Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “What is it?” I asked him, not without surprise, seeing him standing in front of me, smiling, staring wide-eyed at me, and not saying anything.

  “But … it’s Christmas …,” he murmured and, realizing that there was nothing more to say, he abandoned me and hurried into the kitchen.

  I will note here, incidentally, that after that he and I never had any relations and hardly ever said a word to each other up to my leaving prison.

  In the kitchen, around the hot, burning stoves, there was bustling and jostling—a real crush. Everybody watched over his own goods; the cookies were beginning to prepare the prison meal, because dinner was supposed to be earlier that day. No one had started to eat yet, however, though some would have been glad to, but they observed appearances in front of the others. They were waiting for the priest, and only after that was the fast to be broken. Meanwhile, it was not yet full daylight when the summoning cries of the corporal began to resound outside the prison gates: “Cooks!” These cries resounded almost every minute and went on for nearly two hours. The cooks were summoned from the kitchens to receive the offerings brought to the prison from all over town. They were brought in extraordinary quantities, in the form of kalachi, bread, cheesecakes, suet cakes, flatbread, pancakes, and other baked goods.

  I don’t think there was a single merchant’s or tradesman’s wife in the whole town who did not send her bread and best wishes on the great feast day to the “unfortunate” prisoners. There were rich offerings—fancy breads of the whitest flour, sent in large quantities. There were very poor offerings—a two-penny little kalach and a couple of wretched suet cakes slightly smeared with sour cream: this was a gift of the poor to the poor, from their last. Everything was received with equal gratitude, without distinction of gifts and givers. The prisoners who received them took their hats off, bowed, gave their best wishes, and brought the offerings to the kitchen. When whole heaps of the offered bread had accumulated, seniors from each barrack were sent for, and they distributed everything equally among the barracks. There was no arguing, no cursing; it was done honestly, equally. What came to our barrack was then divided among us; this was done by Akim Akimych and another prisoner; they did it with their own hands and with their own hands gave each of us his share. There was not the least objection, not the least envy of anyone; everyone was left pleased; there could even be no suspicion that the offerings might have been concealed or not distributed equally. Having settled his affairs in the kitchen, Akim Akimych proceeded to his vesting, dressed with all his propriety and solemnity, not leaving a single little hook unfastened, and, having dressed, at once set about praying in earnest. He prayed for quite a long time. Many prisoners were already standing in prayer, older ones for the most part. The young ones did not pray much: they might just cross themselves on getting up, even on a feast day. After praying, Akim Akimych came up to me and with a certain solemnity wished me a Merry Christmas. I immediately invited him for tea, and he invited me for his suckling pig. A little later Petrov came running to wish me a Merry Christmas. He seemed to have been drinking already, and though he came running breathlessly, he did not say much, but only stood in front of me for a short while in some expectation, then quickly left me for the kitchen. Meanwhile, the prisoners in the military barrack were preparing to receive the priest. This barrack was arranged differently from the others: the bunks in it stood along the walls and not in the middle of the room, as in the other barracks, so that it was the only room in the prison that was clear in the middle. It was probably done that way so that the prisoners could be gathered there in case of need. In the center of the room they placed a little table, covered it with a clean towel, stood an icon on it, and lit an icon lamp. A priest finally came with a cross and holy water. Having prayed and sung before the icon, he stood before the prisoners, and they all began to approach and kiss the cross with real veneration. Then the priest went around all the barracks and sprinkled them with holy water. In the kitchen he praised our prison bread, which was famous in town for its taste, and the prisoners decided at once to send him two fresh-baked loaves; an invalid was immediately dispatched to deliver them. The cross was seen off with the same veneration with which it had been met, and then almost at once the major and the commandant arrived. Among us the commandant was liked and even respected. He went around all the barracks accompanied by the major, wished everybody a Merry Christmas, stopped at the kitchen and tried the prison shchi. The shchi turned out to be fine; in honor of the day each prisoner was allotted nearly a pound of beef. On top of that there was millet kasha with plenty of butter. As he showed the commandant out, the major ordered the dinner to begin. The prisoners tried not to catch his eye. We didn’t like his spiteful glance from behind his glasses, which even now he cast right and left, to see if there was any disorder, if anyone was to blame.

  We began dinner. Akim Akimych’s suckling pig was perfectly roasted. And I cannot explain how it happened, but right after the major’s departure, some five minutes later, an extraordinary number of people turned out to be drunk, though five minutes earlier they had all been almost perfectly sober. Many glowing and shining faces appeared; balalaikas appeared. The little Pole with the fiddle, hired for the day, was already going around with some carouser and sawing away at merry dances. The conversation grew more drunken and noisy. But the dinner ended without any great disorders. Everyone had eaten his fill. Many of the old and staid men went to bed at once, which was what Akim Akimych did, evidently assuming that on a great feast day one must unfailingly sleep after dinner. The little old Starodubsky Old Believer, after dozing briefly, climbed onto the stove, opened his book, and prayed until late at night almost without interruption. It was painful for him to look at the “shame,” as he referred to the general carousing of the prisoners. The Circassians all sat on the porch and with curiosity, but at the same time with a certain disgust, looked at the drunken men. I came across Nurra. “Yaman, yaman!”* he said to me, wagging his head in pious indignation. “Ah, yaman! Allah will be angry.” Isai Fomich stubbornly and haughtily lit a candle in his corner and began to work, clearly showing that the feast was of no account to him. In corners here and there maidans began. There was no fear of the invalids, and sentries were posted in case the sergeant should come, though he tried not to notice anything himself. The guards officer came to the prison only three times during that whole day. But the drunkards hid themselves and the maidans were put away when he appeared, and it seemed he himself had decided to pay no attention to minor disorders. On that day a drunk man was considered a minor disorder. People gradually began to loosen up. Quarrels also began. But the great majority still remained sober, and they could look after the unsober. The carousers, however, were drinking beyond measure. Gazin was triumphant. He strutted with a self-contented air around his place on the bunk, under which he had boldly transferred the vodka he had kept hidden until then in the snow behind the barracks, in a secret place, and chuckled slyly, looking at the customers who kept flocking to him. He himself was sober and hadn’t drunk a drop. He intended to carouse at the end of the feast, after emptying the prisoners’ pockets of all their cash. Songs rang out in the barracks. But the drunkenness was already turning into a dazed stupor, and the songs were not far from tears. Many walked about with their own balalaikas, sheepskins thrown over their shoulders, fingering the strings with a dashing air. In the special section they even formed a chorus of about eight men. They sang nicely to the accompaniment of balalaikas and guitars. Of pure folk songs they sang only a few. I remember one, dashingly performed:

  Last night, a young lass,

  I went to the feast.

  And here I heard a new version of this song, one I had never encountered before. Several lines were added at the end:

  And I, a young lass,

  Tidied up the house:

  Washed the spoons in a tub,

  Made shchi from the suds,

  What I scraped from the doorposts,

  I baked into pies.
<
br />   They mostly sang prison songs, as we called them, well-known ones at that. One of them, “Once upon a time …,” was a comic song describing how a man used to make merry and live as a free gentleman, and had now landed in prison. It described how he used to liven up his “blamanzh with chempan,” and now:

  They dole me out some soggy cabbage,

  And I just wolf it down.

  This one, all too well known, was also popular:

  As a lad I lived a merry life

  With capital in my pocket,

  Capital, yes, but I lost it all

  And my freedom along with It …

  and so on. Only among us it was pronounced “copital,” not “capital,” deriving capital from the word kopit, “to save.” There were also mournful songs. One was in pure prison style, and also, I think, well known:

  In the sky the dawn’s light breaks;

  Beats the morning drum.

  A senior opens wide the gates,

  The scribe with the roll call comes.

  No one sees behind these walls

  The painful life we bear,

  But God the Father is with us all,

  We’ll not perish even here. Etc.

  Another song was even more mournful, though with a beautiful tune, probably composed by some exile, with sickly sweet and quite illiterate words. I still remember a few lines from it:

  No more I’ll ever see again

  The place where I was born;

  Guiltless to suffering condemned,

  Forever I’m forlorn.

  From the roof a screech owl’s call

  Echoes through the hollow;

  My heart is wrung, my spirits fall,

  For there I cannot follow.

  This song was often sung among us, not in chorus, but as a solo. Someone in his free time would go out to the porch of the barrack, sit down, brooding, his cheek propped on his hand, and start singing it in a high falsetto. You’d listen, and your heart would be wrung. We had some decent voices among us.

  Meanwhile twilight was already coming. Sadness, anguish, and stupor showed painfully through the drinking and carousing. A man who had been laughing an hour earlier was now sobbing, having drunk to overflowing. Others had already managed to have a couple of fights. Still others, pale and barely keeping their feet, staggered around the barracks getting into quarrels. Those whose drunkenness was not of a provocative sort vainly looked for friends, so as to pour out their hearts to them and weep out their drunken grief. All these poor people had wanted to have fun, to spend the great feast joyfully—and Lord! how oppressive and sad this day was for nearly every one of them. Each of them saw it out as if he had been cheated of some hope. Petrov stopped to see me a couple of more times. He had drunk very little that whole day and was almost completely sober. But up to the very last hour he kept expecting that something simply had to happen, something extraordinary, festive, joyful. Though he didn’t say it, you could see it in his eyes. He shuttled tirelessly from one barrack to another. But nothing special happened, and he met with nothing but drunkenness, senseless, drunken cursing, and heads stupefied by vodka. Sirotkin also wandered about all the barracks in his new red shirt, pretty, well scrubbed, and also as if quietly and naïvely expecting something. It was gradually becoming unbearable and disgusting in the barracks. Of course, there was also much that was funny, but I felt somehow sad and sorry for them all, I felt oppressed and stifled among them. Here are two prisoners arguing over who is going to stand whom to a drink. You can see they’ve been arguing for a long time and had even quarreled before then. One in particular has some long-standing grudge against the other. He’s complaining and, moving his tongue thickly, is trying to prove that the other has dealt unfairly with him: some sheepskin jacket got sold, some money got hidden away sometime, last year, before Lent. There was something else besides … The accuser is a tall and muscular fellow, sensible, quiet, but with a yearning, when drunk, to make friends and pour out his grief. He scolds and states his claims as if wishing to make even firmer peace with his rival afterwards. The other is thickset, sturdy, short, with a round face, sly and cagey. He may have drunk more than his comrade, but he’s only slightly tipsy. He has a strong character and a reputation for being rich, but for some reason it is to his advantage not to annoy his effusive friend right now, and so he takes him to the taverner. The friend insists that he must and is obliged to treat him, “if only you’re an honest man.”

  The taverner, with a certain respect for the buyer and a shade of scorn for his effusive friend, who is not spending his own money but is being treated, produces the vodka and pours a glass.

  “No, Stepka, you’ve got to,” the effusive friend says, seeing that he’s won out, “it’s your duty.”

  “Well, I’m not going to waste my breath on you!” Stepka replies.

  “No, Stepka, that’s nonsense,” the first one insists, taking the glass from the taverner, “ ’cause you owe me money; you’ve got no conscience, and your eyes aren’t even yours, you borrowed ’em. You’re a scoundrel, Stepka, so there—in a word, a scoundrel!”

  “Well, quit whining, you’re spilling your vodka! You asked for it, you got it, so drink it!” the taverner shouts at the effusive friend. “I won’t stand over you till tomorrow!”

  “I’m going to drink it, quit shouting! Merry Christmas, Stepan Dorofeich!” he says politely, with a slight bow, holding the glass in his hand and turning to Stepka, whom a moment earlier he had called a scoundrel. “May you keep your cheer for a hundred years, not counting what’s past!” He drinks, grunts, and wipes his mouth. “Before, brothers, I could down a lot of vodka,” he observes with grave dignity, as if addressing everybody and nobody in particular, “but now—must be I’m feeling my age. Thank you, Stepan Dorofeich.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “So I come back to what I was saying to you, Stepka: besides you being a great scoundrel towards me, let me tell you …”

  “And here’s what I’ll tell you, you drunken fish,” Stepka, who has lost patience, interrupts him. “Listen and mark my every word: let’s you and me divide the world in half, half for you and half for me. Go and don’t come my way again. I’m sick of you!”

  “So you won’t give me back my money?”

  “What’s this money you keep on about, drunk man?”

  “Eh, you’ll come to give it back yourself in the next world—and I won’t take it! I worked for my money, with sweat and calluses. You’ll choke on my five kopecks in the next world.”

  “Giddap to the devil!”

  “Quit giddapping me; I’m not a horse!”

  “Get out, get out!”

  “Scoundrel!”

  “Mucker!”

  And the swearing starts again, even worse than before the drinking.

  Here are two friends sitting apart on the bunks. One is tall, thickset, beefy, a real butcher; his face is red. He’s almost in tears, because he’s very moved. The other is frail, scrawny, gaunt, with a long nose from which something seems to be dripping, and with little pig eyes fixed on the ground. He’s a politic and educated man; he used to be a clerk and treats his friend somewhat haughtily, which the latter secretly finds very unpleasant. They’ve been drinking together all day.

  “Me he dared!” the beefy friend shouts, grasping the clerk’s head firmly with his left arm and rocking it back and forth. “Dared”—meaning struck. The beefy friend, a former sergeant, secretly envies his emaciated friend, and therefore they both flaunt the refinement of their style before each other.

  “And I tell you that you’re not right …,” the clerk begins dogmatically, stubbornly not raising his eyes to him and looking at the ground with dignity.

  “Me he dared, do you hear!” his friend interrupts, pulling at his dear friend still more. “You’re all that’s left to me in the whole world now, do you hear? That’s why it’s to you alone I say: Me he dared!…”

  “And I say again: such a flimsy excuse, dear friend, only heaps
shame on your head!” the clerk objects in a thin and polite little voice. “And you’d better agree, dear friend, that all this drunkenness is due to your own inconstancy …”

  The beefy friend shrinks back a little, stares dully with his drunken eyes at the self-satisfied little clerk, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, with all his might, punches the clerk’s little face with his enormous fist. Thus ends a whole day’s friendship. The dear friend goes sprawling unconscious under the bunk …

  Here one of my acquaintances from the special section comes into our barrack, an infinitely good-natured and jolly fellow, sensible, harmlessly mocking, and of extraordinarily simple appearance. He is the one who, on my first day in prison, during dinner in the kitchen, asked where the rich muzhik lived, claimed he had “anbishin,” and drank tea with me. He’s about forty, with a remarkably thick lower lip and a big, fleshy nose strewn with blackheads. He’s holding a balalaika and casually fingering the strings. Behind him, as if in tow, followed an extremely small prisoner with a big head, of whom I knew very little as yet. However, nobody else paid any attention to him either. He was somehow strange, mistrustful, eternally silent and serious; he worked in the tailor’s shop and obviously tried to live by himself, without dealing with anybody. But now, being drunk, he attached himself to Varlamov like his shadow. He followed after him in terrible agitation, waved his arms, beat his fist on the wall, on the bunk, and even all but sobbed. Varlamov seemed to pay no attention to him, as if he were not there beside him. It was remarkable that previously these two men had had almost no relations with each other; in occupation and in character they had nothing in common. They belonged to different categories and lived in different barracks. The little prisoner’s name was Bulkin.