He told me all this nonsense with minute and exact details; all of it pure figment of his poor disordered brain. He believed whole-heartedly that his punishment would be graciously remitted. He spoke quite calmly and with full assurance of the passionate love he had inspired in the young lady.
That odd, romantic delusion about a young gentlewoman’s love for a man of nearly fifty years, afflicted with a gloomy and disfigured face, only proved the terrible effect produced by fear of the punishment he was to receive upon this poor, timid creature.
It may be that he had really seen someone through the bars of the window, and insanity, germinating under excess of fear, had taken shape and form in the present delusion.
This unfortunate soldier, who, you may be certain, had never given a thought to young ladies, had begotten this romance in his diseased imagination, and clung convulsively to this desperate hope. I listened without interrupting him, and then repeated the story to other patients. They were naturally curious, and questioned him; but he preserved a chastely discreet silence.
Next day the doctor examined him. As the poor mat swore there was nothing wrong with him, he was entered on the list of those to be discharged. When we learned that the physician had scribbled ‘Sanat. est’ against his name it was much too late to warn him. Besides, we were far from certain ourselves what was really the matter with the man.
The error lay with the authorities who had sent him to us without specifying the reason for requiring his admittance to hospital-an unpardonable oversight.
However, two days later the unhappy creature was taken out to be scourged. We understood that he was dumb founded by finding, contrary to his fixed expectation, that he really was to take his punishment. To the last moment he thought he would be pardoned, and when marched out in front of the battalion he began to cry for help.
As there was no longer room in our ward they sent him to the infirmary. I heard that for eight entire days he did not utter a single word, paralysed with misery and bewilderment When his back was healed they took him away, and I neve heard any more about him.
As to the treatment of the sick and the remedies prescribed those who were but slightly indisposed paid no attention whatever to doctor’s orders, and never took their medicine. Generally speaking, those who were more seriously ill were strict in their observance of medical advice. They took their mixtures and powders, and looked after themselves with the greatest care. But they preferred external to internal remedies
Cupping-glasses, leeches, cataplasms, blood-lettings-in all which things the common people have so blind a confidence -were held in high honour in our hospital. Inflictions of that sort were regarded with approval.
I noticed a curious phenomenon which interested me Men who could endure without a murmur the frightful tortures caused by the rods and scourges, howled, grimaced and moaned at the least little ailment. Whether it was all pretence or not I really cannot say.
We had cuppings of a quite peculiar kind. The machine with which instantaneous incisions are made was out of order, so they had to use the lancet.
Twelve incisions are necessary for a cupping; with a machine these are not painful at all, for it makes them instantaneously; with the lancet it is a different matter altogether -the lancet cuts slowly, and causes the patient to suffer. If you have to make ten openings there will be about one hundred and twenty pricks, and these are very painful. I myself had 10 undergo it: besides pain, it caused great nervous irritation, hut the suffering was not so great that one could not help groaning if one tried.
It was laughable to see great, hulking fellows wriggling and howling. One could not help comparing them with a certain type of man who is firm and calm enough in a crisis, but ill-tempered and capricious in the bosom of their families for no reason at all. If dinner is late, for example, they’ll scold and swear; everything annoys them and they fall out with everyone; the more comfort they have, the more troublesome are they to other people. Characters of this sort, which are common enough among the lower orders, were all too numerous in prison because each man’s company was forced upon his neighbour.
Sometimes the prisoners chaffed or insulted the tetchy fellows of whom I have been speaking. These would then hide their discontent: it seemed that a word of abuse was enough to bridle their tongues.
Oustiantsef had no use for a man who whined under the lancet and never let slip an opportunity of rebuking the delinquent. Besides, he was fond of scolding; it was a sort of necessity with him, engendered by illness and also his stupidity. He would gaze at you fixedly for some time, and then treat you to a long speech of threatening and warning, all in a tone of calm and impartial conviction. It seemed as though he thought his function in this world was to watch over order and morality in general.
‘He must poke his nose into everything,’ the prisoners used to laugh, for they pitied him, and did what they could to avoid conflict with him.
‘Can he talk? Why, three wagons wouldn’t be too many to carry away all his chatter.’
‘Well, why not? No one’s going to put up with a mere idiot. What’s there to cry out about at the mere touch of a lancet? What harm in the world do you fancy that is going to do you?’
‘Hear, hear!’ another man interrupts. ‘Cupping’s a mere nothing. I know by experience. But the most horrid thing is when they keep pulling your ears. That just shuts you up.’
All the prisoners burst out laughing.
‘Have you had them pulled?’
‘By Jove, yes, I should think he had.’
‘That’s why they stick upright, like hop-poles.’
The fellow in question, Chapkin by name, certainly had long, pointed ears. He had led a vagabond life, but was still quite young, intelligent, and quiet. He used to talk with a sort of dry humour and a show of gravity which made his stories most amusing.
‘How in the world was I to know you had had your ears pulled and lengthened, your brainless idiot? ‘ began Oustiantsef, once more wrathfully addressing Chapkin, who, however, vouchsafed no attention to his companion’s obliging apostrophe.
‘ Well, who did pull your ears for you? ‘ someone asked.
‘Why, the police superintendent, of course! Our offence was wandering abroad and sleeping in the open. We had just arrived at K, I and another tramp called Eptinie; he had no surname, that fellow. On the way we had stayed a little while in the hamlet of Tolmina; yes, there’s actually a hamlet called Tolmina. Well, we get to the town, and are just looking around to see if there’s any business doing, after which we mean to flit. You know, out in the open country you’re as free as air, but it’s not exactly the same thing in the town. First we go into a public-house, and as we open the door we give a sharp look round. What should we see but a sunburnt fellow in a German coat all out at elbows. He walks straight up to us. After chatting about one thing and another he asks us:
‘“Excuse my asking, but have you passports?”
‘“No, we haven’t.”
‘“Nor have we. Incidentally, I’ve a couple of mates with me, also in the service of General Cuckoo.1 We’ve been seeing a bit of life, and just now haven’t a penny to bless ourselves with. May I take the liberty of asking you to be so good as to order a quart of brandy?”
“‘With the greatest pleasure,” we answer. So we drink together, and they tell us of a place where there’s a real good stroke of business to be done-a house at the end of the town belonging to a wealthy merchant fellow; lots of good things there, so we make up our minds to have a shot at it during the night. There are five of us, and just as we’re starting on the job they nab us, take us to the police-station, and then before the superintendent. “I shall examine them myself,” he says. He lights his pipe, and they bring him in a cup of tea. He was a sturdy fellow with whiskers. Besides us five, there were three other tramps just brought in. You know, comrades, that there’s nothing in this world more funny than a tramp, because he always forgets everything he’s done. You may cudgel his head till you’re tired,
but you’ll always get the same answer, that he’s forgotten all about everything.
‘The police superintendent then turns to me and asks me squarely:
‘“Who are you?”
‘I answer just like all the rest of them:
‘“I’ve forgotten all about it, sir.”
‘“Just you wait; I’ve a word or two more to say to you. I know your face.”
‘Then he gives me a good long stare; but I hadn’t seen him anywhere before, that’s a fact.
‘Then he asks another of them: “Who are you?”
‘“Mizzle-and-scud, sir.”
‘“They call you Mizzle-and-scud?”
‘“Precisely that, sir.”
‘“Right, you’re Mizzle-and-scud! And you?” to a third.
‘“Along-o’-him, sir.”
‘“But what’s your name-your name?”
‘“Me? I’m called Along-o’-him, sir.”
‘“Who gave you that name, hound?”
1 i.e. tramps like himself who wander through the forests and hear the birds sing.
‘ “ Very worthy people, sir. There are lots of worthy people about; nobody knows that better than you, sir.”
‘“And who may these worthy people be?”
‘“O Lord! It’s slipped my memory, sir. Please, please forgive me.”
‘“So you’ve forgotten them, all of them, these worthy people?”
‘“Every mother’s son of them, sir.”
‘“But you must have had relations-a father, a mother. Do you remember them?”
‘“I suppose I must have had, sir; but I’ve forgotten about ‘em, my memory’s so bad. Now I come to think about it, I’m sure I had some, sir.”
‘“But where have you been living till now?”
‘ “ In the woods, sir.”
‘“Always in the woods?”
‘“Always in the woods.”
“‘Winter too?”
‘“Never saw any winter, sir.”
‘ “ Get along with you! And you-what’s your name?”
‘ “ Hatchets-and-axes, sir.”
‘“And yours?”
‘ “ Sharp-and-mum, sir.”
‘“And you?”
‘ “ Keen-and-spry, sir.”
‘“And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.”
‘“Not a mother’s son of us anything whatever.”
‘He couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. Then all the others began to laugh at seeing him laugh! But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till every tooth in your jaw is smashed. Devilish big and strong these fellows, I can tell you.
‘“Take them off to the lock-up,” said he. “I’ll see to them in a bit. As for you” (meaning me), “you wait here! Just sit down over there, will you.”
‘“Over there” was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I, “What’s he up to now?”
‘“Sit down,” he says again. “Take the pen and write.”
‘And then he goes and seizes my ear and gives it a good pull.
I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest.
‘“I can’t write, sir.”
‘“Write, write!”
‘“Have mercy on me, sir!”
‘“Write your best. Write, write!”
‘And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I ‘d rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell.
‘“Write, write!” was all he said.’
‘ Had the fellow gone mad? What the hell was he up to?’
‘No, he wasn’t mad. A little while before, a secretary had done a “job” at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money. He had very big ears, just as 1 have. They had published the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that’s why he tormented me with his “Write, write!” He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand.’
‘A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?’
‘O Lord! Don’t say a word about it, I beg.’
Everybody burst out laughing.
‘Well, you did write?’
‘What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper, and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just gave me a dozen thumps, regula-tion allowance, and then let me go about my business: to prison, that is.’
‘Do you really know how to write?’
‘Of course I did. What d’ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the whole blessed thing, though, ever since pens came into fashion.’
Thanks to the patients’ gossip time passed fairly quickly. But even so, Lord, how wearied and bored we were! Those long days were suffocating in their monotony-one exactly like another. If only I had had a single book!
For all that, I often went into hospital, especially in the early days of my imprisonment, either because I was ill or because I needed rest, just to get out of the barrack where life was indeed made burdensome and which was far worse even than the hospital, especially as regards its effect upon moral sentiment and good feeling. We gentlemen were the abiding objects of envious dislike: incessant quarrels picked with us, ourselves for ever in the wrong, and looks filled with menacing hate unceasingly directed at us! Here, in the sick-rooms, one lived on a sort of footing of equality, there was something of comradeship.
The most melancholy moment of the twenty-four hours was evening, when night set in. We went to bed very early. A smoky lamp just gave us one point of light at the far end of the room, near the door. In our corner we were in almost complete darkness. The air was pestilential, stifling. Some of the patients could not get to sleep; they would rise and remain for an hour together sitting on their beds, with their heads bent, as though in deep reflection. I used to watch them closely, trying to guess of what they might be thinking; thus I tried to kill time. Then I became lost in my own reverie; the past came before me, showing itself to my imagination in large powerful outlines filled with highlights and massive shadows; details that at any other time would have remained forgotten presented themselves with vivid force, leaving upon me an impression that would have been impossible under any other circumstances.
Then I would begin to muse dreamily on the future. When should I leave this confinement, this dreadful prison? Whither betake myself? What would then happen to me? Would I return to the place of my birth? So I brooded and brooded until hope revived in my soul.
Another time I would begin to count, one, two, three, etc. to see if sleep could be won that way. I would sometimes get as far as three thousand and still be as wakeful as ever. Then someone would turn in his bed.
Then there was Oustiantsef’s coughing, that cough of the advanced consumptive. He would groan feebly, and stammer: ‘My God, I’ve sinned, I’ve sinned!’
How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and so complete! In a corner there are some patients not yet asleep, stretched on their pallets, and talking in low voices. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far away-things that are for ever fled. He is talking of his wandering through the world, of his children, his wife, and his life in the old days. And the very accent of the man’s voice tells you that all those things belong to an irrevocable past, that he is as a limb cut off from the body of mankind and cast aside. There is another, listening intently to what he is saying. A weak, feeble sort of muttering and murmuring comes to one’s ear from far off in the dreary room, a sound as of some distant river… I remember how, one winter’s night that seemed as if it would never end, I heard a story which seemed at first like the stammerings of a soul in nightmare or the delirium of fever. Here it is.
CHAPTER IV
AKOULKA’S HUSBAND
Late one night at about eleven o’clock I had been sleeping some time and woke up with a start. The wan, fitful flame of the dist
ant lamp barely illumined the room. Nearly everyone was fast asleep, even Oustiantsef; in the quiet of the night I heard his laboured respiration, the rattling in his throat with every breath. Outside, in the corridor, sounded the muffled tread of an approaching patrol. A rifle-butt struck the floor with a low, dull sound.
The door opened; the corporal entered and counted the sick, stepping softly about the room. After a minute or so he withdrew, leaving a fresh sentry at the door; the patrol went off, and silence reigned once more. It was only then that I noticed not far from me two prisoners who were not asleep; they seemed to be holding a muttered conversation. That was by no means uncommon, for it often happened that a couple of patients whose beds adjoined and who had not exchanged a word for weeks, would all of a sudden break out into conversation in the dead of night, and one of them would tell the other his life-story.
They had probably been talking for some considerable time. I had not heard the beginning of it, and could not at first grasp what they were saying; but little by little I grew familiar with the muttered sounds, and understood all that was going on. I had not the least desire to sleep, and could not but listen.
One man was telling his story with some warmth, propped up on his elbow and leaning towards his companion. He was plainly excited to no little degree; the necessity of speech was upon him.
The other sat on his pallet with a gloomy and indifferent air, his legs stretched out flat on the mattress. Now and again he murmured some reply, more out of politeness than interest, and continually took snuff from a horn box. This was a soldier named Tchérévine from the penal battalion, a morose, cold-reasoning pedant, an idiot full of self-esteem. The narrator was one Chichkof: he was about thirty years old, a civilian convict whom I had never observed; indeed, during the whole time I was in prison I could never work up the smallest interest in him, for he was a conceited, heady fellow.
Sometimes he would hold his tongue for weeks together, and look sulky and brutal enough for anything; then all of a sudden he would interrupt a conversation, behave outrageously, fly into a white-hot rage about nothing at all, and tell long, ridiculous yarns about one barrack or another, blowing abuse on all the world, and acting like a man beside himself. Then someone would give him a hiding, and he would have another fit of silence. He was a mean and cowardly fellow, and the object of general contempt. Short of stature, he had little flesh on him, but his wandering gaze sometimes became abstracted and seemed to reflect some vague form of thought. When he told you anything he worked himself into a fever of excitement, gesticulated wildly, broke off suddenly and passed to another subject, lost himself in fresh details, and at last forgot altogether what he was talking about. He was often embroiled in argument, was Chichkof, and as he poured abuse on his adversary, he spoke with a sentimental whine and was affected almost to tears. He was not a bad hand at playing the balalaika, and had a weakness for it; on festival days he would display his prowess as a dancer when encouraged by others, and he danced by no means badly. It was quite easy to make him do what you wanted-not that he was compliant by nature, but he liked to please and to strike up an intimacy.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 160
