I have already said that almost everyone in the barrack settled down to some handiwork: besides the gamblers, there were no more than five totally idle men; they went to sleep at once. My place on the bunk was just by the door. On the other side of the bunk, head to head with me, was Akim Akimych. He worked till ten or eleven, gluing together some multicolored Chinese lantern commissioned from him in town for rather good pay. He was an expert at making lanterns, worked methodically, without getting distracted; when he finished work, he put everything away neatly, spread out his mattress, said his prayers, and lay down properly in bed. He extended this propriety and orderliness, evidently, to the most petty pedantry; he obviously must have considered himself an extremely intelligent man, as all dull and limited people generally do. I disliked him from the very first day, though, I remember, on that first day I mused about him a great deal and marveled most of all that such a person, instead of succeeding in life, had wound up in prison. Later on I shall have to speak more than once about Akim Akimych.
But I will briefly describe the composition of our whole barrack. I was to live in it for many years, and these were my future roommates and comrades. Understandably, I studied them with greedy curiosity. To the left of my place on the bunk was a little group of Caucasian mountaineers, sent up mostly for robberies and with varying terms. There were two Lezgins, one Chechen, and three Daghestan Tatars.2 The Chechen was a gloomy and sullen creature; he hardly ever spoke with anyone and always looked around him with hatred, furtively, and with a venomous, maliciously mocking smile. One of the Lezgins was already an old man with a long, fine, hooked nose—an inveterate brigand by the look of him. But the other, Nurra, made a most delightful, pleasing impression on me from the very first day. He was still a young man, not tall, of Herculean physique, perfectly blond, with pale blue eyes, a pug nose like a Finnish woman’s, and bowlegs from a life spent on horseback. His body had been cut and wounded all over by bayonets and bullets. In the Caucasus he had belonged to the allies, but he kept going on the quiet and joining the opposition mountaineers, and made raids with them on the Russians. Everyone in the prison liked him. He was always cheerful, friendly to everyone, worked without a murmur, was calm and serene, though he often looked indignantly at the vileness and filth of the prisoners’ life and was fiercely outraged by any sort of stealing, swindling, drunkenness, and dishonesty in general; yet he never quarreled, but only turned away in indignation. He himself, during all his time in prison, never stole anything or committed a single bad act. He was extremely devout. He said his prayers piously; during the fasts before the Muslim holy days he fasted fanatically and stood for whole nights in prayer. Everyone liked him and believed in his honesty. “Nurra’s a lion,” the prisoners used to say; and the nickname of “lion” stuck to him. He was absolutely convinced that, once he had finished his appointed term in prison, he would be sent home to the Caucasus, and he lived only in that hope. I think he would have died if he had been deprived of it. I noticed him distinctly on my first day in prison. It was impossible not to notice his kind, sympathizing face among the angry, sullen, and jeering faces of the other prisoners. Within the first half hour of my arrival in prison, he patted me on the shoulder as he walked past me and laughed good-naturedly in my face. At first I could not understand what this meant. He spoke Russian very poorly. Soon after that he came up to me again, and again smiled and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. Then again and again, and so it went on for three days. On his part, as I guessed and later learned, this meant that he was sorry for me, that he felt how hard this first acquaintance with prison was for me, that he wanted to show me his friendship, cheer me up, and assure me of his protection. Kind and naïve Nurra!
The Daghestan Tartars were three in number, and they were all brothers. Two of them were middle-aged, but the third, Alei, was no more than twenty-two and looked younger still. His place on the bunk was next to mine. His beautiful, open, intelligent, and at the same time good-naturedly naïve face won my heart at first sight, and I was very glad that fate had sent me him and not some other man as a neighbor. His whole soul was expressed in his handsome—one might even say beautiful—face. His smile was so trustful, so childishly simple-hearted; his big, dark eyes were so gentle, so tender, that I always felt a special pleasure, even a relief from anguish and sadness, in looking at him. I say it without exaggeration. At home one day his older brother (he had five older brothers; two others ended up in some sort of mill) told him to take his saber and get on his horse to go on an expedition with him. In mountaineer families respect for one’s elders is so great that the boy not only did not dare, but did not even think of asking where they were going. The brothers did not find it necessary to tell him. They were all setting out on a robbery, to waylay a rich Armenian merchant and hold him up. And so it went: they killed the convoy, put a knife into the Armenian, and stole his goods. The affair was discovered: all six were seized, tried, found guilty, flogged, and sent to hard labor in Siberia. The only mercy granted Alei by the court was the shortening of his term; he was sent up for four years. The brothers loved him very much, and more with a sort of fatherly than brotherly love. He was their comfort in exile, and they, who were usually gloomy and sullen, always smiled looking at him, and when they talked to him (though they talked to him very little, as if they considered him still a boy with whom there was no point in talking about anything serious), their stern faces softened, and I guessed they were saying something jocular, almost childish—at least they always exchanged glances and chuckled good-naturedly when they heard his reply. He hardly ever dared to address them himself: so respectful he was. It is hard to imagine how this boy, through the whole time of his imprisonment, was able to preserve such gentleness of heart, to form in himself such strict honesty, such sincerity and attractiveness, and not become coarse and depraved. His, however, was a strong and harmonious nature, for all its apparent gentleness. I got to know him well later on. He was as chaste as a pure maiden, and if someone in prison committed a nasty, cynical, dirty, or unjust and violent act, the fire of indignation lit up in his beautiful eyes, which made them still more beautiful. But he avoided quarrels and abuse, though he was not one of those who let themselves be insulted with impunity and knew how to stand up for himself. But he had no quarrels with anyone: everyone liked him and everyone was nice to him. At first he was merely polite with me. I gradually began to converse with him; after a few months he learned to speak excellent Russian, which his brothers never accomplished in all their time in prison. He seemed to me an extremely intelligent boy, extremely modest and tactful, and already quite capable of reasoning. In general, I will say beforehand: I consider Alei a far from ordinary being, and I remember my meeting with him as one of the best meetings in my life. There are people so beautiful by nature, so richly endowed by God, that the mere thought that they might ever change for the worse seems impossible to you. You are always at peace about them. I am at peace about Alei even now. Where is he now?…
Once, already long after my arrival in prison, I was lying on the bunk and thinking about something very painful. Alei, who was always busy and liked to work, was not occupied with anything this time, though it was too early to go to sleep. It was one of their Muslim holy days, and they were not working. He was lying with his hands behind his head and also thinking about something. Suddenly he asked me:
“So, is it very hard for you now?”
I looked him over with curiosity, and this quick, direct question from Alei, always tactful, always discerning, always intelligent of heart, seemed strange to me; but looking more attentively, I saw in his face so much anguish, so much suffering from his memories, that I realized at once that for him, too, it was very hard and precisely at that moment. I told him my guess. He smiled and sighed sadly. I liked his smile, always tender and heartfelt. Besides, when he smiled, he showed two rows of pearl white teeth, the beauty of which might have been envied by the most beautiful woman in the world.
“So, Alei, you m
ust have been thinking of how they’re celebrating this holy day at home in Daghestan? It must be good there?”
“Yes,” he replied rapturously, and his eyes shone. “But how did you know I was thinking about that?”
“How could I not know! So it’s better there than here?”
“Oh, why do you say that!…”
“What flowers there must be there now, what a paradise!…”
“O-oh, better not to speak of it.” He was in great agitation.
“Listen, Alei, did you have a sister?”
“I did, and what of it?”
“She must be a beauty, if she’s like you.”
“Forget about me! She’s such a beauty, there’s no better in all Daghestan. Ah, what a beauty my sister is! You’ve never seen anything like it! My mother was also a beauty.”
“And your mother loved you?”
“Ah! What are you saying! She must have died of grief for me by now. I was her favorite son. She loved me more than my sister, more than anyone … She came to me in my sleep last night and wept over me.”
He fell silent and did not say another word that evening. But from then on he kept trying to talk to me, though out of the respect which for some unknown reason he felt for me, he never addressed me first. But he was very glad when I addressed him. I asked him about the Caucasus, about his former life. His brothers did not prevent him from talking to me; they were even pleased. Seeing that I was growing more and more fond of Alei, they, too, became much friendlier towards me.
Alei helped me at work and did me all the service he could in the barrack, and you could see that he was very pleased to oblige me and to make things easier for me in some way, though in this effort to oblige there was not the slightest humiliation or profit-seeking, but only a warm, friendly feeling for me, which he no longer concealed. Among other things, he had considerable manual ability; he learned to sew linens rather well, stitched boots, and later did his best to learn joinery. His brothers praised him and were proud of him.
“Listen, Alei,” I said to him once, “why don’t you learn to read and write in Russian? Do you know how useful it might be for you here in Siberia later on?”
“I’d like to very much. But who will teach me?”
“As if there aren’t enough literate people here! Do you want me to teach you?”
“Oh, please do!” And he even sat up on the bunk and clasped his hands pleadingly, looking at me.
We started the next evening. I had a Russian translation of the New Testament—a book that was not forbidden in prison. Without an ABC, with this book alone, Alei learned to read excellently in a few weeks. After some three months, he understood the printed language perfectly. He studied with ardor, with enthusiasm.
Once he and I read through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. I noticed that he seemed to recite certain passages from it with particular feeling.
I asked him if he liked what he had read.
He gave me a quick glance and color came to his face.
“Oh, yes!” he answered. “Yes, Isa is a holy prophet, Isa speaks the words of God. How good!”
“What do you like most of all?”
“Where he says: forgive, love, do not offend, and love your enemies. Ah, how well he speaks!”3
He turned to his brothers, who were listening to our conversation, and ardently began saying something to them. They talked among themselves long and seriously, nodding their heads in agreement. Then with a gravely benevolent, that is, a purely Muslim, smile (which I like so much, and what I like is precisely the gravity of this smile), they turned to me and confirmed that Isa was God’s prophet and that he performed great miracles, that he fashioned a bird out of clay, blew on it, and it flew … and that they have it written in their books. In saying this, they were fully convinced that they were giving me great pleasure by praising Isa, and Alei was perfectly happy that his brothers had decided and wished to give me this pleasure.
Writing also went extremely well for us. Alei got hold of some paper (and did not allow me to pay for it), pens, ink, and in some two months he learned to write exceedingly well. His brothers were even struck by it. Their pride and satisfaction knew no limits. They did not know how to thank me. At work, if we happened to be working together, they vied with each other in helping me and counted it their own good fortune. To say nothing of Alei. He loved me maybe as much as his brothers. I will never forget how he left the prison. He took me behind the barrack, threw himself on my neck and wept. He had never kissed me or wept before. “You’ve done so much for me, so much,” he said. “My father and mother could not have done so much: you have made a man of me. God will reward you, and I will never forget you …”
Where is he, where is he now, my good, dear, dear Alei!…
Besides the Circassians, there was also a whole group of Poles in our barracks, who made up a completely separate family and hardly communicated with the other prisoners. I have already said that, for their exclusiveness, for their hatred of the Russian prisoners, they were hated in their turn by everybody. These were sick, tormented natures; there were six of them. Some of them were educated people. I will talk about them separately and in detail further on. It was from them that I occasionally obtained some books during the last years of my life in prison. The first book I read made a strong, strange, and singular impression on me. I will speak in particular about those impressions another time. They are all too curious for me, and I am sure they will be totally incomprehensible for many. It is hard to judge about certain things if you have not experienced them. I will say one thing: that moral privations are more painful than any physical torments. A simple man, going to hard labor, lands in his own society, or perhaps one even more developed. He has lost a great deal, of course—his birthplace, his family, everything—but his milieu remains the same. An educated man, who is subject by law to the same punishment as the simple man, often loses incomparably more. He has to stifle in himself all his needs, all his habits, to move into a milieu that is insufficient for him, to get used to breathing a different air … He is a fish out of water … And the same punishment imposed by law on everyone turns out to be ten times more tormenting for him. This is true … even if it is only a matter of sacrificing material habits.
But the Poles made up a special closed group. There were six of them, and they stuck together. Of all the prisoners in our barrack, they liked only the Jew, and that maybe only because he amused them. However, the other prisoners also liked our little Jew, though all of them without exception laughed at him. He was our only one, and even now I cannot recall him without laughing. Whenever I looked at him, I was always reminded of Gogol’s little Jew Yankel, from Taras Bulba,4 who, when he got undressed to go and spend the night with his wife in some sort of closet, at once bore a terrible resemblance to a chicken. Isai Fomich, our Jew, was as like a plucked chicken as two drops of water. He was no longer a young man, around fifty, short and weak, cunning, and at the same time decidedly stupid. He was impudent and arrogant, and at the same time a terrible coward. He was all little wrinkles, and his brow and cheeks bore the brands he had received on the scaffold. I simply cannot understand how he could have survived sixty lashes. He came on the accusation of murder. He had a recipe hidden away, which his Jewish friends had obtained for him from a doctor immediately after the scaffold. With this recipe an ointment could be prepared which could make his brands go away in two weeks. He did not dare use this ointment in prison and waited for the end of his twelve-year term at hard labor, after which, having settled in exile, he firmly intended to use the recipe. “Othervise it vill be impossible to get marryet,” he said to me once, “and I absolutely vant to get marryet.” He and I were great friends. He was always in excellent spirits. Life in prison was easy for him; he was a jeweler by trade, was buried in work from town, where there was no jeweler, and was thus delivered from heavy work. Naturally, he was also a moneylender and provided all the prisoners with money at interest and against pledges. He had
come before me, and one of the Poles described his arrival for me in detail. It is a very funny story, which I will tell further on; I will be speaking of Isai Fomich more than once.
Notes from a Dead House Page 9