Any female thief or thief’s companion, any woman who has directly or indirectly entered the world of crime, is forbidden all ‘romance’ with non-criminals. In such cases the traitress is not killed. A knife is too noble a weapon to use on a woman; a stick or a poker is sufficient for her.
It is quite another matter if a man becomes involved with a woman from the free world. This is honor and glory, the subject of one man’s boasting stories and another’s envy. Such instances are not at all rare, but so exaggerated are the fairy tales surround them that it is extremely difficult to learn the truth. A typist becomes a prosecutor, a courier is transformed into the director of a factory, and a salesgirl is promoted to the rank of a minister in the government. Bald-faced lies crowd the truth to the back of the stage, into utter blackness, and it is impossible to make head or tail of the play’s action.
It is undoubtedly true, however, that a certain percentage of the criminals have families back home, families that have long since been abandoned by their criminal fathers. The wives must raise their children and struggle with life as best they can. Sometimes it does happen that husbands return from imprisonment to their families, but they do not usually stay long. The ‘wandering spirit’ lures them to new travels, and the local police provide an additional incentive for a speedy departure. The children remain behind – children who are not horrified by their father’s profession. On the contrary, they pity him and even long to follow in his footsteps, as the song ‘Fate’ tells us:
So have the strength to fight your fate,
Don’t look around for friend or mate.
I’m very weak, but I will have
To follow my dead father’s path.
The cadre officers of the criminal world – its ‘leaders’ and ‘ideologues’ – are criminals whose families have practiced the trade for generations.
As for fatherhood and the raising of children, these questions are totally excluded from the Talmud of vice. The criminal automatically expects his daughters (if they exist somewhere) to adopt a career of prostitution and become the companions of successful thieves. In such instances the conscience of the criminal is not burdened in the slightest – even within the unique ethical code of the world of crime. As for his sons becoming thugs, this, to the criminal, is a perfectly natural turn of events.
Resurrection of the Larch
Quiet
All of us, the whole work gang, took our places in the camp dining hall with a mixture of surprise, suspicion, caution, and fear. The tables were the same dirty, sticky ones we had eaten at since we had arrived. The tables should not have been sticky because the last thing anyone wanted was to spill his soup. But there were no spoons, and any spilled soup was scraped together by fingers and simply licked up.
It was dinnertime for the night shift. Our work gang was hidden away among the night shift so that no one might see us – as if there were anyone to see us! We were the weakest, the worst, the hungriest. We were the human trash, but they had to feed us, and not with garbage or leftovers. We too had to receive a certain amount of fats, solid foods, and mainly bread – bread that was just the same as that given to the best work gangs that still preserved their strength and were fulfilling the plan of ‘basic production’: gold, gold, gold…
When we were fed, it was always last. Night or day, it didn’t make any difference. Tonight we were last again.
We lived in a section of the barracks. I knew some of the semi-corpses, either from prison or from transit camps. I moved together with these lumps in pea coats, cloth hats that covered the ears and were not taken off except for visits to the bathhouse, quilted jackets made from torn pants that had been singed at camp-fires. Only by memory did I recognize the red-faced Tartar, Mutalov, who had been the only resident in all Chikment whose two-storied house had an iron roof, and Efremov, the former First Secretary of the Chikment City Council, who had liquidated Mutalov as a class in 1930.
There too was Oxman, former head of a divisional propaganda office until Marshal Timoshenko, who was not yet a marshal, kicked him out of the division as a Jew. Also there was Lupinov, assistant to the supreme prosecutor of the USSR, Vyshinsky. Zhavoronkov was a train engineer for the Savelisk depot. Also there was the former head of the secret police in the city of Gorky who had had a quarrel with one of his former ‘wards’ when they met at a transit camp:
‘So they beat you? So what? You signed, so you’re an enemy. You interfere with the Soviet government, keep us from working. It’s because of insects like you that I got fifteen years.’
I couldn’t help butting in: ‘Listening to you, I don’t know whether to laugh or spit in your face…’
There were various people in this doomed brigade. There was a member of the religious sect, God Knows. Maybe the sect had a different name, but that was the one invariable answer the man ever gave in response to questions from the guards.
I remember, of course, the sectarian’s name – Dmitriev – although he never answered to it. Dmitriev was moved, placed in line, led by his companions or the work gang leader.
The convoy changed frequently, and almost every new commander tried to find out why he refused to respond to the loud command – ‘Names!’ – shouted out before the men set out for work.
The work gang leader would briefly explain the circumstances, and the relieved guard would continue the roll call.
The sectarian got on everyone’s nerves in the barracks. At night we couldn’t sleep because of the cold and warmed ourselves at the iron stove, wrapping our arms around it and gathering the departing warmth of cooling iron, pressing our faces to the metal.
Naturally we blocked this feeble warmth from the other residents of the barracks who, hungry too, couldn’t sleep in their distant corners covered with frost. From those corners someone with the right to shout or even beat us would jump out and drive the hungry workers from the stove with oaths and kicks.
You could stand at the stove and legally dry your bread, but who had bread to dry? And how many hours could you take to dry a piece of bread?
We hated the administration and the camp guards, hated each other, and most of all we hated the sectarian – for his songs, hymns, psalms…
Silently we clutched the stove. The sectarian sang in a hoarse voice as if he had a cold. He sang softly, but his hymns and psalms were endless.
The sectarian and I worked as a pair. The other members of the section rested from the singing while working, but I didn’t have even that relief.
‘Shut up!’ someone shouted at the sectarian.
‘I would have died long ago if it weren’t for singing these songs. I want to go away – into the frost. But I’m too weak. If I were just a little stronger. I don’t ask God for death. He sees everything himself.’
There were other people in the brigade, wrapped in rags, just as dirty and hungry, with the same gleam in their eyes. Who were they? Generals? Heroes of the Spanish War? Russian writers? Collective-farm workers from Volokolamsk?
We sat in the dining hall wondering why we weren’t being fed, whom they were waiting for. What news was to be announced? For us any news could only be good. There is a certain point beyond which anything is an improvement. The news could only be good. Everyone understood that – not with their minds, but with their bodies.
The door of the serving-window opened from inside and we were brought soup in bowls – hot! Kasha – warm! And cranberry pudding for dessert – almost cold! Everyone was given a spoon, and the head of the brigade warned us that we would have to return the spoons. Of course we would return the spoons. Why did we need spoons? To exchange for tobacco in other barracks? Of course we’ll return the spoons. Why do we need spoons? We’re used to eating straight from the bowl. Who needs a spoon? Anything that’s left in the bottom of the bowl can be pushed with fingers to the edge…