Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (198 page)

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.

There must be some mysterious and important reason for the present system, but what it is, it is impossible to understand. No one believes-indeed, one cannot believe-that a consumptive man will run away. Who could even imagine such a thing, especially if the disease has reached a certain point? It is impossible to deceive the doctors and lead them to mistake a convict in good health for a consumptive, for this particular malady can be recognized at a glance. Do irons help to prevent a sick convict from escaping? Not in the least. The irons are degrading and shameful, a physical and moral burden; but they will not hinder a man attempting to escape. The most awkward and least intelligent convict can saw through them, or break the rivets by hammering at them with a stone. Chains, then, are a useless precaution, and if they are worn as a punishment, should not that punishment be spared to dying men?

As I write these lines, one face stands out in my memory: that of a dying man, a man who died in consumption, the same Mikhailoff whose bed was nearly opposite to mine, and who expired, I think, four days after my arrival in hospital. When I spoke above of the consumptive patients, I was only reviving involuntarily ideas and sensations which occurred to me at the time of this death. I knew Mikhailoff very little; he was a young man of twenty-five at most, not very tall, thin, and with a fine face. He belonged to the special section, and was remarkable for his strange, but soft and sad taciturnity; he seemed to have ‘dried up’ in prison, to use an expression of the convicts who remembered him well. For some strange reason I recall that he had very fine eyes.

He died at three o’clock in the afternoon on a clear, dry day. The sun shed its brilliant rays obliquely through the greenish, frozen panes of our room. A torrent of light inundated the unhappy patient, who had lost consciousness and was several hours dying. Early in the morning his sight began to fail, and he was unable to recognize those who approached him. The convicts would gladly have done anything to relieve him, for they saw he was in great suffering. His respiration was painful, deep, and irregular; his breast rose and fell violently, as though he were in want of air; he cast off his blanket and his clothes. Then he began to tear up his shirt, which seemed to him a terrible burden. It was taken off, and I was horrified to see that immensely long body, with fleshless arms and legs, with beating breast, and ribs which were as clearly marked as those of a skeleton. There was nothing now on this living corpse but a crucifix and the irons, from which his dried-up legs might easily have freed themselves. A quarter of an hour before he died all was silent in the ward; the patients spoke only in whispers and walked on tiptoe. From time to time they exchanged remarks on other subjects, and cast a furtive glance at the dying man. The rattling in his throat grew more and more painful. At last, with a trembling hand, he felt for the cross on his breast and endeavoured to tear it off; it was too heavy and suffocated him. It was removed. Ten minutes later he died. Someone then knocked on the door in order to warn the sentinel; the warder entered, looked at the dead man with a vacant air, and went away to fetch the assistant-surgeon. The latter was quite a good fellow, but a little too preoccupied with his personal appearance; otherwise he was most agreeable. He soon arrived, approached the corpse with long strides which re-echoed in the silent ward, and felt the dead man’s pulse with an unconcerned air which seemed to have been assumed for the occasion. He then made a vague gesture with his hand and went out.

The guard-house was notified of this death: the man belonged to the special section, and certain formalities had to be carried out in the registration of his death. While we were awaiting the hospital guard, one of the prisoners said in a whisper: ‘The eyes of the deceased might as well be closed.’ Another took heed of this remark, and approaching Mikhailoff in silence, closed his eyes; then, noticing the cross which had been taken from his neck lying on the pillow, he took it up and looked at it, put it down, and crossed himself. The face of the dead man was becoming ossified; a ray of white light was playing on the surface and illuminated two rows of fine white teeth which gleamed between his thin drawn lips.

The sergeant of the guard at last arrived, musket on shoulder and helmet on head, accompanied by two soldiers; he approached the corpse, slackening his pace as if uncertain what he should do next. He looked furtively at the prisoners, but they remained silent and gazed at him with a sombre expression. A yard or so from the dead man he stopped short, as if suddenly nailed to the spot; the naked, dried-up body, loaded with irons, had impressed him. He undid his chin-strap, removed his helmet (which he was not bound to do), and made the sign of the cross; he had a grey head, the head of a soldier who had seen much service. I remember that by his side stood Tchekounoff, an old man who was also grey. He kept his eyes upon the sergeant and followed his every movement with strange attention. They glanced across, and I saw that Tchekounoff also trembled. He clenched his teeth, nodded in the direction of the dead man, murmured almost involuntarily to the sergeant: ‘He too had a mother!’ Those words went to my heart. Why had he uttered them, and why had the idea occurred to him? The corpse was raised on its mattress and the straw creaked. The chains dragged on the floor with a sharp ring; they were taken up and the body was carried out. Everyone suddenly began to talk again. The sergeant could be heard in the corridor calling to someone to go for the blacksmith, who would remove the dead man’s irons. But I have digressed from my subject.

CHAPTER II

THE HOSPITAL (
continued)

The doctors used to visit the wards at about eleven o’clock in the morning; they appeared all together and formed a procession which was headed by the chief physician. An hour and a half earlier, the ordinary physician had made his round. He was a quiet young man, always affable and kind, much liked by the prisoners, and thoroughly versed in his art. His patients found only one fault with him-he was ‘too soft.’ He was, in fact, by no means communicative: he seemed embarrassed in our presence, blushed sometimes, and changed the quantity of food as soon as he was asked to do so. I think he would have given them any medicine they liked. In other respects he was an excellent young man.

A Russian doctor often enjoys the affection and respect of the people, and with reason, as far as I have been able to see. I know that my words may seem paradoxical, especially when one remembers the mistrust in which the Russian people hold foreign drugs and foreign doctors. They prefer, even when seriously ill, to address themselves year after year to a witch, or to employ old women’s remedies (which, however, are by no means to be despised), rather than to consult a doctor or go into hospital. In truth, these prejudices may be chiefly ascribed to causes which have nothing to do with medicine, namely, the popular mistrust of anything which bears an official and administrative character; nor must it be forgotten that the common people are frightened and prejudiced in regard to the hospitals by the stories, which are often absurd, of fantastic horrors said to take place within them. There may, however, be an element of truth in some of these tales.

But what repels them more than anything else is the ‘Germanism’ of the hospitals-the idea that they will be attended in sickness by foreigners, the severity of the diet, the heartlessness of the surgeons and physicians, the dissection and autopsy of the bodies, etc. The lower classes imagine, moreover, that they will be treated by noblemen-for in their view the doctors belong to the nobility; but with the exception of a few rare cases, once they have made their acquaintance, their fears vanish. This success must be attributed to the doctors themselves, especially the young ones who, for the most part, know how to win the respect and affection of the people. I speak now of what I myself have seen and experienced on many occasions and in many places, and I think the same holds good everywhere. In some remote localities the doctors are said to receive presents, make profit out of their hospitals, neglect the patients, and sometimes even forget their art. All this may be true; but I am speaking of the majority, inspired as they are by that wave of generosity which is regenerating the medical art. As for the apostates, the wolves in the sheep-fold, they may excuse themselves and blame the circumstances in which they live. But they are foolish as well as inexcusable, especially if they are no longer humane, for it is precisely the humanity, affability, and brotherly compassion of a doctor which prove the most efficacious remedies for his patients. It is time these useless lamentations about circumstances were ended. There may be truth in what is alleged, but a cunning rogue who knows how to take care of himself never fails to blame his environment when he wishes to excuse his faults-above all, if he is a good writer or speaker.