Cell No. 1. The floor is some seven feet square. The window is closed with an iron grating. The door has a small peep-hole in it. The cell is furnished with a sleeping bench, a table, and a stool. The air is close—an evil-smelling place lies next door. On the other side is cell No. 2, with Markov in it; he walks up and down with large, nervous strides. Somehow or other I still remember that he makes three steps along his cell, while I manage, on a curve, to make five. The prison is full of vague sounds. The strained ear begins to distinguish them, and gradually to make out the course of prison life, and even its moods. The guards—I guess them to be soldiers of the prison guard company—are rough and revengeful men.
It is early morning. Someone’s voice is booming. Whence? Outside of the window, clinging to the grating, hang two soldiers. They look at me with cruel, savage eyes, and hysterically utter terrible curses. They throw in something abominable through the open window. There is no escape from their gaze. I turn to the door—there another pair of eyes, full of hatred, peers through the peep-hole; thence choice abuse pours in also. I lie down on the sleeping-bench and cover my head with my cloak. I lie for hours. The whole day, one after another, the “public accusers” replace each other at the window and at the door—the guards allow all to come freely. And into the narrow, close kennel pours, in an unceasing torrent, a foul stream of words, shouts, and curses, born of immense ignorance, blind hate, and bottomless coarseness. One’s whole soul seems to be drenched with that abuse, and there is no deliverance, no escape from this moral torture chamber.
What is it all about? “Wanted to open the Front” ... “sold himself to the Germans”—the sum, too, was mentioned—“for twenty thousand roubles” ... “wanted to deprive us of land and freedom.” This was not their own, this was borrowed from the Committee. But Commander-in-Chief, General, gentleman—this, indeed, was their own! “You have drunk our blood, ordered us about, kept us stewing in prison; now we are free and you can sit behind the bars yourself. You pampered yourself, drove about in motor-cars; now you can try what lying on a wooden bench is, you ——. You have not much time left. We shan’t wait till you run away—we will strangle you with our own hands.” These warriors of the rear scarcely knew me at all. But all that had been gathering for years, for centuries, in their exasperated hearts against the power they did not love, against the inequality of classes, because of personal grievances and of their shattered lives—for which someone or other was to blame—all this now came to the surface in the form of unmitigated cruelty. And the higher the standing of him who was reckoned the enemy of the people, and the deeper his fall, the more violent was the hostility of the mob and the greater the satisfaction of seeing him in its hands. Meanwhile, behind the wings of the popular stage stood the managers, who inflamed both the wrath and the delight of the populace; who did not believe in the villainy of the actors, but permitted them even to perish for the sake of greater realism in the performance and to the greater glory of their sectarian dogmatism. These motives of party policy, however, were called “tactical considerations.”
I lay, covered head and all by my cloak and, under a shower of oaths, tried to see things clearly:
“What have I done to deserve this?”
I went through the stages of my life.... My father was a stern soldier with a most kindly heart. Up to thirty years of age he had been a peasant serf and was drafted into the Army, where, after twenty-two years of hard service in the ranks, under the severe discipline of the times of Nicholas I, he was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. He retired with the rank of Major. My childhood was hard and joyless, amidst the poverty of a pension of 45 roubles a month. Then my father died. Life became still harder. My mother’s pension was 25 roubles a month. My youth was passed in study and in working for my daily bread. I became a volunteer in the Army, messing in barracks with the privates. Then came my officer’s commission, then the Staff College. The unfairness of my promotion, my complaint to the Emperor against the all-powerful Minister of War, and my return to the 2nd Artillery Brigade. My conflict with a moribund group of old adherents of serfdom; their accusation of demagogy. The General Staff. My practice command of a company in the 183rd Pultussk Regiment. Here I put an end to the system of striking the soldiers and made an unsuccessful experiment in “conscious discipline.” Yes, Mr. Kerensky, I did this also in my younger days. I privately abolished disciplinary punishment—“watch one another, restrain the weak-spirited—after all, you are decent men—show that you can do your duty without the stick.” I finished my command: during the year the behaviour of the company had not been above the average, it drilled poorly and lazily. After my departure the old Sergeant-Major, Stsepoura, gathered the company together, raised his fist significantly in the air and said distinctly, separating his words:
“Now it is not Captain Denikin whom you will have. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sergeant-Major.”
It was said, afterwards, that the company soon showed improvement.