Dubrovlag, that was the name they offered to the pestilence of fences and huts in Mordovia. The Oak Leaf camps. And after Iosif came Malenkov. And after Malenkov came Krushchev. And after Krushchev came Brezhnev. Each in his time has painted over the inheritance of his predecessor, but the Oak Leaf camps have remained because they have been necessary for each new Czar's survival. Where the planners and architects of Iosif first planted their stakes and hung their wire, there remain posts and fences and watch-towers with searchlights and traversing machine-guns. If it is hard to remember you, Iosif, we can come to the Dubrovlag and watch the slow march of the men who have replaced your prisoners in the Oak Leaf camps.
For thirty miles the branch line from Pot'ma winds north across the desolation of the prisonscape.
Past Camp 18 and Camp 6.
The hamlet of Lesnoy.
Camp 19 and Camp 7 and Camp 1.
The village of Sosnovka.
The station at Sal'khoz, across the road from Vindrey to Promzina.
Over the bridge that spans the turgid flowing stream at Lepley and past Camp 5, and sub-Camp 5 where the foreigners are held incommunicado from the domestic fodder of the Colonies.
Past the farm where the short-term prisoners work under the guard of rifles and dogs, past the fields where beet and potato sprout from the long-used soil.
Past the twins of Camp 4 and Camp 10, one to the left and one to the right of the single track line.
Through the township of Yavas, over the bridge of rusted steel that crosses the river, and past Camp 11 and Camp 2. where the Central Investigation Prison has been built with concrete to house those who face interrogation for misde-meanours committed within the barbed wire and free-fire corridors.
Past more fields where the work is back-breaking and by hand, past the station at Lesozavad and to the hamlet of Barashevo. Here is Camp 3, here is the Central Administration complex. Here at Barashevo are buffers on the siding track because few of the trains that run north from Pot'ma have need to travel further.
The camps are rooted in the history of the state, but dedicated also to the present, and will be a part too of the future. They have their permanence, they have their place.
They are indestructible.
They are all criminals, of course, who ride in the Stolypin carriages from Pot'ma on the way to Barashevo. All have been convicted by legally constituted courts. There are some who have stolen from banks, there are some who have read poetry in Pushkin Square in Moscow. There are some who have raped virgin teenage girls in the darkness of an alley way, there are some who have taught their children the liturgy and practices of the church of the Seventh Day Adventists. There are some who have corruptly manipulated the production of state factories for their own personal gain, there are some who have covertly passed on the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And there are some who are traitors. They are all criminals, those who live in the barracks huts of the camps, and those who will join them when the train reaches the platforms of Barashevo.
It had been a luxury, the journey from Moscow to Pot'ma., Only three to share a compartment. And a luxury, too, had been the cell on the second floor of the hospital block at Vladimir. And luxuries are temporary.
There were fifteen of them in the compartment, crammed and squashed for three hours since their loading from the Transit gaol. Difficult to move, hideous to breathe in the shuttered carriage. The tight smell of men who have not washed their bodies or known clean clothes. All together, elbows in ribs, knees in calves, packed tight and swaying with the motion of the train as it struggled north.
When he had woken from a faint sleep on the ice cold floor of the cell, Holly had known that the lice had found him. Creeping little bastards in the hair of his head and his stomach, and he had gouged with his fingernails at the flesh under his clothes. The men who sat or lay near to him on the floor had watched with a curiosity that a man who was held in the Transit gaol at Pot'ma should concern himself with such a small matter as the pin-sharp biting of the louse. Only an old man with his white hair cropped short and worn as a Jew's cap had spoken to Holly with the wry grin of experience at his mouth. They were nothing, the lice at Pot'ma, the old man said. At the Transit at Alma-Ata there were bugs that saturated the walls of the holding cells, red and fast with their crawl, with a bite like scissors. And at the Transit at Novosibirsk there were rats, great grey pigs, a tail as thick as your little finger, and the men in the holding cells slept in a laager in the centre of the floor and changed the watch in the dark hours so that always some men guarded the edge of their perimeter. So, what were a few lice? Holly had talked with the old man and realized only later that when he spoke all those who were within earshot had listened and tried to learn about him from his words. He was the outsider, he came from beyond the corrals of the big camp, from beyond the wire of the little camp. Though he spoke in Russian, the language that his parents had given him, he was from without the walls that bounded their experience. They examined him with their eyes and ears. They might have wished to touch him. They were without hostility and without friendship. They were interested in an object to which they had not before been exposed.
There had been eighty men in the cell trying to sleep away the cold of the night.
There had been fifteen men in the compartment of the train trying to endure the rattling movement on the rails.
And the train had stopped. They heard the barking of the dogs, the shouting of orders, and they waited because that is the lot of prisoners.
For how long, Holly? For fourteen years.
In the cell at Pot'ma Transit the old man had kissed him, the door was opened, the guards were calling names. Holly and the majority were to travel, the old man waited for another transport to another destination. He had kissed Holly, wetly on each cheek, and he had not cared who had seen him, and he had whispered in Holly's ear. In the Dubrovlag, he had said, pity for others is always possible, but self-pity is never possible. He had pulled Holly's ear then and crackled a laugh, and Holly had slapped his shoulder in a kind of gratitude.
The wind swept aside the foetid air of the compartment as the door was unbolted. The guards who waited below them stamped their feet, beat down the snow beneath their boots.
Some from the carriage could jump down and then slither into the lines they must form. Some must be helped.
Beyond the platform stood the camp. An outer gate was open, an inner gate was closed. They stood in three rows of five, to be counted and then marched forward. On the ice one man fell and was scooped back to his feet by those who were behind him. Not really a march, not even a brisk tramp, but a shuffling movement forward towards the opened gate.' Holly saw the high wooden fence of vertical overlapping boards and above it the rise of steep angled roofs and in the corners were watch-towers built up on stilts with the platform reached by open ladder. They kept the dogs close to the prisoners.
Put on a show, Holly…
He walked with his back straight and his shoulders firm.
And the other men saw him, and some would have sniggered at the fall that would follow such arrogance, and a few would have suffered in the knowledge that defiance brings only pain and punishment, and for one or two or three the young man who ambled erect in the first rank was a donor of comfort.
It was not the proper way of things that one man should walk as if with indifference towards the opened gates of Camp 3 at Barashevo, and the guards watched him, and the dogs eyed him. Self-pity is never possible; do not forget that, Holly. Sejf-pity is unacceptable.
The gates were pushed shut behind them. A beam cracked down into its sockets. More shouting, more orders. To Holly's right, lights glowed from the warmth of the Administration block where the windows were misted and the scent of coal smoke billowed from a brick chimney. The inner gates opened. In front of him Holly could see the expanse of the snow-draped camp. He had reached the Correctional Labour Colony in the Dubrovlag with the designated administrative title of ZhKh 385/3/1. He had arrived at Camp 3, Zone 1 (Strict Regime). He thought it was a Sunday, the eighth day after the death of a man in the Coronary Care unit of the Hammersmith Hospital.