The Zone (16 page)

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t keep you at headquarters for nothing. You can find a common language with everyone.”

“What do you mean to say by that?”

“Half the officers address you formally, with respect.”

“Well, so what?”

“So that’s why some people say you’re a composer.”

“A what?”

“Nothing. A composer. You write operas. Meaning you write up the operational workers; you know, security guys, your friends…”

I leant across the table and hit Fidel with a metal ruler. A crimson mark stayed on his cheek. Fidel jumped off his chair and yelled, “Ooh, headquarters’ bitch! Officers’ lackey!”

Then I felt the onrush of a wave of fury which put an end to all thought. Fidel moved slowly, like a swimmer. I hit him with a left, then again. Saw not more than a step away a round, distinctly formed chin. That was exactly where I drove my grievances, bitterness, pain… A stool flew out from under Fidel’s legs. After that, blood on the pages of a rationing report. And the hoarse voice of Captain Tokar, who had appeared in the doorway: “As you were! I order both of you – as you were!”

Lowering my eyes, I told Captain Tokar everything. He heard me out, straightened his shirt, and suddenly began talking in a rapid, senile whisper: “I’ll make them pay. See if I don’t. I gave thirty roubles for Brooch in Kotlas.”

That evening Captain Tokar got drunk. He started a brawl in the settlement beer hall. Tore up the photograph of the horse. Cursed his wife with the very dirtiest words, the kind of words that lost their meaning long ago. And at night he walked off somewhere by the hydroelectric generator, and tried, breaking match after match, to light a cigarette in the wind.

Early in the morning, I was again shovelling the porch. Then I headed for the gates past the dirty piles of snow.

I walked beneath a moon as harsh and blunt as graffiti on a wall, and waited for the captain, who arrived upright, carefully shaven, unruffled. I snapped my hand to my temple, then let it fall as if completely sapped. And at last I asked in a courteous, challenging, amiable voice, “Well, how goes it, Uncle Lenya?”

Twenty years have passed. Captain Tokar is still alive. And so am I. But where is that world, full of hatred and fear? Did it go away? And what is the reason for my melancholy and shame?

Dear Igor,

Just read your piece about American crime. And to be frank, I was a little surprised.

Theft, murder, rape – of course these are horrible crimes. They are committed in America; they are also committed in the USSR.

But I would like to raise another issue – the crimes that Soviet people don’t even notice, the ones that have become habitual and commonplace. The crimes that don’t even appear as such in the eyes of an average Soviet citizen.

Blatant rudeness – isn’t that a kind of crime? I suppose it is a matter of taste, but personally I would prefer to be robbed once in my life than to be humiliated every moment.

Think of the gloomy faces of Soviet salespersons, the sullen expressions of train conductors, the notes of perpetual irritation in the voices of countless administrators.

Do you agree? You have to agree that the average American policeman is three times as polite as the average Moscow waiter.

That is not all. Soviet rudeness often takes a legitimized form of injunction. I have read many announcements in my life that startled me, but I especially remember three. The first one I saw on the wall of a Leningrad food store. It read: “THE GUILTY WILL BE PUNISHED!” After that, not a word. A threat ominously addressed into space.

Apropos: In this same food store, a friend of mine saw a note lying on the cover of a zinc tub: “Zina, don’t water the sour cream. I already watered it.”

The second announcement was on a wall in the office of the head of the militia in the city of Zelenogorsk. It read: “DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS!” This order reeked of hopelessness.

But the most surprising announcement of all was one I saw in the admissions office of a country hospital. It consisted of
two words – “NOT ALLOWED” – followed by three exclamation points.

But all of this is a digression. The real matter at hand is the following: I have wanted to write down a certain camp story for a long time. Somehow I never got around to it. But I came to visit Lev here at Dartmouth, sat around doing nothing, and then finally managed to put myself to work. The story is not part of the original version of
The Zone
. Think of it instead as a later stratification. I don’t think readers will notice the difference. Let there at least be one relatively whole section in the book. Something like a separate chapter.

 

T
HERE WERE THREE OF US sitting in the Command Patrol Station. Security Officer Bortashevich was shuffling creased, worn cards. Gusev, on watch, was trying to get some sleep without taking a lit cigarette out of his mouth. I was waiting for the kettle to boil and the dry bread propped against it to warm.

Bortashevich drawled limply, “Take broads as an example. Say you and she are getting on: movies, sugar wafers, polite conversations… You quote her Gogol with Belinsky…* Go hear some bloody opera… Then, naturally, it’s into the bunk. But Madame tells you: Marry me, you louse. First the registry office, then the baser instincts. The instincts, you see, don’t suit her. But if they’re holy to me, then what?”

“So again, it’s those kikes,” Gusev said.

“What do you mean, kikes?” Bortashevich said.

“They’re everywhere, I said, from Raikin to Karl Marx. And they breed like fungi. Take the VD clinic at Chebyu. The doctors are Jewish, the patients are Russian. Is that the Communist way?”

Just then the telephone from the main office rang. Bortashevich put the receiver to his ear, then said to me, “For you.”

I heard Captain Tokar’s voice. “Come over and see me, and right away.”

“Comrade Captain,” I said, “it’s already nine o’clock, by the way.”

“Oh?” the captain said. “You only serve your country till six?”

“Then why bother posting work schedules? I’m supposed to report out tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning you will be in Ropcha. There’s an assignment from the Chief of Staff – to bring one
prisoner from the Ropcha transit camp. To make it short, I’m waiting.”

“Where are you off to?” Bortashevich asked me.

“Someone has to escort a zek here from Ropcha.”

“For retrial?”

“Don’t know.”

“By regulation there should be two of you.”

“What in the guards is ever done by regulation? By regulation all they do is lock you up in the detention.”

Gusev raised his eyebrows. “And did you ever see a Jew in detention?”

“You’ve got Jews on the brain,” Bortashevich said. “We’re tired of it. You take a good look at Russians. One look and you turn to stone.”

“I won’t argue,” Gusev replied.

The tea kettle suddenly came to the boil. I moved it onto a roofing tile next to the strongbox. “All right, I’m off.”

Bortashevich pulled out a card, looked at it, and said, “Oho! The queen of spades awaits you.” Then he added, “Take handcuffs.”

I took a pair.

I walked through the zone, even though I could have gone around it on the patrol footpath. For a year now I’d been intentionally going through the zone at night. I kept hoping I’d get used to the feeling of terror. The problem of personal courage was posed to us here in a rather severe way. The champions in this category were generally acknowledged to be the Lithuanians and the Tartars.

I slowed down a little near the machine shop. At night this was where the
chifir
drinkers gathered. They would fill a soldier’s mug with water and empty a whole packet of loose tea into it. Then they would lower a razor blade attached to a long steel wire into the cup. The end of the wire was then thrown onto a high-voltage wire. The liquid in the cup boiled within two seconds. The brown beverage had an effect somewhat like alcohol. People began to gesticulate excitedly, to shout and laugh for no reason.

The
chifir
drinkers didn’t inspire serious alarm in anyone. Serious alarm was inspired by people who could cut your throat without drinking
chifir
.

Shadows moved in the darkness. I came closer. Prisoners were sitting on potato cartons around a small tub of
chifir
. Once they saw me, they went quiet.

“Have a seat, boss,” a voice said from the darkness. “The samovar’s ready.”

“Sitting it out,” I said, “is your department.”

“He’s literate,” the same voice commented.

“He’ll go far,” a second said.

“No farther than checkpoint,” a third said wryly.

Everything normal, I thought. The usual blend of friendliness and hate. Though to think of all the stuff I’d brought for them, the tea, margarine, cans of fish…

I lit a cigarette, rounded Barracks Six, and came out by the camp transport depot. The rosy window of the administration office swam out of the darkness.

I knocked. An orderly let me in. In his hand was an apple.

Tokar glanced out of his office and said, “Chewing on post again, Barkovets?”

“Nothing of the kind, Comrade Captain,” the orderly protested, turning away.

“Do you think I can’t see? Your ears are moving. The day before yesterday you fell asleep entirely.”

“I wasn’t sleeping, Comrade Captain. I was thinking. But it won’t happen again.”

“Too bad,” Tokar said, and then turned to me: “Come in.”

I entered, reported for duty according to regulation.

“Excellent,” the captain said, tightening his belt. “Here are the documents, you can depart at once. Convey here a zek by the name of Gurin. He’s serving eleven years. Fifth conviction. Code man. Be careful.”

“Just who,” I asked, “needs him in such a hurry? Don’t we have enough of our own recidivists here?”

“We’ve got enough,” Tokar agreed.

“So what’s this all about?”

“I don’t know. The orders are from top command.”

I unfolded the travel papers. Under the heading marked “Designation” was this order: “To convey to the Sixth Subdivision Gurin, Fyodor Yemelyanovich, in the capacity of performer of the role of Lenin.”

I asked, “What does this mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Better ask the Political Instructor. Most likely they’re staging a theatrical production for the sixtieth anniversary of Soviet power. So they’re inviting a guest actor. Maybe he’s got talent, or the appropriate mug… I don’t know. For now, deliver him here, and then we’ll find out what it’s all about. If anything happens, use your weapon. Godspeed.”

I took the papers, saluted, and withdrew.

We neared Ropcha close to midnight. The settlement seemed dead. The darkness muffled the dogs’ barking.

The logging-truck driver who had given me a ride asked, “Where did they send you in the middle of the night? You should have gone in the morning.”

I had to explain. “This way I’ll be returning in daylight. Otherwise I’d be coming back at night. What’s more, in the company of a dangerous recidivist.”

“Could be worse,” the driver said. “We’ve got dispatchers in logging who are scarier than the zeks.”

“It happens,” I said. We said goodbye.

I woke the orderly in the checkpoint cabin, showed him my papers and asked where I could spend the night. The orderly had to think about it.

“It’s noisy in the barracks. The convoy brigades get back in the middle of the night. If you take someone’s bunk, they might swing their belts. And in the kennels the dogs bark.”

“Dogs – that’s better.”

“You can stay here with me. All the comforts. You can cover yourself with a sheepskin jacket. The next shift comes in at seven.”

I lay down, put a tin can near the trestle bed, and lit a cigarette.

The main thing is not to think about home, to concentrate on some urgent daily problem. Here, for instance: I’m running out of cigarettes and the orderly, it seems, doesn’t smoke.

I asked, “You don’t smoke, or what?”

“If you offer me one, I’ll smoke.”

Still no better.

The orderly tried to start a conversation with me. “Is it true that your soldiers in the Sixth poke she-goats?”

“I don’t know. Doubtful. The zeks, now, they indulge.”

“In my opinion, it’s better in a fist.”

“Matter of taste.”

“Well, all right,” the orderly said, taking pity on me, “sleep. It’s quiet here.”

As for quiet, he was wrong. The checkpoint cabin adjoined the penal isolator. In the middle of the night, a zek woke up inside it. He jangled his handcuffs and sang loudly: “And I go, walking about Moscow…”

“Tomcat’s in the mood for Pussy,” the orderly grumbled. He looked into the peephole and yelled, “Agayev, blow one out and go to sleep! Or you’ll get my fist in your eye!”

In answer, we heard, “Chief, pull your horns in!”

The orderly responded with a torrent of ornate obscenity.

“Suck me till you’re good and full!” the zek retorted.

This concert lasted about two hours. On top of everything, I ran out of cigarettes.

I went up to the peephole and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigarettes or tobacco?”

“Who are you?” Agayev asked, astounded.

“I’m on assignment from the Sixth Camp Subdivision.”

“And I thought you were a student. Is everyone so cultured in the Sixth?”

“Yes,” I said, “when they’re out of cigarettes.”

“There’s a ton of tobacco here. I’ll push it under the door. You wouldn’t happen to be from Leningrad?”

“From Leningrad.”

“A fellow countryman. I thought so.”

The rest of the night was passed in conversation.

In the morning I went looking for Dolbenko, the officer in charge of operations. I presented my orders to him. He said, “Have breakfast and wait at the checkpoint. Do you have a weapon on you?… Good.”