Fyodor Dostoyevsky - THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

The moment preceding punishment is terrible for a man condemned to the rods. I have seen many of them on the eve of the fatal day: I generally met with them in the hospital when I was ill, which happened often enough. In Russia the people who show most compassion for the convicts are certainly the doctors, who never draw those distinctions between the prisoners which are observed by other persons brought into direct relations with them. In this respect the common people can alone be compared with the doctors, for they never reproach a criminal with the crime that he has committed, whatever it may be. They forgive him in consideration of the sentence passed upon him.

It is well known that the common people throughout Russia call crime a ‘misfortune,’ and the criminal an ‘unfortunate.’ This definition is expressive and profound, though unconscious and instinctive. To the doctor the convicts have naturally recourse, above all when they are to undergo corporal punishment. The prisoner who has been before a court martial knows almost to the hour when his sentence will be executed. To escape it he gets himself sent to the hospital, in order to postpone for some days the terrible moment. When he is, declared restored to health, he knows that the day after he leaves the hospital this moment will arrive. Accordingly, on quitting the hospital the convict is always in a state of agitation. Some of them may endeavour from vanity to conceal their anxiety, but no one is taken in by that; everyone understands the cruelty of such a moment, and is silent from motives of humanity.

I knew one young convict, an ex-soldier, sentenced for. murder, who was to undergo the maximum punishment. On the eve of the day on which he was to suffer, he had resolved to drink a bottle of vodka into which he had infused a quantity of snuff.

A prisoner condemned to the rods always drinks, before the critical moment arrives, a certain amount of spirits which he has procured long beforehand, and often at a fabulous price. He would deprive himself of the necessaries of life for six months rather than not be in a position to swallow half a pint of vodka before the flogging. The convicts are convinced that a drunken man suffers less from the rods or the whip than one who is stone-cold sober.

To return to my narrative. A few moments after swallowing his bottle of vodka the poor devil felt sick. He coughed up blood, and was carried unconscious to the hospital. His lungs were so much injured by this accident that phthisis set in and carried him off within a few months. The doctors who had attended him never discovered the origin of his malady.

If examples of cowardice are not rare among the prisoners, it must be added that there are some whose intrepidity is quite astounding. I remember many instances of extraordinary courage. The arrival of a terrible bandit in hospital remains fixed in my memory.

One fine summer day word went round the infirmary that the notorious prisoner Orloff was to be flogged the same evening, and that he would be brought into hospital afterwards. The patients already there said that the punishment would be a cruel one, and all-including myself, I must admit-awaited with curiosity the arrival of this villain, about whom the most unheard-of tales were told. He was a malefactor of a rare kind, capable of assassinating old men and children in cold blood. He possessed an indomitable force of will, and was fully conscious of his power. He had been found guilty of several crimes and condemned to be flogged through the ranks.

Towards evening he was brought, or, rather carried in. The place was already dark, and candles were lighted. Orloff was excessively pale, almost unconscious, with his thick curly hair of dull, lack-lustre black. His back was torn and swollen, blue, and stained with blood. The prisoners nursed him throughout the night; they changed his poultices, placed him on his side, prepared the lotion ordered by the doctor; in a word, they showed as much solicitude for him as for a relation or benefactor.

Next day he had fully recovered his faculties, and took one or two turns round the room. I was much astonished, for he was broken down and powerless when he was brought in. He had received only half the number of blows ordered by the sentence when the doctor stopped the punishment, convinced that if it were continued Orloff’s death would inevitably ensue.

This criminal was of a feeble constitution, weakened by long imprisonment. Anyone who has seen convicts after Hogging will remember their thin, drawn features and feverish looks. Orloff soon recovered his powerful energy, which enabled him to overcome his physical weakness. He was no ordinary man. From curiosity I made his acquaintance, and was able to study him at leisure for an entire week. Never in my life did I meet a man whose will was more firm or inflexible.

I had seen at Tobolsk just such another celebrity of the same kind-a brigand chief. This fellow was a veritable wild beast; one had only to be near him, without even knowing him, in order to recognize him as a dangerous man. What scared me above all was his utter lack of intelligence. In his case matter had won such an ascendancy over mind, that one could see at a glance that he cared for nothing in the world but the brutal satisfaction of his physical desires. And yet I felt certain that Kareneff (for such was his name) would have fainted on being condemned to the severe corporal punishment which Orloff had undergone, but that he would have murdered the nearest man to him without blinking.

Orloff, on the contrary, was a brilliant example of the triumph of spirit over matter. He had a perfect command over himself. He despised punishment, and feared nothing in the world. His dominant characteristic was boundless energy, a thirst for vengeance, and an inflexible will when he had some object to attain.

I was not astonished at his haughty air. He looked down upon all around him from the height of his grandeur. Not that he took the trouble to pose, for bis pride was an innate quality. I don’t believe anything had the least influence over him. He looked upon everything with the calmest eye, as if nothing in the world could surprise him. He knew well that the other prisoners respected him but he never took advantage of it or gave himself airs.

Nevertheless, vanity and conceit are defects from which scarcely any convict is exempt. Orloff was intelligent and strangely frank in talking too much about himself. He replied point-blank to all the questions I put to him, and confessed that he was waiting impatiently for his return to health in order to take the remainder of the punishment he was to undergo.

‘Now,’ he said to me with a wink, ‘it is all over. I shall take the remainder, and then be sent to Nertchinsk with a convoy of prisoners. I shall use the opportunity to escape, and am confident I shall succeed. If only my back would heal a little quicker!’

For five days he was burning with impatience to be in a condition to leave hospital. At times he was gay and in the best of humours, and I profited by those rare occasions to ask him about his adventures.

He would contract his eyebrows a little, but always answered my questions straightforwardly. When he realized that I was endeavouring to see through him and discover in him some trace of repentence, he looked at me with a haughty and contemptuous air, as if I were a foolish little boy whom he honoured too highly with his conversation.

I detected in his countenance a sort of compassion for me. After a moment’s pause he would laugh out loud, but without the least irony, and I fancy he must, more than once, have laughed in the same manner when my words returned to his memory. At last he signed himself out as cured, although his back was not yet completely healed. As I too was almost well again, we left the infirmary together. I returned to barracks, while he was shut up in the guard-room, where he had been formerly detained. On parting he shook hands with me, which in his eyes was a signal mark of favour. I fancy he did so because at that moment he was in a good humour; but in reality he must have despised me, for I was a feeble being, in all respects contemptible, and guilty above all of resignation. Next day he underwent the second half of his punishment.