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

      ‘Oh, there’s no comparison between us. In all Daghestan you’d never meet so beautiful a girl. My sister is, indeed, charming. I am sure that you’ve never seen anyone like her. My mother also is very handsome.’

      ‘And your mother was fond of you?’

      ‘What do you mean? Of course she was. I’m sure she has died of grief, she was so fond of me. I was her favourite child. Yes, she loved me more than my sister, more than all the others. This very night she appeared to me in a dream and shed tears for me.’

      He was silent, and never spoke again for the rest of the night; but from that moment he sought my company and my conversation, although he remained most respectful and never ventured to address me first. On the other hand he was happy when I spoke to him. He often talked of the Caucasus and of his past life. His brothers did not forbid him to converse with me; in fact I think they even encouraged him to do so, and when they saw that I was fond of him they became more affable towards me.

      Ali often helped me in my work. In barracks he did everything he could to please me and save me trouble. In bis attentions there was neither servility nor the hope of any advantage, but only a warm, cordial feeling which he did not try to hide. He had an extraordinary aptitude for the mechanical arts: he had learnt to sew very tolerably and to mend boots, and even understood something of carpentry -everything, in short, that could be learnt in prison. His brothers were proud of him.

      ‘Listen, Ali,’ I said to him one day, ‘why don’t you learn to read and write Russian? It might be very useful to you here in Siberia.’

      ‘I should like to, but who would teach me?’

      ‘There are plenty of people here who can read and write. I’ll teach you myself if you like.’

      ‘Oh, do teach me, please,’ said Ali, raising himself up in bed. He joined his hands and looked at me with a suppliant air.

      We set to work the very next evening. I had a Russian translation of the New Testament, the only book that was not forbidden in prison. With that book alone, and without an alphabet, Ali learned to read in a few weeks, and after a few months he could do so perfectly. He brought an extraordinary zeal and warmth to his studies.

      One day we were reading together the Sermon on the Mount. I noticed that he read certain passages with much feeling and I asked him if he liked the Gospel. He glanced up at me, and his face suddenly lighted up.

      ‘Yes, yes, Jesus is a holy prophet. He speaks the language of God. How beautiful it is!’

      ‘But tell me what it is that particularly pleases you.’

      ‘The passage which says, “Forgive those that hate you!” Ah! how divinely He speaks!’

      He turned towards his brothers, who were listening to our conversation, and said a few eager words. They talked together seriously for some time, approving what their young brother had said by a nodding of their heads. Then with a grave, kindly smile, quite a Mussulman smile (I liked its gravity), they assured me that Isu (Jesus) was a great prophet. He had done great miracles. He had created a bird with a little clay into which He breathed the breath of life, and the bird had flown away. That, they said, was written in their books. They were convinced that they would please me much by praising Jesus. As for Ali, he was happy to see that his brothers approved of our friendship, and that they were saying what he thought would gratify. My success in teaching Ali to write was quite extraordinary. He had obtained paper at his own expense (for he would not allow me to buy any), also pens and ink; and in less than two months he had learned to write. His brothers were astonished at such rapid progress. Their satisfaction and their pride were without bounds, and they were at a loss to express their gratitude. If we happened to be together in the workshop, they disputed as to which of them should help me. I am not, of course, speaking of Ali, who felt more affection for me than for his own brothers. I shall never forget the day of his release. He took me outside, threw himself on my neck and sobbed. He had never before embraced me, and never before wept in my presence.

      ‘You have done so much for me,’ he said; ‘neither my father nor my mother have ever been kinder. You have made a man of me. God will bless you, I shall never forget you, never!’

      Where is he now, where is my good, kind, dear Ali?

      Besides the Circassians, we had a certain number of Poles, who formed a separate group. They had scarcely any relations with the other convicts. I have already said that, thanks to their hatred of the Russian prisoners, they were detested by everyone. All six of them were of a restless, morbid disposition; some were men of education, of whom I shall have more to say later.

      It was from them that during the last days of my imprisonment I obtained a few books, and indeed the first work I read made a profound impression on me. I shall speak further on of that experience, which I look upon as very curious, though it will be difficult for the reader to understand. Of this I am certain, for there are certain things of which one cannot judge without having experienced them oneself. It will be enough for me to say that intellectual privation is more difficult to support than the most dreadful physical torture.

      A common man sent to hard labour finds himself in kindred society, perhaps even in more interesting society than he has been accustomed to. He loses his native place and family, but his ordinary surroundings are much the same as before. An educated man, condemned by law to the same punishment as the other, suffers incomparably more. He must stifle all his needs, all his habits; he must descend into a lower sphere, must breathe another air. He is like a fish thrown upon the sand. The punishment which he undergoes, equal in the eyes of the law for all criminals, is ten times more severe and more painful for him than for the common man. This is an incontestable truth, even if one thinks only of material comforts that must be sacrificed.

      I was saying that the Poles formed a group by themselves. They lived together and took no notice of any of their fellow convicts, except a Jew, and that for no other reason than because he amused them. Our Jew was generally liked, although everyone laughed at him. We only had one, and even now I cannot think of him without a smile. Whenever I looked at him I thought of the Jew Jankel in Gogol’s Tarass Boulba, who, when undressed and ready to go to bed with his wife in a sort of cupboard, resembled a fowl; for Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein and a plucked fowl were as like one another as two drops of water. He was already about fifty years of age, small, feeble, cunning, and at the same time very stupid, bold, and boastful, though a horrible coward. His face was covered with wrinkles; his forehead and cheeks were scarred from the burning he had received in the pillory. I never understood how he had been able to live through the sixty strokes to which he had been condemned for murder.

      He carried on his person a medical prescription given him by other Jews immediately after his exposure in the pillory. They had promised that with the aid of that ointment his scars would disappear in less than a fortnight; but he had been afraid to use it, and was waiting for the end of his twenty years’ penal servitude, when he would become a colonist and put the famous remedy to better use.

      ‘Otherwise I shall not be able to get married,’ he would say; ‘and it is essential that I marry.’

      We were great friends, for his good humour was inexhaustible. Prison life did not seem to disagree with him. A goldsmith by trade, he received more orders than he could execute, for there was no jeweller’s shop in the town. He thus escaped hard labour, and as a matter of course he lent money on pledges to the convicts, who paid him heavy interest. He had arrived at the prison before me, but one of the Poles described to me his triumphal entry. It is quite a history, and I shall relate it further on, for there is much to tell of Isaiah Fomitch Bumstein.

      As for the other prisoners there were, first of all, four Old Believers, among whom were the old man from Staradoub, two or three Little Russians (very morose persons), and a young convict with delicate features and a finely chiselled nose. He was only about twenty-three years of age, but had already committed eight murders. Then there was a band of coiners, one of whom was the buffoon of our barrack, and, finally, some sombre, sour-tempered convicts, shorn and disfigured, always silent, and full of envy. They looked askance at all who came near them, and must have been doing so for many years.