In the hospital, the prisoners are first seen each morning by the intern and later by the head doctor and other physicians. Alexander describes the intern as a knowledgeable and gentle young man whom the prisoners like very much, though they think him too soft. He often allows doubtful cases to remain in the ward. Alexander reflects more broadly that simple people often distrust hospitals and medical administration, partly from fear of official institutions and partly from stories about harsh rules, but that many doctors themselves win real affection and respect through kindness and humanity.

Among the prisoners there is an understood arrangement by which men who are not truly ill may still remain in the ward under the vague diagnosis of febris catarrhalis, which the prisoners jokingly interpret as “spare cramps.” The intern allows such cases to stay for a time if they need rest from work or relief from the guardhouse. Only when a man abuses this tolerance does the doctor timidly urge him to recover and ask for discharge.

The head doctor, who is humane but firmer, dismisses such men more decisively. One prisoner pretends for a long time to have an eye infection to postpone a sentence of a thousand strokes. He secretly irritates his eyes at night with lime. When the doctors finally resort to the “very painful” treatment of a seton, cutting the skin at the back of his neck and passing a tape through the wound to keep it open, the man endures the torture for several days before finally agreeing to be discharged. As soon as the wound heals, he is sent to receive his punishment.

Alexander reflects on the fear of flogging. Some prisoners will resort to extraordinary measures to delay it, while others ask to be discharged before their backs have healed so that the punishment may be finished sooner. He recalls the story of a baptized Kalmyk from the special section also named Alexander, who claimed that he could survive 4,000 strokes for killing an officer because he had been “under the lash since childhood” (186). He tells how he repeatedly pretended to die during the punishment, so that he would be taken to the hospital and then sent back later to complete the sentence. He recounts all this with cheerfulness and without bitterness, which astonishes Alexander.

In general, Alexander is struck by how often beaten men speak of their punishments calmly, even humorously, without “even the slightest shade of spite or hatred” (187). This attitude seems connected to their sense that punishment is simply part of an inevitable struggle with authority, not necessarily a moral condemnation in the eyes of their own people.

Alexander records the prisoners’ stories about two officers known for supervising corporal punishment. Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov is remembered with contempt as a cruel man who enjoys torment for its own sake and invents tricks to raise false hopes in condemned men, only to order them flogged without mercy. Lieutenant Smekalov, by contrast, is remembered almost affectionately. Though he also punishes, he speaks with prisoners in an easy and familiar manner, jokes with them, and seems to them “all heart.” The prisoners laugh at the memory of his tricks and speak of him with warmth.

Alexander explains that only in the hospital does he gain a direct view of corporal punishment, though most of these techniques have changed since his time. Convicts punished from the battalions, prison sections, and military units around the town are brought to the prisoners’ wards and, in his first weeks there, Alexander watches them closely. He wants to understand their attitude toward punishment.

Men who are waiting to undergo the second half of a sentence, after their backs have healed from the first, are usually gloomy and distracted. The others generally avoid speaking about what awaits them. Once punishment begins, however, even men who had been terrified often endure it “manfully.” Only Orlov had seemed different, because he was impatient to finish his sentence and continue toward exile and escape. He took heart after surviving the first half of his punishment. After the second half, Orlov died in the hospital.

Alexander becomes preoccupied with the nature of physical pain and asks many prisoners about it. They all answer in the same way, saying that it burns “like fire.” He also hears the common opinion that the birch is more tormenting than the rod, even if the birch can be endured in greater numbers without immediate danger to life. This reflection leads Alexander into a broader condemnation of corporal punishment itself, which he sees as corrupting not only for the victim but for the man who inflicts it. He argues that habitual power over another human body and humiliation of another person’s dignity turns cruelty into a kind of intoxication and destroys humanity in the punisher, since “tyranny is a habit” (197).

Alexander then turns to the figure of the executioner. The official executioner—though despised and feared—is at least recognized openly for what he is. He is usually a convict kept for that duty, separated from others. He is vain, proud, and often materially comfortable because he receives bribes from condemned men who seek lighter blows. He may promise to punish less harshly, though he always gives the first blow with full force. Alexander recalls one such executioner as intelligent, self-important, and strangely dignified, even while carrying out the “humiliating” task of killing stray dogs in town.

Hospital life itself remains “terribly boring.” Meals are one of the few diversions, since rations vary by illness and can be sold or supplemented with food purchased through the guards. The arrival of new patients, especially men in transit or recently flogged, also breaks the boredom. Occasionally, prisoners fake mental illness to delay punishment, while those who truly do have mental illnesses are brought in for observation. At first, such men seem amusing to the ward, but they soon become unbearable. One was Sergeant Ostrozhski, a Polish overseer Alexander had once respected who is now in a reduced state. Another prisoner, terrified of an expected flogging, invents a fantasy that a colonel’s daughter has fallen in love with him and will save him. Two days after leaving the ward, he is taken to be punished anyway.

Evenings and nights in the hospital are the worst. The ward is dark, foul, and airless. Men lie awake counting, remembering the past, or imagining freedom. Others whisper about former lives to which they will never return. In this atmosphere, Alexander feels both the dreariness of hospital confinement and its strange similarity to actual prison.

Late at night in the hospital ward, when most of the patients are asleep, Alexander overhears a whispered conversation between two men. One is Shishkov, a young civil convict from the tailor’s shop. Shishkov is excitable, weak, and despised by the others. The other is Cherevin, an older corrective-company soldier who seems to be a cold and self-important listener. He answers only occasionally. Shishkov, agitated and eager to tell his story, begins recounting the events that led to his imprisonment.

He describes the household of Ankudim Trofimych, a prosperous and respected old merchant who has an 18-year-old daughter, Akulka. Another man, Filka Morozov, once connected with the family, quarrels with Ankudim. He takes his share of money and goes on a long drunken spree. During this period, Filka begins spreading rumors that he has had sex with Akulka, publicly dishonoring her and ruining a proposed marriage with an older widower, Mikita Grigoryich. The family beats Akulka severely because of the scandal. Shishkov, meanwhile, is living in poverty with his mother and falling into drunkenness himself. Encouraged by his mother, who wants the marriage for money, he agrees to marry Akulka, though he also believes the rumors and bargains for cash from her family.

Filka continues to taunt Shishkov before and after the wedding, mocking him for marrying a disgraced woman. Shishkov goes into the marriage drunk and enters the bridal room prepared to beat Akulka with a whip. Instead, he discovers that she is innocent. Overcome, he falls to his knees and begs her forgiveness. For a short time, he is proud of his wife and of the marriage. However, Filka’s continued insults and suggestions that Akulka still belongs to him take a toll on Shishkov’s mind. Though Akulka remains guiltless, Shishkov starts beating her regularly, partly from wounded pride and partly from his inability to resist the shame he feels before others.

Later, Filka is hired as a substitute recruit and—before leaving to take on another man’s military service—publicly bows to Akulka and asks her forgiveness. She returns the bow and tells Shishkov afterward that she now loves Filka “more than the whole world” (219). That same day, Shishkov decides to kill her. The next morning, he takes her by cart into the woods on the pretense of going to their field. There, he orders her to get down, tells her to pray, seizes her by the hair, and cuts her throat with a knife. She does not die at once. He embraces her, weeps over her, and then panics. He leaves her and runs home, hiding in an old bathhouse until he is found and arrested that night, after Akulka is discovered dead.

When Shishkov finishes, Cherevin responds without emotion and turns at once to his own experience of beating his wife, treating the whole matter as ordinary.

With the coming of April and Holy Week, summer work gradually begins. The change of season strongly affects the prisoners. Bright sun and the smell of spring awaken an even sharper longing for freedom in the prisoners’ “fettered soul[s].” Alexander notices that quarrels become more frequent. At the same time, however, men fall into sudden silence, staring across the Irtysh toward the free Kirghiz steppe. The nearness of spring also recalls the escapee’s life, since runaways begin once more to slip into the forests and roads of Siberia and Russia. Even prisoners who have no real intention of escaping think about or remember past escapes. Alexander describes one old convict who spent his life running away, roaming widely across Russia and Siberia. In prison, he now sits quietly in the sun, humming to himself and feeding the prison dogs.

Spring affects Alexander no less painfully. He becomes more restless and more oppressed by prison, especially the hostility shown to him as a nobleman. He often looks through the prison fence at green grass and the widening blue sky. During Lent, he is included in one of the weekly groups sent to prepare for communion. These days please him, because the men are excused from work and marched under guard to church. Standing near the entrance among the shackled convicts, receiving alms from worshippers—and later taking communion—he feels a strange mixture of humiliation and consolation. At Easter, the same pattern returns as at Christmas: Official gifts, alms from the town, festive food, visits from the priest and authorities, and then drunkenness and idleness. Easter is more painful than Christmas because the long, bright day makes confinement feel still heavier.

Summer labor is much harder than winter labor. The prisoners are sent to engineering works, construction, workshops, painting, brickmaking, and brick carrying. The brickyard, several miles from the fortress, is considered the hardest assignment. Alexander sometimes works carrying bricks from the bank of the Irtysh up to a building site. Though the ropes cut his shoulders, he takes satisfaction in gaining physical strength that will help him with “living after prison” (227). He especially values the work on the riverbank, because there he can turn his back on the fortress and look out over the open steppe, the sky, distant yurts, and the free landscape beyond the prison world.

Evenings in summer are somewhat easier, though still full of agitation. Prisoners gather in the kitchen or yard to discuss rumors, to sing, and to argue. At this time, a rumor spreads that an important general from Petersburg is coming to inspect all Siberia. The prisoners become excited and fantasize that he may remove the major or even hear their complaints against him. Streets are leveled, fences painted, and the prison itself scrubbed and arranged for inspection. During this period, a convict named Lomov stabs Gavrilka with an awl during a quarrel over a woman. The wound is slight, but the major, who already hates the Lomov family, seizes the chance to pursue the case eagerly. Lomov is tried, receives an additional sentence, and is given 1,000 rods.

When the inspector finally arrives, the prison is ready. The prisoners are lined up in clean white clothing, and the major is in a state of extreme agitation. The general enters with a suite of officials, walks through the prison, glances at the barracks and kitchen, briefly asks about Alexander, and then leaves almost at once. Nothing changes, no complaints are heard, and the prisoners are left “in some perplexity” (236).