So few my roads,
So many the mistakes.
‘What are you playing for?’ Seva spat out his question with boundless contempt; this was considered bon ton at the beginning of a game.
‘These duds.’ Naumov tapped his own shoulders.
‘Five hundred,’ Seva appraised Naumov’s jacket and pants.
In response there erupted an elaborate stream of obscenities intended to convince the opponent of the much greater worth of the object. The viewers surrounding the players patiently waited for the end of this traditional overture. Seva was not one to fall behind and he swore even more bitterly, trying to lower the price. For his part Seva was ‘playing’ a few second-hand pullovers. After the pullovers had been appraised and cast on the blanket, Seva shuffled the cards.
I was sawing wood for Naumov’s barracks together with Garkunov, a former textile engineer. This was night work – after the normal work in the mines. We had to chop and saw enough wood for the day. We came to the horse-drivers’ barracks immediately after supper; it was warmer here than in our barracks. When we finished, Naumov’s orderly gave us some bread and poured cold soup into our pots. It was the leftovers of the single invariable dish of the cafeteria, called ‘Ukrainian dumplings’ on the menu. We would always sit on the floor somewhere in the corner and quickly eat our wages. We ate in absolute darkness; the barracks’ kolymkas lit the card-playing area. At the moment we were watching Seva and Naumov.
Naumov lost his ‘duds’. The pants and jacket lay next to Seva on the blanket. The pillow was being played for. Seva’s fingernail described elaborate patterns in the air. The cards would disappear in his palm and then appear again. Naumov was wearing an undershirt; his satin Russian blouse departed after the pants. Someone’s helpful hands threw a padded jacket over his shoulders, but he cast it off with a jerky movement. Suddenly everyone fell silent. Seva was scratching the pillow with his nail.
‘I’ll play the blanket,’ said Naumov hoarsely.
‘Two hundred,’ Seva responded indifferently.
‘A thousand, you bitch!’ Naumov shouted.
‘For what? It’s nothing! Junk!’ Seva exclaimed. ‘But for you I’ll play it at three hundred.’
The game continued. According to the rules it could not be ended until one of the partners had nothing left with which to ‘answer’.
‘I’ll play the felt boots!’
‘Nothing doing,’ said Seva firmly. ‘I don’t play for regulation-issue rags.’
A Ukrainian towel embroidered with roosters and appraised at a few rubles was played and then a cigarette case with a pressed profile of Gogol. Everything transferred to Seva. The dark skin of Naumov’s cheeks reddened.
‘On tick,’ he said obsequiously.
‘That’s all I need,’ Seva responded in a lively fashion and stretched his hand back over his shoulder; immediately a lit, home-made cigarette was put into it. Seva inhaled deeply and coughed.
‘What am I supposed to do with your ‘tick”? No new prisoners are coming in; where can you get anything? From the guards?’
The ‘rules’ didn’t oblige Seva to play ‘on tick’, that is, on credit, but Seva didn’t want to offend Naumov by depriving him of his last chance to recoup his losses.
‘One hundred,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ll play for an hour.’
‘Give me a card.’ Naumov adjusted his cross and sat down. He won back the blanket, pillow, and pants. Then he lost everything again.
‘We need some chifir,’ said Seva, putting the things he had won into a large plywood suitcase. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘Make some, guys,’ said Naumov. This was an amazing northern drink; several ounces of tea leaves went into one mug – the drink was extremely bitter, drunk in swallows with a snack of salted fish. It totally eliminated any drowsiness and therefore was favored by thieves and long-distance truck drivers in the north.
Naumov’s heavy black gaze roamed over the surrounding company. His hair was tangled. His gaze fell upon me and stopped. Some thought flashed over his face.
‘Come here.’
I came out into the light.
‘Take off the coat.’
It was clear what he had in mind, and everyone watched with interest.
Under the quilted jacket I wore only the regulation undershirt. I’d been issued a field shirt two years earlier, but it had long since rotted away. I got dressed.
‘Now you,’ said Naumov, pointing at Garkunov. Garkunov took off his quilted jacket. His face was white. Beneath the dirty undershirt was a wool sweater. It was the last package from his wife before he was sent off to Siberia, and I knew how Garkunov treasured it. In the bathhouse he would wash the sweater and then dry it on his own body; he never let it out of his hands for a minute, because it would have been stolen immediately.
‘Let’s have it,’ said Naumov.
‘I won’t take it off,’ said Garkunov hoarsely. ‘You’ll have to take the skin with…’
They rushed at him, knocking him down.
‘He’s biting,’ someone shouted.
Garkunov slowly got up from the floor, wiping the blood from his face with his sleeve. Immediately Sasha, Naumov’s orderly, the same Sasha who had just poured us soup for sawing wood, stooped down and jerked something from the top of his boot. Then he stretched out his hand to Garkunov, and Garkunov sobbed and started to lean over on his side.
‘Couldn’t we get along without that?’ shouted Seva.
In the flickering light of the gasoline lamp, Garkunov’s face became gray.
Sasha stretched out the dead man’s arms, tore off his undershirt, and pulled the sweater over his head. The sweater was red, and the blood on it was hardly noticeable. Seva folded the sweater into the plywood suitcase – carefully, so as not to get the blood on his fingers. The game was over. I went back to my barracks. Now I had to find a new partner to cut wood with.
In the Night
Supper was over. Slowly Glebov licked the bowl and brushed the breadcrumbs methodically from the table into his left palm. Without swallowing, he felt each miniature fragment of bread in his mouth coated greedily with a thick layer of saliva. Glebov couldn’t have said whether it tasted good or not. Taste was an entirely different thing, not worthy to be compared with this passionate sensation that made all else recede into oblivion. Glebov was in no hurry to swallow; the bread itself melted in his mouth and quickly vanished.
Bagretsov’s cavernous, gleaming eyes stared into Glebov’s mouth without interruption. None of them had enough will power to take his eyes from food disappearing in another’s mouth. Glebov swallowed his saliva, and Bagretsov immediately shifted his gaze to the horizon – to the large orange moon crawling out on to the sky.
‘It’s time,’ said Bagretsov. Slowly they set out along a path leading to a large rock and climbed up on to a small terrace encircling the hill. Although the sun had just set, cold had already settled into the rocks that in the daytime burned the soles of feet that were bare inside the rubber galoshes. Glebov buttoned his quilted jacket. Walking provided no warmth.
‘Is it much farther?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Some way,’ Bagretsov answered quietly.
They sat down to rest. They had nothing to say or even think of – everything was clear and simple. In a flat area at the end of the terrace were mounds of stone dug from the ground and drying moss that had been ripped from its bed.
‘I could have handled this myself,’ Bagretsov smiled wryly. ‘But it’s more cheerful work if there are two of us. Then, too, I figured you were an old friend…’
They had both been brought on the same ship the previous year.
Bagretsov stopped: ‘Get down or they’ll see us.’
They lay down and began to toss the stones to the side. None of the rocks was too big for two men to lift since the people who had heaped them up that morning were no stronger than Glebov.