short, that was desired, always excepting spirits.

For many years Osip prepared for me every day a piece of roast meat. How

he managed to get it cooked was a secret. What was strangest in the

matter was, that during all this time I scarcely exchanged two words

with him. I tried many times to make him talk, but he was incapable of

keeping up a conversation. He would only smile and answer my questions

by “yes” or “no.” He was a Hercules, but he had no more intelligence

than a child of seven.

Suchiloff was also one of those who helped me. I had never asked him to

do so, he attached himself to me on his own account, and I scarcely

remember when he began to do so. His principal duty consisted in washing

my linen. For this purpose there was a basin in the middle of the

court-yard, round which the convicts washed their clothes in prison

buckets.

Suchiloff had found means for rendering me a number of little services.

He boiled my tea-urn, ran right and left to perform various commissions

for me, got me all kinds of things, mended my clothes, and greased my

boots four times a month. He did all this in a zealous manner, with a

business-like air, as if he felt all the weight of the duties he was

performing. He seemed quite to have joined his fate to mine, and

occupied himself with all my affairs. He never said: “You have so many

shirts, or your waistcoat is torn;” but, “We have so many shirts, and

our waistcoat is torn.” I had somehow inspired him with admiration, and

I really believe that I had become his sole care in life. As he knew no

trade whatever his only source of income was from me, and it must be

understood that I paid him very little; but he was always pleased,

whatever he might receive. He would have been without means had he not

been a servant of mine, and he gave me the preference because I was more

affable than the others, and, above all, more equitable in money

matters. He was one of those beings who never get rich, and never know

how to manage their affairs; one of those in the prison who were hired

by the gamblers to watch all night in the ante-chamber, listening for

the least noise that might announce the arrival of the Major. If there

was a night visit they received nothing, indeed their back paid for

their want of attention. One thing which marks this kind of men is their

entire absence of individuality, which they seem entirely to have lost.

Suchiloff was a poor, meek fellow; all the courage seemed to have been

beaten out of him, although he had in reality been born meek. For

nothing in the world would he have raised his hand against any one in

the prison. I always pitied him without knowing why. I could not look at

him without feeling the deepest compassion for him. If asked to explain

this, I should find it impossible to do so. I could never get him to

talk, and he never became animated, except when, to put an end to all

attempts at conversation, I gave him something to do, or told him to go

somewhere for me. I soon found that he loved to be ordered about.

Neither tall nor short, neither ugly nor handsome, neither stupid nor

intelligent, neither old nor young, it would be difficult to describe in

any definite manner this man, except that his face was slightly pitted

with the small-pox, and that he had fair hair. He belonged, as far as I

could make out, to the same company as Sirotkin. The prisoners sometimes

laughed at him because he had “exchanged.” During the march to Siberia

he had exchanged for a red shirt and a silver rouble. It was thought

comical that he should have sold himself for such a small sum, to take

the name of another prisoner in place of his own, and consequently to

accept the other’s sentence. Strange as it may appear it was

nevertheless true. This custom, which had become traditional, and still

existed at the time I was sent to Siberia, I, at first, refused to

believe, but found afterwards that it really existed. This is how the

exchange was effected:

A company of prisoners started for Siberia. Among them there are exiles

of all kinds, some condemned to hard labour, others to labour in the

mines, others to simple colonisation. On the way out, no matter at what

stage of the journey, in the Government of Perm, for instance, a

prisoner wishes to exchange with another man, who--we will say he is

named Mikhailoff--has been condemned to hard labour for a capital

offence, and does not like the prospect of passing long years without

his liberty. He knows, in his cunning, what to do. He looks among his

comrades for some simple, weak-minded fellow, whose punishment is less

severe, who has been condemned to a few years in the mines, or to hard

labour, or has perhaps been simply exiled. At last he finds such a man

as Suchiloff, a former serf, sentenced only to become a colonist. The

man has made fifteen hundred versts [about one thousand miles] without a

kopeck, for the good reason that a Suchiloff is always without money;

fatigued, exhausted, he can get nothing to eat beyond the fixed rations,

nothing to wear in addition to the convict uniform.

Mikhailoff gets into conversation with Suchiloff, they suit one another,

and they strike up a friendship. At last at some station Mikhailoff

makes his comrade drunk, then he will ask him if he will “exchange.”

“My name is Mikhailoff,” he says to him, “condemned to what is called

hard labour, but which, in my own case, will be nothing of the kind, as

I am to enter a particular special section. I am classed with the

hard-labour men, but in my special division the labour is not so

severe.”

Before the special section was abolished, many persons in the official

world, even at St. Petersburg, were unaware even of its existence. It

was in such a retired corner of one of the most distant regions of

Siberia, that it was difficult to know anything about it. It was

insignificant, moreover, from the number of persons belonging to it. In

my time they numbered altogether only seventy. I have since met men who

have served in Siberia, and know the country well, and yet have never

heard of the “special section.” In the rules and regulations there are

only six lines about this institution. Attached to the convict prison of

---- is a special section reserved for the most dangerous criminals,

while the severest labours are being prepared for them. The prisoners

themselves knew nothing of this special section. Did it exist

temporarily or constantly? Neither Suchiloff nor any of the prisoners

being sent out, not Mikhailoff himself could guess the significance of

those two words. Mikhailoff, however, had his suspicion as to the true

character of this section. He formed his opinion from the gravity of the

crime for which he was made to march three or four thousand versts on

foot. It was certain that he was not being sent to a place where he

would be at his ease. Suchiloff was to be a colonist. What could

Mikhailoff desire better than that?

“Won’t you change?” he asks. Suchiloff is a little drunk, he is a

simple-minded man, full of gratitude to the comrade who entertains him,

and dare not refuse; he has heard, moreover, from other prisoners, that

these exchanges are made, and understands, therefore, that there is

nothing extraordinary, unheard-of, in the proposition made to him. An

agreement is come to, the cunning Mikhailoff, profiting by Suchiloff’s

simplicity, buys his name for a red shirt, and a silver rouble, which

are given before witnesses. The next day Suchiloff is sober; but more

liquor is given to him. Then he drinks up his own rouble, and after a

while the red shirt has the same fate.

“If you don’t like the bargain we made, give me back my money,” says

Mikhailoff. But where is Suchiloff to get a rouble? If he does not give

it back, the “artel” [_i.e._, the association--in this case of convicts]

will force him to keep his promise. The prisoners are very sensitive on

such points: he must keep his promise. The “artel” requires it, and, in

case of disobedience, woe to the offender! He will be killed, or at

least seriously intimidated. If indeed the “artel” once showed mercy to

the men who had broken their word, there would be an end to its

existence. If the given word can be recalled, and the bargain put an end

to after the stipulated sum has been paid, who would be bound by such an

agreement? It is a question of life or death for the “artel.”

Accordingly the prisoners are very severe on the point.

Suchiloff then finds that it is impossible to go back, that nothing can

save him, and he accordingly agrees to all that is demanded of him. The

bargain is then made known to all the convoy, and if denunciations are

feared, the men looked upon as suspicious are entertained. What,

moreover, does it matter to the others whether Mikhailoff or Suchiloff

goes to the devil? They have had gratuitous drinks, they have been

feasted for nothing, and the secret is kept by all.

At the next station the names are called. When Mikhailoff’s turn

arrives, Suchiloff answers “present,” Mikhailoff replies “present” for

Suchiloff, and the journey is continued. The matter is not now even

talked about. At Tobolsk the prisoners are told off. Mikhailoff will

become a colonist, while Suchiloff is sent to the special section under

a double escort. It would be useless now to cry out, to protest, for

what proof could be given? How many years would it take to decide the

affair, what benefit would the complainant derive? Where, moreover, are

the witnesses? They would deny everything, even if they could be found.

That is how Suchiloff, for a silver rouble and a red shirt, came to be

sent to the special section. The prisoners laughed at him, not because

he had exchanged--though in general they despised those who had been

foolish enough to exchange a work that was easy for a work that was

hard--but simply because he had received nothing for the bargain except

a red shirt and a rouble--certainly a ridiculous compensation.

Generally speaking, the exchanges are made for relatively large sums;

several ten-rouble notes sometimes change hands. But Suchiloff was so

characterless, so insignificant, so null, that he could scarcely even be

laughed at. We lived a considerable time together, he and I; I had got

accustomed to him, and he had formed an attachment for me. One day,

however--I can never forgive myself for what I did--he had not executed

my orders, and when he came to ask me for his money I had the cruelty to

say to him, “You don’t forget to ask for your money, but you don’t do

what you are told.” Suchiloff remained silent and hastened to do as he

was ordered, but he suddenly became very sad. Two days passed. I could

not believe that what I had said to him could affect him so much. I knew

that a person named Vassilieff was claiming from him in a morose manner

payment of a small debt. Suchiloff was probably short of money, and did

not dare to ask me for any.

“Suchiloff, you wish, I think, to ask me for some money to pay

Vassilieff; take this.”

I was seated on my camp-bedstead. Suchiloff remained standing up before

me, much astonished that I myself should propose to give him money, and

that I remembered his difficult position; the more so as latterly he had

asked me several times for money in advance, and could scarcely hope

that I should give him any more. He looked at the paper I held out to

him, then looked at me, turned sharply on his heel and went out. I was

as astonished as I could be. I went out after him, and found him at the

back of the barracks. He was standing up with his face against the

palisade and his arms resting on the stakes.

“What is the matter, Suchiloff?” I asked him.

He made no reply, and to my stupefaction I saw that he was on the point

of bursting into tears.

“You think, Alexander Petrovitch,” he said, in a trembling voice, in

endeavouring not to look at me, “that I care only for your money, but

I----”

He turned away from me, and struck the palisade with his forehead and

began to sob. It was the first time in the convict prison that I had

seen a man weep. I had much trouble in consoling him; and he afterwards

served me, if possible, with more zeal than ever. He watched for my

orders, but by almost imperceptible indications I could see that his

heart would never forgive me for my reproach. Meanwhile other men

laughed at him and teased him whenever the opportunity presented itself,

and even insulted him without his losing his temper; on the contrary, he

still remained on good terms with them. It is indeed difficult to know a

man, even after having lived long years with him.

The convict prison had not at first for me the significance it was

afterwards to assume. I was at first, in spite of my attention, unable

to understand many facts which were staring me in the face. I was

naturally first struck by the most salient points, but I saw them from a

false point of view, and the only impression they made upon me was one

of unmitigated sadness. What contributed above all to this result was my

meeting with A----f, the convict who had come to the prison before me,

and who had astonished me in such a painful manner during the first few

days. The effect of his baseness was to aggravate my moral suffering,

already sufficiently cruel. He offered the most repulsive example of the

kind of degradation and baseness to which a man may fall when all

feeling of honour has perished within him. This young man of noble

birth--I have spoken of him before--used to repeat to the Major all that

was done in the barracks, and in doing so through the Major’s

body-servant Fedka. Here is the man’s history.

Arrived at St. Petersburg before he had finished his studies, after a

quarrel with his parents, whom his life of debauchery had terrified, he

had not shrunk for the sake of money from doing the work of an informer.

He did not hesitate to sell the blood of ten men in order to satisfy his

insatiable thirst for the grossest and most licentious pleasures. At

last he became so completely perverted in the St. Petersburg taverns and

houses of ill-fame, that he did not hesitate to take part in an affair

which he knew to be conceived in madness--for he was not without

intelligence. He was condemned to exile and ten years’ hard labour in

Siberia. One might have thought that such a frightful blow would have

shocked him, that it would have caused some reaction and brought about a

crisis; but he accepted his new fate without the least confusion. It did

not frighten him; all that he feared in it was the necessity of working,

and of giving up for ever his habits of debauchery. The name of convict

had no effect but to prepare him for new acts of baseness, and more

hideous villainies than any he had previously perpetrated.

“I am now a convict, and can crawl at ease, without shame.”

That was the light in which he looked upon his new position. I think of

this disgusting creature as of some monstrous phenomenon. During the

many years I have lived in the midst of murderers, debauchees, and

proved rascals, never in my life did I meet a case of such complete

moral abasement, determined corruption, and shameless baseness. Among us

there was a parricide of noble birth. I have already spoken of him; but

I could see by several signs that he was much better and more humane

than A----f. During the whole time of my punishment, he was never

anything more in my eyes than a piece of flesh furnished with teeth and

a stomach, greedy for the most offensive and ferocious animal

enjoyments, for the satisfaction of which he was ready to assassinate

anyone. I do not exaggerate in the least; I recognised in A----f one of

the most perfect specimens of animality, restrained by no principles, no

rule. How much I was disgusted by his eternal smile! He was a monster--a

moral Quasimodo. He was at the same time intelligent, cunning,

good-looking, had received some education, and possessed a certain

capacity. Fire, plague, famine, no matter what scourge, is preferable to

the presence of such a man in human society. I have already said that in

the convict prison espionage and denunciation flourished as the natural

product of degradation, without the convicts thinking much of it. On the

contrary, they maintained friendly relations with A----f. They were more

affable with him than with any one else. The kindly attitude towards him

of our drunken friend, the Major, gave him a certain importance, and

even a certain worth in the eyes of the convicts. Later on, this

cowardly wretch ran away with another convict and the soldier in charge

of them; but of this I shall speak in proper time and place. At first,

he hung about me, thinking I did not know his history. I repeat that he

poisoned the first days of my imprisonment so as to drive me nearly to

despair. I was terrified by the mass of baseness and cowardice in the

midst of which I had been thrown. I imagined that every one else was as

foul and cowardly as he. But I made a mistake in supposing that every

one resembled A----f.

During the first three days I did nothing but wander about the convict

prison, when I did not remain stretched out on my camp-bedstead. I

entrusted to a prisoner of whom I was sure, the piece of linen which had

been delivered to me by the administration, in order that he might make

me some shirts. Always on the advice of Akim Akimitch, I got myself a

folding mattress. It was in felt, covered with linen, as thin as a

pancake, and very hard to any one who was not accustomed to it. Akim

Akimitch promised to get me all the most essential things, and with his

own hands made me a blanket out of a piece of old cloth, cut and sewn

together from all the old trousers and waistcoats which I had bought

from various prisoners. The clothes delivered to them, when they have

been worn the regulation time, become the property of the prisoners.

They at once sell them, for however much worn an article of clothing may

be, it always possesses a certain value. I was very much astonished by

all this, above all at the outset, during my first relations with this

world. I became as low as my companions, as much a convict as they.

Their customs, their habits, their ideas influenced me thoroughly, and

externally became my own, without affecting my inner self. I was

astonished and confused as though I had never heard or suspected

anything of the kind before, and yet I knew what to expect, or at least

what had been told me. The thing itself, however, produced on me a

different impression from the mere description of it. How could I

suppose, for instance, that old rags possessed still some value? And,

nevertheless, my blanket was made up entirely of tatters. It would be

difficult to describe the cloth out of which the clothes of the convicts

were made. It was like the thick, gray cloth manufactured for the

soldiers, but as soon as it had been worn some little time it showed the

threads and tore with abominable ease. The uniform ought to have lasted

for a whole year, but it never went so long as that. The prisoner

labours, carries heavy burdens, and the cloth naturally wears out, and

gets into holes very quickly. Our sheepskins were intended to be worn

for three years. During the whole of that time they served as outer

garments, blankets, and pillows, but they were very solid. Nevertheless,

at the end of the third year, it was not rare to see them mended with

ordinary linen. Although they were now very much worn, it was always

possible to sell them at the rate of forty kopecks a piece, the best

preserved ones even at the price of sixty kopecks, which was a great sum

for the convict prison.

Money, as I have before said, has a sovereign value in such a place. It

is certain that a prisoner who has some pecuniary resources suffers ten

times less than the one who has nothing.

“When the Government supplies all the wants of the convict, what need

can he have for money?” reasoned our chief.

Nevertheless, I repeat that if the prisoners had been deprived of the

opportunity of possessing something of their own, they would have lost

their reason, or would have died like flies. They would have committed

unheard-of crimes; some from wearisomeness or grief, the others, in

order to get sooner punished, and, according to their expression, “have

a change.” If the convict who has gained some kopecks by the sweat of

his brow, who has embarked in perilous undertakings in order to conquer

them, if he spends this money recklessly, with childish stupidity, that

does not the least in the world prove that he does not know its value,

as might at first sight be thought. The convict is greedy for money, to

the point of losing his reason, and, if he throws it away, he does so in

order to procure what he places far above money--liberty, or at least a

semblance of liberty.

Convicts are great dreamers; I will speak of that further on with more

detail. At present I will confine myself to saying that I have heard

men, who had been condemned to twenty years’ hard labour, say, with a

quiet air, “when I have finished my time, if God wishes, then----” The

very words hard labour, or forced labour, indicate that the man has lost

his freedom; and when this man spends his money he is carrying out his

own will.

In spite of the branding and the chains, in spite of the palisade which

hides from his eyes the free world, and encloses him in a cage like a

wild beast, he can get himself spirits and other delights; sometimes

even (not always), corrupt his immediate superintendents, the old

soldiers and non-commissioned officers, and get them to close their eyes

to his infractions of discipline within the prison. He can,

moreover--what he adores--swagger; that is to say, impress his

companions and persuade himself for a time, that he enjoys more liberty

than he really possesses. The poor devil wishes, in a word, to convince

himself of what he knows to be impossible. This is why the prisoners

take such pleasure in boasting and exaggerating in burlesque fashion

their own unhappy personality.

Finally, they run some risk when they give themselves up to this

boasting; in which again they find a semblance of life and liberty--the

only thing they care for. Would not a millionaire with a rope round his

neck give all his millions for one breath of air? A prisoner has lived

quietly for several years in succession, his conduct has been so

exemplary that he has been rewarded by special exemptions. Suddenly, to

the great astonishment of his chiefs, this man becomes mutinous, plays

the very devil, and does not recoil from a capital crime such as

assassination, violation, etc. Every one is astounded at the cause of

this unexpected explosion on the part of a man thought incapable of such

a thing. It is the convulsive manifestation of his personality, an

instinctive melancholia, an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion,

all of which obscures his reason. It is a sort of epileptic attack, a

spasm. A man buried alive who suddenly wakes up must strike in a similar

manner against the lid of his coffin. He tries to rise up, to push it

from him, although his reason must convince him of the uselessness of

his efforts.

Reason, however, has nothing to do with this convulsion. It must not be

forgotten that almost every voluntary manifestation on the part of a

convict is looked upon as a crime. Accordingly, it is a perfect matter

of indifference to them whether this manifestation be important or

insignificant, debauch for debauch, danger for danger. It is just as

well to go to the end, even as far as a murder. The only difficulty is

the first step. Little by little the man becomes excited, intoxicated,

and can no longer contain himself. For that reason it would be better

not to drive him to extremities. Everybody would be much better for it.

But how can this be managed?