Akim Akimych kept no secrets, and, I recall, my impression was not entirely pleasant.

But I was doomed to live for two years under his command. Everything Akim Akimych told me about him turned out to be perfectly correct, with the difference that the impression of reality is always stronger than the impression from a mere account. He was a dreadful man, precisely because such a man had almost unlimited power over two hundred souls. In himself he was only disorderly and malicious, nothing more. He looked upon the prisoners as his natural enemies, and that was his first and greatest mistake. He actually had some abilities; but everything, even what was good, came out in some distorted form. Unrestrained, malicious, he would burst into the prison sometimes even at night, and if he noticed that a prisoner was sleeping on his left side or on his back, he would punish him in the morning: “Sleep on your right side, as I ordered.” In the prison he was hated and feared like the plague. He had a purple, spiteful face. Everyone knew that he was entirely in the hands of his orderly, Fedka. Most of all he loved his poodle, Tresorka, and he nearly lost his mind from grief when Tresorka fell ill. They say he sobbed over him as over his own son; he drove one veterinarian out and, as his habit was, nearly gave him a beating, and, hearing from Fedka that there was a convict in the prison who was a self-taught veterinarian whose treatments were very successful, he immediately sent for him.

“Save us! I’ll shower you with gold if you cure Tresorka!” he shouted at the prisoner.

This was a Siberian muzhik, actually a very able veterinarian, but cunning, shrewd, a perfect little muzhik.

“I take a look at Tresorka,” he told the prisoners later, though it was a long while after his visit to the major, when the whole thing had been forgotten. “I look: the dog’s lying on a sofa, on a white pillow; and I can see he’s got an inflammation, that he needs a bloodletting, and he’ll recover, by gorry, I say to myself! Then I think, ‘But what if I don’t cure him, what if he croaks?’ ‘No, Your Honor,’ I say, ‘you called me too late. If it was at this same time yesterday or the day before, your dog would be cured; but now I can’t cure him …’ ”

So Tresorka died.

I was told in detail how someone had wanted to kill our major. There was a certain inmate in the prison. He had been living with us for several years already and was distinguished by his meek behavior. It was also noticed that he almost never spoke to anyone. So he was considered something of a holy fool.8 He was literate and for the whole last year constantly read the Bible, read it day and night. When everyone had fallen asleep, he would get up at midnight, light a wax church candle, climb onto the stove,9 open the book, and read till morning. One day he went and announced to the sergeant that he did not want to go to work. This was reported to the major; the man boiled over and immediately came galloping himself. The prisoner rushed at him with a previously prepared brick, but he missed. He was seized, tried, and punished. It all happened very quickly. Three days later he died in the hospital. As he lay dying, he said that he held no evil against anyone, but only wanted to suffer. By the way, he did not belong to any schismatic sect. He was remembered with respect in the prison.

They finally changed my fetters. Meanwhile several kalach girls had come to the workshop one after another. Some were quite little girls. They usually came with kalachi until they were of age; their mothers baked them, and they sold them.