FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

The Peasant Marey

I
t was the second day in Easter week. The air was warm, the sky was blue, the sun was
high, warm, bright, but my soul was very gloomy. I sauntered behind the prison
barracks. I stared at the palings of the stout prison fence, counting the movers; but I
had no inclination to count them, though it was my habit to do so. This was the second
day of the “holidays” in the prison; the convicts were not taken out to work, there were
numbers of men drunk, loud abuse and quarrelling was springing up continually in every
corner. There were hideous, disgusting songs and card-parties installed beside the
platform-beds. Several of the convicts who had been sentenced by their comrades, for
special violence, to be beaten till they were half dead, were lying on the platform-bed,
covered with sheepskins till they should recover and come to themselves again; knives
had already been drawn several times. For these two days of holiday all this had been
torturing me till it made me ill. And indeed I could never endure without repulsion the
noise and disorder of drunken people, and especially in this place. On these days even the
prison officials did not look into the prison, made no searches, did not look for vodka,
understanding that they must allow even these outcasts to enjoy themselves once a year,
and that things would be even worse if they did not. At last a sudden fury flamed up in my
heart. A political prisoner called M. met me; he looked at me gloomily, his eyes flashed
and his lips quivered. ”Je haïs ces brigands!“ he hissed to me through his teeth, and
walked on. I returned to the prison ward, though only a quarter of an hour before I had
rushed out of it, as though I were crazy, when six stalwart fellows had all together flung
themselves upon the drunken Tatar Gazin to suppress him and had begun beating him;
they beat him stupidly, a camel might have been killed by such blows, but they knew that
this Hercules was not easy to kill, and so they beat him without uneasiness. Now on
returning I noticed on the bed in the furthest corner of the room Gazin lying unconscious,
almost without sign of life. He lay covered with a sheepskin, and every one walked round
him, without speaking; though they confidently hoped that he would come to himself
next morning, yet if luck was against him, maybe from a beating like that, the man would
die. I made my way to my own place opposite the window with the iron grating, and lay on
my back with my hands behind my head and my eyes shut. I liked to lie like that; a
sleeping man is not molested, and meanwhile one can dream and think. But I could not
dream, my heart was beating uneasily, and M.‘s words, ”Je haïs ces brigands!“ were
echoing in my ears. But why describe my impressions; I sometimes dream even now of
those times at night, and I have no dreams more agonising. Perhaps it will be noticed that
even to this day I have scarcely once spoken in print of my life in prison. The House of the
Dead I wrote fifteen years ago in the character of an imaginary person, a criminal who
had killed his wife. I may add by the way that since then, very many persons have
supposed, and even now maintain, that I was sent to penal servitude for the murder of my
wife.
Gradually I sank into forgetfulness and by degrees was lost in memories. During the
whole course of my four years in prison I was continually recalling all my past, and
seemed to live over again the whole of my life in recollection. These memories rose up of
themselves, it was not often that of my own will I summoned them. It would begin from
some point, some little thing, at times unnoticed, and then by degrees there would rise up
a complete picture, some vivid and complete impression. I used to analyse these
impressions, give new features to what had happened long ago, and best of all, I used to
correct it, correct it continually, that was my great amusement. On this occasion, I
suddenly for some reason remembered an unnoticed moment in my early childhood
when I was only nine years old—a moment which I should have thought I had utterly
forgotten; but at that time I was particularly fond of memories of my early childhood. I
remembered the month of August in our country house: a dry bright day but rather cold
and windy; summer was waning and soon we should have to go to Moscow to be bored all
the winter over French lessons, and I was so sorry to leave the country. I walked past the
threshing-floor and, going down the ravine, I went up to the dense thicket of bushes that
covered the further side of the ravine as far as the copse. And I plunged right into the
midst of the bushes, and heard a peasant ploughing alone on the clearing about thirty
paces away. I knew that he was ploughing up the steep hill and the horse was moving
with effort, and from time to time the peasant’s call “come up!” floated upwards to me. I
knew almost all our peasants, but I did not know which it was ploughing now, and I did
not care who it was, I was absorbed in my own affairs. I was busy, too; I was breaking off
switches from the nut trees to whip the frogs with. Nut sticks make such fine whips, but
they do not last; while birch twigs are just the opposite. I was interested, too, in beetles
and other insects; I used to collect them, some were very ornamental. I was very fond,
too, of the little nimble red and yellow lizards with black spots on them, but I was afraid
of snakes. Snakes, however, were much more rare than lizards. There were not many
mushrooms there. To get mushrooms one had to go to the birch wood, and I was about to
set off there. And there was nothing in the world that I loved so much as the wood with
its mushrooms and wild berries, with its beetles and its birds, its hedgehogs and squirrels,
with its damp smell of dead leaves which I loved so much, and even as I write I smell the
fragrance of our birch wood: these impressions will remain for my whole life. Suddenly in
the midst of the profound stillness I heard a clear and distinct shout, “Wolf!” I shrieked
and, beside myself with terror, calling out at the top of my voice, ran out into the clearing
and straight to the peasant who was ploughing.
It was our peasant Marey. I don’t know if there is such a name, but every one called
him Marey—a thick-set, rather well-grown peasant of fifty, with a good many grey hairs in
his dark brown, spreading beard. I knew him, but had scarcely ever happened to speak to
him till then. He stopped his horse on hearing my cry, and when, breathless, I caught with
one hand at his plough and with the other at his sleeve, he saw how frightened I was.
“There is a wolf!” I cried, panting.
He flung up his head, and could not help looking round for an instant, almost
believing me.
“Where is the wolf?”
“A shout . . . some one shouted: ‘wolf’ . . . ” I faltered out.
“Nonsense, nonsense! A wolf? Why, it was your fancy! How could there be a wolf?”
he muttered, reassuring me. But I was trembling all over, and still kept tight hold of his
smock frock, and I must have been quite pale. He looked at me with an uneasy smile,
evidently anxious and troubled over me.
“Why, you have had a fright, aïe, aïe!” He shook his head. “There, dear. . . . Come,
little one, aïe!”
He stretched out his hand, and all at once stroked my cheek.
“Come, come, there; Christ be with you! Cross yourself!”
But I did not cross myself. The corners of my mouth were twitching, and I think that
struck him particularly. He put out his thick, black-nailed, earth-stained finger and softly
touched my twitching lips.
”Aïe, there, there,” he said to me with a slow, almost motherly smile. “Dear, dear,
what is the matter? There; come, come!”
I grasped at last that there was no wolf, and that the shout that I had heard was my
fancy. Yet that shout had been so clear and distinct, but such shouts (not only about
wolves) I had imagined once or twice before, and I was aware of that. (These
hallucinations passed away later as I grew older.)
“Well, I will go then,” I said, looking at him timidly and inquiringly.
“Well, do, and I’ll keep watch on you as you go. I won’t let the wolf get at you,” he
added, still smiling at me with the same motherly expression. “Well, Christ be with you!
Come, run along then,” and he made the sign of the cross over me and then over himself.
I walked away, looking back almost at every tenth step. Marey stood still with his mare as
I walked away, and looked after me and nodded to me every time I looked round. I must
own I felt a little ashamed at having let him see me so frightened, but I was still very
much afraid of the wolf as I walked away, until I reached the first barn half-way up the
slope of the ravine; there my fright vanished completely, and all at once our yard-dog
Voltchok flew to meet me. With Voltchok I felt quite safe, and I turned round to Marey
for the last time; I could not see his face distinctly, but I felt that he was still nodding and
smiling affectionately to me. I waved to him; he waved back to me and started his little
mare. “Come up!” I heard his call in the distance again, and the little mare pulled at the
plough again.
All this I recalled all at once, I don’t know why, but with extraordinary minuteness of
detail. I suddenly roused myself and sat up on the platform-bed, and, I remember, found
myself still smiling quietly at my memories. I brooded over them for another minute.
When I got home that day I told no one of my “adventure” with Marey. And indeed it
was hardly an adventure. And in fact I soon forgot Marey. When I met him now and then
afterwards, I never even spoke to him about the wolf or anything else; and all at once
now, twenty years afterwards in Siberia, I remembered this meeting with such
distinctness to the smallest detail. So it must have lain hidden in my soul, though I knew
nothing of it, and rose suddenly to my memory when it was wanted; I remembered the
soft motherly smile of the poor serf, the way he signed me with the cross and shook his
head. “There, there, you have had a fright, little one!” And I remembered particularly the
thick earth-stained finger with which he softly and with timid tenderness touched my
quivering lips. Of course any one would have reassured a child, but something quite
different seemed to have happened in that solitary meeting; and if I had been his own
son, he could not have looked at me with eyes shining with greater love. And what made
him like that? He was our serf and I was his little master, after all. No one would know
that he had been kind to me and reward him for it. Was he, perhaps, very fond of little
children? Some people are. It was a solitary meeting in the deserted fields, and only God,
perhaps, may have seen from above with what deep and humane civilised feeling, and
with what delicate, almost feminine tenderness, the heart of a coarse, brutally ignorant
Russian serf, who had as yet no expectation, no idea even of his freedom, may be filled.
Was not this, perhaps, what Konstantin Aksakov meant when he spoke of the high degree
of culture of our peasantry?
And when I got down off the bed and looked around me, I remember I suddenly felt
that I could look at these unhappy creatures with quite different eyes, and that suddenly
by some miracle all hatred and anger had vanished utterly from my heart. I walked about,
looking into the faces that I met. That shaven peasant, branded on his face as a criminal,
bawling his hoarse, drunken song, may be that very Marey; I cannot look into his heart.
I met M. again that evening. Poor fellow! he could have no memories of Russian
peasants, and no other view of these people but: ”Je haïs ces brigands!“ Yes, the Polish
prisoners had more to bear than I.