Kerya shows me a bunch of keys in his possession. “These open all 64 flats in a new apartment block,” he says with pride. “It was built by Bulgarians in an international friendship project. I stole the keys from a drunken builder. It’s still empty. I’ve already slept a few nights there. Come home with me. You’ll sleep like a lord.”
The ‘Bulgarian’ building protects us from the 20-degree frost outside, but I grow sick of Kerya’s company. Drink is his only topic of conversation.
“Where do the other tramps sleep?” I ask. “Do the cops make up feather beds for them in the railway station?”
“Not likely. If they catch you sleeping there they give you a good going over, and if the same cop catches you twice you get a month for sure.” Kerya narrows his eyes like a contented cat. “I had to sleep in a basement for nearly three months before I got hold of these keys!”
He reminds me of the legendary Volga tramp who found himself a place under an upturned boat on the beach. Graciously inviting another tramp to come in and doss down beside him, he placed a pile of dog ends before the man: “Have a smoke, brother, don’t be shy. I was in your position myself not so long ago.”
“Where did you sleep before you got the keys?” I ask, wanting to prolong this rare conversation.
“Like me to show you?”
“Why not? There’s nothing else to do.”
Off we go, picking up a few bottles on the way with the remains of my walnut money. Kerya takes me to a shabby block of flats and leads me down to the basement. Although it is night, the scene below is as bright as day, lit by a bonfire of burning tyres. A group of people are sitting around the fire, women as well as men. Their faces are covered in hideous weeping sores produced by a tropical disease that is rife in Turkmenia. The filth in which the tramps live spreads the infection. When the sores heal they leave a deep scar. It is hard enough to behold children suffering from the disease but the tramps look truly repulsive.
Nevertheless, I am pleased at the thought of company so I sit down and produce my bottles. The basement dwellers welcome me as though I was Santa Claus. I’m already three sheets to the wind and after a top-up I feel such a sense of brotherhood that I invite all the tramps over to our Bulgarian house. Kerya drops into a few more basements on the way back. Soon we are about fifty people. We stock up as we go, from every street-corner, bottle-peddling pensioner.
Our Bulgarian house is soon blazing with light and rocking with noise like a Caribbean cruiser gone off course in the night. Some of our guests sing; others recall old offences. Glass windows shatter and curses echo through the rooms. The police arrive before anyone is killed. They drive us out of the building, whacking us enthusiastically with their truncheons as we go. However, they seem reluctant to arrest us, probably through fear of contagion. In the confusion I manage to slip off and make my way back to the station. I’ve had enough of Ashkhabad.
As the train slows to a halt between Artik and Dushak I ask a soldier on the platform: “Can I get off for a smoke?”
With a bored gesture, he points the barrel of his Kalashnikov towards the door. However, as soon as my feet touch the ground he shouts: “Stop! I’m arresting you for breaching frontier regulations.” He points a revolver at my head.
A sergeant comes running up and helps escort me to a separate carriage. There is another man already inside it. The soldiers lock us in and leave. I pull two bottles of wine from my rucksack and give one to my companion. We drink quickly before the soldiers return.
Border guards are recruited from the keenest Komsomol activists, the type of person who will happily inform on his colleagues. Someone must have told an officer that we got drunk after our arrest. At Dushak the interrogating officer is very persistent about this. The soldier who arrested me stands by his side looking so miserable that I take pity on him and say that I was already drunk when I stepped off the train.
Then the officer points to my notebook of crosswords. “What are these?”
“Crosswords, I make them up.”
“Why?”
“It passes the time. I sent one to Smena once,” I babble, “but they rejected it with apologies. They said one of my words was derived from Church Slavonic.”
“Hmm… Why were you trying to cross the Soviet border?”
“Who me? Do I look like a madman? I don’t know a word of Farsi and I can’t run.”
The officer glances at my leg. I sense that he does not believe I’m guilty. But once the wheels of justice are in motion there is no going back.
‘Let’s hope no one trod on the judge’s foot in the bus,’ I think to myself on the morning of my trial. The length of my sentence will depend on the judge’s mood. It’s obvious I’m not an Iranian spy, but I am a vagrant and idleness is a crime against the very foundation of the Soviet state.
My trial lasts a few minutes. I refuse my right to a final word and this probably pleases the judge, allowing him to get away to his lunch. He gives me a year of strict-regime prison with compulsory treatment for alcoholism. There is no hope of remission. I am not overjoyed with this sentence but neither am I tearing my hair out. By this time I know I can survive camp. I only have to remember not to think myself smarter than the others or get mixed up in other people’s business. If I share my tobacco down to the last roll-up and refuse to give way to self-pity then prison life will be tolerable. Still, I feel apprehensive as I await my transfer, wondering what my fellow inmates will be like.
10
Turkmenistan
The prisoner we call Death Number Two glares at me: “Hey, slurper! Are you from Kolyma or what?”
I shake my head. The way you drink your chefir reveals your camp history. ‘Kolyma’ drinkers swallow their chefir in three gulps; ‘Norilsk’ drinkers in two.
“Never mind, let’s have another brew,” Death Number Two picks up his teapot and runs over to the Titan boiler in the corner of our workshop. He rinses the pot, pours in some hot water, sprinkles in a large heap of green tea and runs back to his bench to put the lid on before the tea cools. We huddle together in a circle, smoking rough tobacco rolled in newspaper while we wait for the chefir to brew. The anticipation is even better than the chefir itself. When it is ready Death carefully fills a bowl and pours it back into the teapot, so that the leaves settle and do not get into our mouths.
“Have a punch in the liver, Vanya,” Death hands me a cup.
I have to dope myself with chefir or I won’t be able to do a day’s work. I feel like death myself when I awake in the morning. My head and muscles ache, my guts churn and my skin crawls. After a few mouthfuls of chefir I return to life. I team up with a group of fellow chefirists, for only the very strong or the completely despised can survive on their own.
The huge workshop buzzes like a million beehives. Dust and tobacco smoke hang so thick you can see no further than ten metres. The midday heat rises to 45 degrees so everyone strips to the waist. Bodies gleam with sweat as they bend over their sewing machines.
I work on my own machine, making gloves. This is almost freedom as it saves me from the production line. I can work at my own pace and it is not hard to meet the quota of 72 pairs a day. My pay goes straight to the camp for my keep. The few roubles I earn for exceeding the quota pay for tobacco and tea. Prisoners with wealth and influence buy their quota from other zeks. Freed from the obligation to work, they lounge about smoking opium and hashish.
Most of Ashkhabad’s 1,500 inmates take opium. It is brought in by visitors, delivery-men or sometimes thrown over the fence at a pre-arranged spot. Even the guards will bring in drugs for a large enough bribe. Indian hemp grows in the camp yard. As soon as the buds appear they are picked, dried and smoked in joints.