Kolyma Tales

Esperanto

A wandering actor who happened to be a prisoner reminded me of this story. It was just after a performance put on by the camp activities group in which he was the main actor, producer, and theater carpenter.

He mentioned the name Skoroseev, and I immediately recalled the road to Siberia in ’39. The five of us had endured the typhoid quarantine, the work assignments, the roll-calls in the biting frost, but we were nevertheless caught up by the camp nets and cast out into the endlessness of the taiga.

We five neither knew nor wanted to know anything about each other until our group reached the spot where we were to work and live. Each of us received the news of our future trip in his own way: one went mad, thinking he was to be shot at the very moment he was granted life. Another tried to talk his way out of the situation, and almost succeeded. I was the third – an indifferent skeleton from the gold-mine. The fourth was a jack-of-all-trades over seventy years old. The fifth was Skoroseev. ‘Skoroseev,’ he would pronounce carefully, standing on tiptoes so as to look each of us in the eye.

I couldn’t care less, but the jack-of-all-trades kept up the conversation.

‘What kind of work did you do before?’

‘I was an agronomist in the People’s Agriculture Commissariat.’

The chief of coal exploration, whose responsibility it was to receive the group, leafed though Skoroseev’s folder.

‘I can still work, citizen chief…’

‘OK, I’ll make you a watchman…’

Skoroseev performed his duties zealously. Not for a minute would he leave his post, afraid that any mistake could be exploited by a fellow prisoner and reported to the camp authorities. It was better not to take any chances.

Once there was a heavy snowstorm that lasted all night. Skoroseev’s replacement was a Gallician by the name of Narynsky. This chestnut-haired convict had been a prisoner of war during World War I, and he had been convicted of plotting to re-establish Austro-Hungary. He was a little proud of having been accused of such a ‘crime’ among the throngs of Trotskyites and saboteurs. Narynsky told us with a chuckle that when he took over the watch he discovered that Skoroseev hadn’t budged from his spot even during the snowstorm. Skoroseev’s dedication was noticed, and his position became more secure.

Once a horse died in camp. It was no great loss, since horses work poorly in the far north. But the meat! The meat! The hide had to be removed from the frozen carcass. There were neither butchers nor volunteers, but Skoroseev offered to do the job. The camp chief was surprised and pleased; there would be both hide and meat! The hide could be registered in the official report, and the meat would go into the general pot. The entire barracks, all of the village spoke of Skoroseev. Meat! meat! The carcass was dragged into the bathhouse, where Skoroseev skinned and gutted it when it had thawed. The hide stiffened again in the frost and was carried off to the storehouse. We never tasted the meat; at the last minute the camp chief realized that there was no veterinarian who could sign to give permission. An official report was made up, and the carcass was hacked into pieces and burned on a bonfire in the presence of the camp chief and the work gang leader.

We were prospecting for coal, but without any luck. Little by little, in groups of five and ten, people were taken away from our camp. Making their way along the forest path up the mountain, these people left my life for ever. Each of us understood that ours was a prospecting group and not a mine group. Each strove to remain here, to ‘brake’, as long as possible. One would work with unusual diligence, another would pray longer than usual. Anxiety had entered our lives.

A new group of guards had arrived from behind the mountain. For us? But they took no one away, no one!

That night there was a search in the barracks. We had no books, no knives, no felt pens, no newspapers, no writing paper. What was there to search for?

They were confiscating civilian clothing. Many of the prisoners had acquired such clothing from civilians who worked in the prospecting group which itself was unguarded. Were they trying to prevent escapes? Fulfilling an order, maybe? Or was there some change of authority higher on up?

Everything was confiscated without any reports or records. Confiscated, and that was that! Indignation was boundless. I recalled how, two years earlier, civilian clothing had been confiscated in Magadan; hundreds of thousands of fur coats from hundreds of convict gangs that had been shipped to the Far North of Misery. These were warm coats, sweaters, and suits that could have served as precious bribes to save a life in some decisive hour. But all roads back were cut off in the Magadan bathhouse. Mountains of civilian clothing rose in the yard. They were higher than the water tower, higher than the bathhouse roof. Mountains of clothing, mountains of tragedies, mountains of human fates suddenly snapped. All who left the bathhouse were doomed to death. How these people had fought to protect their goods from the camp criminal element, from the blatant piracy that raged in the barracks, the cattle cars, the transit points! All that had been saved, hidden from the thieves, was confiscated in the bathhouse by the state.

How simple it all was! Only two years had passed, and now everything was being repeated.

Civilian clothing that had reached the mines was confiscated later. I remember how I had been awakened in the middle of the night. There were searches in the barracks every day, and every day people were led away. I sat on my cot and smoked. I had no civilian clothing. It had all been left in the Magadan bathhouse. But some of my comrades had civilian clothing. These were precious things – symbols of a different life. They may have been rotting, torn, unmended, because no one had either the time or the strength to sew. Nevertheless they were treasured.

Each of us stood at his place and waited. The investigator sat next to the lamp and wrote up reports on confiscated items.

I sat on the bunk and smoked, neither upset nor indignant, but overwhelmed by one single desire – that the search be ended as quickly as possible so we could go back to sleep. But our orderly, whose name was Praga, began to hack away at his suit with an axe, tore the sheets into shreds, chopped up his shoes.

‘Just rags, all they’ll get is rags.’

‘Take that axe away from him,’ shouted the inspector.

Praga threw the axe on the floor. The search stopped. The items Praga had torn and cut were his own things. They had not yet managed to write up a report on them. When he realized they were not about to seize him, Praga shredded his civilian clothing before our very eyes. And before the eyes of the investigator.

That had been a year ago. And now it was happening again.

Everyone was excited, upset, and had difficulty falling asleep again.

‘There’s no difference between the criminals who rob us and the government that robs us,’ I said. And everyone agreed with me.

As watchman, Skoroseev started his shift about two hours before we did. Two abreast – all the taiga path would allow – we reached the office, angry and offended. Naïve longing for justice sits deep in man – perhaps even too deep to root out. After all, why be offended? Angry? Indignant? This damn search was just one instance of thousands. But at the bottom of each of our souls something stronger than freedom, stronger than life’s experience, was boiling. The faces of the convicts were dark with rage.

On the office porch stood the camp chief, Victor Nikolaevich Plutalov. The chief’s face was also dark with rage. Our tiny column stopped in front of the office, and Plutalov called me into the office.

‘So, you say the state is worse than the camp criminals?’ Plutalov stared at me from under lowered brows, biting his lips and sitting uncomfortably on a stool behind his desk.

I said nothing. Skoroseev! The impatient Mr Plutalov didn’t conceal his stoolie, didn’t wait for two hours! Or was something else the matter?

‘I don’t give a damn how you run off at the mouth. But what am I supposed to do if it’s reported to me? Or, in your language, someone squeals?’

‘Yes sir, it’s called squealing.’

‘All right, get back to work. You’d all eat each other alive if you had the chance. Politicians! A universal language. Everyone is going to understand one another. But I’m in charge here. I have to do something, if they squeal to me…’

Plutalov spat angrily.

A week passed, and I was shipped off with the latest group to leave the blessed prospecting group for the big mine. On the very first day I took the place of a horse in a wooden yoke, heaving with my chest against a wooden log.

Skoroseev remained in the prospecting group.

They were putting on an amateur performance in camp, and the wandering actor, who was also master of ceremonies, came running out to encourage the nervous performers offstage (one of the hospital wards). ‘The performance’s going great! It’s a great performance!’ he would whisper into the ear of each participant. ‘It’s a great performance!’ he announced loudly and strode back and forth, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a dirty rag.

Everything was very professional; the wandering actor had himself once been a star. Someone on stage was reading aloud a story of Zoschenko, ‘Lemonade’. The master of ceremonies leaned over to me:

‘Give me a smoke!’

‘Sure.’

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ the master of ceremonies said suddenly, ‘but if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was that bitch Skoroseev.’

‘Skoroseev?’ Now I knew whose intonations the voice on stage had reminded me of.

‘I’m an Esperantist. Do you understand? It’s a universal language. No “basic English” for me. That’s what I got my sentence for. I’m a member of the Moscow Society of Esperantists.’

‘Oh, you mean Article 5, Paragraph 6? A spy?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Ten years?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘But where does Skoroseev fit in?’

‘Skoroseev was the vice-chairman of the society. He’s the one who sold us all out, testified against everyone.’

‘Kind of short?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where’s he now?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d strangle him with my bare hands. I ask you as a friend [I had known the actor for about two hours – no more]: hit him in the face if you meet him. Right in the mug, and half your sins will be forgiven you.’

‘Half, for sure?’

‘For sure.’

But the reader of Zoschenko’s ‘Lemonade’ was already walking offstage. It wasn’t Skoroseev, but tall, lanky Baron Mendel. He looked like a prince from the Romanov dynasty and counted Pushkin among his ancestors. I was somewhat disappointed as I looked Pushkin’s descendant over, and the master of ceremonies was already leading his next victim on to the stage. He declaimed Gorky’s ‘Wind gathers the clouds over the sea’s gray plain’.

‘Just listen,’ the baron leaned over to me. ‘What kind of poetry is that? That kind of howling wind and thunder isn’t poetry. Just imagine! In that same year, that same day and hour, Blok wrote his “Oath in Fire and Gloom”, and Bely wrote “Gold in Azure”…’

I envied the baron’s happiness. He could lose himself, flee into verse.

Many years had passed, and nothing was forgotten. I arrived in Magadan after being released from camp and was attempting to free myself in a true fashion, to cross that terrible sea over which I had once been brought to Kolyma. And although I realized how difficult it would be to exist during my eternal wanderings, I didn’t want to remain on the cursed Kolyma soil by choice.

I had little money, and a truck headed in my direction had brought me to Magadan for a ruble per kilometer. The town was shrouded by a white fog. I had acquaintances here. They had to be here. But one seeks out acquaintances here in the day, and not at night. At night, no one will open even for a familiar voice. I needed a roof over my head, a berth, sleep.

I stood in the bus station and gazed at the floor which was completely covered with bodies, objects, sacks, crates. If worse came to worst… It was as cold here as on the street, perhaps forty-five degrees below zero. The iron stove had no fire in it, and the station door was constantly opening.

‘Don’t I know you?’

In the savage frost I was glad to see even Skoroseev. We shook hands through our mittens.

‘You can stay at my place. My house is nearby. I was released quite a while back. Got a mortgage and built a house. Even got married.’ Skoroseev burst out laughing. ‘We’ll have some tea…’

It was so cold, I agreed. For a long time we made our way over the hills and ruts of night-time Magadan with its shroud of cold milky darkness.

‘Yes, I built a house,’ Skoroseev was saying as I smoked, resting up. ‘Got a government loan. Decided to build a nest. A northern nest.’

I drank some tea, lay down, and fell asleep. But I slept badly in spite of my distant journey. Somehow yesterday had been lived badly. When I woke up, washed, and had a smoke, I understood how I had lived yesterday badly.

‘Well, I’ll be going. I have a friend not far from here.’

‘Leave your suitcase. If you find your friends, you can come back for it.’

‘No, this is too far away.’

‘I really wish you’d stay. After all, we are old friends.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’

I buttoned my coat, picked up the suitcase and reached for the door handle. ‘Goodbye.’

‘What about the money?’ said Skoroseev.

‘What money?’

‘For the night. It’s not free.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.’

I put down the suitcase, unbuttoned my coat, groped for the money in my pockets and paid. The fog was milky yellow in the day.