Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Look at the flunkey! He’s found a master!” he said with pauses and in a voice gasping from weakness. He was living out his last days.

  Chekunov turned to him with indignation:

  “Who’s a flunkey?” he said, glaring contemptuously at Ustyantsev.

  “You’re a flunkey!” the man replied in a self-assured tone, as if he had every right to scold Chekunov and had even been attached to him for that purpose.

  “Me a flunkey?”

  “Yes, you. Listen, good people, he doesn’t believe it! He’s surprised!”

  “What’s it to you! Look, he’s alone, like he has no hands. They’re not used to being without servants, we know that. Why shouldn’t I serve him, you shaggy-mugged clown?”

  “Who’s shaggy-mugged?”

  “You’re shaggy-mugged.”

  “Me shaggy-mugged?”

  “Yes, you!”

  “And you’re a beauty, eh? If I’m shaggy-mugged … you’ve got a face like a crow’s egg!”

  “You are shaggy-mugged! God’s already killed you, so lie down and die! But no, he goes on picking! Well, what are you picking for?”

  “What for! No, I’d rather bow to a boot than to a bast shoe. My father never bowed and told me not to! I … I …”

  He wanted to continue, but was seized by a terrible coughing fit for several minutes, spitting blood. Soon the cold sweat of exhaustion stood out on his narrow forehead. The coughing hindered him, or he would have gone on talking; you could see by his eyes how he wanted to keep up the abuse; but in his weakness he could only wave his hand … So that in the end Chekunov forgot about him.

  I sensed that the consumptive’s anger was directed more at me than at Chekunov. Nobody would have been angry at Chekunov or looked at him with particular contempt for his wish to be of service and earn a kopeck by it. Everybody understood that he did it simply for money. On this account simple folk are not that touchy and have a keen perception of things. What Ustyantsev did not like was me myself, he did not like my tea, and that I, as a gentleman, even if in fetters, seemed unable to get along without a servant, though I never asked or wished for any servant. In fact, I always wanted to do everything myself, and I especially did not wish to give the impression that I was a softy, a sissy, who plays the lord. I even took some pride in that, while we’re at it. But still—and I decidedly do not understand how this always happened—I could never say no to the various attendants and servants who latched on to me and finally took complete possession of me, so that in reality they were my masters and I their servant; but in appearance it somehow came out by itself that I was in fact a gentleman, who could not do without servants and playing the lord. That, of course, vexed me very much. But Ustyantsev was a consumptive, irritable man. The other patients maintained an air of indifference, even with a certain shade of haughtiness. I remember that everybody was preoccupied with one particular circumstance: from the prisoners’ conversation I learned that a convict was to be brought that evening, who at the moment was being punished by running the gauntlet. The prisoners awaited the new man with some curiosity. They said, however, that the punishment was a light one—only five hundred strokes.

  I gradually took in my surroundings. As far as I could tell, most of those who were really sick had scurvy or eye infections—the local diseases in those parts. There were several of them in the ward. Others of the really sick had fevers, various sores, chest ailments. Here it was not like in the other wards, here all diseases were heaped together, even the venereal. I said “really sick,” because there were some who came just like that, without any illness, “for a rest.” The doctors admitted them willingly, out of compassion, especially when there were many empty beds. Confinement in the guardhouses and prisons seemed so bad compared with the hospital that many prisoners gladly came to lie there, despite the stuffiness and the locked ward. There were even special lovers of lying in bed and of hospital life in general; they came mostly from the correctional company. I studied my new comrades with curiosity, but, I remember, one man from our prison, who was already dying, especially aroused my curiosity, also a consumptive and also in his last days, who was lying two beds away from Ustyantsev and was thus almost opposite me. His name was Mikhailov; I had seen him in the prison just two weeks before. He had been ill for a long time, and should have come long ago to be treated; but with some sort of stubborn and completely needless patience he had mastered himself, held out, and only during the holidays had gone to the hospital, to die in three weeks of terrible consumption, as if he just burned up. I was shocked now by his dreadfully altered face—a face that had been one of the first I noticed on entering the prison; it had somehow leaped into my eyes then. Next to him lay a soldier from the correctional company, already an old man, a dreadful and repulsive sloven … But I’m not going to go through all the patients … I remembered about this old cadger now only because he also made a certain impression on me then and in one minute managed to give me a rather full understanding of certain peculiarities of the convicts’ ward. The old fellow, I remember, had a bad cold then. He sneezed all the time and went on sneezing for the whole next week, even in his sleep, somehow in volleys of five or six sneezes at a time, punctiliously saying each time, “Lord, what a punishment!” At the moment he was sitting on his bed and greedily filling his nose with snuff from a little paper packet, so as to sneeze more forcefully and punctiliously. He sneezed into a cotton handkerchief, his own, checkered, washed a hundred times and extremely faded, in the process wrinkling his little nose peculiarly, forming countless fine wrinkles, and exhibiting the stumps of old, blackened teeth along with red, slobbery gums. Having finished sneezing, he opened the handkerchief, attentively examined the abundant phlegm accumulated in it, and immediately smeared it on his brown hospital robe, so that all the phlegm remained on the robe, while the handkerchief was only left a little damp. He did that for the whole week. This meticulous, niggardly preservation of his own handkerchief to the detriment of the hospital robe did not stir up any protest on the patients’ part, though one or the other of them might have to wear the same robe after him. But our simple folk are strangely unsqueamish and unfastidious. As for me, I cringed at that moment, and with disgust and curiosity at once began involuntarily to inspect the robe I had just put on. Here I noticed that it had long been attracting my attention by its strong smell; it had already had time to warm up on me and smelled more and more strongly of medicines, plasters, and, it seemed to me, some sort of pus, which was no wonder, since from time immemorial it had never left patients’ shoulders. It may be that the canvas lining on the back had been washed occasionally, I don’t know for certain. But at the present time that lining was steeped in all sorts of unpleasant juices, lotions, fluid drained from pierced Spanish flies, and so on. What’s more, men who had just run the gauntlet very often arrived in the prisoners’ wards with lacerated backs; they were treated with lotions, and then the robe, put on right over the wet shirt, could not possibly help being tainted: everything stayed on it. And all the time I was in prison, all through those several years, whenever I happened to be in the hospital (which was pretty often), I put a robe on each time with timorous mistrust. I especially disliked the big and remarkably fat lice I sometimes met with in these robes. The prisoners delighted in executing them, so that when an executed beast popped under a prisoner’s thick, clumsy nail, you could even judge the extent of the satisfaction it gave him by the look on the hunter’s face. We also had a strong dislike of bedbugs, and it happened that the whole ward sometimes rose up to exterminate them on a long, dull winter night. And though, apart from the heavy stench, everything in the ward was externally as clean as possible, the inner, the lining cleanliness, so to speak, was nothing to boast of. The patients were used to it and even considered that it had to be that way, and the rules themselves were not conducive to any special cleanliness. But I’ll speak of the rules later …

  As soon as Chekunov served me tea (made, be it said in passing, from the
ward’s water, which was fetched once a day and somehow all too soon went bad in our atmosphere), the door opened with some noise and the soldier who had just run the gauntlet was brought in under reinforced convoy. It was the first time I had seen a flogged man. Later they were brought in often, some were even carried (after a very severe flogging), and each time it afforded the patients great diversion. Such men were usually met among us with an exceedingly stern expression of the face and even with a certain slightly forced seriousness. However, the reception depended in part on the degree of importance of the crime and, consequently, on the number of strokes. A very badly beaten and, reputedly, greater criminal enjoyed greater respect and greater attention than some little runaway recruit, for instance, like the one just brought in now. But in the one case as in the other, neither special compassion nor any especially irritable remarks were offered. They silently helped the unfortunate man and took care of him, especially if he could not do without help. The medical attendants knew they were entrusting the beaten man to experienced and skillful hands. The help usually consisted of frequent and necessary changes of sheets or shirts moistened with cold water, with which they covered the torn back, especially if the punished man was unable to look after himself, and also in deftly pulling out the splinters that often remained in the wounds from rods broken over the back. This last operation was usually very unpleasant for the patient. But generally I was always amazed by the extraordinary staunchness with which the punished men endured pain. I’ve seen many of them, sometimes very badly beaten, and almost none of them moaned! Only it was as if their faces changed completely, turned pale; their eyes burned; their gaze wandered, became troubled; their lips trembled, so that the poor men would bite them on purpose, sometimes until they bled. The soldier who came in was a lad of about twenty-three, strong, muscular, with a handsome face, tall, well-built, swarthy. His back, however, had suffered a proper beating. His body was bared to the waist; a wet sheet was thrown over his shoulders, which made him tremble all over as if in a fever, and for about an hour and a half he paced up and down the ward. I studied his face: it seemed he was not thinking of anything at that moment; he had a strange and wild look; his gaze wandered; he obviously had difficulty fixing it attentively on anything. It seemed to me that he looked intently at my tea. The tea was hot; steam rose from the cup, and the poor man was chilled and trembling, his teeth were chattering. I invited him to drink some. He turned to me silently and sharply, took the cup, drank it standing and without sugar, very hurriedly and somehow trying especially not to look at me. Having drunk it all, he silently set the cup down and, without even nodding to me, started pacing up and down the ward again. He couldn’t be bothered with words and nods! As for the prisoners, at first for some reason they all avoided any conversation with the punished recruit; on the contrary, having begun by helping him, it was as if they then tried not to pay any more attention to him, perhaps wishing to leave him in peace as far as possible and not bother him with any further questions and “sympathizings,” with which he seemed to be perfectly content.

  Meanwhile it grew dark, the night lamp was lit. It turned out that some of the prisoners even had their own candlesticks, though not very many. Finally, after the doctor’s evening visit, the sergeant of the guard came in, counted all the patients, and locked the ward, having brought in a night tub beforehand … I was surprised to learn that this tub would remain there all night, though there was a real lavatory just outside in the corridor, only two steps from our door. But such was the established order. During the day a prisoner could be let out of the ward, though for no more than one minute; but at night it was out of the question. The convicts’ wards were not like the ordinary ones, and a sick prisoner bore his punishment even in sickness. Who originally established this order I don’t know; all I know is that there was no real order in it and that the whole useless essence of formalism was nowhere expressed more fully than, for instance, in this case. This order, naturally, did not come from the doctors. I repeat: the prisoners could not praise their doctors highly enough, looked upon them as fathers, respected them. Everyone saw kindness from them, heard gentle words; and a prisoner, having been rejected by the whole world, valued that, because he could see how unfeigned and sincere those gentle words and that kindness were. They might not have been; no one would have asked questions if the doctors had treated them differently, that is, more rudely and inhumanly: consequently, they were kind out of genuine humanity. And, naturally, they understood that a sick man, whether or not he was a prisoner, needs such a thing, for instance, as fresh air, like any other sick man, even of the highest rank. The patients in other wards, the convalescents, for instance, could freely walk through the corridors, getting good exercise, breathing air which was not as poisoned as the air in the wards, stifling and always inevitably filled with suffocating exhalations. It is horrible and disgusting now to imagine to what extent the air, which was already poisoned to begin with, must have become poisoned at night, when they brought in that tub, considering the warm temperature of the ward and certain illnesses, with which it is impossible to avoid going. If I said just now that the prisoner bore his punishment even in sickness, I naturally did not and do not suppose that it was set up that way only for the sake of punishment. Naturally, that would be senseless slander on my part. There is no point in punishing sick men. And if so, then it goes without saying that some strict, harsh necessity probably forced the authorities to take measures so harmful in their consequences. What sort? But here is the vexing thing, that nothing else can begin to explain the necessity of this measure, and many other measures besides, so incomprehensible that it is impossible not only to explain them, but even to imagine an explanation. How explain such pointless cruelty? Can you picture a prisoner who comes to the hospital, purposely pretending to be sick, deceives the doctors, goes out to the latrine at night, and escapes under cover of darkness? To seriously demonstrate all the absurdity of such reasoning is almost impossible. Escape where? Escape how? Wearing what? During the day they let men out one by one; they could do the same at night. At the door stands a sentry with a loaded gun. The lavatory is literally two steps from the sentry, but despite that the patient is accompanied by a second sentry, who never takes his eyes off him all the while. There is only one window in the place, with double frames, as in winter, and with iron bars. In the yard outside the window, right by the windows of the prisoners’ ward, another sentry paces all night. To get through the window, you would have to break the frames and the bars. Who would allow that? Suppose he kills the second sentry beforehand, so that he doesn’t make a peep and nobody hears anything. But, even allowing for that absurdity, the window and bars still have to be broken. Notice that here, right next to the sentry, sleep the guards of the ward, and ten paces away, by the other prisoners’ ward, stands another sentry with a gun, beside him a second sentry and other guards. And where will he escape to in the winter, wearing stockings, slippers, a hospital robe, and a nightcap? And if so, if there is so little danger (that is, really none at all), why put such a heavy burden on the sick, maybe in the last days and hours of their life, sick men for whom fresh air is more necessary than for healthy people? What for? I never could understand it …

  And, while we’re at it, once we’ve asked “What for?” I can’t help remembering now another perplexity that stuck up in front of me for many years in the guise of a most mysterious fact, which I also failed to explain in any way. I can’t help saying a few words about it, before I go on with my description. I’m speaking of the fetters, from which no illness saved a man condemned to hard labor. Even consumptives died before my eyes in fetters. And yet everybody was used to it, everybody considered it something accomplished, irrefutable. I doubt that anybody even stopped to think about it, since it never even once entered the head of any of our doctors all through those several years to petition the authorities to unfetter the gravely ill prisoners, especially the consumptives. Granted, the fetters themselves are not God knows ho
w heavy. They weigh between eight and twelve pounds. For a healthy man, it’s not burdensome to carry ten pounds. I was told, however, that after several years fetters begin to make your legs wither. I don’t know if it’s true, though, by the way, there is some probability of it. A weight, even a small one, even just ten pounds, attached permanently to your leg, does make the limb abnormally heavy, and in the long run may have a detrimental effect … But granted it’s all right for a healthy man. Is it the same for a sick one? Granted, it’s all right for an ordinary sick man. But, I repeat, is it the same for the gravely ill, is it the same, I repeat, for the consumptives, whose arms and legs are withering away even without that, so that every straw feels heavy? And, truly, if the medical authorities had obtained that relief just for the consumptives alone, that in itself would have been a real and great benefit. Granted, they say a prisoner is an evildoer and unworthy of any benefits; but need one aggravate the punishment for someone who has already been touched by the finger of God? And it is impossible to believe it is done for the sake of punishment alone. Even the court spares consumptives from bodily punishment. Consequently, here again there is some secret, important measure, taken as a salutary precaution. But what sort?—it’s impossible to grasp. It’s impossible in fact to fear that a consumptive will escape. Who could conceive of that, especially bearing in mind a certain degree in the development of the illness? To pretend to have consumption, to deceive the doctors in order to escape, is impossible. It’s not that sort of illness; you can see it at a glance. And by the way: can it be that they put a man in leg fetters only so that he won’t escape or so as to hinder him from escaping? Not at all. Fetters are simply a dishonor, a shame and a burden, physical and moral. At least they’re supposed to be. They can never hinder anybody from escaping. With no great effort, the most unskillful, the most clumsy of prisoners is able to saw them off or knock the rivet out with a stone very quickly. Leg fetters are decidedly no precaution against anything; and if so, if they are prescribed for a condemned convict only as a punishment, then again I ask: why punish a dying man?