The Zone (20 page)

There was also another extreme that had to be avoided, namely, submerging oneself in aesthetics to the point of oblivion, losing sight of the fact that prison camp is revolting, and painting it in the ornamental tradition of the south-western school.

So there were two extremes to stay away from. I could have told the story about the man who sewed his eye shut, or the one about the man who nursed and raised a baby goldfinch in the logging sector, or the one about an embezzler named Yakovlev who nailed his scrotum to his bunk, or the one about Burkov the pickpocket who sobbed at the burial of a May beetle.

In a word, if it seems to you that there isn’t enough vileness, we can put some in. And if the opposite is true, well, that can also be easily remedied.

 

A
FTER THEY HAD TIED ME UP with telephone wire, I calmed down. My head lay under a steam-heat radiator, and my feet, in badly made cheap leather army boots, were under the chandelier in the middle of the Lenin Room, where the New Year’s tree had stood a week earlier.

I could hear the soldiers of the escort platoon being issued their weapons and Lieutenant Khuriyev giving them instructions. I knew they’d be going out in the freezing cold now, starting to walk along the black gangways by the zone, past the straining dogs, and each soldier would shine his flashlight on his face so the guard in the watchtower could recognize him.

As the first order of business, I decided to declare a hunger strike and began waiting for supper in order to refuse it. But no one came.

I could hear the off-duty shift coming down the corridor, dumping their two-magazine cartridge pouches and their sub-machine guns, which would be white with hoarfrost, on the weapons-room counter. Then I heard the sentries moving aluminium stools in the mess hall, where the cook Balodis would have saved them a few onions, a loaf of bread and a piece of lard, but must have forgotten some salt, to judge by the cursing.

As I grew sober from the cold and pain, I began to recall everything as it happened.

In the daytime we had been drinking with the trusties. They all tried to hug me and kept repeating, “Bob, you’re the only human being in the whole Ust-Vym camp.” Then we made our way all across the settlement to the commissary and met Stern, the logging unit’s medic, and Fidel walked up to him, pulled off his beaver hat, scooped some snow up in it, and put it back on his head. We walked on, while the dirty snow started to trickle down the doctor’s face.

Then we went inside the commissary and asked Tonechka for some swill. She said there wasn’t any cheap drink, to which we shouted back that it didn’t matter since we were out of money anyway. She said, “Wash the floors in the storeroom, and I’ll give you each a little bottle of eau de Cologne.” Tonechka went out and came back in a few minutes with a bucket of steaming water. We took off our fatigue shirts and twisted them into plaits, dipped them into the bucket, and began to scrub the plank floor. Balodis and I worked hard, and Fidel was hardly in our way. Afterwards we drank the cologne, which trickled slowly into our mugs. The taste was awful and we snacked on hard candies, chewing them together with the bits of wrapping paper that were still stuck to them.

Tonechka said, “To your health!”

Balodis, the Latvian, pointed at her and asked Fidel, “Could you?”

And Fidel answered, “For a million, and then only on a hangover.”

When we left it was already dark. Lights were going on over the sawmill and in the settlement. We walked past the stables, where wagons without horses were standing, the wagon tongues resting on the ground. Fidel started playing ‘We’re on Our Way through Uruguay’, but Balodis grabbed the guitar from him and smashed it against a tree. We threw the pieces in an ice hole.

I looked up at the stars and my head began to spin.

Just then Fidel climbed up a telegraph pole with a knife in his teeth. He was a competent technician and hoped to do some damage. He climbed higher and higher, and when his shadow on the snow had grown enormous he suddenly shrieked “Mama!” and fell from a height of ten metres. We rushed to him, but Fidel stood up, brushed off the snow, and said, “Getting down is the easy part.”

We looked for the knife but couldn’t find it. “Obviously you swallowed it,” Balodis said. “That’s OK,” replied Fidel, “I have two of them.”

Then we set off for the barracks, and when the bakery van came towards us around the turn, we kept walking ahead until the driver had to back up and run through somebody’s fence.

When we got back the duty detail were cleaning their weapons. We went to the mess hall and ate some cold pickle soup. Fidel wanted to relieve himself in the water can that stood on a stool in the corner, but Balodis talked him out of it.

Then we went into the Lenin Room and sat around a table covered with a red calico cloth. The walls were hung with bulletin boards, posters and printed slogans; the chandelier glittered, and a New Year’s edition of
Lightning
, the bulletin-board newspaper, lay rolled in a tube in the corner.

“Will Communism be here soon?” Fidel asked. “Because my needs are piling up.”

“And how about your abilities?” I asked.

“No problem,” Fidel said. “I have plenty of abilities.”

“For cursing,” Balodis said.

“Not only that,” Fidel said.

Fidel started setting up chess pieces. I rested my head on the tablecloth, and Balodis stood looking at photographs of the members of the Central Committee.

“That’s some name,” he said. “Comrade Dentures.” Just then Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room. “You’d better go to bed, boys,” he said.

But Fidel yelled, “Why is there injustice all around us, Sergeant? Explain why! A thief does time for what he did, but what are we rotting here for?”

“Who’s to blame for that?” the sergeant said.

“If someone could show me the man who’s to blame for all my misfortunes,” I said, “I would strangle him on the spot.”

“Better go to sleep,” Yevchenko said.

At this point we stood up and filed past the sergeant, brushing his shoulder. We sat on the logs in the courtyard and had a smoke, then we set off towards the administration compound.

“Bob, go into the zone and get some fuel, my engine is shutting down,” Fidel said.

“Aha,” Balodis said, catching on, “there’s no potion in the commissary, but there’s always plenty in the zone. The crooks’ll give us some without a murmur. They know we won’t be in their debt.”

He tugged at Fidel’s sleeve. “Give me a cigarette.”

“Smoking is unhealthy,” Fidel said. “Nicotine has an adverse effect on the heart.”

“No, it’s healthy,” Balodis said. “Healthier than vodka. What’s unhealthy is standing around in a watchtower.”

I wasn’t allowed into the zone. The controller on watch asked, “Where are you going?”

“To the zone.”

“On private business?”

“No,” I said, “public.”

“After vodka, is that it?”

“Well, so what?”

“Turn back.”

“Oho,” I said, “so this is socialist justice! You think it’s all right for the recidivists to drink it all up and then go commit another punishable offence?”

“You go after vodka, you get friendly with the contingent, then he uses you for precarious purposes.”

“Who’s that – he?”

“The contingent, that’s who. You’re supposed to feel antagonism towards the convicts. You’re supposed to hate them. And can you say that you hate them? Not that I can see. Where’s your antagonism, I ask?”

“I don’t hate anyone. Not even you, numbskull.”

“That’s my point,” the controller said, and added, “Want a shot from my private reserves?”

“Sure,” I said, “only don’t expect any antagonism.”

I returned to the barracks, stumbling as I went. I crossed the snow-covered parade ground in the dark and wound up in the drying room, where the stove was going and felt snow boots and sheepskin jackets were hanging from hooks. Fidel rushed over to me, knocking over his chair, but I told him there was no vodka and he started to cry. “But where’s Balodis?” I asked.

“Everyone’s asleep,” Fidel said. “We’re the only ones left.”

Then I almost started crying myself. I imagined we were all alone in the wide world. Who was there to love us? Who was there to take care of us?

Fidel picked up a harmonica and made a shrill, piercing sound on it. “Oho,” he said, “I pick up the instrument for the first time and the result is not bad. What shall I play for you, Bach or Mozart?”

“Mozart’s quieter,” I said. “If the next shift wakes up, they’ll come in here and kill us.”

We were silent for some time.

“Dzavashvili has some home-brewed
chacha
,”* Fidel said, “only he won’t give us any. Should we try?”

“I don’t feel like messing with him.”

“Maybe you’re scared of him?”

“What is there to be scared of? I don’t give a damn about him.”

“No, you’re scared. I noticed a long time ago.”

“Maybe I’m scared of you too? Maybe I’m even scared of Kogan?”

“You’re not scared of Kogan, and you’re not scared of me, but you are scared of Dzavashvili. All Georgians go around with hunting knives. They’ll pull out their knives over nothing. You should see the size of Dzavashvili’s
saksan
!* It wouldn’t fit in the top of his boot.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

Andzor Dzavashvili was sleeping right by the door. Even in sleep his face was handsome and a little anxious. Fidel woke him up and said, “Listen, you non-Russian, give us some
chacha
.”

Dzavashvili woke up in fright, the way any soldier in the guard section did if awoken suddenly. He put his hand under the mattress, then took a look at us and said, “This is no time for
chacha
, friend – it’s time for sleep.”

“Give, I say. Bob and I have hangovers to get rid of.”

“How are you going to work tomorrow?” Andzor asked.

“Keep your moustache out of our business,” Fidel answered.

Andzor turned over, his back to us.

Here Fidel shouted, “So, you son of a bitch, you won’t give a Russian soldier any
chacha
?”

“Who’s a Russian,” Andzor said, “you? You’re not a Russian, you’re an Alcoholist!”

Then it started.

Andzor yelled out, “Gigo! Vakhtang!
Vai me! Arunda!
”*

Georgians came running in their underwear, showing deep tans even here in the north, and they started making gestures in such a way that Fidel immediately began to bleed from the nose. Then a fracas began that would be remembered in the barracks for many years. I went down six times and got up around three. In the end they tied me up with telephone wire and carried me into the Lenin Room, but even there, lying on the rough planks, I was still going after someone. It was probably the man who was to blame for all the reverses in my fortune.

Towards morning my mood always goes bad. Especially after sleeping on a cold floor, tied up with telephone wire.

I heard the cook dropping firewood with a crash onto the metal shingles by the stove, and buckets clattering, and an orderly walking down the corridor. Then doors started slamming, and everything filled with the special noise of an all-male barracks where everyone walks around in heavy boots.

After a few minutes Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room and then, bending over me, he cut the telephone wire with a bayonet.

“Thank you, Comrade Yevchenko,” I said, “I won’t forget this when I tell the Voice of America correspondent the whole story.”

“Sure,” the sergeant said, “we’ve got a whole zone of correspondents for you out there.” Then he told me that Captain Tokar wanted to see me.

I entered the main office rubbing my wrists. Tokar rose from behind his desk. By the window sat Bogoslovsky, who had recently replaced me as company clerk.

“This time I do not intend to forgive,” the captain said. “You drank with the trusties?”

“Who, me?”

“You.”

“Well, yes, I drank, so I had a drink, so…”

“Just out of curiosity, how much?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I remember I was drinking from a tin can.”

“Comrade Captain,” Bogoslovsky said, “he’s not denying it. He won’t do it again.”

“I know. I’ve heard that before. I’m sick of it! This time let the military court decide. The days of the old camp garrison are past. We belong to the Regular Army, thank God. And don’t you forget it.”

He turned to me. “You have brought about several ‘incidents’ in the detachment. You disrupt political lessons, you put demagogical questions to Lieutenant Khuriyev. Yesterday you instigated a fight that had a bad chauvinist smell to it. That’s enough. Let HQ decide.”

The captain glanced suspiciously at the door, then flung it open. Fidel was standing there eavesdropping.

“Hello there, Comrade Captain,” he said.

“Well, here we are,” the captain said. “Petrov can serve as your escort to the stockade.”

“I can’t serve as his escort,” Fidel said. “He’s my friend. I can’t escort a friend. I feel no antagonism towards him.”

“But you can drink together?”

“Drinking is another matter,” Fidel said thoughtfully.

“Enough!” The captain slammed his palm on the table. “Take off your belt!”

I took it off.

“Put it on the table.”

I threw the belt on the table. The brass buckle struck the glass. “Pick up the belt!” the captain shouted.

I picked it up.

“Put it on the table!”

I laid it on the table.

“Lance Corporal Petrov, take a weapon with you and march him to the first sergeant for the documents.”

“What’s the gun for?”

“Follow orders.”

At this point I said, “I should have something to eat. You don’t have the right to starve me to death.”