Kolyma Tales (19 page)

No one was permitted to leave, but there was one job in the section for which a man could be allowed to cross through the ‘wire’. True, this had nothing to do with leaving the camp settlement and crossing the outer wire – a series of three fences, each with ten strands of barbed wire and a forbidden area beyond them circumscribed by another low fence. No one even dreamt of that. They could only contemplate the possibility of leaving the immediate yard. Beyond the barbed wire of the yard was a cafeteria, a kitchen, storehouses, a hospital – in a word, a very different life, one forbidden to Andreev. Only one person could pass through the fence – the sewage disposal man. And when he suddenly died (life is full of fortunate coincidences!), Ognyov accomplished miracles of energy and intuition. For two days he ate no bread. Then he traded the bread for a pressed-fiber suitcase.

‘I got it from Baron Mandel, Andreev!’

Baron Mandel! A descendant of Pushkin! Far below, Andreev could make out the long, narrow-shouldered figure of the Baron with his tiny bald skull, but he had never had an opportunity to make his acquaintance.

Since he had been in quarantine for only a few months, Ognyov still had a wool jacket left over from the ‘outside’. He presented the assignment man with the jacket and the suitcase and in exchange received the sewage disposal job. Two weeks later, Ognyov was nearly strangled to death in the dark by criminals. They took three thousand rubles from him. The ability to leave and enter quarantine evidently provided a number of business opportunities.

Andreev scarcely saw Ognyov during the heyday of his commercial career. Beaten and tormented, Ognyov made a confession to Andreev one night as he returned to his old place:

‘They cleaned me out today, but I’ll beat them in the end. They think they know cards, but I’ll get it all back!’

Ognyov never helped Andreev with bread or money, nor was this the custom in such instances. In terms of camp ethics, he was acting quite normally.

One day Andreev realized with amazement that he had survived. It was extremely difficult to get up from his bunk, but he was able to do it. The main thing was that he didn’t have to work and could simply lie prone. Even a pound of bread, three spoons of kasha and a bowl of watery soup were enough to resurrect a person so long as he didn’t have to work.

It was at this precise moment that he realized he felt no fear and placed no value on his life. He also knew that he had passed through a great test and had survived. He knew he would be able to use his terrible experience in the mine for his own benefit. The opportunity for a convict to exercise choice, free will, did, in fact, exist – however minutely. Such an opportunity was a reality that could save his life, given the right circumstances. Andreev was prepared for the great battle when he would fight a beast with the cunning of a beast. He had been deceived, and he would deceive. He would not die. He would not permit that to happen.

He would fulfill the desires and commands his body had imparted to him at the gold-mine. He had lost the battle at the mine, but it would not be the last he fought. He was the slag rejected from the mine. He had been deceived by his family, deceived by his country. Everything – love, energy, ability – had been crushed and trampled. Any justification the mind might seek was false, a lie, and Andreev knew this. Only the instinct of a beast, roused by the mine, could and did suggest a way out.

Precisely here, on these Cyclopian shelves, Andreev realized that he was worth something, that he could respect himself. He was still alive, and he had neither betrayed nor sold out anyone during the investigation or in the camp. He had succeeded in speaking the truth for the most part, and in suppressing his own fear. It was not that he feared nothing. No, but moral barriers had now been more clearly and precisely defined; everything, in fact, had become clear and precise. It was clear, for example, that Andreev was guilty of nothing. His former health was lost without a trace, broken for ever. But was it for ever? When Andreev had been first brought to this town, he thought he might live for another two or three weeks. To regain his former strength he would have needed complete rest for many months in resort conditions, with milk and chocolate. Since it was clear, however, that Andreev would never see any such resort, he would have to die. But that was not terrible; many of his comrades had died. Something stronger than death would not permit him to die. Love? Bitterness? No, a person lives by virtue of the same reasons as a tree, a stone, a dog. It was this that Andreev had grasped, had sensed with every fiber of his being precisely here at the city transit prison camp during the typhoid quarantine.

*

The scratch marks on Andreev’s hands and arms healed faster than did his other wounds. Little by little, the turtle-shell armor into which his skin had been transformed disappeared. The bright, rosy tips of his frostbitten fingers began to darken; the microscopically thin skin, which had covered them after the frostbite blisters ruptured, thickened slightly. And, above all, he could bend the fingers of his left hand. In a year and a half at the mines, both of Andreev’s hands had molded themselves around the handles of a pick and shovel. He never expected to be able to straighten out his hands again. When he ate, he would grasp his spoon by pinching the handle with the tips of his fingers, and he even forgot that a spoon could be held in any other manner. His living hand was like a hook, an artificial limb. It fulfilled only the functions of an artificial hand. He could, if he wished, use it to cross himself when praying to God. But in his heart there was nothing but bitterness, and his spiritual wounds could not so easily be healed. They were never to heal.

At last, to his amazement, Andreev managed to straighten out his left hand one day in the bathhouse. Soon would come the turn of the right hand – still bent claw-fashion. At night Andreev would quietly touch his right hand, and it seemed to him that it was on the verge of opening. He bit his fingernails in the neatest fashion and then proceeded to chew his dirty, thick, slightly moistened skin – a section at a time. This hygienic operation was one of Andreev’s few amusements when he was not eating or sleeping.

The bloody cracks on the soles of his feet no longer hurt as much as they used to. The scurvy ulcers on his legs had not yet healed and required bandaging, but his wounds grew fewer and fewer in number, and were replaced by blue-black spots that looked like the brand of some slave-owner. Only his big toes would not heal; the frostbite had reached the bone marrow, and pus slowly seeped from them. Of course, there was less pus than there had been back at the mine, where the rubber galoshes that served as summer footwear were so full of pus and blood that his feet sloshed at every step – as if through a puddle.

Many years would pass before Andreev’s toes would heal. And for many years after healing, whenever it was cold or even slightly chilly at night, they would remind him of the northern mine. But Andreev thought of the future. He had learned at the mine not to plan his life further than a day in advance. He strove toward close goals, like any man who is only a short distance from death. Now he desired one thing alone – that the typhoid quarantine might last for ever. This, however, could not be, and the day arrived when the quarantine was up.

That morning all the residents of the section were driven out into the yard. The prisoners milled around silently, shivering for hours behind the wire fence. The assignment man stood on a barrel and shouted out the names in a hoarse, desperate voice. Those whose names were called left through the gate – never to return. Out on the highway trucks roared – roared so loudly that it was difficult to hear the assignment man.

‘Don’t let them call me, don’t let them call me,’ Andreev implored the fates in a childish invocation. No, he would not be lucky. If they didn’t call for him today, they would call for him tomorrow. He would return to hunger, beatings, and death in the gold-mines. His frostbitten fingers and toes began to ache, as did his ears and cheeks. Andreev shifted his weight more and more frequently from one foot to the other. He raised his shoulders and breathed into his clasped hands, but it was no easy thing to warm his numb hands and sick feet. It was all of no use. He was helpless in the struggle with the monstrous machine whose teeth were grinding up his entire body.

‘Voronov! Voronov!’ the assignment man called out. ‘Voronov! The bastard has to be here…’ In a rage the assignment man threw the thin yellow folder on to a barrel and put his foot down on the papers.

Suddenly Andreev understood. As lightning shows the way in a storm, so his road to salvation was revealed. In his excitement he immediately grew bold and moved forward toward the assignment man, who was calling out one name after the other. People disappeared from the yard, one after the other. But the crowd was still enormous. Now, now…

‘Andreev!’ the assignment man shouted.

Andreev remained silent and examined the assignment man’s shaven jowls. When he had finished his examination, Andreev’s gaze shifted to the remaining folders. There were only a few left. ‘The last truck,’ Andreev thought.

‘Sychov! Answer – first name and patronymic!’

‘Vladimir Ivanovich,’ an elderly convict answered, according to the rules, and pushed the crowd aside.

‘Crime? Sentence? Step out!’

A few more persons responded to the assignment officer’s call. They left, and the assignment man left with them. The remaining prisoners were returned to the section.

The coughing, stamping, and shouting quieted down and dissolved into the polyphonic speech of hundreds of men.

Andreev wanted to live. He had set himself two goals and was resolved to achieve them. He saw, with unusual clarity, that he had to lengthen his stay here as long as he could, if possible to the very last day. He had to control himself and not make any mistakes… Gold was death. No one in this transit prison knew that better than Andreev. No matter what the cost, he had to avoid the taiga and the gold-mines. How could he, a slave deprived of all rights, manage this?

He had come to the conclusion that the taiga had been depopulated during the quarantine; cold, hunger, exhausting workdays, and sleeplessness must have deprived the taiga of people. That meant that trucks with prisoners would be sent to the mines from quarantine. (Official telegrams read: ‘Send 200 trees.’) Only when all the mines had been filled again would they begin sending people to other places – and not to dig gold in the taiga. Andreev did not care where he was sent. Just as long as it wasn’t to mine gold.

Andreev did not say a word about this to anyone. He did not consult with Ognyov or Parfentyev, his comrade from the mines, or with any of the thousand people who lay with him on those warehouse shelves. He knew that, if he were to tell them of his plan, any one of them would rush to tell the camp authorities – for praise, for a cigarette butt, for no reason at all… He knew what a heavy burden it was to keep a secret, but he could do it. Only if he told no one would he be free of fear. It was two, three, four times easier for him to slip alone through the teeth of this machine. The game was his alone; that was something he had learned at the mine.

Andreev ‘did not respond’ for many days. As soon as the quarantine was up, convicts were again used for work assignments, and the trick was not to be included in the large groups, since they were usually sent to do earth-moving with picks, axes, and shovels. In smaller groups of two or three persons it was easier to earn an extra piece of bread or even some sugar; Andreev had not seen sugar for more than a year and a half. His strategy was simple and accurate. All these jobs were, of course, a violation of regulations in the transit prison, but there were many people who wanted to take advantage of free labor. People assigned to earth-moving details hoped to be able to beg for some tobacco or bread. And they succeeded – even from passers-by. Andreev would go to the vegetable storage areas, where he could .eat his fill of beets and carrots and bring ‘home’ a few raw potatoes, which he would cook in the ashes of the stove and eat half-raw. Conditions demanded that all nutritional ‘functions’ be performed quickly; there were too many hungry people around.

Andreev’s days were filled with activity and began to acquire a certain meaning. He had to stand in the cold every morning for two hours, listening to the scheduling officer call out names. And when the daily sacrifice had been made to Moloch, everyone would tramp back into the barracks, from where they would be taken to work.

Andreev worked at the bakery, carried garbage at the women’s transit prison, and washed floors in the guards’ quarters, where he would gather up the sticky, delicious meat leftovers from the officers’ tables. When work was over, mountains of bread and large basins of starchy fruit pudding would be brought to the kitchen, and everyone would sit down, eat, and stuff their pockets with bread.

Most of all Andreev preferred to be sent alone, but that happened rarely. His small-group strategy failed him only once. One day the assignment man, who remembered Andreev’s face (but knew him as Muravyov), said to him:

‘I found you a job you’ll never forget – chopping wood for the camp director. There’ll be two of you.’

Joyously the two men ran ahead of the guard, who was wearing a cavalry overcoat. The guard slipped, stumbled, jumped over puddles, holding the tails of his coat with both hands. They soon reached a small house with a locked gate and barbed wire strung along the top of the fence. The camp director’s orderly opened the gate, took them without a word to the woodshed, closed the door, and loosed an enormous German shepherd into the yard. The dog kept them locked up until they had cut and split all the wood in the shed. Later that evening they were taken back to camp. They were to be sent back to do the same job the next day, but Andreev hid under his bunk and did no work at all that day.

The next morning, before bread was distributed, a simple idea occurred to Andreev, and he immediately acted upon it. He took off his boots and put them on the edge of the shelf, soles outward, so that it looked as though he himself was lying on the bunk with his boots on. Then he lay down next to them, propping his head on his forearms.