Calico shirts and metal-studded belts were also very popular. On feast days they would dress up, and the dressed-up man unfailingly went about all the barracks showing himself to everybody. The self-satisfaction of a well-dressed man was almost childish—and in many ways the prisoners were perfect children. True, all these fine things somehow suddenly left their owner, were sometimes pawned and let go for nothing the same evening. However, a binge unfolded gradually. It was usually timed to a feast day or the binger’s name day. The prisoner would get up in the morning, light a candle before the icon and pray; then he would dress up and order himself a dinner: beef and fish would be bought, Siberian dumplings prepared; he would eat like a horse, almost always alone, rarely inviting comrades to share his meal. Then vodka would appear: the name-day man would get plastered and unfailingly walk around the barracks, reeling and stumbling, trying to show everybody that he was “on a spree,” and thereby earn universal respect. Everywhere among Russian people a certain sympathy is felt for a drunk man; but in prison a man on a spree was even shown deference. Prison carousing had its own sort of aristocratism. In making merry, a prisoner unfailingly hired music. There was a little Pole in the prison, a runaway soldier, quite a vile little fellow, but who played the fiddle and had his own instrument—it was all he possessed. He did not know any craft and thus his only earnings came from getting hired by carousers to play merry dances. His duty consisted in constantly following his drunken master from barrack to barrack and sawing away at his fiddle for all he was worth. Boredom and anguish often showed on his face. But the cry “Play, you’ve been paid for it” made him saw away again and again. A prisoner setting out on a spree could be firmly assured that, if he got very drunk, he would unfailingly be looked after, put to bed in time, and always be hidden somewhere if the authorities appeared, and all that quite disinterestedly. For their part, the sergeant and the invalids who lived and kept order in the prison could also be completely at ease: the drunk man could not cause any disorder. The whole barrack looked after him, and if he got noisy or rowdy—he would be pacified at once, even simply tied up. And therefore the lower-ranking prison authorities turned a blind eye on drunkenness and declined to notice it. They knew very well that if they forbade vodka, there would be something worse. But where did the vodka come from?

Vodka was bought right in the prison, from so-called taverners.3 There were several of them, and they carried on their trade continuously and successfully, even though there were generally few drinkers and “carousers,” because carousing called for money, and prisoner money was hard to come by. The trade began, went on, and was concluded in a rather original way. Suppose a prisoner has no craft and no wish to work (there were such), but wants to get money and besides is an impatient man, who wants to make a quick fortune. He has some money to start with, and he decides to deal in vodka: a bold venture, involving great risk. You could pay for it with your hide and lose both goods and capital straight off. But the taverner goes into it. He has little money to start with, so the first time he brings the vodka to the prison himself and, naturally, sells it for a good profit. He repeats the experiment a second and third time, and if he is not caught by the authorities, he quickly sells out, and only then does he establish a real business on broad foundations: he becomes an entrepreneur, a capitalist, keeps agents and assistants, risks much less, and earns more and more. His assistants take the risks.

In prison there are always many people who have squandered, gambled, or caroused away everything to the last kopeck, people without a craft, pitiful and bedraggled, but endowed with a certain degree of boldness and resolution.