Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/255

 for the last three days been in a state of suppressed excitement. Perhaps this excitement had begun much earlier, as I reflected afterwards when I recalled snatches of talk, and at the same time the increased quarrelsomeness of the convicts and the moroseness and peculiar irritability that had been conspicuous in them of late. I had put it down to the hard work, the long wearisome summer days, the unconscious dreams of the forest, and of freedom and the brief nights, in which it was difficult to get enough sleep. Perhaps all this was working together now into one outbreak, but the pretext for this outbreak was the prison food. For some days past there had been loud complaints and indignation in the prison, and especially when we were gathered together in the kitchen at dinner or supper; they were discontented with the cooks and even tried to get a new one, but quickly dismissed him and went back to the old. In fact all were in an unsettled state of mind.

“They work us hard and they feed us on tripe,” some one would growl in the kitchen.

“If you don’t like it, order a blancmange,” another would reply.

“I like soup made of tripe, lads,” a third would put in, “it’s nice.”

“But if you never get anything else but tripe, is it nice?”

“Now to be sure it’s time for meat,” said a fourth; “we toil and toil at the brickyard; when one’s work’s done, one wants something to eat. And what is tripe?”

“And if it is not tripe, it’s heart.”

“Yes, there’s that heart too. Tripe and heart, that’s all they give us. Fine fare that is! Is that justice or is it not?”

“Yes, the food’s bad.”

“He’s filling his pockets, I warrant.”

“It’s not your business.”

“Whose then? It’s my belly. If everybody would make a complaint we should get something done.”

“A complaint?"

“Yes.”

“It seems you didn’t get flogged enough for that complaint. You image!”

“That’s true,” another who had hitherto been silent said grumpily. “It’s easy talking. What are you going to say in your complaint; you’d better tell us that first, you blockhead?”

“All right, I’ll tell you. If all would come, I’d speak with all.