Kolyma Tales

My First Tooth

The column of men was just as I had dreamed all through my boyhood years. Everywhere were blackened faces and blue mouths burned by the Ural sun in April. Enormous guards leaped into sleighs which flew by without stopping. One of the guards had a single eye and a scar slash across his face. The head guard had bright-blue eyes and we all, all two hundred convicts, knew his name before half the first day had passed – Sherbakov. We learned it by magic, in some unfathomable, incomprehensible way. The convicts uttered his name in an offhand fashion as if it were something they had long been familiar with and this trip with him would last for ever. Indeed, he entered our lives for eternity. That is just the way it was – at least for many of us. Sherbakov’s enormous, supple figure appeared briefly everywhere. He would run ahead of the column and meet it, and then follow the last cart with his eyes before rushing forward to catch up and overtake it. Yes, we had carts, the classic carts of Siberia. Our group was making a five-day march in convict file. We carried no special goods with us and whenever we stopped anywhere or had to be counted, our irregular ranks reminded one of recruits at a railway station. It would be a long time, however, before the paths of our lives led us to any railway stations. It was a crisp April morning, and our yawning, coughing group was mustered in the twilight of a monastery courtyard before setting out on the long journey.

The quiet, considerate Moscow guards had been replaced by a band of shouting, suntanned young men under the command of the blue-eyed Sherbakov, and we spent the night in the basement of the Solikamsk Police Station which was located in a former monastery. Yesterday, when they poured us into the cold basement, all we could see was ice and snow around the church. There was always a slight thaw in the day and in the evening it would freeze over again. Blue-gray drifts blanketed the entire yard, and to find the essence of the snow, its whiteness, one had to break the hard, brittle crust of ice, dig a hole, and only then scoop out the flaky snow that melted joyously on the tongue and cooled dry mouths, burning them with its freshness.

I was one of the first to enter the basement and was thus able to pick a warmer spot. The enormous icy chambers frightened me, and I searched with all the inexperience of youth for something that would at least resemble a stove. But my chance comrade, a stunted thief by the name of Gusev, shoved me right up against the wall next to the only window, which was barred and had a double frame. Semicircular and about a yard high, the window began down at the floor and looked like a loophole. I wanted to find a warmer spot, but the crowd kept flowing through the narrow door and there was no opportunity to return. Very calmly, without saying a word to me, Gusev kicked the glass with the tip of his boot, breaking first one pane and then the second. Cold air rushed through the new opening, burning like boiling water. Caught in this icy draft and already terribly chilled after a long wait and head count in the courtyard, I began to shiver. Immediately, however, I understood the wisdom of Gusev’s action. Of the two hundred convicts, we two were the only ones that night who breathed fresh air. People were so packed into the cellar that it was impossible to lie down or even to sit. We had to remain standing.

The upper half of the room was hidden by a white fog of breath – unclean and stuffy. The ceiling was invisible, and we had no idea if it was high or low. People began to faint. Choking for breath, men tried to push their way to the door, where there was a crack and a peep-hole. They tried to breathe through it but every now and again the sentry outside the door would shove his bayonet through this peep-hole, and the men didn’t try again after that. Naturally, no medical assistance was rendered to those who fainted. Only the wise Gusev and I were able to breathe easily at the broken window. Muster took a long time…

We were the last to leave and, when the fog in the cellar had cleared, we saw within arm’s reach a vaulted ceiling, the firmament of our church-prison. In the basement of the Solikamsk Police Station I found huge letters drawn with a lump of coal, stretching right across the vaulted ceiling: ‘Comrades! We were in this grave three days and thought we would die, but we survived. Comrades, be strong!’

Accompanied by the shouts of the guards, our column crawled past the outskirts of Solikamsk and made its way toward a low area. The sky was blue, very blue – like the eyes of the guard commander. As the wind cooled our faces the sun burned them so that by nightfall of the first day they became brown. Accommodation, prepared in advance, was always the same. Two peasant huts were rented to put up the convicts for the night. One would be fairly clean, and the other rather dingy – something like a barn. Sometimes it was a barn. The trick was to end up in the ‘cleaner’ one, but that was not for the convicts to choose. Every evening at twilight the commander of the guards would have the men file past him. With a wave of his hand he would indicate where the man standing before him should spend the night. At the time Sherbakov seemed to me to be infinitely wise because he didn’t dig around in papers or lists to select ‘more distinguished criminals’, but simply picked out the necessary convicts with a wave of his hand. Later I decided that Sherbakov must be unusually observant; each selection, made by some unfathomable method, turned out to be the correct one. The political prisoners were all in one group, and the common criminals in the other. A year or two later I realized that Sherbakov’s wisdom did not depend on miracles. Anyone can learn to assess others by outward appearance. In our group, belongings and suitcases might have served as secondary signs, but our things were being hauled separately, on the carts and peasant sleighs.

On the first night something happened. That event is the subject of this story. Two hundred men stood waiting for the commander of the guards when, off to the left, a disturbance was heard. There was an uproar of shouting, puffing, and swearing, and finally a clear cry of ‘Dragons! Dragons!’ A man was flung out on to the snow in front of the file of convicts. His face was bloodied, and someone had jammed a tall fur hat on his head, but it could not cover the narrow oozing wound. The man, who was probably Ukrainian, was dressed in homespun. I knew him. He was Peter Zayats, the religious sectarian, and he had been brought from Moscow in the same railroad car with me. He prayed constantly.

‘He won’t stand up for roll-call!’ the guard reported, excited and puffing.

‘Stand him up!’ ordered the commander.

Two enormous guards supported Zayats, one on each side. Zayats, however, was heavier, and a head taller than either of them.

‘You don’t want to stand up? You don’t want to?’

Sherbakov struck Zayats in the face with his fist. Zayats spat into the snow.

All at once I felt a burning sensation in my chest and I realized that the meaning of my whole life was about to be decided. If I didn’t do something – what exactly, I didn’t know – it would mean that my arrival with this group of convicts was in vain, that twenty years of my life had been pointless.

The burning flush of shame over my cowardliness fled from my cheeks. I felt them cool down and my body lighten.

I stepped out of line and said in a trembling voice:

‘How dare you beat that man!’

Sherbakov looked me over in sheer amazement.

‘Get back in line.’

I returned to the line. Sherbakov gave the command, and heading for the two huts as indicated by his fingers, the group melted away in the darkness. His finger directed me to the poorer hut.

We lay down to sleep on wet, rotting year-old straw which was strewn on bare smooth earth. We lay in each other’s embrace because it was warmer that way, and only the criminal element in the group played its eternal card-games beneath a lantern hanging from a ceiling beam. Soon even they fell asleep and so, mulling over my act, did I. I had no older friend, no one to set an example. My sleep was interrupted by someone shining a light in my face. One of my comrades, a thief, kept repeating in a confident, ingratiating voice:

‘He’s the one, he’s the one.’

The lantern was held by a guard.

‘Come on outside.’

‘I’ll get dressed right away.’

‘Come as you are.’

I walked outside shivering nervously and not knowing what was going to happen.

Flanked by two guards, I walked up on to the porch.

‘Take your underwear off!’

I undressed.

‘Go stand in the snow.’

I went out into the snow, looked back at the porch, and saw two rifle barrels aimed directly at me. How much time I spent there that night in the Urals, my first night in the Urals, I don’t remember.

I heard a command:

‘Get dressed.’

As I pulled on my underwear, a blow on the ear knocked me into the snow. A heavy boot struck me directly in the teeth, and my mouth filled with warm blood and began to swell.

‘Go back to the barracks!’

I went back to the hut and found my spot, but it was already occupied by another man. Everyone was asleep or pretending to be asleep. The salty taste of blood wouldn’t go away. There was some object in my mouth, something superfluous, and I gripped this superfluous thing and tore it forcibly from my mouth. It was a knocked-out tooth. I threw it on to the decaying straw on the earthen floor.

With both arms I embraced the dirty, stinking bodies of my comrades and fell asleep. I fell asleep and didn’t even catch cold.

In the morning the group got underway, and Sherbakov’s blue imperturbable eyes ranged calmly over the convict columns. Peter Zayats stood in line. No one beat him, and he wasn’t shouting about dragons. The common criminals in the group peered at me in a hostile, anxious fashion. In the camps every man learns to answer for himself.

Two days later we reached ‘headquarters’ – a new log house on the river-bank.

The commandant, Nestorov, came out to take over the group. He was a hairy-fisted man, and many of the criminals in the group knew him and praised him highly:

‘Whenever they brought in escapees, Nestorov would come out and say: ‘So you boys decided to come back! OK, take your pick – either a licking or solitary confinement.” Solitary had an iron floor, and no one could survive more than three months there, not to mention the investigation and the extra sentence. “A licking, sir.”

‘He’d wind up and knock the man off his feet! Then he’d knock him down again! He was a real expert. “Now go back to the barracks.” And that was all. No investigations. A good supervisor.’

Nestorov walked up and down the ranks, carefully examining the faces.

‘Any complaints against the guards?’

‘No, no,’ a ragged chorus of voices answered.

‘How about you?’ The hairy finger touched my chest. ‘How come you’re answering as if you had cotton wool in your mouth? And your voice is hoarse.’

‘No,’ I answered, trying to force my damaged mouth to enunciate the words as firmly as possible. ‘I have no complaints about the guards.’

‘That’s not a bad story,’ I said to Sazonov. ‘It’s even got a certain amount of literary sophistication. But you’ll never get it published. Besides, the ending is sort of amorphous.’

‘I have a different ending,’ Sazonov said. ‘A year later they made me a bigwig in camp. That was when there was all that talk about rehabilitation and the new society “reforging” men. Sherbakov was supposed to get the job of second-in-command of the section I worked in. A lot depended on me, and Sherbakov was afraid I still hadn’t forgotten about the tooth I’d lost. Sherbakov hadn’t forgotten it either. He had a large family, and it was a good job, right on top. He was a simple, direct man and came to see me to find out if I would object to his candidacy. He brought a bottle of vodka with him to make peace Russian-style, but I wouldn’t drink with him. I did tell him I wouldn’t interfere with his appointment.

‘Sherbakov was overjoyed, kept saying he was sorry, shifting from one foot to the other at my door, catching the rug with his heel and not able to bring the conversation to an end.

‘ “We were on the road, you understand. We had escaped prisoners with us.” ’

‘That’s not really a good ending either,’ I said to Sazonov.

‘I have a different one then.

‘Before I was appointed to the section where I met Sherbakov again, I saw Peter Zayats on the street. He was an orderly in the village. There was no trace of the former young, black-haired, black-browed giant. Instead he was a limping, gray-haired old man coughing up blood. He didn’t even recognize me, and when I took him by the arm and addressed him by name, he jerked back and went his own way. I could see from his eyes that Zayats was thinking his own thoughts, thoughts that I could not guess at. My appearance was either unnecessary or offensive to the master of such thoughts, who was conversing with less earthly personages.’

‘I don’t like that variation either,’ I said.

‘Then I’ll leave it as I originally had it.’

Even if you can’t get something published, it’s easier to bear a thing if you write it down. Once you’ve done that, you can forget…