Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/57

 than once to Siberia and had escaped more than once, had more than once changed his name, and had at last been sent to our prison with a life sentence. It was said, too, that he had been fond of murdering small children simply for pleasure: he would lure the child to some convenient spot, begin by terrifying and tormenting it, and after enjoying to the full the shuddering terror of the poor little victim, he would kill it with a knife slowly, with deliberation and enjoyment. All this perhaps was invented in consequence of the feeling of oppression Gazin aroused in every one, but all these stories were in keeping with him, and harmonized with his appearance. Yet at ordinary times, when he was not drunk, his behaviour in prison was very orderly. He was always quiet, did not quarrel with anyone, and avoided quarrels, but as it seemed from contempt for the others, as though he considered himself superior to all the rest; he spoke very little, and was, as it were, intentionally reserved. All his movements were calm, deliberate, self-confident. One could see from his eyes that he was very intelligent and exceedingly cunning; but there was always something of supercilious derision and cruelty in his face and smile. He traded in vodka, and was one of the richest vodka dealers in the prison. But about twice in the year he would get drunk himself, and then all the brutality of his nature came out. As he gradually got drunk, he began at first attacking people with gibes, the most spiteful, calculated, as it seemed, long-premeditated taunts; finally, when he was quite drunk he passed into a stage of blind fury, snatched up a knife and rushed at people. The convicts knowing his terrible strength ran and hid themselves: he fell upon anyone he met. But they soon found means to get control of him. A dozen men, inmates of the same prison ward as Gazin, would suddenly rush at him all at once and begin beating him. Nothing crueller could be imagined: they beat him on the chest, on the heart, on the pit of the stomach, on the belly; they beat him hard and beat him a long time; they only desisted when he lost consciousness and lay like a corpse. They could not have brought themselves to beat any other convict like that to beat like that meant killing any other man, but not Gazin. Then they wrapped his unconscious body in a sheepskin and carried it to the bed. “He’ll sleep it off.” And he did in fact get up next morning almost uninjured and went to work, silent and sullen. Every time Gazin got drunk every one in the prison knew that the day would certainly end in a