Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Meanwhile M—cki was somehow becoming more and more sad and gloomy with the years. Anguish was overcoming him. Earlier, during my first time in prison, he had been more communicative; his soul had all the same broken through more often and more fully. When I arrived, it was already his third year at hard labor. In the beginning he was interested in many things that had gone on in the world during those two years, and of which he had no notion, being in prison; he asked questions, listened, showed emotion. But towards the end, with the years it all somehow started to concentrate inside him, in his heart. The coals were covering over with ashes. He became more and more embittered. “Je haïs ces brigands,” he often repeated to me, looking with hatred at the convicts, whom I had already come to know more closely, and none of my arguments in their favor had any effect on him. He did not understand what I was saying, though he occasionally agreed absent-mindedly; but the next day he would repeat again: “Je haïs ces brigands.” By the way, he and I often spoke in French, and for that one of the supervisors at work, the engineer soldier Dranishnikov, for who knows what reason, nicknamed us “medicos.” M—cki became animated only when he remembered his mother. “She’s old, she’s sick,” he said to me. “She loves me more than anything in the world, and here I don’t know whether she’s alive or not. It was already enough for her, knowing that I had run the gauntlet …” M—cki was not a nobleman and before his exile had suffered corporal punishment. Remembering it, he clenched his teeth and tried to look away. Lately he had begun to go about alone more and more. One morning, between eleven and twelve, he was summoned to the commandant. The commandant came out to him with a cheerful smile.

  “Well, M—cki, what did you dream about last night?” he asked.

  “I gave such a start,” M—cki told us when he came back. “As if I’d been stabbed through the heart.”

  “I dreamed I got a letter from my mother,” he replied.

  “Better, better!” the commandant retorted. “You’re free! Your mother petitioned … Her petition has been granted. Here’s her letter, and here’s the order about you. You’ll be leaving prison straightaway.”

  He came back to us pale, not yet recovered from the news. We congratulated him. He pressed our hands with his trembling, cold hands. Many of the prisoners also congratulated him and were glad of his good luck.

  He was released as a settler and stayed in our town. They soon gave him a job. At first he often came to our prison and, whenever he could, told us various bits of news. He was mainly very interested in politics.

  Of the other four, that is, besides M—cki, T—ski, B—ski, and Zh—ski, two were still very young men, sent up for short terms, little educated, but honest, simple, direct. The third, A—chukovsky, was all too simple-minded and there was nothing special in him, but the fourth, B—m, a man already on in years, made a very nasty impression on us all. I don’t know how he ended up in such a category of criminals, and he himself denied it. His was a coarse, petty bourgeois soul, with the habits and principles of a shopkeeper grown rich by cheating on kopecks. He was without any education and was interested in nothing except his trade. He was a house painter, but an outstanding one, a magnificent one. The authorities soon learned of his abilities, and the whole town started asking B—m to paint their walls and ceilings. In two years he painted nearly all the government apartments. The apartment owners paid him personally, and his life was not a poor one. But the best thing of all was that his other comrades were sent to work with him. Of the three who always went with him, two learned his trade, and one of them, T—zewski, began to paint no worse than he. Our major, who also occupied a government house, sent for B—m in his turn and ordered him to paint all the walls and ceilings for him. Here B—m outdid himself: even the governor-general’s was not painted so well. The house was wooden, one-storied, quite decrepit, and badly peeling on the outside, but the inside was painted like a palace, and the major was delighted … He rubbed his hands and said that now he would certainly get married: “With such lodgings, it’s impossible not to get married,” he added very seriously. He was more and more pleased with B—m, and through him with the others who worked along with him. The work went on for a whole month. During that month, the major totally changed his opinion about all our group and began to patronize them. It went so far that he once suddenly summoned Zh—ski to him outside the prison.

  “Zh—ski!” he said, “I offended you. I was wrong to flog you, I know it. I repent. Do you understand that? I, I, I—repent!”

  Zh—ski replied that he understood that.

  “Do you understand that I, I, your superior, summoned you in order to ask your forgiveness? Do you feel that? Who are you next to me? A worm! Less than a worm: you’re a prisoner! While I, by God’s grace,* am a major. A major! Do you understand that?”

  Zh—ski replied that he understood that, too.

  “Well, so now I’m making peace with you. But do you feel it, do you feel it fully, in all its fullness? Are you capable of understanding and feeling it? Just think: I, I, a major …,” and so on.

  Zh—ski himself recounted this whole scene to me. It meant there was some human sense in this drunken, cantakerous, and disorderly man. Considering his notions and development, such an act could be seen as almost magnanimous. However, his drunken state may have contributed much to it.

  His dream was not realized: he did not get married, though he was completely set on it, once the decoration of his lodgings was finished. Instead of marrying, he wound up in court and was ordered to hand in his resignation. Here all his old sins were dragged in as well. Earlier, as I recall, he had been the mayor of this town … The blow fell on him unexpectedly. In the prison the news caused boundless rejoicing. It was a holiday, a celebration! They say the major howled like an old woman and drowned himself in tears. But there was nothing to be done. He resigned, sold his pair of grays, then all his possessions, and even fell into poverty. We would run into him afterwards in a shabby civilian frock coat and a visored cap with a little cockade. He looked spitefully at the prisoners. But all his fascination went away as soon as he took off his uniform. In uniform he was a terror, a god. In a frock coat he suddenly became a complete nothing and smacked of the lackey. It’s astonishing how much a uniform does for these people.

  * * *

  * The literal expression, employed in my time, however, not only by our major, but by many petty commanders, mainly those who had risen from the ranks. Author.

  IX

  The Escape

  Soon after our major’s replacement, radical changes took place in our prison. Hard labor was abolished and instead of it a penal company of the military department was formed, on the pattern of the Russian penal companies. This meant that exiled convicts of the second category were no longer brought to our prison. It began to be populated from then on only by prisoners from the military department, meaning people not stripped of their civil rights, the same as all other soldiers, only punished, who came for short terms (six years at the most), and, upon leaving prison, joined their battalions again as the same privates they had been before. However, those who returned to prison after a second crime were punished, as before, with a twenty-year sentence. With us, however, even prior to that change there had been a section of prisoners of the military category, but they lived with us because there was no other place for them. Now the whole prison became of this military category. Needless to say, the previous convicts, the real civil convicts, stripped of all their rights, branded, and with half their heads shaved, remained in the prison until the end of their full terms; no new ones came, and those who remained gradually served their terms and went away, so that after some ten years there could not have been a single convict left in our prison. The special section also remained in the prison, and from time to time serious criminals from the military department were still sent to it, pending the opening of the heaviest hard labor in Siberia. Thus life went on for us essentially as before: the same keeping, the same work, and almost the sa
me rules, only the authorities were changed and became more complex. A staff officer was appointed, a company commander, and on top of that four subalterns who took turns on duty in the prison. The invalids were also abolished; instead of them twelve sergeants and a quartermaster were established. Divisions of ten were introduced, corporals from among the prisoners themselves were introduced, nominally, to be sure, and needless to say Akim Akimych at once found himself a corporal. This whole new establishment and the whole prison with all its officials and prisoners remained as before in the jurisdiction of a commandant as the highest superior. That was all that happened. Naturally, the prisoners were very agitated at first, discussed, tried to fathom, to figure out their new superiors; but when they saw that essentially everything remained as before, they calmed down at once, and our life went on in the old way. But the main thing was that we were rid of the former major; it was as if we all relaxed and cheered up. Frightened looks disappeared; each of us knew now that in case of need he could talk things over with the superior, that only by mistake could an innocent man be punished instead of a guilty one. Vodka even went on being sold among us in the same way and on the same basis as before, despite the fact that sergeants had been put in place of the former invalids. These sergeants for the most part turned out to be decent and sensible men who understood their position. Some of them, however, at first tried to show bravado and, of course, from inexperience, thought of treating the prisoners like soldiers. But soon they, too, understood what it was all about. Others who took too long in understanding were shown the essence of the matter by the prisoners themselves. There were some rather sharp clashes: for instance, they would tempt a sergeant, get him drunk, and after that announce to him, as among friends, of course, that he had drunk with them, and consequently … In the end, the sergeants looked indifferently or, better, looked away, when the bladders were smuggled in and the vodka was sold. What’s more, just like the former invalids, they went to the market and brought the prisoners kalachi, beef, and all the rest—that is, whatever they could do without great shame. Why all these changes had to take place, what the penal company was set up for—I don’t know. It happened during my last years in prison. But I was fated to live two more years under these new rules …

  Must I make note of all that life, of all my years in prison? I don’t think so. If I were to write out in order, in sequence, all that happened and that I saw and experienced in those years, I could, naturally, write three or four times more chapters than I have written so far. But such a description would, willy-nilly, become too monotonous. The adventures would all come out too much in the same tone, especially if the reader has managed, from the chapters I’ve already written, to form for himself at least a somewhat satisfactory notion of prison life in the second category. I wanted to present the whole of our prison and all that I lived through during those years in one graphic and vivid picture. Whether I have achieved that goal, I don’t know. And that is not entirely for me to judge. But I’m convinced that I can stop here. Besides, I myself sometimes get sick at heart from these memories. And I can hardly remember everything. The subsequent years have somehow been erased from my memory. I’ve completely forgotten many circumstances, I’m sure of that. I remember, for instance, that all those years, essentially so like one another, went by sluggishly, drearily. I remember that those long, boring days were as monotonous as rainwater dripping from the roof drop by drop. I remember that only the passionate desire for resurrection, renewal, a new life, gave me the strength to wait and hope. And I finally pulled myself together: I waited, I counted off each day, and, though there were a thousand left, I counted off each one with delight, bade farewell to it, buried it, and, with the coming of the new day, rejoiced that it was no longer a thousand, but nine hundred and ninety-nine. I remember that in all that time, despite having hundreds of fellow prisoners, I was in terrible solitude, and I finally came to love that solitude. Spiritually alone, I revisited all my past life, went through everything down to the smallest detail, pondered my past, judged myself alone strictly and implacably, and sometimes even blessed my fate for having sent me this solitude, without which neither that judgment of myself nor that strict review of my past life could have been. And what hopes then throbbed in my heart! I thought, I resolved, I swore to myself that in my future life there would be no such mistakes, no such falls, as there had been before. I outlined a program for the whole of my future and resolved to follow it firmly. A blind faith arose in me that I would and could fulfill it all … I waited, I called for freedom to come quickly; I wanted to test myself anew, in a new struggle. At times I was seized by a convulsive impatience … But it pains me to remember now about the state of my soul then. Of course, all this concerns just me alone … But I have written about it, because it seems to me that everyone will understand it, because the same thing should happen with anyone, if he does time in prison, in the flower of his youth and strength.

  But why talk of that!… I’d better tell something more, so as not to break off too abruptly.

  It occurred to me that someone might well ask: Can it be that no one could possibly escape from the prison, and that in all those years no one did escape? I’ve already noted that a prisoner who has spent two or three years in prison begins to value those years and willy-nilly comes to reckon that it is better to serve the rest with no trouble, no danger, and get out, finally, to live in legitimate fashion as a settler. But such a reckoning only enters the head of a prisoner sentenced to a relatively short term. A long-timer might well be ready to risk it … But that somehow didn’t happen among us. I don’t know whether they were too cowardly, or the surveillance was especially strict, military, or the location of our town was in many ways unfavorable (on the steppe, exposed)—it’s hard to say. I think all those causes had their influence. Indeed, it would have been quite difficult to escape from our prison. And yet one such case did occur while I was there: two men risked it, and they were even from among the most important criminals.

  After the major was replaced, A—v (the one who spied for him in the prison) was left completely alone, without protection. He was still a very young man, but his character had strengthened and formed itself with the years. Generally he was a bold, resolute, and even very clever man. He would have gone on spying and dealing in various underground ways even if they had granted him freedom, but now he would not have gotten caught so stupidly and improvidently as he had been before, paying for his stupidity with hard labor. Among us he did some faking of passports. I cannot speak positively, however. I heard it from our prisoners. They said he did work of that sort while he was still going to the major’s kitchen and, naturally, derived what profit he could from it. In short, it seems he would have tried anything to change his lot. I had occasion to learn something of his soul: his cynicism reached the point of outrageous insolence, of the coldest mockery, and aroused an insurmountable loathing. It seems to me that if he had badly wanted a drink of vodka, and could not have obtained it otherwise than by cutting somebody’s throat, he would certainly have cut it, provided it could have been done on the quiet, so that nobody knew. He learned calculation in prison. It was to this man that Kulikov, a prisoner in the special section, turned his attention.