Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (216 page)

‘Can’t get away from here, eh?
That’s
their notion, is it? Just look at those chaps!’

‘Yes,’ said a third, looking very superior, ‘but
who’s
got away? Tip-top fellows.
You
can’t hold a candle to them.’

At any other time a man to whom such a remark was made would have flared up in anger, and defended himself; now the observation was met with modest silence.

‘True enough,’ they said. ‘Everybody’s not a Koulikoff or an Av. You’ve got to show what you’re made of before you’ve a right to boast.’

‘I say, pals, after all, why do we stay here?’ exclaimed a prisoner seated by the kitchen window. He spoke in a drawling voice, but you could see he was enjoying himself; he rubbed his cheek slowly with the palm of his hand. ‘ Why do we stay? It’s no life at all; we’ve been buried alive now, haven’t we?’

‘Dammit! You can’t get out of prison as easy as shaking off an old boot. I tell you it sticks to your calves. What’s the good of lamenting the fact?’

‘But, look, there’s Koulikoff now,’ began one of the most eager, a mere lad.

‘Koulikoff!’ exclaimed another, looking askance at the young fellow. ‘Koulikoff! They don’t turn out Koulikoffs by the dozen.’

‘And Av, pals, there’s a lad for you!’

‘Aye, aye, he’ll get Koulikoff just where he wants him, and as often as he wants him. He’s up to everything, he is.’

‘I wonder how far they’ve got; that’s what
I
want to know,’ said one.

Then the talk turned to details: Had they got far from the town? What direction did they take? Which road would give them the best chance? Then they discussed distances, and those convicts who knew the neighbourhood well were listened to attentively.

Next, they talked about the inhabitants of neighbouring villages, of whom they seemed to have a very low opinion. There was nobody in the neighbourhood, the convicts believed, who would hesitate as to the course to be pursued. Nothing would induce them to help the runaways; on the contrary, they would hunt them down.

‘If you only knew what scoundrels these peasants are! Rascally brutes!’

‘Peasants, indeed! Worthless rogues!’

‘These Siberians are rotten types. They think nothing of
killing a man.’

‘Oh, well, our fellows’

‘Yes, that’s it, they may come off second best. Our fellows are as plucky as plucky can be.’

‘Well, if we live long enough, we shall hear something about them soon.’

‘Well, now, what do you think? Do you think they’ll get clean away?’

‘I’m dead certain they’ll never be caught,’ said one of the most excited, giving the table a great blow with his fist.

‘Hm! That’s as things turn out.’

‘I’ll tell you what, friends,’ said Skouratof, ‘if I once got out, I’d stake my life they’d never get me again.’

‘
You?’

Everyone burst out laughing. They would hardly condescend to listen to him; but Skouratof was not to be silenced.

‘I tell you I’d stake my life on it!’ he cried. ‘Why, I made up my mind about that long ago. I’d find means of going through a key-hole rather than let them catch me.’

‘Oh, don’t you fear, when your belly got empty you ‘d just go creeping to a peasant and ask him for a morsel of something.’

Fresh laughter.

‘I ask him for food? You’re a liar!’

‘Hold your tongue, can’t you? We know what you were sent here for. You and your Uncle Varia killed a peasant for bewitching your cattle.’

More laughter. The more serious among them seemed very angry and indignant.

‘You’re a liar!’ cried Skouratof. ‘It’s Mikitka who told you that; I wasn’t in that at all, it was Uncle Varia; don’t you mix my name up in it. I’m a Moscow man, and I’ve been on the tramp ever since I was quite a small boy. Look here, when the priest taught me to read the liturgy he used to pinch my ears and say, “Repeat this after me: ‘Have pity on me, Lord, out of Thy great goodness’”; then he used to make me say with him, “They’ve taken me up and brought me to the police-station out of Thy great goodness,” etc.

I tell you that’s what used to happen when I was quite a little fellow.’

All laughed heartily again: that was what Skouratof wanted, he liked playing the clown. Soon the talk became serious again, especially among the older men and those who knew something about escapes. Those among the younger convicts who controlled themselves and listened seemed highly delighted. A great crowd was assembled in and about the kitchen. There was no patrol about, so everybody could give vent to his feelings in conversation or otherwise. I noticed one man enjoying himself particularly, a little Tartar with high cheek-bones and a remarkably droll face. His name was Mametka. He could scarcely speak Russian at all, but it was odd to see the way he craned his neck forward into the crowd, and the childish delight he showed.

‘Well, Mametka, my lad,
iakchi.’

‘Iakchi, ouk, iakchi!’
said Mametka as well as he could, shaking his grotesque head.
‘Iakchi.’

‘They’ll never catch them, eh?
Iok.’

‘Iok, iok!’
and Mametka wagged his head and brandished his arms.

‘You’re a liar, then, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hey!’

‘That’s it, that’s it,
iakchi!’
answered poor Mametka.

‘All right, good,
iakchi
it is!’

Skouratof gave him a thump on the head, which forced his cap down over his eyes, and went out in high glee, and Mametka was quite crestfallen.

For a week or so a very tight hand was kept on everyone in jail, and the whole neighbourhood was repeatedly and carefully searched. How they managed it I cannot tell, but the prisoners always seemed to know exactly what steps were being taken to recapture the fugitives. For some days, according to all we heard, fortune favoured them; no trace of them could be found. The convicts made very light of official measures, and were quite at their ease about their friends. They repeated over and over again that the two runaways would never be found.

All the local peasantry were said to have been enrolled and were watching all likely places, woods, ravines, etc.

‘Rubbish!’ said our fellows, grinning broadly. ‘They’ve hidden at some friend’s place.’

‘That’s certain. They’re not the fellows to run risks, they’ve made their plans.’

The general idea was, in fact, that they were still concealed in a suburban cellar, waiting till the hue and cry died down and their hair had grown; that they might remain for as long as six months, and then quietly move. Imaginations had run riot when suddenly, eight days after the escape, a rumour spread that the authorities were on their track. This rumour was at first treated with contempt, but towards evening it seemed to be confirmed. The convicts were wildly excited. Next morning it was reported in town that the runaways had been caught, and were being brought back. After dinner there were further details: the story was that they had been seized at a hamlet seventy versts from the town. At last we learned the truth. Our sergeant-major positively asserted, immediately after an interview with the governor, that they would be brought into the guard-house that very night. They had been recaptured; there could be no doubt of that.

It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the effect which this news had upon the convicts. At first they were angry, then hopelessly dejected. Finally they began to be bitter and sarcastic, pouring their scorn not on the authorities, but on the runaways who had been such fools as to get caught. It began with a few, then all joined in, except a handful of the more serious and thoughtful types who held their tongues, and seemed to regard the rest with supreme contempt.

Poor Koulikoff and Av were now just as heartily abused as they had been previously extolled; the men seemed to take a delight in running them down, as though their recapture was an insult to their mates. It was said contemptuously that the fellows had probably got hungry, couldn’t stand it, and had entered a village to beg bread. According to the etiquette of the road, to do that is to descend very low in the social scale. The rumour, however, proved untrue: what had happened was that the fugitives’ tracks had been picked up and followed. They led to a wood which was forthwith surrounded, so that the poor fellows had no recourse but to give themselves up.

They were brought in that night, bound hand and foot, under armed escort. All hurried to the palisades to see what would happen, but they saw nothing except the carriages of the commander-in-chief and the governor, which were waiting in front of the guard-house. The fugitives were ironed and locked up separately, their punishment being adjourned till next day. The prisoners began to sympathize with the hapless wretches when they heard how they had been taken despite all their precautions, and the anxiety about the issue was keen.

‘They’ll get a thousand at least.’

‘A thousand? I tell you they’ll have the life beaten out of them. Av may get off with a thousand, but they’ll kill the other chap. Why, he’s in the special section.’

They were wrong. Av was sentenced to five hundred strokes: his previous good conduct told in his favour, and this was his first prison offence. Koulikoff, I believe, had fifteen hundred. The punishment, upon the whole, was mild rather than severe.

The two men showed good sense and feeling, for they revealed no one’s name as having helped them, and declared that they had made straight for the wood without entering a house. I was very sorry for Koulikoff; to say nothing of the heavy beating he received, he had thrown away all his chances of having his burden lightened. Later he was sent to another prison. Av’s sentence was remitted; the physicians interfered, and he was released. But as soon as he was safe in hospital he began bragging again, said he would stick at nothing now, and that they would soon see what he would do. Koulikoff was not one whit altered: suave as ever, he continued his pose, and even after his punishment there was nothing in his manner or words to show that he had had such an adventure. But the convicts no longer admired him; he seemed to have fallen a good deal in their estimation, and to be on their own level instead of a superior being. So it was that poor Koulikoff’s star waned; success is everything in this world.

CHAPTER X

FREEDOM

This incident occurred during the last year of my imprisonment. My recollection of those last months is as vivid as that of the first years, but I have given a sufficiently detailed account of my experiences. In spite of my impatience to be free, this year was the least trying of all those I spent there.: I had many friends and acquaintances among the convicts, who had by this time come to regard me with favour. Many of them, indeed, held me in sincere and genuine affection. The soldier appointed to escort my friend and myself-we were released simultaneously-out of the prison very nearly cried when the time came to part. And when at last we were in full possession of our freedom, and were staying in rooms placed at our disposal in the Government building for the month we had yet to spend in town, this man came to see us almost every day. On the other hand, there were some men whose hatred I could never soften, whose regard I could never win. God knows why, but they showed the same hard aversion for me at the last as at the first;
some insuperable obstacle stood between us.

I had more privileges during my last year. I found some old acquaintances and even some old schoolfellows among the officers of the garrison, and the renewal of intercourse with them helped me. Thanks to them I got permission to keep some money, to write to my family, and even to have a certain number of books. For some years I had not had a single volume, and no words can describe the strange, deep emotion and excitement caused by the first book that I read in jail. I began to devour it at night, when the doors were locked, and read till break of day. It was a copy of some review, and it seemed to me like a messenger from the other world. As I read, my old life seemed to rise up before me in sharp outline, as it were of some independent being, some other soul than mine. I tried to get some clear idea of my relation to current events and things: my arrears of knowledge and experience were too great to be made up. The free world had lived through many stirring events during my absence, but my chief anxiety was thoroughly to understand what was going on now, that I could at last know something about it. All the words I read were as tangible things, which I desired rather to feel sensibly than to use as mere media of knowledge; I tried to see more in the text than could be found there. I imagined it to contain mysterious meanings, and tried to see on every page allusions to the past with which my mind was familiar, whether they were there or not. As I turned each leaf I sought for traces of what had moved men deeply before the days of my bondage, and I was extremely depressed when I realized that a new state of things had arisen; a new kind of human existence which was alien to my knowledge and my sentiments. I felt like a straggler, left behind and lost in the onward march of mankind.

Yes, there were indeed ‘arrears,’ if that word is not too weak.

For the truth is that another generation had come into being: I knew it not, and it knew not me. At the foot of one article I saw the name of an old friend; with what avidity I scanned it! But the other names were nearly all new to me; new workers had come upon the scene, and I was eager to learn something of themselves and their achievements. It made me feel almost desperate to have so few books, and to know how hard it would be to get more. At an earlier date, in the old governor’s time, it was a very dangerous thing to bring books into the jail. If one was found during one of his regular general searches there was trouble, and no efforts were spared to find out how they had been smuggled in, and who was privy to the offence. I did not wish to be subjected to a humiliating scrutiny, and, if I had, it would have been useless. I was obliged to live without books, and spent years shut up within myself, tormented with many a question and problem upon which I had no means of throwing light. But I can never tell the whole dreadful story.