I keep the mirror with me. It is not an amulet. I don’t know whether it brings luck. Perhaps the mirror attracts and reflects rays of evil, keeping me from dissolving in the human stream, where no one except me knows Kolyma and the engineer, Kipreev.
Kipreev was indifferent to his surroundings. A thief, a hardened criminal with a modicum of education, was invited by the administration to learn the secrets of the X-ray laboratory. It is always hard to tell if the criminals in camp are using their own real names, but this one called himself Rogov, and he was studying under Kipreev’s tutelage. The hope was that he would learn to pull the right levers at the right time.
The administration had big plans, and they certainly weren’t terribly concerned about Rogov, the criminal. Nevertheless, Rogov ensconced himself in the lab together with Kipreev, and watched him, reported on his actions, and participated in this governmental function as a proletarian friend of the people. He was constantly informing and made conversation and visits impossible. Even if he didn’t interfere, he was constantly spying and was a model of vigilance.
This was the primary intent of the administration. Kipreev was to prepare his own replacement – from the criminal world. As soon as Rogov acquired the necessary skills, he would have a lifelong profession, and Kipreev would be sent to Berlag, a nameless camp identified only by number and intended for recidivists.
Kipreev realized all of this, but he had no intention of opposing his fate. He instructed Rogov without any concern for himself.
Kipreev was lucky in that Rogov was a poor student. Like any common criminal, Rogov knew what was most important – that the administration would not forget the criminal element under any circumstances. He was an inattentive student. Nevertheless, his hour came, and Rogov declared that he could do the job, and Kipreev was sent off to a numbered camp. But the X-ray lab somehow broke down, and the doctors had Kipreev returned to the hospital. Once more the lab began to function.
It was about this time that Kipreev began experimenting with the optic blind.
The dictionary of foreign words published in 1964 defines the ‘blind’ as follows: ‘a diaphragm (a shutter with variable-size opening) which is used in photography, microscopy, and fluoroscopy.’
Twenty years earlier the word ‘blind’ was not listed in the dictionary of foreign words. It is a creation of the war period, an invention having to do with electron microscopes.
Somewhere Kipreev found a torn sheet from a technical journal, and the blind was used in the X-ray laboratory in the convict hospital on the left bank of the Kolyma River.
The blind was Kipreev’s pride and joy – his hope, albeit a weak hope. A report was given at a medical conference and also sent to Moscow. There was no response.
‘Can you make a mirror?’
‘Of course.’
‘A full-length mirror?’
‘Any kind you like, as long as I have the silver for it.’
‘Will silver spoons do?’
‘They’ll be fine.’
Thick glass intended for the desks of senior bureaucrats was requisitioned from the warehouse and brought to the X-ray laboratory.
The first experiment was unsuccessful, and Kipreev fell into a rage and broke the mirror with a hammer. One of the fragments became my mirror – a present from Kipreev.
On the second occasion everything worked out successfully, and the bureaucrat realized his dream – a full-length mirror.
It never occurred to the bureaucrat to thank Kipreev. Whatever for? Even a literate slave ought to be grateful for the privilege of occupying a hospital bed. If the blind had attracted the attention of the higher-ups, the bureaucrat would have received a letter of commendation, nothing more. Now, the mirror – that was something real. But the blind was a very nebulous thing. Kipreev was in total agreement with his boss.
But falling asleep at night on his cot in the corner of the lab and waiting for the latest woman to leave the embraces of his pupil, assistant and informer, Kipreev could not believe either himself or Kolyma. The blind was not a joke. It was a technical feat. But neither Moscow nor Magadan was in the least interested in engineer Kipreev’s invention.
In camp, letters are not answered, nor are reminders of unanswered letters appreciated. The prisoner has to wait – for luck, an accidental meeting.
All this was wearing on the nerves – assuming they were still whole, untorn, and capable of being worn out.
Hope always shackles the convict. Hope is slavery. A man who hopes for something alters his conduct and is more frequently dishonest than a man who has ceased to hope. As long as the engineer waited for a decision on the damned blind, he kept his mouth shut, ignoring all the appropriate and inappropriate jokes that his immediate superior permitted himself – not to mention those of his own assistant who was only waiting for the hour and the day when he could take over. Rogov had even learned to make mirrors, so he was guaranteed a ‘rake-off’.
Everyone knew about the blind, and everyone joked about Kipreev – including the pharmacist Kruglyak, who ran the Party organization at the hospital. This heavy-faced man was not a bad sort, but he had a bad temper, and – mainly – he had been taught that a prisoner is scum. As for this Kipreev… The pharmacist had come to the hospital only recently, and he did not know the history of the electric light-bulbs. He never gave any thought to the difficulties of assembling an X-ray laboratory in the taiga, in the Far North.
As the pharmacist phrased it in the slang of the criminal world that he had recently acquired, Kipreev’s invention was a ‘dodge’.
Kruglyak sneered at Kipreev in the procedure room of the surgical ward. The engineer grabbed a stool and was about to strike the Party secretary, but the stool was ripped from his hands, and he was led away to the ward.
Kipreev either would have been shot or sent to a penal mine, a so-called special zone, which is worse than being shot. He had many friends at the hospital, however, and not just because of his mirrors. The affair of the electric light-bulbs was well-known and recent. People wanted to help him. But this was Point 8 of Article 58 – terrorist activities.
The women doctors went to the head of the hospital, Vinokurov. Vinokurov had no use for Kruglyak. Moreover, he valued Kipreev and he was expecting a response to his report on the blind. And, mainly, he was not a vicious person. He was an official who didn’t use his position to do evil. A careerist who feathered his own bed, Vinokurov did not go out of his way to help anyone, but he did not wish them evil either.
‘All right, I won’t forward the papers to the prosecutor’s office under one condition,’ Vinokurov said. ‘Provided there isn’t any report from the victim, Kruglyak. If he submits a report, the matter will go to trial. And a penal mine is the least Kipreev can get.’
Kruglyak’s male friends spoke to him.
‘Don’t you understand that he’ll be shot? He has none of the rights that we have.’
‘He raised his hand at me.’
‘He didn’t raise his hand, no one saw that. Now if I had a disagreement with you, I’d let you have it in the snout after two words. Don’t you ever quit?’
Kruglyak was not really a bad person, and he certainly wouldn’t do as a bigwig in Kolyma. He agreed not to send in a report.
Kipreev remained in the hospital. A month passed, and Major-General Derevyanko arrived. He was second-in-charge to the chief of Far Eastern Construction, and he was the supreme authority for the prisoners.