Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/40

 understand. He was a cabinet-maker, a cobbler, a shoemaker, a painter, a gilder, a locksmith, and he had learnt all this in the prison. He was self-taught in everything: he would take one look at a thing and do it. He used to make all sorts of little boxes, baskets, lanterns, children’s toys, and sold them in the town. In that way he made a little money and he immediately spent it on extra underclothes, on a softer pillow or a folding mattress. He was in the same room as I was, and was very helpful to me during my first days in prison.

When they went out from prison to work the convicts used to be drawn up in two rows before the guard-house; in front of them and behind them, the soldiers were drawn up, with loaded muskets. An officer of the Engineers, the foreman and several engineers of the lower rank, who used to superintend our work, came out. The foreman grouped the convicts and sent them to work in parties where they were needed.

I went with the others to the engineers’ workshop. It was a low-pitched stone building standing in a large courtyard which was heaped up with all sorts of materials; there was a smithy, a locksmith’s shop, a carpenter’s, a painter’s and so on. Akim Akimitch used to come here and work at painting; he boiled the oil, mixed the colours and stained tables and other furniture to look like walnut.

While I was waiting for my fetters to be changed, I was talking to Akim Akimitch about my first impressions in prison.

“Yes, they are not fond of gentlemen,” he observed, “especially politicals; they are ready to devour them; no wonder. To begin with you are a different sort of people, unlike them; besides, they’ve all been serfs or soldiers. Judge for yourself whether they would be likely to be fond of you. It’s a hard life here, I can tell you. And in the Russian disciplinary battalions it’s worse still. Some of these fellows come from them and they are never tired of praising our prison, they say it’s like coming from hell to paradise. It’s not the work that’s the trouble. There in the first division they say the authorities are not all military, anyhow they behave very differently from here. There they say the convicts can have little homes of their own. I haven’t been there, but that’s what they say. They don’t have their heads shaved, they don’t wear a uniform, though it’s a good thing they do wear a uniform and have their heads shaved here; it’s more orderly, anyway, and it’s pleasanter to the eye. Only they don’t like it. And look what a mixed rabble they are!