Kolyma Tales

The Lawyers’ Plot

Into Shmelyov’s work gang were raked the human rejects; they were the by-products of the gold-mine. There were only three paths out of the mine: nameless mass graves, the hospital, or Shmelyov’s gang. This brigade worked in the same area as the others, but its assignments were less crucial. Here slogans were not just words. ‘The Quota Is Law’ was understood to mean that if you didn’t fill your quota, you had broken the law, deceived the state, and would answer with an additional sentence and even your life. Shmelyov’s gang was fed worse, less than the others. But I understood well the local saying, ‘In camp a large ration kills, not a small one.’ I wasn’t about to pursue the large ration of the leading work gang.

I had only recently been transferred to Shmelyov, about three weeks earlier, and I still didn’t know his face. It was the middle of winter and our leader’s face was wrapped in a complicated fashion with a ragged scarf. In the evening it was dark in the barracks, and the kerosene lantern barely illuminated the door. I don’t even remember our gang leader’s face – only his voice that was hoarse as if he had caught cold.

We worked the night shift in December, and each night was a torment. Sixty degrees below zero was no joke. But nevertheless it was better at night, more calm. There were fewer supervisors in the mine, less swearing and fewer beatings.

The work gang was getting into formation to march to work. In the winter we lined up in the barracks, and it is torturous even now to recall those last minutes before going into the icy night for a twelve-hour shift. Here, in this indecisive shoving before the half-opened doors with their cold drafts, each man’s character was revealed. One man would suppress his shivering and stride directly out into the darkness while another would suck away at the butt of a home-made cigar. Where the cigar came from was a mystery in a place that lacked any trace of even home-grown tobacco. A third figure would guard his face from the cold wind, while a fourth held his mittens above the stove to accumulate some warmth in them.

The last few men were shoved out of the barracks by the orderly. That was the way the weakest were treated everywhere, in every work gang.

In this work gang I hadn’t yet reached the shoving stage. There were people here who were weaker than me, and this provided a certain consolation, an unexpected joy. Here, for the time being, I was still a person. I had left behind the shoves and fists of the orderly in the ‘gold’ gang from which I had been transferred to Shmelyov.

The gang stood inside the barracks door, ready to leave, when Shmelyov approached me.

‘You’ll stay home,’ he wheezed.

‘Have I been transferred to the morning shift?’ I asked suspiciously. Transfers from one shift to another were always made to catch the clock’s hour hand so that the working day was not lost and the prisoner could not receive a few extra hours of rest. I was aware of the method.

‘No, Romanov called for you.’

‘Romanov, who’s Romanov?’

‘This louse doesn’t know who Romanov is,’ the orderly broke in.

‘He’s in charge. Clear? He lives just this side of the office. You’re to report at eight o’clock.’

‘Eight o’clock?’

An enormous wave of relief swept over me. If Romanov were to keep me till twelve, when our shift had its dinner, I had the right not to go to work that day. I felt an aching in my muscles and my body was overcome with exhaustion. But it was a joyous exhaustion.

I untied the rope around my waist, unbuttoned my pea jacket, and sat down next to the stove. As its warmth flowed over me the lice under my shirt began to stir. With bit-off fingernails I scratched my neck and chest. And I drowsed off.

‘It’s time.’ The orderly was shaking me by the shoulder. ‘And bring back a smoke. Don’t forget.’

When I knocked at Romanov’s door, there was a clanking of locks and bolts, a lot of locks and bolts, and some unseen person shouted from behind the door:

‘Who is it?’

‘Prisoner Andreev, as ordered.’

Bolts rattled, locks chimed, and all fell silent.

The cold crept under my pea jacket, and my feet lost their warmth. I began to beat one boot against the other. They weren’t the usual felt boots but quilted ones, sewn from old pants and quilted jackets.

Again bolts rattled and the double door opened, allowing light, heat, and music to escape.

I stepped in. The door of the entrance hall was not shut and a radio was playing.

Romanov himself stood before me, or rather I stood before him. Short, fat, perfumed, and quick on his feet, he danced around me, examining my figure with his quick black eyes.

The smell of a convict struck his nostrils, and he drew a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket. Waves of music, warmth, and cologne washed over me. Most important was the warmth. The dutch stove was red hot.

‘So we meet,’ Romanov kept repeating ecstatically, moving around me and waving his perfumed handkerchief. ‘So we meet.’

‘Go on in.’ He opened the door to the next room. It contained a desk and two chairs.

‘Sit down. You’ll never guess why I sent for you. Have a smoke.’

He began sifting through some papers on the desk.

‘What’s your first name?’

I told him.

‘Date of birth?’

‘1907.’

‘A lawyer?’

‘Actually, I’m not a lawyer, but I studied at Moscow Uni…’

‘A lawyer, then. Fine. Just sit tight. I’ll make a few calls and the two of us will get on the road.’

Romanov slipped out of the room, and soon the music in the dining-room was shut off. A telephone conversation ensued.

Sitting on the chair I began to drowse and even to dream. Romanov kept disappearing and reappearing.

‘Listen, did you leave any things at the barracks?’

‘I have everything with me.’

‘That’s great, really great. The truck will be here any minute and we can get on the road. You know where we’re going? To Khatynakh itself, to headquarters! Ever been there? It’s OK, I’m joking, just joking…’

‘I don’t care.’

‘That’s good.’

I took off my boots, rubbed my toes, and turned my foot rags.

The clock on the wall said eleven-thirty. Even if it was a joke – about Khatynakh – it didn’t make any difference: I wouldn’t have to go to work today. The truck roared up, the beams of its headlights sliding along the shutters and touching the office ceiling.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

Romanov had donned a white sheepskin coat, a Yakut fur hat, and colorful boots. I buttoned my pea jacket, retied the rope around my waist, and held my mittens above the stove for a moment. We walked out to the truck. It was a one-and-a-half-ton truck with an open bed.

‘How much today, Misha?’ Romanov asked the driver.

‘Seventy degrees below zero, comrade chief. They sent the night shift back to the barracks.’

That meant they sent our work gang, Shmelyov’s, home as well. I hadn’t been so lucky after all.

‘All right, Andreev,’ said Romanov, dancing around me. ‘Have a seat in back. It’s not far. And Misha will drive fast. Right, Misha?’

Misha said nothing. I crawled up on to the truck bed and clasped my knees with my arms. Romanov squeezed into the cab, and we set off.

It was a bad road, and I was tossed around so much that I didn’t freeze. In about two hours lights appeared, and we drove up to a two-story log house. It was dark everywhere, and only in one window of the second floor was there a light burning. Two sentries in long leather coats stood next to the large porch.

‘OK, we’ve arrived. That’s great. Have him stand here for the time being.’ And Romanov disappeared up the large stairway.

It was two a.m. The lights were extinguished everywhere. Only the desk lamp of the officer on duty burned.

I didn’t have to wait long. Romanov had already managed to change into the uniform of the NKVD, the secret police. He came running down the stairway and began waving to me.

‘This way, this way.’

Together with the assistant of the officer on duty we went upstairs, and in the corridor of the second floor stopped in front of a door bearing a plaque: ‘Smertin, Senior Supervisor, Ministry of Internal Affairs.’ ‘Smertin’ meant ‘death’ in Russian, and so threatening a pseudonym (it couldn’t have been his real name) impressed me in spite of my exhaustion.

‘For a pseudonym, that’s too much,’ I thought, but we were already entering an enormous room with a portrait of Stalin that occupied an entire wall. We stopped before a gigantic desk to observe the pale reddish face of a man who had spent his entire life in precisely this sort of room.

Romanov bent politely over the desk. The dull blue eyes of Senior Supervisor Comrade Smertin fixed themselves on me. But only for a moment. He was searching for something on the desk, shuffling some papers. Romanov’s willing fingers located whatever it was they were looking for.

‘Name?’ Smertin asked, poring over the papers. ‘Crime? Sentence?’

I told him.

‘Lawyer?’

‘Lawyer.’

The pale face looked up from the table.

‘Did you write complaints?’

‘I did.’

Smertin wheezed. ‘About the bread ration?’

‘That and in general.’

‘OK, take him out.’

I made no attempt to clarify anything, to ask any question. What for? After all I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t working the night shift in the gold-mine. They could do the clarifying if they wanted to.

The assistant to the officer on duty came in with a note, and I was taken on foot through the settlement at night to the very edge of the forest. There, guarded by four towers and three rows of barbed-wire fence, stood the camp prison.

The prison had cells for solitary and group confinement. In one of the latter I related my past history, neither expecting an answer from my neighbors nor asking them about anything. That was the custom – so they wouldn’t think I was a ‘plant’.

Morning came. It was the usual Kolyma morning – without light, without sun, and in no way distinguishable from night. A hammer was struck against a rail, and a bucket of steaming boiling water was carried in. The guards came for me, and I said goodbye to my comrades. I knew nothing of them.

They brought me back to the same house, which now appeared smaller than it had at night. This time I was not admitted to Smertin’s august presence. The officer on duty told me to sit and wait, and I sat and waited until I heard a familiar voice:

‘That’s fine! That’s great! Now you’ll get going.’ On alien territory Romanov used the formal grammatical address in speaking to me.

Thoughts began to stir lazily in my brain. I could almost feel them physically. I had to think of something new, something I wasn’t accustomed to, something unknown. This – new thing – had nothing to do with the mine. If we were returning to the Partisan Mine, Romanov would have said: ‘Now we’ll get going.’ That meant I was being taken to a new place. Let come what may!

Romanov came down the stairs, almost hopping. It seemed as if he were about to slide down the bannisters like a small boy. He was holding a barely touched loaf of bread.

‘Here, this is for the road. There’s something else too.’ He disappeared upstairs and returned with two herring.

‘Everything up to snuff, right? That seems to be about all. Wait, I forgot the most important thing. That’s what it means to be a non-smoker.’

Romanov went upstairs and again returned with a small pile of cheap tobacco heaped on a piece of newspaper. About three boxes, I determined with a practiced eye. The standard package of tobacco was enough to fill eight matchboxes. That was our unit of measure in camp.

‘This is for the road. A sort of dry rations.’

I said nothing.

‘Have the guards been sent for?’

‘They’ve been sent for,’ the officer on duty answered.

‘Have whoever’s in charge come upstairs.’

And Romanov disappeared up the stairs. Two guards arrived – one an older man with pock-marks on his face and wearing a tall fur hat of the sort worn in the Caucasian Mountains. The other was a rosy-cheeked youth about twenty years old wearing a Red Army helmet.

‘This one,’ said the officer on duty, pointing at me.

Both – the young one and the pock-marked one – looked me over carefully from head to toe.

‘Where’s the chief?’ the pock-marked one asked.

‘He’s upstairs. The package is there too.’

The pock-marked man went upstairs and soon returned with Romanov.

They talked quietly, and the pock-marked man gestured in my direction.

‘Fine,’ Romanov said finally. ‘We’ll give you a note.’

We walked out on to the street. Next to the porch, on the same spot where the truck from the Partisan Mine had stood the previous night, was a comfortable ‘raven’ – a prison bus with barred windows. I got in, the barred doors closed, the guards occupied their spots in back, and we set off. For a while the ‘raven’ followed the central highway that slices all of Kolyma in half, but then we turned off to the side. The road twisted through the hills, the motor roared on the slopes, and the sheer, pine-forested cliffs with frosty-branched willow shrubs towered above us. Finally, having wound around several hills, the truck followed a riverbed to a small clearing. The trees were cut down, and the edges of the clearing were ringed with guard towers. In the middle, about three hundred yards away, were other slanted towers and the dark mass of the barracks surrounded with barbed wire.

The door of the small guardhouse on the road opened, and a sentry with a revolver strapped to his waist came out. The bus stopped. Leaving the motor running, the driver jumped out and walked past my window.

‘That really twisted us around. It really is a serpent.’

I was familiar with the name, and if anything, my reaction was even stronger than to Smertin’s name. This was ‘Serpentine’, the infamous pre-trial prison where so many people had perished the previous year. Their bodies had not yet decayed. But, then, they never would in the permafrost.

The senior guard went up the path to the prison, and I sat at the window thinking that now my hour, my turn had come. It was just as difficult to think about death as about anything else. I didn’t draw myself any picture of my own execution; I just sat and waited.

The winter twilight had already set in. The door of the ‘raven’ opened, and the older guard tossed me some felt boots.

‘Put these on.’

I took off my quilted boots, but the felt boots were too small.

‘You’ll never make it in those cloth boots,’ said the pock-marked man.

‘I’ll make it.’

He tossed the felt boots into the corner of the bus.

‘Let’s go.’

The ‘raven’ turned around and rushed away from ‘Serpentine’. From the vehicles flashing past us I soon realized we were back on the main highway. The bus slowed down, and all around I could see the lights of a large village. The bus stopped at the porch of a brightly lit house, and I entered a lighted corridor very similar to the one in Smertin’s building. Behind a wooden barrier next to a wall phone sat a guard with a pistol on his belt. This was the village of Yagodny, named after the head of the secret police. On the first day of our trip we had covered only seventeen kilometers. Where would we go from here?

The guard took me to a far room with a wooden cot, a bucket of water, and a pail that served as a toilet. The door had a hole for observation by the guard.

I lived there two days. I even managed to dry and rewind the bandages on my legs that were festering with scurvy sores.

There was a sort of rural quiet in the regional office of the secret police. I listened intently from my tiny cell, but even in the day it was rare to hear steps in the corridor. Occasionally an outside door would open, and keys could be heard turning in door locks. And there was always the guard – the same guard, unshaven, wearing an old quilted jacket and a pistol in a shoulder holster. It all seemed rather rustic in comparison with gleaming Khatynakh where Comrade Smertin conducted affairs of state. Very, very rarely the telephone would ring.

‘Yes, they’re gassing up. Yes. I don’t know, comrade chief. OK, I’ll tell them.’

Whom were they referring to? My guards? Once a day, toward evening, the door to my cell would open and the guard would bring in a pot of soup, a piece of bread, and a spoon. The main course was dumped into the soup and served together. I would take the kettle, eat everything, and lick the pot clean. Camp habits were strong.

On the third day the pock-marked soldier stepped over the cell threshold. He wore a long leather coat over a shorter one.

‘Rested up? Let’s get on the road.’

I stood on the porch of the regional office, thinking we would again have a closed prison bus, but the ‘raven’ was nowhere to be seen. An ordinary three-ton truck stood before the porch.

‘Get in.’

Obediently I climbed over the side of the bed.

The young soldier squeezed into the cab, and the pock-marked one sat next to me. The truck started up and in a few minutes we were back on the main highway. Where was I being taken? North or south? East or west? There was no sense asking and, besides, the guards weren’t supposed to say. Was I being transferred to a different district? Which one? The truck lurched along for many hours and stopped abruptly.

‘We’ll have dinner here. Get down.’

I got down.

We had come to a cafeteria.

The highway was the aorta and main nerve of Kolyma. Unguarded equipment was constantly being shunted back and forth. Food supplies were always guarded because of the danger of escaped convicts. The guards also provided protection (unreliable, to be sure) from theft by the driver and supply agent.

At the cafeteria one encountered geologists, mine explorers going on vacation with the money they’d earned, and black-market dealers in tobacco and chifir – the semi-narcotic drink made of strong tea in the far north. These were the heroes and the scoundrels of the north. All the cafeterias sold vodka. People would meet, quarrel, fight, exchange news, and hurry on. Truck motors would be left running while the drivers took a two- or three-hour nap in the cab. One also encountered convicts in the cafeteria. On their way up into the taiga they appeared as clean, neat groups. Coming back, the dirty broken bodies of these half-dead, no longer human creatures were the refuse of the mines. In the cafeteria were detectives whose job it was to capture escapees. The escapees themselves were often in military uniform. Past these cafeterias drove the black limousines of the lords of life and death – the lives and deaths of both convicts and civilians.

A playwright ought to depict the north in precisely such a roadside cafeteria; that would be an ideal setting. I used the idea later in a story, of course.

I stood in the cafeteria trying to elbow my way through to the enormous red-hot barrel of a stove. The guards weren’t overly concerned that I would attempt to escape, since it was obvious I was too weak for that. It was clear to everyone that such a goner had nowhere to run to in sixty degrees below zero weather.

‘Sit down over there and eat.’

The guard brought me a bowl of hot soup and gave me some bread.

‘We’ll be on our way now,’ said the young one. ‘We’ll leave as soon as the sergeant comes.’

But the pock-marked man didn’t come alone. He was with an older ‘warrior’ (they didn’t call them soldiers back then) in a short coat and carrying a rifle. He looked at me, then at the pock-marked man.

‘Well, I guess that would be all right,’ he said.

‘Let’s go,’ the pock-marked man said to me.

We went to a different corner of the cafeteria. Bent over by the wall sat a man in a pea jacket and a regulation-issue black flannel cap with ear flaps.

‘Sit down here,’ said the pock-marked man. I obediently sat down on the floor next to this man. He didn’t turn his head.

The pock-marked man and the unknown ‘warrior’ left, while the young one, ‘my’ guard, stayed with us.

‘They’re taking a break, you understand?’ the man in the convict hat suddenly whispered to me. ‘They don’t have any right to do that.’

‘They’ve long since lost their souls,’ I said, ‘so they might as well do whatever they like. What do you care?’

The man raised his head. ‘I tell you, they don’t have the right.’

‘Where are they taking us?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know where they’re taking you. I’m going to Magadan. To be shot.’

‘To be shot?’

‘Yes, I’ve already been sentenced. I’m from the Western Division – from Susuman.’

I didn’t like this piece of news at all. But then I didn’t know the procedures for applying capital punishment. Embarrassed, I fell silent. The pock-marked soldier walked up with our new traveling companion. They started discussing something with each other. Now that there were more guards, they treated us more roughly. No one brought me any more soup in the cafeterias.

We drove on for a few hours, and three more prisoners were attached to our group. The three new men were of indeterminate age – like all those who had gone through the hell of Kolyma. Their puffy white skin and swollen faces spoke of hunger, scurvy, and frostbite.

‘Where are they taking us?’

‘To Magadan. To be shot. We’ve already been sentenced.’

We lay bent over in the truck bed, our knees and backs touching. The truck had good springs, the road was well paved so we weren’t tossed from side to side, and soon we began to feel the cold.

We shouted, groaned, but the guard was implacable. We had to reach Sporny before morning. The condemned man begged to be allowed to warm himself even for five minutes. The truck roared into Sporny where lights were already burning.

The pock-marked man walked up: ‘You’ll go to the stockade and be sent on later.’

I felt cold to the marrow of my bones, was numb from the frost, and frantically beat the soles of my boots against the snow. I couldn’t get warm. Our ‘warriors’ kept trying to locate the camp administrator. Finally after about an hour we were taken to the freezing unheated stockade. Frost covered all the walls, and the floor was icy. Someone brought in a bucket of water. The lock rattled shut. How about firewood? A stove?

On that night in Sporny all ten of my toes were again frostbitten. I tried in vain to get even a minute’s sleep.

They led us out in the morning and we got back in the truck. The hills flashed by, and approaching vehicles coughed hoarsely in passing. The truck descended from a mountain pass, and we were so warm that we didn’t want to go anywhere; we wanted to wait, to walk a little on this marvelous earth. It was a difference of at least twenty degrees. Even the wind was warm, almost as if it were spring.

‘Guards! We have to urinate…’ How could we explain to the soldiers that we were happy to be warm, to feel the southern wind, to leave behind the ringing silence of the taiga.

‘OK, get down.’

The guards were also glad to have an opportunity to stretch their legs and have a smoke. My seeker of justice had already approached the guard:

‘Could we have a smoke, citizen warrior?’

‘OK, but go back to your place.’

One of the new men didn’t want to get down but, seeing that the stop was to be an extended one, he moved over to the edge and gestured to me.

‘Help me get down.’

I extended a hand to the exhausted man and suddenly felt the extraordinary lightness of his body, a deathly lightness. I stepped back. The man, holding on to the edge of the truck bed, took a few steps.

‘How warm!’ But his eyes were clouded and expressionless.

‘OK, let’s go. It’s twenty-two degrees below zero.’

Each hour it got warmer.

In the cafeteria of the village of Belyashka, our guards stopped to eat for the last time. The pock-marked man bought me a kilo of bread.

‘Here, take it. It’s white bread. We’ll get there this evening.’

A fine snow was falling when far below we saw the lights of Magadan. It was about fifteen degrees above zero. There was no wind, and the snow fell straight down in soft wet particles. The truck stopped in front of the regional office of the secret police, and the guards went inside.

A hatless man wearing civilian clothing came out. In his hands he held a torn envelope. With a clear voice and in the manner of a man accustomed to the job, he called out a name. The man with the fragile body crawled to the side at his gesture.

‘To the stockade!’

The man in the suit disappeared into the building and immediately reappeared. In his hands was a new envelope.

‘Constantine Ugritsky! To the stockade! Eugene Simonov! Stockade!’

I didn’t say goodbye to either the guards or the people who had traveled with me to Magadan. It wasn’t the custom.

Only I and my guards now remained at the office porch.

The man in the suit again appeared on the porch with an envelope.

‘Andreev! Take him to the division office. I’ll give you a receipt,’ he said to my guards.

I walked into the building. First of all I looked for the stove. There was a steam radiator. Behind a wooden barrier was a telephone and a man on duty. The room was somewhat shabbier than the one at Comrade Smertin’s in Khatynakh. But perhaps that room had created such an impression on me because it was the first office I had seen in my Kolyma life? A steep staircase led up to the second floor.

The man in civilian clothes who had handled our group out on the street came into the room.

‘Come this way.’

We climbed the narrow stairway to the second floor and arrived at a door with the inscription: Y. Atlas, Director.

‘Sit down.’

I sat down. In the tiny office the most important area was occupied by a desk. Papers, folders, some lists were heaped on it. Atlas was thirty-eight or forty years old. He was a heavy man of athletic build with receding black hair.

‘Name?’

‘Andreev.’

‘Crime, sentence?’

I answered.

‘Lawyer?’

‘Lawyer.’

Atlas jumped up and walked around the desk: ‘Great! Captain Rebrov will talk to you.’

‘Who is Captain Rebrov?’

‘He’s in charge here. Go downstairs.’

I returned to my spot next to the radiator. Having mulled over the matter, I decided to eat the kilo of white bread my guards had given me. There was a tub of water with a mug chained to it right there. The wind-up clock on the wall ticked evenly. Through a half-dream I heard someone walk quickly past me and go upstairs, and the officer on duty woke me up.

‘Take him to Captain Rebrov.’

I was taken to the second floor. The door of a small office opened and I heard a sharp voice:

‘This way, this way.’

It was an ordinary office, somewhat larger than the one in which I had been two hours earlier. The glassy eyes of Captain Rebrov were fixed directly on me. On the corner of the table stood a glass of tea with lemon and a saucer with a chewed rind of cheese. There were phones, folders, portraits.

‘Name?’

‘Andreev.’

‘Crime, sentence?’

I told him.

‘Lawyer?’

‘Lawyer.’

Captain Rebrov leaned over the table, bringing his glassy eyes closer to mine, and asked:

‘Do you know Parfentiev?’

‘Yes, I know him.’

Parfentiev had once been my work gang leader back at the mine before I was transferred to Shmelyov’s group.

‘Yes, I know him. He was my work gang leader, Dmitri Parfentiev.’

‘Good, so you know Parfentiev?’

‘Yes, I know him.’

‘How about Vinogradov?’

‘I don’t know any Vinogradov.’

‘Vinogradov, the director of Far Eastern Ship Construction?’

‘I don’t know him.’

Captain Rebrov lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and said, extinguishing the cigarette in the saucer:

‘So you know Vinogradov and don’t know Parfentiev?’

‘No, I don’t know Vinogradov…’

‘Oh, yes, you know Parfentiev and don’t know Vinogradov. I see.’

Captain Rebrov pushed a button, and the door behind me opened.

‘Take him to the stockade.’

The saucer with the cigarette and uneaten rind of cheese remained on the right-hand side of the desk next to the pitcher of water in Rebrov’s office.

The guard led me through the dark night along the streets of sleeping Magadan.

‘Get a move on.’

‘I have nowhere to hurry to.’

‘Why don’t you chat a little longer?’ The guard took out his pistol. ‘I could shoot you like a dog. It’s no problem to write someone off.’

‘You won’t do it,’ I said. ‘You’d have to answer to Captain Rebrov.’

‘Get moving, you louse!’

Magadan is a small town. Together we reached Vaskov’s House, the local prison. Vaskov was second in charge to Berzin when Magadan was being built. The wooden prison was one of the first in Magadan, and the prison kept the name of the man who built it. Magadan had long since acquired a stone prison built according to the latest word in penitentiary technology, but this new building was also called Vaskov’s House. After some brief negotiations at the entrance I was admitted into the yard of Vaskov’s House. I saw a low, stocky, long building made of smooth heavy planks. Across the yard were two wings of a wooden building.

‘The second one,’ a voice behind me said.

I seized a door handle, opened the door, and walked in.

There were double-width berths packed with people. But it wasn’t crowded, not shoulder to shoulder. The floor was earthen. A stove made from half a barrel stood on long metal legs. There was a smell of sweat, disinfectant, and dirty bodies. With difficulty I crawled on to an upper berth where it was warmer and found a free spot. My neighbor woke up.

‘Straight from the woods?’

‘Yes.’

‘With fleas?’

‘With fleas.’

‘Then lie down in the corner. The disinfection service is working here, and we don’t have fleas.’

‘Disinfection – that’s good,’ I thought. ‘And mainly, it’s warm.’

We were fed in the morning. There was bread and boiling water. I wasn’t yet due to get bread. I took off my quilted boots, put them under my head, lowered my padded trousers to keep my feet warm, fell asleep, and woke up twenty-four hours later. Bread was being passed out and I was already registered for meals in Vaskov’s House.

For dinner they gave broth and three spoons of wheat kasha. I slept till morning of the next day when the hysterical voice of the guard on duty awakened me.

I crawled down from the bunk.

‘Go outside – to that porch over there.’

The doors of the true House of Vaskov opened before me, and I entered a low, dimly lit corridor. The guard turned the lock, threw back the massive iron latch, and disclosed a tiny cell with a double berth. Two men sat bent over in the corner on the lower bunk.

I walked up to the window and sat down. Someone was shaking me by the shoulders. It was my gang leader, Dmitry Parfentiev, whom Rebrov had asked about.

‘Do you understand anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘When were you brought in?’

‘Three days ago. Atlas had me brought in in a small truck.’

‘Atlas? He questioned me in the division office. About forty years old, balding, in civilian clothing.’

‘With me he wore a military uniform.’

‘What did Captain Rebrov ask you?’

‘Do I know Vinogradov.’

‘Well?’

‘How am I supposed to know him?’

‘Vinogradov is the director of Far Eastern Ship Construction.’

‘You know that, but I don’t know who Vinogradov is.’

‘He and I were students at the same school.’

I began to put two and two together. Before his arrest Parfentiev had been a district prosecutor. Vinogradov, in passing through the area, learned that his university friend was in the mine and sent him some money. He also asked the head of the mine to help Parfentiev. The mine doctor had told Smertin and Smertin told Rebrov, who started an investigation of Vinogradov. All convicts in the northern mines who had formerly been lawyers were brought in. The rest was simply a matter of the usual investigative techniques.

‘But why are we here? I was in wing…’

‘We’re being released,’ said Parfentiev.

‘Released? Being let go, that is, not being let go but being sent to a transit prison?’

‘Yes,’ said a third man, crawling out into the light and looking me over with obvious contempt.

He had a fat repulsive pink face and was dressed in a black fur coat. His voile shirt was open at the chest.

‘So you know each other? Captain Rebrov didn’t have time to squash you. An enemy of the people…’

‘What are you, a friend of the people?’

‘At least I’m not a political prisoner. I was never in the secret police and I never did anything to the working people. But it’s because of your kind that we go to jail.’

‘What are you, a thief?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’

‘OK, stop it, stop it,’ Parfentiev broke in.

The doors clanked open.

‘Come on out!’

There were about seven men standing at the entrance. Parfentiev and I walked up to them.

‘Are all of you lawyers?’ asked Parfentiev.

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘What happened? Why are we being released?’

Some all-knowing soul said quietly:

‘Captain Rebrov has been arrested. Everyone arrested under his instructions is being released.’