3 Out of working hours he used to wander about the prison barracks; almost everyone else would be at work, only he had nothing to do. If anything was said to him, usually a taunt (he and the others in his division were often made fun of), he would turn round and go off to another room without saying a word; sometimes he blushed crimson if he were much ridiculed. I often wondered how this peaceable, simple-hearted creature had come into prison. Once I was in the convicts’ ward in the hospital. Sirotkin too was ill, and was in the bed next to mine; one evening we fell into talk. Somehow he got warmed up, and incidentally told me how he had been taken for a soldier, how his mother cried seeing him off, and how wretched he was as a recruit. He added that he could not endure the life of a recruit, because everyone there was so cross and stern, and the officers were almost always displeased with him.

“How did it end?” I asked. “What brought you here? And in the special division too.⁠ ⁠… Ah, Sirotkin, Sirotkin!”