Sapphire Skies (31 page)

Nikita stared at me in that intense way again. I could see why the criminals called him Rasputin: he did bear a resemblance to Tsarina Alexandra’s disastrous monk.

A gang of women marched past on their way to the fields. I stared at their lined faces and shorn heads. There was nothing womanly about them: starvation and hard work had robbed them of their breasts and hips. The men paid them no attention when they passed and an idea came to me. I rushed to the camp’s barber.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

I removed my scarf and let down my hair. Many of the women transported with me to Kolyma had been shaved all over, like the women in Auschwitz, but I’d managed to avoid that. I’d prevented my hair becoming matted by combing it every day with my fingers.

‘Ah, I see,’ he said, giving me a stool to sit on and picking up a pair of scissors. ‘Such a pity … but it’s better — the lice won’t trouble you so much.’

I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until the last strand of my hair lay on the floor around my feet.

I was assigned work with a lumber gang. On the first day we assembled in the faint morning light near the camp gate, where our brigadier, a former train robber with a mouthful of gold teeth, took the roll. I was dismayed to see Katya in the group. She was wearing the dress that we had fought over in the bathhouse and paraded her victory before me.

‘Well, haven’t you changed in only a few days,’ she said, looking at my shorn head.

I wondered how she was going to work in that dress or in the red leather shoes she wore with it.

Another lumber gang assembled behind us and I was disconcerted to see Nikita there. He didn’t appear to recognise me and I was relieved. A piano accordionist and guitarist — prisoners also — played music while we collected our saws, axes, shovels and sacks. ‘Work is honourable, glorious, valiant and heroic!’ they sang.

Because we were carrying tools that could be used as weapons, the guards were armed and vigilant. They kept their guns pointed at us as we marched past the gate.

The head guard shouted, ‘Keep to your rank and look straight ahead! A step to the right or left will be regarded as an attempt to escape and we will shoot without warning!’

We marched five kilometres to our worksite, where we were put into pairs. I was placed with another woman, much taller than I was. Luckily for me she knew how to fell trees — cutting from three sides to make the trunk fall into an open space. We worked in rhythm to fulfil our norm. Our bread ration was dependent on achieving that quota. I was fortunate to be partnered with someone who was physically strong, even though I had to work hard to keep up with her. We spoke as little as possible, even during our meal break and on the way back to the camp: we couldn’t afford to waste one ounce of energy.

While being in the forest was better than working in a mine, I didn’t like lumbering. It hurt me to cut down the majestic trees. I winced each time we hacked into the trunks with our saws and axes. But the trees got their revenge. One day my partner and I misjudged which way a cedar would fall. A thick branch struck her and crushed her skull. It was an awful way to die and yet all I could think about was my bread ration. What would happen to me now? When I came to my senses, my cold-bloodedness horrified me.

My fellow prisoners had no such concerns. They acted quickly, stripping my fallen comrade of her shoes, pants and underwear before the brigadier had even been informed of her death.

With everyone else paired up, the only person left for me to work with was Katya and she did nothing. The next day, as soon as we reached our worksite, she was busy in the bushes, pleasuring our brigadier or one of the guards. She told the brigadier that I could fulfil her norm as well as mine, but even he saw that it would be impossible. Instead I was to work on my own to fulfil a reduced norm. I only had to cut down the occasional tree then; most of the time I was sawing branches off felled trees or stacking the wood for hauling.

As we settled into our routine, we were accompanied by fewer guards and sometimes none at all. The brigadier kept the gang in check; and where could a prisoner escape to in such a wilderness anyway? I felt secure in this arrangement until one day I struggled to keep up with my norm and returned to the camp later than the others. It was then that I crossed paths with Nikita. He looked as ferocious up close as he did at a distance, but he wasn’t as ugly as I’d first thought. His beard was misleading and I realised that we could even be the same age. He peered at me through the twilight and recognised me. I turned to walk in another direction but he grabbed my arm.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

His voice surprised me. It was rough but not uneducated. From his appearance the most I’d have expected from him was a grunt.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he repeated. ‘Not now because I have to get back. But sometime.’

I was struck dumb. A polite request for a conversation wasn’t what I’d been anticipating. Nikita nodded as if we’d made a firm agreement, then he released my arm and strode off towards the camp.

Although cutting my hair seemed to protect me from unwanted attention, I still kept up my guard. The criminals assaulted old women and men too; they even raped each other. But there was a greater threat to our survival up here in the Arctic: winter.

‘Come on, what’s the temperature?’ we pestered the prisoner whose duty it was to check the thermometer.

It was four o’clock in the morning and we were assembled in the snowy yard waiting for roll call to commence. We jumped up and down and slapped our arms and legs. The clothing we’d been issued was inadequate for the climate. The chill tore through my padded jacket and I had no warm scarf to protect my head. I rubbed my face and ears to prevent frostbite. A woman in my barracks had lost her nose that week: it had come off in her hand. The image of it wouldn’t leave my mind and I was frightened that the same thing would happen to me.

‘It’s only minus forty,’ the prisoner reported.

We let out a collective moan. Work wasn’t called off until the temperature fell to below minus 45 degrees Celsius.

The roll was called and we walked off to our worksite. I slipped in the snow and pulled myself up quickly; not because I was afraid of the guards but because I didn’t want to freeze. The cold and starvation were the real threats now. The food we were given wasn’t enough to sustain us and the soup poured into our bowls for our daytime meals often froze before we could eat it.

One evening, Agrafena was chewing a piece of bread when she winced and touched her mouth. Blood ran down her hand. Our eyes met. A bleeding mouth was the first sign of scurvy. Over the next few weeks, I watched Agrafena decline. Her skin broke out in boils and she suffered constantly from diarrhoea.

‘You must go to the hospital,’ I told her.

Agrafena worked in the camp laundry. I only saw her at night because those who worked in the camp didn’t have to get up as early as the lumber gangs did. The following morning I helped Agrafena to rise at the same time as me and took her to the hospital. The staff were only allowed to admit two patients a day so getting there first was important. But when I returned in the evening I found Agrafena lying in her bunk.

‘They said I wasn’t sick enough to be exempted from work,’ she told me. ‘I don’t have a fever.’

I looked at her pale face and the suppurating sores on her neck. How sick did she need to become before they’d put her on anti-scurvy rations? She needed vitamin supplements, or at least carrots and turnips. If I didn’t do something to help her, Agrafena would die. While working in the forest I searched for berries or mushrooms to feed her, but everything lay under a thick layer of snow. Then one evening when I was walking back to the camp, I saw Nikita striding through the snow ahead of me. He was wearing military boots, a scarf and padded gloves. Of course, criminals knew how to get everything. I quickened my pace to catch up with him.

‘Nikita!’

He turned and glared at me with wild eyes. I took a step back, frightened. ‘What?’ he growled, showing no recollection of our last conversation.

‘You wanted to talk to me?’

‘What is it you want?’

There was no small talk in Nikita’s world. I got straight to my point. ‘Do you know how I can get some supplements? My friend has scurvy. They won’t take her into the hospital. They say she’s not sick enough!’

Nikita’s lips curled into what looked like an unpleasant smirk. I’d been foolish to approach such a dangerous man in the forest alone.

‘Yes, I can get those supplements for you,’ he said. ‘Everyone who works at the hospital owes me something.’

Part of me was relieved but I was also aware of what he would expect in return. When I’d first come to the camp the idea of trading my body was unthinkable, but desperation changed everything. I looked at him, not sure how to proceed.

‘I have syphilis,’ he said.

The blood drained from my face. In order to save Agrafena I had given myself a death sentence.

‘I don’t expect anything from you,’ he said. ‘I only want to know what you did before the war.’

I was surprised at the request. ‘Why?’

‘In my barracks we gamble on what the political prisoners did before they were arrested, then we bribe a guard to confirm who’s right. I’m famous for never being wrong.’

My toes were turning numb from the cold but I had to hear what Nikita was going to say. I guessed criminals were good at being able to read people so they could swindle them.

‘According to your records you were a medical student,’ he continued. ‘There’s no way that’s right. So either you altered your records or the government did. Which one?’

My breath froze in my throat. ‘What do you think?’

Nikita grinned. It was the first time that I’d seen his teeth; except for the two front ones, all of them were gold. ‘Definitely not a medical student. If you were a student, you’d look at things like a short-sighted person does because you were used to staring at books and notes. But you’ve got a deliberate way of walking and you squint at the horizon a certain way. My guess is that you were a pilot.’

I couldn’t believe it. Either Nikita was a genius at reading people or this was a trick and he’d found out who I was some other way.

‘I can’t say,’ I told him. ‘It could cost my life.’

He nodded. ‘You don’t have to. I can see I was right. Come on, let me carry you back to the camp. You’re turning blue.’

He bent to allow me to climb onto his back. His torso was so wide that my legs barely made it around him. When we reached the camp he walked straight past the guards with me still on his back and they said nothing.

He put me down and grinned at me again. ‘Let everyone know that you are with me. That way the other men will leave you alone.’

The piggyback ride brought back memories of my brother, Alexander. ‘I would make a terrible criminal,’ I said to him. ‘I didn’t read you correctly at all.’

A few nights later, one of the female criminals slipped a bottle of powder into my hand while we were lining up to get our soup. ‘It’s from Nikita,’ she said.

I looked around for Agrafena but she wasn’t in the meal hut. I quickly finished my supper and headed back to our barracks. I found her in her bunk, struggling to breathe. I mixed the powder Nikita had sent me with some water and held it to her chapped lips.

She shook her head. ‘It’s too late for me. You take it. Save yourself.’

I wrapped my arm around her to keep her warm, but it caused her pain so instead I put the pieces of sacking I used as an extra blanket on top of her. Agrafena’s eyes were dimming; she wouldn’t last until the morning. How had this happened? How had the clever university professor become one of the
dokhodyagi
? I knew the answer to that. But I would never understand
why
.

Agrafena turned her face to me. ‘Would you like to hear it?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘The joke I told about Stalin.’

I nestled closer to her. ‘All right.’

She smiled. ‘Stalin is dying and isn’t sure if he wants to go to heaven or hell. He is given a tour of each. In heaven he sees people playing harps and singing. In hell he sees people eating, drinking and dancing. Stalin opts for hell. When he dies, he is led through a labyrinth and into a great hall where people are being burned on stakes and lowered into boiling cauldrons. Two of the Devil’s henchmen grab him and drag him towards some hot coals. Stalin protests, “But on the tour, I was shown people enjoying themselves!” “That,” replies the Devil, “was just propaganda!”’

Agrafena died in the early hours of the morning. Her uniform and underwear were too soiled and threadbare now for even the most desperate criminal to scavenge. But she had bequeathed me her mittens. They were in better condition than mine but I didn’t wear them. I kept them hidden inside my mattress: something to remember her by.

Winter in the Arctic Circle lasts nine months. As time wore on I could no longer make my norm and the reduced food ration was further draining my strength. Our gang lost three prisoners in one week. Two of them dropped dead where they stood in the forest. The third walked towards the forbidden zone of the camp despite the warnings of the guards. He was shot. There were no prisoners strong enough to replace those we had lost and the camp commandant accused the brigadier of sabotage by not taking care of his team. Now the whole gang had a group norm to fulfil, including the brigadier and Katya.

The brigadier hated me now and often beat me. ‘Work, you lazy slut! Or we’ll all suffer!’

One day, when I was sawing the branches off a tree and shivering violently from the wind chill, my saw slipped from my hand. I reached to pick it up but I couldn’t bend. The muscles in my legs stopped trembling and my arms and shoulders stiffened. My hand was a claw and when I tried to move my fingers they wouldn’t straighten. My breath echoed in my head. I felt like a clock that was winding down. I’m freezing to death, I thought.

I struggled against it and tried again to reach for the saw. Failing that, I strained to call for help but I had no voice. Exhaustion overcame me and I collapsed backwards into the snow. At first I was terrified. I wasn’t supposed to die: Valentin and Mama were waiting for me. But then a sense of peace came over me. I accepted my fate. I had done all I could to survive, but Kolyma had won, as the major who had interrogated me had said it would. As the last vestiges of heat left my body, I felt myself lighten as if I were about to float away.