“Until last year petitioners for divorce had to make an announcement in their local papers. For example: Citizeness Ivanovna, Anna Semyonova, born 1942, living at 5, Sadovaya Street, has initiated divorce proceedings…
“Prisoners note down the names and addresses of divorced women and then they copy out Turgenev’s letters. Imagine how citizeness Ivanovna feels. She is alone after kicking out the husband who sold all her furniture for drink. Suddenly she receives a letter from an unknown admirer! And written in such effusive language that it makes her head spin. She replies and thus she becomes what we call an external student. Yura and Fedka each have three external students. They sometimes get parcels. There’s a woman in our street at home who married a prisoner after she became his external student.”
“But can’t they see from our address that this is a camp?”
“The zeks say they are working in a secret military plant, which is why the address is just a number. I am sure many women guess the truth but all the same they continue to write. It’s better to receive a letter than nothing at all. Remember the joke about two women friends who meet each other in the street? One says:
‘How’s the old man, drinking?’
‘Yes, the parasite.’
‘Knocking you around?’
‘Yes, the bastard.’
‘Well, you can’t complain, at least he’s in good health.’”
I laugh. Being a married woman in the happiest country in the world is better than being divorced, widowed or single. “Don’t you have an external student?” I ask Oleg.
“I don’t need one. My own wife’s enough. She had me arrested for beating her up. At my trial she pleaded with the judge to let me off but that only annoyed him.
“Lily was the most beautiful girl in town, but everyone despised her because she was born in prison. Her mother came from the Moscow intelligentsia and her father was an army officer, Polish I think. He was shot after the war as a cosmopolitan. After her release from jail Lily’s mother got a minus 20[20] so she ended up in Astrakhan.
“Lily’s mother was a proud and defiant woman. The locals called her a prostitute. You know what it’s like — a single mother coming out of prison, and to make it worse she was a member of the intelligentsia. Lily was a tough kid, always hanging around with the boys and baiting the teachers. She would start a fight for the slightest reason. She often won too, despite her size.
“Soon after they locked me up Lily had our daughter, Sveta. When she wants to see me she comes to the camp, sets Sveta down outside the Godfather’s office and runs away. Then she phones up and demands my release. Sveta screeches like a stuck pig, the guards can do nothing with her and in the end they give us a special visit. Then Lily takes Sveta away until the next time she decides she wants a visit. If he had the powers the Godfather would probably have released me by now.”
The library is separated from the camp schoolroom by a thin partition. School is compulsory for all those under sixty who have not completed the seventh class. Those who refuse have parcels and visits withheld. Teachers are civilian volunteers. The sound of these lessons keeps Oleg and me entertained as we work.
“Masha goes to the shop,” the teacher’s voice reads out.
Some wit remarks: “It’d be better if she came to see us.”
Ignoring him, the teacher’s voice continues: “Who can tell me which is the subject of the sentence?”
Silence.
“You, Kuznetsov, come up to the board, please.”
“What’s the point if I don’t know the fucking answer?” grumbles Kuznetsov, but we hear the scrape of his bench.
“Which word is the subject of the sentence?”
After some thought Kuznetsov answers: “Er, Masha?”
“Correct! and which is the verb?”
“Um, ‘shop’?”
“No. Anyone else?”
“Of course it is ‘goes’ but we would say: ‘staggers’” another voice pipes up.
“How do you mean ‘staggers’?” asks the teacher.
“Well, Masha’s obviously got a hangover and is going for a bottle.”
“No not, ‘staggers’ but ‘waddles,’ because of the huge arse on her.”
At that point everyone throws themselves into an impassioned discussion about Masha’s qualities and failings, her physique and her temperament.
When exams take place candidates spill out of the classroom into the library looking for us. Together we help them solve problems and correct their written mistakes. The teacher does not try to stop us. The more who pass the better it looks for him.
Our camp has a technical school which is supposed to give inmates skills that will deter them from the path of crime. The yard outside the school is full of farm machinery waiting to be repaired. It is protected from the weather by tarpaulin and guarded by an old man who was sentenced for killing his wife. In her death struggle she hit him so hard with an iron that he has a dent in his cranium the size of a fist. The blow altered his mind.
Oleg and I approach the old man one day. “Look here, Grandad,” says Oleg, “it’s a pity to sit here all day doing nothing. If you cut this tarpaulin into strips and sew them together you’ll be able to make a balloon. We’ll bring you some rope; you’ll tie your balloon to your chair, and then you’ll be able to float out of here. If you leave on a moonless night no one will see you. We won’t say anything. It’ll be a secret between the three of us.”
The old man is excited by the plan and for a whole month he busily sews together pieces of tarpaulin. He is eventually caught, but by this time he has taken to sewing. One day he turns up on evening parade in a marshal’s uniform, sewn from tarpaulin bleached white by the sun, and covered in stripes and tin medals made from old fish cans. We cheer as he smartly salutes the camp guards.
It is hard to get used to the camp regime, with endless searches and body counts. For hours we have to stand like sheep in the rain or snow. The semi-literate guards line us up in fives; even so, they usually lose count and have to start again.
Those who want to get out of work cut their wrists or nail their scrotums to their bunks. A man in our cell slashes his wrists with a piece of smuggled razor. I want to call the guards. Oleg just shrugs and says: “Don’t be in a hurry; there’s not much threat of death when the world looks on.”
And it is true; no one dies of a few slashes across their wrists. They do it for show, out of hysteria.
A prisoner named Kuptsev is an exception. He’s always hiding somewhere in the basement or under the roof, slitting his wrists and waiting for someone to find him. He never seeks help himself. When I ask him why he does it he replies: “The sensation of blood draining out of my body is like nothing else in the world.”
Another man rips his stomach open. He stands smiling at the guards, with his dripping guts cupped in his hands. Stories of people who cut themselves up are usually told with a grin but they’re not funny. Everyone responds to cruelty and injustice in their own way.
In camp I find the lack of solitude even harder to bear than the loss of freedom. You’re always in a crowd. This is not so bad when you’re working during the daytime, but at night you sleep among hundreds of men whose faces you got tired of a long while ago. You start to hate your fellow inmates and they you.
At first I am surprised to see zeks turn on warders for no apparent reason, insulting them and getting punished for it. Then I start to do the same thing myself, just to gain some solitude in the isolator.