He and I played a fascinating game. Whenever a new passenger entered the car, he and I would try to guess the new arrival’s age and profession. We would exchange observations and he would strike up a conversation with the passenger and come back to me with the answer.
Thus the lady who had painted lips but whose nails lacked any trace of polish was determined by us to be a member of the medical profession. The obviously fake leopard coat she wore testified that its wearer was probably a nurse or orderly, but not a doctor. A doctor wouldn’t have worn an artificial fur coat. Back then nylon and synthetic fabrics were unheard of. Our conclusion turned out to be correct.
From time to time a two-year-old child, dirty, ragged, and blue-eyed, would run past our compartment from somewhere in the depths of the railroad car. His pale cheeks were covered with scabs of some kind. In a minute or two the young father, who had heavy, strong working hands, would come after him with firm confident strides. He would catch the boy, and the child would laugh and smile at his father who would smile back at him and return him to his place in joyous bliss. I learned their story, a common story in Kolyma. The father had just served a criminal sentence and was returning to the mainland. The child’s mother chose not to return, and the father was taking his son with him, having firmly resolved to tear the child (and perhaps himself) free from the vise-like clutches of Kolyma. Why didn’t the mother leave? Perhaps it was the usual story: she’d found another man, liked the free life of Kolyma, and didn’t want to be in the situation of a second-rate citizen on the mainland… Or perhaps her youth had faded? Or maybe her love, her Kolyma love, had ended? Who knows? The mother had served a sentence under Article 58 of the Criminal Code, an article classifying political prisoners. Thus her crime had been of the most common and everyday sort. She knew what a return to the mainland would mean – a new sentence, new torments. There were no guarantees against a new sentence in Kolyma either, but at least she wouldn’t be hunted as all were hunted over there.
I neither learned nor wanted to learn anything. The nobility, the goodness, the love for his child was all I saw in this father who himself must previously have seen very little of his son. The boy had been in a nursery.
His clumsy hands unbuttoned the child’s pants with their enormous unmatched buttons sewn on by rough, inept, but good hands. Both the boy and the father exuded happiness. The two-year-old child didn’t know the word ‘mama’. He shouted, ‘Papa, papa!’ He and this dark-skinned mechanic played with each other among the throng of card-sharks and wheeler-dealers with their bales and baskets. These two people were, of course, happy.
But there was no more sleep for the passenger who had slept for two days from the moment we had left Irkutsk and who had awakened only to drink another bottle of vodka or cognac or whatever it was. The train lurched. The sleeping passenger crashed to the floor and groaned – over and over again. The conductors sent for an ambulance and it was discovered that he had a broken shoulder. He was carried away on a stretcher, and disappeared from my life.
Suddenly there appeared in the car the figure of my savior. Perhaps ‘savior’ is too lofty a word since, after all, nothing important or bloody had occurred. My acquaintance sat, not recognizing me and as if not wanting to recognize me. Nevertheless we exchanged glances and I approached him. ‘I just want to go home and see my family.’ These were the last words I heard from this criminal.
And that is alclass="underline" the glaring light of the bulb at the Irkutsk train station, the ‘businessman’ hauling around random pictures for camouflage, vomit avalanching down on to my berth from the throat of the young lieutenant, the sad prostitute on the upper berth in the conductor’s compartment, the dirty two-year-old boy blissfully shouting, ‘Papa! Papa!’ This is all I remember as my first happiness, the unending happiness of ‘freedom’. The roar of Moscow’s Yaroslav Train Station met me like an urban surf; I had arrived at the city I loved above all other cities on earth. The train came to a halt and I could see the dear face of my wife who met me just as she had met me so many times before after each of my numerous trips. This trip, however, had been a long one – almost seventeen years. Most important, I was not returning from a business trip. I was returning from hell.
Essays on the Criminal World
The Red Cross
Life in camp is so arranged that only medical personnel can give the convict any real help. The protection of labor depends on the protection of health, and the protection of health means the protection of life. The camp director and the overseers who work under him, the head of the guard and the guards themselves, the head of the Divisional Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and all his staff of investigators, the chief of culture and education with all his inspectors – these are only some of the numerous varieties of camp authority. Regulation of life in the camps consists of carrying out the will – good or bad – of these people. In the eyes of the convict they are all symbols of oppression and compulsion. All these people force the convict to work, guard him day and night to keep him from escaping, check to see that he doesn’t eat or drink too much. Daily, hourly, all these people repeat to the convict: ‘Work! Work more!’
Only one person in the camp does not say these terrible, hated words to the convict. That is the doctor. The doctor uses other words: ‘Rest,’ ‘You’re tired,’ ‘Don’t work tomorrow,’ ‘You’re sick.’ Only the doctor has the authority to save the convict from going out into the white winter fog to the icy stone face of the mine for many hours every day. The doctor is the convict’s official defender from the arbitrary decisions of the camp authorities, from excessive zeal on the part of the more veteran guards.
At one time, large printed notices hung on the walls of the camp barracks: ‘The Rights and Obligations of the Convict’. Obligations were many and rights few. There was the right to make a written request to the head of the camp – as long as it was not a collective request… there was the right to send letters to one’s relatives through the camp censors… and the right to medical aid.
This last right was extremely important, although in many of the first-aid stations at the mines, dysentery was cured with a solution of potassium permanganate, while the same solution – just a little thicker – was smeared on abscessed wounds and frostbite cases.
A doctor could officially free a man from work by writing in a book: ‘Hospitalize’, ‘Send to health clinic’, or ‘Increase rations’. And in a ‘working’ camp the doctor’s most important job was to determine ‘labor categories’, the degree to which a prisoner was capable of working. The setting of the different labor categories also determined the work norm of each prisoner. A doctor could even free a man – by declaring him an invalid under the authority of the famous Article 458. Once a person was freed from work because of illness, no one could make him work. The doctor could not be controlled in these instances; only medical personnel higher up on the administrative ladder could do that. As far as treatment was concerned, the doctor was subordinate to no one.