The Zone (9 page)

I swam across the Mississippi. And that’s just what I’ll write to Leningrad. In my opinion, it was worth leaving for this alone.

Did you know that in March I was interviewed by Roy Stillman, and that he asked me, “What did you find most striking about America?” I answered, “The fact that it exists. That it is a reality.”

For us, America was like Carthage or Troy. And suddenly it turned out that Broadway is a reality, Tiffany’s is a reality, the Flatiron Building is a reality, and the Mississippi is a reality.

Once I was walking in lower Manhattan. I stopped by a bar called Johnny’s. I went inside, ordered an Irish coffee, and found a seat by the window.

I sensed that there was someone under the table. I bent down – it was a bum, drunk. A black guy, completely drunk, wearing a red shirt. (Incidentally, I saw exactly the same shirt once on Yevtushenko.*)

And suddenly I nearly cried with happiness. Could this really be me, drinking Irish coffee in a bar called Johnny’s, with a black bum under the table?

Of course, there is no such thing as happiness, as Pushkin says. But there is also no peace, and beyond that, I’m weak of will, so I have to differ with him.

And of course, all this is tinsel, paper streamers – the bar, the drunk black guy, the Irish coffee. But it means that, in the end, there is something to paper streamers. How many times in
the last decades have fashions in women’s hats changed? And paper streamers remain paper streamers for a thousand years.

Let’s assume there really is no such thing as happiness, no such thing as peace, and no freedom either. But there are kinds of attacks of senseless ecstasy. Can this be me?

I’m staying in the Curtis Hotel, with a multitude of various amusements. There’s a bar. There’s a swimming pool. There’s a suspicious-looking Havana Room. There’s a souvenir shop, where I acquired swimming trunks for the Mississippi. (On the front, a design of a sausage and two hard-boiled eggs.)

There are clean sheets, hot water, a television set, writing paper. There is a terrific neighbour, Ernst Neizvestny. (He just convincingly demonstrated to Harrison Salisbury:* “The vertical is God. The horizontal is Life. In the point of intersection, there is me, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Kafka.”)

There is you, to whom I’m sending this idiotic letter.

I’m in the hotel. I’m taking part in some incomprehensible symposium. I have on me close to a hundred dollars.

Early in the morning, I walk out of the hotel. It is cool and raw. A man, looking down and out, stops me and asks, “Do you have a match?” I answer, “Hold on.” And I hand him a lighter. And the man has trouble lighting up in the wind. Then I add, “Inhale, inhale.” And it’s unlikely that he’ll stare after me. Because these are the few words I can say without an accent.

He says, “Cool today.” And I answer, in English, “Sure.” And we go off our separate ways, two absolutely free people – a participant in a puzzling symposium and a down-and-out fellow in a sweater that Yevtushenko would be envious of.

Last night we played bingo. Neizvestny played and lost four times. That means he’ll win some other, unknown game.

Hugs to you all. We’ll see each other soon. I’m bringing a small excerpt and the end of a prison novella. It was sent to me through Levin, from Texas. The beginning is missing. It began, I remember, like this: “In the north, it generally gets dark early. And in the zone especially.”

I’ll put that sentence in somewhere.

Well, till we meet.

 

A
S SOON AS THE ROAR of the motors stopped, the pine trees rustled high above the heads of the men. The prisoners quit work, pulled spoons out of the tops of their boots and walked to the barn.

The “slopper” dipped his ladle deep in a dark and viscous liquid. The men ate silently, then got out tobacco pouches and lit up from the embers.

The smoke of the campfire disappeared upwards, becoming pale October sky. It was quiet. The pines rustled in the space above the logging sector that had become empty without the motors rumbling.

“Shall we talk of those marvellous creatures?” Zek Brigadier Agoshin said, pulling his torn zek three-flap cap down over his eyes.

“Forget it,” Beluga said. “After your conversations no one can sleep.”

“No one can sleep? Then you just better give up and break your thing over your knee. You’ll grow a bigger and better one when you get out.”

The zeks laughed in spite of themselves. The autumn air was saturated with the smell of motor oil. The trees rocked in the pale sky. The sun fell unevenly on the rough yellowish logs.

There were two who sat smoking a little apart from the others, a short-legged fellow in a worn quilted vest named Yerokhin, and a former foreman, a native of the Chernigov district, a lean man named Zamarayev.

“You’re a shallow person, Yerokha,” Zamarayev was saying, “shallow and not serious. Your kind belongs in the grave or the zoo.”

“Lay off,” Yerokhin said. “He barges in like this was a snack bar. I’m not getting rusty, you know. I can still stick you.”

“I’m terrified… You just blather on and on, while life is going by.”

Yerokhin got angry. “Tell your story walking. Your crap won’t fly here. And anyway, what’s the use of talking to you? You’re completely dense. Just the other day you went running at a radio with a pitchfork. In a word, a peasant.”

“In our village there is a radio receiver in every cabin,” Zamarayev said. He lifted his eyes dreamily and continued, “I had a five-wall myself… a barn with a slate roof… a log cow shed… outside the windows, honeysuckle… I lived by my conscience. It would happen that a
kum
came by, to have a meal after a fast—”

“
Kum
?” Yerokhin said uneasily. “An agent, or what?”

“An agent… It’s
you
who’s the agent. A
kum
, I say… A kinsman. He’d come over. Bring a bottle of port grape wine. My
kum
was a serious man, an invalid—”

“A Party member, or what?” Yerokhin interrupted again.

“A non-Party Communist,” Zamarayev rapped out crisply. “Lost a leg in the Yezhov times.”*

“Meaning he’s an enemy of the people?”

“Not an enemy, but a lieutenant in the OGPU.* Guarded the likes of us jackals. Deprived of his leg, froze it on his battle post. They discharged him from the ranks, but they did give him a pension.”

“They should have known better,” Yerokhin said.

Zamarayev did not hear him. A happy smile flickered on his face. He continued, “And my
kum
likes to joke. Sometimes he’d say from the doorway, ‘Go and get us a little one!’ I’m getting into my galoshes when he laughs. ‘As you were, I’ve got it here.’ And pulls out a bottle of red. In our village they had the rouble-forty wine, but it tasted like the rouble-seventy-two kind. We’d pour our glasses, so it used to be. God’s bounty, harmony at home. I lived in good conscience.”

“In good conscience. So what did they get you for?”

Zamarayev, silent, hit a twig against the top of his boot.

“For what, I said, were you arrested?” Yerokhin said, not letting up.

“Well, for linseed oil.”

“You stole, is that it?”

“What, that linseed oil?”

“Well.”

“That linseed oil, yes.”

“In good conscience. And then what’d you do with it? Take it off to market?”

“No, drank it instead of lemonade.”

“Right.” Yerokhin grinned. “So how much linseed oil did you move?”

“Ech, that was a time,” Zamarayev said, “that was a time. That linseed oil? Two tons or so.”

“How much does that come to? Half a grand?”

“In the legal suit, forty thousand. Old roubles, of course.”

“Oho! And if you translate that into booze?”

“You’re a shallow person,” Zamarayev said angrily. “You’ve got one thing in your head. You should join the circus instead of the kangaroo. You ever hear of the kangaroo? The one with the purse on its belly.”

“Get off my dick,” Yerokhin said, “cut your crap. Or you get one in the smacker.”

“Fine,” Zamarayev stopped him, “whatever. But I’m doing time because some people are envious of others’ millions. With money I was a total boss. Money is power.”

“When Communism arrives,” Yerokhin said with malice, “you’ll be without money, and worse than dirt. Under Communism they will abolish money.”

“Not likely,” Zamarayev said. “Without money all will be looted. So they won’t abolish it. And with money even Communism doesn’t frighten me.”

“What do you need money for, you blockhead? To light your gas ring with? Have you ever even put on a pair of ordinary shoes? An imported shoe? Even a Chinese one?” Yerokhin said, raising his voice and looking in wonder at his beat-up prisoner’s boots.

“My boots were of real leather,” Zamarayev said in response, “sewn by my brother-in-law.”

“Stolen by who?” Yerokhin did not understand.

“You’re a savage, you don’t even understand Russian.”

But Yerokhin’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Now if
I
had that forty grand. Wouldn’t I show them all! According to you, life is – what? It’s a kaleidoscope! I could throw on a show when I was free. I’d come to a cocktail hall. Throw down three gold pieces. They bring me cognac, beef Stroganoff, fillet… And there’s music playing, girls everywhere. Would you permit, as they say, a turn of the waltz? In the sense of a tango… She dances, all dressed up, shining like a pike… Afterwards you drive her to her place. On the way, you see something from the newspaper, Sergei Yesenin,* flying saucers… How I put on a show! And if they suddenly refused, I had a method that could convince any girl in a nice way. The method was simple: I’d say, ‘Lie down, you bitch, or I’ll kill you!’ Yes, I knew how to move my horns. The ladies certainly screamed under me!”

“Why scream for no reason?” Zamarayev asked.

“Ooh, what a bumpkin! And sex?”

“What?” Zamarayev did not understand.

“Sex, I said.”

“Talk like a human being.”

“Well then, love, love… According to you, love is – what? Love is… Love is… a kaleidoscope. Kind of, one thing today, another – tomorrow.”

“Love,” Zamarayev said, “is in order to have harmony at home. In order to have respect. But with your kind of girls, it’s better not to show your face in the village. You would be ashamed before the people.”

“So you’ve gone through life on one mare. While I have a legal wife in every Department of Construction. Of course, I don’t say… It happens… You can catch something on your tip.”

“What?” Zamarayev did not understand.

“On your tip, I said… Well, that… Gonorrhoea.”

“What?”

“That’s a peasant for you, doesn’t know what gonorrhoea is! It’s the clap, the clap!”

“Ah-ah.” Zamarayev moved away slightly. “So how did you get here, anyway? Not for that, by any chance?”

“They nabbed me at a dance. I slipped a shank into this fellow’s rib cage.”

“And that was the end of him, was it?”

“No end at all. He pulled through, the snake. Shouts out in the courtroom, that son of a bitch, ‘I forgive Yerokhin!’ But the prosecutor shakes his head and says, ‘You maybe, yes, but society cannot forgive him.’ In the beginning I claimed total incapacity. I yell, ‘I got drunk, I forgot everything that happened!’ Well, in the end the cops broke me. I confessed. I yell, ‘Shoot me! Why don’t you shoot me, you pig? If Lenin only saw your reprobate puss.’ That’s what I said to the prosecutor. So he went and got me three years for nothing. There was an article about me in the newspaper. You don’t believe me? I swear to God! It was called ‘Fungus’.”

“That makes sense,” Zamarayev said.

“You want me to tell you a secret?” Yerokhin said suddenly. “If you want, I’ll tell you a secret that will make you turn green. Only – you can’t tell anyone.”

“I know your secrets. You’re digging a tunnel under the bread room.”

“A tunnel – that’s nothing… Well, you want me to tell you? But just to you as a friend. Here, listen: I’m an Epstein on my mother’s side.”

“Epstein,” Zamarayev said, frowning in disbelief. “We’ve seen Epsteins the likes of you. You’re a gentile like the rest of us. And if you’re an Epstein, why are you here for hooliganism? Why didn’t you go into the business end?”

“I take after my father,” Yerokhin explained briefly.

“Epstein,” Zamarayev repeated.

“Peasant,” the other muttered in reply.

The gonging of the signal rail slowly sank into the spacious October sky. Knocking sounds could be heard from the power-saw bench. Behind the trees, thundering, a log-carrier went by.

“I’m off to the grindstone,” Yerokhin said. He got up, brushed off some tobacco crumbs. Then, without looking
back, he started on his way through the forest to the machine shop.

“What a peasant, doesn’t know what gonorrhoea is,” Yerokhin smirked.

“A shallow person, not serious,” Zamarayev said under his breath, watching him go.

“The types they get in here,” Yerokhin thought.

“Where do people like him come from?” Zamarayev wondered.

The forest filled with mist. A dog tethered to a chain post began barking. Security Officer Bortashevich appeared, wearing narrow box-calf boots.

The prisoners stood up reluctantly, put out the campfire, and went their ways.

In the watchtowers, the new shift came on. Out of boredom, someone turned on a searchlight.

Dear Igor,

I keep thinking about our conversation. Maybe the problem is that evil is arbitrary, that it is determined by time and place, and to put it more broadly, by the general tendencies of the historical moment.

Evil is determined by the state of affairs, by demand, by the function of its carrier. Besides all this, there’s the factor of chance, the unlucky conjunction of circumstance, and even bad aesthetic taste.