Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I was trying to sort all our people into categories, but now, as I recall Akim Akimych, I think one more category can be added. True, it was made up of him alone. It is the category of the totally indifferent convicts. The totally indifferent, that is, those to whom it was all the same whether they lived in freedom or in prison, naturally did not and could not exist among us, but Akim Akimych seems to have made the exception. He even set himself up in prison as if he intended to live there all his life: everything around him, starting with his mattress, pillows, utensils, was arranged so solidly, so firmly, so durably. Of the camp-like, the temporary, no trace could be noticed in him. He still had many years of prison ahead of him, but I doubt that he ever thought of getting out. But if he was reconciled with reality, then, of course, it came not from the heart, but rather from subordination, which for him, however, were one and the same.