I am there too – on a lower bunk near the door. It’s cold down here, but I don’t dare crawl higher, where it’s warmer, since I would only be thrown down. The upper berths are for the strong and, mainly, for hardened criminals. I don’t have the strength anyway to climb the steps which have been nailed to a post. I’m better off down below. If there should be a fight for the lower bunks, I can always crawl under them.
I cannot bite or fight, although I have learned well all the tricks of prison fighting. The limited amount of space – a prison cell, a convict train car, crowded barracks – have dictated the methods of grabbing, biting, breaking. But I just don’t have the strength for such tactics. I can only growl and curse. I struggle for every day, every hour of rest. Every part of my body prompts me to act this way.
I am called up the very first night, but I don’t tighten the rope that serves as my belt, nor do I button my coat.
The door closes behind me, and I enter the space between the inner and outer doors.
The work gang consists of twenty men – the usual quota for one truck. They are standing at the next door, from which billow clouds of thick, white smoke.
The assignment man and the senior guard look over the men and take a head count. There is another man standing off to the right. He is wearing a quilted coat, felt pants, a fur hat with ear-flaps, and fur mittens, which he beats energetically against his body. He’s the one I need. I’ve been hauled around enough to know the ‘law’ perfectly.
The man with the mittens is the ‘representative’ who can accept or reject prisoners.
‘Don’t take me, sir. I’m sick, and I won’t work at the mine. I need to be sent to the hospital.’
The representative hesitates. Back at the mine they told him to select only good workers; they didn’t need any other kind. That is why he has come.
The representative looks me over – my torn pea jacket, a filthy buttonless military shirt which reveals a dirty body scratched bloody from louse bites, rags around my fingers, other rags tied with string around my feet (in an area where the temperature drops to seventy-five degrees below zero), inflamed hungry eyes, and an incredibly emaciated condition. He has seen this sort of thing before, and he knows what it means. He takes a red pencil and crosses out my name with a firm hand.
‘Go on back, you son of a bitch,’ the assignment man says to me.
The door swings open, and I am again inside the minor zone. My place on the bunk has been taken, but I drag out the intruder. He growls from habit but soon calms down.
I fall asleep as if knocked unconscious but awake at the first rustle. I have learned to wake up like a wild man or a beast – without any intermediate drowsy stage.
When I open my eyes, I see a slippered foot hanging from the upper bunk. The slipper is totally worn out, but it is nevertheless a slipper, and not a regulation-issue shoe. A dirty boy, who has been consorting with the professional criminals in camp, appears before me and addresses someone above me in the effeminate voice cultivated by many of the homosexuals:
‘Tell Valyusha,’ he says to some unseen person on the upper berth, ‘that they brought in some performers…’
After a pause, a hoarse voice responds from above:
‘Valyusha wants to know who they are.’
‘They’re performers from the Cultural Division. A magician and two singers. One of the singers is from Harbin.’
The slipper stirs and disappears. The voice from above says:
‘Bring them here.’
From the edge of my bunk I see three men standing under the lamp – two in pea jackets and one in a fur-lined jacket. The faces of all three express reverence.
‘Which one is from Harbin?’ the voice asks.
‘I am,’ the man in the fur-lined jacket answers.
‘Valyusha says you should sing something.’
‘In Russian? French? Italian? English?’ the singer asks, stretching his neck.
‘Valyusha says it should be in Russian.’
‘What about the guards? Is it all right if I sing quietly?’
‘Don’t worry about them… Do it right – just like in Harbin.’
The singer steps back a few paces and sings ‘The Toreador’ couplets. His breath frosts each time he exhales.
The singing is followed by a deep growl, and the voice from above commands:
‘Valyusha says to sing a song.’
The singer grows pale and tries again:
Whisper, my golden one,
Whisper, beloved,
Whisper, my golden taiga.
Twist and turn, pathways,
One after the other,
Through our free and handsome taiga.
‘Valyusha says that was good,’ the voice utters from above.
The singer sighs in relief. Wet from nervousness, his steaming forehead looks as if it were surrounded by a halo. The singer wipes his brow with his palm, and the halo disappears.
‘Now take off your jacket,’ the voice says. ‘Here’s a replacement.’ A padded coat is tossed down from above.
The singer silently takes off his jacket and puts on the padded coat.
‘You can go now,’ the voice says from above. ‘Valyusha wants to sleep.’
The Harbin singer and his companions disappear in the barracks’ fog.
I move back from the edge of the bunk, curl up, and fall asleep with my hands pushed up in the sleeves of my padded coat. In what seems like no more than a moment, however, I am awakened by a loud, emotional whispering:
‘My friend and I were walking down a street in Ulan-Bator. It was time to eat, and there was a Chinese cafeteria on the corner. We went in and saw they had Chinese meat pies on the menu. I’m from Siberia, and I know our Siberian meat pies – the kind they make in the Urals. But these were Chinese. We decided to order a hundred. The Chinese manager burst out laughing; said that would be a lot and grinned from ear to ear. Well, how about ten? He kept laughing; said that would be a lot. So we ordered two. He shrugged his shoulders, went off to the kitchen, and brought them out. Each one was the size of your hand and had hot grease poured all over it. The two of us ate half of one and left.’
‘Let me tell you what happened to me one time…’
It takes a considerable effort of the will to stop listening and fall asleep again.
The smell of smoke awakens me. Above me, in the criminal kingdom, they are smoking. Someone with a home-made cigar climbs down, and the pungent aroma wakes everyone below.
Again I hear a whispering: ‘You can’t imagine how many cigarette butts there were back at the Party Regional Office in Severnoye. My God, oh, my God! Aunt Polly, our cleaning lady, was constantly complaining that she couldn’t get everything swept up. And I didn’t even understand what a butt was back then…’
I fall asleep again.
Someone jerks my foot. It is the assignment man. His inflamed eyes are furious. At his command, I come out into the yellow strip of light by the door.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘so you don’t want to go to the mine.’
I am silent.
‘How about a warm collective farm, damn you! I’d go myself.’
‘No.’
‘How about a road gang? To tie brooms. Think about it.’
‘I know your brooms,’ I say. ‘Today I tie brooms, and tomorrow they bring me a wheelbarrow.’
‘Just what do you want?’
‘To go to the hospital. I’m sick.’
The assignment man writes something in his notebook and goes away. Three days later a medic comes to the minor zone and calls for me. He measures my temperature, looks at the ulcers on my back, and rubs in some sort of ointment.
Vaska Denisov, Kidnapper of Pigs
He had to borrow a pea jacket from a friend for this evening’s journey. Vaska’s own pea jacket was too dirty and torn for him to take two steps through the civilian village. Anyone might stop him.