Notes from Underground & The House of the Dead. Федор Достоевский

On holidays he will have meat, and fine people will give him alms, and his evening’s work will bring him in some money. And then again, is prison society to be counted for nothing? The convicts are clever, wide-awake people, who are up to everything. The new arrival can scarcely conceal the admiration he feels for his companions in labour. He has seen nothing like it before, and he will consider himself in the best company possible.

      Is it possible that men so differently situated can feel in an equal degree the punishment inflicted? But why think about questions that are insoluble? The drum beats, and we must return to barracks.

      CHAPTER V

      FIRST IMPRESSIONS (continued)

       Table of Contents

       We were inside once more. The doors of the barracks were locked, each with a special padlock, and the prisoners remained shut up until next morning.

      The roll was checked by a noncommissioned officer accompanied by two soldiers. When an officer happened to be present, the convicts were drawn up in the courtyard, but generally speaking they were identified in the buildings. As the soldiers often made mistakes, they went out and came back in order to count us again and again, until their reckoning was satisfactory; then the barracks were closed. Each one housed about thirty prisoners, and we were very closely packed on our camp bedsteads. As it was too early to go to sleep, the convicts occupied themselves with work.

      Besides the old soldier (of whom I have spoken) who slept in our dormitory and represented the prison authority, there was in our barrack another veteran who wore a good-conduct badge. It happened not infrequently, however, that the good-conduct men themselves committed offences for which they were sentenced to be whipped. They then lost their rank, and were immediately replaced by comrades whose behaviour was considered satisfactory.

      Our good-conduct man was none other than Akim Akimitch. To my great astonishment, he was very hard on the prisoners, but they only retaliated with jests. The other old soldier was more prudent and interfered with no one; if he opened his mouth it was only as a matter of form, as an affair of duty. For the most part he remained silent, seated on his little bedstead, occupied in mending his own boots.

      That day I could not help remarking to myself-and the accuracy of my observation afterwards became apparent-that all those, whoever they be, who are not convicts but have dealings with convicts, beginning with the soldiers of the escort and the sentinels, look upon their charges in a false and exaggerated light, expecting that for a yes or a no, these men will throw themselves upon them knife in hand. The prisoners, perfectly conscious of the fear they inspire, show a certain arrogance. Accordingly, the best prison director is the one who shows no emotion in their presence. In spite of the airs they give themselves, the convicts prefer that confidence should be placed in them. By such means, indeed they may be conciliated. I have more than once had occasion to notice their astonishment at an official entering their prison without an escort, and certainly their astonishment was not unflattering. A visitor who is intrepid imposes respect. If anything unfortunate happens, it will not be in his presence. The terror inspired by convicts is general, and yet I saw no foundation for it. Is it their appearance, their brigand-like looks, that causes a certain repugnance? Is it not rather the feeling that overwhelms you directly you enter the prison that in spite of all efforts, all precautions, it is impossible to turn a living man into a corpse, to stifle his feelings, his thirst for vengeance and for life, his passions, and his imperious desire to satisfy them? However that may be, I declare that there is no reason to fear the convicts. A man does not throw himself so quickly nor so easily upon his fellow man, knife in hand. Few accidents happen; they are, indeed, so rare that the danger may be considered nonexistent.

      I speak, it must be understood, only of prisoners already condemned, who are undergoing their punishment, and some of whom are almost happy to find themselves in prison; so attractive under any circumstances is a new form of life. These men live quiet and contented. As for the turbulent ones, the convicts themselves keep them in restraint, and their arrogance never goes too far. A condemned criminal, audacious and reckless as he may be, is afraid of every prison official. It is by no means the same with an accused person whose fate has not been decided. Such a one is quite capable of attacking no matter whom, without any motive of hatred but solely because he is to be whipped next day. If, indeed, he commits a fresh crime his offence becomes complicated punishment is delayed, and he gains time. The act of aggression is explained: it has a cause, an object. The convict wishes at all hazards to change his fate, and that as soon as possible. In connection with this, I myself have witnessed a physiological fact of the strangest kind.

      In the military section was an old soldier who had been condemned to two years’ hard labour. He was a great boaster, and at the same time a coward. Generally speaking, the Russian soldier does not boast; he has no time to do so, even had he the inclination. But when such a one does appear among a crowd of others, he is always a coward and a rogue. Dutoff-that was the name of the prisoner of whom I am speaking-underwent his punishment, and then returned to his battalion in the Line; but, like all who are sent to prison to be corrected, he had been thoroughly corrupted. A ‘return horse’ reappears after two or three weeks’ liberty, not for a comparatively short time, but for fifteen or twenty years. So it happened in the case of Dutoff. Three weeks after he had been set at liberty he robbed one of his comrades, and was, moreover, mutinous. He was taken before a court martial and sentenced to a severe form of corporal punishment. Horribly frightened, like the coward that he was, at the prospect of punishment, he attacked the officer of the guard with a knife as the latter entered his cell on the day before he was to run the gauntlet of his company. He quite understood that he was aggravating his offence, and that the duration of his punishment would be increased; but all he wanted was to postpone for some days, or at least for some hours, a terrible moment. He was such a coward that the officer was not even wounded. He had, indeed, only committed this assault in order to add a new crime to the last already against him, and thus defer the sentence.

      The moment preceding punishment is terrible for a man condemned to the rods. I have seen many of them on the eve of the fatal day: I generally met with them in the hospital when I was ill, which happened often enough. In Russia the people who show most compassion for the convicts are certainly the doctors, who never draw those distinctions between the prisoners which are observed by other persons brought into direct relations with them. In this respect the common people can alone be compared with the doctors, for they never reproach a criminal with the crime that he has committed, whatever it may be. They forgive him in consideration of the sentence passed upon him.

      It is well known that the common people throughout Russia call crime a ‘misfortune,’ and the criminal an ‘unfortunate.’ This definition is expressive and profound, though unconscious and instinctive. To the doctor the convicts have naturally recourse, above all when they are to undergo corporal punishment. The prisoner who has been before a court martial knows almost to the hour when his sentence will be executed. To escape it he gets himself sent to the hospital, in order to postpone for some days the terrible moment. When he is, declared restored to health, he knows that the day after he leaves the hospital this moment will arrive. Accordingly, on quitting the hospital the convict is always in a state of agitation. Some of them may endeavour from vanity to conceal their anxiety, but no one is taken in by that; everyone understands the cruelty of such a moment, and is silent from motives of humanity.

      I knew one young convict, an ex-soldier, sentenced for. murder, who was to undergo the maximum punishment. On the eve of the day on which he was to suffer, he had resolved to drink a bottle of vodka into which he had infused a quantity of snuff.

      A prisoner condemned to the rods always drinks, before the critical moment arrives, a certain amount of spirits which he has procured long beforehand, and often at a fabulous price. He would deprive himself of the necessaries of life for six months rather than not be in a position to swallow half a pint of vodka before the flogging. The convicts are convinced that a drunken man suffers less from the rods or the whip than one who is stone-cold sober.

      To return to my narrative. A few moments after swallowing his bottle of vodka the poor devil felt sick. He coughed