The House of the Dead

from Starodubov had a brief nap and then clambered on the stove, opened his book and prayed almost uninterruptedly till the dead of night. It was painful to him to see the “shamefulness,” as he said, of the convicts’ carousing. All the Circassians settled themselves on the steps and gazed at the drunken crowd with curiosity and a certain disgust. I came across Nurra: “Bad, bad!” he said, shaking his head with pious indignation, “Ough, it’s bad! Allah will be angry!” Isay Fomitch lighted his candle with an obstinate and supercilious air and set to work, evidently wanting to show that the holiday meant nothing to him. Here and there, card parties were made up. The players were not afraid of the veterans, though they put men on the lookout for the sergeant, who for his part was anxious not to see anything. The officer on duty peeped into the prison three times during the day. But the drunken men were hidden and the cards were slipped away when he appeared, and he, too, seemed to have made up his mind not to notice minor offences. Drunkenness was looked on as a minor offence that day. Little by little, the convicts grew noisier. Quarrels began. Yet the majority were still sober and there were plenty to look after those who were not. But those who were drinking drank a vast amount. Gazin was triumphant. He swaggered up and down near his place on the bed, under which he had boldly stored away the vodka, hidden till that day under the snow behind the barracks, and he chuckled slyly as he looked at the customers coming to him. He was sober himself; he had not drunk a drop. He meant to carouse when the holidays were over, when he would have emptied the convicts’ pockets. There was singing in all the wards. But drunkenness was passing into stupefaction and the singing was on the verge of tears. Many of the prisoners walked to and fro with their balalaikas, their sheepskins over their shoulders, twanging the strings with a jaunty air. In the special division they even got up a chorus of eight voices. They sang capitally to the accompaniment of balalaikas and guitars. Few of the songs were genuine peasant songs. I only remember one and it was sung with spirit:

I, the young woman,
Went at eve to the feast.

And I heard a variation of that song which I had never heard before. Several verses were added at the end:

I, the young woman,
Have tidied my house;
The spoons are rubbed,
The boards are scrubbed,
The soup’s in the pot
The peas are hot.

For the most part they sang what are called in Russia “prison” songs, all well-known ones. One of them, “In Times Gone By,” was a comic song, describing how a man had enjoyed himself in the past and lived like a gentleman at large, but now was shut up in prison. It described how he had “flavoured blancmange with champagne” in old days and now:

Cabbage and water they give me to eat
And I gobble it up as though it were sweet.

A popular favourite was the hackneyed song:

As a boy I lived in freedom,
Had my capital as well.
But the boy soon lost his money,
Straightway into bondage fell.

and so on. There were mournful songs too. One was a purely convict song, a familiar one too, I believe:

Now the dawn in heaven is gleaming,
Heard is the awakening drum.
Doors will open to the jailer,
The recording clerk will come.
We behind these walls are hidden,
None can see us, none can hear.
But the Lord of Heaven is with us.
Even here we need not fear.⁠ ⁠…

Another was even more depressing but sung to a fine tune and probably composed by a convict. The words were mawkish and somewhat illiterate. I remember a few lines of it:

Never more shall I behold
The country of my birth.
In suffering, guiltless, I’m condemned
To pass my life on earth.
The owl upon the roof will call
And grief my heart will tear,
His voice will echo in the woods,
And I shall not be there.

This song was often sung amongst us, not in chorus, but as a solo. Someone would go out on to the steps, sit down, ponder a little with his cheek on his hand and begin singing it in a high falsetto. It made one’s heart ache to hear it. There were some good voices among us.

Meanwhile it was beginning to get dark. Sadness, despondency and stupefaction were painfully evident through the drunkenness and merrymaking. The man who had been laughing an hour before was sobbing, hopelessly drunk. Others had had a couple of fights by now. Others, pale and hardly able to stand, lounged about the wards picking quarrels with everyone. Men whose liquor never made them quarrelsome were vainly looking for friends to whom they could open their hearts and pour out their drunken sorrows. All these poor people wanted to enjoy themselves, wanted to spend the great holiday merrily, and, good God! how dreary, how miserable the day was for almost all of us. Everyone seemed disappointed. Petrov came to see me twice again. He had drunk very little all day and was almost sober. But up to the last hour he seemed to be still expecting that something must be going to happen, something extraordinary, festive and amusing. Though he said nothing about it, one could see this in his eyes. He kept flitting from ward to ward without wearying. But nothing special happened or was to be met with, except drunkenness, drunken, senseless oaths and men stupefied with drink. Sirotkin, too, wandered through the wards, well washed and looking pretty in a new red shirt; he, too, seemed quietly and naively expectant of something. By degrees it became unbearable and disgusting in the wards. No doubt there was a great deal that was laughable, but I felt sad and sorry for them all, I felt dreary and stifled among them.

Here were two convicts disputing which