‘When Dima was with me in exile there was no reason to worry about him,’ says Pavel. ‘It was just our life, his mother and me, and later our daughter Lara when she was born. There was no reason specifically to worry. I was the only one technically punished. We had a hard life and it was tough. It was extremely cold. I almost died from a bad case of pneumonia when I was working in the mines. There was a doctor who became my friend; he worried about me and they sent me to hospital. They didn’t want me to die on their watch. It would be bad publicity. But that was only happening to me, so there was no fear at all. But here I was, already a pretty aged man living in comfortable America. And suddenly my son gets sucked back into that life.’
TEN
‘Okay, hands against the wall! Hands against the wall, bags on the ground!’
There’s a five-metre-high gate behind them, and in front of them is another set of identical gates with tight rolls of barbed wire over the top. A blinding spotlight is trained on them, dogs are barking all around.
‘Pick up your bags! Turn left! Keep one hand behind your back. Move!’
Ropes are hanging vertically and horizontally from the brightly lit windows, socks are being pulled across the wall. And Dima knows it’s the doroga – the road. He looks up, and the feeling he has when he sees it is… is joy. He knows what all this is and he’s finally going to experience it. He knows it from books, from family stories, from songs sung at home. It’s in his blood. And now he’s here, he’s actually going to live it. But the air is filled with screaming and thumping. He glances at the faces of his friends. A guard pokes him in the back.
‘Move!’
In an instant the joy deflates. No, this isn’t a book. This is real.
They’re each issued the standard bedroll, an aluminium bowl, aluminium spoon, aluminium mug. Then they’re taken out into a long broad corridor with rows of pitted metal doors on either side. The hallway echoes with clinking keys, shouted orders, the cries of the other prisoners. One of the hatches ahead is open, Frank can see a face squeezed through the gap, and as he gets closer he can see it’s Kieron. Their eyes meet. He doesn’t look good. Wide eyes, messy hair.
Frank is stopped outside a door. The guard pulls it open and pushes him inside. It smells of cigarettes and damp. In front of him two men are pulling a rope through the window, and Frank thinks, Christ almighty, they’re getting the drugs in, I’ll keep well out of that, I’ll just keep myself to myself.
But a moment later the men have dropped the rope and are questioning him.
‘Name? Birthday? Where you born?’
Frank bites his lip. He considers ignoring them but he thinks better of it. He gives them his full name and date of birth.
‘Where you born? What crime?’
Frank tells them. He sees one of the guys writing it all down, then the Russian drops a scrap of paper into a sock and it disappears out the window. And Frank thinks, fuck, identity theft! What an idiot! I’ve been here one minute and I get suckered. They’re gonna rob my bank account. I’m stuck in prison, this goes to the bosses and they sell it to some guy on the outside. Unbelievable.
Dima is standing outside cell 306. He rubs his short salt and pepper hair, scratches his beard and pushes his round, steel-rimmed spectacles up his nose. The guard inserts a huge key into the lock. The door swings open. Dima steps inside, he puts down his pink bag and the door slams shut behind him.
And he thinks, yes, definitely a Solzhenitsyn moment.
Dima knows the protocol from the books. There are four beds, three inmates. The bottom beds are taken, he nods to his cellmates and throws the bag onto a top bunk, turns around and introduces himself.
‘Litvinov, Dimitri. Born in sixty-two.’
‘Vitaly.’
The other guy says, ‘I am Alexei. Welcome.’
Then Vitaly says, ‘What are they charging you with?’
‘Piracy.’
Dima’s cellmates stand silent for a moment before they both make incredulous little circles with their lips. ‘Ooooohhh,’ says Vitaly. ‘We’ve been expecting you. Sit down sit down, be comfortable, my friend. Yes yes, we knew you were coming. Didn’t know we’d have one of you in this cell, but we knew you were coming to SIZO-1. Some of your friends are already here. There was a memorandum from the kotlovaya, the boss cell, it said we should be positive and co-operative with you. In the criminal hierarchy you’re pretty high up, you know. Because you’re sufferers. You’ve suffered from an absolute injustice. Yes yes, we knew you were coming. We’ve known for a week. We knew before your judge found out.’
Down the corridor Frank is lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, pondering those words shouted at him through a cell door back at the courthouse on Thursday. You’ve got some fucking questions to answer. It’s your fault we’re getting sent down. Is all this his fault? He was in charge of the action, that much is true, but surely nobody could have known the Russians would overreact like this? He knows who said it, and he knows some of the others will be thinking the same thing. Even if he gets out of here, he’s still going to get shit from them. But then, maybe they’re right. Or maybe not. Jesus, who knows?
Then Frank gets tapped on the shoulder and he’s handed a little scrap of paper. It’s from Dima, it says, This place is fucking cool man, my cellmates are fucking great, I could stay here for months! Then Phil sends him a note saying, Frank old bean, nice of you to join us! Then another one from Phil. Beware the soup, here be dragons!
Next door, Vitaly grabs Dima’s hand and sits him down on the bed. And in furious excited Russian he launches into a crash course in surviving Murmansk SIZO-1.
‘It’s probably kind of weird for you, and scary to be here. But listen, Dima, people live here.’ He’s in his thirties with dark hair, yellow teeth, maybe Uzbek roots, possibly Tartar. He has light coffee-coloured skin with an alcoholic face, but he’s been in prison so long the booze has drained from his cheeks. His skin is dry and shot with red hairlines from burst capillaries. ‘This is not the end of the world, people live here just fine, and you will be fine here too. How many of you are there?’
‘Thirty.’
‘Thirty, right. Okay, well you can talk to them on the doroga, it goes all night, it goes to all the cells, you can send a message, there’s no problem. We have another big group here, seventeen men. A gang. They shot up a nightclub. They stay as a gang here by communicating on the doroga.’ He points at the wall. ‘You see these shelves? We put all the stuff on there. Anything that’s on the shelf you take, and anything you have that you want to share with us you put on the shelf. If there’s something you don’t want to share, keep it in your bag. If someone takes it from your bag they’re a bitch and an arsehole, so nobody does that. So whatever you have, put it on the shelf. You’re with us here now, we share everything and you should too.’
‘Okay, cool, got it. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.’
‘Exactly. Okay, what else? You have the morning inspection, and after they’re done they say, “Do you have any complaints or questions?” And you’d better not say yes, because it doesn’t matter what you say. If you say you have a problem, they’ll give you a real problem. So just say nothing.’
There’s a bang on the wall, Vitaly holds up a hand in apology, jumps up and pulls a sock into the cell. He unfolds the note.