Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/78

 of a flogging, was friendly to every one, very meek and mild. He never quarrelled, yet he had such a passion for smuggling that he could not resist bringing in vodka in spite of his cowardice. Like the other cooks he carried on a trade in vodka, though, course, not on the same scale as Gazin, for instance, because he had not the courage to risk much. I always got on capitally with Osip. As for providing one’s food, the cost was trifling. I am not far wrong if I say that I hardly spent more than a rouble a month on my board, always excluding bread which was part of the prison fare, and occasionally soup, which I took if I were very hungry in spite of the disgust it inspired, though that, too, passed off almost completely in time. Usually I bought a pound of beef a day. And in winter a pound cost a halfpenny. One of the old veterans, of whom there was one in each room to keep order, used to go to the market to buy beef. These veterans voluntarily undertook to go to market every day to buy things for the prisoners and charged the merest trifle, next to nothing, for doing so. They did this for the sake of their own peace and comfort, for they could hardly have existed in the prison if they had refused. In this way they brought in tobacco, tea in bricks, beef, fancy bread and so on, everything in fact but vodka. They were not asked to bring in vodka, though they were sometimes regaled with it.

For years together Osip roasted me a piece of beef, always the same cut. But how it was roasted is another question, and indeed is not what mattered. It is a remarkable fact that for several years I hardly exchanged two words with Osip. Several times I tried to talk to him, but he was incapable of keeping up a conversation; he would smile or answer “yes” or “no”, and that was all. It was strange to see this Hercules who was like a child of seven.

Another convict who helped me was Sushilov. I did not ask for his services nor seek them. He found me out and placed himself at my disposal of his own accord; I don’t remember when or how it happened. He did my washing. There was a large hole for emptying the water at the back of the prison, made on purpose. The washing troughs stood above this hole and the convicts’ clothes were washed there. washed there. Sushilov invented a thousand different little duties to please me: he got my tea ready, ran all sorts of errands, took my jacket to be mended, greased my boots four times a month; all this he did eagerly, fussily, as though no one knew what duties he was overwhelmed