Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/82

 the roll is called; when Mihailov’s name is called, Sushilov answers “here,” when Sushilov’s is called, Mihailov shouts “here” and they go on their way. Nothing more is said about it. At Tobolsk the convicts are sorted: Mihailov is sent to a settlement and Sushilov is conducted with extra guards to the “special division.” Protest later is impossible; and after all, how could he prove it? How many years would an inquiry into such a case take? Might he not come in for something else? Where are his witnesses? If he had them they would deny it. So the upshot of it is that for a red shirt and a rouble Sushilov is sent to the “special division.”

The convicts laughed at Sushilov not because he had exchanged (though they feel contempt for all who exchange a lighter sentence for a heavier one, as they do for all fools who have been duped) but because he had done it for a red shirt and a rouble—too trivial a price. Convicts usually receive large sums, relatively speaking, for exchanging. They sometimes charge dozens of roubles. But Sushilov was so submissive, such a nonentity, so paltry in the eyes of all that he was not even worth laughing at.

I got on very well with Sushilov for several years. By degrees he became extremely devoted to me. I could not help noticing it, so that I became quite attached to him too. But one day he did not do something—I had asked him, though I had just given him some money and—I can never forgive myself for it—I had the cruelty to say to him, “Well, Sushilov, you take the money but you don’t do your work.” He said nothing, ran to do the job, but became suddenly depressed. Two days passed. I thought to myself, “Surely it can’t be on account of what I said?” I knew that one of the convicts called Anton Vassilyev was worrying him very persistently about a trifling debt. “Probably he has no money and is afraid to ask me!” On the third day I said to him: “Sushilov, I think you wanted to ask me for the money to pay Anton Vassilyev? Take it.” I was sitting on the bed at the time; Sushilov was standing before me. He seemed greatly impressed at my offering him the money, at my thinking of his difficult position of my own accord, especially as he had, in his own opinion, been paid too much by me of late, so that he had not dared to hope I would give him more. He looked at the money, then at me, suddenly turned away and went out. All this surprised me very much. I followed him and found him behind the prison. He was standing facing the