A short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "The Peasant Marey," 1876. Full Text in English

The New Testament that Dostoyevsky took with him to prison in Siberia

THE PEASANT MAREY


It 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.