Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  The rest of the people in our barrack consisted of four Old Believers, old men and Bible readers, among them the old man from the Starodubsky settlements; two or three Ukrainians, gloomy fellows; a young prisoner with a fine little face and a fine little nose, about twenty-three years old, who had already killed eight souls; a group of counterfeiters, one of whom was the entertainer of our whole barrack; and finally several gloomy and sullen persons with shaved skulls and disfigured faces, silent and envious, who looked around themselves with lowering hatred, and intended to go on looking like that, silently scowling and hating, for long years to come—for their whole term at hard labor. All this only flashed past me on that first cheerless evening of my new life—flashed amidst the smoke and soot, the curses and inexpressible cynicism, in the mephitic atmosphere, in the clanking of fetters, amidst oaths and shameless guffawing. I lay down on the bare bunk, put my clothes under my head (I had no pillow as yet), covered myself with my sheepskin coat, but was unable to fall asleep for a long time, worn out though I was and broken by all the monstrous and unexpected impressions of that first day. But my new life was only beginning. Much still lay ahead of me that I had never thought of, that I had not anticipated …

  V

  The First Month

  Three days after my arrival in prison, I was ordered to go to work. That first day of work is a very memorable one for me, though nothing extraordinary happened to me in the course of it, at least taking into consideration all that was extraordinary in my situation to begin with. But this, too, was one of my first impressions, and I still went on greedily observing everything. All those first three days I had spent in the most painful feelings: “This is the end of my wanderings: I am in prison!” I repeated to myself every moment. “This is my refuge for many long years, my corner, which I enter with such a mistrustful, such a morbid feeling … But who knows? Maybe many years from now I’ll be sorry when I have to leave it!…,” I would add, not without an admixture of that gleeful feeling which sometimes reaches the point of a need to deliberately chafe your own wound, as if you wish to admire your own pain, as if the consciousness of the extent of your misfortune indeed affords pleasure. The thought of being sorry to leave this corner in time struck me with horror: even then I already had a presentiment of the monstrous degree to which a man grows accustomed to things. But that still lay ahead of me, and meanwhile everything around me now was hostile and—frightening … or maybe not everything, but naturally it seemed so to me. That savage curiosity with which my new fellow convicts looked me over, their redoubled severity towards a novice from the gentry who had suddenly appeared in their corporation, a severity that at times almost reached the point of hatred—all this tormented me so much that I myself wanted to start work all the sooner, the sooner to learn and experience the whole of my calamity at once, so as to begin to live as they all did, the sooner to fall into the same rut with them. Naturally, I did not notice then and did not suspect much that was right under my nose: amidst the hostile I had as yet to divine the comforting. However, in the meantime the few affable, gentle persons I met in those three days greatly encouraged me. The most gentle and affable with me was Akim Akimych. Among the sullen and hate-filled faces of the other prisoners, I could not help noticing several that were kind and cheerful. “There are bad people everywhere, and among the bad some good ones,” I hastened to think, consoling myself. “Who knows? Maybe these people are not so much worse than the remainder, who remained there, outside the prison.” I was thinking that, and shook my head at the thought myself, and yet—my God!—if I had only known then how true that thought was! There was a man here, for example, whom I came to know fully only after many, many years, and yet he was with me and constantly around me during almost all my time in prison. This was the prisoner Sushilov. Just now, when I mentioned convicts who were no worse than others, I involuntarily recalled him at once. He served me. I also had another servant. From the very beginning, from the first days, Akim Akimych recommended to me a prisoner named Osip, saying that for thirty kopecks a month he would cook special food for me every day, if I found the prison fare so disgusting and had the means to buy my own. Osip was one of the four cooks appointed for our two kitchens by election among the prisoners, though, incidentally, they remained perfectly free to accept or reject the appointment; and having accepted it, they could reject it again even the next day. The cooks did not go out to work, and all their duty consisted in baking bread and cooking shchi. They were called not cooks but cookies (in the feminine)—not out of disdain for them, by the way, the less so as the most sensible and, if possible, honest men were chosen for the kitchen, but just so, as a friendly joke, at which our cooks were not offended in the least. Osip was almost always chosen, and for several years in a row he was our constant cooky, and occasionally refused, only for a time, when he was quite overcome by anguish and, along with it, the wish to smuggle in vodka. He was a man of rare honesty and meekness, though he got there for contraband. He was that same contrabandist, the tall, sturdy fellow I have already mentioned; a coward, afraid of everything, especially birching, placid, uncomplaining, gentle with everyone, who never quarreled with anyone, but who could not help smuggling vodka, despite all his cowardice, out of a passion for contraband. He and the other cooks also dealt in vodka, though, of course, not on the same scale as Gazin, for instance, because he did not have the courage to risk so much. I always got along very well with this Osip. As for the means for having your own food, very little was needed. I won’t be wrong if I say that my food cost me only one silver rouble a month, apart from bread, naturally, which was government issue, and sometimes shchi, if I was very hungry, despite my aversion to it, which, however, went away almost completely later on. I usually bought a piece of beef, a pound a day. In winter it cost half a kopeck. Beef was brought from the market by one of the invalids, of whom we had one in each barrack to keep order, and who voluntarily took upon themselves the duty of going to the market every day to buy things for the prisoners, and did not take any pay for it, except perhaps something trifling. They did it for the sake of their own peace; otherwise it would have been impossible for them to live in the barracks. They used to bring tobacco, bricks of tea, beef, kalachi, and so on and so forth, with the one exception of vodka. They were not asked to bring vodka, though they were occasionally treated to some. For several years in a row, Osip cooked for me one and the same piece of fried beef. How it was fried is another question, and that was not the point. Remarkably enough, for several years I hardly exchanged two words with Osip. I tried to talk with him many times, but he was somehow unable to keep up a conversation: he would smile, or answer yes or no, and that was all. It was even strange to look at this seven-year-old Hercules.

  But, besides Osip, another of the people who helped me was Sushilov. I did not ask him or seek him out. He somehow found me himself and attached himself to me; I don’t even remember when or how it happened. He began doing laundry for me. A big cesspit was dug behind the barracks for that purpose. The prisoners’ linen was laundered over that pit in wooden tubs. Besides that, Sushilov himself invented thousands of different duties to please me: he prepared my tea kettle, ran various errands, found things I needed, took my jacket to be mended, tarred my boots four times a month; he did it all zealously, bustlingly, as if God knows what sort of duty lay on him—in short, he bound his fate with mine completely, and took all my affairs upon himself. For instance, he never said, “You have so many shirts, your jacket is torn,” and so on, but always, “We now have so many shirts, our jacket is torn.” He tried to read my eyes, and seemed to have taken that as his main purpose in life. He had no sort of handicraft, and it seems he got his kopecks only from me. I paid him as much as I could, that is, in small change, and he always remained uncomplainingly satisfied. He could not help serving somebody, and it seems he chose me in particular because I was more well-mannered than the others and more honest about payments. He was one of those who can never get rich and set themselves
up, and who would accept to stand watch for a maidan, spending whole nights in freezing entryways, listening to every sound outside in case it was the major, and for it took five silver kopecks for almost a whole night, and if they failed they lost everything and answered for it with their hide. I have already spoken about them. The characteristic of these people is the annihilation of their own person always, everywhere, and before almost everyone, and in group activities to take not even a secondary but a tertiary role. All this is simply in their nature. Sushilov was a very pitiful fellow, totally uncomplaining and humiliated, even downtrodden, though nobody in our barrack had trod on him, he was just downtrodden by nature. I always pitied him for some reason. I could not even glance at him without that feeling; but why I pitied him, I could not say myself. I also could not converse with him; nor did he know how to converse, and it was obviously a great difficulty for him, and he would only liven up when, to end the conversation, I would give him something to do, ask him to go, to run somewhere. I even became convinced, finally, that I was giving him pleasure by it. He was neither tall nor short, neither good- nor bad-looking, neither stupid nor smart, neither young nor old, slightly pockmarked, somewhat blond. It was never possible to say anything too definite about him. One thing only: it seems to me, as far as I could guess, that he belonged to the same company as Sirotkin, and that solely because he was downtrodden and uncomplaining. The prisoners occasionally chuckled at him, mainly because he had exchanged on the way to Siberia with his party, and had done so for a red shirt and one silver rouble. It was the negligible price he had sold himself for that made the prisoners laugh at him. To exchange means to change names, and therefore fates, with someone. Strange as this fact may seem, it is true, and in my time it was still in full force among prisoners sent to Siberia, hallowed by tradition and defined by well-known forms. At first I simply could not believe it, though I finally came to accept the obvious.

  Here is how it was done. For instance, a party of prisoners is being sent to Siberia. All sorts are going: to hard labor, to the mills, to penal settlements; all going together. Somewhere along the way, say in Perm province, one member of the party decides to exchange with another. For instance, some Mikhailov, sentenced for murder or some other capital offense, finds going to hard labor for many years unbeneficial. Suppose he’s a clever fellow, an old hand, who knows his business; so he’s on the lookout for somebody in the same party who is of a simpler, more downtrodden, more uncomplaining sort, and whose sentence is comparatively lighter: a few years in a mill or a settlement, or even at hard labor, only for a shorter term. Finally, he comes across Sushilov. Sushilov is a house serf and is simply being sent to a settlement. He has already gone a thousand miles, naturally without a kopeck to his name, because Sushilov will never have a kopeck—he goes on, exhausted, worn-out, eating only government rations, without a fleeting bite of something good, in nothing but government clothes, serving everybody for pitiful small change. Mikhailov strikes up a conversation with Sushilov, makes his acquaintance, even becomes friends with him, and finally, at some stopping place, treats him to vodka. He finally makes the suggestion: how would he like to exchange? “I, Mikhailov, this and that, I’m going to hard labor, not really to hard labor, but to a ‘special section.’ It’s hard labor, but special, meaning better.” This special section, for as long as it existed, was not even known to all the authorities—for instance, those in Petersburg. It was such a separate and special little corner, in one of the little corners of Siberia, and held so few people (in my time there were about seventy men in it), that it was even hard to find a trace of it. Later I met people who worked in Siberia and knew it well, who first heard about the existence of a “special section” from me. In the Code of Law there are only six lines about it: “There is instituted in such-and-such prison a Special Section for the most serious criminals, until such time as camps for the heaviest hard labor are opened in Siberia.” Even the prisoners themselves did not know whether it was for good or for a fixed term. No term was mentioned; it only said until the opening of the heaviest labor, meaning “for the long haul.” No wonder that neither Sushilov nor anyone in his party knew about it, not excluding the convict Mikhailov himself, who could only have a notion of this special section judging by his crime, which was all too serious and for which he had already gone through his three or four thousand. Consequently, he was not being sent to a very nice place. Whereas Sushilov was going to a settlement; what could be better? “How would you like to exchange?” Sushilov is a bit tipsy, a simple soul, filled with gratitude for Mikhailov’s kindness to him, and therefore does not dare to refuse. Besides, he has already heard from the prisoners in his party that it is possible to exchange, that others do it, consequently there is nothing extraordinary and unheard-of about it. They come to an agreement. The shameless Mikhailov, taking advantage of Sushilov’s extraordinary simplicity, buys his name from him for a red shirt and a silver rouble, which he gives him on the spot in front of witnesses. The next day Sushilov is no longer drunk, but he is given drink again, and, well, it’s bad to back out: the silver rouble has already been drunk up, a little later the red shirt has been, too. If you don’t like it, pay back the money. And where is Sushilov to get a whole silver rouble? And if he doesn’t pay it back, his group will make him: they take a strict view of these things. Besides, if you’ve made a promise, keep it—that the group will insist on. Otherwise they’ll chew you to pieces. Beat you to death, maybe, or simply kill you, or at least scare the hell out of you.

  In fact, if the group granted indulgence even once in a matter like this, that would put an end to the custom of exchanging names. If it is possible to go back on your promise and break a deal that has already been concluded and paid for—who will keep it after that? In short, this is a group, a common cause, and therefore the party is very strict about it. Sushilov finally sees that he cannot plead his way out, and decides to give his full consent. The deal is announced to the whole party; well, and there may be others there who ought to be given gifts and drinks, if need be. For them, naturally, it’s all the same whether Mikhailov or Sushilov lands in some hellhole, but they’ve drunk vodka, they’ve been given a treat—consequently, they’ll keep mum. At the very first stopping place, for instance, they call the roll; they come to Mikhailov: “Mikhailov!” “Here!” shouts Sushilov. “Sushilov!” “Here!” shouts Mikhailov—and they go on. Nobody even mentions it anymore. In Tobolsk the exiles are sorted out. Mikhailov goes to a settlement, and Sushilov under reinforced convoy to the special section. No further protest is possible; and what in fact can be proved? For how many years would such a case drag out? What would come of it? Where, finally, are the witnesses? If any are found, they will deny it all. And so the result remains that, for a red shirt and a silver rouble, Sushilov winds up in the “special section.”

  The prisoners laughed at Sushilov—not because he exchanged (though they generally despise those who exchange lighter work for heavier, as they do any fools who get taken in), but because all he got for it was a red shirt and a silver rouble: the price was too insignificant. Exchanges are usually done for big sums, again relatively speaking. They sometimes even charge several dozen roubles. But Sushilov was so uncomplaining, unassuming, and insignificant for them all, that he wasn’t even worth laughing at.

  I lived for a long time with Sushilov, several years. He gradually became extremely attached to me; I could not help noticing it, and so I also became quite used to him. But once—I can never forgive myself for it—he did not do something I asked him to do, and meanwhile he had just taken money from me, and I had the cruelty to say to him: “So, Sushilov, you take the money but don’t do the work.” Sushilov said nothing, ran and did my errand, but then suddenly grew sad. Two days passed. I thought: it can’t be because of my words. I knew that one prisoner, Anton Vasiliev, kept demanding some paltry debt from him. He probably had no money, but was afraid to ask me. On the third day I said to him: “Sushilov, it seems you want to ask money from
me for Anton Vasiliev? Here.” I was sitting on the bunk then; Sushilov was standing in front of me. He seemed to be very struck that I myself offered him money, that I myself remembered his difficult position, the more so as, in his opinion, he had taken too much from me recently, so that he did not dare hope I would give him more. He looked at the money, then at me, suddenly turned and left. I was very struck by it all. I followed him and found him behind the barracks. He was standing by the prison stockade, his face pressed to the palings and his arms leaning against them. “What’s the matter, Sushilov?” I asked. He did not look at me, and I noticed, to my great astonishment, that he was on the verge of tears. “Alexander Petrovich … you think,” he began in a breaking voice, trying to look away, “that I … for you … for the money … but I … I … a-a-ah!” Here he turned to the stockade again, so that he even bumped his forehead against it, and broke into sobs!… It was the first time I had seen a man in prison cry. I had a hard time comforting him, and though after that he began to serve me and “look after me” still more zealously, if that was possible, I noticed by certain almost imperceptible signs that his heart could never forgive me my reproach. And yet others laughed at him, picked on him at every opportunity, sometimes abused him badly—and he lived peacefully and amicably with them and never got offended. Yes, it can be very hard to make a man out, even after long years of acquaintance!