The day was hot, cloudy, sad-one of those days when places like a hospital assume a particularly disagreeable and repulsive look. Together with the soldier escorting me I entered the reception hall, where there were two copper baths. Two other convicts and their escorts waited there. An assistant-surgeon came in, looked at us with a careless and patronizing air, and went away still more indifferently to inform the physician on duty of our arrival. It was not long before the doctor arrived. He was most affable, examineed me, and gave me a paper on which my name was inscribed. The physician-in-ordinary of the convict wards was to diagnose my trouble, and prescribe treatment and diet. I had already heard the convicts say that the doctors could not be too highly praised. ‘They’re fathers to us,’ they used to say.
The three of us next changed our clothes. Our uniforms and linen were taken away, and we were supplied with hospital linen, to which were added long stockings, slippers, cotton nightcaps, and a dressing-gown made of very thick brown cloth which was lined, not with linen, but with filth. The dressing-gown was certainly foul but I soon discovered its utility. We were afterwards taken to the convict wards which were at the end of a long corridor; they were very high, and spotlessly clean. The external cleanliness was quite satisfactory: everything visible shone; so, at least, it seemed to me after the dirtiness of the convict prison.
The two prisoners whom I had found in the entrance hall turned to the left of the corridor while I entered another room. A sentry with musket on shoulder marched up and down before the padlocked door; not far off was his relief The sergeant of the hospital guard ordered him to let me pass, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a long narrow room, with twenty-two beds arranged against the walls. Three or four of them were as yet unoccupied. These wooden beds were painted green, and, as is notoriously the case with all hospital beds in Russia, were doubtless inhabited by bugs. I was allotted one in a corner near the windows. There were very few prisoners dangerously ill and confined to bed.
The patients were mostly convalescent or men who were slightly indisposed. My new companions lay on their couches, or walked up and down between the rows of beds. There was just space enough for them to do so. The atmosphere of the ward was stifling, and had the odour peculiar to hospitals. It was composed of various emanations, each more disagreeable than the other, and of the smell of drugs. My bed was covered with a counterpane, but as the stove was kept well heated all day long I removed it. The bed itself consisted of a cloth blanket lined with linen, and coarse sheets of more than doubtful cleanliness. By the side of the bed was a little table with a pitcher and pewter mug, together with a diminutive napkin. The table could also hold a samovar if the patient were rich enough to drink tea. These men of means, however, were not very numerous. The pipes and tobacco pouches-for all the patients, even the consumptives, smoked -could be hidden under the mattress. The doctors and other officials scarcely ever made a search, and when they caught a man with a pipe in his mouth, they pretended not to have seen. The patients, however, were very cautious, and always smoked at the back of the stove. They never smoked in bed except at night, when the officers in charge made no rounds.
I had never before been a patient in any hospital, and everything was quite new to me. I noticed that my entry had a strange effect on some of the prisoners: they had heard of me, and all the inmates now looked upon me with that slight shade of superiority which recognized members of no matter what society show towards a newcomer. On my right lay a man who had been committed for trial on a charge of coining. An ex-secretary and the illegitimate son of a retired captain, he had been in the hospital for almost a year. There was nothing whatever wrong with him, but he had assured the doctors that he had an aneurism, and he so thoroughly deceived them that he escaped both the hard labour and the corporal punishment to which he had been sentenced. Twelve months later he was transferred to an asylum at Tk. He was a vigorous young fellow of eight-and-twenty, cunning, a self-confessed rogue, and something of a lawyer. He was intelligent, had easy manners, but was very presumptuous and suffered from morbid self esteem. Convinced that there was no one on earth more honest or just than himself, he considered himself innocent and made no secret of his opinion.
This personage was the first to address me, and he questioned me with much curiosity. He initiated me into the ways of the hospital, and, of course, began by telling me that he was the son of a captain. He was very anxious that I should take him for a noble or at least for someone well connected.
Soon afterwards an invalid from the Disciplinary Company came and told me that he knew a great many noblemen in exile, and, to convince me, he rolled off their Christian names and their patronymics. It was only necessary to watch the face of this soldier to understand that he was an abominable liar. His name was Tchekounoff, and he took an interest in me simply because he suspected me of having money. When he saw that I possessed a packet of tea and some sugar, he at once offered me his services to procure me a samovar and boil the water. M. D. S. Khad promised to send me my own by one of the prisoners who worked in the hospital, but Tchekounoff arranged to get me one forthwith. He obtained one made of tin, boiled my water, and, in a word, showed such extraordinary zeal that he drew down upon himself the scorn of a consumptive patient whose bed was just opposite mine. This man was named Usteantseff; he was the soldier who, when condemned to the rods, stricken with terror, swallowed a bottle of vodka in which he had infused tobacco and thus brought on lung disease.
I have already spoken of him. He had remained silent until now, stretched out on his bed and breathing with diffi-culty. His serious look was always turned in my direction and he never lifted his gaze from Tchekounoff, whose civility irritated him. His extraordinary gravity rendered his in dignation comic. At last he could stand it no longer.
‘Look at that fellow! He’s found his master,’ he said stammering out the words in a voice strangled by weakness for he had now not long to live.
Tchekounoff, much annoyed, turned round.
‘Who is the fellow?’ he asked, looking at Usteantseff with contempt.
‘Why, you’re a flunkey,’ replied Usteantseff, as confidently us if he had the right to call Tchekounoff to order.
‘I a flunkey?’
‘Yes, you’re a flunkey; a true flunkey. Listen, my good friends. He won’t believe me. He’s quite astonished, the brave fellow.’
‘Well, what of it? It’s obvious when a man doesn’t know how to make use of his hands that he’s not used to being without servants. Why shouldn’t I give him a hand, you buffoon with a hairy snout?’
‘Who has a hairy snout?’
‘You!’
‘I have a hairy snout?’
‘Yes, you certainly have.’
‘You’re a nice fellow, you are. If I have a hairy snout, you have a face like a crow’s egg.’
‘ Hairy snout! The merciful Lord has settled your account. You’d do much better to keep quiet and die.’
‘Why? I’d rather prostrate myself before a boot than a slipper. My father never kowtowed himself, and never made me do so.’
He would have continued, but an attack of coughing convulsed him for some minutes. He spat blood, and a cold sweat broke out on his low forehead. If his cough had not prevented him from speaking, he would have continued to declaim. One could see that from “his look; but he was powerless to do more than move his hand, with the result that Tchekounoff spoke no more about the matter.
I quite understood that the consumptive patient hated me far more bitterly than Tchekounoff. No one would have thought of being angry with him or of despising him for the services he rendered me and the few kopecks that he tried to earn from me. It was generally recognized that he did it all in order to obtain a little money. The Russian people are not at all susceptible in such matters, and know perfectly well how to take them.
I had displeased Usteantseff, just as my tea had displeased him. What irritated him was that, in spite of all, I was a gentleman, even with my chains; tha
t I could not do without a servant, though I neither asked for nor desired one. In fact I tried to do everything for myself, so as not to appear a white-handed, effeminate person, and not to play a part which excited so much envy.
I even felt a little pride on this point, but, in spite of everything-I don’t known why-I was always surrounded by officious, complaisant folk who attached themselves to me of their own free will, and who ended by ruling me. It was I, rather, who was their servant; so that, whether I liked it or not, I was made to appear a nobleman, who could not do without the services of others and who gave himself airs. This exasperated me.
Usteantseff was consumptive and, therefore, irascible. The other patients showed me nothing more than indifference tinged with a shade of contempt. They were preoccupied with a circumstance which I can still recall.
I learned, as I listened to their conversation, that then was to be brought into hospital that evening a convict who at that moment was being flogged. They were looking forward with keen curiosity to this new arrival, but they said that his punishment was not severe-only five hundred strokes.
I looked round the ward. The majority of genuine patient were, as far as I could see, suffering from scurvy and disease of the eyes-both peculiar to this country. The remainder suffered from fever, tuberculosis, and other illnesses. There was no segregation of the various diseases; all the patient were together in the same room.
I have spoken of ‘genuine patients,’ for certain convict had come in merely to get a little rest. The doctors admitted them simply from compassion, particularly if there were any vacant beds. Life in the guard-house and in the prison was so hard compared with that of the hospital, that many preferred to remain lying down in spite of the stifling atmosphere and the rules against leaving the room.
There were even men who took pleasure in this kind of life. They nearly all belonged to the Disciplinary Company, examined my new companions with curiosity, and one of then puzzled me very much. He was consumptive, and was dying. His bed was a little way beyond Usteantseff’s and almost next to mine. His name was Mikhailoff. I had seen him in the prison two weeks before, when he was already seriously ill. He ought to have been under treatment long before, but he bore up against his malady with surprising courage. He did not go to the hospital until just before the Christmas holidays, and died three weeks later of galloping consumption. He seemed to have burned out like a candle. What astonished me most was the terrible change in his countenance. I had noticed him on the very first day of my imprisonment. Next to him lay a soldier of the Disciplinary Company-an old man with an evil expression, and whose general appearance was disgusting.
But I am not going to describe every patient. I refer to this old man simply because he made an impression on me, and at once initiated me into certain peculiarities of the ward. He had a severe cold in the head, which caused him to sneeze every few moments. This he did even in his sleep, as if firing a salute of five or six guns, while each time he called out, ‘My God, what torture!’
Seated on his bed he crammed his nose eagerly with snuff from a paper bag, in order to sneeze more strongly and with greater regularity. He sneezed into a checked cotton pocket-handkerchief which was his own property and which had lost its colour through perpetual washing. His little nose then became puckered in a most peculiar manner with a multitude of wrinkles, and his open mouth revealed broken teeth, decayed and black, and red gums moist with saliva. When he sneezed into his handkerchief he unfolded it and wiped it on the lining of his dressing-gown. His proceeding disgusted me so much that I involuntarily examined the dressing-gown which I had just put on. It exhaled a most offensive odour which contact with my body helped to bring out. It smelt of plasters and medicaments of all kinds, and seemed as though it had been worn by patients from time immemorial; the lining had, perhaps, been washed once, but I would not swear to it. Certainly at the time I put it on it was saturated with lotions and stained by contact with poultices and plasters of every imaginable kind.
Prisoners condemned to the rods, having undergone their punishment, were brought straight to the hospital with their backs still bleeding. As compresses and poultices were placed on their wounds, the dressing-gowns they wore over their wet shirts received and retained the droppings.
During the period of my imprisonment I was in hospital on several occasions, and it was always with mistrust and abhorrence that I put on the dressing-gown provided for me. As soon as Tchekounoff had given me my tea (I may say in parenthesis that the water brought in in the morning, and not renewed throughout the day, was soon corrupted, soon poisoned by the fetid air), the door opened, and the soldier who had received the rods was brought in under double escort. I saw for the first time a man who had just been whipped. The event was by no means infrequent, but whenever it happened it caused great distress to the other patients. These unfortunate men were received with grave composure, but the nature of their reception usually depended on the enormity of their crime, and consequently on the number of strokes administered.
The criminals most cruelly whipped, and who were celebrated as first-rate villains, enjoyed more respect and attention than a simple deserter, a mere recruit, like the one who had just been brought in. But in neither case was any particular sympathy manifested, nor were any annoying remarks made. The unhappy man was attended to in silence, above all if he was incapable of attending to himself. The assistant-surgeon knew that they were entrusting their patients to skilful and experienced hands. The usual treatment consisted in frequent application to the poor fellow’s back of a shirt or piece of linen steeped in cold water. It was also necessary to extract from his wounds the splinters of the rods which had been broken on his back. This last operation was particularly painful to the victims, and the extraordinary stoicism with which they supported their sufferings astonished me greatly.
I have seen many convicts who had been frequently and cruelly whipped, but I do not remember one of them uttering a groan. After such an experience, however, the countenance is pale and distorted, the eyes glitter, the look wanders, and the lips tremble so that a patient sometimes bites them till they bleed.
The soldier who had just come in was twenty-three years of age. He was a well-built and rather fine-looking man, tall, splendidly proportioned, with a bronzed skin. His back, uncovered down to the waist, was terribly lacerated, and his body now trembled with fever beneath the damp sheet with which his back was covered. For about an hour and a half he did nothing but walk up and down the room. I watched his face: he seemed to be thinking of nothing; his eyes had a strange expression, at once wild and timid; they seemed to fix themselves with difficulty on the various objects. I fancied I saw him looking attentively at my hot tea; the steam was rising from the full cup, and the poor devil was shivering and clattering his teeth. I invited him to have some; he turned towards me without saying a word, and taking up the cup, swallowed the tea at one gulp without adding sugar. He tried not to look at me, and when he had finished he returned the cup in silence without making a sign, and then began pacing up and down as before. He was in too much pain to think of speaking to me or thanking me. As for the other prisoners, they refrained from questioning him; when once they had applied compresses they paid no more attention to him, thinking, probably, that it would be better to leave him alone and not worry him with their questions or their sympathy. The soldier seemed quite satisfied with this arrangement.
Meanwhile it grew dark and the lamp was lighted; some of the patients possessed candlesticks of their own, but they were not many. In the evening the doctor came round, after which a non-commissioned officer on guard counted the patients and locked the room.
The prisoners could not speak too highly of the doctors. They looked upon them as true fathers and held them in great respect. Those doctors had always something pleasant to say, a kindly word even for reprobates, who appreciated it all the more because they knew it was spoken in sincerity.
Yes, those kindly words were indeed sincere, for no one
would have thought of blaming the doctors had they shown themselves ill-tempered or even quite inhuman. They were gentle purely from compassion. They understood perfectly that a convict who is sick has as much right to breathe pure air as anyone else, even though the latter be a great personage. The convalescents were allowed to walk freely through the corridors for exercise, and to breathe air less pestilential than that of the ward, which was close and saturated with poisonous exhalations.
Once the doors had been locked in the evening, they had to remain so throughout the night, and under no pretext was anyone allowed to leave the room.
For many years I was unable to understand a certain fact which plagued me like an insoluble problem. I must speak of it before continuing my narrative. I am thinking of the chains which every convict is obliged to wear, however ill he may be; even consumptives have died beneath my eyes, their legs weighed down with irons.
Everybody was accustomed to it and regarded it as an inevitable fact. I do not think the doctors themselves would have thought of demanding the removal of the irons from convicts who were seriously ill, not even from the consumptives. The chains, it is true, were not extraordinarily heavy they did not in general weigh more than eight or ten pounds, which is an endurable burden for a man in good health. I have been told, however, that after some years the legs of the convicts dry up and waste away. I do not know whether that is true. I am inclined to think it is; for the weight, however light it may be (say not more than ten pounds), if it is permanently fixed to the leg, increases the weight of the limb abnormally, and at the end of a certain time must have a disastrous effect on its development.
The danger to a healthy convict is not so great, but the same cannot be said of the sick. For those who were seriously ill, for the consumptives, whose arms and legs dry up of themselves, this additional burden is insupportable. Even if the medical authorities claimed exemption for the consumptive patients only, I am certain that it would prove an immense benefit. I shall be told that convicts are malefactors, unworthy of compassion; but ought we to show increased severity towards those on which the hand of God already weighs? No one will believe that the object of this aggravation is to reform the criminal, and after all, the consumptive prisoners are exempted by the courts from corpora] punishment.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 156