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. I noticed all these people at a glance on the first night of my arrival. They were veiled in thick smoke; the atmosphere was poisonous, and vibrant with obscene oaths, the rattling of chains, insults, and cynical laughter. I stretched myself out on the bare planks, my head resting on my coat, rolled up to do duty for a pillow, with which I had not yet been supplied. Then I covered myself with my sheepskin, but, owing to the painful impressions of the evening, I was unable for some time to get to sleep. My new life was only just beginning. The future held much that I had not foreseen, of which I had never had the least idea.
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST MONTH
Three days after my arrival I was ordered to go to work. The impression made upon me by my surroundings remain to this day very clear. There was nothing particularly striking about them, unless one considers that my position was in itself extraordinary. First sensations count for a good deal, and as yet everything was unfamiliar. The first three days were certainly the most unpleasant in the whole term of imprisonment.
I told myself over and over again that I had reached my journey’s end. I was now in prison, my home for many years. Here I would have to live. I had arrived overwhelmed with grief. Who knew but when I left I should do so with regret? I told myself all this as one touches a wound, the better to feel its pain. That I might regret my stay was a terrible thought: already I felt to what an intolerable degree man is a creature of habit. But that belonged to the future. The present, meanwhile, was sufficiently grim.
The eager curiosity with which my fellow convicts examined me, their harshness towards a former nobleman now joining their society, a harshness which sometimes took the form of hatred-all this tormented me to such a degree that I was only too glad to go to work in order to measure at one stroke the whole extent of my misfortune, to begin at once to share the common life, and to fall with my companions into the abyss.
But all convicts are not alike, and I had not yet begun to distinguish from the general hostility a certain sympathy which here and there was manifested towards me.
After a time the affability and goodwill shown by several of the prisoners gave me a little courage and restored my spirits. Most friendly among them was Akim Akimitch, and I soon noticed other kind, goodnatured faces in the dark and hateful crowd. I consoled myself with the thought that bad men are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good. Who knows? These fellows may be no worse than others who are free. Reflecting thus, I felt some doubt, but how right I proved to be!
There was Suchiloff, for example, a man whose acquaintance I did not make until long afterwards, although he was a near neighbour during almost the whole period of my confinement. Whenever I speak of the better type of convict who is no worse than other men, my thoughts turn involuntarily to him. He acted as my servant, together with another prisoner named Osip whom Akim Akimitch had recommended to me immediately after my arrival. For thirty kopecks a month this man agreed to cook me a separate dinner, since I could pay for my own food and might not be able to stomach the ordinary prison fare. Osip was one of the four cooks chosen by the prisoners to work in our two kitchens. Incidentally, they were at liberty to refuse these duties, and to give them up whenever they thought fit. The cooks