I fell asleep and in my ragged hungry dreams saw Shestakov’s can of condensed milk, a monstrous can with a sky-blue label. Enormous and blue as the night sky, the can had a thousand holes punched in it, and the milk seeped out and flowed in a stream as broad as the Milky Way. My hands easily reached the sky and greedily I drank the thick, sweet, starry milk.
I don’t remember what I did that day nor how I worked. I waited. I waited for the sun to set in the west and for the horses to neigh, for they guessed the end of the work day better than people.
The work horn roared hoarsely, and I set out for the barracks where I found Shestakov. He pulled two cans of condensed milk from his pockets.
I punched a hole in each of the cans with the edge of an axe, and a thick white stream flowed over the lid on to my hand.
‘You should punch a second hole for the air,’ said Shestakov.
‘That’s all right,’ I said, licking my dirty sweet fingers.
‘Let’s have a spoon,’ said Shestakov, turning to the laborers surrounding us. Licked clean, ten glistening spoons were stretched out over the table. Everyone stood and watched as I ate. No one was indelicate about it, nor was there the slightest expectation that they might be permitted to participate. None of them could even hope that I would share this milk with them. Such things were unheard of, and their interest was absolutely selfless. I also knew that it was impossible not to stare at food disappearing in another man’s mouth. I sat down so as to be comfortable and drank the milk without any bread, washing it down from time to time with cold water. I finished both cans. The audience disappeared – the show was over. Shestakov watched me with sympathy.
‘You know,’ I said, carefully licking the spoon, ‘I changed my mind. Go without me.’
Shestakov comprehended immediately and left without saying a word to me.
It was, of course, a weak, worthless act of vengeance just like all my feelings. But what else could I do? Warn the others? I didn’t know them. But they needed a warning. Shestakov managed to convince five people. They made their escape the next week; two were killed at Black Springs and the other three stood trial a month later. Shestakov’s case was considered separately ‘because of production considerations’. He was taken away, and I met him again at a different mine six months later. He wasn’t given any extra sentence for the escape attempt; the authorities played the game honestly with him even though they could have acted quite differently.
He was working in the prospecting group, was shaved and well fed, and his checkered socks were in one piece. He didn’t say hallo to me, but there was really no reason for him to act that way. I mean, after all, two cans of condensed milk aren’t such a big deal.
The Snake Charmer
We were sitting on an enormous pine that had fallen during a storm. Trees are barely able to hold themselves upright in the inhospitable earth of the permafrost, and storms easily rip them loose, tearing up their roots, toppling them to the ground. Platonov was telling me of his life here – our second life in this world. I frowned inadvertently when the Jankhar mine was mentioned. I myself had been in rotten, difficult places, but Jankhar’s terrible fame was everywhere.
‘Just how long were you in Jankhar?’
‘A year,’ Platonov said quietly. His eyes narrowed, and the wrinkles on his forehead became more pronounced. Before me was a different Platonov, older by ten years.
‘But I have to admit it was tough only at first, for two or three months. I was the only one there… who could read or write. I was the storyteller for the criminal element in camp; I used to retell novels of Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells. In exchange they fed and clothed me, and I ate well. You probably made use of that single advantage yourself of an education?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I never told “novels” for soup. I don’t even know what that is. I have heard “novelists” though.’
‘Is that a condemnation?’ asked Platonov.
‘Not at all,’ I replied.
‘If I survive,’ said Platonov, using the same ritualistic formula that introduced any thought concerning things more distant than the next day, ‘I’ll write a story about it. I even have a title: “The Snake Charmer”. How do you like it?’
‘It’s good, but first you have to survive. That’s the main thing.’
Andrei Fyodorovich Platonov, a movie scriptwriter in his first life, died about three weeks after this conversation, died the way many die – swung his pick, stumbled, and fell face down on the stone ground. Proper treatment could probably have returned him to life, because he wheezed on for an hour or more. By the time the stretcher-bearers arrived, he was silent and they carried his small body off to the morgue; he was a frail burden of bones and skin.
I loved Platonov because he didn’t lose interest in life beyond the blue seas and tall mountains – the life from which we were separated by so many miles and years. We’d almost ceased believing in the existence of that life, or rather, we believed in it the way schoolboys believe in the existence of America. Platonov possessed some books, God only knows how, and he would avoid the usual conversations – what kind of soup there would be for dinner, would we get bread three times a day or all at once in the morning, would the weather be clear tomorrow.
I loved Platonov, and I will now attempt to write his story – ‘The Snake Charmer’.
The end of the working day was by no means the end of work. After the horn sounded, we had to take our tools to the storeroom, turn them in, get in formation, go through two of the ten daily roll-calls to the accompaniment of the guards swearing at us and the pitiless abuse and shouts of those of our comrades who were still stronger than us. They too were exhausted and were in a rush to return home and grew angry over every delay. Then there would be still another roll-call and we would set out in formation for firewood. It was a five-kilometer walk to the forest, since all the nearby trees had long since been cut and burned. There was a work gang of lumbermen to cut the trees, but the mine laborers had to carry a log each. How heavy logs that even two men couldn’t carry were delivered – no one knew. Trucks were never sent for logs, and all the horses were sick in their stalls. A horse weakens and falls ill much quicker than a human being. It often seems, and it’s probably true, that man was able to raise himself from the animal kingdom because he had more physical endurance than any of the other animals. It’s not correct to say that man has ‘nine lives’ like a cat; instead, one could say of cats that they have nine lives – like a man. A horse can’t endure even a month of the local winter life in a cold stall if it’s worked hard hours in subzero weather. It’s true that the horses of the local Yakut tribesmen don’t do any work, but then they don’t get fed either. Like the winter reindeer, they dig out last year’s dry grass from under the snow. But man lives on. Perhaps he lives by virtue of his hopes? But he doesn’t have any hope. He is saved by a drive for self-preservation, a tenacious clinging to life, a physical tenacity to which his entire consciousness is subordinated. He lives on the same things as a bird or dog, but he clings more strongly to life than they do. His is a greater endurance than that of any animal.
Such were Platonov’s thoughts as he stood at the gates with a log on his shoulder and waited for a new roll-call. They brought and stacked the logs, and people entered the dark log barracks, hurrying, pushing, and swearing.
When his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, Platonov saw that not everyone, by any means, had been at the work site. On the upper berths in the far corner, about seven men were seated in a circle around two others who sat cross-legged in Tartar style playing cards. They’d taken the only light, a kerosene lantern with a smoking wick that quivered as it lengthened the flame and made their shadows sway on the walls.