‘It’s time.’ The orderly was shaking me by the shoulder. ‘And bring back a smoke. Don’t forget.’
When I knocked at Romanov’s door, there was a clanking of locks and bolts, a lot of locks and bolts, and some unseen person shouted from behind the door:
‘Who is it?’
‘Prisoner Andreev, as ordered.’
Bolts rattled, locks chimed, and all fell silent.
The cold crept under my pea jacket, and my feet lost their warmth. I began to beat one boot against the other. They weren’t the usual felt boots but quilted ones, sewn from old pants and quilted jackets.
Again bolts rattled and the double door opened, allowing light, heat, and music to escape.
I stepped in. The door of the entrance hall was not shut and a radio was playing.
Romanov himself stood before me, or rather I stood before him. Short, fat, perfumed, and quick on his feet, he danced around me, examining my figure with his quick black eyes.
The smell of a convict struck his nostrils, and he drew a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket. Waves of music, warmth, and cologne washed over me. Most important was the warmth. The dutch stove was red hot.
‘So we meet,’ Romanov kept repeating ecstatically, moving around me and waving his perfumed handkerchief. ‘So we meet.’
‘Go on in.’ He opened the door to the next room. It contained a desk and two chairs.
‘Sit down. You’ll never guess why I sent for you. Have a smoke.’
He began sifting through some papers on the desk.
‘What’s your first name?’
I told him.
‘Date of birth?’
‘1907.’
‘A lawyer?’
‘Actually, I’m not a lawyer, but I studied at Moscow Uni…’
‘A lawyer, then. Fine. Just sit tight. I’ll make a few calls and the two of us will get on the road.’
Romanov slipped out of the room, and soon the music in the dining-room was shut off. A telephone conversation ensued.
Sitting on the chair I began to drowse and even to dream. Romanov kept disappearing and reappearing.
‘Listen, did you leave any things at the barracks?’
‘I have everything with me.’
‘That’s great, really great. The truck will be here any minute and we can get on the road. You know where we’re going? To Khatynakh itself, to headquarters! Ever been there? It’s OK, I’m joking, just joking…’
‘I don’t care.’
‘That’s good.’
I took off my boots, rubbed my toes, and turned my foot rags.
The clock on the wall said eleven-thirty. Even if it was a joke – about Khatynakh – it didn’t make any difference: I wouldn’t have to go to work today. The truck roared up, the beams of its headlights sliding along the shutters and touching the office ceiling.
‘Come on, let’s go.’
Romanov had donned a white sheepskin coat, a Yakut fur hat, and colorful boots. I buttoned my pea jacket, retied the rope around my waist, and held my mittens above the stove for a moment. We walked out to the truck. It was a one-and-a-half-ton truck with an open bed.
‘How much today, Misha?’ Romanov asked the driver.
‘Seventy degrees below zero, comrade chief. They sent the night shift back to the barracks.’
That meant they sent our work gang, Shmelyov’s, home as well. I hadn’t been so lucky after all.
‘All right, Andreev,’ said Romanov, dancing around me. ‘Have a seat in back. It’s not far. And Misha will drive fast. Right, Misha?’
Misha said nothing. I crawled up on to the truck bed and clasped my knees with my arms. Romanov squeezed into the cab, and we set off.
It was a bad road, and I was tossed around so much that I didn’t freeze. In about two hours lights appeared, and we drove up to a two-story log house. It was dark everywhere, and only in one window of the second floor was there a light burning. Two sentries in long leather coats stood next to the large porch.
‘OK, we’ve arrived. That’s great. Have him stand here for the time being.’ And Romanov disappeared up the large stairway.
It was two a.m. The lights were extinguished everywhere. Only the desk lamp of the officer on duty burned.
I didn’t have to wait long. Romanov had already managed to change into the uniform of the NKVD, the secret police. He came running down the stairway and began waving to me.
‘This way, this way.’
Together with the assistant of the officer on duty we went upstairs, and in the corridor of the second floor stopped in front of a door bearing a plaque: ‘Smertin, Senior Supervisor, Ministry of Internal Affairs.’ ‘Smertin’ meant ‘death’ in Russian, and so threatening a pseudonym (it couldn’t have been his real name) impressed me in spite of my exhaustion.
‘For a pseudonym, that’s too much,’ I thought, but we were already entering an enormous room with a portrait of Stalin that occupied an entire wall. We stopped before a gigantic desk to observe the pale reddish face of a man who had spent his entire life in precisely this sort of room.
Romanov bent politely over the desk. The dull blue eyes of Senior Supervisor Comrade Smertin fixed themselves on me. But only for a moment. He was searching for something on the desk, shuffling some papers. Romanov’s willing fingers located whatever it was they were looking for.
‘Name?’ Smertin asked, poring over the papers. ‘Crime? Sentence?’
I told him.
‘Lawyer?’
‘Lawyer.’
The pale face looked up from the table.
‘Did you write complaints?’
‘I did.’
Smertin wheezed. ‘About the bread ration?’
‘That and in general.’
‘OK, take him out.’
I made no attempt to clarify anything, to ask any question. What for? After all I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t working the night shift in the gold-mine. They could do the clarifying if they wanted to.
The assistant to the officer on duty came in with a note, and I was taken on foot through the settlement at night to the very edge of the forest. There, guarded by four towers and three rows of barbed-wire fence, stood the camp prison.
The prison had cells for solitary and group confinement. In one of the latter I related my past history, neither expecting an answer from my neighbors nor asking them about anything. That was the custom – so they wouldn’t think I was a ‘plant’.
Morning came. It was the usual Kolyma morning – without light, without sun, and in no way distinguishable from night. A hammer was struck against a rail, and a bucket of steaming boiling water was carried in. The guards came for me, and I said goodbye to my comrades. I knew nothing of them.
They brought me back to the same house, which now appeared smaller than it had at night. This time I was not admitted to Smertin’s august presence. The officer on duty told me to sit and wait, and I sat and waited until I heard a familiar voice:
‘That’s fine! That’s great! Now you’ll get going.’ On alien territory Romanov used the formal grammatical address in speaking to me.
Thoughts began to stir lazily in my brain. I could almost feel them physically. I had to think of something new, something I wasn’t accustomed to, something unknown. This – new thing – had nothing to do with the mine. If we were returning to the Partisan Mine, Romanov would have said: ‘Now we’ll get going.’ That meant I was being taken to a new place. Let come what may!
Romanov came down the stairs, almost hopping. It seemed as if he were about to slide down the bannisters like a small boy. He was holding a barely touched loaf of bread.
‘Here, this is for the road. There’s something else too.’ He disappeared upstairs and returned with two herring.
‘Everything up to snuff, right? That seems to be about all. Wait, I forgot the most important thing. That’s what it means to be a non-smoker.’
Romanov went upstairs and again returned with a small pile of cheap tobacco heaped on a piece of newspaper. About three boxes, I determined with a practiced eye. The standard package of tobacco was enough to fill eight matchboxes. That was our unit of measure in camp.