Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (190 page)

Isaiah Fomitch carried a bag containing his prison kit and a few things of his own. He set down the bag, and sat down on his bedstead with his legs crossed and without daring to raise his eyes. The other fellows were all laughing at him simply because he was a Jew. Suddenly a young man left the group and came up to him, carrying in his hand an old pair of summer trousers which were dirty, torn, and mended with old rags. He sat down by the side of Isaiah Fomitch, and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said he, ‘I’ve been waiting for the last six years; look up and tell me how much you’ll give for this article,’ holding up his rags for him to see.

Isaiah Fomitch was so dumbfounded that he dared not look at the mocking crowd, whose scarred and hideous faces were now gathered round him. He was so scared that he could not utter a word. When he saw who was speaking to him he shuddered, and began to examine the rags carefully. All waited to hear him speak.

‘Well, can’t you give me a silver rouble for it? It’s certainly worth that,’ said the would-be vendor, smiling and looking towards Isaiah Fomitch with a wink.

‘A silver rouble? No; but I’ll give you seven kopecks.’

These were the first words Isaiah ever spoke in prison. Loud laughter broke out on all sides.

‘Seven kopecks! Well, let’s have them; you’re certainly a lucky man. Look! Take care of the pledge, you’ll answer for it with your head.’

‘The interest will be three kopecks; that will make ten kopecks you owe me,’ said the Jew, at the same time slipping his hand into his pocket for the sum agreed upon.

‘Three kopecks interest-for a year?’

‘No, not for a year, for a month.’

‘You’re a terrible screw. What’s your name?’

‘Isaiah Fomitch.’

‘Well, Isaiah Fomitch, you ought to get on. Good-bye.’

The Jew once more examined the rags on which he had lent seven kopecks, folded them up, and put them carefully away in his bag. The convicts continued to laugh at him.

Indeed everyone was always laughing at him; but, although everyone owed him,money, no one insulted him. And when he saw they were all well disposed towards him, he gave himself great airs; but he was so comic that they were at once forgiven.

Luka, who before his imprisonment had known many Jews, often teased him, less from malice than for amusement, as one plays with a dog or a parrot. Isaiah Fomitch knew this and took no offence.

‘You’ll see, Jew, how I’ll flog you.’

‘If you give me one blow I will return you ten,’ replied Isaiah Fomitch valiantly.

‘Scurvy Jew!’

‘As scurvy as you like, but I have plenty of money.’

‘Bravo! Isaiah Fomitch. We must take care of you. You’re the only Jew we have; but they’ll send you to Siberia all the same.’

‘I am already in Siberia.’

‘They’ll send you still further.’

‘Will not the Lord God be there?’

‘Of course, He’s everywhere.’

‘Well, then! With the Lord God, and money, one has all
that is necessary.’

‘What a fellow he is!’ they all cried.

The Jew saw that he was being laughed at, but did not lose heart. He strutted about, delighted with the false flattery that greeted him, and began to sing in that high, squeaky falsetto that one hears in every barrack room, ‘La, la, la, la.’ The tune was absurd, but it was the only song he was heard to sing during the whole of his imprisonment. When he made my acquaintance he assured me solemnly that it was the song, and the very air, that was sung by 600,000 Jews, small and great, when they crossed the Red Sea, and that every Israelite was ordered to sing it after a victory gained over an enemy.

Every Friday evening men came over from the other barracks expressly to see Isaiah Fomitch celebrate the Sabbath. He was so vain, so innocently conceited, that this general curiosity flattered him immensely. He covered the table in his little corner with a pedantic self-importance, opened a book, lighted two candles, muttered some mysterious words, and clothed himself in a kind of striped chasuble with sleeves, which he kept carefully stowed away at the bottom of his trunk. He fastened leather bracelets on his wrists, and finally attached to his forehead, by means of a ribbon, a little box, which looked like a horn starting from his head. Then he began to pray. He read in a drawling voice, shouted, spat, and threw himself about with wild fantastic gestures. All this was prescribed by the ceremonial of his religion. There was nothing ridiculous or even strange about it, except the vanity Isaiah Fomitch himself displayed as he performed his rites. He would suddenly cover his head with both hands, and begin to read with many sobs. His tears increased, and in his grief he almost laid his head with its little ark upon the book, howling all the while. But all at once he would break off in the middle of his lamentation, burst into a laugh, and recite with a nasal twang a hymn of triumph, as if he were overwhelmed by an excess of happiness.

‘Can’t understand it,’ the convicts would sometimes say to one another. One day I asked Isaiah Fomitch what these sobs signified, and why he passed so suddenly from despair to triumphant happiness. He was delighted at my questions, and at once explained. The sobs and tears, he told me, were provoked by the destruction of Jerusalem, and the law ordered every pious Jew to groan and strike his breast; but at the moment of his most acute grief he was suddenly to remember that a prophecy had foretold the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and he was therefore to manifest overflowing joy by singing, laughing, and reciting his prayers with happiness expressed in voice and look. This sudden passage from one emotion to another pleased Isaiah Fomitch, and he expounded the ingenious prescription of his faith with the greatest satisfaction.

One evening, while he was at his prayers, the governor entered, followed by the officer of the guard and an escort of soldiers. The prisoners immediately lined up in front of their beds; Isaiah Fomitch alone continued to shriek and gesticulate. He knew that his form of worship was authorized and that no one might interrupt him, so that he ran no risk by howling in the presence of the governor. He liked to perform under the eyes of the chief.

The governor approached to within a few steps. Isaiah Fomitch turned round, and began to sing his hymn of triumph in the officer’s face, gesticulating and drawling out certain syllables. When he came to the part where he had to assume an expresion of extreme happiness, he did so by blinking, laughing, and nodding his head in the governor’s direction. The latter was at first much astonished; then he burst out laughing, shouted ‘Idiot!’ and went away, while the Jew continued to shriek. An hour later, when he had finished, I asked him what he would have done if the governor had been so wicked or so foolish as to lose his temper.

‘What governor?’ he said.

‘The governor, man. Didn’t you see him? He was only two steps from you, and watching you all the time.’ But Isaiah Fomitch assured me in all seriousness that he had not seen the governor, for while he was saying his prayers he was in such a state of ecstasy that he neither saw nor heard anything that was taking place around him.

I can see Isaiah Fomitch wandering about the prison on Saturday endeavouring to do nothing, as the Law ordains every Jew. What improbable anecdotes he told me! Every time he returned from the synagogue he always brought me some news of St Petersburg and the most absurd rumours imaginable from his fellow Jews of the town, who were supposed to have it at first hand. But enough of Isaiah Fomitch.

There were only two public baths in the town. One, kept by a Jew, was divided into compartments, for which one paid fifty kopecks. It was frequented by the local aristocracy.

The other was old, dirty, and stuffy; it was for the use of the common people, and it was there that the convicts were taken. The air was cold and clear, the prisoners were delighted to leave the fortress and take a walk through the town. During that walk their laughter and jokes never ceased. A platoon of soldiers with loaded muskets accompanied us, which provided quite a sight for the townsfolk. On reaching our destination, we found the bath so small that we could not all enter at once. We were divided into two groups, one of which waited in the cold room while the other bathed in the hot one. But the room was so narrow that it was hard to understand how even half our number managed to pile in.

Petroff kept close to me; of his own accord he remained at my side without having been asked to do so, and offered to rub me down. Baklouchin, a convict in the special section, also offered me his services. I remember him (he was known as the ‘Sapper’) as the gayest and most agreeable of all my companions. We had become intimate friends. Petroff helped me to undress, because I was generally a long time getting my things off, not being yet accustomed to the operation, and it was almost as cold in the dressing-room as out of doors.

It is very difficult for a convict who is still a novice to get his things off. He must first learn how to undo the leather straps with which his chains are fastened. These straps are buckled over the ankle, underneath the ring which encloses the leg. One pair of straps costs sixty kopecks, and each convict is obliged to buy himself a pair, for it would be impossible to walk without their assistance. The ring does not grip the leg too tightly. One can pass a finger between the iron and the flesh, but the ring chafes the ankle, and any convict who walks without leather straps for a single day will find his skin raw.

To remove the straps presents no serious difficulty. It is a
different matter with the clothes. Taking off one’s trousers is in itself a most elaborate operation, and the same may be said of the shirt whenever it has to be changed. The first to give us lessons in this art was Koreneff, a former brigand chief who had once been condemned to be chained up for five years. The convicts are very skilful at the work, and manage it with ease.

I gave a few kopecks to Petroff to buy soap and a bunch of the twigs with which one rubs oneself down in the bath. Bits of soap were issued to the convicts, but they were no larger than two-kopeck pieces. The soap was sold in the
dressing-room, as well as mead and cakes of white flour. Each convict received one pailful of boiling water according to an agreement between the proprietor of the bath and the prison authorities. Convicts who wished to make themselves thoroughly clean could for two kopecks buy a second pailful, which the proprietor handed through a window pierced in the wall for that purpose. As soon as I was undressed Petroff took me by the arm and remarked that I should find it difficult to walk with my chains.

‘Pull them up on to your calves,’ he said, holding me by the arms as if I were an old man. I was ashamed at his attention, and assured him that I could walk well enough by myself, but he did not believe me. He took the same care of me as one does of an awkward child. Petroff was no servant in any sense of the word; if I had offended him he would have known how to deal with me. I had promised him nothing for his assistance, nor had he asked me for anything. I wonder what inspired his extraordinary solicitude.

Imagine a room of twelve feet long and of equal width, in which a hundred men are crowded together; or say eighty, for we were in all two hundred divided into two sections. The steam blinded us; the sweat, the dirt, and lack of space were such that we could hardly find room to stand. I was frightened and wished to leave, but Petroff hastened to reassure me. With great difficulty we managed to climb on to the benches, by stepping over the heads of convicts whom we persuaded to bend down and let us pass. The benches, however, were already occupied, and Petroff informed me that I would have to buy a place. He at once entered into negotiation with the convict who was near the window, and for a kopeck this man consented to cede me his place. After receiving the money, which Petroff held tight in his hand, and with which he had wisely provided himself beforehand, the man crept into a dark and dirty corner just below me, where there was at least half an inch of filth. Even the places above the benches were occupied; the convicts swarmed everywhere. As for the floor there was not a place as large as the palm of the hand which was not occupied by the convicts. They tossed the water from their pails; those who were standing up poured it over themselves, and the dirty water, running down their bodies, fell on the shaved heads of those who were sitting down. Other convicts crowded on the upper bench and the steps leading to it. They washed themselves more thoroughly, but there were relatively few of them. The common people do not care to wash with soap and water; they prefer the horrible method of stewing and then douching themselves with cold water. Below I could see fifty bundles of twigs rising and falling; the holders were whipping themselves into a state akin to intoxication. The steam became thicker and thicker every minute, so that what one now felt was not a warm but a burning sensation, as from boiling pitch. The convicts shouted and howled to the accompaniment of the hundred chains shaking on the floor. Those who tried to move from one position to another got their chains mixed up with those of their neighbours, and knocked against the heads of the men who were lower down than they. There were volleys of abuse as those who fell dragged down those whose chains had become entangled in theirs. They were all in a state of frenzy, of wild exultation. Cries and shrieks were heard on all sides. There was much crowding and crushing at the window of the dressing-room through which the hot water was delivered, and a good deal was spilt on the heads of those seated on the floor before it reached its destination. We seemed to be quite free; but from time to time one could see through the dressing-room or the open door the moustached face of a soldier with his musket at his feet, watching that no serious disorder took place.

The shaved heads of the convicts, and their red bodies, which the steam had turned to the colour of blood, seemed more monstrous than ever. On their backs stood out in striking relief the scars left by whips or rods-scars made long before, but so thoroughly that the flesh seemed to have been torn quite recently. Strange marks; a shudder passed through me at the mere sight of them. Again the volume of steam increased, and the bath-room was now covered with a thick, burning cloud, concealing movement, stifling cries. Through this cloud emerged torn backs, shaved heads, and, to complete the picture, Isaiah Fomitch howling with joy on the highest bench. He was saturating himself with steam. Any other man would have fainted away, but no temperature is too high for him; he engages the services of a rubber for a kopeck but after a few moments the latter is unable toi continue, throws away his bunch of twigs, and runs to douche himself with cold water. Isaiah Fomitch is undaunted, he quickly hires a second rubber, then a third; on these occasions he thinks nothing of expense, and changes his rubber four or five times. ‘He stews well, the gallant Isaiah Fomitch,’ cry the convicts from below. The Jew feels that he surpasses all the others, that he has beaten them; he triumphs with his hoarse falsetto voice, and sings out his favourite air, which rises above the general hubbub. It seemed to me that if ever we met in hell we should be reminded of this place. I could not help saying so to Petroff, who looked all round him but made no answer.