# The House of the Dead/Part 2/Chapter 2

The doctors went their rounds in the morning; between ten and eleven they made their appearance in our ward all together, with the chief doctor at their head, and an hour and a half before that, our special ward doctor used to visit the ward. At that time our ward doctor was a friendly young man and a thoroughly good doctor. The convicts were very fond of him and only found one fault in him that “he was too soft.” He was in fact not very ready of speech and seemed ill at ease with us, he would almost blush and change the diet at the first request of the patient, and I believe he would even have prescribed the medicines to suit their ​fancy if they had asked him. But he was a splendid young man.
It may be said that many doctors in Russia enjoy the love and respect of the peasants, and, as far as I have observed, that is perfectly true. I know that my words will seem paradoxical when one considers the distrust of medicine and of foreign drugs universally felt by the common people in Russia. A peasant will, in fact, even in severe illness, go on for years consulting a wise woman, or taking his home-made remedies (which are by no means to be despised), rather than go to a doctor, or into a hospital. There is one important element in this feeling which has nothing to do with medicine, that is, the general distrust felt by the peasants for everything which is stamped with the hall-mark of government; moreover, the people are frightened and prejudiced against hospitals by all sorts of horrible tales and gossip, often absurd but sometimes not without a foundation of fact. But what they fear most is the German routine of the hospital, the presence of strangers about them all the time they are ill, the strict rules in regard to diet, the tales of the rigorous severity of the attendants and doctors and of the cutting open and dissection of the dead and so on. Besides, the people argue that they will be treated by “the gentry,” for doctors are after all “gentlemen.” But all these terrors disappear very quickly when they come into closer contact with the doctors (generally speaking, not without exceptions, of course) which I think is greatly to the credit of our doctors, who are for the most part young men. The majority of them know how to gain the respect and even the love of the people. Anyway, I am writing of what I have myself seen and experienced many times and in many places, and I have no reason to think that things are different in other places. Here and there, of course, there are doctors who take bribes, make a great profit out of their hospitals and neglect their patients almost completely, till they forget all they have learnt. Such men are still to be found, but I am speaking of the majority or rather of the tendency, the spirit which animates the medical profession in our day. Whatever one may say in defence of these renegades, these wolves in the fold, however one may ascribe their shortcomings, for instance, to the “environment” of which they too are the victims, they will always be greatly to blame, especially if they also show a lack of humanity. Humanity, kindness, brotherly sympathy are sometimes of more use to the patients than any medicines. It is high time we gave ​up apathetic complaints of being corrupted by our environment. It is true no doubt that it does destroy a great deal in us, but not everything, and often a crafty and knowing rogue, especially if he is an eloquent speaker or writer, will cover up not simply weakness but often real baseness, justifying it by the influence of his “environment.”
But again I have wandered from my subject; I merely meant to say that the mistrust and hostility of the peasants are directed rather against medical administration than against the doctors themselves. When the peasant finds out what they are really like, he quickly loses many of his prejudices. The general arrangements of our hospitals are still in many respects out of harmony with the national spirit, their routine is still antagonistic to the people’s habits, and not calculated to win their full confidence and respect. So at least it seems to me from some of my personal experiences.
Our ward doctor usually stopped before every patient, examined and questioned him gravely, and with the greatest attention, and prescribed his medicine and his diet. Sometimes he noticed that there was nothing the matter with the patient, but as the convict had come for a rest from work, or to lie on a mattress instead of bare boards, and in a warm room instead of in the damp lock-up, where huge masses of pale and wasted prisoners were kept awaiting their trial (prisoners awaiting trial are almost always, all over Russia, pale and wasted—a sure sign that they are generally physically and spiritually worse off than convicted prisoners), our ward doctor calmly entered them as suffering from “febris catarrhalis” and sometimes let them stay even for a week. We all used to laugh over this “febris catarrhalis.” We knew very well that this was, by a tacit understanding between the doctor and the patient, accepted as the formula for malingering or “handy shooting pains” which was the convicts’ translation of “febris catarrhalis.” Sometimes a patient abused the doctor’s soft-heartedness and stayed on till he was forcibly turned out. Then you should have seen our ward doctor: he seemed shy, he seemed ashamed to say straight out to the patient that he must get well and make haste to ask for his discharge, though he had full right to discharge him by writing on his chart “sanat est” without any talk or cajoling. At first he gave him a hint, afterwards he tried as it were to persuade him: “Isn’t your time up? You are almost well, you know; the ward is crowded.” and so on and so on, till the ​patient himself began to feel ashamed, and at last asked for his discharge of his own accord. The chief doctor, though he was a humane and honest man (the convicts were very fond of him, too), was far sterner and more determined than the ward doctor; he could even show a grim severity on occasion, and he was particularly respected among us for it. He made his appearance followed by the whole staff, and also examined each patient separately, staying longer with those who were seriously ill, and he always managed to say a kind, encouraging word to them, often full of true feeling. Altogether he made a very good impression. Convicts who came in with a “handy shooting pain,” he never rejected nor turned out, but if the patient were too persistent, he simply discharged him: “Well, brother, you’ve been here long enough, you’ve had a rest, you can go, you mustn’t outstay your welcome.” Those who persisted in remaining were either lazy convicts who shirked work, especially in the summer when the hours were long, or prisoners who were awaiting corporal punishment. I remember special severity, even cruelty, being used in one such case to induce the convict to take his discharge. He came with an eye affection; his eyes were red and he complained of an acute shooting pain in them. He was treated with blisters, leeches, drops of some corrosive fluid, but the malady remained, the eyes were no better. Little by little, the doctors guessed that it was a sham: there was a continual slight inflammation which grew neither worse nor better, it was always in the same condition. The case was suspicious. The convicts had long known that he was shamming and deceiving people, though he did not confess it himself. He was a young fellow, rather good-looking, indeed, though he made an unpleasant impression on all of them reserved, suspicious, frowning, he talked to no one, had a menacing look, held aloof from every one as though he were suspicious. I remember it even occurred to some people that he might do something violent. He had been a soldier, had been found out in thieving on a large scale, and was sentenced to a thousand strokes and a convict battalion. To defer the moment of punishment, as I have mentioned before, convicts sometimes resorted to terrible expedients: by stabbing one of the officials or a fellow convict they would get a new trial, and their punishment would be deferred for some two months and their aim would be attained. It was nothing to them that the punishment when it did come, two months later, would be twice or three times as severe; all they care about was deferring the awful ​moment if only for a few days at any cost—so extreme is sometimes the prostration of spirit of these poor creatures.
Some of the convicts whispered among themselves that we ought to be on our guard against this man—he might murder some one in the night. However, it was only talk, no special precautions were taken, even by those who slept next to him. It was seen, however, that he rubbed his eyes at night with plaster taken from the wall as well as with something else, that they might be red in the morning. At last the head doctor threatened him with a seton. In obstinate eye affections of long duration when every medical expedient has been tried, to preserve the sight, the doctors have recourse to a violent and painful remedy; they apply a seton to the patient as they would to a horse.
But even then the poor fellow would not consent to recover. He was too obstinate or perhaps too cowardly. A seton perhaps was not so bad as the punishment with sticks, but it was very painful too. The patient’s skin, as much as one can grip in the hand, is pinched up behind the neck and all of it stabbed through with a knife which produces a long and wide wound all over the back of the neck. Through this wound they thrust a linen tape, rather wide—a finger’s breadth. Then every day at a fixed hour they pull this tape in the wound so that it is opened again, that it may be continually separating and not healing. Yet for several days the poor fellow obstinately endured this torture, which was accompanied with horrible suffering and only at last consented to take his discharge. His eyes became perfectly well in a single day, and as soon as his neck was healed he went to the lock-up to receive next day the punishment of a thousand strokes with sticks.
Of course the minute before punishment is awful; so awful that I am wrong in calling the terror of it cowardice and weakness of spirit. It must be awful when men are ready to endure twice or thrice the punishment, if only they can avoid facing it at once. I have mentioned, however, that there were some who asked for their discharge before their backs were quite healed after the first beating, in order to endure the remainder of their punishment and have their sentence over; and detention in the lock-up awaiting punishment was without doubt incomparably worse for all than life in prison. But apart from the difference in temperaments, years of being accustomed to blows and punishments play a great part in the fortitude and fearlessness of some. Men who have been frequently flogged seem to harden their hearts and their backs: at last they look upon the punishment scep​tically, almost as a trifling inconvenience and lose all fear of it. Speaking generally, this is true. One of our convicts in the special divisions, a Kalmuck, who had been christened Alexandr or “Alexandra” as they used to call him in the prison, a queer fellow, sly, fearless and at the same time very good-natured, told me how he got through his four thousand “sticks.” He told me about it, laughing and joking, but swore in earnest that if he had not from childhood—his earliest, tenderest childhood—always been under the lash, so that his back had literally never been free from scars all the while he lived with his horde, he never could have endured the punishment. He seemed to bless his education under the lash.
“I was beaten for everything, Alexandr Petrovitch!” he told me one evening, sitting on my bed, before the candles were lighted, “for everything and nothing, whatever happened, I was beaten for fifteen years on end, as far back as I can remember, several times every day; anyone beat me who liked, so that in the end I got quite used to it.”
How he came to be a soldier I don’t know; I don’t remember, though perhaps he told me; he was an inveterate runaway and tramp. I only remember his account of how horribly frightened he was when he was condemned to four thousand “sticks” for killing his superior officer.
“I knew I should be severely punished and that perhaps I shouldn’t come out alive, and though I was used to the lash, four thousand strokes is no joke; besides, all the officers were furious with me! I knew, I knew for certain that I shouldn’t get through it, that I couldn’t stand it; I shouldn’t come out alive. First I tried getting christened; I thought maybe they’d forgive me, and though the fellows told me it would be no use, I shouldn’t be pardoned, I thought I’d try it. Anyway, they’d. have more feeling for a Christian after all. Well, they christened me and at the holy christening called me Alexandr; but the sticks remained, they did not take one off; I thought it was too bad. I said to myself: ‘Wait a bit, I’ll be a match for you all.’ And would you believe it, Alexandr Petrovitch, I was a match for them! I was awfully good at pretending to be dead, that is not being quite dead, but just on the point of expiring. I was brought out for punishment; I was led through the ranks for the first thousand; it burnt me; I shouted. I was led back for the second thousand; well, thought I, my end is come, they’ve beaten all sense out of me; my legs were giving way, I fell on the ground; ​my eyes looked lifeless, my face was blue, I stopped breathing and there was foam on my mouth. The doctor came up. ‘He’ll die directly,’ said he. They carried me to the hospital and I revived at once. Then they led me out twice again and they were angry with me too, awfully angry, and I cheated them twice again; the second time I looked like dead after one thousand; and when it came to the fourth thousand every blow was like a knife in my heart, every blow was as good as three, it hurt so! They were savage with me. That niggardly last thousand—damn it—was as bad as all the three thousand together and had I not died before the very end (there were only two hundred left) they would have beaten me to death. But I took my own part; I deceived them again and shammed death. Again they were taken in and how could they help being? The doctor believed I was dead. So they beat me for the last two hundred with all the fury they could, they beat me so that it was worse than two thousand, but yet they didn’t kill me, no fear! And why didn’t they kill me? Why, just because I’ve grown up from childhood under the lash. That’s why I am alive to this day. Ach, I have been beaten in my day!” he added at the end of the story in a sort of mournful reverie, as though trying to recall and reckon how many times he had been beaten. “But no,” he added, after a minute’s silence. “there’s no counting the beatings I’ve had! How could I? They’re beyond reckoning.” He glanced at me and laughed, but so good-naturedly that I could not help smiling in response. “Do you know, Alexandr Petrovitch, that whenever I dream at night now, I always dream that I am being beaten? I never have any other dreams.” He certainly often cried out at night and so loudly that the other convicts waked him up at once by prodding him, and saying, “What are you shouting for, you devil!” He was a short sturdy fellow of forty-five, good-humoured and restless; he got on well with every one and though he was very fond of stealing, and often got a beating among us for that, after all every one stole and every one was beaten for it.
I will add one other point. I was always amazed at the extraordinary good nature, the absence of vindictiveness, with which all these victims talked of how they had been beaten, and of the men who had beaten them. Often there was not the slightest trace of spite or hatred in their story, which gripped my heart at once, and made it throb violently. Yet they would tell the story and laugh like children.
​M., for instance, described his punishment to me. He was not of the privileged class and received five hundred strokes. I heard of this from the others and asked him myself whether it were true, and how it happened. He answered with a certain brevity, as though with an inward pang; he seemed to avoid looking at me and his face flushed; half a minute later he did look at me; there was a gleam of hatred in his eyes, and his lips were quivering with indignation. I felt that he could never forget that page in his past.
But almost all our convicts (I will not guarantee that there were no exceptions) took quite a different view of it. It cannot be, I sometimes thought, that they consider themselves guilty and deserving of punishment, especially when they have committed an offence, not against one of their own class, but against some one in authority. The majority of them did not blame themselves at all. I have said already that I saw no signs of remorse even when the crime was against one of their class; as for crimes against officers in control of them, they did not count them at all. It sometimes seemed to me that for the latter class of crimes they had a peculiar, so to speak, practical, or rather matter of fact, point of view. They put it down to fate, to the inevitability of the act, and this was not done deliberately but was an unconscious attitude, a kind of creed. Though the convict is almost always disposed to consider himself justified in any crime against officers, so much so that there is no question about it in his mind, yet in practice he recognizes that the authorities take a very different view of his crime, and that therefore he must be punished, and then they are quits. It is a mutual struggle. The criminal knows and never doubts that he will be acquitted by the verdict of his own class, who will never, he knows, entirely condemn him (and for the most part will fully acquit him), so long as his offence has not been against his equals, his brothers, his fellow peasants. His conscience is clear, and with that he is strong and not morally disturbed, and that is the chief thing. He feels, as it were, that he has something to rest upon, and so he feels no hatred, but takes what has happened to him as something inevitable which has not began with him and will not end with him, but will go on for long ages as part of a passive, but stubborn and old-established feud. No soldier hates the individual Turk he is fighting with; yet the Turk stabs him, hacks at him, shoots him.
Yet not all the stories I heard, however, showed the same coolness and indifference. They talked of Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov, ​for instance, with a certain shade of indignation, though even in this case the feeling was not very strong. I made the acquaintance of this Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov when I was first in hospital—from the convicts’ stories about him, I mean. Afterwards I met him in the flesh when he was on duty at the prison. He was a tall man about thirty, big and fat, with red puffy cheeks, white teeth and with a loud laugh like Nozdryov’s. One could see from his face that he was a man who never thought about anything. He was particularly fond of flogging and punishing with “sticks” when it was his duty to superintend. I hasten to add that I looked upon Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov at the time as a monster, and that was how he was regarded by the convicts themselves. There were, in the past, in that recent past, of course, of which “the tradition is still fresh though it is hard to believe in it,” other officers who were eager to do their duty conscientiously and zealously. But as a rule they did their work in all simplicity of heart without relishing it. Žherebyatnikov had something of the pleasure of an epicure in administering punishment. He was passionately fond of the art of punishing, and he loved it as an art. He enjoyed it and like the worn-out aristocratic debauchees of the Roman Empire, he invented all sorts of subtleties, all sorts of unnatural tricks to excite and agreeably thrill his crass soul.
The convict is led out for punishment; Zherebyatnikov is the officer in command; the mere sight of the long ranks of men drawn up with thick sticks in their hands inspires him. He walks round the ranks complacently, and repeats emphatically that every man is to do his duty thoroughly, conscientiously, or else. . . . But the soldiers don’t need to be told what that or else means. Then the criminal is brought out and if he knows nothing of Zherebyatnikov, if he has not heard all about him, this would be the sort of trick the lieutenant would play on him—one of hundreds, of course; the lieutenant was inexhaustible in inventing them. At the moment when the convict is stripped and his hands are tied to the butt-ends of guns by which the sergeants afterwards drag him down the “Green Street,” it is tho regular thing for him to beg in a plaintive, tearful voice, entreating the commanding officer to make his punishment easier and not to increase it by unnecessary severity. “Your honour,” cries the poor wretch, “have mercy on me, be a father to me; I’ll pray for your honour all my life; don’t destroy me, have pity on me!”
​That was just what Zherebyatnikov wanted; he would pause, and would begin talking to the victim with a sentimental air.
“But what am I to do, my friend?” he would begin. “It’s not I am punishing you, it’s the law!”
“Your honour, it’s all in your hands, have pity on me!”
“Do you suppose I don’t feel for you? Do you suppose it’s a pleasure to me to see you beaten? I am a man too. Am I a man or not, do you suppose?”
“For sure, your honour, we all know you are our father, we are your children. Be a father to me!” cries the convict, beginning to hope.
“But judge for yourself, my friend-you’ve got sense; I know that as a fellow creature I ought to be merciful and indulgent even to a sinner like you.”
“It’s the holy truth you are speaking, your honour.”
“Yes, to be merciful however sinful you may be. But it’s not my doing, it’s the law! Think of that! I have my duty to God and to my country; I shall be taking a great sin upon myself if I soften the law, think of that!” “Your honour”
“But there! So be it, for your sake! I know I am doing wrong, but so be it . . . I will have mercy on you this time. I’ll let you off easy. But what if I am doing you harm? If I have mercy on you this once and let you off easily, and you’ll reckon on it being the same next time and commit a crime again, what then? It will be on my conscience.”
“Your honour! I’d not let friend or foe! As before the throne of the Heavenly Father . . .”
“All right, all right! But do you swear to behave yourself for the future?”
“Strike me dead, may I never in the world to come . . .”
“Don’t swear, it’s a sin. I’ll believe your word. Do you give me your word?”
“Your honour!!!”
“Well, I tell you, I’ll spare you simply for your orphan’s tears. You are an orphan, aren’t you?”
“Yes, your honour, alone in the world, neither father nor mother . . .”
​But the fearful procession begins; he is led along; the drum begins to boom; the sticks begin flying.
“Give it him!” Zherebyatnikov bawls at the top of his voice “Whack him! Flay him, flay him! Scorch him! Lay it on, lay it on! Hit him harder, the orphan, harder, the rascal! Touch him up, touch him up!”
And the soldiers hit as hard as they can, the poor wretch begins to scream and there are flashes before his eyes, while Zherebyatnikov runs after him along the line in peals of laughter, holding his sides, and hardly able to stand, so that one felt sorry for the dear man at last. He is delighted and amused and only from time to time there is a pause in his loud hearty roars of laughter, and one hears again:
“Flay him, flay him! Scorch him, the rascal, scorch him, the orphan! . . .”
Or he would invent another variation. The convict brought out to punishment begins to entreat him again. This time Zherebyatnikov does not grimace or play a part with him, but goes in for frankness:
“I tell you what, my good fellow,” he says, “I shall punish you properly, for you deserve it. But I tell you what I’ll do for you: I won’t tie you to the guns. You shall go alone, but in a new way. Run as fast as you can along the line! Every stick will hit you just the same, but it will sooner be over; what do you think? Would you like to try?”
The convict listens with perplexity and mistrust and hesitates. “Who knows,” he thinks to himself, “maybe it will be easier. I’ll run as hard as I can and the pain will not last a quarter so long and perhaps not all the sticks will hit me.”
“Very well, your honour, I agree.”
“Well, I agree too, then. Cut along! Mind now, look sharp!” he shouts to the soldiers, though he knows beforehand that not one stick will miss the guilty back; the soldier knows very well what would be in store for him if he missed.
The convict runs with all his might along the “Green Street,” but of course he doesn’t get beyond the fifteenth soldier: the sticks fall upon his back like lightning, like the tattoo on a drum, and the poor wretch drops with a scream, as though he had been cut down or struck by a bullet.
“No, your honour, better the regular way,” he says, getting up slowly from the ground, pale and frightened.
And Zherebyatnikov, who knows the trick beforehand and how ​it ends, roars with laughter. But there is no describing all his diversions or all that was said about him.
Stories of somewhat different tone and spirit were told of Lieutenant Smekalov, who was commanding officer of our prison before our major was appointed. Though the convicts talked somewhat unconcernedly and without special anger of Zherebyatnikov, yet they did not admire his exploits, they did not speak well of him and were evidently disgusted by him. Indeed, they seemed to look down upon him with contempt. But Lieutenant Smekalov was remembered among us with enjoyment and delight. He had no particular liking for punishment. There was nothing of the Zherebyatnikov element in him. But he was by no means opposed to the lash; yet the fact is that even his floggings were remembered among the convicts with love and satisfaction—so successful was the man in pleasing them! And how How did he gain such popularity? It is true that the convicts, like all the Russian people, perhaps, are ready to forget any tortures for the sake of a kind word; I mention it as a fact without qualifying it in one way or another. It was not difficult to please these people and to be popular among them. But Lieutenant Smekalov had won a peculiar popularity, so that even the way he used to administer punishment was remembered almost with tenderness. “We had no need of a father,” the convicts would say, and they would sigh, comparing their recollections of their old commanding officer, Smekalov, with the present major. “He was a jolly good fellow!”
He was a simple-hearted man, good-natured, perhaps, in his own way. But sometimes it happens that there is a man in authority who has not only good-nature but a generous spirit, and yet every one dislikes him and sometimes they simply laugh at him. Smekalov knew how to behave so that they looked upon him as one of themselves, and this is a great art, or more accurately an innate faculty, which even those who possess it never think about. Strange to say, some men of this sort are not good-natured at all, yet they sometimes gain great popularity. They don’t despise, they don’t scorn the people under their control—in that, I think, lies the explanation. There is no sign of the fine gentleman, no trace of class superiority about them, there is a peculiar whiff of the peasant inborn in them; and, my word! what a keen scent the people have for it! What will they not give for it! They are ready to prefer the sternest man to the most merciful, if the former has a smack of their own homespun flavour. And ​what if the same man is really good-natured, too, even though in a peculiar way of his own? Then he is beyond all price.
Lieutenant Smekalov, as I have said already, sometimes punished severely, but he knew how to do it so that, far from being resented, his jokes on the occasion were, even in my day when it was all long past, remembered with enjoyment and laughter. He had not many such jokes, however: he was lacking in artistic fancy. In fact, he really had one solitary joke which was his mainstay for nearly a year; perhaps its charm lay in its uniqueness. There was much simplicity in it. The guilty convict would be brought in to be flogged. Smekalov comes in with a laugh and a joke, he asks the culprit some irrelevant questions about his personal life in the prison not with any sort of object, not to make up to him, but simply because he really wants to know. The birch-rods are brought and a chair for Smekalov. He sits down and even lights his pipe; he had a very long pipe. The convict begins to entreat him. . . . “No, brother, lie down . . . it’s no use,” says Smekalov. The convict sighs and lies down.
“Come, my dear fellow, do you know this prayer by heart?”
“To be sure, your honour, we are Christians, we learnt it from childhood.”
“Well then, repeat it.”
And the convict knows what to say and knows beforehand what will happen when he says it, because this trick has been repeated thirty times already with others. And Smekalov himself knows that the convict knows it, knows that even the soldiers who stand with lifted rods over the prostrate victim have heard of this joke long ago and yet he repeats it again—it has taken such a hold on him once for all, perhaps from the vanity of an author, just because it is his own composition. The convict begins to repeat the prayer, the soldiers wait with their rods while Smekalov bends forward, raises his hand, leaves off smoking, and waits for the familiar word. After the first lines of the well-known prayer, the convict at last comes to the words, “Thy Kingdom come.” That’s all he is waiting for. “Stay,” cries the inspired lieutenant and instantly turning with an ecstatic gesture to a soldier he cries, “Now give him some.”
And he explodes with laughter. The soldiers standing round grin too, the man who thrashes grins, even the man who is being thrashed almost grins, although at the word of command, “Now give him some,” the rod whistles in the air to cut a minute later like a razor through his guilty flesh. And Smekalov is delighted, ​delighted just because he has had such a happy thought, and has himself found the word to rhyme to “come.”
And Smekalov goes away perfectly satisfied with himself and, indeed, the man who has been flogged goes away almost satisfied with himself and with Smekalov, and half an hour later he will be telling the story in the prison of how the joke that had been repeated thirty times before had now been repeated for the thirty-first time. “He is a jolly good fellow! He loves a joke!”
There was even a flavour of maudlin sentimentality about some reminiscences of the good-natured lieutenant.
“Sometimes one would go by, brothers,” a convict would tell us, his face all smiles at the recollection, “and he’d be sitting in the window in his dressing-gown, drinking his tea and smoking his pipe. I’d take off my cap. ‘Where are you off to, Aksyonov?’ he’d say. ‘Why, to work, Mihail Vassilitch, first thing I must go to the work-room.’ He’d laugh to himself. He was a jolly good fellow! Jolly is the only word!”
“We shall never see his like again,” one of his listeners would add.