Bab Bab 16 · THE HOSPITAL[4] (_continued_)

I have spoken here of punishments and of those who have administered

them, because I got a very clear idea on the subject during my stay in

the hospital. Until then I knew of them only by general report. In our

room were confined all the prisoners from the battalion who were to

receive the spitzruten [rods], as well as those from the military

establishment in our town and in the district surrounding it.

During my first few days I looked at all that surrounded me with such

greedy eyes that these strange manners, these men who had just been

flogged or were about to be flogged, left upon me a terrible impression.

I was agitated, frightened.

As I listened to the conversation or narratives of the other prisoners

on this subject, I put to myself questions which I endeavoured in vain

to solve. I wished to know all the degrees of the sentences; the

punishments, and their shades; and to learn the opinion of the convicts

themselves. I tried to represent to myself the psychological condition

of the men flogged.

It rarely happened, as I have already said, that the prisoner approached

the fatal moment in cold blood, even if he had been beaten several times

before. The condemned man experiences a fear which is very terrible, but

purely physical--an unconscious fear which upsets his moral nature.

During my several years’ stay in the convict prison I was able to study

at leisure the prisoners who wished to leave the hospital, where they

had remained some time to have their damaged backs cured before

receiving the second half of their punishment. This interruption in the

punishment is always called for by the doctor who assists at the

execution.

If the number of strokes to be received is too great for them to be

administered all at once, it is divided according to advice given by the

doctor on the spot. It is for him to see if the prisoner is in a

condition to undergo the whole of his punishment, or if his life is in

danger.

Five hundred, one thousand, and even one thousand five hundred strokes

with the stick are administered at once. But if it is two or three

thousand the punishment is divided into two or three doses.

Those whose back had been cured after the first administration, and who

are to undergo a second, were sad, sombre and silent the day they went

out, and the evening before. They were almost in a state of torpor. They

engaged in no conversation, and remained perfectly silent.

It is worthy of remark that the prisoners avoid addressing those who are

about to be punished, and, above all, never make any allusion to the

subject, neither in consolation nor in superfluous words. No attention

whatever is paid to them, which is certainly the best thing for the

prisoner.

There are exceptions, however.

The convict Orloff, of whom I have already spoken, was sorry that his

back did not get more quickly cured, for he was anxious to get his

leave-ticket in order that he might take the rest of his flogging, and

then be assigned to a convoy of prisoners, when he meant to escape

during the journey. He had a passionate, ardent nature, and with only

that object in view.

A cunning rascal, he seemed very pleased when he first came; but he was

in a state of abnormal excitement, though he endeavoured to conceal it.

He had been afraid of being left on the ground, and dying before half of

his punishment had been undergone. He had heard steps taken in his case,

by the authorities, when he was still being tried, and he thought he

could not survive the punishment. But when he had received his first

dose he recovered his courage.

When he came to the hospital I had never seen such wounds as his; but he

was in the best spirits. He now hoped to be able to live. The stories

which had reached him were untrue, or the execution would not have been

interrupted.

He now began to think of a long Siberian journey, possibly of escaping

to liberty, fields, and forests.

Two days after he had left the hospital he came back to die--on the very

couch which he had occupied during my stay there.

He had been unable to support the second half of his punishment; but I

have already spoken of this man.

All the prisoners without exception, even the most pusillanimous, even

those who were beforehand tormented night and day, supported it

courageously when it came. I scarcely ever heard groans during the night

following the execution; our people, as a rule, knew how to endure pain.

I questioned my companion often in reference to this pain, that I might

know to what kind of suffering it might be compared. It was no idle

curiosity which urged me. I repeat that I was moved and frightened; but

it was in vain, I could get no satisfactory reply.

“It burns like fire!” was the general answer; they all said the same

thing.

First I tried to question M--tski. “It burns like fire! like hell! It

seems as if one’s back were in a furnace.”

I made one day a strange observation, which may or may not have been

well founded, although the opinion of the convicts themselves confirms

my views; namely, that the rods are the most terrible punishment in use

among us.

At first it seems absurd, impossible, yet five hundred strokes of the

rods, four hundred even, are enough to kill a man. Beyond five hundred

death is almost certain; the most robust man will be unable to support a

thousand rods, whereas five hundred sticks are endured without much

inconvenience, and without the least risk in the world of losing one’s

life. A man of ordinary build supports a thousand sticks without danger;

even two thousand sticks will not kill a man of ordinary strength and

constitution. All the convicts declared that rods were worse than sticks

or ramrods.

“Rods hurt more and torture more!” they said.

They must torture more than sticks, that is certain, that is evident;

for they irritate much more forcibly the nervous system, which they

excite beyond measure. I do not know whether any person still exists,

but such did a short time ago, to whom the whipping of a victim procured

a delight which recalls the Marquis de Sade and the Marchioness

Brinvilliers. I think this delight must consist in the sinking of the

heart, and that these nobles must have experienced pain and delight at

the same time.

There are people who, like tigers, are greedy for blood. Those who have

possessed unlimited power over the flesh, blood, and soul of their

fellow-creatures, of their brethren according to the law of Christ,

those who have possessed this power and who have been able to degrade

with a supreme degradation, another being made in the image of God;

these men are incapable of resisting their desires and their thirst for

sensations. Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last

becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become

hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish

him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the

development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable

of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the

citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human

dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.

That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the

whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such

things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In a

word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his

fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the means

of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ the

elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition.

Society despises an executioner by trade, but not a lordly executioner.

Every manufacturer, every master of works, must feel an irritating

pleasure when he reflects that the workman he has beneath his orders is

dependent upon him with the whole of his family. A generation does not,

I am sure, extirpate so quickly what is hereditary in it. A man cannot

renounce what is in his blood, what has been transmitted to him with his

mother’s milk; these revolutions are not accomplished so quickly. It is

not enough to confess one’s fault. That is very little! Very little

indeed! It must be rooted out, and that is not done so quickly.

I have spoken of the executioners. The instincts of an executioner are

in germ in nearly every one of our contemporaries; but the animal

instincts of the man have not developed themselves in a uniform manner.

When they stifle all other faculties, the man becomes a hideous monster.

There are two kinds of executioners, those who of their own will are

executioners and those who are executioners by duty, by reason of

office. He who, by his own will, is an executioner, is in all respects

below the salaried executioner, whom, however, the people look upon with

repugnance, and who inspires them with disgust, with instinctive

mystical fear. Whence comes this almost superstitious horror for the

latter, when one is only indifferent and indulgent to the former?

I know strange examples of honourable men, kind, esteemed by all their

friends, who found it necessary that a culprit should be whipped until

he would implore and beg for mercy; it seemed to them a natural thing, a

thing recognised as indispensable. If the victim did not choose to cry

out, his executioner, whom in other respects I should consider a good

man, looked upon it as a personal offence; he meant, in the first

instance, to inflict only a light punishment, but directly he failed to

hear the habitual supplications, “Your nobility!” “Have mercy!” “Be a

father to me!” “Let me thank God all my life!” he became furious, and

ordered that fifty more blows should be administered, hoping thus, at

last, to obtain the necessary cries and supplications; and at last they

came.

“Impossible! he is too insolent,” cried the man in question, very

seriously.

As for the executioner by office, he is a convict who has been chosen

for this function. He passes an apprenticeship with an old hand, and as

soon as he knows his trade remains in the convict prison, where he lives

by himself. He has a room, which he shares with no one. Sometimes,

indeed, he has a separate establishment, but he is always under guard. A

man is not a machine. Although he whips by virtue of his office, he

sometimes becomes furious, and beats with a certain pleasure.

Notwithstanding he has no hatred for his victim, a desire to show his

skill in the art of whipping may sharpen his vanity. He works as an

artist; he knows well that he is a reprobate, and that he excites

everywhere superstitious dread. It is impossible that this should

exercise no influence upon him, and not irritate his brutal instincts.

Even little children say that this man has neither father nor mother.

Strange thing!

All the executioners I have known were intelligent men, possessing a

certain degree of conceit. This conceit became developed in them through

the contempt which they everywhere met with, and was strengthened,

perhaps, by the consciousness of the fear with which they inspired their

victims, and of the power over unfortunate wretches.

The theatrical paraphernalia surrounding them developed, perhaps, in

them a certain arrogance. I had for some time an opportunity of meeting

and observing at close quarters an ordinary executioner. He was a man

about forty, muscular, dry, with an agreeable, intelligent face,

surrounded by long curly hair. His manners were quiet and grave, his

general demeanour becoming. He replied clearly and sensibly to all

questions put to him, but with a sort of condescension as if he were in

some way my superior. The officers of the guard spoke to him with a

certain respect, which he fully appreciated, for which reason, in

presence of his chiefs, he became polite, and more dignified than ever.

He never departed from the most refined politeness. I am sure that, when

I was speaking to him, he felt incomparably superior to the man who was

addressing him. I could read that in his countenance. Sometimes he was

sent under escort, in summer, when it was very hot, to kill the dogs of

the town with a long, very thin spear. These wandering dogs increased in

numbers with such prodigious rapidity, and became so dangerous during

the dog days, that, by the decision of the authorities, the executioner

was ordered to destroy them. This degrading duty did not in any way

humiliate him. It should have been seen with what gravity he walked

through the streets of the town, accompanied by a soldier escorting him;

how, with a single glance, he frightened the women and children; and

how, from the height of his grandeur, he looked down upon the passers-by

generally.

Executioners live at their ease. They have money to travel comfortably,

and drink vodka. They derive most of their income from presents which

the prisoners condemned to be flogged slip into their hands before the

execution. When they have to do with convicts who are rich, they then

fix a sum to be paid in proportion to the means of the victim. They will

exact thirty roubles, sometimes more. The executioner has no right to

spare his victim; and he does so at the risk of his own back. But for a

suitable present he agrees not to strike too hard. People almost always

give what he asks; should they in any case refuse, he would strike like

a savage; and it is in his power to do so. He sometimes exacts a heavy

sum from a man who is very poor. Then all the relations of the victim

are put in movement. They bargain, try and beat him down, supplicate

him; but it will not be well if they do not succeed in satisfying him.

In such a case the superstitious fear inspired by the executioner stands

them in good part. I had been told the most wonderful things--that at

one blow the executioner can kill his man.

“Is this your experience?” I asked.

Perhaps so. Who knows? Their tone seemed to decide, if there could be

any doubt about it. They also told me that he can strike a criminal in

such a way that he will not feel the least pain, and without leaving a

scar.

Even when the executioner receives a present not to whip too severely,

he gives the first blow with all his strength. It is the custom! Then he

administers the other blows with less severity, above all if he has been

well paid.

I do not know why this is done. Is it to prepare the victim for the

succeeding blows, which will appear less painful after the first cruel

one; or do they want to frighten the criminal, so that he may know with

whom he has to deal; or do they simply wish to display their vigour from

vanity? In any case the executioner is slightly excited before the

execution, and he is conscious of his strength and of his power. He is

acting at the time; the public admires him, and is filled with terror.

Accordingly, it is not without satisfaction that he cries out to his

victim, “Look out! you are going to have it!”--customary and fatal words

which precede the first blow.

It is difficult to imagine a human being degraded to such a point.

The first day of my stay at the hospital I listened attentively to the

stories of the convicts, which broke the monotony of the long days.

In the morning, the doctor’s visit was the first diversion. Then came

dinner, which it will be believed was the most important affair of our

daily life. The portions were different according to the nature of the

illness: some of the prisoners received nothing but broth with groats in

it; others nothing but gruel; others a kind of semolina, which was much

liked. The convicts ended by becoming effeminate and fastidious. The

convalescents received a piece of boiled beef. The best food, which was

reserved for the scorbutic patients, consisted of roast beef with

onions, horseradish, and sometimes a small glass of spirits. The bread

was, according to the illness, black or brown; the precision preserved

in distributing the rations would make the patients laugh.

There were some who took absolutely nothing; the portions were exchanged

in such a way that the food intended for one patient was eaten by

another: those who were being kept on low diet, who received only small

rations, bought those of the scorbutic patients; others would give any

price for meat. There were some who ate two entire portions; it cost

them a good deal, for they were generally sold at five kopecks each. If

one had no meat to sell in our room the warder was sent to another

section, and if he could not find any there he was asked to get some

from the military “infirmary”--the free infirmary, as we called it.

There were always patients ready to sell their rations; poverty was

general, and those who possessed a few kopecks used to send out to buy

cakes and white bread, or other delicacies, at the market. Warders

executed these commissions in a disinterested manner. The most painful

moment was that which followed the dinner; some went to sleep, if they

had no other way of passing their time; others either wrangled or told

stories in a loud voice.

When no new patients were brought in, everything became very dull. The

arrival of a new patient caused always a certain excitement, above all,

if no one knew anything about him; he was questioned about his past

life.

The most interesting ones were the birds of passage: they had always

something to tell.

Of course they never spoke of their own little faults. If the prisoner

did not enter upon this subject himself, no one questioned him about it.

The only thing he was asked was, what quarter he came from? who were

with him on the road? what state the road was in? where he was being

taken to? etc. Stimulated by the stories of the new comers, our comrades

in their turn began to tell what they had seen and done; what was most

talked about was the convoys, those in command of them, the men who

carried the sentences into execution.

About this time, too, towards evening, the convicts who had been

scourged came up; they always made a rather strong impression, as I have

said; but it was not every day that any of these were brought to us, and

everybody was bored to extinction, when nothing happened to give a

fillip to the general relaxed and indolent state of feeling. It seemed,

then, as though the sick themselves were exasperated at the very sight

of those near them. Sometimes they squabbled violently.

Our convicts were in high glee when a madman was taken off for medical

examination; sometimes those who were sentenced to be scourged, feigned

insanity that they might get off. The trick was found out, or it would

sometimes be that they voluntarily gave up the pretence. Prisoners, who

during two or three days had done all sorts of wild things, suddenly

became steady and sensible people, quieted down, and, with a gloomy

smile, asked to be taken out of the hospital. Neither the other convicts

nor the doctors said a word of remonstrance to them about the deceit, or

brought up the subject of their mad pranks. Their names were put down on

a list without a word being said, and they were simply taken elsewhere;

after the lapse of some days they came back to us with their backs all

wounds and blood.

On the other hand, the arrival of a genuine lunatic was a miserable

thing to see all through the place. Those of the mentally unsound who

were gay, lively, who uttered cries, danced, sang, were greeted at first

with enthusiasm by the convicts.

“Here’s fun!” said they, as they looked on the grins and contortions of

the unfortunates. But the sight was horribly painful and sad. I have

never been able to look upon the mad calmly or with indifference. There

was one who was kept three weeks in our room: we would have hidden

ourselves, had there been any place to do it. When things were at the

worst they brought in another. This one affected me very powerfully.

In the first year, or, to be more exact, during the first month of my

exile, I went to work with a gang of kiln men to the tileries situate at

two versts from our prison. We were set to repairing the kiln in which

the bricks were baked in summer. That morning, in which M--tski and B.

made me acquainted with the non-commissioned officer, superintendent of

the works. This was a Pole already well on in life, sixty years old at

least, of high stature, lean, of decent and even somewhat imposing

exterior. He had been a long time in service in Siberia, and although he

belonged to the lower orders he had been a soldier, and in the rising of

1830--M--tski and B. loved and esteemed him. He was always reading the

Vulgate. I spoke to him; his talk was agreeable and intelligent; he told

a story in a most interesting way; he was straightforward and of

excellent temper. For two years I never saw him again, all I heard was

that he had become a “case,” and that they were inquiring into it; and

then one fine day they brought him into our room; he had gone quite mad.

He came in yelling, uttering shouts of laughter, and began to dance in

the middle of the room with indecent gestures which recalled the dance

known as Kamarinskaïa.

The convicts were wild with enthusiasm; but, for my part, account for it

as you will, I felt utterly miserable. Three days after, we were all of

us upset with it; he got into violent disputes with everybody, fought,

groaned, sang in the dead of the night; his aberrations were so

inordinate and disgusting as to bring our very stomachs up.

He feared nobody. They put the strait-waistcoat on him; but we were no

whit better off for it, for he went on quarreling and fighting all

round. At the end of three weeks, the room put up an unanimous entreaty

to the head doctor that he might be removed to the other apartment

reserved for the convicts. But after two days, at the request of the

sick people in that other room, they brought him back to our infirmary.

As we had two madmen there at once, both rooms kept sending them back

and forward, and ended by taking one or the other of the two lunatics,

turn and turn about. Everybody breathed more freely when they took them

away from us, a good way off, somewhere or other.

There was another lunatic whom I remember--a very remarkable creature.

They had brought in, during the summer, a man under sentence, who

looked like a solid and vigorous fellow enough, of about forty-five

years. His face was sombre and sad, pitted with small-pox, with little

red and swollen eyes. He sat down by my side. He was extremely quiet;

spoke to nobody, and seemed utterly absorbed in his own deep

reflections.

Night fell; then he addressed me, and, without a word of preface, told

me in a hurried and excited way--as if it were a mighty secret he were

confiding--that he was to have two thousand strokes with the rod; but

that he had nothing to fear, as the daughter of Colonel G---- was taking

steps on his behalf.

I looked at him with surprise, and observed that, as I saw the affair,

the daughter of a Colonel could be of little use in such a case. I had

not yet guessed what sort of person I had to do with, for they had

brought him to the hospital as a bodily sick person, not mentally. I

then asked him what illness he was suffering from.

He answered that he knew nothing about it; that he had been sent among

us for something or other; but that he was in good health, and that the

Colonel’s daughter had fallen in love with him. Two weeks before she had

passed in a carriage before the guard-house, where he was looking

through the barred window, and she had gone head over ears in love at

the mere sight of him.

After that important moment she had come three times to the guard-house

on different pretexts. The first time with her father, ostensibly to

visit her brother, who was the officer on service; the second with her

mother, to distribute alms to the prisoners. As she passed in front of

him she had muttered that she loved him and would get him out of prison.

He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it

pure figment of his poor disordered head. He believed devoutly and

implicitly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke

very calmly, and with all assurance of the passionate love he had

inspired in this young lady.

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.