“Our lads are feisty, uppity; when it’s seven against one, they’re fearless …”

“They’re good ones, the both of them! One got to prison for a pound of bread, and the other’s a pantry whore, ate some old woman’s curds and was whipped for it.”4

“Well, well, enough of that!” cried the invalid soldier who lived in the barrack to keep order and therefore slept on a special cot in the corner.

“Water, lads! Ninvalid Petrovich is awake! Greetings, Ninvalid Petrovich, our dear brother!”

“Brother … What kind of brother am I to you? We never drank up a rouble together, and now it’s ‘brother’!” grumbled the invalid, putting his arms through the sleeves of his overcoat …

They were preparing for roll call; dawn was breaking; a dense, impenetrable crowd of people gathered in the kitchen. The prisoners in their sheepskin jackets and two-colored hats crowded around the bread, which one of the cooks was cutting. The cooks were elected by the whole group, two for each kitchen. They also had charge of the kitchen knife for cutting bread and meat, one for the whole kitchen.

The prisoners placed themselves in all the corners and around the tables, hats and jackets on, belts tied, ready to go straight out to work. Before some of them stood wooden bowls of kvass.5 They crumbled bread into the kvass and sipped it. The noise and din were unbearable; but some talked sensibly and quietly in the corners.

“Greetings and welcome to you, dear old Antonych!” said a young prisoner, sitting down beside a scowling and toothless prisoner.

“Well, greetings to you, if you mean it,” the man said, not raising his eyes and trying to chew his bread with his toothless gums.

“And here I thought you was dead, Antonych, I really did.”

“No, you die first, and me after …”

I sat down beside them. On my right two grave prisoners were talking, obviously trying to maintain their dignity before each other.

“No fear they’ll steal from me,” said one. “The fear, brother, is that I’ll do the stealing.”

“Well, don’t go touching me with your bare hand: I’ll burn you.”

“As if you’ll burn me! You’re a mucker same as us; there’s no other name for it … She’ll fleece you without so much as a thank-you. I dunked my last little kopeck here, too. The other day she came herself. Where was I to go with her? I began asking to go to Fedka the hangman’s: he had a house on the outskirts, bought it from mangy Solomon, the Yid, the one who strung himself up later …”

“I know. He used to smuggle vodka for us three years ago. We called him Dark Pothouse Grishka. I know.”

“No, you don’t. Dark Pothouse was somebody else.”

“The hell he was somebody else! A fat lot you know! I’ll bring you as many witnessaries as you …”

“You will, will you! You’re what, and I’m who?”

“Who? I don’t want to brag, but I used to beat you—that’s who!”

“You beat me? The man who could beat me hasn’t been born yet, and whoever tried is eating dirt.”

“You Moldavian plague!”

“The Siberian pest on you!”

“Go talk to a Turkish saber!”

And the abuse took off.

“All right, all right, enough racket!” people around them shouted. “They didn’t know how to live in freedom; here they’re glad to get clean bread …”

Things quieted down at once. Verbal abuse, “tongue lashing,” was allowed. It was partly an amusement for everybody. But it usually did not lead to fighting, and only rarely, in exceptional cases, did enemies come to blows. A fight would be reported to the major; there would be inquiries, he would come himself—in short, it would be bad for everybody, and therefore fights were not allowed. And the enemies themselves abused each other more for diversion, as an exercise of style. Often they deceived themselves, they began in a terrible fever, frenziedly. You think: they’re going to fall on each other. Nothing of the sort: they reach a certain point and break it off at once. In the beginning all this was extremely surprising to me. I have purposely given examples here of the most ordinary prison conversations. I could not imagine at first how it was possible to curse for the pleasure of it, to find amusement in it, a nice exercise, gratification. However, we also must not forget vanity. A cursing dialectician was respected. He was all but applauded, like an actor.

Just the evening before I had noticed them looking askance at me.

I had already caught several dark looks.