Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/168

 the corpse comes to life and all begin to dance with joy. The Brahmin dances with the resuscitated corpse and dances in a peculiar Brahminical fashion. And so the theatricals were over till the next evening. The convicts dispersed merry and satisfied; they praised the actors, they thanked the sergeant. There were no sounds of quarrelling. Every one was unusually contented, even as it were happy, and fell asleep not as on other nights, but almost with a tranquil spirit and why, one wonders? And yet it is not a fancy of my imagination. It’s the truth, the reality. These poor people were only allowed to do as they liked, ever so little, to be merry like human beings, to spend one short hour not as though in prison—and they were morally transformed, if only for a few minutes

Now it is the middle of the night. I start and wake up. The old man is still praying on the stove, and will pray there till dawn. Aley is sleeping quietly beside me. I remember that he was still laughing and talking to his brothers about the theatricals as he fell asleep, and unconsciously I look closer into his peaceful childlike face. Little by little, I recall everything: the previous day, the holidays, the whole of that month I lift up my head in terror and look round at my sleeping companions by the dim flickering light of the prison candle. I look at their poor faces, at their poor beds, at the hopeless poverty and destitution—I gaze at it—as though I wanted to convince myself that it is really true, and not the continuation of a hideous dream.

But it is true: I hear a moan, some one drops his arm heavily and there is the clank of chains. Another starts in his sleep and begins to speak, while the old man on the stove prays for all “good Christians,” and I hear the even cadence of his soft prolonged, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us.”

“After all, I am not here for ever, only for a few years,” I think, and I lay my head on the pillow again.