Kolyma Tales (16 page)

‘We’ll do it right here,’ Peter Ivanovich said, getting up from behind the desk. ‘No sense going to surgical ward. By the way, where is Sergei Fyodorovich?’

‘He can’t come,’ Anna Ivanovna, the physician on duty, said. ‘He said he was busy.’

‘Busy, busy,’ Peter Ivanovich repeated. ‘He ought to be here to see how I do his job for him.’

The surgeon’s assistant rolled up Merzlakov’s sleeve and smeared iodine on Merzlakov’s arm. Holding the syringe in his right hand, the assistant inserted the needle into a vein next to the elbow. Dark blood spurted from the needle into the syringe. With a soft movement of the thumb the assistant depressed the plunger, and the yellow solution began to enter the vein.

‘Pump it in all at once,’ Peter Ivanovich said, ‘and stand back right away. You,’ he said to the orderlies, ‘hold him down.’

Merzlakov’s enormous body shuddered and began to thrash about even as the orderlies took hold of him. He wheezed, struggled, kicked, but the orderlies held him firmly and he slowly began to calm down.

‘A tiger, you could hold a tiger that way,’ Peter Ivanovich shouted in near ecstasy. ‘That’s the way they catch tigers in the Zabaikal region.’ He turned to the head of the hospital. ‘Do you remember the end of Gogol’s novel,
Taras Bulba
? “Thirty men held his arms and legs.” This gorilla is bigger than Bulba, and just eight men can handle him.’

‘Right,’ the head of the hospital said. He didn’t remember the Gogol passage, but he definitely enjoyed seeing the shock therapy.

While making rounds the next morning Peter Ivanovich stopped at Merzlakov’s bed.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘What’s your decision?’

‘I’m ready to check out,’ Merzlakov answered.

Into Shmelyov’s work gang were raked the human rejects; they were the by-products of the gold-mine. There were only three paths out of the mine: nameless mass graves, the hospital, or Shmelyov’s gang. This brigade worked in the same area as the others, but its assignments were less crucial. Here slogans were not just words. ‘The Quota Is Law’ was understood to mean that if you didn’t fill your quota, you had broken the law, deceived the state, and would answer with an additional sentence and even your life. Shmelyov’s gang was fed worse, less than the others. But I understood well the local saying, ‘In camp a large ration kills, not a small one.’ I wasn’t about to pursue the large ration of the leading work gang.

I had only recently been transferred to Shmelyov, about three weeks earlier, and I still didn’t know his face. It was the middle of winter and our leader’s face was wrapped in a complicated fashion with a ragged scarf. In the evening it was dark in the barracks, and the kerosene lantern barely illuminated the door. I don’t even remember our gang leader’s face – only his voice that was hoarse as if he had caught cold.

We worked the night shift in December, and each night was a torment. Sixty degrees below zero was no joke. But nevertheless it was better at night, more calm. There were fewer supervisors in the mine, less swearing and fewer beatings.

The work gang was getting into formation to march to work. In the winter we lined up in the barracks, and it is torturous even now to recall those last minutes before going into the icy night for a twelve-hour shift. Here, in this indecisive shoving before the half-opened doors with their cold drafts, each man’s character was revealed. One man would suppress his shivering and stride directly out into the darkness while another would suck away at the butt of a home-made cigar. Where the cigar came from was a mystery in a place that lacked any trace of even home-grown tobacco. A third figure would guard his face from the cold wind, while a fourth held his mittens above the stove to accumulate some warmth in them.

The last few men were shoved out of the barracks by the orderly. That was the way the weakest were treated everywhere, in every work gang.

In this work gang I hadn’t yet reached the shoving stage. There were people here who were weaker than me, and this provided a certain consolation, an unexpected joy. Here, for the time being, I was still a person. I had left behind the shoves and fists of the orderly in the ‘gold’ gang from which I had been transferred to Shmelyov.

The gang stood inside the barracks door, ready to leave, when Shmelyov approached me.

‘You’ll stay home,’ he wheezed.

‘Have I been transferred to the morning shift?’ I asked suspiciously. Transfers from one shift to another were always made to catch the clock’s hour hand so that the working day was not lost and the prisoner could not receive a few extra hours of rest. I was aware of the method.

‘No, Romanov called for you.’

‘Romanov, who’s Romanov?’

‘This louse doesn’t know who Romanov is,’ the orderly broke in.

‘He’s in charge. Clear? He lives just this side of the office. You’re to report at eight o’clock.’

‘Eight o’clock?’

An enormous wave of relief swept over me. If Romanov were to keep me till twelve, when our shift had its dinner, I had the right not to go to work that day. I felt an aching in my muscles and my body was overcome with exhaustion. But it was a joyous exhaustion.

I untied the rope around my waist, unbuttoned my pea jacket, and sat down next to the stove. As its warmth flowed over me the lice under my shirt began to stir. With bit-off fingernails I scratched my neck and chest. And I drowsed off.

‘It’s time.’ The orderly was shaking me by the shoulder. ‘And bring back a smoke. Don’t forget.’

When I knocked at Romanov’s door, there was a clanking of locks and bolts, a lot of locks and bolts, and some unseen person shouted from behind the door:

‘Who is it?’

‘Prisoner Andreev, as ordered.’

Bolts rattled, locks chimed, and all fell silent.

The cold crept under my pea jacket, and my feet lost their warmth. I began to beat one boot against the other. They weren’t the usual felt boots but quilted ones, sewn from old pants and quilted jackets.

Again bolts rattled and the double door opened, allowing light, heat, and music to escape.

I stepped in. The door of the entrance hall was not shut and a radio was playing.

Romanov himself stood before me, or rather I stood before him. Short, fat, perfumed, and quick on his feet, he danced around me, examining my figure with his quick black eyes.

The smell of a convict struck his nostrils, and he drew a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket. Waves of music, warmth, and cologne washed over me. Most important was the warmth. The dutch stove was red hot.

‘So we meet,’ Romanov kept repeating ecstatically, moving around me and waving his perfumed handkerchief. ‘So we meet.’

‘Go on in.’ He opened the door to the next room. It contained a desk and two chairs.

‘Sit down. You’ll never guess why I sent for you. Have a smoke.’

He began sifting through some papers on the desk.

‘What’s your first name?’

I told him.

‘Date of birth?’

‘1907.’

‘A lawyer?’

‘Actually, I’m not a lawyer, but I studied at Moscow Uni…’

‘A lawyer, then. Fine. Just sit tight. I’ll make a few calls and the two of us will get on the road.’

Romanov slipped out of the room, and soon the music in the dining-room was shut off. A telephone conversation ensued.

Sitting on the chair I began to drowse and even to dream. Romanov kept disappearing and reappearing.

‘Listen, did you leave any things at the barracks?’

‘I have everything with me.’

‘That’s great, really great. The truck will be here any minute and we can get on the road. You know where we’re going? To Khatynakh itself, to headquarters! Ever been there? It’s OK, I’m joking, just joking…’

‘I don’t care.’

‘That’s good.’

I took off my boots, rubbed my toes, and turned my foot rags.

The clock on the wall said eleven-thirty. Even if it was a joke – about Khatynakh – it didn’t make any difference: I wouldn’t have to go to work today. The truck roared up, the beams of its headlights sliding along the shutters and touching the office ceiling.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

Romanov had donned a white sheepskin coat, a Yakut fur hat, and colorful boots. I buttoned my pea jacket, retied the rope around my waist, and held my mittens above the stove for a moment. We walked out to the truck. It was a one-and-a-half-ton truck with an open bed.

‘How much today, Misha?’ Romanov asked the driver.

‘Seventy degrees below zero, comrade chief. They sent the night shift back to the barracks.’

That meant they sent our work gang, Shmelyov’s, home as well. I hadn’t been so lucky after all.

‘All right, Andreev,’ said Romanov, dancing around me. ‘Have a seat in back. It’s not far. And Misha will drive fast. Right, Misha?’

Misha said nothing. I crawled up on to the truck bed and clasped my knees with my arms. Romanov squeezed into the cab, and we set off.

It was a bad road, and I was tossed around so much that I didn’t freeze. In about two hours lights appeared, and we drove up to a two-story log house. It was dark everywhere, and only in one window of the second floor was there a light burning. Two sentries in long leather coats stood next to the large porch.

‘OK, we’ve arrived. That’s great. Have him stand here for the time being.’ And Romanov disappeared up the large stairway.

It was two a.m. The lights were extinguished everywhere. Only the desk lamp of the officer on duty burned.

I didn’t have to wait long. Romanov had already managed to change into the uniform of the NKVD, the secret police. He came running down the stairway and began waving to me.

‘This way, this way.’

Together with the assistant of the officer on duty we went upstairs, and in the corridor of the second floor stopped in front of a door bearing a plaque: ‘Smertin, Senior Supervisor, Ministry of Internal Affairs.’ ‘Smertin’ meant ‘death’ in Russian, and so threatening a pseudonym (it couldn’t have been his real name) impressed me in spite of my exhaustion.

‘For a pseudonym, that’s too much,’ I thought, but we were already entering an enormous room with a portrait of Stalin that occupied an entire wall. We stopped before a gigantic desk to observe the pale reddish face of a man who had spent his entire life in precisely this sort of room.

Romanov bent politely over the desk. The dull blue eyes of Senior Supervisor Comrade Smertin fixed themselves on me. But only for a moment. He was searching for something on the desk, shuffling some papers. Romanov’s willing fingers located whatever it was they were looking for.

‘Name?’ Smertin asked, poring over the papers. ‘Crime? Sentence?’

I told him.

‘Lawyer?’

‘Lawyer.’

The pale face looked up from the table.

‘Did you write complaints?’

‘I did.’

Smertin wheezed. ‘About the bread ration?’

‘That and in general.’

‘OK, take him out.’

I made no attempt to clarify anything, to ask any question. What for? After all I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t working the night shift in the gold-mine. They could do the clarifying if they wanted to.

The assistant to the officer on duty came in with a note, and I was taken on foot through the settlement at night to the very edge of the forest. There, guarded by four towers and three rows of barbed-wire fence, stood the camp prison.

The prison had cells for solitary and group confinement. In one of the latter I related my past history, neither expecting an answer from my neighbors nor asking them about anything. That was the custom – so they wouldn’t think I was a ‘plant’.

Morning came. It was the usual Kolyma morning – without light, without sun, and in no way distinguishable from night. A hammer was struck against a rail, and a bucket of steaming boiling water was carried in. The guards came for me, and I said goodbye to my comrades. I knew nothing of them.

They brought me back to the same house, which now appeared smaller than it had at night. This time I was not admitted to Smertin’s august presence. The officer on duty told me to sit and wait, and I sat and waited until I heard a familiar voice:

‘That’s fine! That’s great! Now you’ll get going.’ On alien territory Romanov used the formal grammatical address in speaking to me.

Thoughts began to stir lazily in my brain. I could almost feel them physically. I had to think of something new, something I wasn’t accustomed to, something unknown. This – new thing – had nothing to do with the mine. If we were returning to the Partisan Mine, Romanov would have said: ‘Now we’ll get going.’ That meant I was being taken to a new place. Let come what may!

Romanov came down the stairs, almost hopping. It seemed as if he were about to slide down the bannisters like a small boy. He was holding a barely touched loaf of bread.

‘Here, this is for the road. There’s something else too.’ He disappeared upstairs and returned with two herring.

‘Everything up to snuff, right? That seems to be about all. Wait, I forgot the most important thing. That’s what it means to be a non-smoker.’

Romanov went upstairs and again returned with a small pile of cheap tobacco heaped on a piece of newspaper. About three boxes, I determined with a practiced eye. The standard package of tobacco was enough to fill eight matchboxes. That was our unit of measure in camp.

‘This is for the road. A sort of dry rations.’

I said nothing.

‘Have the guards been sent for?’

‘They’ve been sent for,’ the officer on duty answered.

‘Have whoever’s in charge come upstairs.’

And Romanov disappeared up the stairs. Two guards arrived – one an older man with pock-marks on his face and wearing a tall fur hat of the sort worn in the Caucasian Mountains. The other was a rosy-cheeked youth about twenty years old wearing a Red Army helmet.

‘This one,’ said the officer on duty, pointing at me.

Both – the young one and the pock-marked one – looked me over carefully from head to toe.

‘Where’s the chief?’ the pock-marked one asked.

‘He’s upstairs. The package is there too.’

The pock-marked man went upstairs and soon returned with Romanov.