The Zone (11 page)

There’s something similar in what we Russian émigrés experience.

For decades we lived in conditions of total unfreedom, flattened, like flounder, by the heavy weight of oppression, when suddenly we were caught up in a lung-splitting hurricane of freedom. And we headed off to break into the food stall.

It seems to me I’ve got off the track.

The following two fragments have to do with the preceding episode. The main figure in both is Captain Yegorov – a mean and stupid animal. In my stories, he comes out rather pleasant. Here we witness the transforming power of art.

Earlier, this was something on the order of a novella, but Dreitzer sent me only odd pages. I’ve tried to fill them out and have created a film montage in the tradition of Mr Dos Passos.* Apropos, in one old review I was called his imitator.

 

K
ATYA SWITCHED ON THE LIGHTS; the windows went dark. It was very early. In the foyer, the wind-up clock ticked with a deep sound.

Katya pushed her feet into cold slippers and went to the kitchen. She returned, stood there a while, wrapping herself up in a blue flannelette bathrobe. Then she tore off a page from the day calendar and began to read it slowly with great attention. “Twenty-eighth of February. Thursday. Five hundred and sixty years ago, Abdul Rahman Jami* was born. The name of this outstanding contributor to Persian culture…”

“Yegorov, wake up,” Katya said. “The water’s frozen.”

The captain turned uneasily in his sleep.

“Pavel, there’s ice in the washbasin.”

“Normal,” the captain said. “Entirely normal… Under conditions of warming, ice arises. While under conditions of cooling – no, not like that. Under conditions of cooling, ice. And from heating, vapour… Newton’s third law. Of which I’m not entirely persuaded.”

“The snowdrifts have reached halfway up the window. Pavel, don’t go back to sleep.”

“Precipitation,” Yegorov responded. “Better let me tell you about the dream I just had. It seemed that Marshal Voroshilov* presented me with a sabre, and with this sabre I tickled Major Kovba.”

“Pavel, stop behaving like an idiot.”

The captain quickly got up, rolled a cold black barbell out of the corner. While doing this, he said, “You train for a century, but you still can’t outdrink a whale. And you’ll never be as strong as a gorilla.”

“Pavel!”

“What’s the matter? What happened?”

Yegorov moved to her and wanted to put his arms around her.

Katya pulled away and loudly burst into tears. She shuddered and her mouth twisted.

“But why cry?” Yegorov asked softly. “Crying is not required. Much less sobbing…”

Then Katya covered her face with her hands and spoke slowly – slowly, so the tears would not interfere. “I can’t go on.”

Now depressed himself, the captain took out a cigarette and lit it in silence.

Behind the window, a grey, frosty morning was spreading. Long bluish shadows lay on the snow.

Yegorov dressed slowly, put on a down jacket and picked up an axe. The snow squeaked under his ski boots.

“But there has to be another life somewhere,” Katya thought, “an entirely different life. Somewhere there are wild berries, campfires, singing… And a labyrinth of paths, crossed with pine-tree roots… And rivers, and people waiting to cross. Somewhere there are serious white books, the eternally elusive music of Bach, the swish of car wheels… While here, it’s the howling of dogs. The power saw buzzing from morning till night. And now, on top of everything else, ice in the washbasin.”

Katya breathed on the window pane. Yegorov set a log on its end. For some time he looked closely at the little branches. Then he gave the axe a short swing up and let it fall sharply, slanting it a little.

‘The Turkish March’ came over the radio. Katya imagined a platoon of Turkish soldiers. They trudged through deep snow in heavy turbans, fighting their way from the Division of Economic Administration to the machine shop. Their yataghans have frozen to their scabbards, the turbans gone white…

“My God,” Katya thought, “I’m losing my mind!”

Yegorov returned with an armful of firewood and dumped it by the stove. Then he pulled out of his pocket a prison knife with a locking pin, confiscated during a personal search, and began to chip off kindling.

“Once I used to love winter,” Katya thought, “but now I hate it. I hate frost in the morning and dark evenings. I hate dogs
barking, fences, barbed wire. I hate boots, down vests… and ice in the washbasin.”

“Be quiet,” she said aloud. “I hate your always being right!”

“How’s that?” Yegorov did not understand. Then he said, “Well, if you’d like, I’ll go to Vozhayel and get apples and champagne, and we can invite Zhenya Bortashevich and Larissa.”

“Your Bortashevich cuts his nails during supper.”

“Then Vakhtang Kekelidze. His father is a count.”

“Kekelidze is a vulgarian!”

“Meaning?”

“You don’t know.”

“Why do you think I don’t know?” the captain said. “I know. I know he plays up to you. That’s the way Georgians behave. The guy’s unmarried. It’s unpleasant, of course. Actually, he deserves a punch in the jaw.”

“A woman needs it.”

“What, exactly?”

“For a man to pay attention to her.”

“You need to have a baby,” the captain said.

The hoarse, vibrating baying from the kennel grew stronger. One swelling timbre stood out in particular among the other voices.

“Why is it I was never bothered by seagulls,” Katya said, “or wild ducks? I cannot, cannot, cannot endure that barking.”

“It’s Harun,” Yegorov said.

“What a horror.”

“You haven’t heard wolves yet. That’s a really terrible business.”

The firewood in the stove hissed as it flared up. And there was already a smell of wet snow.

“Pavel, don’t be angry.”

“What’s there to be angry about?”

“Bring some apples from Vozhayel.”

“By the way, the ice in the washbasin is melting.”

Katya came up behind him and put her arms around him.

“You’re big,” she said, “like a tree in a thunderstorm. I’m afraid for you.”

“Fine,” he said, “everything will be all right. Everything will be simply wonderful.”

“Is it really possible everything will be all right?”

“Everything will be wonderful. If we are good ourselves.”

“And is it true the ice is melting in the washbasin?”

“It’s true,” he said, “it’s normal. A law of nature.”

In the kennel, Harun began to howl again.

“Wait a second,” Yegorov said, pulling away from Katya. “I’ll be right back. This will just take a minute.”

Katya let her hands drop. She went into the kitchen and lifted the heavy cover of the washbasin. Inside, a small lump of ice was melting.

“It really is melting,” Katya said out loud.

She went back, sat down. Yegorov was still out.

Katya put on a scratchy phonograph record. She remembered some lines from a poem that had been dedicated to her by Lyonya Mak, a weightlifter and unacknowledged genius:

In the kennel, a shot rang out. The hoarse canine howl changed to a screech and then stopped.

After a few moments, the captain returned. He walked past the windows. He was carrying something wrapped in a tarpaulin.

Katya was afraid to lift her eyes.

“So, what do you think?” Yegorov said, grinning. “It’s a bit quieter now, isn’t it?”

Katya tried to ask, “What’s this? Now what?”

“It’s not a problem,” the captain assured her. “I’ll call over a flunky with a shovel.”

Dear Igor,

As you know, Shalamov regards the camp experience as entirely negative.

I knew Varlam Tikhonovich slightly through Gena Aygi.* He was an astounding man. And all the same, I don’t agree with him.

Shalamov hated prison. I think that’s not enough. To have that feeling does not yet signify having a love of freedom, or even a hatred of tyranny.

Soviet prison is one of countless manifestations of tyranny, one of the forms of total, all-embracing violence.

But there is beauty even in prison life. And if you only use dark colours you won’t get it right.

In my opinion, one of its delightful adornments is language.

The laws of linguistics do not apply to prison-camp reality, inasmuch as camp speech is not a means of exchange. It is not functional, in fact is designed least of all for practical use. Camp life, which is nauseating in essence, endows language with a preference for particular expressiveness. It is a goal in itself and not a means.

Very little of camp speech is wasted on communication: “Duty officer wants to see you.” “Was looking for him myself.” You get the feeling that the zeks economize on everyday verbal material. In its essence, camp speech is a creative phenomenon, aesthetic through and through, and artfully purposeless. It is fanciful, picturesque and ornamented. It is close to the euphonic orchestration of the Remizov school.*

A camp monologue is an absorbing verbal adventure. It’s a kind of drama, with an intriguing beginning, a fascinating climax and a stormy finale – or else an oratorio, with deeply significant pauses, unexpected accelerations of tempo, rich tonal shading and heart-rending vocal fioriture. It is an accomplished theatrical spectacle, buffoonery, an exuberant, daring and free creative expression.

Speech for an experienced camp inmate takes the place of every usual civil adornment – specifically: haircuts, imported suits, shoes, ties and glasses and, beyond these, money, position in society, awards and regalia.

Well-turned speech is often the only weapon of a camp old-timer, his only lever of social influence, the unshakable and steadfast foundation of his reputation.

Top-notch speech evokes the respect a master gets. Work skills in camp do not count for much; usually, it’s the opposite. Achievements on the outside are forgotten. What remains is the word.

In camp, scrupulously chosen speech means having an advantage on the same order as physical strength. A good storyteller in the logging sector means much more than a good writer in Moscow.

It is possible to imitate Babel, Platonov, Zoshchenko* and Hemingway. Dozens of young writers do so, not without success. Camp speech is impossible to fake, inasmuch as its main condition is to be organic.

Allow me to reproduce here a not entirely proper entry from my army notebook.

A dupe pretending to be a confidence man is a funny and indecent spectacle. They say of such, “The prancing homo’s playing at Code man.”

The art of camp speech rests on traditions shaped long ago. Indestructible canons exist in it, stock expressions and
innumerable regulations. It calls for the usual creative meticulousness. As with literature, the genuine artist leans on tradition while he develops the features of his own originality.

As surprising as it may be, there are very few obscenities in camp speech. A real criminal rarely condescends to use them. He spurns the unhygienic locution of obscenities. He prizes his speech and knows its value. He values quality and not decibels and prefers exactness to profusion.

The disgusted “You belong by the piss bucket” is worth more than ten choice swear words. The wrathful “What are you selling yourself for now, bitch?” kills on the spot. The condescending “That’s a real dope, can’t steal and can’t stand guard” discredits someone absolutely.

A form of verbal contest, brilliant conversational duelling, is still alive in camp. I observed such battles often, with their warm-up volleys, feigned apathy and sudden fireworks of murderous eloquence, with their sharpened formulations in the style of Krylov or La Fontaine:* “The wolf gobbles up the sick sheep too.”

In camp, people don’t swear on relatives and dear ones. You don’t hear oaths and verbose eastern protestations. Here they say, “I swear by freedom!”

The following excerpt is about the same Captain Yegorov. The piece in the middle got lost. There was a story with a horse in it – I’ll tell you sometime – and also one about a riot in Veslyana, when Yegorov was knocked out with a shovel.

All in all, about twenty pages were lost, all because our literature is equated with dynamite. This is a great honour for us, I think.

 

I
T WAS CLEAN AND COOL in the men’s room. Yegorov sat smoking on the window sill. Outside the window, firemen were playing skittles. A bread van drove by, then heaved and braked by a bakery.

Yegorov stubbed out his cigarette and walked outside. Sunbeams lay across the hospital corridor. There were many windows here. Gauzy curtains quivered, lifted and fell.

A nurse was coming down the corridor. She looked like a nun and seemed pretty.

All the hospital nurses seemed pretty. And they really were pretty, in so far as they were young and healthy, and all around them so many transparent white curtains, so much cold light and not one superfluous thing.

“Well, how is she?” Yegorov asked.

“Condition satisfactory,” the nurse answered coldly. She had slanting eyes, neat bangs, and a bluish uniform that was tied at the waist.