A convict was waiting ready to fasten on my fetters. I was placed on a stool, and had to put my foot on an anvil. The blacksmith fitted an iron ring round each ankle, and welded it together. Every stroke of the hammer made my heart sink, as I realised that a new existence was beginning for me.
The mental depression into which I now fell was soon accompanied by physical discomfort. The fetters at first caused me intolerable pain in walking, and even disturbed my sleep. It also requires considerable practice before one can easily manage to dress and undress. The heavy chains—about 13 lbs. in weight—are not only an encumbrance, but are very painful, as they chafe the skin round the ankles; and the leather lining is but little protection to those unaccustomed to these adornments. Another great torment is the continual clinking of the chains. It is indescribably irritating to the nervous, and reminds the prisoner at every turn that he is a pariah among his kind, “deprived of all rights.”
The transformation is completed by the peculiar convict dress, consisting—besides the coarse linen underclothing—of a grey gown made of special material, and a pair of trousers. Prisoners condemned to hard labour wear a square piece of yellow cloth sewn on their gowns. The feet are clad in leathern slippers nicknamed “cats.” All these articles of clothing are inconvenient, heavy, and ill-fitting.
I hardly knew myself when I looked in the glass and beheld a fully attired convict. The thought possessed me—“For long years you will have to go about in that hideous disguise.” Even the gendarme regarded me with compassion.
“What won’t they do to a man?” he said. And I could only try to comfort myself by thinking how many unpleasant things one gets used to, and that time might perhaps accustom one even to this.
My own clothes I gave away to the warders, and any possessions of value—watch, ring, cigarette-case—I sent by post to relations. I kept only my books. I had been given a bag in which to keep a change of linen; and into it I also put a few volumes of Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine, Molière, and Rousseau, thus completing my preparations for travelling.
PRISONERS MARCHING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ODESSA
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Evening came. The officer in command of the convoy appeared in the prison courtyard with his men and took the party in charge. I was conducted to the office. A statyehny spìsok[[41]] is prepared for each individual convict, in which his name and place of exile are entered, and also a list of the exciseable things he takes with him. In the statyehny spìsok of each political prisoner his photograph is pasted, and in mine there were two.