Fyodor Dostoyevsky - THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

A common man sent to hard labour finds himself in kindred society, perhaps even in more interesting society than he has been accustomed to. He loses his native place and family, but his ordinary surroundings are much the same as before. An educated man, condemned by law to the same punishment as the other, suffers incomparably more. He must stifle all his needs, all his habits; he must descend into a lower sphere, must breathe another air. He is like a fish thrown upon the sand. The punishment which he undergoes, equal in the eyes of the law for all criminals, is ten times more severe and more painful for him than for the common man. This is an incontestable truth, even if one thinks only of material comforts that must be sacrificed.

I was saying that the Poles formed a group by themselves. They lived together and took no notice of any of their fellow convicts, except a Jew, and that for no other reason than because he amused them. Our Jew was generally liked, although everyone laughed at him. We only had one, and even now I cannot think of him without a smile. Whenever I looked at him I thought of the Jew Jankel in Gogol’s Tarass Boulba, who, when undressed and ready to go to bed with his wife in a sort of cupboard, resembled a fowl; for Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein and a plucked fowl were as like one another as two drops of water. He was already about fifty years of age, small, feeble, cunning, and at the same time very stupid, bold, and boastful, though a horrible coward. His face was covered with wrinkles; his forehead and cheeks were scarred from the burning he had received in the pillory. I never understood how he had been able to live through the sixty strokes to which he had been condemned for murder.

He carried on his person a medical prescription given him by other Jews immediately after his exposure in the pillory. They had promised that with the aid of that ointment his scars would disappear in less than a fortnight; but he had been afraid to use it, and was waiting for the end of his twenty years’ penal servitude, when he would become a colonist and put the famous remedy to better use.

‘Otherwise I shall not be able to get married,’ he would say; ‘and it is essential that I marry.’

We were great friends, for his good humour was inexhaustible. Prison life did not seem to disagree with him. A goldsmith by trade, he received more orders than he could execute, for there was no jeweller’s shop in the town. He thus escaped hard labour, and as a matter of course he lent money on pledges to the convicts, who paid him heavy interest. He had arrived at the prison before me, but one of the Poles described to me his triumphal entry. It is quite a history, and I shall relate it further on, for there is much to tell of Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein.

As for the other prisoners there were, first of all, four Old Believers, among whom were the old man from Staradoub, two or three Little Russians (very morose persons), and a young convict with delicate features and a finely chiselled nose. He was only about twenty-three years of age, but had already committed eight murders. Then there was a band of coiners, one of whom was the buffoon of our barrack, and, finally, some sombre, sour-tempered convicts, shorn and disfigured, always silent, and full of envy. They looked askance at all who came near them, and must have been doing so for many years. I noticed all these people at a glance on the first night of my arrival. They were veiled in thick smoke; the atmosphere was poisonous, and vibrant with obscene oaths, the rattling of chains, insults, and cynical laughter. I stretched myself out on the bare planks, my head resting on my coat, rolled up to do duty for a pillow, with which I had not yet been supplied. Then I covered myself with my sheepskin, but, owing to the painful impressions of the evening, I was unable for some time to get to sleep. My new life was only just beginning. The future held much that I had not foreseen, of which I had never had the least idea.

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Three days after my arrival I was ordered to go to work. The impression made upon me by my surroundings remain to this day very clear. There was nothing particularly striking about them, unless one considers that my position was in itself extraordinary. First sensations count for a good deal, and as yet everything was unfamiliar. The first three days were certainly the most unpleasant in the whole term of imprisonment.

I told myself over and over again that I had reached my journey’s end. I was now in prison, my home for many years. Here I would have to live. I had arrived overwhelmed with grief. Who knew but when I left I should do so with regret? I told myself all this as one touches a wound, the better to feel its pain. That I might regret my stay was a terrible thought: already I felt to what an intolerable degree man is a creature of habit. But that belonged to the future. The present, meanwhile, was sufficiently grim.

The eager curiosity with which my fellow convicts examined me, their harshness towards a former nobleman now joining their society, a harshness which sometimes took the form of hatred-all this tormented me to such a degree that I was only too glad to go to work in order to measure at one stroke the whole extent of my misfortune, to begin at once to share the common life, and to fall with my companions into the abyss.

But all convicts are not alike, and I had not yet begun to distinguish from the general hostility a certain sympathy which here and there was manifested towards me.

After a time the affability and goodwill shown by several of the prisoners gave me a little courage and restored my spirits. Most friendly among them was Akim Akimitch, and I soon noticed other kind, goodnatured faces in the dark and hateful crowd. I consoled myself with the thought that bad men are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good. Who knows? These fellows may be no worse than others who are free. Reflecting thus, I felt some doubt, but how right I proved to be!

There was Suchiloff, for example, a man whose acquaintance I did not make until long afterwards, although he was a near neighbour during almost the whole period of my confinement. Whenever I speak of the better type of convict who is no worse than other men, my thoughts turn involuntarily to him. He acted as my servant, together with another prisoner named Osip whom Akim Akimitch had recommended to me immediately after my arrival. For thirty kopecks a month this man agreed to cook me a separate dinner, since I could pay for my own food and might not be able to stomach the ordinary prison fare. Osip was one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners to work in our two kitchens. Incidentally, they were at liberty to refuse these duties, and to give them up whenever they thought fit. The cooks were men who were not expected to do hard labour: they had to bake bread and prepare the cabbage soup. They were called ‘cook-maids,’ not from contempt (for the men chosen were always the most intelligent) but merely in fun, and they took no offence at the name.

For many years past Osip had been regularly chosen as one of the ‘cook-maids.’ He never refused the duty except when he was out of sorts, or when he saw an opportunity of smuggling vodka into the barracks. Although he had been condemned as a smuggler, he was remarkably honest and good-tempered, as I have already observed; at the same time he was a dreadful coward, and feared the rod above all things. Of a peaceful, patient disposition, affable towards everyone, he never became involved in quarrels. But he could never resist the temptation of bringing in spirits, notwithstanding his cowardice: it was simply his love of the game. Like the other cooks he dealt in spirits, but on a far smaller scale than Gazin because he was afraid of the risks involved. I always lived on good terms with Osip. To have a separate table it was not necessary to be very rich; it cost me only one rouble a month apart from the bread, which was supplied free. Sometimes when I was very hungry I determined to eat the cabbage soup, in spite of the disgust with which it invariably filled me, until after a time my revulsion entirely disappeared. I generally bought one pound of meat a day, which cost me two kopecks.