But it takes a month or two for the official nomination to be confirmed—and what if you can’t be contained within that Hero of the Soviet Union either? “Heroes” are awarded to quiet boys who are models of military and political preparedness—but what if your soul is afire and you want a drink, and there isn’t anything to drink? And why, if you’re a Hero of the whole Union, are the rats being so stingy as to refuse you an extra liter of vodka? And Ivan Koverchenko mounted his horse and, even though it’s true that he had never heard of Caligula, he rode his horse upstairs to the second floor to see the city’s military commissar—the commandant: Come on now, issue me some vodka. (He figured this would be more imposing, more in the style of a Hero, and harder to turn down.) Did they arrest him for that? No, of course not! But his award was reduced from Hero to the Order of the Red Banner.
Koverchenko had a large thirst, and vodka wasn’t always available, and so he had to be inventive. In Poland, he had gone in and prevented the Germans from blowing up a certain bridge—and he got the feeling this bridge really belonged to him and so, for the time being, before our commandant’s headquarters arrived, he exacted payment from the Poles for crossing the bridge. After all, without me you wouldn’t have this bridge, you pests! He collected tolls for a whole day (for vodka), and then got bored with it, and this wasn’t in any case the place for him to stick around. So Captain Koverchenko offered the nearby Poles his equitable solution: that they buy the bridge from him. (Was he arrested for this! Nooo!) He didn’t ask very much for it, but the Poles protested and refused. Pan Captain abandoned the bridge: All right then, to hell with you, take your bridge and cross it for nothing.
In 1949 he was chief of staff of a parachute regiment in Polotsk. Major Koverchenko was very much disliked by the Political Branch of the division because he had failed the political indoctrination course. He had once asked them to recommend him for admission to the Military Academy, but when they gave him the recommendation, he took one look at it and threw it back across the table at them: “With that kind of recommendation the place for me to go is not the Academy but to the Banderovtsy [the Ukrainian nationalist rebels].” (Was he arrested for that? He might very well have gotten a tenner for it, but he got away with it.) At that point, on top of all the rest, it turned out that he had given one of his men an unwarranted leave. And then he himself drove a truck at breakneck speed while drunk and wrecked it. And so they gave him ten—ten days in the guardhouse. However, his own men, who loved him with absolute devotion, were the guards, and they let him out of the guardhouse to go and have fun in the village. So he could have been patient through that guardhouse stretch too. But the Political Branch began to threaten him with a trial! Now that threat shocked and insulted Koverchenko; it meant: for burying bombs—Ivan, we need you; but for a lousy one-and-a-half-ton truck—off to prison with you? He crawled out the window at night, went over to the Dvina River, where a friend’s motorboat was hidden, and off he went in it.
And it turned out that he wasn’t just one more drunk with a short memory: he wanted to avenge himself for everything the Political Branch had done to him; and in Lithuania he left his boat and went to the Lithuanians, saying: “Brothers, take me to your partisans! Accept me and you won’t be sorry; we’ll twist their tails.” But the Lithuanians decided he was being planted on them.
Ivan had a letter of credit sewn in his clothes. He got a ticket to the Kuban. However, en route to Moscow he got very drunk in a restaurant. Consequently, he squinched up his eyes at Moscow as they were leaving the station, and told the taxi driver: “Take me to an embassy!” “Which one?” “Who the hell cares? Any one.” And the driver took him to one: “Which one is that?” “The French.” “All right.”
Perhaps his thoughts got mixed up, and his original intentions in going to an embassy had changed into something else, but his cleverness and his strength had in no wise lapsed: without alerting the policemen at the embassy entrance, he went quietly down a side street and climbed to the top of a smooth wall double a man’s height. In the embassy yard it was easier: no one discovered him or detained him, and he went on inside, walked through one room, then another, and he saw a table set. There were many things on the table, but what astonished him most was the pears. He felt a yen for them, and he stuffed all the pockets in his field jacket and trousers with them. At that moment, the members of the household came in to dine. Koverchenko began to attack them and shout at them before they could begin on him: “You Frenchmen!” According to him, France hadn’t done anything good for the last century. “Why don’t you start a revolution? Why are you trying to get de Gaulle into power? And you want us to send our Kuban wheat to you? It’s no go.” “Who are you? Where did you come from?” The French were astounded. Immediately adopting the right approach, Koverchenko kept his wits about him: “A major of the MGB.” The French were frightened. “But even so, you are not supposed to burst in here. What is your business here?” “… you in the mouth!” Koverchenko bellowed at them straight from the heart. And, after playing the hoodlum for them a while longer, he noticed that in the next room they were already telephoning about him. He was still sober enough to begin his retreat, but the pears started to fall out of his pockets—and he was pursued by mocking laughter.
And in actual fact, he had enough strength left not only to leave the embassy safe and sound but to move on. The next morning he woke up in Kiev Station (was he not planning to go on to the West Ukraine?), and they soon picked him up there.
During his interrogation he was beaten by Abakumov personally. And the scars on his back swelled up to a hand’s breadth.
The Minister beat him, of course, not because of the pears and not because of his valid rebuke to the French, but to find out by whom and when he had been recruited. And, of course, the prison term they handed him was twenty-five years.
There are many such stories, but like every railroad car, the Stolypin falls silent at night. At night there won’t be any fish, nor water, nor going to the toilet.
And the car is filled then with the steady noise of the wheels, which doesn’t in the least break the silence. And, if, in addition, the convoy guard has left the corridor, one can talk quietly from the third compartment for men with the fourth, or women’s, compartment.
A conversation with a woman in prison is quite special. There is something noble about it, even if one talks only about articles of the Code and prison terms.
One such conversation went on all night long, and here are the circumstances in which it took place. It was in July, 1950. There were no passengers in the women’s compartment except for one young girl, the daughter of a Moscow doctor, sentenced under Article 58-10. And there was a big to-do in the men’s compartment. The convoy guards began to drive all the zeks out of three compartments into two (and don’t even ask how many they piled up in there). And they brought in some offender who was not at all like a convict. In the first place, he hadn’t had his head shaved and his wavy blond locks, real curls, lay seductively on his big, thoroughbred head. He was young, dignified, and dressed in a British military uniform. He was escorted through the corridor with an air of deference (the convoy itself had been a little awed by the instructions on the envelope containing his case file). And the girl had managed to catch a glimpse of the whole episode. But he himself had not seen her. (And how much he regretted that later!)