Kolyma Tales Read online

  How many the mistakes I have made.

  “What are you staking?” Sevochka asked, his clenched lips expressing infinite contempt—this was considered the height of good manners at the start of a game.

  “These rags of mine: this suit,” replied Naumov, clapping his hands to his shoulders.

  “I’ll call that five hundred, then,” was Sevochka’s evaluation of Naumov’s clothes. The response was a loud and lengthy series of obscenities, meant to persuade the opponent that the stake was worth far more. The spectators crowding around the players patiently waited for this traditional opening move to end. Sevochka gave as good as he got, cursing even more viciously in order to knock the price down. In the end Naumov’s clothes were valued at a thousand. In response, Sevochka staked a few well-worn sweaters. After the sweaters had been valued and thrown down on the quilt, Sevochka shuffled the cards.

  Garkunov, a former textile engineer, and I were sawing firewood for Naumov’s barracks. This was moonlighting. After our day’s work at the pit face, we had to saw and chop enough firewood to last twenty-four hours. As soon as supper was over, we went to see the horse herders; it was warmer there than in our barracks. After we’d done the job, the man on duty in Naumov’s barracks would fill our pans with cold “broth,” the leftovers from the sole and invariable dish, which in the refectory was called “Ukrainian dumplings,” along with a piece of bread each. We would find somewhere on the floor to sit and quickly eat what we had earned. We ate in complete darkness since the kerosene lamps only lit up the card game, but as the old prison hands observed so rightly, the spoon never missed the mouth. Now we watched Sevochka and Naumov playing each other.

  Naumov lost his “rubbish.” His trousers and jacket were lying on the quilt next to Sevochka. The pillow was now the stake. Sevochka’s fingernail traced elaborate patterns in the air. Cards would disappear in his hand and then reappear. Naumov was wearing just his vest; his satin side-buttoned shirt had gone the same way as his trousers. Helping hands tried to put a quilted jacket over his shoulders, but he brusquely threw it off onto the floor. Suddenly there was a silence. Sevochka slowly brushed the pillow with his fingernail.

  “I’ll stake the quilt,” said Naumov. His voice was hoarse.

  “Two hundred,” Sevochka replied indifferently.

  “A thousand, you bitch!” Naumov yelled.

  “For that? That’s not worth having. It’s crap, it’s rubbish,” Sevochka decreed. “Just for you, I’ll put it at three hundred.”

  The battle continued. The rules state that no battle is over as long as the opponent can come up with a response.

  “I’ll stake my felt boots.”

  “I don’t play for felt boots,” said Sevochka firmly. “I don’t accept government rags.”

  A Ukrainian rug decorated with roosters, a cigarette case with Gogol’s face embossed on it, both valued at a few rubles, were lost, like everything else, to Sevochka. Naumov’s dark-skinned cheeks began to blush deep red.

  “Put it on the slate,” Naumov pleaded.

  “Like hell I will,” retorted Sevochka as he stretched his hand out behind him. Someone immediately put a lit cigarette into it. Sevochka took a deep puff and started coughing. “What use is your slate to me? There isn’t going to be another batch of prisoners, so where will you get the money? From the guards, I suppose?”

  Agreeing to gamble “on the slate,” that is, on credit, was an optional favor according to the rules, but Sevochka didn’t want to rub Naumov’s nose in it or deprive him of any chance of recuperating his losses.

  “I stake a hundred,” he said slowly. “I give you an hour’s credit.”

  “Give me a card,” said Naumov, adjusting his cross as he sat down. He won back the quilt, the pillow, and his trousers, and then lost everything again.

  “Let’s brew up some chifir,” said Sevochka as he put away his winnings in a big fiber suitcase. “I’ll wait.”

  “Brew it up, boys,” said Naumov.

  They meant that amazing northern drink chifir, very strong tea made by brewing more than two ounces of tea in a small mug. This makes an extremely bitter drink, gulped down with the help of salted fish. It keeps you awake, so it is highly valued by gangsters and by long-distance truck drivers in the north. Chifir must have a very bad effect on the heart, but I have known people addicted to it for many years who suffered almost no side effects. When the mug was handed to him, Sevochka took a sip.

  Naumov looked around at everyone, his gaze grim and dark. He was disheveled. When he caught sight of me, he fixed me with a stare. A thought flashed in Naumov’s brain.

  “You there, come up here.”

  I came into the light.

  “Take off your padded jacket.”

  There was no mistaking his intentions, and everyone was interested to see what would come of Naumov’s idea.

  All I had under my padded jacket was prison-issue linen. The tunic had been issued about two years ago, and it was falling apart. I put my jacket back on.

  “Then you come here,” said Naumov, pointing at Garkunov.

  Garkunov took off his padded jacket. His face turned white. He was wearing a woolen sweater under his filthy shirt. The sweater was the last thing his wife had passed to him before he was sent off to the Far North, and I knew how carefully Garkunov looked after it. He washed it when in the bathhouse, dried it on his body, and never let go of it for a minute: a woolen sweater would have immediately been stolen by his fellow prisoners.

  “Go on, take it off,” said Naumov.

  Sevochka made an approving gesture with his finger. Woolen garments were highly valued. If he had the wool sweater laundered and then had the lice steamed out of it, he could wear it himself. It had a nice pattern.

  “I’m not taking it off,” gasped Garkunov. “You’ll have to flay me first.”

  Men hurled themselves at him and threw him to the floor.

  “He’s biting,” someone shouted.

  Garkunov slowly got up and used his sleeve to wipe the blood off his face. Right then Sashka, the same Sashka, Naumov’s duty orderly, who had an hour ago given us soup for sawing the wood, squatted down and snatched something from the top of his felt boot. Then he moved his arm toward Garkunov; Garkunov gave a sobbing gasp and then slumped down onto his side.

  “Did you have to do that?” Sevochka yelled. In the flickering light of the kerosene lamp you could see Garkunov’s face draining of color.

  Sashka stretched out the dead man’s arms, tore the shirt open, and pulled the sweater off over his head. The sweater was red, so you could hardly see the bloodstains. Sevochka, carefully avoiding getting his fingers dirty, put the sweater away in his suitcase. The game was over, and I could go home. Now I had to find someone else to saw firewood with me.

  1956

  AT NIGHT

  SUPPER was over. Glebov took his time licking his bowl clean, then carefully raked the bread crumbs off the table into his left hand, which he lifted to his mouth so as to lick every crumb off his palm. Without swallowing them, he could feel the saliva in his mouth greedily covering the tiny lump of bread in a thick layer. Glebov could not have said whether it tasted good. Taste was something different, too weak compared with the passionate, oblivious feeling that food gave him. Glebov took his time before swallowing; the bread melted in his mouth and it melted quickly.

  Bagretsov could not take his sunken, shining eyes off Glebov’s mouth. Nobody had the strength of will to avert their eyes from food disappearing into somebody else’s mouth. Glebov swallowed his saliva, and Bagretsov immediately shifted his gaze to the horizon, where a big orange moon was creeping out into the sky.

  “It’s time,” said Bagretsov.

  Without speaking, they followed the path to the rock and climbed to a small ledge that went around the bare hill. The sun had only just set, but the stones, which had burned the soles of their feet through the rubber shoes (worn without socks), were already cold. Glebov buttoned up his padded jacket. Walkin
g didn’t make him any warmer.

  “Is it much farther?” he whispered.

  “It’s quite far,” Bagretsov answered quietly.

  They sat down for a rest. There was nothing to talk about, and nothing to think about, either: everything was clear and simple. On a square at the end of the terrace were heaps of stones that had been turned over, and lumps of moss that had been torn off and left to dry.

  “I could have done this on my own,” Bagretsov said with a laugh, “but it’s more fun if there are two of us. Anyway, for an old friend. . . .”

  They had been brought here last year on the same ship. Bagretsov stopped.

  “We’ve got to lie down, or we’ll be seen.”

  They lay down and started throwing the stones aside. None of the stones here were too big for two men to lift or move, because the men who had dumped them here in the morning had been no stronger than Glebov.

  Bagretsov cursed quietly: he had grazed a finger, and it was bleeding. He put some sand on the wound, tore a lump of cotton wool from his jacket lining and pressed it on the wound, but the finger still bled.

  “Bad clotting,” said Glebov in a bored tone.

  “Are you a doctor, then?” asked Bagretsov, as he sucked at the blood.

  Glebov remained silent. It seemed a very long time ago that he had been a doctor. And had he ever been one? Far too often, the world beyond these mountains and seas seemed to him like a dream or a fiction. What was real was the minute, the hour, the day from reveille to the order to stop work. He never let his mind wander any further and he could not have found the strength to do so. Like everyone else.

  He knew nothing of the past life of the people around him, and he was not interested. Yet, if the next day Bagretsov were to announce he was a doctor of philosophy or a major general in the air force, Glebov would have believed him without hesitating. Had he himself ever been a doctor? He had lost his reflexive judgments, even his reflexive observational powers. Glebov could see Bagretsov was sucking the blood from his dirty finger, but he said nothing. It just flashed through his mind, but he couldn’t find the will to reply, and he wasn’t trying. Whatever mind he still had left, and it might well no longer be a human mind, had too few facets. At the moment it was focused on one thing only: to move the stones as fast as possible.

  “I expect it’s deep down, is it?” Glebov asked, once they had lain down to rest.

  “How could it be deep?” replied Bagretsov.

  Glebov realized that his question was idiotic and that the pit couldn’t possibly be deep.

  “Here we are,” said Bagretsov.

  He had touched a human digit. A big toe was poking out of the stones, and it was perfectly visible in the moonlight. The toe was not like Glebov’s or Bagretsov’s, not just because it was lifeless and stiff—theirs were, too. The dead man’s toenails had been cut, and the toe was fatter and softer than Glebov’s. They quickly flung aside the stones dumped over the body.

  “Quite young,” said Bagretsov.

  It was an effort for the two of them to drag the corpse out by its legs.

  “A pretty big lad,” said Glebov, who was out of breath.

  “If he hadn’t been such a big lad,” said Bagretsov, “he’d have been buried like the rest of us, and we wouldn’t have had to come all this way today.”

  They straightened out the corpse’s arms and pulled off his shirt.

  “His underpants are quite new,” said Bagretsov with satisfaction.

  So they pulled the underpants off too. Glebov stuffed the bundle of linen under his padded jacket.

  “It’d be better if you put them on,” said Bagretsov.

  “No, I’d rather not,” mumbled Glebov.

  They placed the corpse back in the grave and covered it with stones.

  The blue light of the moon, which had now risen, shone on the stones, on the thin polar forest, picking out every ledge, every tree in a special light that was not like daylight. Everything seemed real in its own way, but not its daytime self. This was a sort of second, nocturnal aspect of the world.

  The corpse’s linen grew warm from being close to Glebov’s body. It no longer seemed to belong to someone else.

  “I could do with a smoke,” said Glebov dreamily.

  “You can have a smoke tomorrow,” said Bagretsov, smiling. Tomorrow they would sell the clothes and get some bread, perhaps even a bit of tobacco in exchange. . . .

  1954

  CARPENTERS

  THERE had been a white mist for days on end. It was so thick that a man became invisible two yards away. Not that there was any reason to go far on one’s own. The few routes—to the refectory, the hospital, or the guardhouse—could be divined by some mysterious instinct, like the capacity for orientation that animals have and that, given the right circumstances, can be activated in human beings.

  The workmen were not allowed to see a thermometer, and they didn’t need one. No matter what the temperature was, they had to go to work. In any case, the old hands could tell almost exactly how many degrees below zero it was. If there was a frosty mist, then it was minus forty centigrade outside; if there was a noise when you breathed out but you could still breathe normally, then it was minus forty-five; if your breath was noisy and you were out of breath, then it was minus fifty. Below fifty-five degrees a gob of spit freezes solid in midair. Spit had been freezing in midair for two weeks.

  Potashnikov woke up each morning hoping that the freezing temperatures had abated. After last winter, experience told him that, however cold it was, what you needed to feel warm was a sharp change in temperature, a contrast. Even if the weather got no warmer than minus forty or minus forty-five, you’d feel warm for a couple of days, and there was no point making any plans for longer than two days.

  But there was no letup in the cold, and Potashnikov realized that he could not stand it anymore. Breakfast gave him the ability to endure an hour’s work at most, and then he was overcome by tiredness and the cold got to his very bones: an idiomatic expression that was literally true. All you could do, so as not to freeze to death by lunchtime, was to wave your pickax or spade about and hop from one leg to the other. The hot lunch, the notorious dumpling soup and two spoonfuls of porridge, did little to restore your strength, but it did warm you up. Once again, you had the strength to work for an hour, after which Potashnikov was overcome by a desire, if not to get warm, then just to lie down on the sharp edges of the frozen stones and die. But the day still came to an end and after supper, with a drink of water and a mouthful of bread, which all the workmen took back to the barracks, never eating it with the refectory soup, Potashnikov would immediately lie down to sleep.

  Naturally, he slept on the top bunk; the lower bunks were like an ice cellar, and those who slept there spent half the night standing by the stove, taking turns to put their arms around it and get the remnants of its warmth. There was never enough firewood. You had to go four kilometers after work to fetch wood, and everyone used any excuse they could to get out of this task. It was warmer up on top, although people slept in their work clothes, wearing hats, padded jackets, pea jackets, quilted trousers. It was warmer up on top, but even there your hair froze to the pillow in the night.

  Potashnikov could feel his strength waning every day. He was a man of thirty, but he now found it hard to climb to the top bunk and hard to get down. His neighbor had died the day before, just died. He’d failed to wake up, and nobody was curious as to why he had died, as if there was only one reason for dying and everyone knew what it was. The duty orderly was pleased that the death had happened in the morning instead of the evening; he would get the dead man’s rations for that day. Everyone understood that, and Potashnikov was bold enough to approach the orderly and say, “Leave a crust for me.” But the orderly responded with the violent cursing that can only come from a man who was once weak and is now strong and who knows that he can curse with impunity. A weak man curses a strong man only in extraordinary circumstances, when moved by the boldness
of despair. Potashnikov said nothing and retreated.

  He had to decide to do something, to make his enfeebled brain think up something. Or die. Potashnikov wasn’t afraid of death. But he did have a secret passionate desire, a last stubborn resolve, a desire to die somewhere like a hospital, in a bunk or a bed, being attended to, even if only by prison authorities, but not to die outside in the freezing cold or kicked to death by the guards, not in the barracks to the sound of loud quarreling, in filth and surrounded by everyone’s indifference. He didn’t blame people for being indifferent. He had realized a long time ago what caused this dulling of the spirit, this cold lack of sympathy. The same cold that turned saliva to ice in midair had gotten to the human soul. If your bones could freeze, then your brain could freeze into insensitivity and so could your soul. You couldn’t think about anything in the freezing cold. Everything was simple. A cold hungry brain couldn’t take in nutrition, the brain cells withered; this was clearly a physical process, and God knew if the pathosis could ever be reversed, as a medical man would put it, like frostbite, or if the destruction was permanent. That was what happened to the soul: it froze, it shrank, and, maybe, it would stay cold forever. All this had occurred to Potashnikov before, and now all that was left was a desire to endure, to outlive the spell of freezing cold.

  Of course, the first thing was to find some means of salvation. There were few such means. You could become a foreman or a guard, just hang around the bosses. Or around the kitchen. But there were hundreds competing for the kitchen, and Potashnikov had refused a year ago to be a foreman, because he had promised himself that he would not allow himself to enslave another human being here. Even if his own life was at stake, he refused to have his dying comrades hurl their last curses in his face. Potashnikov was expecting death any day now, and the day appeared to have come.

  He gulped down a bowl of warm soup and chewed the last lump of bread, then, barely able to drag his feet, went to his workplace. The brigade was lined up for the start of work; a fat, red-faced man in a reindeer-skin hat, Yakut reindeer-skin boots, and a white fur jacket walked up and down the line. He surveyed the workmen’s emaciated, filthy, expressionless faces. The men were shuffling their feet, waiting for this unexpected delay to be over. The foreman was there too, respectfully reporting something to the man in the reindeer-skin hat.