While I was waiting for my fetters to be changed, I was talking to Akim Akimitch about my first impressions in prison.
“Yes, they are not fond of gentlemen,” he observed, “especially politicals; they are ready to devour them; no wonder. To begin with you are a different sort of people, unlike them; besides, they’ve all been serfs or soldiers. Judge for yourself whether they would be likely to be fond of you. It’s a hard life here, I can tell you. And in the Russian disciplinary battalions it’s worse still. Some of these fellows come from them and they are never tired of praising our prison, they say it’s like coming from hell to paradise. It’s not the work that’s the trouble. There in the first division they say the authorities are not all military, anyhow they behave very differently from here. There they say the convicts can have little homes of their own. I haven’t been there, but that’s what they say. They don’t have their heads shaved, they don’t wear a uniform, though it’s a good thing they do wear a uniform and have their heads shaved here; it’s more orderly, anyway, and it’s pleasanter to the eye. Only they don’t like it. And look what a mixed rabble they are! One will be a Kantonist,2 another will be a Circassian, a third an Old Believer, a fourth will be an orthodox peasant who has left a wife and dear little children behind in Russia, the fifth will be a Jew, the sixth a gipsy, and the seventh God knows who; and they’ve all got to live together, they’ve all got to get on together somehow, eat out of the same bowl, sleep on the same bed. And no sort of freedom. If you want an extra crust you must eat it on the sly; every farthing you’ve to hide in your boots and nothing before you but prison and more prison. … You can’t help all sorts of nonsense coming into your head.”
But I knew that already. I particularly wanted to question him about our major. Akim Akimitch made no secret of things and I remember my impression was not altogether agreeable.
But I had to live for two years under his rule. All that Akim Akimitch told me about him turned out to be perfectly true with the only difference that the impression made by the reality is always stronger than that made by description. The man was terrible, just because being such a man he had almost unlimited power over two hundred souls. In himself he was simply a spiteful and ill-regulated man, nothing more; he looked on the convicts as his natural enemies and that was his first and great mistake. He really had some ability, but everything, even what was good in him, came out in a distorted form. Unrestrained and ill-tempered, he would sometimes burst into the prison even at night, and if he noticed that a convict was sleeping on his left side or on his back he would have him punished next day: “You’ve to sleep on your right side, as I’ve ordered you.” In the prison he was hated and feared like the plague. His face was purplish crimson and ferocious. Everyone knew that he was completely in the hands of his orderly, Fedka. What he loved most in the world was his poodle Trezorka, and he almost went mad with grief when Trezorka fell ill. They say he sobbed over him as though it had been his own son; he drove away one veterinary surgeon, and, after his usual fashion, almost beat him. Hearing from Fedka that one of the convicts in the prison was a self-taught “vet” who was very successful in curing animals, he called him in at once.
“Help me! I’ll load you with gold, cure Trezorka!” he shouted to the convict.
The man was a Siberian peasant, crafty, clever, really a very skilful vet, though a peasant in every sense of the word.
“I looked at Trezorka,” he told the convicts afterwards, long after his visit to the major, however, when the whole story was forgotten. “I looked—the dog was lying on a white cushion on the sofa and I saw it was inflammation, that it ought to be bled and the dog would get well, yes indeed! And I thinks to myself—what if I don’t cure it, what if it dies? ‘No, your honour,’ said I, ‘you called me in too late; if it had been yesterday or the day before, I could have cured the dog, but now I can’t.’ ”
So Trezorka died.
I was told in detail of an attempt to kill the major. There was a convict in the prison who had been there several years and was distinguished for his mild behaviour. It was observed, too, that he hardly ever spoke to anyone. He was looked upon as a bit queer in the religious way. He could read and write and during the last year he was continually reading the Bible, he read it day and night. When everyone was asleep he would get up at midnight, light a church wax candle, climb on to the stove, open the book and read till morning. One day he went up and told the sergeant that he would not go to work. It was reported to the major; he flew into a rage, and rushed into the prison at once himself. The convict threw himself upon him with a brick he had got ready beforehand, but he missed his aim. He was seized, tried and punished. It all happened very quickly. Three days later he died in the hospital. As he lay dying he said that he meant no harm to anyone, but was only seeking suffering. He did not, however, belong to any dissenting sect. In the prison he was remembered with respect.
At last my fetters were changed. Meanwhile
