Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  I gradually began to widen the circle of my acquaintances. However, I was not thinking about making acquaintances myself: I was still uneasy, gloomy, and mistrustful. My acquaintances began by themselves. One of the first to visit me was the prisoner Petrov. I say “visit” and give special emphasis to the word. Petrov was in the special section and lived in the barrack furthest away from mine. There obviously could be no connections between us; we also had decidedly nothing in common and could not have. And yet in those first days Petrov seemed to consider it his duty to come to my barrack almost every day or to stop me during our free time, when I would be walking behind the barracks, as far from all eyes as possible. At first I found it unpleasant. But he was somehow able to do it so that his visits soon even began to divert me, though he was not an especially gregarious or talkative man. In appearance he was of medium height, strongly built, adroit, fidgety, with a rather pleasant face, pale, broad cheekbones, a bold gaze, small, closely set white teeth, and an eternal pinch of snuff behind his lower lip. Holding snuff behind one’s lip was a custom among many of the convicts. He looked younger than his years. He was about forty, but seemed only thirty. He always talked to me with extreme ease, and behaved on an equal footing in the highest degree, that is, extremely decently and tactfully. If he noticed, for instance, that I was seeking solitude, he would talk to me for a couple of minutes, leave me at once, and thank me each time for my attention—certainly something he never did with anyone else in the prison. It is curious that these relations between us lasted not only for the first few days, but over the course of several years, and almost never became closer, though he really was devoted to me. Even now I cannot decide what he wanted from me, why he thrust himself upon me every day. Though he did happen to steal from me later on, he did it somehow inadvertently; but he almost never asked me for money, which means he did not come for money or for any other profit.

  Again I don’t know why, but it always seemed to me as if he did not live in the same prison with me, but somewhere far off in another house, in town, and only came to the prison in passing, to find out the news, to visit me, to see how we all lived. He was always hurrying somewhere, as if he had left someone waiting for him somewhere, as if he had not finished doing something. And yet he never seemed very flustered. His gaze, too, was somehow strange: intent, with a shade of boldness and a certain mockery, but he gazed somehow into the distance, through the object; as if he were trying to make out, beyond the object in front of his nose, some other more distant one. This gave him an absentminded look. I watched on purpose sometimes to see where Petrov would go after me. Where was it that he was so expected? But he would hurry off somewhere to the barracks or the kitchen, sit down there by one of the talkers, listen attentively, occasionally enter into the conversation himself, even very vehemently, and then would suddenly break off and fall silent. But whether he talked or sat silently, still you could see that he was there just so, in passing, that he had something to do elsewhere and was expected. The strangest thing was that he never had anything to do; he lived in complete idleness (apart from prison work, of course). He knew no handicrafts, and almost never had any money. But he was not much worried about money either. And what did he talk about with me? His conversation was as strange as he was. He would see, for instance, that I was walking behind the barracks and would suddenly turn abruptly in my direction. He always walked quickly, always turned abruptly. He came at a walk, but seemed to be running.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Am I bothering you?”

  “No.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Napoleon. Isn’t he a relative of the one from the year twelve?” (Petrov was a cantonist and could read and write.)

  “He is.”

  “Then how come they say he’s a president?”1

  He always asked questions quickly, curtly, as if he needed to find something out as soon as possible. As if he was inquiring into a very important matter that could brook no delay.

  I explained what sort of president he was and added that he might soon become an emperor.

  “How is that?”

  I explained that, too, as well as I could. Petrov listened attentively, with perfect understanding and a quick grasp, even inclining his ear towards me.

  “Hm. And here’s something I wanted to ask you, Alexander Petrovich: is it true what they say, that there are apes whose arms reach their heels, and who are as tall as the tallest man?”

  “Yes, there are such apes.”

  “What sort are they?”

  I also explained as much as I knew about that.

  “Where do they live?”

  “In hot countries. There are some on the island of Sumatra.”

  “That’s in America, isn’t it? Don’t they say the people there walk upside down?”

  “Not upside down. You’re talking about the antipodes.”

  I explained what America was and, as well as I could, what the antipodes are. He listened as attentively as if he had come running on purpose for the antipodes alone.

  “Ahh! And I read last year about the countess La Vallière. Arefyev brought the book from the adjutant. So is it true, or just made up? Dumas wrote it.”2

  “Of course it’s made up.”

  “Well, good-bye. My thanks to you.”

  And Petrov vanished, and essentially we almost never talked in any other way.

  I began to make inquiries about him. M., learning of this acquaintance, even warned me. He told me that many of the convicts had struck terror into him, especially at the beginning, during his first days in prison, but none of them, not even Gazin, had made such a terrifying impression on him as this Petrov.

  “He’s the most resolute, the most fearless of all the convicts,” said M. “He’s capable of anything; he’ll stop at nothing, if the fancy takes him. He’ll put the knife to you, too, if it occurs to him, just so, simply put the knife to you, without wincing, without remorse. I even think he’s not in his right mind.”

  This opinion interested me greatly. But somehow M. could not account for why it seemed so to him. And, strangely enough, for several years after that, I knew Petrov, talked with him almost every day; in all that time he was sincerely attached to me (though I decidedly do not know why)—and all through those several years, though he lived sensibly in prison and did absolutely nothing terrible, each time I looked at him and talked with him, I felt certain that M. was right and that Petrov was perhaps the most resolute and fearless of men, and knew no constraint. Why it seemed so to me, I also cannot account for.

  I will note, however, that this Petrov was the same one who had wanted to kill the major when he was summoned to be punished, and when the major was “saved by a miracle,” as the prisoners said, having left just before the moment of punishment. Another time, before he came to prison, it happened that a colonel struck him at drill. He had probably been beaten many times before that; but this time he refused to take it and stabbed his colonel openly, in broad daylight, before the drawn-up ranks. However, I don’t know his whole story in detail; he never told it to me. Of course, these were only outbursts, when his nature revealed itself all at once, fully. But still they were very rare in him. He really was sensible and even placid. There were hidden passions in him, even strong, burning ones; but the hot coals were always covered with ashes and smoldered quietly. I never noticed in him, as I did, for instance, in others, even the shadow of braggadocio or vanity. He rarely quarreled, but on the other hand he was not particularly friendly with anyone, except for Sirotkin, and then only when he needed him. Once, however, I saw him become seriously angry. He had not been given something, some object or other; he had not gotten his share. His quarrel was with a prison strongman, tall, spiteful, a bully, a jeerer, and far from a coward—Vassily Antonov, a common-law criminal. They had been shouting for a long time, and I thought the matter would end at most with simple blows, because occasionally, though very rarely, Petrov fought and swore like the lowest
convict. But this time something else happened: Petrov suddenly went pale, his lips trembled and turned blue, he had difficulty breathing. He got up and slowly, very slowly, with the inaudible steps of his bare feet (he liked to go barefoot in the summer), approached Antonov. All at once everybody in the whole noisy and clamorous barrack became hushed; you could have heard a fly buzz. Everybody waited for what would happen. Antonov leaped up to meet him; he looked awful … I couldn’t stand it and left the barrack. I expected to hear the cry of a murdered man before I stepped off the porch. But this time, too, the matter ended in nothing: before Petrov had time to reach him, Antonov silently and hastily threw him the contested object. (The matter had to do with a most pitiful rag, some sort of foot cloth.) Naturally, a couple of minutes later Antonov cursed him a little anyway, for the sake of propriety and his conscience, to show he was really not all that frightened. But Petrov paid no attention to the curses, and did not even respond: the matter was not about curses, and it had been decided in his favor; he was left very pleased and took his rag. Fifteen minutes later he went back to his loitering about the prison with a look of complete idleness and as if searching out some curious conversation somewhere, so that he could poke his nose in and listen. He seemed to be interested in everything, but it somehow happened that he mostly remained indifferent to it all and just loitered about the prison doing nothing, as if tossed now here, now there. He might also be compared with a worker, a stalwart worker, who could work at a cracking pace, but who for the time being has not been given any work, and meanwhile sits there playing with little children. I also couldn’t understand why he stayed on in prison, why he didn’t escape. He wouldn’t have thought twice, if he had wanted to badly enough. Reason holds sway over people like Petrov only until they want something. Then nothing on earth can hinder their desire. And I’m sure he could have escaped handily, fooled everybody, gone for weeks without bread somewhere in the forest or in the bulrushes. But he evidently had not hit upon this thought yet and did not desire it fully. I never noticed any great reasoning, any particular common sense in him. These people are born with one idea, which unconsciously moves them here and there all their lives; so they rush about all their lives until they find something they really want to do; then they are ready to risk their heads. I was sometimes surprised at how it was that such a man, who had killed his superior for striking him, could lie down so unprotestingly under the rods. He was sometimes whipped when he was found with vodka. Like all convicts without a trade, he occasionally undertook to smuggle vodka. But he lay down under the rods as if of his own accord, that is, as if he acknowledged that he deserved it; otherwise he wouldn’t have done it for the life of him. I also marveled at him when, despite his obvious attachment to me, he stole from me. It came over him somehow in spells. It was he who stole my Bible from me, which I gave him only to carry from one place to another. He had to go just a few steps, but he managed to find a buyer on the way, sold it, and drank up the money at once. He evidently wanted very much to have a drink, and what he wanted very much had to be fulfilled. Such a man kills another for twenty-five kopecks, so as to drink a dram of vodka on those kopecks, though another time he would let a man with a hundred thousand pass right by. That evening he told me about the theft himself, with no embarrassment or remorse, quite indifferently, as if it were the most ordinary incident. I tried to give him a good scolding; I was also sorry about my Bible. He listened without annoyance, even very meekly; he agreed that the Bible was a very useful book, was sincerely sorry that I no longer had it, but did not regret stealing it at all; he looked at me with such self-confidence that I at once stopped scolding him. He put up with my scolding, probably reasoning that the man could not do without yelling at him for such an act—so, all right, let him give vent to it, amuse himself, yell; but essentially it was all nonsense, such nonsense that it was embarrassing for a serious man to talk about it. It seems to me he generally considered me a sort of child, almost an infant, who did not understand the simplest things in the world. If, for instance, I started talking to him about something other than learning and books, he did answer me, true, but as if only out of politeness, confining himself to the briefest replies. I often wondered what this bookish knowledge that he usually asked me about meant to him. Every now and then, during these conversations, I would glance at him out of the corner of my eye to see if he was laughing at me. But no, he usually listened seriously, attentively, though not very, in fact, and this last circumstance sometimes annoyed me. He asked his questions precisely, pointedly, but was somehow not very surprised at the information he received from me and even took it absent-mindedly … It also seemed to me that he had decided, without racking his brains too long, that it was impossible to talk with me as with other people, that apart from talking about books, I would not understand anything and even could not understand anything, so there was no use bothering me.

  I’m convinced that he even loved me, and that always amazed me greatly. Whether he regarded me as an immature, incomplete man, whether he felt that special sort of compassion for me that any strong creature instinctively feels for a weaker one, once he had recognized me as such … I don’t know. And though that did not prevent him from stealing from me, I’m convinced that he felt sorry for me even as he stole from me. “Eh, really!” he may have thought, laying hands on my goods, “what sort of man is he, if he can’t even protect his own goods!” Yet that seems to be what he loved me for. He once said to me himself, somehow inadvertently, that I was “all too kindhearted a man” and that I was “so simple, so simple, it was even a pity to see. Only don’t be offended, Alexander Petrovich,” he added a moment later. “I said it from the heart.”

  It sometimes happens in the lives of such people that they suddenly reveal and distinguish themselves sharply and prominently in a moment of abrupt mass action or upheaval, and thus hit at once upon their full activity. They are not men of words, and cannot be the instigators or main leaders of the affair; but they are its main executors and the first to begin. They begin simply, without special pronouncements, but they are the first to leap over the main obstacle, without reflection, fearlessly making straight for all the knives—and everybody rushes after them and goes on blindly, goes on till the last wall, where they usually lay down their lives. I don’t believe Petrov has ended well; in some one moment it will be all over for him at once, and if he has not perished so far, it means his time has not come yet. Who knows, though? Maybe he will live to have gray hair and die most peacefully of old age, drifting about aimlessly here and there. But I think M. was right when he said that he was the most resolute man in the whole prison.

  VIII

  Resolute Men. Luchka

  About the resolute it is hard to say much; in prison, as everywhere, there were very few of them. By the looks of him, he is a horrible man; you think over what other people tell about him and even steer clear of him. Some unaccountable feeling made me avoid these people at first. Later my views of even the most horrible murderers changed in many ways. A man may not be a murderer, but he may be more horrible than another who got there for six murders. There were crimes of which it was hard to form even the most elementary notion: there was so much strangeness in the way they were committed. I say that precisely because here, among our simple people, some murders proceed from the most astonishing causes. There exists, for instance, and even quite frequently, the following type of murderer. The man lives quietly and meekly; he has a hard lot, but he bears it. Suppose he’s a muzhik, or a house serf, a tradesman, a soldier. Suddenly something in him comes unhinged; he can’t control himself and sticks a knife into his enemy and oppressor. It’s here that the strangeness begins: for a while the man suddenly leaps beyond all limits. The first man he killed was an oppressor, an enemy; that is a crime, but understandable; he had a reason; but then he kills not an enemy but the first man he meets, kills him for fun, for a rude word, for a glance, for a trifle, or simply “Out of my way, don’t cross me, I’m coming.” It’s
as if the man is drunk, as if he’s in a feverish delirium. As if, having leaped over a line that was sacred to him, he begins to admire the fact that nothing is holy for him anymore; as if he feels an urge to leap over all legality and authority at once, and to revel in the most boundless and unbridled freedom, to revel in this thrill of horror, which it is impossible for him not to feel. He also knows that a terrible punishment awaits him. All this may resemble the sensation when a man on a high tower feels drawn to the depths below him, so that he is finally glad to throw himself down headlong: do it quickly and there’s an end to it! And all this happens even with the most meek and hitherto inconspicuous people. Some of them, when so bedazed, even start prancing. The more downtrodden he was before, the stronger now is his urge to show off, to strike terror into people. He enjoys this terror, he likes the very revulsion he arouses in others. He affects some sort of desperation, and such a “desperate man” is sometimes just waiting for a quick punishment, just waiting to be finished off, because it is finally hard for him to keep up this affected desperation. It is curious that in most cases all this mood, all this affectation, lasts right up to the scaffold, and then is cut off just like that: as if this term were somehow formal, set out beforehand according to the rules. Here the man suddenly becomes submissive, effaces himself, turns into a sort of rag. On the scaffold he whimpers—asks people’s forgiveness. He gets to prison, and you look: such a driveler, such a sniveler, so downtrodden you’re even astonished at him: “Can this be the same one who put the knife to five or six people?”