“Why did they arrest you?” Klim asked Elkin.
“The Feodosia authorities got an order to find and detain any Nepmen, bourgeois, and other undesirable elements. They knew me personally—I fixed their cars for them, so they didn’t have to go very far to find me.”
“Did they formally accuse you of anything?”
“They don’t give a damn about formal accusations!” Nina snapped out. “The Bolsheviks need free labor. They don’t understand anything about efficient production, and their outgoing costs are so high that they don’t have enough money to pay the workforce. So, they need slaves to cut down timber in Solovki and work in the mines for nothing.”
Putting an iron pot of water inside the big masonry oven, Nina slammed its shutter. Her movements were abrupt and violent. It seemed she was on the point of grabbing something and smashing it to smithereens.
“How on earth did you escape?” Klim asked Elkin. “I’ve heard it’s impossible—Solovki is on some island in the White Sea.”
“I didn’t get that far,” said Elkin gloomily. “I ran away from a transit camp on the mainland.”
Klim felt a chill run down his spine. Everybody in the USSR had heard rumors of the camps in the north, but there was no reliable information about them.
“Perhaps you’d let me interview you?” he asked. “I’m sure United Press would be interested in your story.”
Elkin looked Klim up and down, scornfully. “So, you’re already thinking how to make a fast buck, are you?”
“I’d just like to know—”
“Mr. Rogov, I have nothing left but my story, and I intend to sell it to the highest bidder. I need to get out of this blessed country of ours, and it costs three hundred rubles to organize an illegal passage across the border to Poland.”
“We’ll give you the money!” Nina exclaimed, her voice full of emotion.
Neither she nor the countess seemed in the slightest bit concerned that Elkin had accused Klim of seeking to profit from another’s misfortune.
Countess Belov glanced at the clock on the wall. “We should put the potatoes on to boil,” she said. “The children will be back from school soon.”
Nina ran out to the yard to the cold cellar, and Klim set off after her.
She opened the hatch and was about to go down the cellar steps when he reached her.
“You never even asked me about the passport,” he said. “I’ve brought you everything.”
She turned and stared at him blankly. “Yes, thank you.”
There was no celebratory dance. Klim stood next to the open mouth of the cellar, breathing in the damp smell of earth and decay.
“It’s fine,” he said. “You don’t have to thank me.”
Nina came out again with a pipkin of small, sprouting potatoes.
“I know Elkin’s your friend,” said Klim. “I just want you to know that once you’ve chartered that boat for the German refugees, we won’t have any money left to live on. I don’t speak German, and it’ll be some time before I can find work. My friend Seibert is a famous journalist in Germany, and he’s barely scraping a living publishing articles here and there…. I hope you don’t mind me speaking honestly?”
“Of course not,” Nina nodded. Her face was wan and miserable. A curl had escaped her comb and hung down beside her cheek.
“I’ll do whatever I can to fix things for us,” said Klim. “But all of a sudden, you come up with some plan of your own like getting Elkin across the border to Poland—”
Nina looked down at the ground.
“I want to help him because it’s so easy to imagine myself in his place. The Bolsheviks are just like the Mongol army back in the middle ages. They ambush peaceful civilians and make them into slaves. If you’re set to work logging or building one of their mines or plants—then that’s it. You’ll end up a cripple, physically and morally…. I was just imagining what would happen to me if they got their hands on me. And it could happen at any minute! What would I do? I would have to rely on the kindness of others—and that’s all Elkin has to rely on.”
Nina took a deep, shuddering breath and put her arm around Klim. “You may not understand what I’m doing, but it won’t come between us, I promise you. Just trust me!”
Klim clasped Nina to him. The problem was he could not just trust her. The paradise they were building was too fragile. One false movement, one strong gust of wind, and the whole thing would collapse. What awaited them then? No waterfalls and sunsets; only jealousy and suspicion.
“It will be better for everyone,” said Nina, “if I give Elkin the money to get him over the border. He can take our dollars out of the country, and I’ll meet him in Berlin. And then we can pay for the ship.”
Klim sighed. “You do as you see fit.” He took the “Book of the Dead” from his pocket and handed it to her. “Here. This is my diary. Read it and then burn it. I can’t take it with me to Germany in any case. All printed material and manuscripts have to pass the censor if I want to take them across the border.”
“So, you’d let me into your innermost secrets?”
“I think we need to learn how to understand each other. Even if it means sharing some painful things.”
“Would you like me to tell you about Oscar too?” asked Nina.
Klim shook his head. “I’m prepared to postpone that particular pleasure until 1976. When you’re eighty years old, I’ll stop worrying that you’re about to leave me, and I’ll be ready to hear your confessions.”
I’m sorry, but I can’t destroy your notebook. So, I will try to smuggle it into Germany. I will read it to you when I am eighty, and you are scolding me about Oscar Reich. Your diary will be proof that we are both as bad as each other.
Tomorrow, Elkin is leaving for Minsk. In the end, he decided to tell me the whole story of his escape from the camp by way of thanking me for paying for his journey.
I will try to record it to the best of my abilities.
Elkin was sentenced to ten years of hard labor and sent off to the north.
The OGPU have the whole system working smoothly now: new prisoners are brought in on trains to the station in Kem town, and from there, they are driven like cattle to the transit camp beside the White Sea. They are referred to as “reinforcements” like soldiers at the front. Nobody hides the fact that they are meant to take the place of prisoners who have died.
The transit camp is a plot of land surrounded by a fence and barbed wire with a couple dozen wooden huts. These huts will house about fifteen hundred people at any one time, all living in atrociously cramped conditions and sleeping on long wooden platforms made of boards. At the end of each hut, there is a space partitioned off for the guards. The guards are prisoners too. They are former OGPU employees who have been sent north after being found guilty of professional misconduct. The only free men among the camp supervisors are the camp commander and his two assistants.
The Soviet camp system is organized as follows: prisoners fight for privileges because this seems simpler to them than fighting for freedom. This explains why none of the guards ever tries to run away or ever turns his weapon on his oppressors.
If you go to a labor camp as a prison guard, you sleep on a separate platform and eat from a special pot. You may even be given a fur coat. You won’t be kept outside in the wind for hours during inspections or sent down to the sea to retrieve the logs driven across the water from Solovki.