The affair was blamed on hostile princes, and a month later Akim Akimych invited the princeling for a friendly visit. The man came, suspecting nothing. Akim Akimych drew up his detachment, exposed and rebuked the prince publicly, proved to him that setting fire to fortresses was shameful. Then he read him a most detailed exhortation on how allied princelings should behave in the future, and in conclusion he had him shot, which he immediately reported to the authorities in full detail. For all that he was tried and sentenced to death, but the sentence was mitigated and he was sent to Siberia, to hard labor of the second degree, to twelve years in prison. He was fully aware that he had acted wrongly, told me that he knew it even before he had the princeling shot, knew that an ally should be tried according to the law; but, though he knew it, he seemed quite unable to understand the real nature of his guilt:

“For pity’s sake! He set fire to my fortress! What should I do, bow down to him for it?” he said in response to my objections.

But, though the prisoners made fun of Akim Akimych’s lunacy, they still respected him for his precision and skill.

There was no craft that Akim Akimych did not know. He was a joiner, a bootmaker, a shoemaker, a house painter, a gilder, a locksmith—and he had learned all that in prison. He was self-taught in everything: one glance and he did it. He also made various boxes, baskets, lanterns, children’s toys, and sold them in town. In that way he picked up a little money, and he immediately spent it on extra linen, on a softer pillow, installed a folding mattress. He lived in the same barrack with me and did me many good turns during my first days at hard labor.

Coming out of the prison to go to work, the prisoners formed two rows in front of the guardhouse; before and behind the prisoners, convoy soldiers lined up with loaded muskets. An officer of the engineers appeared, a sergeant, and several lower-ranking engineers attached to the works. The sergeant counted the prisoners and sent them off in parties where they were needed for work.

I was sent along with others to the engineering workshop. It was a low stone building that stood in a large yard heaped with various materials. Here was the smithy, the locksmith’s shop, the joiner’s, the painter’s, and so on. Akim Akimych used to come there and work in the painter’s shop, boiled linseed oil, mixed paints, and finished tables and furniture in imitation walnut.

While waiting for my fetters to be changed, I got to talking with Akim Akimych about my first impressions of prison.

“Yes, sir, they don’t like noblemen,” he observed, “especially political criminals, they devour them gladly, and no wonder, sir. First, you and the people are different, not like them at all, and, second, they’re all former serfs or from the ranks. Judge for yourself, how could they like you? Life is hard here, I can tell you. But in Russian penal companies it’s harder still, sir. We have some from there. They can’t praise our prison highly enough, as if they’d gone from hell to paradise. The trouble isn’t the work, sir. They say there, in the first category, the authorities aren’t entirely military, or at least they act differently from ours. There, they say, convicts can live in their own little houses. I’ve never been there, but that’s what they say, sir. They don’t get their heads shaved; they don’t wear uniforms; though, by the way, it’s good that we dress in uniforms here and get shaved; in any case there’s greater order, and it’s more pleasing to the eye. Only they don’t like it. And then just look what rabble they are, sir! One’s a cantonist, another a Circassian, the third a schismatic,7 the fourth an Orthodox peasant, his family and dear children left behind, the fifth a Jew, the sixth a Gypsy, the seventh who knows what, and they all have to live together anyhow, to get along, to eat from the same bowl, to sleep on the same bunk. And here’s your freedom: you can eat an extra bit only on the sly, every penny has to be hidden in your boot, and there’s nothing but prison and more prison … Like it or not, you get foolish in the head.”

But that I already knew. I especially wanted to ask about our major.