Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/126

 most charming of the convicts, as indeed he was. I was already slightly acquainted with him. Petrov even helped me to undress, for not being used to it, I was slow undressing, and it was cold in the anteroom, almost as cold as in the open air.

It is, by the way, very difficult for a convict to undress till he has quite mastered the art. To begin with one has to learn how to unlace quickly the bands under the ankle irons. These bands are made of leather, are eight inches in length and are put on over the undergarment, just under the ring that goes round the ankle. A pair of these bands costs no less than sixty kopecks and yet every convict procures them, at his own expense of course, for it is impossible to walk without them. The ring does not fit tightly on the leg, one can put one’s finger in between, so that the iron strikes against the flesh and rubs it, and without the leather a convict would rub his leg into a sore in a day. But to get off the bands is not difficult. It is more difficult to learn how to get off one’s underlinen from under the fetters. It is quite a special art. Drawing off the undergarment from the left leg, for instance, one has first to pull it down between the ring and the leg, then freeing one’s foot one has to draw the linen up again between the leg and the ring; then the whole of the left leg of the garment has to be slipped through the ring on the right ankle, and pulled back again. One has to go through the same business when one puts on clean linen. It is hard for a novice even to guess how it can be done; I was first taught how to do it at Tobolsk by a convict called Korenev, who had been the chief of a band of robbers and had been for five years chained to the wall. But the convicts get used to it, and go through the operation without the slightest difficulty.

I gave Petrov a few kopecks to get me soap and a handful of tow; soap was, indeed, served out to the convicts, a piece each, the size of a halfpenny and as thick as the slices of cheese served at the beginning of supper among middle-class people. Soap was sold in the anteroom as well as hot spiced mead, rolls and hot water. By contract with the keeper of the bath-house, each convict was allowed only one bucketful of hot water; every one who wanted to wash himself cleaner could get for a half-penny another bucketful, which was passed from the anteroom into the bathroom through a little window made on purpose. When he had undressed me, Petrov took me by the arm, noticing that it was very difficult for me to walk in fetters.