Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  And therefore, despite all the petty cares of my settling into the barrack, which I have already mentioned, and which I was drawn into for the most part by Akim Akimych, despite the fact that they also distracted me somewhat—a terrible gnawing anguish tormented me more and more. “A dead house!” I would say to myself, in the evening sometimes, on the porch of our barrack, studying the prisoners, who had already gathered after work and were lazily loitering about the prison yard, from the barrack to the kitchen and back. I studied them and from their faces and movements tried to find out what sort of people they were and what sort of characters they had. They loafed about in front of me either with scowling brows or much too merry (those two looks were most often met with and almost characteristic of prison), cursing or simply talking, or, finally, strolling alone, as if lost in thought, gliding quietly, some with a tired and apathetic look, others (even here!) with a look of defiant superiority, hats cocked, coats thrown over their shoulders, with bold, sly eyes and an impudent grin. “All this is my milieu, my present-day world,” I thought, “which I’ve got to live with, like it or not …” I kept trying to ask questions and find out about them from Akim Akimych, with whom I liked very much to drink tea, so as not to be alone. I will say in passing that tea, in that first time, was almost my only nourishment. Akim Akimych did not refuse the tea, and he himself set up our funny, homemade little tin samovar, which M. had lent me. Akim Akimych usually drank one glass (he also had glasses), drank it silently and ceremoniously, handed the glass to me, and at once set to work on my quilt. But of what I needed to find out he could not inform me, nor did he even understand why I was so especially interested in the characters of the convicts around us and close to us, and he listened to me with a sort of sly little smile, which I remember very well. “No, clearly, I must experience it myself and not keep asking questions,” I thought.

  On the fourth day, just like that time when I went to have my fetters changed, the prisoners lined up early in the morning, in two rows, on the little square in front of the guardhouse, by the prison gates. Ahead, facing them, and behind, soldiers were drawn up, guns loaded and bayonets fixed. A soldier has the right to shoot a prisoner if he attempts to escape from him; but at the same time he has to answer for his shooting if it was not in a case of extreme necessity; and it is the same in the case of an open mutiny of the convicts. But who would venture to escape in plain sight? The engineers officer, the sergeant, some lower-ranking engineers and soldiers assigned to supervise the work appeared. The roll was called; the group of prisoners going to the tailor’s shops left before the rest; the engineers were not concerned with them; they worked for the prison itself and made clothes for it. Then some went off to the workshops, and the rest to do ordinary dirty work. I went with twenty other prisoners. Outside the fortress, on the frozen river, there were two government barges, which were no longer usable and had to be dismantled, so that at least the old timbers would not go to waste. Though it seems all this old material was worth very little, almost nothing. Firewood was sold in town at a very low price, and there were enough forests around. Prisoners were sent there only so that they would not sit with idle hands, and they understood that very well themselves. They always did such work sluggishly and apathetically, and it was almost totally different when the work itself was sensible, worthwhile, and especially when they could get it on assignment. Then they became as if inspired, and though they gained nothing at all from it, I saw how they spared no effort to finish sooner and better; their self-esteem was even somehow involved in it. But it was hard to get an assignment for this present work, done more for the sake of form than of need, and it was necessary to work right up till the drum beat the call to go home at eleven o’clock in the morning. The day was warm and misty; the snow was nearly melting. Our whole group went out of the fortress to the riverbank, with a slight clanking of fetters, which, though hidden under our clothes, still gave out a high and piercing metallic sound at each step. Two or three men detached themselves to fetch the necessary tools from the storeroom. I walked with the rest and even became as if animated: I wanted all the sooner to see and find out what the work was. What was this hard labor? And how would it be for me to work for the first time in my life?

  I remember everything to the last detail. On the way some tradesman with a little beard met us, stopped, and put his hand in his pocket. A prisoner immediately stepped out of our group, took his hat off, received the alms—five kopecks—and quickly returned to us. The tradesman crossed himself and went on his way. We spent those five kopecks the same morning on kalachi, dividing them equally among our party.

  Of this whole group of prisoners, some were sullen and taciturn, as usual, others were indifferent and sluggish, still others chattered lazily among themselves. One was terribly pleased and merry about something, sang and all but danced on the way, his fetters clanking at every leap. It was the same short and stocky prisoner who, on my first morning in prison, had quarreled with another man by the water buckets, during wash-up time, because the other man senselessly insisted that he was the bird Kagan. This rollicking fellow’s name was Skuratov. Finally, he began to sing some dashing song, of which I remember the refrain:

  They married me off without me there—

  I was down at the mill.

  The only thing lacking was a balalaika.

  Of course, his extraordinarily merry state of mind at once aroused indignation in some of our party, and was even taken as all but offensive.

  “Hear him howl!” one prisoner said reproachfully, though it was none of his business.

  “The wolf only had one song, and that he stole, the Tula-man!” one of the gloomy ones observed with a Ukrainian accent.

  “Suppose I am a Tula-man,” Skuratov immediately objected, “but you in your Poltava—you choked on a dumpling.”

  “Lies! And you, what do you eat? You slurp shchi from a bast shoe!”

  “And now it’s like the devil’s feeding him cannonballs,” a third one added.

  “It’s true I’m a pampered man, brothers,” Skuratov responded with a little sigh, as if regretting his pamperedness, addressing everyone in general and no one in particular. “Since childhood I’ve been wrought up” (meaning “brought up”—Skuratov deliberately distorted the word) “on prunes and little white rolls. My dear brothers own a shop in Moscow even now, selling wind in the passageway. Rich merchants.”

  “And what were you selling?”

  “Oh, I’ve come down through various qualities. It was then, brothers, that I got my first two hundred …”

  “Not roubles!” one curious listener picked up, even jumping as he heard about so much money.

  “No, my dear man, not roubles—rods. Luka, hey, Luka!”

  “For some it’s Luka, but for you it’s Luka Kuzmich,” a small and skinny prisoner with a sharp little nose responded reluctantly.

  “Well, Luka Kuzmich, then, devil take you.”

  “For some it’s Luka Kuzmich, but for you it’s Uncle.”

  “Well, devil take you and your uncle, there’s no point talking to you! And it was a good word I wanted to say. Well, so you see, brothers, as it happened I didn’t spend long in Moscow. They gave me fifteen lashes for the road and threw me out. So I …”

  “Why did they throw you out?” interrupted one prisoner, who had been diligently following the story.

  “Don’t break the quarantine, don’t drink bung-juice, don’t play blubberlips—so, brothers, I didn’t manage to get properly rich in Moscow. And I wanted verry, verry much to get rich. I wanted it so much, I can’t tell you.”

  Many burst out laughing. Skuratov was obviously one of those voluntary jokers, or, better, buffoons, who seemed to make it their duty to amuse their sullen comrades, and who, naturally, got nothing but abuse for it. He belonged to a particular and remarkable type, whom I may have occasion to talk about again.

  “Even now you could be shot for a sable,” observed Luka Kuzmich. “Why, your clothes alone are wo
rth a good hundred roubles.”

  Skuratov was wearing a most shabby, worn-out sheepskin coat, with patches sticking out on all sides. He looked the man up and down quite indifferently but attentively.

  “But the head, brothers, the head’s worth a lot!” he replied. “As I was bidding farewell to Moscow, my only comfort was that my head was coming with me. Farewell, Moscow, thanks for the hot time, for the breath of freedom, for the good lambasting! And the sheepskin, my dear man, is nothing for you to look at …”

  “So it’s your head I should look at?”

  “His head isn’t even his, it was handed out to him,” Luka mixed in again. “They gave it to him as alms when his party passed through Tyumen.”

  “But still, Skuratov, you must have had some trade?”

  “Trade, hah! He was a blind beggar’s guide, led the moles around, pinched pennies from them,” observed one of the scowling ones. “That’s all he had for a trade.”

  “I actually tried stitching boots,” Skuratov replied, completely ignoring the barb. “I only made one pair.”

  “Did anybody buy them?”

  “Yes, I ran into a man who clearly didn’t fear God or honor his father and mother: the Lord punished him—he bought them.”

  Everybody around Skuratov roared with laughter.

  “I worked again, here already,” Skuratov went on with perfect composure, “for Stepan Fyodorovich Pomortsev, the lieutenant, making uppers for his boots.”

  “Was he pleased?”

  “No, brothers, he wasn’t. He cursed me to kingdom come, and also gave me a knee in the backside. He was verry angry. Eh, you’re a cheat, my life, a cheat, my prison life!”

  And then a little later on

  Ak-kulina’s man turned up …

  He unexpectedly dissolved in song again and started skipping and beating his feet in rhythm.

  “What an outrageous man!” growled the Ukrainian walking beside me, looking askance at him with spiteful contempt.

  “A useless man!” another observed in a definitive and serious tone.

  I decidedly did not understand why they were angry with Skuratov, and why all merry people in general, as I had already managed to notice in those first days, seemed to be held in a certain contempt. I ascribed the anger of the Ukrainian and the others to personal reasons. But it was not personal; it was anger at the fact that Skuratov had no self-control, had no stern, affected air of his own dignity, with which the whole prison was infected to the point of pedantry; in short, at his being, in their own expression, a “useless” man. Yet they were not angry with all the merry ones and did not slight them all as they did Skuratov and others like him. It depended on how a man allowed himself to be treated: a good-natured, guileless man would at once be subjected to humiliation. I was even shocked by it. But among the merry ones there were also some who could and would bite back, and who gave no quarter to anybody: these they were forced to respect. Here, in this same group of people, there was one of these snappish ones, essentially the merriest and nicest of men, but I got to know that side of him only later—a tall, imposing fellow, with a big wart on his cheek and a most comical expression on his face, who was, however, rather handsome and keen-witted. He was known as “the pioneer,” because he once served in the pioneers;4 now he found himself in the special section. I will come back to him later.

  However, not all the “serious” ones were as expansive as the Ukrainian made indignant by merriment. There were several men in the prison who aimed at preeminence, a knowledge of all things, resourcefulness, character, intelligence. Many of them were in fact intelligent people, with character, and in fact achieved what they aimed at, that is, preeminence and considerable moral influence over their comrades. Among themselves these clever ones were often great enemies—and they each had many who hated them. They looked upon the other prisoners with dignity and even condescension, picked no unnecessary quarrels, were in good standing with the authorities, behaved like managers at work, and none of them would find fault, for example, with singing; they did not stoop to such trifles. With me all this sort were remarkably polite all the while I was in prison, but not very talkative—also, it seems, out of dignity. Of them I will also have to speak in more detail.

  We came to the riverbank. On the river below, frozen into the ice, stood the old barge that had to be broken up. On the other side of the river lay the bluish steppe; the view was gloomy and deserted. I expected everyone to throw themselves into work, but they did not even think of it. Some sat on logs that lay on the bank; almost all of them pulled from their boots pouches of local tobacco, sold in leaves at the market for three kopecks a pound, and stubby willow pipes with little homemade wooden stems. The pipes began to puff; the convoy stretched out in a line around us and with an utterly bored look began to guard us.

  “And whose bright idea was it to break up this barge?” one man muttered as if to himself, not addressing anyone. “Do they need wood chips or something?”

  “Somebody who’s not afraid of us thought it up,” observed another.

  “Where are all these muzhiks flocking to?” the first asked after a brief silence, not noticing, of course, the answer to his previous question, and pointing at a crowd of muzhiks in the distance making their way somewhere in single file over the untouched snow. Everybody turned lazily in that direction and, having nothing better to do, started making fun of them. One of the muzhiks, the last one, walked in a somehow extraordinarily funny way, spreading his arms and hanging his head sideways in its conical felt hat. His whole figure was fully and distinctly outlined against the white snow.

  “Look how brother Petrovich got hisself all wrapped up,” one man observed, mocking the muzhiks’ way of talking. It is remarkable that the prisoners generally looked down somewhat on the muzhiks, though half of them were muzhiks themselves.

  “That last one walks like he’s planting turnips, eh, lads?”

  “He’s heavy-minded, got lots of money,” a third one observed.

  They all laughed, but also somehow lazily, as if unwillingly. Meanwhile a kalach seller came up, a pert and saucy wench.

  They spent the five kopecks of alms on kalachi and divided them up equally on the spot.

  A young fellow who sold kalachi in prison took two dozen and started arguing hotly that he should get three extra and not just two, according to the usual arrangement. But the woman would not agree.

  “Well, then give me a little of that?”

  “That what?”

  “What the mice don’t eat.”

  “Bite your tongue!” the wench shrieked and laughed.

  Finally, a sergeant with a swagger stick came to inspect the work.

  “Hey, you, what are you all sitting around for! Get moving!”

  “Come on, Ivan Matveich, give us an assignment,” one of the “superior” men said, slowly getting up.

  “Why didn’t you ask earlier, before you were sent out? Take the barge apart, there’s your assignment.”

  Somehow the men finally rose and went down to the bank, barely dragging their feet. The “managers” emerged from the crowd at once, at least verbally. It turned out that the barge was to be broken up not just anyhow, but preserving the timbers as far as possible, and in particular the ribs fastened all along the barge’s keel with wooden pins—slow and tedious work.

  “First off, we’ve got to pull out this little timber here. Let’s set to it, lads,” observed one prisoner, not a manager or superior, but a simple laborer, a reserved and quiet fellow, who had been silent up to then, and, bending over, he took hold of a thick timber, waiting for helpers. But nobody helped him.

  “Yeah, sure you’ll pick it up! You’ll never pick it up, and if your grandpa bear comes along, he won’t pick it up either!” someone grumbled through his teeth.

  “Well then, brothers, how do we begin? I really don’t know …,” said the upstart, puzzled, abandoning the beam and raising himself.

  “You can’t work your way through all thi
s work … What are you popping up for?”

  “He couldn’t feed three chickens without losing count, and here he’s the first … Squawker!”

  “I didn’t mean anything, brothers,” the puzzled man tried to talk his way out of it, “I just …”

  “What am I supposed to do, put dust covers on you or something? Pickle you for the winter?” the officer shouted again, looking in perplexity at the twenty-headed crowd that did not know how to set to work. “Get moving! Quick!”

  “You can’t go quicker than quick, Ivan Matveich.”

  “And so you don’t do anything, eh? Saveliev! Yammer Petrovich! It’s you I’m talking to: What are you standing there pawning your eyes for!… Get moving!”

  “What can I do by myself?…”

  “Give us an assignment, Ivan Matveich.”

  “I told you—there won’t be any assignment. Take the barge apart and go home. Get moving!”