The world as a construction in a Kafka penal colony. Kafka F. In a penal colony. Biography of the writer. Analysis of a letter to F. Kafka's father

“In a penal colony” you can remember the summary of the story in 7 minutes.

“In a penal colony” summary

The main characters of Kafka's story have no names:

• Traveler
• Officer
• New commandant
• Convicted
• Soldier

The story centers on a Traveler who arrives at a penal colony on a remote island. and sees the cruel machine for the first time. The officer tells him all the information about the execution machine and its purpose.

He is offered to attend the execution of a guilty soldier. A simple, somewhat simple-minded soldier, assigned as a servant and supposedly disobedient to his master, is to be killed by a machine with the words "Honor your superior."

Execution usually involved placing the convicted person in a “special kind of apparatus” for executions. The device works on the following principle: it scratches the commandment he violated on the person’s body, then turns it over to the other side and scratches the same words again, only deeper, and so on until the offender dies. The criminal dies slowly over 12 hours

The officer is a supporter of the apparatus and considers it necessary. However, since the death of the old commandant, this punishment has found more and more opponents and the new commandant among them.

The officer asks the Traveler to speak with the current Commandant and support him at a meeting of the colony's command, but the Traveler refuses.

Then the officer releases the Convict and gets into the execution machine himself. However, the machine malfunctions and instead of the usual elegant operation, it quickly kills the officer.

After this terrible spectacle of the self-destruction of man and machine, the traveler, accompanied by two soldiers, visits the grave of the old commandant, who invented this execution machine. The tombstone is set very low, and the inscription states that his followers believe that he will one day rise from the dead and take control of the colony again.

The traveler leaves the island.

Kafka Franz

In a penal colony

FRANZ KAFKA

IN THE CORRECTIONAL COLONY

“This is a very unique apparatus,” the officer said to the traveling researcher and, despite the fact that the apparatus had been familiar to him for a long time, he looked at it with a certain amount of admiration. The traveler, apparently, only out of politeness accepted the commandant’s invitation to attend the execution of a soldier convicted of disobedience and insulting a superior in rank. Although in the colony itself there was no particular interest in execution. In any case, in this deep, sandy valley surrounded by bare slopes, besides the officer and the traveler, there was only a condemned man - a dull-faced, long-mouthed man with scraggly hair and face - and a soldier with him, holding a heavy chain, into which thinner chains flowed, shackling his ankles and the wrists of the condemned man and his neck, and also connected to each other by chains. And the condemned man, meanwhile, looked so devoted like a dog that it seemed that if you freed him from his chains and let him run along the slopes, all he had to do was whistle for the beginning of the execution.

"Would you like to sit down?" - he finally asked, pulled one out of the pile of folding chairs and handed it to the traveler; he couldn't refuse. He sat down at the edge of the ditch, into which he glanced briefly. It wasn't very deep. On one side the excavated earth was piled in a heap, on the other there was an apparatus. “I don’t know,” said the officer, “whether the commandant explained to you how the apparatus works.” The traveler made a vague gesture with his hand; the officer was just waiting for an opportunity to explain the operation of the apparatus himself. “This apparatus,” he said and took hold of the handle of the bucket on which he was leaning, “: the invention of the former commandant. I worked on it from the first samples, and also participated in all other work until their completion. The credit for the invention belongs to only to him. Have you heard about our former commandant? No? Oh, I can say without exaggeration that the entire structure of the colony is the work of his hands. We, his friends, even when he was dying, knew that the structure of the colony was so perfect ", that not a single follower of his, even if he had a thousand plans in his head, for many years would be able to change anything created by his predecessor. And our prediction came true; the new commandant was forced to admit it. It's a pity that you didn't find the former commandant! However, ", the officer interrupted himself, "I was chatting, and meanwhile the apparatus is standing in front of us. As you can see, it consists of three parts. Over time, each has acquired a certain popular designation. The lower one is called a bed, the upper one is called a draftsman, and the middle one the free part is called the harrow." "Harrow?" - asked the traveler. He didn't listen very carefully, the sun was caught and held by the shadowless valley, it was difficult to gather his thoughts. All the more surprising to him was the officer in a tight-fitting ceremonial uniform, hung with aiguillettes, weighed down with epaulettes, who so diligently presented his subject and, in addition, throughout the conversation, here and there, tightened the bolts with a screwdriver. The soldier seemed to be in the same condition as the traveler. He wrapped the condemned man's chains around both wrists, leaned one hand on the gun, his head dangled from his neck, and nothing attracted his attention. This did not seem strange to the traveler, since the officer spoke French, and neither the soldier nor the convict, of course, understood French. What was even more noteworthy was that the convict, despite this, listened carefully to the officer’s explanations. With a certain drowsy persistence, he directed his gaze to where the officer was pointing, and when the traveler interrupted him with a question, the condemned man, like the officer, turned his gaze to the traveler.

“Yes, harrow,” the officer confirmed, “the appropriate name. The needles are located like on a harrow, and the whole thing is set in motion like a harrow, albeit in the same place and much more sophisticated. Yes, you will now understand for yourself. Here, on the bed , they lay the condemned man down. I am going to first describe the apparatus to you, and only then begin the procedure. It will then be easier for you to follow what is happening. In addition, the gear train of the draftsman has worn out; it grinds a lot during operation; it is almost impossible to hear each other; spare parts here, unfortunately, are difficult to obtain. So, this, as I said, is a bed. It is entirely covered with a layer of cotton wool; you will learn about its purpose later. The convict is placed on this cotton wool on his stomach, naked, of course; here are the straps for arms, here for the legs, here for the neck, with them the convict is fastened in. Here, at the head of the bed, on which, as I said, the person is first placed face down, there is a small felt cushion, it can be easily adjusted so that it fits the person straight into your mouth. It is designed to prevent screaming and tongue biting. Of course, the person is forced to take it into his mouth, otherwise the seat belt will break his neck." “Is this cotton wool?” asked the traveler and leaned closer. “Yes, yes,” the officer smiled, touch it." He took the traveler’s hand and ran it over bed. “This is specially treated cotton wool, that’s why it looks so unusual; I’ll tell you about its purpose." The traveler was already a little fascinated by the device; raising his hand to his eyes, protecting them from the sun, he glanced at its top. It was a large structure. The bed and the drawer were the same size and looked like two dark chests. The drawer was placed about two meters above the bed, they were held together by four brass rods at the corners, almost shining in the rays of the sun.Between the boxes, a harrow hovered on a steel rim.

The officer hardly noticed the traveler's initial indifference, but his current incipient interest did not go unnoticed by him; he interrupted his explanations to give the traveler time for undisturbed exploration. The condemned man followed the example of the traveler; Unable to cover his eyes with his hand, he blinked his unprotected eyes upward.

“Well, the man is laid down,” said the traveler, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.

“Yes,” said the officer, pushed his cap back a little and ran his hand over his hot face, “now listen! Both the bed and the draftsman each have an electric battery; the bed uses it for itself, the draftsman uses it for the harrow. As soon as the person is fastened ", the bed is set in motion. It vibrates simultaneously in the horizontal and vertical plane. You have probably come across similar devices in hospitals; but the movements of our bed are clearly calculated - namely, they must biasedly follow the movements of the harrow. The harrow is entrusted with the execution of the very sentence."

"And what does the sentence sound like?" - asked the traveler. “You don’t know this either?” the officer was surprised and bit his lip: “I apologize if my explanations are confusing; excuse me. Previously, the commandant gave explanations; the new commandant has relieved himself of this responsibility; the fact that he is such a high-ranking visitor:” Traveler tried to protect himself from praise with both hands, but the officer insisted on his wording: - ": such a high-ranking visitor is not informed about the form of the sentence - this is another innovation that: " - He hardly kept curses on his lips, pulled himself together and said only : - “I was not informed about this, it’s not my fault. Moreover, I am best informed about all types of our sentences, since here,” he slapped himself on his breast pocket, I wear the corresponding drawings from the hand of the former commandant.”

An interesting story. And again, Kafka tells a seemingly ordinary story... about an execution machine, about a strange penal colony with strange rules. Moreover, all the “strangeness” arises after reading; during the same time, you only feel a slight chill from what is happening. A machine that tortures, cutting out on the convict the corresponding rules that he violated... and the execution lasts twelve hours and for twelve hours the defendant is alive and feels his “sin” in his back (and he was convicted for some nonsense by human standards, but not by the standards of the place , in which everything happens) and at the sixth hour the tortured person comes to a pre-death clarification of consciousness. And then the teeth pierce him and throw him into a special pit. And the old commandant, the creator of the machine, whom the executioner worships so much... His strange grave in a coffee shop, a gravestone under a table in the corner, with almost religious inscriptions. And most importantly, this is probably another work by Kafka on the theme of “man as power.” This power is the commandant. There was an old commandant, and people came in droves to admire the execution, they waited with interest for the “sixth hour” and everyone wanted to look at the “enlightenment” so much so that they even had to introduce the rule “children first”; there were so many people who wanted it. But he died and a new commandant came with new views. And people immediately, instantly, accepted his ideas... But the people in both cases were the same. Why is that? Where does this bestial desire to walk, please and even think, as the authorities do? Here's the question...

Perhaps the executioner is the only one who behaves like a human being. Yes, he is cruel, but he goes to the end with his faith, with his truth and does not cling to the new...

And, in the end, he does to himself what he did to his victims. Lies under deadly thorns. And the machine, collapsing, destroys him. He does this because he cannot change, because for him to change is to betray. This is not devotion to the old commandant, this is devotion to yourself, to your dignity.

That's how I understood this story.

The story is easy to read. Strange details, strange things (like a tombstone under a table in a coffee shop) make the story somehow... no, I can’t put it into words. It's worth reading. He is something special. And it is remembered, lodged in memory.

Rating: 10

The story is an allegory through which the author reveals the essence of totalitarian regimes. The topic is not new and not particularly interesting, but Kafka managed to create a surprisingly vivid image of an officer-judge. This image is not revealed immediately. For most of the story, the officer seems to personify the sadistic elements of unchecked power, with the judge acting as investigator and executioner, and the commandant only from afar expressing disapproval and not giving money for spare parts for the torture machine.

But in the final part of the story, the officer suddenly reveals himself from a completely different side - we see a mad fanatic, convinced that he is right. Unable to prevent changes, he voluntarily goes under a torture machine and accepts a painful death in an effort to comprehend the essence of justice.

Why did he do this? In his system of the world, the machine is an instrument for instilling proper behavior in a person. The soldier who violated the guard duty regulations had to learn to respect his superior. And what goal was pursued by the officer who determined the punishment for himself in understanding the essence of justice? What was the offense for which the officer sentenced himself? Is it a secret doubt that suddenly crept into consciousness at the sight of a person from another system? Or the desire to use the car against the traveler? No answer. Only one thing is clear: in the short minutes of preparation for the execution, the officer did something that he considered unfair and requiring appropriate punishment. He does not put himself above the system, does not demand concessions in things that he himself did not give to anyone.

The officer's impulse turns out to be able to be appreciated only by a casual spectator - a traveler. The soldier and the convict show only curiosity about the execution procedure; the meaning of what is happening remains inaccessible to their sleeping minds. The death of a man dispensing murderous justice leads to the death of a machine.

A global regime change took place without anyone noticing. The soldier and the convict have gone to their barracks, people are drinking in the tavern, the new commandant is still somewhere in the distance, and the traveler is fleeing a crazy world where murder is considered synonymous with justice. The allegory is simple: a totalitarian regime is supported by a machine of justice driven by fanatics convinced of their rightness. The machine and fanaticism exist only together; the death of one automatically destroys the other. It is unclear what will replace it.

Judging by the distance of the commandant surrounded by ladies, he is not a fanatic of any idea. This is good. But there is no clear idea in his actions, only a desire to please the clergy and secular society is visible - this is scary. The machine of justice does not have to be glass. And it does not have to be put into action by a fanatic thirsting for justice.

The story leaves an extremely difficult impression. The author’s logical constructions do not raise any objections, and some of the absurdity of the world and people’s behavior does not interfere with understanding the essence and seeing analogies with reality, but the aftertaste is so negative that after reading it you no longer want to do anything: neither read Kafka, nor reflect on the structure of society and the psychology of people. I want to run away, like the traveler ran away, and quickly, so that madness does not have time to overtake me.

Rating: 6

When I read Kafka, it’s like I’m being sucked into a swamp. You wander through the quagmire, there is silence and darkness all around, but something glitters in the muddy water - this is the meaning. You reach for it, it takes on bizarre shapes, teases you and slips away, and in this pursuit you will get covered in swamp fluid. And somewhere along the same swamp someone else is walking, and for him the meaning also looks different...

Rating: no

Cold, subtle, daring, absurd, realistic, deeply thought out and smart story. And again, nothing inhumane. Just a description of the torture machine. Quite original, by the way. Something like a loom coupled with a typewriter. You begin to understand the primary sources of modern empty horror films. But the novella has an IDEA, unlike them.

The world is just cruel, and Kafka responded to this cruelty in any way he could. And this bystander, he, of course, was not a coward, he was able to firmly answer “No” to the officer, but he simply did not want to interfere in all this.

How similar this is to us humans.

Rating: 10

I really like Kafka. He deserved to be a world-class writer with his many works. And this is just one of them. By the way, he himself was a complex and unhappy person. This story, like other works, is similar to a nightmare, which is why it’s an unpleasant feeling and why it’s a feeling of nonsense, some time after reading it (the direction is “absurdism”, etc.). Of course, it’s unrealistic, and even with such a machine - in this way it’s impossible to “write” a person through and through... because a person is not a piece of plywood)) that’s just not the point, and besides, it doesn’t reduce the unpleasant feeling.

In general, some people like it. some don't. I found a stunning idea for myself there: smile: - this is that power and orders change and disfigure people, and when they become outdated, these people with their views... become unusable! A new time is coming, and those are going to the dump, that means. There are a lot of ideas there, this work is a bit old, far from King, for example. It is a parable (many people also know) and the heroes there are “flat” because they are symbols, they are not individuals in the full sense of the word, a traveler, for example, is an outsider’s view of a totalitarian inhuman machine (society)... etc. d.

So HANDS OFF Kafka! He is a classic, and this automatically cancels out the ignorant reviews about him.

Rating: no

There is nothing extraordinary in this story. Everything is described in such detail that the reader is left to “think out” nothing - as in the old joke about a wife and husband: Kafka said, Kafka did, Kafka argued, Kafka appreciated. I also didn’t notice any stunning internal idea. Yes, a little dark, a little disgusting, a little scary, but that’s all. All this abomination of an invented machine, which should seem to shock, is not shocking. The fear that it should arouse in the reader does not. The gloomy atmosphere disappears as quickly as the smoke from a burnt match dissolves - and it even smells the same: for some it’s tasty (I know people who like the smell of a burnt match), for others not so much. What contributes to this? I think that the very manner of storytelling is so ordinary, detailed down to the atom, but most of all - the characters. These nameless four - an officer, a traveler, a soldier and a convict - are like drawings on cardboard from a box or on wrapping paper: gray, lifeless and amorphous. The only exception here is the officer, and only because his entire “vitality” and at least some presence of emotions are due only to fanaticism towards the system, selfless devotion to the old commandant and the machine. The rest is gray, but roughly speaking, not at all.

Rating: 5

The colony. Tropics. Heat. Convicted. Execution. Twelve-hour torture with a fatal outcome for falling asleep on duty. With a detailed description of the process, the behavior of the person being tortured and other delights that obviously should make us understand (according to the author’s intention) how cruel our world is. Personally, they made it clear to me that I wanted to stay away from the author’s work, from this quintessence of gloom and depression, after which I want to hang myself and forget myself.

Lecture plan.

1.Biography of the writer. Analysis of a letter to F. Kafka's father.

2. Characteristics of the writer’s creativity. Major works. Novelistic creativity. Novels “Castle”, “Trial”, “America”. Modernist irony in the works of F. Kafka.

3.Analysis of the writer’s short stories (“In the penal colony”, “The Hunger Man”, “Metamorphosis”).

Kafka is born 3 July 1883 year in Jewish family living in the Josefov district, a former Jewish ghetto city ​​of Prague ( Czech, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). His father is Herman (Genykh) Kafka ( 1852 -1931 ), came from Czech-speaking Jewish community in South Bohemia, with 1882 Mr. was a wholesale dealer in dry goods. The writer's mother is Julia Kafka (née Etl Levi) ( 1856 -1934 ), the daughter of a wealthy brewer - preferred German. Kafka himself wrote in German, although he also knew Czech perfectly. He was also quite good at French, and among the four people whom the writer, “without pretending to compare with them in strength and intelligence,” felt “as his blood brothers,” was the French writer Gustave Flaubert. The other three: Franz Grillparzer, Fedor Dostoevsky And Heinrich von Kleist. Although a Jew, Kafka nevertheless had virtually no knowledge of Yiddish and began to show interest in the traditional culture of Eastern European Jews only at the age of twenty under the influence of those who toured in Prague Jewish theater troupes; interest in studying Hebrew arose only towards the end of life.

Kafka had two younger brothers and three younger sisters. Both brothers, before reaching the age of two, died before Kafka turned 6 years old. The sisters' names were Ellie, Valli and Ottla (all three died during Second World War in the Nazi concentration camps V Poland). Since 1889 By 1893 gg. Kafka attended primary school (Deutsche Knabenschule), and then a gymnasium, which he graduated from 1901 year of passing the matriculation examination. Having graduated from Prague Charles University, received a doctorate in law (Kafka’s dissertation supervisor was professor Alfred Weber), and then entered the service as an official in the insurance department, where he worked in modest positions until his premature - due to illness - retirement in 1922 d. Work for the writer was a secondary and burdensome occupation: in his diaries and letters he literally admits his hatred of his boss, colleagues and clients. In the foreground there was always literature, “justifying his entire existence.” IN 1917 after a pulmonary hemorrhage a long period ensued tuberculosis, from which the writer died June 3 1924 years in a sanatorium near Vienna.

Asceticism, self-doubt, self-judgment and a painful perception of the world around him - all these qualities of the writer are well documented in his letters and diaries, and especially in “Letter to Father” - a valuable introspection into the relationship between father and son and into childhood experience. Due to an early break with his parents, Kafka was forced to lead a very modest lifestyle and often change housing, which left an imprint on his attitude towards Prague itself and its inhabitants. Chronic diseases ( psychosomatic whether nature is a moot point) tormented him; in addition to tuberculosis, he suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, abscesses and other diseases. He tried to counteract all this naturopathic in ways such as vegetarian diet, regular exercise and drinking plenty of unpasteurized cow's milk. As a schoolboy, he took an active part in organizing literary and social gatherings, and made efforts to organize and promote theatrical performances, despite misgivings even from his closest friends, such as Max Brod, who usually supported him in everything else, and despite his own fear of being perceived as repulsive both physically and mentally. Kafka impressed those around him with his boyish, neat, strict appearance, calm and imperturbable behavior, as well as his intelligence and unusual sense of humor.

Kafka's relationship with his oppressive father is an important component of his work, which also resulted from the writer's failure as a family man. Between 1912 -m and 1917 For years he courted a Berlin girl, Felicia Bauer, to whom he was twice engaged and twice broke the engagement. Communicating with her mainly through letters, Kafka created an image of her that did not correspond to reality at all. And in fact they were very different people, as is clear from their correspondence. (Kafka’s second bride was Julia Vokhrytsek, but the engagement was again soon called off). At first 1920s years, he had a love relationship with a married Czech journalist, writer and translator of his works, Milena Jesenskaya. IN 1923 Kafka, together with nineteen-year-old Dora Dimant, moved to Berlin, hoping to distance himself from family influence and concentrate on writing; then he returned to Prague. Health was deteriorating at this time, and June 3 1924 Mr. Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna, probably from exhaustion. (A sore throat prevented him from eating, and in those days intravenous therapy was not developed to feed him artificially). The body was transported to Prague, where it was buried June 11 1924 at the New Jewish Cemetery in the Strašnice area, in a common family grave.

During his lifetime, Kafka published only a few short stories, which constituted a very small proportion of his work, and his work received little attention until his novels were published posthumously. Before his death, he instructed his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to burn, without exception, everything he had written (except, perhaps, for some copies of the works, which the owners could keep for themselves, but not republish them). His beloved Dora Dimant did destroy the manuscripts that she possessed (although not all), but Max Brod did not obey the will of the deceased and published most of his works, which soon began to attract attention. All of his published work, except for a few Czech-language letters to Milena Jesenskaya, was written in German.

Many critics tried to explain the meaning of Kafka's works based on the provisions of certain literary schools - modernism, « magical realism"etc. The hopelessness and absurdity that permeate his work are characteristic of existentialism. Some tried to find influence Marxism on his satire of bureaucracy in such works as “In the Penal Colony”, “ Process" And " Lock" At the same time, others view his works through the prism Judaism(since he was a Jew and showed some interest in Jewish culture, which, however, developed only in the later years of the writer’s life) - made several insightful comments on this matter Borges; through Freudian psychoanalysis(due to stressful family life); or through allegories of the metaphysical search for God (the champion of this theory was Thomas Mann).

“This is a special kind of apparatus,” the officer said to the scientist-traveler, looking at the apparatus, of course, very familiar to him, not without admiration. The traveler, it seemed, only out of politeness accepted the commandant’s invitation to be present at the execution of the sentence imposed on one soldier for disobedience and insulting his superior. And in the penal colony, the upcoming execution apparently did not arouse much interest. In any case, here, in this small and deep sandy valley, closed on all sides by bare slopes, besides the officer and the traveler, there were only two: the convict - a dull, wide-mouthed fellow with an unkempt head and an unshaven face - and a soldier who did not let go of the heavy a chain to which small chains converged, stretching from the ankles and neck of the condemned person and additionally fastened with connecting chains. Meanwhile, in the whole appearance of the condemned man there was such canine obedience that it seemed that he could be let go for a walk along the slopes, but all you had to do was whistle before the execution began, and he would appear.

The traveler showed no interest in the apparatus and walked behind the convict, clearly indifferent, while the officer, making final preparations, either climbed under the apparatus, into the pit, or climbed the ladder to inspect the upper parts of the machine. These works could, in fact, be entrusted to some mechanic, but the officer performed them with great diligence - either he was a special adherent of this apparatus, or for some other reason no one else could be entrusted with this work.

- OK it's all over Now! – he finally exclaimed and climbed down the ladder. He was extremely tired, he was breathing with his mouth wide open, and two ladies' handkerchiefs were sticking out from under the collar of his uniform.

“These uniforms are perhaps too heavy for the tropics,” said the traveler, instead of inquiring about the apparatus, as the officer expected.

“Of course,” the officer said and began to wash his hands, stained with lubricating oil, in the prepared bucket of water, “but this is a sign of the homeland, we don’t want to lose our homeland.” But look at this apparatus,” he added immediately and, wiping his hands with a towel, pointed to the apparatus. – Until now, it was necessary to work manually, but now the device will operate completely independently.

The traveler nodded and looked where the officer was pointing. He wished to insure himself against any accidents and said:

- Of course, there are problems, I really hope that today things will go without them, but you still need to be prepared for them. After all, the device must work for twelve hours without interruption. But if any problems occur, they will be very minor, and they will be corrected immediately... Would you like to sit down? - he finally asked and, pulling one out of a pile of wicker chairs, offered it to the traveler; he couldn't refuse.

Now, sitting at the edge of the pit, he glanced into it. The pit was not very deep. On one side of it lay a mound of dug up earth, on the other side there was an apparatus.

“I don’t know,” said the officer, “whether the commandant has already explained to you the structure of this apparatus.”

The traveler waved his hand vaguely; the officer did not need anything more, because now he could begin the explanation himself.

“This apparatus,” he said and touched the connecting rod, on which he then leaned, “is the invention of our former commandant. I helped him from the very first experiments and participated in all the works until their completion. But the credit for this invention belongs to him alone. Have you heard about our former commandant? No? Well, I won’t exaggerate if I say that the structure of this entire penal colony is his business. We, his friends, knew already at the hour of his death that the structure of this colony was so integral that his successor, even if he had a thousand new plans in his head, would not be able to change the old order, at least for many years. And our prediction came true, the new commandant had to admit it. It’s a pity that you didn’t know the former commandant!.. However,” the officer interrupted himself, “I was chatting, and our apparatus is here, standing in front of us.” It consists, as you can see, of three parts. Gradually, each of these parts received a rather colloquial name. The lower part was called the lounger, the upper part was called the marker, and this middle, hanging part was called the harrow.

- Harrow? – asked the traveler.

He didn't listen very carefully; the sun was too hot in this shadowless valley, and it was difficult to concentrate. He was all the more surprised by the officer who, although he was wearing a tight ceremonial uniform, weighed down with epaulettes and hung with aiguillettes, gave explanations so zealously and, in addition, while continuing to speak, even tightened the nut with a wrench here and there. The soldier seemed to be in the same condition as the traveler. Having wound the condemned man's chain around the wrists of both hands, he leaned one of them on the rifle and stood with his head hanging down with the most indifferent look. This did not surprise the traveler, since the officer spoke French, and neither the soldier nor the convict, of course, understood French. But it was all the more striking that the convict still tried to follow the officer’s explanations. With some sleepy persistence, he constantly directed his gaze to where the officer was pointing at that moment, and now, when the traveler interrupted the officer with his question, the condemned man looked at the traveler in the same way as the officer.

“Yes, with a harrow,” said the officer. – This name is quite suitable. The teeth are arranged like a harrow, and the whole thing works like a harrow, but only in one place and much more intricately. However, now you will understand this. Here, on the sunbed, they place the convict... I will first describe the apparatus, and only then proceed to the procedure itself. This will make it easier for you to keep track of her. In addition, one gear in the marker has been severely ground, it grinds terribly when it rotates, and then it is almost impossible to talk. Unfortunately, replacement parts are very difficult to obtain... So, this is, as I said, a sunbed. It is completely covered with a layer of cotton wool, its purpose you will soon find out. The condemned man is placed on this cotton wool, stomach down - naked, of course - here are the straps to tie him: for the arms, for the legs and for the neck. Here, at the head of the lounger, where, as I said, the criminal’s face first falls, there is a small felt peg that can be easily adjusted so that it falls directly into the convict’s mouth. Thanks to this peg, the convict cannot scream or bite his tongue. The criminal willy-nilly puts this felt in his mouth, because otherwise the neck strap will break his vertebrae.

- Is this cotton wool? – the traveler asked and leaned forward.

“Yes, of course,” the officer said, smiling. - Feel it yourself. “He took the traveler’s hand and ran it along the lounger. – This cotton wool is prepared in a special way, which is why it is so difficult to recognize; I’ll tell you more about its purpose.

The traveler was already a little interested in the apparatus; shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, he looked up at the apparatus. It was a large building. The lounger and the marker had the same area and looked like two dark boxes. The marker was reinforced about two meters above the sunbed and connected to it at the corners with four brass rods that literally shone in the sun. A harrow hung on a steel cable between the boxes.

The officer hardly noticed the traveler’s previous indifference, but he quickly responded to the interest that had now awakened in him; he even suspended his explanations so that the traveler could examine everything slowly and without interference. The condemned man imitated the traveler; Since he could not cover his eyes with his hand, he blinked, looking up with unprotected eyes.

“So, the condemned man lies down,” said the traveler and, lounging in a chair, crossed his legs.

“Yes,” said the officer and, pushing his cap back a little, ran his hand over his heated face. - Now listen! Both the deckchair and the marker have an electric battery, the deckchair contains one for the deckchair itself, and the marker contains a battery for the harrow. As soon as the convict is tied, the lounger is set in motion. It vibrates slightly and very quickly, simultaneously in the horizontal and vertical directions. You, of course, have seen similar devices in medical institutions, only with our lounger all movements are precisely calculated: they must be strictly coordinated with the movements of the harrow. After all, the harrow, in fact, is entrusted with the execution of the sentence.