Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Kultyapka was of a totally different character. Why I brought him from the workshop to the prison while still a blind puppy, I don’t know. I enjoyed feeding him and raising him. Sharik immediately took Kultyapka under his protection and slept with him. When Kultyapka began to grow up, he allowed him to nip his ears, tear at his fur, and play with him, the way grown-up dogs usually play with puppies. Strangely, Kultyapka almost didn’t grow in height, but all in length and breadth. His fur was shaggy, of a light mousy color; one ear stood up, the other hung down. He was of an ardent and rapturous character, like all puppies, who, from joy at seeing their master, would squeal, bark, come to lick his face, and are ready to lose control of all their other feelings in front of you: “Proprieties mean nothing, if only you see my rapture!” Wherever I might be, at the shout “Kultyapka!” he would suddenly appear from around the corner, as if from nowhere, and with squealing rapture would come flying to me, rolling like a ball and turning somersaults on the way. I became terribly fond of the little monster. It seemed that fate had prepared only pleasures and joys for him in his life. But one fine day the prisoner Neustroev, whose occupation was stitching women’s shoes and dressing skins, took special note of him. Something suddenly struck him. He called Kultyapka over, felt his fur, and rolled him over affectionately on the ground. Kultyapka, suspecting nothing, squealed with delight. But the next morning he disappeared. I looked a long time for him; he had vanished without a trace; and only two weeks later was it all explained: Neustroev had taken a great liking to Kultyapka’s fur. He had skinned him, dressed the hide, and used it to line the velvet winter half boots the auditor’s wife had commissioned from him. He showed me the half boots when they were ready. The fur had come out astonishingly well. Poor Kultyapka!

  Many people in our prison were occupied with dressing hides and often brought in dogs with good pelts, who instantly vanished. Some had been stolen, and some had even been bought. I remember I once saw two prisoners behind the kitchen. They were deliberating on something and bustling about. One of them was holding a magnificent big dog, obviously of a valuable breed, on a rope. Some scoundrel of a lackey had stolen him from his master and sold him to our shoemakers for thirty silver kopecks. The prisoners were about to hang him. This could all be done very handily: they would remove the hide and throw the body into the big and deep refuse pit, which was in the farthest corner of the prison and stank terribly in summer, when the heat was intense. It was occasionally cleaned. The poor dog seemed to understand the fate being prepared for him. He glanced questioningly and uneasily at the three of us in turn and only occasionally ventured to wag his bushy tail, which he kept between his legs, as if wishing to soften us by this sign of his trust in us. I quickly left, and they, naturally, finished their business successfully.

  Geese also came to us somehow by chance. Who brought them, and whom they actually belonged to, I don’t know, but for some time they amused the prisoners greatly and even became known in town. They were hatched in the prison and kept in the kitchen. When the brood grew up, the whole gaggle of them got into the habit of going out to work with the prisoners. As soon as the drum roll sounded and the inmates moved towards the gates, our geese would rush honking after us, spreading their wings, jump one after the other over the high threshold of the gateway, and unfailingly make for the right flank, where they would line up waiting for the assignments to be made. They always joined the biggest party and grazed somewhere nearby while the work went on. As soon as the party headed back from work to the prison, they also got up to go. Rumor spread through the fortress that the geese were going to work with the prisoners. “Look, the prisoners are coming with their geese!” people meeting them would say. “How did you train them to do it?” “Here’s for your geese!” someone else would add, giving them alms. But in spite of all their devotion, they were all slaughtered for some festive meal.

  On the other hand, our billy goat, Vaska, would never have been slaughtered, had it not been for a special circumstance. I also don’t know where he came from and who brought him, but suddenly a small, white, very pretty little goat turned up in the prison. After a few days we all got to love him, and he became our general entertainment and even delight. A reason was found for keeping him: it was necessary to keep a goat in the prison stables.2 However, he didn’t live in the stables, but first in the kitchen, and then all over the prison. He was a most graceful and frolicsome creature. He came running when called, jumped onto the benches and tables, butted the prisoners, was always merry and amusing. Once, when he had already cut good-sized horns, the Lezgin Babai, sitting on the barrack porch one evening in a group of other prisoners, decided to butt heads with him. They butted each other’s foreheads for a long time—that being the prisoners’ favorite amusement with the goat—when Vaska suddenly leaped onto the upper step of the porch, and the moment Babai looked away, he instantly reared up, pressing his front hoofs to his body, and hit Babai on the back of the head with all his might, sending him tumbling off the porch, to the delight of all those present and of Babai first of all. In short, everybody was terribly fond of Vaska. When he began to grow up, a general and serious conference was held, as a result of which a certain operation was performed on him, which our veterinarians knew perfectly well how to do. “Otherwise he’ll smell of goat,” the prisoners said. After that Vaska grew terribly fat. And they fed him as if for the slaughter. In the end he grew into a fine, big billy goat, with the longest horns and of an extraordinary corpulence. He waddled when he walked. He also got into the habit of going to work with us, to the amusement of the prisoners and the public we met. Everybody knew the prison goat Vaska. Sometimes, if they were working, for instance, on the riverbank, the prisoners would tear off flexible willow branches, gather leaves of some sort, pick some flowers on the ramparts, and decorate Vaska with it all: weave the branches and flowers around his horns, hang garlands all over his body. Vaska always used to go back to the prison at the head of the prisoners, adorned and decked out, and they walked behind him as if priding themselves before the passersby. This admiration of the goat went so far that some of them even came up with a childish idea: “Why not gild Vaska’s horns?” But they only talked about it, and didn’t do it. However, I remember asking Akim Akimych, our best gilder after Isai Fomich, if you could in fact gild a goat’s horns. He first looked the goat over attentively, then considered seriously and replied that maybe you could, but it wouldn’t last and besides was completely useless. The matter ended there. Vaska would have lived a long time in the prison and died, probably, of shortness of breath, but one day, coming back from work at the head of the prisoners, adorned and decked out, he ran into the major driving in his droshky. “Stop!” he bellowed. “Whose goat is that?” It was explained to him. “What? A goat in the prison, and without my permission? Sergeant!” The sergeant appeared at once and was ordered to slaughter the goat immediately. To skin him, sell the hide at the market, add the money to the official prison purse, and put the meat into the prisoners’ shchi. There was much talk and regret in the prison, but they did not dare disobey. Vaska was slaughtered over our refuse pit. One of the prisoners bought all of the meat, paying a rouble and a half into the prison purse. The money was spent on kalachi, and the man who had bought Vaska sold him in pieces to his fellows for roasting. The meat turned out in fact to be remarkably tasty.

  An eagle, a karagush (a breed of small steppe eagles), also lived with us in prison for a time. Somebody brought him to the barrack wounded and suffering. The prisoners all stood around him; he couldn’t fly; his right wing hung down, and one leg was dislocated. I remember how fiercely he looked around at the curious crowd and opened his hooked beak, prepared to sell his life dearly. When they had looked at him enough and began to disperse, he hobbled off, limping, skipping on his one leg and flapping his good wing, to the farthest end of the prison, where he huddled in a corner, pressing himself close to the palings. There he lived for some three months, and in all that time he never left his cor
ner. At first people often went to look at him and set the dog on him. Sharik attacked him fiercely, but was obviously afraid to get close, which amused the prisoners greatly: “He’s wild, he won’t give himself up!” they said. Later Sharik also began to hurt him badly; his fear left him, and when they set him on, he managed to catch him by the injured wing. The eagle defended himself with all his might, claws and beak, and huddled in his corner, gazing proudly and wildly, like a wounded king, at the curious who came to look at him. In the end they all got tired of him; they abandoned him and forgot him, and yet each day you could see scraps of raw meat and a crock of water beside him. Somebody must have been looking after him. At first he refused to eat, didn’t eat for several days; in the end he started to take food, but never from men’s hands or in front of them. I happened to watch him more than once from a distance. Seeing no one and thinking he was alone, he sometimes ventured to leave his corner and hobble along the fence, some twelve paces from his place, then went back, then went out again, as if doing it for exercise. Catching sight of me, he hurried back to his place at once, limping and skipping with all his might, and, throwing back his head, opening his beak, all ruffled up, at once prepared for battle. I couldn’t soften him with any affection: he bit and thrashed, refused to take beef from me, and all the while I stood over him, looked me fixedly in the eye with his angry, piercing gaze. Solitary and angry, he awaited death, trusting no one and making peace with no one. At last, it was as if the prisoners remembered him, and though no one had bothered with him, though no one had even mentioned him for two months, it was as if they all suddenly felt compassion for him. They said the eagle ought to be taken out. “Let him die, but not in prison,” some said.

  “Right, he’s a free, tough bird, he’s not used to prison,” others agreed.

  “Meaning he’s not like us,” somebody added.

  “What blather: he’s a bird, and we’re men.”

  “The eagle, brothers, is the king of the forests …,” Skuratov began, but this time nobody listened to him. One day, after lunch and the drum roll to go back to work, they took the eagle, holding his beak tight, because he began to struggle fiercely, and carried him out of the prison. They came to the ramparts. The twelve men who made up the party were curious to see where the eagle would go. Strangely, they were all pleased at something, as if they were getting a share of his freedom.

  “Look at this dog’s-meat: you do him good, and he keeps biting!” said the man who was holding him, looking at the angry bird almost with love.

  “Let him go, Mikitka!”

  “Can’t fob him off with any humbuggery. Got to give him freedom, downright free freedom!”

  They threw the eagle from the rampart into the steppe. It was late autumn, a cold and gloomy day. Wind whistled over the bare steppe and rustled through the yellow, withered clumps of steppe grass. The eagle went straight off, waving his injured wing and as if hurrying to get away from us wherever his legs would carry him. The prisoners followed with curiosity the way his head kept flashing up from the grass.

  “See him go!” one said thoughtfully.

  “And he doesn’t look back!” added another. “Hasn’t looked back once, brothers, he’s running for it!”

  “So you thought he’d come back to thank us?” observed a third.

  “Freedom, right enough. He’s feeling his freedom.”

  “Meaning liberty.”

  “Can’t see him anymore, brothers …”

  “What’re you standing there for! March!” the convoy shouted, and we all silently trudged off to work.

  * * *

  * Literally “bay boys,” from gnedoi (“bay”). Translator.

  VII

  The Grievance

  In beginning this chapter, the editor of the late Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov’s notes considers it his duty to make the following report to the reader.

  In the first chapter of Notes from a Dead House, a few words were said about a certain parricide from the nobility. Among other things, he was held up as an example of the callousness with which prisoners sometimes speak of the crimes they have committed. It was also said that the murderer had not confessed his crime before the court, but that, judging by what people told who knew all the details of his story, the facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe in his crime. The same people told the author of the Notes that the criminal’s behavior had been totally dissolute, that he had fallen into debt and had killed his father out of a craving for his inheritance. However, the whole town where this parricide had formerly served told the same story. Of this last fact the editor of the Notes has rather reliable information. Finally, we are told in the Notes that in prison the murderer was always in the most excellent, the merriest spirits; that he was a whimsical, light-minded man, unreasonable in the highest degree, though by no means a fool, and that the author of the Notes never noticed any particular cruelty in him. And right there the words are added: “Of course, I did not believe in that crime.”

  The other day the editor of Notes from a Dead House received information from Siberia that the criminal was indeed in the right and had suffered ten years of hard labor for nothing; that his innocence had been revealed in court, officially. That the real criminals had been found and had confessed, and the unfortunate man had already been released from prison. The editor can in no way doubt the truthfulness of this news …

  There is nothing more to add. There is no point in talking and expanding upon all the depths of the tragic in this fact, upon the ruining of a still young life under such a terrible accusation. The fact is all too clear, all too shocking in itself.

  We also think that if such a fact turns out to be possible, then the possibility itself adds another new and extremely striking feature to the description and full portrayal of the Dead House.

  And now let us go on.

  I have already said earlier that I finally adjusted to my situation in prison. But this “finally” was accomplished with great strain and suffering, and all too gradually. In fact, it took me nearly a year, and that was the hardest year of my life. That is why it has been stored away all of a piece in my memory. It seems to me that I remember each hour of that year in succession. I have also said that other prisoners, too, could not get used to that life. I remember often reflecting to myself during that first year: “What, how are they, can they really be at peace?” These questions preoccupied me very much. I have already mentioned that the prisoners all lived as if they were not at home, but in an inn, on a march, at some sort of stopping place. Even people sent up for life fidgeted or pined away, and each of them certainly dreamed of something almost impossible. This eternal restlessness, manifesting itself silently but visibly; this strange fervor and impatience of sometimes involuntarily expressed hopes, at times so unfounded that they were more like raving, and, what was most striking of all, that often dwelt in the most practical-seeming minds—all this gave the place an extraordinary appearance and character, so much so that these features may have constituted its most characteristic qualities. You somehow felt, almost from the first glance, that there was none of this outside prison. Here everyone was a dreamer, and that jumped into your eyes. You felt it painfully, precisely because this dreaminess lent the majority of the prisoners a gloomy and dismal, somehow unhealthy look. The great majority were silent and spiteful to the point of hatred, and did not like to openly display their hopes. Simple-heartedness and candor were held in contempt. The more unrealizable the hopes were, and the more the dreamer himself felt that unrealizability, the more stubbornly and chastely he concealed them within himself, but renounce them he could not. Who knows, maybe some were secretly ashamed of them. In the Russian character there is so much of the positive and sober-minded, so much inner mockery of oneself first of all … Maybe it was because of this constant secret dissatisfaction with themselves that there was so much impatience in these people in everyday relations with each other, so much resentment and mockery of each other. And if, for
instance, someone of a more naïve and impatient sort should suddenly pop up among them and express aloud what was in all of their minds, should start dreaming and hoping, he would immediately be rudely checked, cut short, derided; but I suspect that the most zealous of the persecutors would be precisely those who themselves perhaps went still further in their dreams and hopes. The naïve and simple-minded, as I’ve already said, were generally looked upon among us as the most banal fools and were treated with contempt. Each man of us was so gloomy and vain that he had contempt for anyone who was kind and without vanity. Apart from these naïve and simple-minded babblers, all the rest, that is, the silent ones, were sharply divided into the good and the wicked, the gloomy and the bright. There were incomparably more of the gloomy and wicked; if there happened to be some among them who were talkative by nature, they were all inevitably restless gossips and anxious enviers. They minded everybody else’s business, yet never exposed their own soul, their own secret business, to anybody. It wasn’t the fashion, it wasn’t done. The good—a very small group—were quiet, silently kept their expectations to themselves, and, naturally, were more inclined than the gloomy to have hopes and to believe in them. However, it seems to me that there was also a category in the prison of those in total despair. One such, for instance, was the old man from the Starodubsky settlements; in any case there were very few of them. The old man looked calm (I’ve already spoken of him), but, judging by certain signs, I suspect his inner state was terrible. However, he had his own salvation, his own way out: prayer and the idea of martyrdom. Having gone out of his mind, the Bible-reading prisoner, whom I have already mentioned and who attacked the major with a brick, was probably also one of those in despair, those whose last hope had abandoned them; and since it is impossible to live with no hope at all, he invented a way out for himself in a voluntary, almost artificial martyrdom. He declared that he had attacked the major without anger, but solely from a wish to embrace suffering. And who knows what psychological process had gone on in his soul then! No living man lives without some sort of goal and a striving towards it. Having lost both goal and hope, a man often turns into a monster from anguish … The goal of all of us was freedom and getting out of prison.