Many prisoners tanned skins, and they often brought into the prison dogs with good coats, who instantly disappeared. Some of these dogs were stolen, some even bought. I remember once seeing two convicts behind the kitchen consulting together and very busy about something. One of them held by a string a magnificent big black dog evidently of an expensive breed. Some rascal of a lackey had brought it from his master’s and sold it for about sixpence to our shoemakers. The convicts were just going to hang it. This was a thing very easily done; they stripped off the skin and flung the dead body into the big deep cesspool in the furthest corner of the prison yard, which stank horribly in the hottest days of summer. It was rarely cleaned out. The poor dog seemed to understand the fate in store for it. It glanced at each of the three of us in turn with searching and uneasy eyes and from time to time ventured to wag its drooping bushy tail, as though trying to soften us by this sign of its trust. I made haste to move away, and they no doubt finished the job to their satisfaction.
It was by chance that we came to keep geese. Who first introduced them and to whom they really belonged I don’t know, but for some time they were a source of great diversion to the convicts and even became familiar objects in the town. They were hatched in the prison and were kept in the kitchen. When all the goslings were full grown, they all used to follow the convicts to work in a flock. As soon as the drum sounded and the prisoners began to move towards the gates, our geese would run after us, cackling, fluttering their wings one after another, leaping over the high sill of the gate, and would unhesitatingly turn towards the right wing and there draw up and wait till the convicts were ready to start. They always attached themselves to the largest party, and while the convicts were at work they would graze close by. As soon as the party began to move off again towards the prison, the geese started too. It was reported in the fortress how the geese followed the convicts to work. “Hullo, here are the convicts with their geese,” people would say when they met them. “How did you train them?” “Here’s something for the geese,” another would add and give us alms. But in spite of their devotion they were all killed for some feast day.
On the other hand nothing would have induced the convicts to kill our goat, Vaska, if it had not been for a special circumstance. I don’t know where he came from either or who brought him into the prison, but one day a very charming little white kid made his appearance. In a few days we all grew fond of him and began to find entertainment and even consolation in him. They even found an excuse for keeping him by saying, “If we have a stable in the prison, we must have a goat.” He did not, however, live in the stable, but at first in the kitchen and afterwards all over the prison. He was a very graceful, very mischievous creature. He ran up when he was called, jumped on benches and tables, butted at the convicts, and was always merry and amusing. One evening when his horns had grown fairly big, a Lezghian called Babay who was sitting on the steps with a group of other convicts, took it into his head to butt at the goat; they were knocking their foreheads together for a long time—to play like this with the goat was a favourite pastime of the convicts—when suddenly Vaska skipped on to the topmost step, and as soon as Babay turned aside, the goat instantly reared on its hind legs and bending his forelegs inward, he butted with all his might at the back of Babay’s head so that the man flew head over heels off the steps to the intense glee of all present, especially Babay himself. Everyone was awfully fond of Vaska, in fact.
When he began to be full grown it was decided after a long and earnest deliberation to perform a certain operation on him which our veterinary specialists were very skilful in, “or he will smell so goaty,” said the convicts. After that Vaska grew fearfully fat. The convicts used to feed him, too, as though they were fattening him up. He grew at last into a fine and handsome goat of extraordinary size with very long horns. He waddled as he walked. He, too, used to follow us to work to the diversion of the convicts and of everyone we met. Everyone knew the prison goat Vaska. Sometimes if they were working on the bank of the river for instance, the convicts would gather tender willow shoots and other leaves and pick flowers on the rampart to decorate Vaska with them; they would wreathe flowers and green shoots round his horns and hang garlands all over his body. Vaska would return to the prison always in front of the convicts, decked out, and they would follow him, and seem proud of him when they met anyone. This admiration for the goat reached such a pitch that some of our men, like children, suggested that they might gild Vaska’s horns. But they only talked of doing this, it was never actually done. I remember, however, asking Akim Akimitch, who, after Isay Fomitch, was our best gilder, whether one could really gild goat’s horns. At first he looked attentively at the goat
