When he realized that I was getting at his conscience and probing for some repentance in him, he looked at me with such contempt and haughtiness, as if I had suddenly turned in his eyes into a silly little boy, with whom it was impossible to reason as with a grown-up. Something like pity for me even showed in his face. A moment later he burst into the most simple-hearted laughter at me, without any irony, and I’m sure, when he was left alone and recalled my words, he laughed maybe several more times. He was finally discharged with his back not quite healed; I, too, was discharged just then, and we happened to return from the hospital together: I to the prison, he to the guardhouse next to our prison, where he had been kept before. Saying good-bye, he shook my hand, and this was a sign of great trust on his part. I think he did it because he was very pleased with himself and the present moment. At bottom he could only have despised me and certainly must have looked at me as at a submissive creature, weak, pathetic, and beneath him in all respects. The next day he was led out to his second punishment …

Once our barrack was locked, it suddenly acquired a special look—the look of a real dwelling, a domestic hearth. Only now could I see the prisoners, my comrades, as if quite at home. During the day, the sergeants, the guards, and the authorities in general could turn up in the prison at any moment, and therefore the inhabitants of the prison all behaved somehow differently, as if not quite at ease, as if expecting something every moment, in some sort of apprehension. But as soon as the barrack was locked, they all settled down calmly at once, each in his own place, and nearly everyone took up some handiwork. The barrack was suddenly lit up. Each man had his own candle and candlestick, most often a wooden one. Some began to stitch boots, some to sew clothes. The mephitic atmosphere of the barrack became worse by the hour. A bunch of revelers squatted in a corner over cards on a spread rug. In almost every barrack there was such a prisoner, who kept a flimsy three-foot rug, a candle, and an incredibly dirty, greasy pack of cards. All this together was known as a maidan.1 The keeper was paid by the gamblers, some fifteen kopecks a night; that was his cut of the deal. The card players usually played blackjack, draw poker, and so on. They were all games of chance. Each player spilled a pile of copper money in front of him—all he had in his pocket—and got up only when he was cleaned out or had beaten his comrades. The game ended late at night, or sometimes went on till daybreak, till the moment when the barrack was unlocked. In our room, as in all the other barracks of the prison, there were always destitute men, baygushi, who had gambled or drunk away everything, or who were simply destitute by nature. I say “by nature,” and I put special emphasis on the expression. Indeed, among our people everywhere, in whatever surroundings, in whatever conditions, there are and always will be certain strange persons, placid and often not at all lazy, who are destined by fate to remain eternally destitute. They are always solitary, they are always slovenly, they always look somehow downtrodden and depressed by something, and they are eternally ordered about by somebody, run somebody’s errands, usually a carouser or a man suddenly become rich and eminent. Any undertaking, any initiative is a grief and a burden for them. It seems they were born on the condition that they never begin anything themselves and only serve others, that they not live by their own will, that they dance to another’s tune; their purpose is only to do for others. To crown it all, no circumstances, no upheavals can make them rich. They are always destitute.