Kolyma Tales (17 page)

They talked quietly, and the pock-marked man gestured in my direction.

‘Fine,’ Romanov said finally. ‘We’ll give you a note.’

We walked out on to the street. Next to the porch, on the same spot where the truck from the Partisan Mine had stood the previous night, was a comfortable ‘raven’ – a prison bus with barred windows. I got in, the barred doors closed, the guards occupied their spots in back, and we set off. For a while the ‘raven’ followed the central highway that slices all of Kolyma in half, but then we turned off to the side. The road twisted through the hills, the motor roared on the slopes, and the sheer, pine-forested cliffs with frosty-branched willow shrubs towered above us. Finally, having wound around several hills, the truck followed a riverbed to a small clearing. The trees were cut down, and the edges of the clearing were ringed with guard towers. In the middle, about three hundred yards away, were other slanted towers and the dark mass of the barracks surrounded with barbed wire.

The door of the small guardhouse on the road opened, and a sentry with a revolver strapped to his waist came out. The bus stopped. Leaving the motor running, the driver jumped out and walked past my window.

‘That really twisted us around. It really is a serpent.’

I was familiar with the name, and if anything, my reaction was even stronger than to Smertin’s name. This was ‘Serpentine’, the infamous pre-trial prison where so many people had perished the previous year. Their bodies had not yet decayed. But, then, they never would in the permafrost.

The senior guard went up the path to the prison, and I sat at the window thinking that now my hour, my turn had come. It was just as difficult to think about death as about anything else. I didn’t draw myself any picture of my own execution; I just sat and waited.

The winter twilight had already set in. The door of the ‘raven’ opened, and the older guard tossed me some felt boots.

‘Put these on.’

I took off my quilted boots, but the felt boots were too small.

‘You’ll never make it in those cloth boots,’ said the pock-marked man.

‘I’ll make it.’

He tossed the felt boots into the corner of the bus.

‘Let’s go.’

The ‘raven’ turned around and rushed away from ‘Serpentine’. From the vehicles flashing past us I soon realized we were back on the main highway. The bus slowed down, and all around I could see the lights of a large village. The bus stopped at the porch of a brightly lit house, and I entered a lighted corridor very similar to the one in Smertin’s building. Behind a wooden barrier next to a wall phone sat a guard with a pistol on his belt. This was the village of Yagodny, named after the head of the secret police. On the first day of our trip we had covered only seventeen kilometers. Where would we go from here?

The guard took me to a far room with a wooden cot, a bucket of water, and a pail that served as a toilet. The door had a hole for observation by the guard.

I lived there two days. I even managed to dry and rewind the bandages on my legs that were festering with scurvy sores.

There was a sort of rural quiet in the regional office of the secret police. I listened intently from my tiny cell, but even in the day it was rare to hear steps in the corridor. Occasionally an outside door would open, and keys could be heard turning in door locks. And there was always the guard – the same guard, unshaven, wearing an old quilted jacket and a pistol in a shoulder holster. It all seemed rather rustic in comparison with gleaming Khatynakh where Comrade Smertin conducted affairs of state. Very, very rarely the telephone would ring.

‘Yes, they’re gassing up. Yes. I don’t know, comrade chief. OK, I’ll tell them.’

Whom were they referring to? My guards? Once a day, toward evening, the door to my cell would open and the guard would bring in a pot of soup, a piece of bread, and a spoon. The main course was dumped into the soup and served together. I would take the kettle, eat everything, and lick the pot clean. Camp habits were strong.

On the third day the pock-marked soldier stepped over the cell threshold. He wore a long leather coat over a shorter one.

‘Rested up? Let’s get on the road.’

I stood on the porch of the regional office, thinking we would again have a closed prison bus, but the ‘raven’ was nowhere to be seen. An ordinary three-ton truck stood before the porch.

‘Get in.’

Obediently I climbed over the side of the bed.

The young soldier squeezed into the cab, and the pock-marked one sat next to me. The truck started up and in a few minutes we were back on the main highway. Where was I being taken? North or south? East or west? There was no sense asking and, besides, the guards weren’t supposed to say. Was I being transferred to a different district? Which one? The truck lurched along for many hours and stopped abruptly.

‘We’ll have dinner here. Get down.’

I got down.

We had come to a cafeteria.

The highway was the aorta and main nerve of Kolyma. Unguarded equipment was constantly being shunted back and forth. Food supplies were always guarded because of the danger of escaped convicts. The guards also provided protection (unreliable, to be sure) from theft by the driver and supply agent.

At the cafeteria one encountered geologists, mine explorers going on vacation with the money they’d earned, and black-market dealers in tobacco and
chifir
– the semi-narcotic drink made of strong tea in the far north. These were the heroes and the scoundrels of the north. All the cafeterias sold vodka. People would meet, quarrel, fight, exchange news, and hurry on. Truck motors would be left running while the drivers took a two- or three-hour nap in the cab. One also encountered convicts in the cafeteria. On their way up into the taiga they appeared as clean, neat groups. Coming back, the dirty broken bodies of these half-dead, no longer human creatures were the refuse of the mines. In the cafeteria were detectives whose job it was to capture escapees. The escapees themselves were often in military uniform. Past these cafeterias drove the black limousines of the lords of life and death – the lives and deaths of both convicts and civilians.

A playwright ought to depict the north in precisely such a roadside cafeteria; that would be an ideal setting. I used the idea later in a story, of course.

I stood in the cafeteria trying to elbow my way through to the enormous red-hot barrel of a stove. The guards weren’t overly concerned that I would attempt to escape, since it was obvious I was too weak for that. It was clear to everyone that such a goner had nowhere to run to in sixty degrees below zero weather.

‘Sit down over there and eat.’

The guard brought me a bowl of hot soup and gave me some bread.

‘We’ll be on our way now,’ said the young one. ‘We’ll leave as soon as the sergeant comes.’

But the pock-marked man didn’t come alone. He was with an older ‘warrior’ (they didn’t call them soldiers back then) in a short coat and carrying a rifle. He looked at me, then at the pock-marked man.

‘Well, I guess that would be all right,’ he said.

‘Let’s go,’ the pock-marked man said to me.

We went to a different corner of the cafeteria. Bent over by the wall sat a man in a pea jacket and a regulation-issue black flannel cap with ear flaps.

‘Sit down here,’ said the pock-marked man. I obediently sat down on the floor next to this man. He didn’t turn his head.

The pock-marked man and the unknown ‘warrior’ left, while the young one, ‘my’ guard, stayed with us.

‘They’re taking a break, you understand?’ the man in the convict hat suddenly whispered to me. ‘They don’t have any right to do that.’

‘They’ve long since lost their souls,’ I said, ‘so they might as well do whatever they like. What do you care?’

The man raised his head. ‘I tell you, they don’t have the right.’

‘Where are they taking us?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know where they’re taking you. I’m going to Magadan. To be shot.’

‘To be shot?’

‘Yes, I’ve already been sentenced. I’m from the Western Division – from Susuman.’

I didn’t like this piece of news at all. But then I didn’t know the procedures for applying capital punishment. Embarrassed, I fell silent. The pock-marked soldier walked up with our new traveling companion. They started discussing something with each other. Now that there were more guards, they treated us more roughly. No one brought me any more soup in the cafeterias.

We drove on for a few hours, and three more prisoners were attached to our group. The three new men were of indeterminate age – like all those who had gone through the hell of Kolyma. Their puffy white skin and swollen faces spoke of hunger, scurvy, and frostbite.

‘Where are they taking us?’

‘To Magadan. To be shot. We’ve already been sentenced.’

We lay bent over in the truck bed, our knees and backs touching. The truck had good springs, the road was well paved so we weren’t tossed from side to side, and soon we began to feel the cold.

We shouted, groaned, but the guard was implacable. We had to reach Sporny before morning. The condemned man begged to be allowed to warm himself even for five minutes. The truck roared into Sporny where lights were already burning.

The pock-marked man walked up: ‘You’ll go to the stockade and be sent on later.’

I felt cold to the marrow of my bones, was numb from the frost, and frantically beat the soles of my boots against the snow. I couldn’t get warm. Our ‘warriors’ kept trying to locate the camp administrator. Finally after about an hour we were taken to the freezing unheated stockade. Frost covered all the walls, and the floor was icy. Someone brought in a bucket of water. The lock rattled shut. How about firewood? A stove?

On that night in Sporny all ten of my toes were again frostbitten. I tried in vain to get even a minute’s sleep.

They led us out in the morning and we got back in the truck. The hills flashed by, and approaching vehicles coughed hoarsely in passing. The truck descended from a mountain pass, and we were so warm that we didn’t want to go anywhere; we wanted to wait, to walk a little on this marvelous earth. It was a difference of at least twenty degrees. Even the wind was warm, almost as if it were spring.

‘Guards! We have to urinate…’ How could we explain to the soldiers that we were happy to be warm, to feel the southern wind, to leave behind the ringing silence of the taiga.

‘OK, get down.’

The guards were also glad to have an opportunity to stretch their legs and have a smoke. My seeker of justice had already approached the guard:

‘Could we have a smoke, citizen warrior?’

‘OK, but go back to your place.’

One of the new men didn’t want to get down but, seeing that the stop was to be an extended one, he moved over to the edge and gestured to me.

‘Help me get down.’

I extended a hand to the exhausted man and suddenly felt the extraordinary lightness of his body, a deathly lightness. I stepped back. The man, holding on to the edge of the truck bed, took a few steps.

‘How warm!’ But his eyes were clouded and expressionless.

‘OK, let’s go. It’s twenty-two degrees below zero.’

Each hour it got warmer.

In the cafeteria of the village of Belyashka, our guards stopped to eat for the last time. The pock-marked man bought me a kilo of bread.

‘Here, take it. It’s white bread. We’ll get there this evening.’

A fine snow was falling when far below we saw the lights of Magadan. It was about fifteen degrees above zero. There was no wind, and the snow fell straight down in soft wet particles. The truck stopped in front of the regional office of the secret police, and the guards went inside.

A hatless man wearing civilian clothing came out. In his hands he held a torn envelope. With a clear voice and in the manner of a man accustomed to the job, he called out a name. The man with the fragile body crawled to the side at his gesture.

‘To the stockade!’

The man in the suit disappeared into the building and immediately reappeared. In his hands was a new envelope.

‘Constantine Ugritsky! To the stockade! Eugene Simonov! Stockade!’

I didn’t say goodbye to either the guards or the people who had traveled with me to Magadan. It wasn’t the custom.

Only I and my guards now remained at the office porch.

The man in the suit again appeared on the porch with an envelope.

‘Andreev! Take him to the division office. I’ll give you a receipt,’ he said to my guards.

I walked into the building. First of all I looked for the stove. There was a steam radiator. Behind a wooden barrier was a telephone and a man on duty. The room was somewhat shabbier than the one at Comrade Smertin’s in Khatynakh. But perhaps that room had created such an impression on me because it was the first office I had seen in my Kolyma life? A steep staircase led up to the second floor.

The man in civilian clothes who had handled our group out on the street came into the room.

‘Come this way.’

We climbed the narrow stairway to the second floor and arrived at a door with the inscription: Y. Atlas, Director.

‘Sit down.’

I sat down. In the tiny office the most important area was occupied by a desk. Papers, folders, some lists were heaped on it. Atlas was thirty-eight or forty years old. He was a heavy man of athletic build with receding black hair.

‘Name?’

‘Andreev.’

‘Crime, sentence?’

I answered.

‘Lawyer?’

‘Lawyer.’

Atlas jumped up and walked around the desk: ‘Great! Captain Rebrov will talk to you.’

‘Who is Captain Rebrov?’

‘He’s in charge here. Go downstairs.’

I returned to my spot next to the radiator. Having mulled over the matter, I decided to eat the kilo of white bread my guards had given me. There was a tub of water with a mug chained to it right there. The wind-up clock on the wall ticked evenly. Through a half-dream I heard someone walk quickly past me and go upstairs, and the officer on duty woke me up.

‘Take him to Captain Rebrov.’

I was taken to the second floor. The door of a small office opened and I heard a sharp voice: