Kolyma Tales (27 page)

‘You’ll get a shot now,’ he heard the voice of the surgeon. ‘But you seem to be a brave sort.’

Golubev remained silent.

‘Answer me! Nurse, talk to the patient.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘It hurts.’

‘That’s the way it always is with a local anesthetic.’ Golubev heard the voice of the surgeon explaining something to his assistant. ‘It’s just a lot of talk about it killing the pain. Look at that…’

‘Hold on for a while!’

Golubev’s entire body shuddered at the intense pain, but almost at once the pain was dulled. The surgeons started joking and kidding with each other in loud voices.

The operation was drawing to a close.

‘Well, we’ve removed your appendix. Nurse, show the patient his meat. See?’

The nurse held up to Golubev’s face a piece of intestine about half the size of a pencil.

‘The instructions demand that the patient be shown that the cut was necessary and that the growth was actually removed,’ explained the surgeon to his civilian assistant. ‘This’ll be a little bit of experience for you.’

‘I’m very grateful to you,’ said the civilian physician, ‘for the lesson.’

‘A lesson in humanity, a lesson in love for one’s fellow man,’ the surgeon said mysteriously, taking off his gloves.

‘If you have anything else like this, be sure to send for me,’ the civilian physician said.

‘If it’s something like this, I’ll be sure to,’ said the surgeon.

The orderlies, themselves patients in patched white gowns, carried Golubev into the ward. It was a small post-operative ward, but there were few operations in the hospital and just then it was occupied by non-surgical patients.

Golubev lay on his back, carefully touching the bandage that was wrapped around him somewhat in the manner of an Indian fakir or yogi. As a child, Golubev had seen pictures of fakirs and yogis in magazines, and nearly an entire lifetime later he still didn’t know if such people really existed. But the thought of fakirs and yogis slid across his brain and disappeared. The exertion of the will and the nervous upheaval were fading away, and the pleasant sense of a duty accomplished filled Golubev’s entire body. Each cell of his body sang and purred something pleasant. For the time being he was free from the threat of being sent off to an unknown convict fate. This was merely a delay. How long would the wound take to heal? Seven or eight days. That meant that in two weeks the danger would again arise. Two weeks was a long time, a thousand years. It was long enough to prepare oneself for new trials. Even so, seven or eight days was the textbook period for what doctors refer to as ‘first intention’. And if the wound were to become infected? If the tape covering the wound were to come loose prematurely from the skin? Gingerly Golubev touched the bandage and the hard gauze that was soaked with gum arabic and already drying. He tried to feel through the bandage. Yes… This was an extra way out, a reprieve of several days, perhaps months. If he had to.

Golubev remembered the large ward in the mine hospital where he had been a patient a year earlier. Almost all the patients there ripped off their bandages, scratched or pulled open their wounds, and sprinkled dirt into them – real dirt from the floor. Still a newcomer, Golubev was amazed, even contemptuous, at those nocturnal rebindings. A year passed, however, and the patients’ mood became quite comprehensible to Golubev and even made him envious. Now he could make use of the experience acquired then.

Golubev drowsed off and awoke when someone’s hand pulled the blanket from his face. (Golubev always slept camp fashion, covering his head, attempting above all to keep it warm and to protect it.) A very pretty head with a small mustache and hair cut square in back was suspended above his own. In a word, the head was not at all the head of a convict, and when Golubev opened his eyes, his first thought was that this was some sort of recollection of yogis or a dream – perhaps a nightmare, perhaps not.

‘Not an honest crook, not a human being in the whole place,’ the man wheezed in a disappointed fashion and covered Golubev’s face again with the blanket.

But Golubev pulled down the blanket with feeble fingers and looked at the man. The man knew Golubev, and Golubev knew him. There was no mistaking it. But he mustn’t rush, rush to recognize him. He had to remember. Remember everything. And Golubev remembered. The man with the hair cut square in back was… Now the man would take off his shirt, and Golubev would see a cluster of intertwining snakes on his chest… The man turned around, and the cluster of intertwining snakes appeared before Golubev’s eyes. It was Kononenko, a criminal who had been in the same transit prison with Golubev several months earlier. A murderer with multiple sentences, he played a prominent role among the camp criminals and had been ‘braking’ for several years in pre-trial prisons. As soon as he was about to be sent off to a forced-labor camp, he would kill someone in the transit prison. He didn’t care whom he killed as long as it was not a fellow-criminal. He strangled his victims with a towel. A towel, a regulation-issue towel was his favorite murder instrument, his authorial style. They would arrest him, start up a new case, try him again, and add a new twenty-five-year term to the hundreds of years he already had to serve. After the trial Kononenko would try to be hospitalized to ‘rest up’, and then he would kill again. And everything would begin from the beginning. At that time, execution of common criminals had been abolished. Only ‘enemies of the people’ convicted under Article 58 could be shot.

‘Kononenko’s in the hospital now,’ Golubev thought calmly, and every cell in his body sang joyously, fearing nothing and confident of success. Kononenko’s in the hospital now. He’s passing through his hospital ‘cycle’ – one of the sinister phases of his metamorphoses. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow, Kononenko’s program would demand the usual victim. Perhaps all Golubev’s efforts had been in vain – the operation, the fearful straining of the will? Now he, Golubev, would be strangled by Kononenko as his latest victim. Perhaps it was a mistake to evade being sent to a hard-labor camp where they gave you a striped uniform and affixed a six-digit number to your back like an ace of diamonds? But at least you don’t get beaten there, and there aren’t a lot of Kononenkos running around.

Golubev’s bed was under the window. Opposite him lay Kononenko. Next to the door, his feet almost touching Kononenko’s, lay a third man, and Golubev could see his face well without having to turn his body. Golubev knew this patient too. It was Podosenov, an eternal resident of the hospital.

The door opened, and the orderly came in with medicine.

‘Kazakov!’ he shouted.

‘Here,’ shouted Kononenko, getting up.

‘There’s a note for you.’ The orderly handed him a folded piece of paper.

‘Kazakov?’ The name pulsed through Golubev’s mind. ‘He’s Kononenko, not Kazakov.’ Suddenly Golubev comprehended the situation, and a cold sweat formed on his body.

It was much worse than he had thought. None of the three was in error. It was Kononenko under another’s name, Kazakov’s name and with Kazakov’s crimes, and he had been sent to the hospital as a ‘stand-in’. This was even worse, even more dangerous. If Kononenko was Kononenko, Golubev might or might not be his victim. In such a case there was an element of chance, of choice, the opportunity to be saved. But if Kononenko was Kazakov, then there was no chance for Golubev. If Kononenko nursed only the slightest suspicion that Golubev had recognized him, Golubev would die.

‘Have you met me before? Why do you keep staring at me like a python at a rabbit? Or maybe like a rabbit at a python? How do you educated people say it?’

Konenenko sat on the stool before Golubev’s bed, shredding the note with his fingers and scattering the fragments on Golubev’s blanket.

‘No, I never laid eyes on you before.’ Golubev’s face was colorless, and his voice hoarse.

‘It’s a good thing too,’ said Kononenko, taking a towel from the nail driven in the wall above the bed and shaking the towel before Golubev’s face. ‘I was going to strangle this “doctor” yesterday.’ He nodded in the direction of Podosenov whose face was a picture of infinite horror. ‘Look what the bastard is doing,’ Kononenko said cheerfully, pointing with the towel in the direction of Podosenov. ‘See the jar under his cot? He’s mixing his own blood with his piss… He scratches his finger and drips in a little blood. Knows what he’s doing. No worse than any doctor. And the lab analysis shows he has blood in his urine. Our “doctor” stays in the hospital. Tell me, is a man like that worthy to live in this world?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? Yes you do. But yesterday they brought you in. We were together in the transit prison, right? Before my last trial. Then I went under the name of Kononenko.’

‘I never saw you before,’ said Golubev.

‘Yes you did. That’s when I decided. Better I do you in than the “doctor”. It’s not his fault.’ Kononenko pointed at Podosenov, whose circulation was slowly, very slowly, returning to normal. ‘It’s not his fault. He’s only saving his own skin. Just like you or me…’

Kononenko walked up and down the room, pouring the paper shreds from one palm to the other.

‘And I would have “fixed” you, sent you to the moon. And I wouldn’t have hesitated. But now the orderly brought this note… I have to get out of here quick. Our guys are getting cut up at the mine. They’re asking all the thieves in the hospital to help out. You don’t understand that kind of life… You don’t have the brains to be a crook!’

Golubev remained silent. He knew that life. But only from the outside looking in.

After dinner Kononenko checked out and departed from Golubev’s life for ever.

While the third bed was empty, Podosenov came over to Golubev’s bed, sat down on the edge at his feet, and whispered:

‘Kazakov is sure to strangle the both of us. We have to tell the head of the hospital.’

‘Go to hell,’ Golubev said.

A wandering actor who happened to be a prisoner reminded me of this story. It was just after a performance put on by the camp activities group in which he was the main actor, producer, and theater carpenter.

He mentioned the name Skoroseev, and I immediately recalled the road to Siberia in ’39. The five of us had endured the typhoid quarantine, the work assignments, the roll-calls in the biting frost, but we were nevertheless caught up by the camp nets and cast out into the endlessness of the taiga.

We five neither knew nor wanted to know anything about each other until our group reached the spot where we were to work and live. Each of us received the news of our future trip in his own way: one went mad, thinking he was to be shot at the very moment he was granted life. Another tried to talk his way out of the situation, and almost succeeded. I was the third – an indifferent skeleton from the gold-mine. The fourth was a jack-of-all-trades over seventy years old. The fifth was Skoroseev. ‘Skoroseev,’ he would pronounce carefully, standing on tiptoes so as to look each of us in the eye.

I couldn’t care less, but the jack-of-all-trades kept up the conversation.

‘What kind of work did you do before?’

‘I was an agronomist in the People’s Agriculture Commissariat.’

The chief of coal exploration, whose responsibility it was to receive the group, leafed though Skoroseev’s folder.

‘I can still work, citizen chief…’

‘OK, I’ll make you a watchman…’

Skoroseev performed his duties zealously. Not for a minute would he leave his post, afraid that any mistake could be exploited by a fellow prisoner and reported to the camp authorities. It was better not to take any chances.

Once there was a heavy snowstorm that lasted all night. Skoroseev’s replacement was a Gallician by the name of Narynsky. This chestnut-haired convict had been a prisoner of war during World War I, and he had been convicted of plotting to re-establish Austro-Hungary. He was a little proud of having been accused of such a ‘crime’ among the throngs of Trotskyites and saboteurs. Narynsky told us with a chuckle that when he took over the watch he discovered that Skoroseev hadn’t budged from his spot even during the snowstorm. Skoroseev’s dedication was noticed, and his position became more secure.

Once a horse died in camp. It was no great loss, since horses work poorly in the far north. But the meat! The meat! The hide had to be removed from the frozen carcass. There were neither butchers nor volunteers, but Skoroseev offered to do the job. The camp chief was surprised and pleased; there would be both hide and meat! The hide could be registered in the official report, and the meat would go into the general pot. The entire barracks, all of the village spoke of Skoroseev. Meat! meat! The carcass was dragged into the bathhouse, where Skoroseev skinned and gutted it when it had thawed. The hide stiffened again in the frost and was carried off to the storehouse. We never tasted the meat; at the last minute the camp chief realized that there was no veterinarian who could sign to give permission. An official report was made up, and the carcass was hacked into pieces and burned on a bonfire in the presence of the camp chief and the work gang leader.

We were prospecting for coal, but without any luck. Little by little, in groups of five and ten, people were taken away from our camp. Making their way along the forest path up the mountain, these people left my life for ever. Each of us understood that ours was a prospecting group and not a mine group. Each strove to remain here, to ‘brake’, as long as possible. One would work with unusual diligence, another would pray longer than usual. Anxiety had entered our lives.

A new group of guards had arrived from behind the mountain. For us? But they took no one away, no one!

That night there was a search in the barracks. We had no books, no knives, no felt pens, no newspapers, no writing paper. What was there to search for?

They were confiscating civilian clothing. Many of the prisoners had acquired such clothing from civilians who worked in the prospecting group which itself was unguarded. Were they trying to prevent escapes? Fulfilling an order, maybe? Or was there some change of authority higher on up?