Five years! Ten years! Twenty-five years!
But she had to excuse these guards their callousness — they were overworked, they had so many people to deal with, so many prisoners to process. As they called out the sentences she observed the same reaction from almost every prisoner: disbelief. Was any of this real? It felt dreamlike, as though they’d been plucked out of the real world and thrown inside an entirely new world where no one was sure of the rules. What laws governed this place? What did people eat? Were they allowed to wash? What did they wear? Did they have any rights? They were newborn with no one to protect them and no one to teach them the rules.
Guided out of the processing room onto the station platform, her arm held by the guard, Raisa didn’t board the train. Instead, she waited as all the other prisoners were loaded onto the row of carriages, converted cattle carts used to transport prisoners to the Gulags. The platform, though part of Kazan station, had been constructed so as to be hidden from the view of regular passengers. When Raisa had been moved from the basement of the Lubyanka to the station she’d been transported in a black truck with the words FRUIT VEGETABLES painted across it. She understood this was no cruel joke on the part of the State but part of the attempt to conceal the scale of arrests. Was there a person alive who didn’t know someone who’d been arrested? And yet the pretence of secrecy was zealously maintained, an elaborate charade fooling no one.
At a guess there were several thousand prisoners on the platform. They were being forced into carriages in such a way that it seemed as if the guards were trying to break some record, hundreds being beaten into spaces which, at a glance, should take no more than thirty or forty. But she’d already forgotten — the rules of the old world no longer applied. This was the new world with new rules and space for thirty was space for three hundred. People didn’t need air between them. Space was a precious commodity in the new world, one that couldn’t be wasted. The logistics of moving people were no different from the logistics of moving grain; pack it in and expect to lose five per cent.
Amongst these people — people of all ages, some in fine tailored clothes, most in tattered rags — there was no sign of her husband. As a matter of routine families were broken up in the Gulags, sent to opposite sides of the country. The system took pride in breaking bonds and ties. The only relationship which mattered was a person’s relationship with the State. Raisa had taught that lesson to her students. Presuming that Leo would be sent to another camp she was surprised when her guard stopped her on the platform, ordering her to wait. She’d been made to wait on the platform before, when they’d been banished to Voualsk. This was a particular trait of Vasili, who seemed to delight in witnessing as much of their humiliation as possible. It wasn’t enough that they suffer. He wanted a ringside seat.
She saw Vasili coming towards her, leading an older man with a stooped back. Less than five metres away she recognized this man as her husband. She stared at Leo, bewildered at his transformation. He was frail, aged by ten years. What had they done to him? When Vasili let go of him he seemed ready to fall over. Raisa propped him up, staring into his eyes. He recognized her. She placed her hand on his face, feeling his brow:
— Leo?
It took him an effort to reply, his mouth shaking as he tried to pronounce the word.
— Raisa.
She turned to Vasili, who was watching all of it. She was angry that there were tears in her eyes. He’d want that. She wiped them away. But they wouldn’t stop.
Vasili couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It wasn’t that he didn’t have exactly what he’d always wanted. He did, and more. Somehow he’d expected his triumph, and this was the crowning moment of it, to be sweeter. Addressing Raisa, he said:
— It’s usual for husbands and wives to be separated. But I thought you might like to take this journey together, a small act of my generosity.
Of course, he meant the words ironically, viciously, but they stuck in his throat and gave him no satisfaction. He was curiously aware of his actions as pathetic. It was the absence of any real opposition. This man who’d been his target for so long was now weak, beaten and broken. Instead of feeling stronger, triumphant, he felt as if some part of him had been damaged. He cut short the speech he’d planned and stared at Leo. What was this feeling? Was it a kind of affection for this man? The idea was ridiculous: he hated him.
Raisa had seen that look before in Vasili. His hatred wasn’t professional; it was an obsession, a fixation, as if unrequited love had grown awful, twisted into something ugly. Though she felt no pity for him she supposed that once upon a time there might have been something human inside of him. He gestured at the guard, who shoved them towards the train.
Raisa helped Leo up into the carriage. They were the last prisoners to be loaded in. The door slid shut after them. In the gloom she could feel hundreds of eyes staring at them.
Vasili stood on the platform, his hands behind his back.
— Have arrangements been made?
The guard nodded.
— Neither of them will reach their destination alive.
One Hundred Kilometres East of Moscow
12 July
Raisa and Leo crouched at the back of the carriage, a position they’d occupied since boarding the previous day. As the last prisoners on, they’d been forced to make do with the only space left. The most coveted positions, the rough wooden benches which ran along the walls at three different heights, had all been taken. On these benches, which were little more than thirty centimetres wide, there were up to three people lying side by side, pressed together as close as if they were having sex. But there was nothing sexual about this terrified intimacy. The only space Leo and Raisa had found was near a hole the size of a fist cut out of the floorboards — the toilet for the entire carriage. There was no division, no partition, no option but to defecate and urinate in full view. Leo and Raisa were less than a foot from the hole.
Initially, in this stinking darkness, Raisa had felt uncontrollably angry. The degradation wasn’t only unjust, appalling, it was bizarre — wilfully malicious. If they were going to these camps to work, why were they being transported as if they were intended for execution? She’d stopped herself from pursuing this line of thought: they wouldn’t survive like this, fired up with indignation. She had to adapt. She kept reminding herself:
New world, new rules.
She couldn’t compare her situation to the past. Prisoners had no entitlements and should have no expectations.
Even without a watch or a view of the world outside, Raisa knew it must be past midday. The steel roof was being cooked by the sun, the weather collaborating with the guards, inflicting a steady punishment, radiating an unrelenting heat on the hundreds of bodies. The train moved with such sluggishness that no breeze came through the small slits in the timber walls. What little breeze there might have been was soaked up by the prisoners lucky enough to sit on the benches.