Chapter ten, The Peasant Merry. It was the second day in Easter week.
The air was warm, the sky was blue, the sun was high,
warm, bright, but my soul was very gloomy. I sauntered behind
the prison barracks. I stared at the palings of the stout prison fence,
counting the movers, but I had no inclination to count them, though it
was my habit to do so. This was the second day of the holidays.
In the prison, the convicts were not taken out to work. There
were numbers of men drunk. Loud abuse and quarreling was springing up continually in
every corner. There were hideous, disgusting songs and card parties installed beside the
platform beds. Several of the convicts, who had been sentenced by their comrades
for special violence, to be beaten till they were half dead, were lying
on the platform bed covered with sheepskins, till they should recover and come to
themselves again. Nigh had already been drawn several times for these two days of
holiday. All this had been torturing me till it made me ill, And
indeed I could never endure without repulsion the noise and disorder of drunken people,
and especially in this place on these days. Even the prison officials did not
look into the prison, made no searches, did not look for vodka,
understanding that they must allow even these outcasts to enjoy themselves once a year,
and that things would be even worse if they did not. At last,
a sudden fury flamed up in my heart, a political prisoner called m met
me. He looked at me gloomily, his eyes flashed, and his lips
quivered. Jehet zebrigand he hissed to me through his teeth and walked on.
I returned to the prison ward, though only a quarter of an hour before
I had rushed out of it as though I were crazy, when six stalwart
fellows had altogether flung themselves upon the drunken Tatar Gazin to suppress him, and
had begun beating him, beat him stupidly. A camel might have been killed
by such blows, but they knew that this Hercules was not easy to kill,
and so they beat him without uneasiness. Now, on returning I noticed
on the bed in the furthest corner of the room Gayzine, lying unconscious,
almost without sign of life. He lay covered with a sheepskin, and everyone
walked around him without speaking, though they confidently hoped that he would come to
himself next morning. Yet if luck was against him, maybe from a beating
like that, the man would die. I made my way back to my
own place, opposite the window with the iron grating, and lay on my
back, my hands behind my head, and my eyes shut. I liked
to lie like that. A sleeping man is not molested. And meanwhile one
can dream and think. But I could not dream. My heart was beating
uneasily, and EM's words jeheese brigande were echoing in my ears. But why
describe my impressions? I sometimes dream even now of those times at night,
and I have no dreams more agonizing. Perhaps it will be noticed that even
to this day I have scarcely once spoken in print of my life in prison.
The House of the Dead, I wrote fifteen years ago, in the
character of an imaginary person, a criminal who had killed his wife. I
may add, by the way, that since then very many persons have supposed,
and even now maintained, that I was sent to penal servitude for the
murder of my wife. Gradually I sank into forgetfulness, and by degrees,
was lost in memories. During the whole course of my four years in prison,
I was continually recalling all my past, and seemed to live over again
the whole of my life and recollection, these memories rose up of themselves.
It was not often that of my own will I summoned them. It would
begin from some point, some little thing, at times unnoticed, and then
by degrees there would rise up a complete picture, some vivid and complete impression.
I used to analyze these impressions, give new features to what had happened
long ago, and best of all, I used to correct it, correct
it continually. That was my great amusement. On this occasion, I suddenly,
for some reason, remembered an unnoticed moment in my early childhood, when
I was only nine years old, a moment which I should have thought had
utterly forgotten, but at that time I was particularly fond of memories of my
early childhood. I remembered the month of August in our country house, a
dry, bright day, but rather cold and windy. Summer was waning,
and soon we should have to go to Moscow to be bored all the winter
over French lessons, and I was so sorry. To leave the country.
I walked past the threshing floor, and going down the ravine, I went
up to the dense thicket of bushes that covered the further side of the ravine
as far as the copse, and I plunged right into the midst of the
bushes and heard a peasant plowing alone on the clearing, about thirty paces away.
I knew that he was plowing up the steep hill, and the horse
was moving with effort, and from time to time the peasant's call come up
floated upwards to me. I knew all almost all our peasants, but I
did not know which it was plowing now, and I did not care who
it was. I was absorbed in my own affairs. I was busy too.
I was breaking off switches from the nut trees to whip the frogs.
With nutsticks make such fine whips, but they do not last, while birch
twigs are just the opposite. I was interested too in beetles and other insects.
I used to collect them. Some were very ornamental. I was very
fond too of the little nimble red and yellow lizards with black spots on them.
But I was afraid of snakes. Snakes, however, were much more
rare than lizards. There were not many mushrooms there. To get mushrooms,
one had to go to the birch wood, and I was about to set
off there. And there is nothing in the world I loved so much as
the wood, with its mushrooms and wild berries, with its beetles, and
its birds, its hedgehogs and squirrels, with its damp smell of dead leaves,
which I loved so much. And even as I write, I smell
the fragrance of our birch wood. These impressions will remain for my whole life.
Suddenly, in the mist of the profound stillness, I heard a clear
and distinct shout wolf. I shrieked, and beside myself with terror, calling
out at the top of my voice, ran out into the clearing and straight
to the peasant who was plowing. It was our peasant Mary. I don't
know if there is such a name, but every one called him Mary,
a thick set, rather well grown peasant of fifty with a good many gray
hairs in his dark brown, spreading beard. I knew him, but had
scarcely ever happened to speak to him till then He stopped his horse on hearing
my cry, and when breathless I caught with one hand at his plow and
with the other at his sleeve. He saw how frightened I was. There
is a wolf, I cried, panting. He flung up his head and
could not help looking round for an instant, almost believing me, Where is
the wolf? A shout? Someone shouted wolf? I faltered out, nonsense,
nonsense, a wolf? Why it is your fancy? How could there
be a wolf? He muttered, reassuring me. But I was trembling all
over and still kept tight hold off his smock frock, and I must have
been quite pale. He looked at me with an uneasy smile, evidently anxious
and troubled over me. When you have had a fright eh? Eh,
he shook his head. There, dear, come little one. Eh.
He stretched out his hand and all at once stroked my cheek. Come come
there, Christ be with you. Cross yourself. But I did not cross
myself. The corners of my mouth were twitching, and I think that struck
him particularly. He put out his thick, black nailed, earth stained finger
and softly touched my twitching lips. Hey, there there, he said,
to me with a slow, almost motherly smile. Dear, dear, what
is the matter there? Come come? I grasped at last that there was
no wolf, and that the shout that I heard was my fancy. Yet
that shout had been so clear and distinct. But such shouts not only about
wolves. I had imagined once or twice before, and I was aware of
that. These hallucinations passed away later as I grew older. Well I will
go, then, I said, looking at him timidly and inquiringly. Well
do, and I'll keep watch on you as you go. I won't let
the wolf get at you. He's added, still smiling at me with the
same motherly expression. Well Christ be with you. Come run along, then,
and he made the sign of the cross over me and then over himself.
I walked away, looking back almost at every tenth step. Mary stood
still with his mare as I walked away, and looked after me and nodded
to me every time I looked around. I must own I felt a little
ashamed at having let him see me so frightened, but I was still very
much afraid of the wolf as I walked away until I reached the first barn
half way up to the slope of the ravine. There my fright vanished completely,
and all at once our yard dog Voltchok flew to meet me. With
Voltchok, I felt quite safe, and I turned round to Mary for the
last time. I could not see his face distinctly, but I felt that
he was still nodding and smiling affectionately to me. I waved to him,
He waved back to me and started his little mare come up. I heard
his call in the distance again, and the little mare pulled at the plow
again. All this I recalled, all at once. I don't know why,
both extraordinary minuteness of detail. I suddenly roused myself and sat up on
the platform bed, and I remember found myself still smiling quietly at my memories.
I brooded over them for another minutes. When I got home that day,
I told no one of my adventure with Mary, and indeed it was
hardly an adventure, And in fact I soon forgot Mary when I met him
now and then afterwards. I never even spoke to him about the wolf or
anything else. And all at once, now, twenty years afterwards, in
Siberia, I remembered this meeting with such distinctness to the smallest detail, so
it must have lain hidden in my soul, though I knew nothing of it,
and rose suddenly to my memory when it was wanted. I remembered the
soft, motherly smile of the poor serf, the way he signed me with
the cross and shook his head. There there you have had a fright little
one. And I remembered particularly the thick earth stained finger with which he softly,
and with him in tenderness, touched my quivering lips. Of course,
anyone would have reassured a child, but something quite different seemed to have happened
in that solitary meaning. And if I had been his own son, he
could not have looked at me with eyes shining with greater love? And what
made him like that? He was our serf and I was his little master.
After all, no one would know that he had been kind to me,
and reward him, for it was he perhaps very fond of little children
some people are. It was a solitary meaning in the deserted fields, and
only God perhaps may have seen from above, with what deep and humane civilized
feeling, and with what delicate, almost feminine tenderness the heart of a coarse,
brutally ignorant Russian serf, who had as yet no expectation, no idea
even of his freedom may be felled. Was not this perhaps what Konstantine Aksakov
meant when he spoke of the high degree of culture of our peasantry. And
when I got down off the bed and looked around me, I remember I
suddenly felt they could look at these unhappy creatures with quite different eyes, that
suddenly, by some miracle, hatred and anger had vanished utterly from my heart.
I walked about, looking into the faces that I met. That shaven
peasant branded on his face as a criminal, bawling his horse drunken song,
may be that very merry I cannot look into his heart. I met em
again, that evening poor fellow. He could have had no memories of Russian
peasants, and no other view of these people. But jeheyte c Brigand yes,
the Polish prisoners had more to bear than I. End of Chapter ten