Pashka produces two bottles of pure surgical spirit donated by a grateful customer. The next thing I know is an agonising pain in my head and back. I open my eyes to see someone giving me an injection.
“What did you drink?” a voice asks.
“Surgical spirit,” I rasp.
“You can’t get that in the chemists. Where did it come from?”
“A friend gave it to me.”
“That was no friend. If the police hadn’t found you and brought you here you would have died. That was industrial spirit and it has burned up your kidneys.”
It seems that after leaving Tarzan and Pashka I fell into a snowdrift. Some passing police pulled me out and hauled me in to the sobering-up station. A nurse declared me to be on the point of death so they called an ambulance. It would have spoiled their records if yet another drunk died in their charge.
The hospital washes out my kidneys and discharges me. Sober again, I am taken on by a plastics factory. Now I remember how much I hate the working life. When I was drinking the only problem I faced was how to get over my hangovers; now I’m working like a donkey for nothing in return. I hardly earn enough to buy bread. Most of my pay goes to the sobering-up station which I have visited 14 times since returning from the forest. Soon I stop going to work; it seems futile.
The local police are sick of the sight of me. The next time they pick me up they give me a beating and put me on a charge of drunken hooliganism. They wait five days for my black eyes to fade, but even then the judge at my trial asks: “What happened to your face?”
“A bag of fists fell on my head.”
The judge decides I am capable of responding to treatment and sentences me to two years in an LTP.[24] It lies about thirty miles away, beside the village of Spiridonovka. Life in the LTP is easier than in other camps for we are classed as sick men rather than criminals. Our guards are unarmed and letters are not censored.
The village of Spiridonovka is a miserable collection of hovels surrounded by a strict-regime camp and the LTP. While the village children play ‘prisoners and warders,’ driving each other in convoys through the mud, their parents work in the camps. The villagers dedicate themselves to taking care of the prisoners, smuggling in vodka, cigarettes and an astronomical amount of tea.
Treatment is compulsory but I categorically refuse to take Antabuse, despite a promise of time off my sentence if I do so. In the past I’ve swallowed it voluntarily; I won’t have it forced down my throat. They send me to the isolator a few times then give up on me.
The doctor in charge of our treatment is a sadist called Bityutskaya. “You will not receive parcels here. You’ve already caused enough suffering to your families,” she announces. This doesn’t make much difference to me as I have no one to visit me or send in food. Later many of us paint ‘In Vino Veritas’ on the back of our jackets. When the doctor walks past we turn our backs so she can fully appreciate the effects of her treatment.
As I walk into the barracks with the other newcomers an older man comes up and introduces himself: “I’m Vassya-the-thief-alias-Honeycake. I’ve been through Rome and the Crimea, fire and water, brass trumpets and devil’s teeth. I’m the orderly around here, so any of you who fancies a cushy job has to clear it with me first, okay?”
Vassya gives us the once over. Spotting a defeated-looking country lad, he asks: “You there, what’s your name?”
“Trofim Ivanich.”
“You look like an intelligent chap, Trofim. Give me a goose and you can guard the stationery store.”
Trofim persuades his wife to smuggle in a goose. She probably feels guilty for having committed him to the LTP. Trofim is delighted to be given such an easy job and goes off to perform it conscientiously.
At evening roll-call there’s one person missing. Ten recounts establish that the absent man is Trofim.
“Where the hell is he?” asks the guard.
“Working,” someone remembers.
“Where?”
“Guarding the shop,” replies an innocent newcomer.
“Who told him to do that?”
“One of the orderlies,” replies another innocent.
No one can prove anything against Vassya; the goose has already been eaten. Trofim has received his first lesson in camp life.
Unlike many inmates, Vassya is fond of talking about his past: “I grew up on a farm in the Kuban. When the Nazis arrived in ’42 I went to work for them as a groom.” He pauses. “Don’t turn up your noses, brothers. I had to eat. They needed me to look after their horses so they took me with them when they retreated. We ended up in Hungary. By then it was obvious to any idiot that the Germans were losing the war. I slipped away and joined up with our boys in Poland.
“After the war I went home to the Kuban and everything would’ve been fine if my mother hadn’t had to show off to the women at the well. Her neighbours were boasting of their sons’ exploits so she produced a picture of me with my chest covered in medals. Someone noticed these were fascist decorations. I had borrowed a regimental dress for the photograph; I could hardly pose with a broom and bucket of horse shit. So I was denounced and given ten years for collaboration.
“Since then I’ve been in more camps than I can count. The truth is I don’t care much for life on the outside, what with residence permits, housing queues and trade union meetings. After a month I’m ready to see the inside of barbed wire again.”
Early one morning a huge turd appears in the snow near the accounts office where officers’ wives work. It is about twelve centimetres in diameter. Beside it lies crumpled newspaper and a pile of dog-ends. A group gathers around the monstrosity. It could only have been produced by a giant — yet normal-sized footsteps lead to the spot.
Vassya appears to be more affronted than anyone else. “Citizen lieutenant,” he says to the officer who has come to inspect the offending object. “This is disgraceful hooliganism, especially in the presence of women. I propose that everyone’s orifice be measured in order to find out who is capable of such an outrage.”
I have my own suspicions, for that week I noticed Vassya collecting something in a plastic bag which he kept carefully hidden away. After the fuss dies down he confesses his deed to a group of confidants. He says he learned the trick in a camp at Komi.
In the work zone we make shell-timers for a Kuibyshev arms plant. Many zeks throw themselves into the job as a distraction from deadly boredom, but none of them gets remission. The only guarantee of early release is membership of the SVP. Some zeks think: ‘Okay I’ll put on the armband but I won’t inform on anyone.’ But it doesn’t work like that: a zek betrays his fellow inmates as soon as he dons that armband. In a day or two he is racing the other SVPs to the guardhouse to sing for a two-rouble bonus. Weakness of character turns people into informers, and once they have crossed that line there’s no turning back.
We are a friendly brigade. When someone nears his release date we give him a hand so that he can save some extra money. Although the work isn’t too heavy we depend on chefir[25] to meet our targets. Tea is smuggled in by civilian workers and by the prisoner who goes to the village post office for our mail. Zlodian Kitten is the only prisoner allowed out without a guard. He is an artist who paints pictures of kittens on glass to sell in the village. His kittens are all different, with bows and balls and so on. As the local shop only sells portraits of Lenin, there’s a huge demand for his work. Zlodian never returns without loose tea slipped in between the pages of newspapers.
24
A punitive treatment centre: basically a labour camp for alcoholics who were also supposed to receive treatment.