第 十八 章 · 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.