X
Christmas
At last the holidays came. The convicts did hardly any work on Christmas Eve. Some went to the sewing-rooms and workshops; the others were sent to their different tasks, but for the most part, singly or in groups, came back to prison immediately afterwards and they all remained indoors after dinner. Indeed the majority had left the prison in the morning more on their own business than for the regulation work: some to arrange about bringing in and ordering vodka; others to see friends, male and female, or to collect any little sums owing to them for work done in the past. Baklushin and others who were taking part in the theatricals went to see certain acquaintances, principally among the officers’ servants, and to obtain necessary costumes. Some went about with an anxious and responsible air, simply because others looked responsible, and though many of them had no grounds for expecting money, they, too, looked as though they were reckoning on getting it. In short everyone was looking forward to the next day in expectation of a change, of something unusual. In the evening the veterans in charge who had been marketing for the convicts brought in eatables of all sorts: beef, sucking-pigs, even geese. Many of the convicts, even the humblest and most careful who used to save up their farthings from one year’s end to another, felt obliged to be lavish for such an occasion and to celebrate befittingly the end of the fast. The next day was a real holiday, guaranteed to them by law and not to be taken from them. On that day the convict could not be set to work and there were only three such days in the year.
And who knows what memories must have been stirred in the hearts of these outcasts at the coming of such a day! The great festivals of the Church make a vivid impression on the minds of peasants from childhood upwards. They are the days of rest from their hard toil, the days of family gatherings. In prison they must have been remembered with grief and heartache. Respect for the solemn day had passed indeed into a custom strictly observed among the convicts; very few caroused, all were serious and seemed preoccupied, though many of them had really nothing to do. But whether they drank or did nothing, they tried to keep up a certain dignity. … It seemed as though laughter were prohibited. In fact they showed a tendency to be over-particular and irritably intolerant, and if anyone jarred on the prevailing mood, even by accident, the convicts set on him with outcries and abuse and were angry with him, as though he had shown disrespect to the holiday itself. This state of mind in the convicts was remarkable and positively touching. Apart from their innate reverence for the great day, the convicts felt unconsciously that by the observance of Christmas they were, as it were, in touch with the whole of the world, that they were not altogether outcasts and lost men, not altogether cut off; that it was the same in prison as amongst other people. They felt that; it was evident and easy to understand.
Akim Akimitch too made great preparations for the holiday. He had no home memories, for he had grown up an orphan among strangers, and had faced the hardships of military service before he was sixteen; he had nothing very joyful to remember in his life, for he had always lived regularly and monotonously, afraid of stepping one hair’s-breath out of the prescribed path; he was not particularly religious either, for propriety seemed to have swallowed up in him all other human qualities and attributes, all passions and desires, bad and good alike. And so he was preparing for the festival without anxiety or excitement, untroubled by painful and quite useless reminiscences, but with a quiet, methodical propriety which was just sufficient for the fulfilment of his duties and of the ritual that has been prescribed once and for all. As a rule he did not care for much reflection. The inner meaning of things never troubled his mind, but rules that had once been laid down for him he followed with religious exactitude. If it had been made the rule to do exactly the opposite, he would have done that tomorrow with the same docility and scrupulousness. Once only in his life he had tried to act on his own judgment, and that had brought him to prison. The lesson had not been thrown away on him. And though destiny withheld from him forever all understanding of how he had been to blame, he had deduced a solitary principle from his misadventure—never to use his own judgment again under any circumstances, for sense “was not his strong point,” as the convicts used to say. In his blind devotion to established ritual, he looked with a sort of anticipatory reverence even upon the festal sucking-pig, which he himself stuffed with kasha and roasted (for he knew how to cook), as though regarding it not as an ordinary pig which could be bought and roasted any day, but as a special, holiday pig. Perhaps he had been used from childhood to see a sucking-pig on the table at Christmas, and had deduced from it that a sucking-pig was indispensable on the occasion; and I am sure that if he had once missed tasting sucking-pig on Christmas Day he would for the rest of his life have felt a conscience-prick at having neglected his duty.
Until Christmas Day he remained in his old jacket and trousers, which were quite threadbare though neatly darned. It appeared now that he had been carefully keeping away in his box the new suit given to him four months ago, and had refrained from touching it with the delectable idea of putting it on
