Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  However, the continual grimacing and restless antics of the madman, who was greeted with laughter when he was brought in, soon simply wearied us all, and after two days we were at the end of our patience. One of them was kept with us for three weeks, and we were ready to go running out of the ward. As if on purpose, just then another madman was brought in. This one made a particular impression on me. It happened during the third year of my term. In the first year, or, rather, in the first months of my prison life, in the spring, I went with a party to work as a carrier for the kiln makers in a brickyard a mile and a half away. The kilns had to be repaired for the coming summer’s brickmaking. That morning, at the factory, M—cki and B. introduced me to Sergeant Ostrozhski, who was the resident overseer there. He was a Pole, an old man of about sixty, tall, lean, of a most seemly and even majestic appearance. He had been serving in Siberia from way back, and though he was of simple stock and had come as a soldier in the onetime army of 1830,2 M—cki and B. loved and respected him. He was always reading the Catholic Bible. I used to talk with him, and he spoke so kindly, so sensibly, told such interesting stories, had such a good-natured and honest look. After that I did not see him for two years, and only heard that he was under investigation for something, and suddenly they brought him into our ward as a madman. He came in shrieking, guffawing, and started dancing around the ward with the most indecent, clownish gestures. The prisoners were delighted, but for me it was so sad … After three days, none of us knew what to do with him. He quarreled, fought, shrieked, sang songs, even during the night, did such repulsive things every moment that we all felt simply nauseated. He was not afraid of anybody. They put him in a straitjacket, but that only made things worse for us, though without it he picked quarrels and got into fights with just about everybody. During those three weeks the whole ward sometimes rose up as one man and asked the head doctor to transfer our treasure to the other prisoners’ ward. There, after two days, they begged in turn that he be transferred back to us. And since we happened to have two madmen at once, both restless and quarrelsome, our two wards kept taking turns exchanging madmen. But they both turned out worse. We all breathed freely when they were finally taken away somewhere …

  I also remember another strange madman. Once during the summer they brought in a convict, a robust and very clumsy-looking fellow of about forty-five, with a face disfigured by smallpox, with small, red, puffy eyes and an extremely dark and sullen look. They put him next to me. He turned out to be a very docile fellow, didn’t speak to anybody, and sat there as if pondering something. It was getting dark, and he suddenly turned to me. Straight off, without further preliminaries, but looking as if he were letting me in on a great secret, he began telling me that one of these days he was supposed to get two thousand, but now it wouldn’t happen, because Colonel G.’s daughter had interceded for him. I looked at him in perplexity and replied that in such cases, it seemed to me, a colonel’s daughter was in no position to do anything. I had not yet guessed what was up; he had not been brought in as a madman, but as an ordinary patient. I asked him what he was sick with. He said he didn’t know, that he had been sent here for some reason, but that he was in perfectly good health, and the colonel’s daughter was in love with him; that once, two weeks ago, she had been driving past the guardhouse, and just then he had looked out the barred window. She had seen him and fallen in love at once. And she had come to the guardhouse three times after that on various pretexts; the first time she had dropped in with her father to see her brother, an officer, who was standing guard just then; another time she had come with her mother to hand out alms, and, passing by, had whispered to him that she loved him and would rescue him. It was strange with what fine detail he told me this whole absurdity, which, of course, was born entirely in his poor, deranged head. He had a sacred belief in his deliverance from punishment. He spoke calmly and affirmatively of this young lady’s passionate love for him, and, not to mention the overall absurdity of the story, it was quite wild to hear this romantic account of a lovelorn maiden from a man approaching fifty, with such a doleful, distressed, and ugly physiognomy. It is strange what the fear of punishment could do to this timid soul. Maybe he really had seen someone from the window, and the madness being prepared in him by fear, growing with every hour, all at once found its outlet, its form. This unfortunate soldier, who in his whole life may never once have given a thought to young ladies, suddenly thought up a whole novel, instinctively clutching at that straw at least. I heard him out silently and told the other prisoners about it. But when the others began to ask questions, he became chastely silent. The next day the doctor questioned him at length, and since he told him that he was not sick at all, and on examination that turned out to be so, he was discharged. But we found out that they had written sanat on his medical chart only when the doctors had left the ward, so that it was impossible to tell them what was wrong with him. And we ourselves had not yet fully figured out the main thing. Yet the whole affair consisted in a mistake made about him by the authorities, who sent him to us without explaining why. There was some sort of carelessness here. And maybe even those who sent him were still only guessing and were not at all convinced of his madness, but acted on obscure rumors and sent him for testing. However it was, two days later the unfortunate man was taken out to be punished. It seems he was very shocked by the unexpectedness; until the last minute he didn’t believe he would be punished, and when they led him between the rows, he began to shout “Help!” In the hospital this time, for lack of cots, he was placed not in ours but in the other ward. But I inquired about him and learned that for all eight days he did not say a word to anyone, was confused and extremely sad … Then, after his back healed, he was transferred somewhere. I at least never heard anything more about him.

  As for treatment and medications in general, as far as I could observe, the slightly ill almost never followed prescriptions and took medications, but the gravely ill and the truly ill in general liked very much to be treated, and took their mixtures and powders conscientiously; but most of all they liked external treatments. Cupping glasses, leeches, poultices, and bloodletting, which our simple folk love and believe in so much, were accepted among us willingly and even with pleasure. One strange circumstance interested me. These same people, who were so patient in enduring the most agonizing pain from rods and birches, often complained, winced, and even moaned from mere cupping glasses. Either they had gone very soft, or they were simply shamming—I really don’t know how to explain it. True, our cupping glasses were of a special kind. Our intern once upon a time had lost or broken the little instrument for making instant cuts in the skin, or else it broke by itself, so that he was forced to make the necessary incisions with a lancet. Around twelve incisions were made for each cupping glass. With the instrument it was painless. Twelve little knives struck suddenly, instantly, and caused no pain. But incisions with the lancet were another matter. A lancet cuts comparatively very slowly; you feel the pain; and since, for example, for ten cupping glasses a hundred and twenty such incisions have to be made in all, of course, it hurts badly. I experienced it, but though it was painful and annoying, still it was not so bad that you couldn’t keep yourself from moaning. It was even funny sometimes to watch some hale and hearty fellow squirm and begin to whine. Generally, it can be compared with a man who is firm and even calm in some serious matter, but mopes and fusses at home when he has nothing to do, won’t eat what he’s offered, curses and shouts; everything is wrong, everybody annoys him, is rude to him, torments him—in short, it’s too much of a good thing, as we sometimes say of such gentlemen, though they are also to be met with among simple folk, and in our prison, with its mutual general cohabitation, even all too often. It happened that the men in his ward would start teasing such a sissy, or else would simply scold him; he would then shut up, as if in fact he had just been waiting for them to scold him so as to shut up. Ustyantsev especially disliked that and never missed a chance to quarrel with a sissy. He generally neve
r missed a chance to wrangle with anybody. It was a pleasure for him, a need, owing to his illness, naturally, and in part to his dull-wittedness. He used first to stare earnestly and intently, and then in a sort of calm, assured voice would begin to deliver his exhortation. He made everything his business; it was as if he had been attached to us to keep an eye on the order or the general morality.

  “Pokes his nose into everything,” the prisoners would say, laughing. They spared him, however, and avoided abusing him, but only laughed sometimes.

  “Talked a heap! Three cartloads or more.”

  “A heap, did I? No hats off to a fool, you know. Why’s he shouting because of a lancet? If you like it hot, you can like it not—I mean, take what comes.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “No, brothers,” one of our prisoners interrupted, “the cupping glasses are nothing; I’ve been through it; but there’s no worse pain than when they pull you by the ear for a long time.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “And you’ve had yours pulled?”

  “You don’t think so? Sure I have!”

  “So that’s why your ears stick out like that.”

  This little prisoner, Shapkin, indeed had very long ears sticking out on both sides. He was a tramp, still a young fellow, sensible and quiet, who always spoke with some serious, hidden humor, which lent a good deal of comedy to some of his stories.

  “Why on earth should I think you’ve had your ears pulled? How would I think that up, you numbskull?” Ustyantsev mixed in again, addressing Shapkin with indignation, though the man had not been speaking to him, but to everyone in general. But Shapkin did not even look at him.

  “And who did it?” someone asked.

  “Who? The police chief, that’s who. It was back when I was a tramp. We arrived in K. then, there were two of us, me and another man, also a tramp, Efim, no last name. On our way, we picked up a little something from a peasant in the village of Tolmina. There’s this village, Tolmina. Well, so we come and look around: let’s pick up a little something here, too, and make tracks. Where the winds blow free is the place for me, but in town it’s creepy, you know. Well, so first of all we come to a pothouse. We look around. A man comes up to us, a real shambles, all out at the elbows, in German clothes. Yack, yack.

  “ ‘And, if I may ask,’ he says, ‘have you got documents?’*2

  “ ‘No,’ we say, ‘no documents.’

  “ ‘Well, there. Same for us, sir. I’ve got a couple of chums here,’ he says. ‘We’re also under General Cuckooshkin.*3 So I make bold to ask, we’ve done a bit of carousing and haven’t had a red cent coming in. Favor us with a half bottle.’

  “ ‘With the greatest pleasure,’ we say. Well, so we drank. And here they pointed us to a piece of business, breaking and entering, that is, in our line. There was this house on the edge of town, and a rich tradesman lived there, heaps of goods, so we decided to call on him during the night. Only that same night, at the rich merchant’s, all five of us got caught. They took us to the police station, then to the chief in person. ‘I’ll question them myself,’ he says. He comes out with his pipe, they carry a cup of tea behind him, a strapping fellow, with side-whiskers. He sits down. And here they brought in three more besides us, also tramps. Your tramp’s a funny man, brothers: he doesn’t remember a thing, you can split him three ways up, he forgets everything, doesn’t know anything. The police chief made straight for me: ‘Who are you?’ He roared it out, like from a barrel. Well, you know, I said the same as everybody: ‘I don’t remember anything, Your Honor,’ I say, ‘I’ve forgotten it all.’

  “ ‘Hold on,’ he says, ‘I’ll talk more with you, your mug’s familiar,’ and he claps his blinkers on me. And I’d never seen him before. He turns to another man:

  “ ‘Who are you?’

  “ ‘Go-off Wavin, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘So your name is Go-off Wavin?’

  “ ‘That’s right, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘Well, fine, so you’re Go-off Wavin. And you?’ To a third man, that is.

  “ ‘Me After-im, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘Yes, but what’s your name?’

  “ ‘That’s my name, Your Honor: Me After-im.’

  “ ‘Who called you that, you scoundrel?’

  “ ‘Good people, Your Honor. You know, Your Honor, the world is not without good people.’

  “ ‘And who are these good people?’

  “ ‘They’ve gone clean out of my head, Your Honor, I ask you kindly to forgive me.’

  “ ‘You’ve forgotten them all?’

  “ ‘Forgotten them all, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘Still, you had a father and mother, didn’t you?… Do you remember them at least?’

  “ ‘It must be supposed I did, Your Honor, but anyhow they’ve also gone clean out of my head. Maybe I did, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘Where have you lived up to now?’

  “ ‘In the woods, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘Always in the woods?’

  “ ‘Always in the woods.’

  “ ‘Well, and in winter?’

  “ ‘Never saw any winter, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘And you, what’s your name?’

  “ ‘Axe, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘And yours?’

  “ ‘Grind Don’t Gape, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘And yours?’

  “ ‘Grind-away No-fear, Your Honor.’

  “ ‘None of you remembers anything?’

  “ ‘We don’t remember anything, Your Honor.’

  “He stands there, laughs, and they look at him, grinning. Well, another time you’d get your teeth bashed in, worse luck. And they’re all such sturdy, beefy fellows.

  “ ‘Take them to jail,’ he says, ‘I’ll deal with them later. But you stay,’ he says, meaning me. ‘Come here, sit down!’ I look: a table, a chair, paper, a pen. I think: What’s he up to? ‘Sit in the chair,’ he says, ‘take the pen, write!’—and he grabs me by the ear and pulls it. I look at him like the devil at a priest: ‘I don’t know how, Your Honor.’ ‘Write!’

  “ ‘Have mercy, Your Honor.’ ‘Write the way you know how!’—and all the while he pulls my ear, goes on pulling it, and suddenly twists it! Well, brothers, I’ll tell you, it would have been better if he’d given me three hundred birches. Sparks flew out of my eyes. ‘Write, I told you!’ ”

  “What, he went foolish?”

  “No, he didn’t. But a short time before, in T—k, a clerk had pulled a fast one: filched some government money and made off with it, and his ears also stuck out. Well, they made it known far and wide. And I seemed to fit the description, so he tested me to see if I knew how to write.”

  “What a business, lad! And it hurt?”

  “I’ll say it did.”

  General laughter rang out.

  “Well, and did you write?”

  “How was I supposed to write? I started moving the pen, went on moving it, moving it over the paper, and he gave up. Well, he boxed my ears a dozen times, naturally, and with that let me go—to jail, I mean.”

  “So you do know how to write?”

  “I used to, but when they started writing with pens, I lost the knack …”

  It was in such stories, or, better, in such blather, that our boring time was sometimes spent. Lord, how boring it was! The days were long, suffocating, all exactly alike. Oh, for some book or other! And yet I went to the hospital often, especially in the beginning, sometimes because I was sick, sometimes just to lie there; to get away from the prison. It was hard there, still harder than here, morally harder. Malice, hostility, quarreling, envy, eternal carping at us gentry, spiteful, threatening faces! Here in the hospital we were all on more of an equal footing, lived more amicably. The saddest time in the whole course of the day came at evening, by candlelight, and the beginning of night. We go to bed early. The bright spot of a dim night-light shines far away by the door, but our end is in semidarkness. It grows more stinking and stuffy. So
meone is unable to fall asleep, sits up, and stays for an hour and a half on his bed, bowing his head in its nightcap, as if thinking about something. You look at him for a whole hour and try to guess what he’s thinking about, so as to kill your own time somehow as well. Or else you start dreaming, remembering the past, painting broad and bright pictures in your imagination; you recall details such as you would never recall or feel at any other time than now. Or else you guess about the future: How will it be to get out of prison? Where to go? When will it be? Will you ever return to your native parts? You think and think; hope begins to stir in your soul … Or sometimes you simply start counting: one, two, three, and so on, so as to somehow fall asleep in the midst of this counting. I sometimes counted up to three thousand and didn’t fall asleep. Here somebody begins to toss. Ustyantsev coughs his putrid, consumptive cough and then moans weakly and each time says: “Lord, I’m a sinner!” And it is strange to hear this sickly, broken, and whining voice amidst the general silence. And somewhere there in a corner men are also not sleeping and are conversing from their cots. One starts telling something about his past, about far away, about long ago, about being a tramp, about his children, about his wife, about the way things used to be. And you can feel just from his far-off whispering that nothing he is talking about will ever come back to him, and he himself, the storyteller, is a cut-off slice. The other man listens. You hear only a quiet, measured whisper, like water murmuring somewhere far away … I remember hearing a story once on a long winter night. At first glance it seemed to me like a feverish dream, as if I were lying in a fever and dreaming it all up in the heat of delirium …