My Fellow Prisoners

The Father

He was the quarantine overseer. There’s a separate building where all new arrivals are quarantined for the first week or two to check for any infectious diseases and to find out ‘what makes them tick’. From here they then get assigned to a particular detachment. And, in fact, how your life works out in prison can pretty much hinge on the results of the quarantine inspection. So they tend to make only serious, reliable people overseers. I might add that there is also something called ‘red quarantine’, but that’s another discussion entirely, and probably best conducted with a criminal investigation team. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid this experience.

He introduced himself as Konstantin. Older than many fellow lags, well over forty, thick-set and with a calm look in his almost jet-black eyes. We shook hands. It can get pretty boring in the quarantine block – most of the detainees they bring in are young. We gradually got talking.

Konstantin was a professional driver, but he’d spent his whole life working with sheep. He’d been tending the flocks at the local state farm. These flocks, some 9,000 strong, belonged to the state. Konstantin had been selling lambs on the side. When they caught up with him, he admitted everything. The loss was calculated at a million roubles, and he was offered the chance to repay it – but he refused. He got nine years. He had already done six and was getting ready for conditional release on parole.

‘They’ve told me they’re going to let me out.’

‘So, was it worth it?’ I asked.

‘Of course’ – not a moment’s doubt. ‘My daughter’s now at school in St Petersburg. A straight-A student. Where would she have gone otherwise? To work at the uranium-enrichment plant? No way! My wife and I are happy for her.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘They’ll take me on as a driver again, I was promised. They know that I won’t touch anyone else’s stuff, everything’s privatized now, the owners are locals, our people. You don’t steal from your own, that’s about as low as it gets.’

‘What about going to St Petersburg, to your daughter?’

‘How would my wife and I do that? We don’t have that kind of money, anyway it’s too late.’

We sit there drinking our tea. Two men no longer young, who have both made a choice to go to prison. Loved ones are waiting for us at home, and we’re here, and it’s our decision. Was it the right one – who knows? I’m certainly not the one to judge Konstantin…