Kolyma Tales (23 page)

Vronsky and Korneev were my acquaintances. We were not friends, but we had known each other since we had been together at Black Lake – an assignment where I returned to life. Without getting up, Zelfugarov turned his bloodied face with its swollen, dirty lips to us.

‘I can’t get up, guys. He hit me under the ribs.’

‘Go tell the paramedic.’

‘I’m afraid to, that will only make things worse. He’ll tell the supervisor.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘There’s no end to this. We have only one way out. As soon as the coal production chief or some other bigwig comes, someone must step forward and hit Kiselyov right on the snout. People will talk about it all over Kolyma, and they’ll have to transfer Kiselyov. Whoever hits him will have his sentence lengthened. How many years will they give for Kiselyov?’

We returned to our work, leaned into the horse collar, went back to the barracks, had supper, and prepared to go to sleep. The ‘office’ sent for me.

Kiselyov was sitting in the office, staring at the floor. He was no coward and didn’t fear threats.

‘So that’s it?’ he said cheerfully. ‘All Kolyma will talk about it? I could have you put on trial – for an attempt on my life. Get out of here, you bastard.’

The only one who could have turned me in was Vronsky, but how? We were together the entire time.

After that, life at the work site became easier for me. Kiselyov didn’t even approach our collar and came to work with a small-caliber rifle. He didn’t descend into the test pit either.

Someone entered the barracks.

‘The doctor wants to see you.’

The ‘doctor’ who replaced Lunin was a certain Kolesnikov, a tall young student who had also been arrested and thus had never finished his course of study.

When I arrived, I found Lunin sitting at the table in his overcoat.

‘Get your things ready. We’re leaving for Arkagala. Kolesnikov, make up a transfer sheet.’

Kolesnikov folded a piece of paper several times and tore off a tiny fragment that was hardly larger than a postage stamp. On it he wrote in microscopic handwriting: ‘Transferred to medical section, Arkagala.’

Lunin took the paper and ran off.

‘I’ll have Kiselyov issue a travel permit.’

He was upset when he returned.

‘He won’t let you go. He says you threatened to hit him in the face, and he absolutely refuses to agree.’

I told Lunin the story.

‘It’s your own fault,’ he said. ‘What do you care about Zelfugarov and all these… They weren’t beating you.’

‘I was beaten before.’

‘Well, I’m off. The truck is leaving. We’ll think of something.’ And Lunin got into the cab.

A few days passed, and Lunin appeared again.

‘I’m here to see Kiselyov. About you.’

He returned in a half-hour.

‘Everything’s in order. He agreed.’

‘How?’

‘I have a method for taming the heart of the rebellious.’ And Sergei Mixailovich acted out the conversation with Kiselyov:

‘What brings you back to these parts, Sergei Mixailovich? Sit down and have a smoke.’

‘Sorry, I don’t have the time, Pavel Ivanovich. These petitions accusing you of beatings have been forwarded to me. But before signing them, I decided to ask you if they were accurate.’

‘It’s a lie, Sergei Mixailovich. My enemies will say anything…’

‘That’s what I thought. I won’t sign them. What difference would it make, Pavel Ivanovich? What’s done is done, and there’s no replacing teeth that have been knocked out.’

‘That’s right, Sergei Mixailovich. Why don’t you come home with me? My wife has made some brandy. I was saving it to celebrate the New Year, but on such an occasion…’

‘I’m sorry, Pavel Ivanovich, I just can’t. But I do want to ask one favor in return. Let me take Andreev to Arkagala.’

‘That’s one thing I’ll never do. Andreev is, how should I put it…?’

‘Your personal enemy?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Well, he’s my personal friend. I thought you would be more receptive to my request. Take a look at these petitions.’

Kiselyov fell silent.

‘OK, he can go.’

‘Make up the transfer papers.’

‘Have him come for them himself.’

I stepped across the threshold of the ‘office’. Kiselyov was staring at the floor.

‘You’re going to Arkagala. Here are your transfer papers.’

Lunin had already left, but Kolesnikov was waiting for me.

‘You can leave this evening – about nine o’clock. Right now we have a case of acute appendicitis.’ He handed me a slip of paper.

I never saw either Kiselyov or Kolesnikov again. Kiselyov was soon transferred to Elgen, where he was accidentally killed a few months after arriving. A thief broke into his house at night. Hearing steps, Kiselyov grabbed the double-barreled shotgun from the wall, cocked it, and attacked the thief. The thief tried to get out the window, and Kiselyov struck him in the back with the butt of the shotgun. The gun went off, and Kiselyov took both barrels right in the stomach.

Every convict in every coal-mining area of Kolyma was delighted. The newspaper with the announcement of Kiselyov’s funeral passed from hand to hand. In the mines the wrinkled scrap of paper was held up to the battery light. People read it, rejoiced, and shouted: ‘Hurrah! Kiselyov died! So there is a God!’

It was from this Kiselyov that Sergei Mixailovich had saved me.

Convicts from Arkagala worked the mine. For every hundred men working underground, there were a thousand working in support groups.

Hunger had reached Arkagala. And, of course, it reached the political prisoner barracks first.

Sergei Mixailovich was angry.

‘I’m not the sun that can warm everybody. I got you a job as an orderly in the chemical laboratory, so you have to figure out for yourself how to live – camp-style, you understand?’ Sergei Mixailovich patted me on the shoulder. ‘Dmitry worked here before you. He sold all the glycerine – both barrels. He got twenty rubles for a half-liter bottle. Said it was honey. Ha ha ha. These convicts will drink anything.’

‘That’s not my way.’

‘Just what is your way?’

The orderly’s job wasn’t reliable. There were strict orders regarding me, and I was quickly transferred to the mine. The desire to eat grew stronger.

Sergei Mixailovich rushed about the camp. Our doctor had one passion: he was immensely attracted by camp officials of all types. Friendship or even a shade of friendship with any camp official was a source of unbelievable pride for him. He attempted to demonstrate his intimacy with the camp authorities in any way possible and was capable of bragging for hours about this intimacy.

I went to see him in his office. Hungry but afraid to ask for a piece of bread, I sat and listened to his endless bragging.

‘As for the camp authorities, they have real power. For there is no power but of God. Ha ha ha! All you have to do is please them, and everything is fine.’

‘I’d like to punch each and every one of them in the face.’

‘That’s just your trouble. Listen, let’s make an agreement. You can come to see me; I know it’s boring in the regular barracks.’

‘Boring?’

‘Sure. You can drop by, have a smoke. No one will give you a smoke in the barracks. I know what things are like over there – you light up, and a hundred eyes are watching you. Just don’t ask me to release you from work. I can’t do that. That is, I can, but it’s awkward. I won’t interfere in that respect. As for food, I depend on my orderly for that. I don’t stand in line myself for bread. So if you need bread, ask my orderly, Nikolai. How is it that after all your years in the camps you can’t lay your hands on some bread? You know what Olga Petrovna, the chief’s wife, told me today? They’re inviting me for dinner. There’ll be booze too.’

‘I have to go, Sergei Mixailovich.’

Hungry and terrible days ensued. Once, no longer able to struggle with hunger, I went to the first-aid station.

Sergei Mixailovich was sitting on a stool, clipping the dead nails from the frostbitten fingers of a dirty, hunched man. The nails fell with a click, one after the other, into an empty basin. Sergei Mixailovich noticed me.

‘I collected half a basin of these yesterday.’

A woman’s face looked out from behind the curtain. We rarely saw women, let alone this close and in the same room. She looked beautiful to me. I bowed and said hallo.

‘Hallo,’ she said in a low, wonderful voice. ‘Sergei, is this your friend, the one you told me about?’

‘No,’ Sergei Mixailovich said, tossing his snips into the basin and walking over to the sink to wash his hands.

‘Nikolai,’ he said to his orderly, who had just come in, ‘take this basin away and bring some bread for him.’ He nodded in my direction.

I waited until the bread was brought and left for the barracks. As for the woman, whose tender and beautiful face I remember to this day, I never saw her again. She was Edith Abramovna, civilian, Party member, a nurse from the Olchan Mine. She had fallen in love with Sergei Mixailovich, taken up with him, got him transferred to Olchan, and obtained for him an early release while the war was still going on. She traveled to Magadan to present Sergei Mixailovich’s case to Nikishov, the head of Far Northern Construction. She was expelled from the Party for being involved with a prisoner; it was the usual method for putting a stop to such affairs. She got Lunin’s case transferred to Moscow, had his sentence canceled, and even managed to get permission for him to take his medical examinations at Moscow University, from which he graduated and had all his civil rights reinstated. And she married him formally.

And when this descendant of a Decembrist received his medical degree, he abandoned Edith Abramovna and demanded a divorce.

‘She’s got a pack of relatives, like all those kikes! I don’t need that.’

He left Edith Abramovna, but he didn’t manage to leave Far Northern Construction. After graduation, he had to return to the Far North for at least three years. As a licensed doctor, Lunin used his connections with camp authorities to land an unexpectedly important appointment – chief of surgery at the Central Prison Hospital on the Left Bank of the Kolyma River in the village of Debin. It was 1948, and by that time I was senior orderly of the surgical ward.

I met Lunin on the stairway. He had a habit of blushing when he was embarrassed. His face became very red when he saw me, but he treated me to a cigarette, congratulated me on my successes and my ‘career’, and told me about Edith Abramovna.

Lunin’s appointment was like a thunderbolt. Rubantsev had been in charge of surgery. A front-line surgeon and a major in the medical service, he was an experienced, no-nonsense type who had moved here after the war – and not just for three days. Some didn’t like Rubantsev. He didn’t get along with the camp authorities, couldn’t stand toadying and lying, and had terrible relations with Scherbakov, chief of sanitation in Kolyma.

Rubantsev had signed a contract and had been warned that the prisoners were his enemies. Being a man of independent mind, however, he soon saw that he had been lied to during his ‘political’ preparation. Rogues, embezzlers, slanderers, and loafers were his colleagues at the hospital. It was the prisoners with their many skills (including medicine) who ran the hospital. Rubantsev realized where the truth lay, and he was not about to hide it. He applied to be transferred to Magadan, where there was a high school for his son. He was denied the transfer orally. After considerable effort, he managed to send his son to a boarding-school fifty miles from Debin. This took several months, and by that time he was running his ward confidently and dismissing loafers and thieves. News of these threatening activities was immediately sent to Scherbakov’s office in Magadan.

Scherbakov didn’t like to stand on ceremony with his subordinates. Cursing, threats, and prison sentences worked fine with prisoners, but they wouldn’t do for a former frontline surgeon who had received medals in the war and who was working under contract.

Scherbakov dug up Rubantsev’s old application and had him transferred to Magadan. And although the academic year had already begun and the surgical ward was working smoothly, he had to abandon everything…

Rubantsev left, and three days later a drunken party was held in the treatment room. Even the principal doctor, Kovalyov, and the hospital director, Vinokurov, helped themselves to the surgical alcohol. They hadn’t visited the surgical ward earlier, because they were afraid of Rubantsev. Drunken parties began in all the doctors’ offices, and nurses and cleaning women were invited. In a word, there were a lot of changes. Secondary adhesion began to occur in operations in the surgical ward, since precious grain alcohol could not be wasted on patients. Half-drunk hospital officials strolled back and forth through the ward.

This was my hospital. After I finished my courses in 1946, I was sent here with a group of patients. The hospital grew before my eyes. It had been a regimental headquarters formerly, but after the war a specialist on camouflage had judged it unsuitable because of its prominent location. Indeed, it could be seen for tens of miles, and so it was converted into a prison hospital. On leaving the three-story building, the former owners, the Kolyma Regiment, had ripped out all the plumbing and sewer pipes. All the chairs in the auditorium had been burned in the boiler. The walls were full of holes, and the doors were broken. The Kolyma Regiment had left Russian-style. We had to repair everything – screw by screw, brick by brick.

The doctors and assistants were doing their best to do a good job. For many of them it was a sacred duty – to pay for their medical education by helping people.

All the loafers raised their heads when Rubantsev left.

‘Why are you stealing alcohol from the medicine cabinets?’

‘Go to hell,’ a nurse answered me. ‘Thank God that Rubantsev is gone, and Lunin is in charge now.’

I was amazed and depressed at Lunin’s conduct. The party continued.

At the next brief meeting, Lunin laughed at Rubantsev: ‘He didn’t do a single ulcer operation. And he’s supposed to be a surgeon.’

This was nothing new. It was true that Rubantsev hadn’t done any ulcer operations. The patients in the therapeutic wards who had this diagnosis were emaciated, undernourished prisoners who didn’t have the slightest chance of surviving the operation. ‘The background isn’t right,’ Rubantsev would say.