The walk back to the Gulag was several miles long, a distance that to the weary prisoners seemed to stretch endlessly. Ramsey put an arm across Whitlock's shoulders and just barely managed to make it, forcing himself along by sheer willpower. They had to walk back along the railroad bed that they had dug that day, and Whitlock was surprised by how little distance they had covered, despite all of their efforts. They worked with nothing but hand tools — picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. With even a few pieces of heavy equipment they could have been far more productive, but the Russians didn't seem interested in anything resembling efficiency. Who needed a tractor when you had slave labor?
They walked past the depressing little village outside the gates of the Gulag, and then into the Gulag itself. From there, the weasel-like man pointed them in the direction of the camp infirmary and let them find it for themselves.
Compared to the other buildings in the Gulag compound, the infirmary was a palace. Whitewashed walls, clean and well-lighted in the dusk, smelling of disinfectant. Beds with actual sheets, so blinding white that Whitlock blinked a few times at the sight of them.
He thought about the crowded and uncomfortable prisoner barracks. How did such a place as this infirmary even exist alongside the rest of the Gulag? There were several empty beds, although these could easily have been filled with the sick and injured. He wondered if those clean beds were mostly for show. Actual sick and injured zeks would sully those boiled sheets.
Most radiant of all was the nurse who came to help them. It was not so surprising that she was a woman — there were a few women working in the camp, but most were old and clad in shapeless clothes on par with burlap sacks. These women were more like potatoes with arms and legs. This nurse was entirely different. A rose in the potato patch.
For one thing, she was young — maybe her early twenties — Whitlock's own age. Blond hair framed her pretty face and she did not wear the typical babushka head scarf, but a proper nurse's hat. Whitlock had become so used to the company of men that for the first time in months, he keenly felt the fact that he was filthy, wore little more than rags, and smelled like a goat.
The young nurse stood there, waiting, her face an expressionless mask.
Whitlock knew that trying to explain anything in English was hopeless, but he tried anyway. "My friend, he is very weak," Whitlock said slowly.
The nurse nodded, and then replied clearly in only slightly accented English. "He looks feverish. Let us get him into a bed."
Whitlock was astonished. Was this infirmary nothing but one miracle after another?
"You speak English," he said.
The girl looked around furtively. She knew that the babushkas in this place watched her jealousy. "I speak English only to do my duty," she said in a loud, deadpan voice.
He helped her get Ramsey undressed and into a hospital gown — again, blindingly white and clean — and then into a hospital bed. By then, Ramsey had drifted off.
"What do you think is wrong with him?"
"I think he has a fever, and he may be malnourished as well," she said.
Whitlock just stared. Other than Ramsey, he had not heard anyone else speak English in months. "It didn't help that he was worked like a dog today."
The girl took hold of Whitlock's wrist and turned it to reveal his raw hands. She made a sound like oh. The mask that she had forced her face into slipped. “Let me do something about those hands," she said.
She sat him down and bathed his hands in a basin of warm, soapy water. The water soon turned pink. Then she smoothed ointment over the sores, and wrapped his hands in bandages. Whitlock couldn't take his eyes off her.
"A Russian who speaks English," he said. "Imagine that."
"Half Russian," she said. "You see, my father was an American.”
Whitlock wanted to know more, but the small, weasel-like man appeared to usher him out. The Russian out of place in the white-washed and well-scrubbed surroundings.
He grabbed Whitlock’s bandaged hands and stared at them as if in disbelief, muttered what was clearly an oath of disgust, and then gave him a shove toward the prison barracks.
Whitlock thought that he might never see his Russian angel again — or Ramsey either, for that matter. Although the prisoners were given a fair amount of freedom to wander the compound in the small amount of free time they had, the infirmary itself was off limits, guarded by stern Russians with rifles that had fixed bayonets. Mostly, Whitlock marched out every day to the work site and swung his pick, helping Uncle Joe Stalin build his railroad.
It was lonely, not having anyone else to talk to. The other prisoners mostly ignored him. Two bunks over was a zek who was in the habit of talking to his chunk of break every evening. The poor man would stroke the bread, smile at it and speak soothing words. Whitlock could not translate the words, but he understood the tone. And then the man would devour his scrap of bread in a few bites, smiling with a look on his face that bordered on ecstasy.
Whitlock wondered how long it would take him to end up like that.
One evening a week later, he returned from digging the railroad bed to find Ramsey back in his bunk. He did not quite look rested or fit, but he was in much better shape than he had been.
"They nursed me back to health," Ramsey said. "So that they can work me to death again. What's the sense in that?"
Whitlock did notice that Ramsey’s hacking cough seemed to have subsided. "Well, you sure as hell sound better than you did."
"It wasn't the cough that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in." Ramsey winked. "In other words, I'm not dead yet."
Whitlock grinned. "Glad to hear it."
He was even happier when the nurse from the infirmary appeared in the barracks.
"I came to check on your hands," she explained. "And on your friend."
The air inside the barracks was cold and foul, but at least they were out of sight of the jealous nurses and definitely out of earshot of anyone else who could speak English. She asked Ramsey how he was doing. Her bedside manner was businesslike.
The nurse had brought along a bag with more ointment and fresh bandages. Whitlock's hands were still a mess from the unrelenting labor. Given time, they would harden into leather. For now, he was glad to let her spread more ointment and wrap his hands in more bandages.
"I'm Harrison Whitlock," he said. "My friends call me Harry."
"Inna."
"EE-nah," he repeated. "Just Inna?"
"Inna Mikhaylovna.” She hesitated, then added, “My last name is Turner."
Whitlock raised his eyebrows. "So, your father really was American."
“Michael Turner. He emigrated here," she explained. “Some Americans did that, thinking that Communism was the best hope for the future.”
"What about you? Were you born here or in the states?"
"I was born here. My mother was Russian."
"So I guess that makes you half American. Your father must have been an idealist to move to Russia.”
“No, he was a fool. I loved my father, but he should have stayed in America.”
She finished bandaging his hands. The last item that her bag contained was a book, a battered copy of The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. She glanced around before taking it out. "This is what I know of America," she said. “That is, besides what my father told me. I thought you might want something to read. Please don't tell anyone I gave it to you. American books are forbidden."
"My lips are sealed." He examined the book and his face lit up. "Thank God. The only thing I've been able to get my hands on were some pamphlets on Communist Party speeches translated into very wooden English. Some kind of propaganda, I gather. The worker is the backbone of society and all of that. Dreadful stuff.”