Notes from a Dead House

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  In short, as much as Kulikov and A—v had been exalted before, so they were humiliated now, even with delight. It was as if they had offended everybody in some way. The story, told with a contemptuous look, was that they had wanted very much to eat, that they had been unable to bear their hunger and had gone into a village to ask the muzhiks for bread. That was the last degree of humiliation for tramps. However, these stories were not true. The escapees had been tracked down; they had hidden in the forest; people had surrounded the forest on all sides. Seeing there was no possibility of saving themselves, they surrendered. There was nothing else they could do.

  But when they were actually brought by the gendarmes in the evening, bound hand and foot, the whole prison poured out to the fence to see what would be done to them. Naturally, they saw nothing but the major’s and the commandant’s carriages by the guardhouse. The escapees were kept in solitary, chained up, and the next day they were put on trial. The mockery and scorn of the prisoners soon ceased of themselves. They learned the details of the affair, learned that there had been nothing else to do but surrender, and they all started earnestly following the course of the trial.

  “They’ll slap a thousand on them,” some said.

  “A thousand, hah!” said others. “They’ll finish them off. A—v may get a thousand, but the other one they’ll finish off, brother, because he’s from the special section.”

  They guessed wrong, though. A—v was given a mere five hundred; they took into consideration his satisfactory former behavior and the fact that this was his first offense. Kulikov, I believe, got fifteen hundred. The punishment was carried out rather mercifully. As sensible people, they did not implicate anyone at the trial, testified clearly, precisely, said they had escaped straight from the fortress, and had not stopped off anywhere. I was sorry most of all for Koller: he lost everything, his last hopes, went through the most, two thousand I believe, and was sent somewhere as a prisoner, only not to our prison. A—v was punished lightly, sparingly; the doctors had a hand in that. But he swaggered and said loudly in the hospital that now he would try anything, he was ready for anything, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do. Kulikov behaved as always, that is, gravely, decently, and, on coming back to the prison after his punishment, looked as if he had never left. But that was not how the prisoners looked at him: though Kulikov had always and everywhere known how to stand up for himself, in their hearts the prisoners somehow ceased to respect him, began to treat him somehow more familiarly. In short, after this escape Kulikov’s glory faded considerably. Success means so much to people …

  * * *

  *1 That is, killed a peasant man or woman on the suspicion that they had loosed a spell on the wind which caused cattle to die. There was one such murderer in the prison. Author.

  *2 “Good?” in Tartar. Translator.

  *3 “No” in Tartar. Translator.

  X

  Leaving Prison

  All this happened during my last year at hard labor. That last year is almost as memorable for me as the first, especially my very last days in prison. But there’s no need to speak of details. I remember only that during that last year, despite my great impatience to finish my term quickly, life was easier for me than in all the previous years of exile. First of all, by then I had many friends and acquaintances among the prisoners, who had decided once and for all that I was a good man. Many of them were devoted to me and sincerely loved me. The pioneer almost burst into tears, seeing me and my comrade off from prison, and when, after leaving, we then spent a whole month in a government building in that town, he came to visit us almost every day, just to have a look at us. However, there were also persons who remained stern and unfriendly to the end, for whom it was apparently hard to say a word to me—God knows why. There seemed to be some sort of barrier between us.

  During that last time I generally had more privileges than in all my time in prison. It turned out that I had some acquaintances and even old schoolmates among the military personnel in town. I renewed relations with them. Through them I could have more money, could write home, and could even have books. For several years I hadn’t read a single book, and it is hard for me to give an account of the strange and at the same time exciting impression that the first book I read in prison made on me. I remember I started reading it in the evening, when the barracks had been locked, and went on reading all night until dawn. It was an issue of a magazine. It was as if news of that world came flying to me; all my former life rose up clear and bright before me, and I tried to guess from my reading if I had fallen far behind that life, if they had lived through much without me, what stirred them now, what questions now occupied them. I picked at words, read between the lines, tried to find hidden meanings, allusions to former things; I searched for traces of what had stirred people before, in my time, and how sad it was for me now to find how much of a stranger I actually was to the new life, how much of a cut-off slice. I would have to get used to the new, to acquaint myself with the new generation. I especially threw myself into articles that appeared over a familiar name, that of a man formerly close to me … But new names could already be heard: new active figures appeared, and I eagerly hurried to acquaint myself with them and was vexed that I had the prospect of so few books and it was so difficult to get hold of them. Formerly, under the former major, it had even been dangerous to bring books to the prison. In case of a search, there were bound to be questions: “Where did these books come from? Where did you get them? So you have connections?…” What could I reply to such questions? And therefore, living without books, willy-nilly I went deeper into myself, asked myself questions, tried to resolve them, sometimes suffered over them … But it can’t all be told like this!…

  I had entered prison in winter and therefore in winter I was also to be set free, on the same day of the month as I had arrived. With what impatience I waited for winter, with what delight at the end of summer I watched the leaves withering on the trees and the grass fading on the steppe! But now summer was over, the autumn wind began to howl; now the first snowflakes came fluttering … It finally settled in, that long-awaited winter! My heart would sometimes start pounding hollowly, heavily, in great anticipation of freedom. But, strangely, the more time passed and the nearer the end came, the more and more patient I grew. By the very last days I was even astonished and reproached myself: it seemed to me that I had become completely cool and indifferent. Many prisoners, meeting me in the yard during our free time, got to talking with me, to congratulating me:

  “So, dear Alexander Petrovich, soon, soon you’ll be out there in freedom. You’ll leave us all alone.”

  “And what about you, Martynov, will it be soon now?” I replied.

  “Me? Don’t ask! I’ve got seven more years to waste away here …”

  And sighing to himself, he would stop, gaze off absent-mindedly, as if peering into the future … Yes, many of them congratulated me sincerely and joyfully. It seemed to me that they all began to treat me more affably. I was evidently already ceasing to be one of them; they were taking leave of me. K—chinsky, a Polish nobleman, a quiet and meek young man, liked, as I did, to walk a lot in the yard during our free time. He hoped, by fresh air and exercise, to preserve his health and make up for all the harm of the stuffy nights in the barrack. “I’m waiting impatiently for you to get out,” he once said with a smile, running into me during a walk. “You’ll leave, and then I’ll know that I have exactly a year left till I get out.”

  I will note here in passing that, owing to dreaminess and long estrangement, freedom seemed to us in prison somehow freer than true freedom, that is, as it actually exists in reality. The prisoners exaggerated the notion of actual freedom, and that is quite natural, quite proper to every prisoner. Some ragged little officer’s orderly was considered almost a king among us, all but the ideal of the free man compared to prisoners, because he went about unshaven, without fetters and without a convoy.

  On the eve of the very last day, at dusk, I wal
ked for the last time along the fence around our whole prison. How many thousands of times I had walked along that fence in all those years! There, behind the barracks, I had wandered during my first year at hard labor, alone, orphaned, crushed. I remember counting then how many thousands of days I had left. Lord, how long ago it was! Here, in this corner, our eagle had lived in captivity; here Petrov had often come to meet me. Now, too, he did not abandon me. He came running and, as if guessing my thoughts, silently walked beside me and looked as if he were surprised at something. I was mentally saying good-bye to the blackened log beams of our barracks. How they had shocked me with their unfriendliness then, in that first time! They, too, must have aged now compared to back then; but I didn’t notice it. And how much youth was buried uselessly within these walls, how much great strength perished here for nothing! I must say it all: these people are extraordinary people. They are perhaps the most gifted, the strongest of all our people. But their mighty strength perishes for nothing, perishes abnormally, unlawfully, irretrievably. And who is to blame?

  That’s just it: who is to blame?

  Early the next morning, before the men went out to work, when dawn was just beginning to break, I went around all the barracks to say good-bye to all the prisoners. Many strong, callused hands reached out to me affably. Some pressed mine in quite a comradely way, but those were few. Others understood very well that I was about to become a totally different man from them. They knew I had acquaintances in town, that from here I would go straight to those gentlemen and sit down with those gentlemen as an equal. They understood that and though they said good-bye to me affably, affectionately, it was hardly as to a comrade, but as if to a squire. Some turned away from me and sternly refused to answer my good-bye. A few even looked at me with a sort of hatred.

  They beat the drum, and everybody headed off to work, while I stayed home. That morning Sushilov had gotten up almost earlier than anybody and bustled about with all his might to prepare tea for me in time. Poor Sushilov! He wept when I gave him my old prison clothes, shirts, under-fetters, and some money. “It’s not that, not that!” he said, trying hard to control the trembling of his lips. “But to lose you, Alexander Petrovich? How can I go on here without you?!” I said good-bye for the last time to Akim Akimych as well.

  “It will be your turn soon!” I said to him.

  “I’ll be here a long time, a long time yet, sir,” he murmured, shaking my hand. I threw myself on his neck and we kissed.

  Ten minutes after the prisoners went out, we also left the prison, never to return—I and my comrade, with whom I had first come there. We had to go straight to the blacksmith, to have our fetters removed. But now no armed convoy came with us: we went with a sergeant. The fetters were removed by our fellow prisoners in the engineering workshop. I waited while they unfettered my comrade, then approached the anvil myself. The smiths turned my back to them, raised my leg, placed it on the anvil … They fussed about, wanted to do it better, more skillfully …

  “The rivet, turn the rivet first of all!…,” the older one commanded. “Put it this way, right … Now hit it with the hammer …”

  The fetters fell off. I picked them up … I wanted to hold them in my hand, to look them over for the last time. It was as if I marveled now that they had just been on my legs.

  “Well, go with God, go with God!” the prisoners said, their voices abrupt, coarse, but as if pleased at something.

  Yes, with God! Freedom, a new life, resurrection from the dead … What a glorious moment!

  Appendix: The Peasant Marey1

  But I think all these professions de foi are very boring to read, and so I’ll tell you a story; though it is not even a story, but only a distant memory, which for some reason I would like to tell about precisely here and now, at the conclusion of our treatise on the people. I was only nine years old then … but, no, I’d better start with when I was twenty-nine.

  It was the second day of the Easter holiday. The air was warm, the sky blue, the sun high, “warm,” bright, but my soul was very dark. I was wandering behind the barracks, staring at and counting the palings of the stout prison stockade, but I didn’t want to count them, though I had the habit. It was the second day of “holiday making” in the prison; the convicts were not sent to work, there were lots of drunks, cursing and quarreling broke out every moment in all the corners. Vile, outrageous songs, card-playing maidans under the bunks, some convicts, sentenced by their own comrades for excessive violence, already beaten half to death and covered with sheepskin coats on the bunks until they revived and came to, knives already drawn several times—all this, in two days of holiday, had tormented me to the point of illness. I never could bear the people’s drunken carousing without loathing, especially here, in this place. During those days even the superiors did not look in on the prison, did not carry out searches, did not hunt for vodka, realizing that once a year even these outcasts had to be allowed some merriment, and that otherwise it would be worse. Finally, anger began to burn in my heart. I ran into the Pole M—cki, a political prisoner; he gave me a dark look, his eyes flashed and his lips trembled: “Je haïs ces brigands!” he rasped in a half whisper and walked on by. I returned to the barrack, though a quarter of an hour earlier I had fled from it half-crazed, when six hefty muzhiks at once had fallen on the drunken Tatar Gazin and set about beating him so as to quiet him down; they beat him absurdly, such blows could have killed a camel; but they knew that this Hercules was hard to kill, and so they beat him without second thoughts. Now, on returning, I noticed the unconscious Gazin at the back of the barrack, on a bunk in a corner, showing almost no signs of life; he lay under a sheepskin coat, and everyone passed him by silently: though they firmly hoped he would come to the next morning, still “who knows, after such a beating, a man might just up and die.” I made my way to my place, facing a barred window, and lay on my back, my hands behind my head and my eyes shut. I liked to lie like that: a sleeping man wasn’t bothered, and meanwhile you could dream and think. But I did not dream; my heart beat uneasily, and M—cki’s words rang in my ears: “Je haïs ces brigands!” However, why describe impressions; even now I sometimes dream at night of that time, and for me no dreams are more tormenting. Perhaps it will also be noticed that until today I have almost never spoken in print about my life at hard labor; I wrote Notes from a Dead House fifteen years ago, through a fictional character, a criminal who had supposedly murdered his wife. Incidentally, I will add as a detail that since then a great many people have thought and maintain even now that I was sent to Siberia for murdering my wife.

  I indeed forgot myself little by little and sank imperceptibly into memories. During all my four years in prison, I was constantly remembering my whole past and, it seems, living through all my former life again in memories. These memories arose of themselves; I rarely called them up by my own will. It would start with some point, some line, sometimes imperceptible, and then would gradually grow into a complete picture, some strong and complete impression. I analyzed these impressions, lent new features to what had been lived through long ago, and, above all, retouched them, ceaselessly retouched them, and in that lay all my amusement. This time for some reason I suddenly remembered an insignificant moment from my early childhood, when I was only nine years old—a moment which it seemed I had completely forgotten; but I was especially fond then of memories from my earliest childhood. I remembered one August on our country estate: the day was dry and clear, but slightly cold and windy; summer was coming to an end, and I would soon have to go back to Moscow and be bored again all winter over French lessons, and I felt so sorry to leave the country. I walked past the barns, went down into the ravine, climbed up to the Losk—as we called the thick bushes that went from the other side of the ravine all the way to the woods. And so I hide myself deep in the bushes and hear, as if not far away, some thirty paces, a solitary peasant plowing in the clearing. I know he’s plowing up a steep hill, and it’s hard going for the horse, and once in a while I
hear him shout “Hup, hup!” I know almost all our peasants, but I don’t know which of them is plowing now, and it’s all the same to me, I’m wholly immersed in my own business, I’m also busy: I break off a hazel switch for whipping frogs; hazel switches are so pretty and so fragile, a far cry from birch ones. I’m also interested in bugs and beetles, I collect them, some are very fancy; I also like the little, nimble red-and-yellow lizards with black spots, but I’m afraid of snakes. However, you come upon snakes much more rarely than lizards. There are few mushrooms here; I have to go to the birch grove for mushrooms, and I’m about to go there. And never in my life have I loved anything so much as the forest, with its mushrooms and wild berries, its bugs and little birds, hedgehogs, squirrels, with its damp smell of rotten leaves, which I love so much. And even now, as I write, I can sense so well the smell of the birch grove on our estate: such impressions stay with you all your life. Suddenly, amid the deep silence, I clearly and distinctly heard a cry: “A wolf’s coming!” I screamed and, beside myself with fear, shouting at the top of my voice, rushed out to the clearing, straight to the plowing peasant.

  It was our peasant Marey. I don’t know if there is such a name, but everybody called him Marey—a man of about fifty, thickset, rather tall, with a lot of gray in his broad, dark brown beard. I knew him, but until then had almost never had occasion to speak to him. He even stopped his little mare, hearing my cry, and when I ran to him and clutched his plow with one hand and his sleeve with the other, he could tell how frightened I was.

  “A wolf’s coming!” I shouted, gasping for breath.

  He raised his head and involuntarily looked around, almost believing me for a moment.

  “Where’s the wolf?”