Fyodor Dostoyevsky - THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

During the first three days, when I was not lying stretched out on my bed, I did nothing but wander about the prison. The authorities had supplied me with a piece of linen, and I entrusted it to a reliable man to be made up into shirts. On the advice of Akim Akimitch, too, I obtained a folding mattress: it was of felt, covered with linen, as thin as a pancake, and very hard to anyone who was not accustomed to it. Akim Akimitch promised to get me all the most essential things, and with his own hands made me a patchwork blanket from a pile of old trousers and waistcoats which I had bought from various prisoners. Clothes issued to convicts become their property when they have been worn the regulation time. Then they are sold without delay; for however much worn an article of clothing may be, it always possesses a certain value. All this surprised me, especially at my first contact with this strange new world. I became as low as my companions, as typical a convict as they. Their customs, their habits, their ideas influenced me thoroughly and externally became my own, without, however, affecting my inner self. I was astonished and confused as though I had never heard of or suspected anything of the kind before; and yet I had known, or at least been told, what to expect. Direct experience, however, made a different impression on me from the mere description. How could I suppose, for instance, that old rags still possessed some value? And yet my blanket was made entirely of tatters. It is difficult to describe the cloth used for prison uniform. It resembled that thick, grey cloth manufactured for the army, but after being worn some little time it became threadbare and tore with abominable ease. The uniform was supposed to last for a whole year, but it never did so. The prisoner works and carries heavy burdens, and the cloth naturally wears out, and is soon full of holes. Our sheepskins were intended to be worn for three years. During the whole of that time they served as overcoats, blankets, and pillows; they were very durable. Nevertheless, at the end of the third year, it was not uncommon to see them mended with ordinary linen. Although they were now very much worn, it was always possible to sell them at the rate of forty kopecks apiece. The better preserved ones even fetched sixty kopecks, which was a very large sum in prison.

Money, as I have said, has a sovereign value in those places, and a prisoner who has some pecuniary resources certainly suffers ten times less than one who has nothing.

‘When the Government supplies all the convict’s needs, what can he want with money?’ reasoned our chief.

Nevertheless, I maintain that if the prisoners had not been allowed to possess anything of their own, they would have gone mad or died like flies. They would have committed unheard-of crimes-some from weariness or grief, the rest in order to get sooner punished and, as they say, ‘ have a change.’ If a convict earns a few kopecks by the sweat of his brow or at considerable risk spends his money recklessly, like a silly child, that does not prove, as might be thought, he does not appreciate its value. The convict is greedy for money, to the point of madness, and if he throws it away he does so in order to procure what he values far above money-liberty, or at least a semblance of liberty.

Convicts are dreamers; I will speak of that further on in more detail. At present I will only remark that I have heard men condemned to twenty years’ hard labour say quietly: ‘When I’ve finished my time, please God I’ll-’ The very words hard labour, or forced labour, indicate that the man has lost his freedom; and when he spends his money he is merely satisfying a natural craving.

In spite of the branding-iron and chains, in spite of the palisade which hides the free world from his eyes, and encloses him in a cage like some wild beast, he can still obtain vodka and other delights. He may even, on rare occasions, manage to bribe his immediate superiors, the veteran soldiers and noncommissioned officers, and persuade them to close their eyes to his breaches of prison discipline. He loves, moreover, to swagger, that is to say, impress his companions and persuade himself for a time that he enjoys more liberty than in fact he does. In short, the poor devil longs to convince himself of the impossible. This is why convicts take such pleasure in boasting and exaggerating their own unhappy personalities to the point of burlesque.

They find in boasting the one thing they long for-a semblance of life and liberty. A millionaire, indeed, with a rope round his neck would surely give all his millions for one breath of air. Yet there is danger in boasting. Suppose a prisoner has lived quietly for several years and by good conduct won certain privileges. Suddenly, to the astonishment of his superiors, he becomes mutinous, plays the very devil, and even ventures upon some capital crime such as murder, violation, etc. All wonder at the cause of this extraordinary conduct on the part of a man believed to be incapable of such a thing; but it is simply the convulsive manifestation of his personality, an instinctive melancholia, an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion which obscures his reason. It is a sort of epileptic fit, a spasm. Even so must a man who is buried alive and suddenly wakes up strike against the lid of his coffin. He tries to rise, to push it from him, though reason must convince him that his efforts are useless.

Reason, however, has no part in this convulsion. It must not be forgotten that almost every act of self-assertion on the part of a convia is regarded as a crime. Accordingly, he takes no account of the importance or triviality of his act: a debauch is a debauch, danger is danger; as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. It is the first step that counts.

Little by little the man becomes excited, intoxicated, and can no longer contain himself. For that reason it would be better not to drive him to extremes; everybody would be much better for it.

But how can that be managed?

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When I first entered the prison I possessed a small sum of money; but I carried very little of it about with me lest it should be confiscated. I had gummed some banknotes into the binding of my New Testament, which had been given to me at Tobolsk by someone who had been exiled many years previously, and who was accustomed to regard other ‘unfortunates’ as his brethren.

There are men in Siberia who spend their lives giving brotherly assistance to the ‘unfortunates.’ They feel the same sympathy for them as they would for their own children: their compassion is something sacred and wholly disinterested. I cannot help here relating quite briefly an encounter which I had at about this time.

In the neighbouring town there lived a widow, Nastasia Ivanovna. None of us. of course, was in direct contact with this woman. She had made it the object of her life to assist all those in exile, and particularly us convicts. Had there been some misfortune in her family? Had someone dear to her suffered punishment similar to ours? I do not know. In any case, she did what she could for us, though it was little enough for she was very poor. But we felt, when shut up in prison, that we had a devoted friend outside. She often brought us news, which we were very glad to hear, for nothing of the kind reached us.

When I left the prison to be taken to another town I had the opportunity of calling upon her and making her acquaintance. She lived in one of the suburbs, at the house of a near relation.

Nastasia Ivanovna was neither old nor young, neither pretty nor ugly. It was difficult, impossible even, to know whether she was intelligent and well-bred. But through her actions there shone an infinite compassion, an irresistible desire to please, to solace, to be in some way helpful. All this could be read in the sweetness of her smile.