The House of the Dead

of one’s misery was an actual enjoyment. The idea of ever regretting this hole struck me with horror: I felt even then how monstrously a man may get used to things. But that was all in the future, and meantime everything about me was hostile and⁠—terrible, for though not everything was really so, it seemed so to me. The savage curiosity with which my new comrades, the convicts, stared at me, the extra surliness of their behaviour towards the new member of their community, who had been a “gentleman,” a surliness which sometimes reached the point of active hatred⁠—all this so tortured me that I was eager to begin work, so as to find out and test all my sufferings as soon as possible, to begin living like all the rest, so as to get into the same rut with all the others without delay. Of course there was a great deal I did not notice then; I had no suspicion of things that were going on in front of me. I did not divine the presence of consolation in the midst of all that was hostile. Yet the few kind and friendly faces I had come across in the course of those three days helped to give me courage.

The kindest and friendliest of all was Akim Akimitch. And among the faces of other convicts that were sullen and full of hatred, I could not help noticing some kind and good-natured ones. “There are bad people everywhere, and good ones among the bad,” I hastened to console myself by reflecting: “and who knows? These people are perhaps by no means so much worse than the remainder who have remained outside the prison.” Even as I thought this, I shook my head at the idea, and yet, my God, if I had only known at the time how true that thought was!

Here, for instance, was a man whom I only came to understand fully in the course of many many years, and yet he was with me and continually near me almost all the time I was in prison. This was the convict Sushilov. As soon as I begin to speak of prisoners being no worse than other men, I involuntarily recall him. He used to wait on me. I had another attendant too. From the very beginning Akim Akimitch recommended me one of the convicts called Osip, telling me that for thirty kopecks a month he would cook my food for me every day, if I so disliked the prison fare, and had the money to get food for myself. Osip was one of the four cooks elected by the convicts for our two kitchens. They were, however, quite free to accept or refuse the appointment and could throw it up at any moment. The cooks did not go out to work, and their duties were confined to baking bread and preparing soup. They were not called povars (i.e. male cooks) but stryapki (i.e. female cooks) not as a sign of contempt for them⁠—for sensible, and as far as might be, honest convicts were chosen for the kitchen⁠—but just as an amiable pleasantry which our cooks did not resent in the slightest. Osip was, as a rule, elected, and for several years in succession he was almost always cook, and only threw up the job occasionally for a time, when he was overcome with violent melancholy and a craving for smuggling in vodka. He was a man of rare honesty and gentleness, though he was in prison for smuggling. He was the tall, sturdy smuggler I have mentioned already. He was afraid of everything, especially of a flogging, was friendly to everyone, very meek and mild. He never quarrelled, yet he had such a passion for smuggling that he could not resist bringing in vodka in spite of his cowardice. Like the other cooks he carried on a trade in vodka, though, course, not on the same scale as Gazin, for instance, because he had not the courage to risk much. I always got on capitally with Osip. As for providing one’s food, the cost was trifling. I am not far wrong if I say that I hardly spent more than a rouble a month on my board, always excluding bread which was part of the prison fare, and occasionally soup, which I took if I were very hungry in spite of the disgust it inspired, though that, too, passed off almost completely in time. Usually I bought a pound of beef a day. And in winter a pound cost a halfpenny. One of the old veterans, of whom there was one in each room to keep order, used to go to the market to buy beef. These veterans voluntarily undertook to go to market every day to buy things for the prisoners and charged the merest trifle, next to nothing, for doing so. They did this for the sake of their own peace and comfort, for they could hardly have existed in the prison if they had refused. In this way they brought in tobacco, tea in bricks, beef, fancy bread and so on, everything in fact but vodka. They were not asked to bring in vodka, though they were sometimes regaled with it.

For years together Osip roasted me a piece of beef, always the same cut. But how it was roasted is another question, and indeed is not what mattered. It is a remarkable fact that for several years I hardly exchanged two words with Osip. Several times I tried to talk to him, but he was incapable of keeping up a conversation; he would smile or answer “yes” or “no,” and that was all. It was strange to see this Hercules who was like a child of seven.

Another convict who helped me was Sushilov. I did not ask for his services nor seek them. He found me out and placed himself at my disposal of his own accord; I don’t remember