Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/125

 him a fool to his face and walked away, and Isay Fomitch vociferated louder than ever. An hour later when he was having supper I asked him, “and what if the major in his foolishness had flown into a rage?”

“What major?”

“What major! Why, didn’t you see him?”

“No.”

“Why, he stood not a yard away from you, just facing you.”

But Isay Fomitch began earnestly assuring me that he had not seen the major and that at the time, during the prayer, he was usually in such a state of ecstasy that he saw nothing and heard nothing of what was going on around him.

I can see Isay Fomitch before me now as he used to wander about the prison on Saturdays with nothing to do, making tremendous efforts to do nothing at all, as prescribed by the law of the Sabbath. What incredible anecdotes he used to tell me every time he came back from the synagogue! What prodigious news and rumours from Petersburg he used to bring me, assuring me that he had got them from his fellow Jews, and that they had them first-hand.

But I have said too much of Isay Fomitch.

There were only two public baths in the town. One of these which was kept by a Jew consisted of separate bathrooms, for each of which a fee of fifty kopecks was charged. It was an establishment for people of the higher class. The other bath-house was intended for the working class; it was dilapidated, dirty and small, and it was to this house that we convicts were taken. It was frosty and sunny, and the convicts were delighted at the very fact of getting out of the fortress grounds and looking at the town. The jokes and laughter never flagged all the way. A whole platoon of soldiers with loaded rifles accompanied us, to the admiration of the whole town. In the bath-house we were immediately divided into two relays: the second relay had to wait in the cold anteroom while the first were washing themselves. This division was necessary, because the bath-house was so small. But the space was so limited that it was difficult to imagine how even half of our number could find room. Yet Petrov did not desert me; he skipped up of his own accord to help, and even offered to wash me. Another convict who offered me his services was Baklushin, a prisoner in the "special division" who was nicknamed "the pioneer," and to whom I have referred already as one of the liveliest and