The misery of all that first year in prison was intolerable, and it had an irritating, bitter effect on me. During that first year I failed to notice many things in my misery. I shut my eyes and did not want to look. Among my spiteful and hostile companions in prison, I did not observe the good ones—the men who were capable of thought and feeling in spite of their repellent outer husk. In the midst of ill-natured sayings, I sometimes failed to notice kind and friendly words, which were the more precious because they were uttered with no interested motives, and often came straight from a heart which had suffered and endured more than mine. But why enlarge on this? I was very glad to get thoroughly tired: I might go to sleep when I got home. For the nights were an agony in the summer, almost worse than in the winter. The evenings, it is true, were sometimes very nice. The sun, which had been on the prison yard all day, set at last. Then followed the cool freshness of evening and then the comparatively cold night of the steppes. The convicts wandered in groups about the yard, waiting to be locked in. The chief mass, it is true, were crowding into the kitchen. There some burning question of the hour was always being agitated; they argued about this and that, sometimes discussed some rumour, often absurd, though it aroused extraordinary interest in these men cut off from the outer world; a report came for instance that our major was being turned out. Convicts are as credulous as children; they know themselves that the story is ridiculous, that it has been brought by a notorious gossip, an “absurd person”—the convict Kvasov whom it had long been an accepted rule not to believe, and who could never open his mouth without telling a lie; yet everyone pounced on his story, talked it over and discussed it, amusing themselves and ending by being angry with themselves and ashamed of themselves for having believed Kvasov.
“Why, who’s going to send him away?” shouted one. “No fear, his neck is thick, he can hold his own.”
“But there are others over him, surely!” protested another, an eager and intelligent fellow who had seen something of life, but was the most argumentative man in the world.
“One raven won’t pick out another’s eyes!” a third, a grey-headed old man who was finishing his soup in the corner in solitude, muttered sullenly as though to himself.
“I suppose his superior officers will come to ask you whether they’re to sack him?” a fourth added casually, strumming lightly on the balalaika.
“And why not?” answered the second furiously. “All the poor people could petition for it, you must all come forward if they begin questioning. To be sure, with us it’s all outcry, but when it comes to deeds we back out.”
“What would you have?” said the balalaika player. “That’s what prison’s for!”
“The other day,” the excited speaker went on, not heeding him, “there was some flour left. We scraped together what little there was and were sending it to be sold. But no, he heard of it; our foreman let him know; it was taken away; he wanted to make something out of it, to be sure. Was that fair now?”
“But who is it you want to complain to?”
“Who? Why, the inspector that’s coming.”
“What inspector?”
“That’s true, lads, that an inspector’s coming,” said a lively young fellow of some education who had been a clerk and was reading The Duchess la Vallière, or something of the kind. He was always merry and amusing, but he was respected for having a certain knowledge of life and of the world. Taking no notice of the general interest aroused by the news that an inspector was coming, he went straight up to one of the cooks and asked for some liver. Our cooks often used to sell such things. They would for instance buy a large piece of liver at their own expense, cook it, and sell it in small pieces to the convicts.
“One ha’p’orth or two ha’p’orths!” asked the cook.
“Cut me two ha’p’orths, let folks envy me,” answered the convict. “There’s a general, lads, a general coming from Petersburg; he’ll inspect all Siberia. That’s true. They said so at the commander’s.”
This news produced an extraordinary sensation. For a quarter of an hour there was a stream of questions: who was it, what general, what was his rank, was he superior to the generals here? Convicts are awfully fond of discussing rank, officials, which of them takes precedence, which can lord it over the other, and which has to give way; they even quarrel and dispute and almost fight over the generals. One wonders what difference it can make to them. But a minute knowledge of generals and the authorities altogether is the criterion of a man’s knowledge, discrimination and previous importance in the world. Talk about the higher authorities is generally considered the most refined and important conversation in prison.
“Then it turns out to be true, lads, that they are coming to sack the major,” observes Kvasov, a little red-faced man, excitable and remarkably muddleheaded. He had been the first to bring the news about the
