*2 “Healthy” (Latin). Author.
III
Continuation*1
I have begun talking about punishments, as well as about the various performers of these interesting duties, essentially because, having gone to stay in the hospital, I only then received a first visual notion of all these things. Until then I had known of them only by hearsay. All the convicts punished by flogging from all the battalions, all the prison sections, and all the military units stationed in our town and its environs were brought to our two wards. In that first time, when I so greedily observed everything that went on around me, all these procedures that were strange to me, all these men punished or preparing to be punished, naturally made the strongest impression on me. I was disturbed, confused, and frightened. I remember that right then I suddenly and impatiently started going into all the details of these new phenomena, listening to other prisoners’ conversations and stories about the subject, asking them questions myself, seeking solutions. I wished, among other things, to know for certain all the degrees of sentences and executions, all the nuances of these executions, the prisoners’ own view of it all; I tried to picture to myself the psychological state of the men going to punishment. I’ve already said it was a rare man who preserved his equanimity in the face of punishment, not excepting even those who had previously been much and repeatedly beaten. Here the condemned man is generally overcome by an acute but purely physical fear, involuntary and irrepressible, which crushes all of a man’s moral essence. Later, too, all through those several years of prison life, I could not help observing those men who, having lain in hospital after the first half of their punishment and healed their backs, were discharged from the hospital so as to undergo the next day the remaining half of the strokes allotted to them. This dividing of the punishment in half always takes place on orders from the doctor who is present at the punishment. If the number of strokes fixed for the crime is great, so that the prisoner cannot bear them all at once, they divide the number into two or even three parts for him, depending on what the doctor says at the time of the punishment itself, that is, whether the man being punished can continue to run the gauntlet, or it would put him in danger of his life. Usually five hundred, a thousand, or even fifteen hundred are dealt out all at once; but if the sentence is for two or three thousand, the punishment is divided into two or even three parts. Men who, once their backs had healed after the first half, left the hospital to undergo the second half, were usually gloomy, sullen, and taciturn on that day and the day before. A certain mental stupor, a certain unnatural distraction could be noticed in them. Such a man does not get into conversation and is mainly silent; most curious of all is that the prisoners themselves never talk with such a man or try to discuss what awaits him. No unnecessary words, no comforting; they even try generally to pay little attention to him. That, of course, is better for the condemned man. There are exceptions, such as Orlov, for instance, of whom I have already told. After the first half of the punishment, all that vexed him was that his back took a long time to heal and that he could not be discharged sooner, the sooner to undergo the rest of the strokes, be sent with a party to the place of exile appointed for him, and escape on the way. But this man was entertaining a purpose, and God knows what he had in mind. He was a man of passion and great vitality. He was very pleased, in a state of intense excitement, though he restrained his feelings. The thing was that before the first half of his punishment he thought he would not survive the rods and was sure to die. Various rumors had already reached him about the authorities’ measures while he was awaiting sentence; already then he was preparing for death. But, having undergone the first half, he took heart. He arrived in the hospital beaten half to death; I had never seen such welts; but he came with joy in his heart, with the hope that he would be left alive, that those rumors were false, that he had, after all, survived the rods, so that now, after awaiting sentence for so long, he began to dream of the road, escape, freedom, the fields and forests … Two days after he was discharged from the hospital, he died in that same hospital, on his former cot, not having withstood the second half. But I have already mentioned that.
And yet those very prisoners who had such a hard time in the days and nights before their punishment, endured that same punishment manfully, not excluding the most fainthearted of them. I rarely heard any moaning, even during the night of their arrival, not even from those who had been very badly beaten. The people generally are able to endure pain. On the subject of pain I made many inquiries. I sometimes wanted to find out for certain how great this pain was, what it might finally be compared with. I truly don’t know why I kept getting at that. I remember only one thing, that it was not out of idle curiosity. I repeat, I was disturbed and shaken. But no one I asked could give me a satisfactory answer. It burns, it scorches like fire—that was all I could find out, and that was the sole answer I got from all of them. It burns, that’s all. In that first time, having become close with M—cki, I put these questions to him. “It hurts very much,” he said, “and the feeling is of burning, like fire; as if your back is being roasted over a very hot fire.” In short, everybody said exactly the same thing. However, I remember, I made a strange observation then, on the correctness of which I will not especially insist; but it was strongly corroborated by the general opinion of the prisoners: it was that the birch, if applied in large quantity, was the worst punishment of all in use among us. At first glance, that would seem absurd and impossible. And yet five or even four hundred strokes of the birch can beat a man to death; and more than five hundred almost certainly. Even a man of the strongest constitution cannot survive a thousand strokes at one time. Whereas a man can endure five hundred rods without any danger to his life. He can endure a thousand rods without danger to his life, even if he’s not a man of strong constitution. Even two thousand rods cannot kill a man of average strength and healthy constitution. The prisoners all said that the birch is worse than the rod. “The birch smarts more,” they said, “it’s a greater torment.” Of course, the birch is more tormenting than the rod. It chafes more, it has more effect on the nerves, excites them immeasurably, shocks them impossibly. I don’t know how it is now, but in the still recent old days there were gentlemen for whom the possibility of whipping their victim afforded something reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade and Brinvilliers.1 I think there is something both sweet and painful in this sensation that makes these gentlemen’s hearts swoon. There are people, like tigers, who have a thirst for licking blood. A man who has once experienced this power, this unlimited lordship over the body, blood, and spirit of a man just like himself, created in the same way, his brother by the law of Christ; a man who has experienced this power and the full possibility of inflicting the ultimate humiliation upon another being bearing the image of God, somehow involuntarily loses control of his sensations. Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, and develops finally into an illness. I stand upon this, that the best of men can, from habit, become coarse and stupefied to the point of brutality. Blood and power intoxicate: coarseness and depravity develop; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible and, finally, sweet to the mind and feelings. Man and citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible for him. What’s more, the example, the possibility, of such self-will has a contagious effect on the whole of society: power is seductive. A society that looks indifferently upon such a phenomenon is itself infected at its foundation. In short, the right of corporal punishment, granted to one man over another, is one of the plagues of society, one of the most powerful means of annihilating in it any germ, any attempt at civility, and full grounds for its inevitable and ineluctable corruption.
The executioner is shunned in society, but the gentleman executioner is far from being shunned. Just recently the contrary opinion has been expressed, but as yet only in books, abstractly. Even those who express it have not yet managed to extinguish this need for despotism in themselves. Even every manufa
cturer, every entrepreneur must inevitably feel a sort of rousing pleasure in the fact that his worker sometimes depends entirely, with his entire family, on him alone. That is certainly so; a generation does not tear itself away so quickly from the inheritance sitting in it; a man does not renounce so quickly what has entered his blood, what was passed on to him, so to speak, with his mother’s milk. Such precocious revolutions do not happen. To acknowledge one’s guilt and ancestral sin is little, very little; it is necessary to break with them completely. And that cannot be done so quickly.
I have spoken of the executioner. The characteristics of the executioner can be found in embryo in almost every contemporary man. But the brutish characteristics of men do not develop equally. If in their development they overpower all the other characteristics in someone, such a man, of course, becomes ghastly and deformed. Executioners are of two kinds: some are voluntary, others are forced, obliged. The voluntary executioner is, of course, inferior in all respects to the forced one, who, nevertheless, is so repugnant to the people, repugnant to the point of horror, of loathing, of an unaccountable, all but mystical fear. Whence comes this almost superstitious fear of one executioner and such indifference, all but approval, of the other? There are examples that are utterly strange: I have known people who were even good, even honest, even respected in society, and yet, for example, they could not take it calmly if a man who was being punished did not cry out under the lashes, did not plead and beg for mercy. Punished men must unfailingly cry out and plead for mercy. That’s how it’s done; it’s considered both proper and necessary, and once, when the victim did not want to cry out, the officer, whom I knew, and who might have been considered a kind man in other respects, even became personally offended. At first he was going to punish the man lightly, but, not hearing the usual “Your Honor, dear father, have mercy, I’ll pray to God eternally,” and so on, he flew into a rage and gave him fifty extra lashes, wishing to get cries and pleas from him—and he got them. “Impossible, sir, it’s rudeness,” he answered me very seriously. As for the real executioner, the forced, the obliged one, this much is known: he is a prisoner who has been tried and sentenced to exile, but has been kept behind as an executioner; he first works as an apprentice to another executioner, and, having learned from him, is kept in the prison for good, where he is held separately, in a separate room, and even manages his own household, but almost always goes around under convoy. Of course, a living man is not a machine; though an executioner beats out of duty, sometimes he also gets carried away, but even if he finds some satisfaction in beating, he almost never feels a personal hatred for his victim. The deftness of the stroke, the knowledge of his profession, the desire to show off before his comrades and the public, tickle his vanity. He does it for the sake of art. Besides, he knows very well that he is a universal outcast, that superstitious fear meets him and accompanies him everywhere, and there is no guaranteeing that this does not influence him, does not increase his ferocity, his brutish inclinations. Even children know that he has “renounced his father and mother.” Strangely enough, all the executioners I’ve happened to see were developed men, with sense, with intelligence, and with an extraordinary vanity, even pride. Whether that pride develops in them as a reaction to the universal contempt for them; whether it is increased by the awareness of the fear they inspire in their victims and the feeling of lordship over them—I don’t know. It may even be that the very showiness and theatricality of the situation in which they appear before the public on the scaffold contributes to the development of a certain arrogance in them. I remember, it so happened that for a certain period of time I met frequently with an executioner and observed him closely. He was a fellow of medium height, muscular, lean, about forty years old, with a rather pleasant and intelligent face and curly hair. He was always extraordinarily grand, calm; outwardly he bore himself like a gentleman, always answered briefly, reasonably, and even affably, but with a sort of lofty affability, as if he were swaggering before me. Guards officers frequently addressed him in my presence and, truly, even with a certain sort of respect for him. He was aware of that, and before a superior he deliberately redoubled his politeness, dryness, and sense of personal dignity. The more affably a superior spoke to him, the more unyielding he himself seemed, and though he never departed from the most refined politeness, I’m certain that at such moments he considered himself immeasurably above the superior who was speaking to him. It was written on his face. Sometimes it happened that, on a very hot summer day, he would be sent under convoy with a long, thin pole to kill off stray dogs in town. In that little town there were an extraordinary number of dogs that did not belong to anyone and that multiplied with unusual speed. In the hot weather they became dangerous, and the executioner would be sent, on orders from the authorities, to exterminate them. But even this humiliating duty apparently did not humiliate him in the least. You should have seen with what dignity he strolled about the streets of the town, accompanied by the weary convoy, the very sight of him scaring away the passing women and children, and how calmly and even haughtily he looked at everyone he met. However, executioners have a comfortable life. They have money, they eat very well, drink vodka. The money comes from bribery. A civilian who has been tried and sentenced to corporal punishment by a court will first of all give something to the executioner, even if it’s the last he has. But with some, with rich offenders, they take it themselves, setting the amount depending on the prisoner’s probable means, take as much as thirty roubles, sometimes even more. With the very rich there may even be a lot of bargaining. The executioner cannot, of course, punish very weakly; for that he would have to answer with his own back. But still, for a certain bribe, he promises the victim that he will not beat him very painfully. His offer is almost always accepted; if not, the punishment is indeed barbaric, and that is wholly within his power. It can happen that he imposes a considerable sum even on a very poor man; relations come, bargain, bow and scrape, and too bad if they don’t satisfy him. On such occasions he is greatly helped by the superstitious fear he inspires. What wonders don’t they tell about executioners! However, the prisoners themselves assured me that an executioner can kill with one blow. But, first of all, when has that been tested? However, maybe so. They spoke of it all too affirmatively. An executioner himself assured me that he could do it. It was also said that he could hit a criminal’s back with a full swing, but in such a way that not even the smallest welt would rise up after the blow, and the criminal would not feel the slightest pain. However, all too many stories are known about all these tricks and subtleties. But even if an executioner takes a bribe for punishing lightly, he still has to give the first blow with a full swing and with all his might. That even became a custom among them. He can soften the subsequent blows, especially if he has been paid beforehand. But the first blow—whether he’s been paid or not—is his. I truly don’t know why they do it that way. Is it to inure the victim at once to the further blows, reckoning that after a very heavy blow the lighter ones will not seem so painful, or is it simply a wish to show off before the victim, to put fear into him, to disconcert him from the start, so that he understands whom he’s dealing with—to display himself, in short? In any case, before the start of the punishment, the executioner feels himself in an excited state of mind, feels his power, is conscious of being the master; he is an actor in that moment; the public looks at him with wonder and horror, and it is certainly not without pleasure that he cries out to his victim before the first blow: “Hold on, it’ll burn!”—the usual and fatal words on those occasions. It is hard to conceive how far human nature can be distorted.
During that first time in the hospital, I listened avidly to all these prisoners’ stories. Lying there was terribly boring for us. The days were all so much alike! In the morning we were somewhat diverted by the doctors’ visit, soon followed by dinner. Naturally, in such monotony, meals provided considerable diversion. The rations differed, depending on the patient’s illness. Some got only soup wi
th some sort of grain; others only thin gruel; still others only farina, which a great many of them fancied. From lying there a long time, the prisoners grew soft and acquired a taste for good food. The convalescent and nearly well were given a piece of boiled beef, or “bull,” as we called it. Best of all was the scurvy ration—beef with onion, horseradish, and so on, sometimes with a dram of vodka. Bread, also going by the illness, was black or half-white, and properly baked. This officialism and nicety in prescribing rations only made the patients laugh. Of course, in some illnesses a man would not eat anything. But those who did have an appetite ate whatever they liked. Some exchanged their rations, so that a ration suited to one illness would go to a completely different one. Others who were on a mild diet bought beef or the scurvy ration, drank kvass or hospital beer, buying it from those to whom it was prescribed. Some even downed two rations. These rations were sold or resold for money. A ration of beef was priced rather high; it cost five paper kopecks. If there was nobody in our ward to buy from, a guard was sent to the other prisoners’ ward, or else to the soldiers’ “free” wards, as we called them. People willing to sell were always found. They were left with bread alone, but they made money. Poverty was, of course, universal, but those who had a bit of cash sent to the market for kalachi, or even for sweets and the like. Our guards carried out all these errands quite disinterestedly. After dinner came the most boring time; some slept from having nothing to do, some chatted, some quarreled, some told stories aloud. If no new patients were brought, it was still more boring. The arrival of a new man almost always produced a certain impression, especially if no one was acquainted with him. We looked him over, tried to find out who and what he was, where from, and what his case was. Those who were in transit aroused special interest; they always had something to tell, though not about their intimate affairs; of that, if they did not bring it up themselves, they were never asked, but only where they were from, who they had come with, how the journey had been, where they were going, and so on. Some, on hearing a new story, would remember as if in passing something of their own about various transits, parties, executors, and party heads. Those punished with rods also appeared at around that time, towards evening. They always made a rather strong impression, as, by the way, has already been mentioned; but they were not brought every day, and on those days when there weren’t any, some sort of listlessness came over us, as if we were terribly sick of each other’s faces, and we even began to quarrel. We were even glad of the crazy ones, who were brought for testing. The trick of pretending to be crazy in order to avoid punishment was occasionally used by the convicts. Some were quickly exposed, or, rather, they themselves decided to change the politics of their actions, and a prisoner, after acting up for two or three days, suddenly, for no reason at all, would become sensible, quiet down, and glumly ask to be discharged. Neither the prisoners nor the doctors reproached or shamed such a man by reminding him of his recent antics; they silently discharged him, silently sent him away, and in two or three days he would come back to us after his punishment. Such cases, however, were generally rare. But the genuine madmen brought for testing were truly a divine punishment for the whole ward. Some of these madmen, jolly, lively, shouting, dancing, singing, were first greeted by the prisoners with all but delight. “Here’s some fun!” they said, looking at a grimacing fellow who had just been brought in. But I found it terribly difficult and painful to see these poor wretches. I could never look indifferently at madmen.
Notes from a Dead House Page 25
