Igor Alexandrovich is ashamed of his record and will only say that he was imprisoned for practising illegal abortions. He has been in Kolyma and Norilsk. Because of his medical training he was put to work in camp hospitals. Thanks to that he survived.
Igor Alexandrovich was released after the 20th Party Congress but as a former zek his degree was no use. He went down to Central Asia where he found work in a Tashkent mortuary. After he lost his job through drinking he became a tramp and beggar.
Everyone likes to listen to Igor Alexandrovich’s stories and it seems that he has come to believe his own inventions. He tells us he always carried at least two guns of foreign make, and that he has lost horses, women and dachas at cards. Famous actresses were in love with him and he hired whole restaurants for his week-long parties.
Because of his short sight, Igor Alexandrovich finds sewing difficult and so he never meets his work quota. This means he can’t buy tobacco in the camp shop, and it leaves him squirming. Yet if I hold out my pack to him he declines with elaborate excuses. So I resort to a more devious method. Leaving a packet of Prima on my bench I go to the other end of the workshop. I return to find several crushed and broken cigarettes in my pack, where they have been too hastily replaced. From then on I resort to this method of giving Igor Alexandrovich a smoke. Sometimes he’s so overcome by shame that he drops his precious cigarette and has to scrabble around for it amid the grease and slime of the floor.
Igor Alexandrovich enjoys dispensing medical advice. When I cut my thumb he delivers a lengthy discourse on haemophilia. “On your release,” he tells me, “you should go to take the waters at a spa. Preferably Karlsbad.”
“I shall certainly follow your advice,” I assure him.
A radio loudspeaker hangs over our heads in the workshop but it is hard to hear and anyway we aren’t interested in the nonsense spewed out by Moscow. But when I catch the strains of an old romance, Grief is my star, I switch off my machine to listen. The noise of the workshop bothers me and I glance around in annoyance. No one else has stopped except Igor Alexandrovich who is standing with his head stretched up towards the loudspeaker. Tears as large as a child’s roll down his stubbly cheeks. I don’t know where he is at this moment but he sure as hell is not in prison. I turn away so that he won’t notice me looking at him.
But later Igor Alexandrovich comes up to me. “Do you remember the song Grief is my star?”
“Of course, but I forgot the words.”
“You don’t need to remember them. Words only give a song its shape. When you love something or someone very much its form has no significance. All lovers know this.”
Igor Alexandrovich is released several months before me and the camp is a sadder place without him.
Finally my own release comes. I intend to hang around in the town waiting for Death Number Two who gets out tomorrow. We plan to head for the Kuban where Death has some relations who might give us work. However the camp authorities have other ideas and they put me straight onto a train to Krasnovodsk, that most desolate of cities.
I have not been out of Ashkhabad for twenty-four hours before I’m robbed of my documents. In Krasnovodsk I meet an alkash with a cruel hangover and invite him for a drink. While we are seeing off our third half-litre he crowns me with a bottle. I wake up to find my pockets empty. At least I had the foresight to hide my money in a pouch under my collar. I’m not badly hurt but a few splinters of glass have embedded themselves in my scalp. ‘Well, old son,’ I tell myself, ‘they say you’re never too old to learn, but it seems you’ll remain a fool till you die. Choose your drinking partners more wisely in future.’
I think it better not to hang around any longer waiting for Death. Without my release papers any cop could stop me and send me back to camp. Besides, I want to get out of Krasnovodsk. It is winter and the town is scoured by a cruel, sand-laden wind. I take a ferry to Baku and then a train to Tblisi.
According to legend, Bogdan Khmelnitski of Ukraine once summoned all the vagabonds in his kingdom to Kiev. He ordered straw of the best quality to be spread for them on the city’s main square. When the tramps arrived they laid themselves down gratefully and went to sleep. Then Khmelnitski ordered the straw to be lit around the edges. As their bed blazed the tramps called out: “We’re burning! Save us!” but none lifted a finger to help themselves. When the flames began to lick his feet their chief shouted: “How lazy you are, brothers! Why don’t you cry out that I too am on fire?”
Soviet railway stations are like that square in Kiev. Their warmth and 24-hour beer stands lure us vagrants like wasps to a jam jar, making it easy for the police to pick us up. We’re aware of the danger but it makes no difference. In Tblisi I spend a few days hanging around the station, drinking in the buffet and trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep in dark corners. Eventually my luck runs out. I am arrested and taken to the spets.
My cell is crammed with bare bunks. The small barred window lets in no sun so its light bulb burns around the clock. I’ve been drinking heavily for the past few days and fear the horrors will come on while I’m alone in the cell with no mental distractions.
“Hey, boss, give us a paper to read,” I ask the sergeant when he brings my dinner. As I was being led to my cell earlier I noticed a pile of newspapers on a shelf in the corridor.
“They’re old papers,” says the sergeant.
“So what if they are. I’m bored to death,” I insist.
“Do you really want something to read?”
“Well I’m not going anywhere in a hurry.”
“Okay we’ll give you a paper,” there is a tinge of spite in his voice. An hour later the door opens and he throws in four newspapers. Eagerly I snatch them up and then drop them in disappointment. They are Georgian. I can make no sense of the tiny worm-like letters writhing over the pages.
As I pace around the cell I remember a Conan Doyle story called The Little Dancing Men, in which Sherlock Holmes deciphers a code made up of matchstick figures. Following his example, I resolve to make sense of those worms. However, unlike the great detective, I do not understand the language I am deciphering. The only Georgian word I know is ‘beer.’ Nevertheless, I remember that most surnames end in ‘shvili,’ so by looking for groups of five letters I’m able to work out the characters for sh, v, i and l. The paper’s masthead ‘Communist’ is written in both Russian and Georgian, so that gives me 11 letters altogether. Pictures of Brezhnev and the cyclist Omar Pkhakadze add to my lexicon. Towards evening I am reading the paper aloud without understanding a single word. When the sergeant looks into my cell he can’t believe his ears. He throws in a packet of Prima.
Reading helps pull me through my hangover. The guards tell me the odd word of Georgian which I have to memorise immediately as I’m not allowed pen or paper. Unfortunately my solitude soon ends. My cell fills with tramps and their endless discussions about where they have drunk and how much, what the women were like and who beat the shit out of whom.