‘His mother kept a whore-house in Minsk before the Revolution. I used to go there,’ Pleve answered coldly.
Pesniakevich emerged from the depths of the corridor with four guards. They picked Pleve up by his arms and legs and carried him into the cell. The lock snapped shut.
Next was Karavaev, manager of the stable. A former soldier of the famous Budyony Brigade, he had lost an arm in the Civil War.
Karavaev banged on the officer of the guards’ table with the steel of his artificial limb.
‘You bastards.’
‘Drop the metal. Let’s have the arm.’
Karavaev raised the untied limb, but the guards jumped the cavalryman and shoved him into the cell. There ensued a flood of elaborate obscenities.
‘Listen, Karavaev,’ said the chief guard of the block. ‘We’ll take away your hot food if you make a noise.’
‘To hell with your hot food.’
The head guard took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and made an X on Karavaev’s cell.
‘Who’s going to sign for the arm?’
‘No one. Put a check mark,’ commanded Pesniakevich.
Now it was the turn of our doctor, Zhitkov. A deaf old man, he wore a hearing-aid. After him was Colonel Panin, manager of the carpentry shop. A shell had taken off the colonel’s leg somewhere in East Prussia during the First World War. He was an excellent carpenter, and he explained to me that before the Revolution children of the nobility were often taught some hand trade. The old man unsnapped his prosthetic leg and hopped into his cell on one leg.
There were only two of us left – Shor, Grisha Shor the senior brigade leader, and myself.
‘Look how cleverly things are going,’ Grisha said; the nervous mirth of the arrest was overtaking him. ‘One turns in a leg; another an arm; I’ll give an eye.’ Adroitly he plucked out his porcelain right eye and showed it to me in his palm.
‘You have an artificial eye?’ I said in amazement. ‘I never noticed.’
‘You are not very observant. But then the eye is a good match.’
While Grisha’s eye was being recorded, the chief guard couldn’t control himself and started giggling.
‘That one gives us his arm; this one turns in his leg; another gives his back, and this one gives his eye. We’ll have all the parts of the body at this rate. How about you?’ He looked over my naked body carefully.
‘What will you give up? Your soul?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t have my soul.’
The Train
At the train station in Irkutsk I lay down in the clear, sharp light of an electric bulb. All my money was sewn into a cotton belt that had been made for me in the shop two years earlier; the time had finally come for it to render service. Carefully, stepping over legs, selecting a path among the dirty, stinking, ragged bodies, a policeman patrolled the train station. Better still, there was a military patrol with red armbands and automatic rifles. There was no way the policeman could have controlled the criminals in the crowd, and this fact had probably been established long before my arrival at the train station. It was not that I was afraid my money would be stolen. I had lost any sense of fear much earlier. It was just that things were easier with money than without.
The light shone directly in my face, but lights had shone in my eyes thousands of times before and I had learned to sleep very well with the light on. I turned up the collar of my pea jacket, shoved my hands into the sleeves of the opposite arms, let my felt boots slip from my feet a little, and fell asleep. I wasn’t worried about drafts. Everything was familiar: the screech of the train whistle, the moving cars, the train station, the policeman, the bazaar next to the train station. It was as if I had just awakened from a dream that had lasted for years. And suddenly I was afraid and felt a cold sweat form on my body. I was frightened by the terrible strength of man, his desire and ability to forget. I realized I was ready to forget everything, to cross out twenty years of my life. And what years! And when I understood this, I conquered myself. I knew I would not permit my memory to forget everything that I had seen. And I regained my calm and fell asleep.
I woke, turned my foot rags so that the dry side was facing inward, and washed myself in the snow. Black splashes flew in all directions. Then I set out for town – my first town in eighteen years. Yakutsk was a large village. The Lena River had receded far from the town, but the inhabitants feared its return, its floods, and the sandy field of the river-bed was empty, filled only by a snowstorm. Here in Irkutsk were large buildings, the hustle and bustle of people, stores.
I bought some knit underwear; I hadn’t worn that kind of underwear for eighteen years. I experienced an inexpressible bliss at standing in line and paying. The size? I forgot my size. The biggest one. The saleswoman shook her head disapprovingly. Size fifty-five? She wrapped up underwear that I was never to wear, for my size was fifty-one. I learned that in Moscow. All the salesgirls were dressed in identical blue dresses. I bought a shaving-brush and a penknife. These wonderful things were ridiculously cheap. In the north everything was home-made – shaving-brushes and penknives. I went into a bookstore. In the used-book section they were selling Solovyov’s History of Russia – 850 rubles for the entire set. No, I wouldn’t buy books until I got to Moscow. But to hold books, to stand next to the counter of a bookstore was like a dish of hot meaty soup… like a glass of the water of life.
In Irkutsk our paths separated. In Yakutsk we walked around town in a group, bought plane tickets together, and stood in lines together – all four of us. It never entered our thoughts to entrust our money to anyone. That was not the custom in our world. I reached the bridge and looked down at the boiling, green Angara River. Its powerful waters were so clean, they were transparent right down to the bottom. Touching the cold brown rail with my frozen hand, I inhaled the gasoline fumes and dust of a city in winter, watched the hurrying pedestrians, and realized how much I was an urban dweller. I realized that the most precious time for man was when he was acquiring a homeland, but when love and family had not yet been born. This was childhood and early youth. Overwhelmed, I greeted Irkutsk with all my heart. Irkutsk was my Moscow.
As I approached the train station, someone tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Someone wants to talk to you,’ a tow-headed boy in a quilted jacket said and led me into the darkness. All at once a short man dove out into the light and began to examine my person.
I realized from his look just whom I had to deal with. His gaze, cowardly and impudent, flattering and hating, was familiar to me. Other snouts peered from the darkness. I had no need to know them; they would all appear in their own time – with knives, with nails, with sharpened stakes in their hands… But for now my encounter was limited to one face with pale earthy skin, with swollen eyelids and tiny lips that seemed glued on to a shaven receding chin. ‘Who are you?’ He stretched out his dirty hand with its long fingernails. I had to answer, for neither the policeman nor the patrol could render any help here.
‘You’re – from Kolyma?’
‘Yes, from Kolyma.’
‘Where did you work there?’
‘I was a paramedic in a geological exploration group.’
‘A paramedic? A doc? You drank the blood of people like us. We have a few things to say to you.’
In my pocket I clasped the new penknife that I had just bought and said nothing. Luck was my only hope. Patience and luck are what saved and save us. These are the two whales supporting the convict’s world. And luck came to me.
The darkness separated. ‘I know him.’ A new figure appeared in the light, one that was totally unfamiliar to me. I have an excellent memory for faces, but I had never seen this man.