The House of the Dead

sent for brief terms, boys of little education, but honest, simple, and straightforward. A third, A‑tchukovsky, was quite a simpleton, and there was nothing special about him. But a fourth, B⁠⸺⁠m, a middle-aged man, made a very disagreeable impression upon all of us. I don’t know how he came to be one of the political prisoners, and, indeed, he denied all connection with them himself. He had the coarse soul of a petty huckster, and the habits and principles of a shopkeeper who had grown rich by cheating over halfpence. He was entirely without education, and took no interest in anything but his trade. He was a painter, and a first-rate one, magnificent. Soon the authorities heard of his talent, and all the town began wanting B⁠⸺⁠m to paint their walls and ceilings. Within two years he had painted almost all the officials’ houses. Their owners paid him out of their own pockets, and so he was not at all badly off. But the best of it was that his comrades, too, began to be sent to work with him. Two who went out with him continually, learnt the trade, too, and one of them, T‑zhevsky, became as good a painter as he was himself. Our major who lived in a government house himself, sent for B⁠⸺⁠m in his turn, and told him to paint all the walls and ceilings. Then B⁠⸺⁠m did his utmost: even the Governor-General’s house was not so well painted. It was a tumbledown, very mangy-looking, one-storey wooden house; but the interior was painted as though it were a palace, and the major was highly delighted.⁠ ⁠… He rubbed his hands, and declared that now he really must get married: “with such a house one must have a wife,” he added quite seriously. He was more and more pleased with B⁠⸺⁠m, and through him with the others who worked with him. The work lasted a whole month. In the course of that month the major quite altered his views of the political prisoners, and began to patronize them. It ended by his summoning Z. one day from the prison.

“Z.,” said he, “I wronged you. I gave you a flogging for nothing, I know it. I regret it. Do you understand that? I, I, I⁠—regret it!”

Z. replied that he did understand it.

“Do you understand that I, I, your commanding officer have sent for you, to ask you your forgiveness. Do you feel that? What are you beside me? A worm! Less than a worm: you are a convict. And I, by the grace of God,10 am a major. A major! Do you understand that?”

Z. answered that he understood that, too.

“Well, now I am making peace with you. But do you feel it, do you feel it fully, in all its fullness? Are you capable of understanding it? Only think: I, I, the major,” and so on.

Z. told me of the whole scene himself. So even this drunken, quarrelsome, and vicious man had some humane feeling. When one takes into consideration his ideas and lack of culture, such an action may almost be called magnanimous. But probably his drunken condition had a good deal to do with it.

His dreams were not realized: he did not get married, though he had fully made up his mind to do so by the time the decoration of his house was finished. Instead of being married he was arrested, and he was ordered to send in his resignation. At the trial all his old sins were brought up against him. He had previously been a provost of the town.⁠ ⁠… The blow fell on him unexpectedly. There was immense rejoicing in the prison at the news. It was a festive day, a day of triumph! They said that the major howled like an old woman, and was dissolved in tears. But there was nothing to be done. He retired, sold his pair of greys, and then his whole property, and even sank into poverty. We came across him afterwards, a civilian wearing a shabby coat and a cap with a cockade in it. He looked viciously at the convicts. But all his prestige went with his uniform. In a uniform he was terrible, a deity. In civil dress he became absolutely a nonentity, and looked like a lackey. It’s wonderful what the uniform does for men like that.

IX

An Escape

Soon after our major was removed, there were fundamental changes in our prison. They gave up using the place as a prison for penal servitude convicts and founded instead a convict battalion, on the pattern of the Russian disciplinary battalions. This meant that no more convicts of the second class were brought to our prison. It began to be filled at this time only with convicts of the military division, men therefore not deprived of civil rights, soldiers like all other soldiers except that they were undergoing punishment in the prison for brief terms, six years at the utmost. At the expiration of their sentence they would go back to their battalions as privates, just as before. Those, however, who came back to the prison after a second offence were punished as before by a sentence of twenty years. There had been, indeed, even before this change a division of convicts of the military class, but they lived with us because there was no other place for them. Now the whole prison became a prison for this military section. The old convicts, genuine civil convicts, who had been deprived of all rights, had been branded, and shaved on one side of the head, remained of course in the prison till their full terms were completed. No new ones came, and those who remained gradually worked out their terms of servitude and went away, so that ten years later there could not have been a convict left in our prison. The special division was left, however, and to it from time to time were