“They’ve drunk up all their money,” observed Vassya. “If they hadn’t they’d have been playing.”
“If! They’ll give you a hundred roubles for an ‘if’ in Moscow,” observed Lutchka.
“And how much did you get altogether, Lutchka?” Kobylin began again.
“They gave me a hundred and five, my dear chap. And, you know, they almost killed me, mates,” Lutchka declared, abandoning Kobylin again. “They drove me out in full dress to be flogged. Till then I’d never tasted the lash. There were immense crowds, the whole town ran out: a robber was to be flogged, a murderer, to be sure. You can’t think what fools the people are, there’s no telling you. The hangman stripped me, made me lie down and shouted, ‘Look out, I’ll sting you.’ I wondered what was coming. At the first lash I wanted to shout, I opened my mouth but there was no shout in me. My voice failed me. When the second lash came, you may not believe it, I did not hear them count ‘two.’ And when I came to I heard them call ‘seventeen.’ Four times, lad, they took me off the donkey, and gave me half an hour’s rest and poured water over me. I looked at them all with my eyes starting out of my head and thought ‘I shall die on the spot. …’ ”
“And you didn’t die?” Kobylin asked naively.
Lutchka scanned him with a glance of immense contempt; there was a sound of laughter.
“He is a regular block!”
“He is not quite right in the top storey,” observed Lutchka, as though regretting he had deigned to converse with such a man.
“He is a natural,” Vassya summed up conclusively.
Though Lutchka had murdered six people no one was ever afraid of him in the prison, yet perhaps it was his cherished desire to be considered a terrible man.
IX
Isay Fomitch—The Bathhouse—Baklushin’s Story
Christmas was approaching. The convicts looked forward to it with a sort of solemnity, and looking at them, I too began to expect something unusual. Four days before Christmas Day they took us to the bathhouse. In my time, especially in the early years, the convicts were rarely taken to the bathhouse. All were pleased and began to get ready. It was arranged to go after dinner, and that afternoon there was no work. The one who was most pleased and excited in our room was Isay Fomitch Bumshtein, a Jewish convict whom I have mentioned in the fourth chapter of my story. He liked to steam himself into a state of stupefaction, of unconsciousness; and whenever going over old memories I recall our prison baths (which deserve to be remembered), the blissful countenance of that prison comrade whom I shall never forget, takes a foremost place in the picture. Heavens, how killingly funny he was! I have already said something about his appearance: he was a thin, feeble, puny man of fifty, with a wrinkled white body like a chicken’s and on his cheeks and forehead awful scars left from being branded. His face wore a continual expression of imperturbable self-complacency and even blissfulness. Apparently he felt no regret at being in prison. As he was a jeweller and there were no jewellers in the town, he worked continually at nothing but his own trade for the gentry and officials of the town. He received some payment for his work. He wanted for nothing, was even rich, but he saved money and used to lend it out at interest to all the convicts. He had a samovar of his own, a good mattress, cups, and a whole dining outfit. The Jews in the town did not refuse him their acquaintance and patronage. On Saturdays he used to go with an escort to the synagogue in the town (which is sanctioned by law). He was in clover, in fact. At the same time he was impatiently awaiting the end of his twelve years’ sentence “to get married.” a most comical mixture of naivete, stupidity, craft, impudence, good-nature, timidity, boastfulness and insolence. It surprised me that the convicts never jeered at him, though they sometimes made a joke at his expense. Isay Fomitch was evidently a continual source of entertainment and amusement to all. “He is our only one, don’t hurt Isay Fomitch,” was what they felt, and although Isay Fomitch saw his position he was obviously proud of being so important and that greatly amused the convicts. His arrival in the prison was fearfully funny (it happened before my time but I was told of it). One day, in the leisure hour towards evening, a rumour suddenly spread through the prison that a Jew had been brought, and was being shaved in the guardroom and that he would come in directly. There was not a single Jew in the prison at the time. The convicts waited with impatience and surrounded him at once when he came in at the gate. The sergeant led him to the civilian room and showed him his place on the common bed. Isay Fomitch carried in his arms a sack containing his own belongings together with the regulation articles which had been given to him. He laid down the sack, climbed on to the bed and sat down tucking his feet under him, not daring to raise his eyes. There were sounds of laughter and prison jokes alluding to his Jewish origin. Suddenly a young convict made his way through the crowd carrying in his hand his very old, dirty, tattered summer trousers, together with the regulation leg-wrappers. He sat down beside Isay Fomitch and slapped him on the shoulder.
“I say, my dear friend, I’ve been looking out for you these last six years. Look here, how much will you give?”
And he spread the rags out before him.
Isay Fomitch, who had been too timid to utter a word and so cowed at his first entrance that he had
