Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  They finally set to work, but sluggishly, reluctantly, clumsily. It was even vexing to look at this robust crowd of stalwart workmen who seemed decidedly perplexed about how to get down to business. They were just starting to remove the first, smallest rib, but, as it happened, it kept breaking, “breaking by itself,” as they reported in justification to the officer; consequently, it was impossible to work that way, and they had to go about it somehow differently. There followed a long discussion among themselves on how to go about it differently and what to do. Of course, it gradually reached the point of cursing and threatened to go even further … The officer shouted and waved his stick again, but again the rib broke. It finally turned out that there were not enough axes and that more tools had to be fetched. Two fellows were detached at once, under convoy, to bring tools from the fortress, while the rest quite calmly sat down on the barge, took out their pipes, and started smoking again.

  The officer finally spat.

  “Well, so you’re still hard at it! Eh, what people, what people!” he muttered angrily, waved his hand, and went off to the fortress swinging his stick.

  An hour later the sergeant came. After calmly hearing the prisoners out, he announced that he was giving them an assignment to remove four more ribs, but to make sure that they came out whole and not broken, and on top of that he marked out a sizable section of the barge to be dismantled, after which they could go home. It was a big assignment, but Lord, how they set to it! Where was their laziness, where was their perplexity! Axes whacked, wooden pegs got pulled out. Others shoved thick poles underneath and, pressing down on them with twenty hands, nimbly and skillfully wrenched out the ribs, which, to my astonishment, now came out perfectly whole and undamaged. Work was at the boil. Everyone suddenly became somehow remarkably intelligent. There was no unnecessary talk, no cursing; everyone knew what needed to be said or done, where to stand, what advice to give. Exactly half an hour before the drum, the given assignment was finished, and the prisoners went home tired, but perfectly content, though they had gained only a mere half hour against the appointed time. But as for me, I noticed one particular thing: no matter where I tried to join in and help them with the work, I was out of place everywhere, I was a hindrance everywhere, they all but drove me away with curses everywhere.

  Even the lowest ragamuffin, who was himself the worst of workmen and did not dare make a peep before the other sharper and more sensible convicts, considered it his right to yell at me and chase me away if I stood next to him, under the pretext that I was hindering him. Finally one of the sharp ones said to me directly and rudely:

  “What are you doing here? Get out! Don’t butt in where you’re not invited.”

  “Got himself in a fix!” another chimed in at once.

  “Better take yourself a cup,” a third said to me, “and go around collecting money for stone construction or tobacco destruction. You’ve got nothing to do here.”

  I had to stand apart, and to stand apart when everybody was working was somehow embarrassing. But when I actually did go and stand at the end of the barge, they shouted at once:

  “See what workers they’ve given us! What can you do with them? Nothing, that’s what!”

  All of this, naturally, was deliberate, because they were all amused by it. They had to crow over the former gentleman, and, of course, they were glad of the chance.

  It is now quite understandable why, as I already said earlier, my first question on entering prison was how to behave, on what footing to put myself with these people. I sensed beforehand that I would often have such clashes with them as now, at work. But, despite any such clashes, I decided not to change my plan of action, which I had already partly thought out at the time; I knew it was right. Namely: I decided that I must behave as simply and independently as possible, by no means to betray any effort to get closer with them; but not to reject them if they themselves wished to get closer. By no means to fear their threats and hatred and, as far as possible, to pretend I did not notice it. By no means to side with them on certain points, and not to cater to some of their habits and customs—in short, not to invite myself into their full friendship. I realized at first glance that they would be the first to despise me for it. However, by their way of thinking (and I later learned this for certain), I still had to maintain and even show respect for my noble origin before them, that is, to pamper myself, put on airs, disdain them, turn up my nose at everything, and keep my hands clean. That was precisely how they understood a nobleman to be. Naturally, they would abuse me for it, but deep down they would still respect me. Such a role was not for me; I had never been a nobleman according to their notions; but instead I promised myself never to belittle my education or my way of thinking before them by any concession. If, to please them, I were to start fawning on them, agreeing with them, being familiar with them, entering into their various “qualities” in order to gain their sympathy—they would at once assume I was doing it out of fear and cowardice, and would treat me with contempt. A—v was not an example: he visited the major, and they were afraid of him themselves. On the other hand, I did not want to withdraw from them into a cold, inaccessible politeness, as the Poles did. I saw very well now that they despised me for wanting to work as they did, for not pampering myself and putting on airs before them; and though I knew for certain that later on they would be forced to change their opinion of me, still the thought that they now seemed to have the right to despise me, thinking that I was trying to ingratiate myself with them at work, upset me very much.

  That evening, when the afternoon’s work was done and I returned to the prison, tired and worn-out, a terrible anguish came over me again. “How many thousands of days like this lie ahead of me,” I thought, “all the same, all just the same!” It was already dusk, and I was wandering alone, silently, along the fence behind the barracks, when suddenly I saw our Sharik running straight towards me. Sharik was our prison dog, just as there are company, battery, and squadron dogs. He had been living in the prison from time immemorial, did not belong to anyone, considered everyone his master, and fed on scraps from the kitchen. He was a rather big dog, black with white spots, a mongrel, not very old, with intelligent eyes and a bushy tail. Nobody ever petted him, nobody paid any attention to him. Already on the first day I stroked him and let him eat bread from my hand. When I stroked him, he stood still, looked at me affectionately, and, as a sign of contentment, quietly wagged his tail. Now, not having seen me for a while—me, the first one in years who had thought of petting him—he ran around looking for me among them all, and finding me behind the barracks, ran with a squeal to meet me. I don’t know what came over me, but I rushed to kiss him and hugged his head. He put his front paws on my shoulders and started licking my face. “So here is the friend fate has sent me!” I thought, and afterwards, during that first oppressive and gloomy time, whenever I came back from work, the first thing I did, before going anywhere, was to hurry behind the barracks with Sharik leaping ahead of me and squealing for joy, to hug his head and kiss it, kiss it, with some sort of sweet and at the same time tormentingly bitter feeling wringing my heart. And I remember it was even pleasant for me to think, as if flaunting my own hurt to myself, that now I had one being left in the whole world who loved me and was attached to me, my friend, my only friend—my faithful dog Sharik.

  VII

  New Acquaintances. Petrov

  But time passed and I gradually began to feel myself more at home. With each day I was less and less confused by the commonplace occurrences of my new life. The events, the surroundings, the people—it all became somehow familiar to my eyes. To be reconciled with this life was impossible, but it was long since time to recognize it as an accomplished fact. All the misapprehensions that still remained in me I hid away in myself and stifled as much as possible. I no longer wandered about the prison like a lost man, nor did I betray my anguish. The wildly curious gazes of the convicts no longer rested on me so often, no longer followed me with such deliberate insole
nce. I also obviously became familiar to them, for which I was very glad. I already walked about the prison as if I was at home, knew my place on the bunk, and even apparently got used to things I had never in my life thought of getting used to. I went regularly every week to have half my head shaved. Every Saturday during our free time each of us was summoned from the prison to the guardhouse for that purpose (anyone who did not get shaved had to answer for it), and there a battalion barber lathered our heads with cold lather and mercilessly scraped them with the dullest of razors, so that even now I get chills all over just remembering that torture. However, a remedy was soon found: Akim Akimych pointed out to me a prisoner from the military category who charged a kopeck for shaving anyone with his own razor and made a business of it. Many of the convicts went to him to avoid the official barbers, and yet they were not pampered folk. Our prisoner-barber was called major—why, I don’t know, and how he resembled a major I also can’t say. Now, as I write, I keep picturing this major, a tall, lean, and taciturn fellow, rather stupid, eternally immersed in his occupation, and unfailingly with a strop in his hand on which, day and night, he sharpened his utterly worn-down razor, and seemed to be totally absorbed in this occupation, obviously taking it for the purpose of his whole life. In fact, he was extremely pleased when the razor was good and somebody came for a shave: his lather was warm, his hand light, his shaving like velvet. He obviously enjoyed his art and was proud of it, and he accepted his earned kopeck with nonchalance, as if it was indeed a matter of art and not of a kopeck. A—v caught it badly from our real major when he was ratting to him once about the prison and, mentioning the name of our prison barber, carelessly referred to him as “the major.” The real major flew into a rage and was offended in the highest degree. “Do you know, you scoundrel, what a major is?” he shouted, foaming at the mouth, dealing with A—v in his own way. “Do you have any idea what a major is!? And suddenly there’s some scoundrel of a convict, and you dare call him a major to my face, in my presence?!…” Only A—v could get along with such a man.

  From the very first day of my life in prison I began to dream of freedom. Calculating when my prison term would be over, in a thousand different forms and methods, became my favorite occupation. I could not even think of anything otherwise, and I am sure that anyone who is deprived of freedom for a term does the same. I don’t know whether the other convicts thought and calculated as I did, but the astonishing light-mindedness of their hopes struck me from the first step. The hope of an inmate, deprived of freedom, is of a completely different sort from that of a man living a real life. A free man has hopes, of course (for instance, for a change in his lot, for success in some undertaking), but he lives, he acts; the whirl of real life carries him away entirely. Not so the inmate. Here, let’s say, there is also life—the life of prison, of hard labor; but whoever the convict may be and whatever his term of punishment, he is decisively, instinctively, unable to take his lot as something absolute, definitive, as part of real life. Every convict feels that he is not at home, but as if on a visit. He looks at twenty years as if they were two, and is completely convinced that when he leaves prison at fifty-five he will be as fine a fellow as he is now at thirty-five. “We’ve still got a life to live!” he thinks and stubbornly drives away all doubts and other vexing thoughts. Even exiles without a term, in the special section, sometimes reckoned that an order might suddenly come from Petersburg: “Send to the mines in Nerchinsk and set a term.” Then it will be fine: first, it takes almost six months to get to Nerchinsk, and life in a transport party is so much better than life in prison! And later he’ll finish his term in Nerchinsk, and then … Some gray-haired men even reckoned that way!

  In Tobolsk I saw men chained to the wall. He sits like that on a chain seven feet long; his cot is right there. He has been chained up for something uncommonly horrible, which he did already in Siberia. They sit like that for five years, for ten years. Most of them are robbers. I saw only one among them who seemed to be of the gentry; he had been in government service somewhere. He spoke as meekly as could be, with a lisp; he had a sweet little smile. He showed us his chain, showed how to lie comfortably on the cot. What a rare bird he must have been! In general, they all behave meekly and appear to be content, and yet each of them wants so very much to get through his term quickly. Why would that be? Here is why: he would then leave his stuffy, dank room with its low brick ceiling, walk in the prison yard, and … and that’s all. He will never be let out of prison. He knows himself that those who have been chained up are kept in prison forever, till they die, and in fetters. He knows it, and still he wants terribly to finish his term on the chain. For without that wish, how could he sit for five or six years on a chain and not die or go out of his mind? Would anyone sit it out?

  I felt that work might save me, fortify my health, my body. Constant inner anxiety, nervous agitation, the stuffy air of the barrack could destroy me completely. “Let me be outside often, get tired each day, learn to carry heavy loads—and at least I’ll save myself,” I thought. “I’ll fortify myself, come out in good health, cheerful and strong, not yet old.” I was not mistaken: work and activity were very good for me. I looked with horror at one of my comrades (a nobleman), how he dwindled away in prison like a candle. He entered it together with me, still young, handsome, cheerful, and left half-ruined, gray-haired, crippled, short of breath. “No,” I thought, looking at him, “I want to live, and I will live.” But I did catch it at first from the convicts for my love of work, and for a long time they taunted me with scorn and mockery. But I took no notice of anyone and cheerfully set off somewhere, for instance to bake and crush alabaster—one of the first tasks I learned. That was easy work. The chief engineers were prepared, as far as possible, to make the work easier for the noblemen, which, however, was not at all indulgence, but merely fairness. It would be strange to demand of a man who was twice weaker and had never worked the same assignment as was normally given to a real worker. But this “pampering” was not always done, and when it was, it was done as if stealthily: these things were kept under strict observation. Quite often we had to do hard work, and then, naturally, it was twice as hard for the noblemen as for the other workers. Usually three or four men, old or weak, were sent to the alabaster works, and so, naturally, we were among them; and on top of that, one real worker was attached who knew the job. Usually, over the course of several years, it was the same man, Almazov, a stern, swarthy, and lean man, already on in years, unsociable and squeamish. He deeply despised us. However, he was very taciturn, so much so that he did not even bother to grumble at us. The shed in which the alabaster was baked and crushed also stood on the deserted and steep riverbank. In winter, especially on a bleak day, it was dismal to look at the river and the distant bank opposite. There was something melancholy and heart-wrenching in that wild and deserted landscape. But it was almost worse when the sun shone brightly on the endless white mantle of snow; you wanted to fly off somewhere into that steppe, which began on the other bank and spread southwards in an unbroken sheet for a thousand miles. Almazov usually started work silently and sternly; we were as if ashamed that we could not help him in any real way, and he purposely managed everything alone, purposely did not ask for any help from us, as if to make us feel all our guilt before him and regret our own uselessness. And the whole thing amounted to nothing more than heating the oven for baking the alabaster we brought and put into it. The next day, when the alabaster was thoroughly baked, we began to unload the oven. Each of us took a heavy mallet, filled a special box with alabaster, and set about crushing it. This was lovely work. The fragile alabaster quickly turned into white, sparkling dust, it crumbled so readily, so well. We swung the heavy mallets and raised such a racket that we enjoyed it ourselves. We would get tired, finally, but at the same time we became light; our cheeks flushed, our blood circulated more quickly. Here Almazov even began to look at us indulgently, as one looks at little children; he puffed indulgently at his pipe, but still could not he
lp grumbling when he had to speak. However, he was like that with everybody, and it seems he was in fact a kind man.

  Another job I was assigned to was turning the flywheel in the workshop. It was a big, heavy wheel. To spin it called for great effort, especially when the turner (an artisan from the engineers) was turning something like a stairway banister or a leg for a big table to furnish some functionary’s office, which required nearly a whole log. In that case one man’s strength was not enough, and two were usually assigned to it—myself and B., another nobleman. This work was left to us for several years, whenever some turning needed to be done. B. was a weak, frail man, still young, suffering from a chest ailment. He came to prison a year before me, along with two other comrades—one an old man who prayed to God day and night all the while he was with us (for which the prisoners respected him greatly) and who died while I was still there; the other still a very young man, fresh, ruddy, strong, brave, who, when B. became exhausted in the middle of their journey, carried him for the remaining five hundred miles. The friendship between them was something to see. B. was a man of excellent education, noble, with a magnanimous character, but spoiled and exasperated by illness. We handled the flywheel together, and it even amused us both. It gave me first-rate exercise.

  I also especially liked shoveling snow. This usually came after blizzards, which were not rare in winter. After a twenty-four-hour snowstorm, some houses were covered halfway up the windows, and some were almost completely buried. When the storm was over and the sun came out, they drove us out in big gangs, sometimes the whole prison, to shovel the snowdrifts away from the government buildings. Each of us was given a shovel, the assignment was for all of us, sometimes so big that you had to wonder how we could handle it, and we all set to work together. The crumbly snow, only just fallen and slightly frozen on the surface, was easily taken up by the shovel in huge lumps and scattered about, turning into sparkling dust while still in the air. The shovel cut freely into the white mass glistening in the sun. The prisoners almost always did this work cheerfully. The fresh winter air, the movement excited them. They all grew merry; they laughed, shouted, joked. They started throwing snowballs, though, naturally, the sensible ones yelled at them after a few minutes, indignant at the laughter and merriment, so that the general enthusiasm usually ended in curses.