The Zone

“Nothing,” I said. “What can I say? A serious play.”

“You’re a cultured person, educated. We decided to draw you into this undertaking.”

“I have nothing to do with the theatre.”

“Do you think I do? But a Communist should always demonstrate his social commitment.”

“I’m not a Party member.”

“All the more reason to take part. Your indifference goes too far. You put yourself outside the collective. Political awareness is not for you, social activity is not for you. Don’t think you’re so much cleverer than everyone else.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Good. You will help with this cultural initiative. I’m managing, casting is done and I’ve already given out scripts, but without an assistant it’s hard. Our actors – well, you know yourself… Lenin is being played by a thief from the Ropcha transit camp. A lifelong pickpocket, with high standing under their Code. It’s the opinion of some here that he’s actively planning to escape.”

I kept quiet. How could I tell the PI what had happened in the forest?

Khuriyev continued, “In the role of Dzerzhinsky – Tsurikov, nicknamed ‘Stilts’, from the Fourth Brigade, in for perverting minors, term – six years. There is evidence he smokes dope. In the role of Timofei – Gesha, a nitwit from the sanitation brigade, a passive homo. In the role of Polina – Tomka Lebedyeva from the Division of Economic Administration, an incredible bitch, worse than the female zeks. In a word, this bunch leaves a lot to be desired. The use of narcotics is a probability, also illicit contacts with Lebedyeva. All that skirt wants is to flap around the zeks. Do you understand me?”

“What is there to understand? Our people.”

“Well then, put your hand to it. There is a rehearsal today at six. You will be assistant director. Your duties in the logging sector are temporarily suspended. I will notify Captain Tokar.”

“No protest here,” I said.

“Be there at ten minutes to six.”

I wandered around the barracks till six. A few times, officers wanted to send me off somewhere to take part in security operations. I told them that I had been placed at the disposal of Senior Lieutenant Khuriyev, and they left me in peace.

Close to six, I sat waiting in the Lenin Room. A moment later, Khuriyev appeared with a briefcase.

“And where are our personnel?”

“They’ll come,” I said. “Most likely they were delayed in the mess hall.”

Just then, Gesha and Tsurikov walked in. Tsurikov I knew from work in the unmarked sector. He was a sullen, emaciated zek with a revolting habit – he scratched himself. Gesha worked as an orderly in the sanitation brigade cleaning barracks, looking after the sick. He stole pills, vitamins and any medications with alcoholic content for the bosses. He walked with a barely noticeable dance step, submitting to some inaudible rhythm. It was said that zek chieftains in the zone would not let him near the campfire.

“Six on the dot,” Tsurikov said, and without bending down scratched his knee.

Gesha was rolling a smoke.

Gurin appeared, wearing only a worn undershirt. “Hot in here,” he said. “Pure Tashkent! But in general, this isn’t a zone, it’s a Palace of Culture. Soldiers address you in the polite form. And the food is choice. Do people really try to escape?”

“They run,” Khuriyev replied.

“To get in or get out?”

“To get out,” the PI answered without smiling.

“And I thought they’d run into the cooler from the outside. Or right from the capitalist jungles.”

“You made your joke, now that’s enough,” Khuriyev said.

Just then, Lebedyeva appeared in a cloud of cheap cosmetics, her hair in a six-month perm. She was a civilian, but she behaved like the inmates and spoke their slang. Generally, administration office workers started resembling the zeks after a month. Even contracted engineers fell into using camp argot. Not to speak of the soldiers.

“Let’s get down to it,” the PI said.

The actors took creased sheets of paper out of their pockets.

“Your roles must be learnt by Wednesday.” Then Khuriyev raised his hand. “I will now present the basic idea. The central line of the play is the struggle between feeling and duty. Comrade Dzerzhinsky, scorning illness, gives himself totally to the Revolution. Comrade Lenin insistently recommends that he take leave. Dzerzhinsky categorically refuses. Parallel to this, the storyline of Timofei develops. Animal lust for Polina temporarily blocks him from world revolution. Polina is a typical representative of the petit-bourgeois mind—”

“The black-marketeer type?” Lebedyeva asked loudly.

“Don’t interrupt. Her ideal is petit-bourgeois well-being. Timofei experiences a conflict between feeling and duty. The personal example of Dzerzhinsky has a strong moral effect on the youth. As a result, his sense of duty triumphs… I hope everything is clear? Let’s begin. So then, we see Dzerzhinsky at work. Tsurikov, sit there, stage left… Enter Vladimir Ilych. In his hand he holds a suitcase. We haven’t got the suitcase yet, we’ll use an accordion case for now. Take it… So then, enter Lenin. Begin!”

Gurin grinned and said with spirit, “How are you, Felix Edmundovich!” (He said this, swallowing his Rs like Lenin, “How ag you?”)

Tsurikov scratched his neck and answered gloomily, “Hello.”

“More respect,” Khuriyev said.

“Hello,” Tsurikov said a little louder.

“Do you know, Felix Edmundovich, what I have here in my hand?”

“A suitcase, Vladimir Ilych.”

“And just what it’s for – can you guess?”

“As you were!” the PI shouted. “It says here, ‘Lenin, with a tinge of irony.’ Where’s the tinge of irony? I don’t see it.”

“It’s coming,” Gurin assured him. He stretched out the arm with the case and winked insolently at Dzerzhinsky.

“Excellent,” Khuriyev said. “Continue. ‘And just what it’s for – can you guess?’”

“And just what it’s for – can you guess?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tsurikov said.

“Not so churlish,” the PI said, breaking in again. “Milder. Before you is Lenin himself. The leader of the world proletariat.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tsurikov said, as sullenly as before.

“That’s better. Continue.”

Gurin winked again with even more familiarity. “The suitcase is for you, Felix Edmundovich. So that you, dear fellow, can go off and take a rest at once.”

Without special effort, Tsurikov scratched his shoulder blade. “I can’t, Vladimir Ilych – there is counter-revolution all around us. Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries,* bourgeois spouts—”

“Scouts,” Khuriyev said. “Go on.”

“Your health, Felix Edmundovich, belongs to the Revolution. The comrades and I have discussed it and decided: you must take a rest. I say this to you as a member of the ruling body.”

Suddenly we heard a female yowl. Lebedyeva was sobbing, her head against the tablecloth.

“What’s the matter?” the PI asked nervously.

“I’m sorry for Felix,” Tamara explained. “He’s skinny as a tapeworm.”

“Dystrophics happen to be hardier,” Gesha said with hostility.

“Break,” Khuriyev announced. Then he turned to me. “Well, what do you think? I would say they’ve grasped the main thing.”

“Och,” Lebedyeva exclaimed, “it’s so close to life! Like in a fairy tale.”

Tsurikov was giving his belly a good scratch. While he did this, his eyes clouded over.

Gesha was studying the escape map. This was considered suspicious, even though the map was displayed openly.

“Let’s continue,” Khuriyev said. The actors put out their cigarettes. “Next come Timofei and Polina. The scene is the reception room of the Cheka. Timofei is manning the switchboard. Polina enters. Begin!”

Gesha sat on a stool and grew pensive. Polina took a few steps towards him, fanning herself with a rose-coloured handkerchief. “Timosha! Yoo-hoo, Timosha!”

Timofei: “Why have you come? Or is something wrong at home?”

“I can’t live without you, my grey-winged dove.”

Timofei: “Go home, Polya. This is no village reading room.”

Lebedyeva pressed her fists to her temples and let out an oppressive, piercing howl: “You don’t love me any more, don’t fancy me… You’ve ruined the best years of my life… I’m all alone now, like a mountain ash in a meadow.”

Lebedyeva had trouble suppressing her sobs. Her eyes turned red. Mascara ran down her wet cheeks. Timofei, on the other hand, behaved almost mockingly. “Our work demands it,” he said through his teeth.

“Why can’t we run off to the ends of the earth!” Polina wailed.

“To join General Wrangel and the White Army,* is that it?” Gesha said, tensing up suddenly.

“Excellent,” Khuriyev said. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your behind. Chmykhalov, don’t upstage the heroine.” (This was how I learnt Gesha’s real name, Chmykhalov.) “Let’s go. Enter Dzerzhinsky. ‘Ah, the younger generation!’”

Tsurikov cleared his throat and said gloomily, “Ah, the fucking younger generation!”

“What kind of parasitical words are those?” Khuriyev broke in.

“Ah, the younger generation!”

“Good health, Felix Edmundovich,” Gesha said, rising a little.

“You’re supposed to be flustered,” Khuriyev said.

“I think he should stand up.” Gurin gave his opinion.

Gesha jumped up, overturning the stool. Then he saluted, touching his palm to his shaved head.

“Good health, sir!” he shouted.

Dzerzhinsky reached out and squeamishly shook his hand. Homosexuals were not liked in the zone, especially passive ones.

“More dynamic!” Khuriyev urged.

Gesha started talking faster. Then even faster. He rushed on, swallowing words. “I don’t know how to proceed, Felix Edmundovich. My Polinka has gone completely mad. She’s jealous of my service, do you understand?” (Gesha pronounced it “un-stan”.) “‘I’m lonesome,’ she says. And I really do love her, that Polinka. She’s my beloved, un-stan? She’s captured my heart, un-stan?”

“Again, parasite words,” Khuriyev shouted. “Be more careful!”

Lebedyeva, her back to us, was freshening her lipstick.

“Break!” the PI announced. “That’s enough for today.”

“Too bad,” Gurin said. “I was just starting to get inspired.”

“Let’s sum up.” Khuriyev pulled out a notepad. “Lenin more or less resembles a human being. Timofei gets a B minus. Polina is better than I thought she’d be, to be honest. As for Dzerzhinsky – unconvincing. Manifestly unconvincing. Remember, Dzerzhinsky is the conscience of the Revolution. A knight without fear or blemish. But the way you do him, he looks like some kind of recidivist.”

“I’ll try to do better,” Tsurikov assured him indifferently.

“Do you know what Stanislavsky* said?” Khuriyev continued. “Stanislavsky would say, ‘I don’t believe it!’ If an actor read a line in a phoney way, Stanislavsky would stop the rehearsal and say, ‘I don’t believe it!’”

“Cops say the same thing,” Tsurikov said.

“What?” The PI didn’t understand.

“The cops, I said, give you the same line. ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it…’ They nabbed me once in Rostov, and the investigator was a real douche—”

“Don’t forget yourself!” the PI shouted.

“Especially with the weaker sex present,” Gurin said.

“I’m an officer in the Regular Army,” Khuriyev said, raising his voice.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” Gurin said. “I meant Lebedyeva.”

“Ah-h,” Khuriyev said. Then he turned to me. “Next time, be more active. Prepare your remarks. You’re a person who’s cultured, educated. And now you’re all dismissed. We meet again on Wednesday. What’s the matter with you, Lebedyeva?”

Tamara was quivering with little sobs, wringing her handkerchief.

“What is it?” Khuriyev asked.

“I’m feeling it so deeply…”

“Excellent. That’s what Stanislavsky called ‘transformation’.”

We said goodbye and we separated. I walked with Gurin to Barracks Six. We were going the same way.

By this time, it had grown dark. The path was lit by yellow light bulbs above the fences. In the free-fire zone, German shepherds ran back and forth, rattling their chains.

Suddenly, Gurin asked, “So how many people did they really do in?”

“Who?” I didn’t understand.

“Those dogs, of course – Lenin with Dzerzhinsky. ‘Knights without fear or radish.’”

I kept quiet. How could I know whether to trust him? And anyway, why was he being so open with me?

The zek wouldn’t let it go. “Now me, for example – I’m in for theft. Stilts, we assume, stuck it where he shouldn’t have. Gesha’s in for something on the order of black-marketeering. As you can see, not one wet job between us. While those two flooded Russia with blood, but that’s all right.”

“Look,” I said, “you’re going too far.”

“What’s going too far about it? Those people were the bloodiest transgressors ever.”

“Listen, let’s end this conversation.”

“Good enough,” he said.

After that, there were three or four rehearsals. Khuriyev would get worked up, mop his forehead with toilet paper, and shout, “I don’t believe it! Lenin is overacting, Timofei is hysterical. Polina is wagging her behind. And Dzerzhinsky looks like a thug.”

“Well, what am I supposed to look like?” Tsurikov asked sullenly. “It is what it is.”

“Did you ever hear of transformation?” Khuriyev asked him.

“I heard,” the zek said uncertainly.

“What did you hear? Just out of curiosity, what?”

“Transformation,” Gurin explained for Dzerzhinsky, “is when backstabbing thieves work as stoolies. Or else, let’s say there’s a prancing homo, but he struts around like a hard ass…”

“Some conversation,” Khuriyev said angrily. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your form. Think more about the content.”

“My bosoms are shaking,” Lebedyeva complained, “and my legs are swollen. I always gain weight when I’m nervous. And I eat so little, cottage cheese and maybe eggs.”

“Not another word about ingesta,” Gurin said to silence her.

“Come on,” Gesha fussed, “let’s try it again. I have a feeling this time I’m going to transform all the way.”

I made an effort to take an active part. Not for nothing had they crossed my name off the convoy schedules. Better to rehearse than to freeze out on the taiga.

I said something or other, using expressions like “mise-en-scène”, “super-task”, “public solitude”…

Tsurikov practically never joined in these discussions. Or if he did say something, it was always totally unexpected. I remember once, we were talking about Lenin, and Tsurikov suddenly said, “It can happen that someone looks like the lowest of the low, but his prick is healthy. Type of A-one salami.”

Gurin grinned. “You think we still remember what it looks like? I mean, that salami.”

“Some conversation,” the political instructor said angrily.

Rumours about our dramatic circle spread through the camp. Attitudes towards the play and the leaders of the Revolution were ambivalent. Lenin was generally respected, Dzerzhinsky not very much. In the mess hall, one zek foreman made a crack to Tsurikov in passing: “So, you found yourself a nice job, Stilts! Made yourself into a Chekist.”

Tsurikov’s response was to hit him over the head with a ladle. The foreman fell down. It became very quiet. Later the morose truck drivers from logging said to Tsurikov, “At least wash the ladle. You can’t dip it in the slops now.”

Gesha was always being asked, “Well, what about you, Cleanup? Who do you play? Krupskaya?”* To this, Gesha would answer evasively, “Well, just… a working lad… an insider.”

And only Gurin walked around the camp with an air of importance, practising his Lenin’s Rs. “You ag following the tgue goad, Comgade Gecidivists!”

“Looks like him,” the zeks would say. “Pure cinema.”

Khuriyev got more nervous each day. Gesha waddled, spoke his lines jerkily, and kept adjusting a non-existent Mauser. Lebedyeva sobbed almost without interruption, even at her regular daytime job. She put on so much weight that she no longer zipped up her brown imported boots. Even Tsurikov – he too was slightly transformed. He was overcome by a hoarse, tubercular cough, which distracted him from his scratching.

The day of the dress rehearsal arrived. They glued little beards and moustaches on Lenin and Dzerzhinsky. To assist with the make-up, they temporarily released a counterfeiter named Zhuravsky from solitary. He had a steady hand and professional, artistic taste.

At first, Gurin had wanted to let his beard grow, but the security officer said it was against regulations. Still, for a month before the performance, the actors were permitted to let their hair grow. Gurin remained with his historically authentic bald head, Gesha turned out to be a redhead, and Tsurikov sprouted an entirely appropriate skewbald crew cut.

For costumes they dressed Gurin in a tight civilian suit, which corresponded to Lenin’s real-life attire. For Gesha, they borrowed a leather jacket from Lieutenant Rodichev. Lebedyeva shortened a velvet party dress. Tsurikov was allotted a khaki tunic.

And so the seventh of November* finally came around. Four red flags hung on the fences from early morning. A fifth was fastened to the building of the penal isolator. The sounds of the ‘Varshavyanka’* carried from all the metal loudspeakers.

The only ones to work that day were flunkies from the housekeeping services. The logging sector was closed. The production brigades all stayed in the zone.

Prisoners roamed aimlessly about the open yard. By one in the afternoon, some began to appear drunk. It was more or less the same in the barracks. Many had gone for liquor early in the morning. The rest wandered about the area in loosened fatigue shirts.

The weapons room was guarded by six trusted re-enlistees. A sergeant stood guard outside the provisions storeroom. On the announcement board, a memo had been posted, entitled “On the intensification of military alertness on the occasion of the Jubilee.”

Towards three o’clock, they assembled the prisoners on the square by Barracks Six. The camp commander, Major Amosov, gave a short speech. He said, “Revolutionary holidays touch every Soviet citizen. Even those who have temporarily stumbled… killed someone, stolen, raped, generally speaking, made a commotion… The Party gives to these people the opportunity to reform, leads them through unrelenting physical labour towards Socialism. In short, all hail the jubilee of our Soviet nation! But as for drunkards and stoners, we will, as they say, call them to account… not to mention the bestiality. As it is, half the she-goats in the area have been messed with, you no-good—”

“That’s a funny one,” a voice called out from the rows of men. “What’s the big deal? I tapped the daughter of Second Regional Party Secretary of Zaporozhye, but you tell me it’s hands off a goat?”

“Quiet, Gurin,” said the commander. “You’re showing off again! We entrust him with playing Comrade Lenin, and all he can think about is a goat… What kind of people are you?”

“People, like people,” one of the prisoners shouted from the columns. “Wretches and thugs.”

“You’re a hopeless lot, as I see it,” the major said.

Political Instructor Khuriyev popped up behind his shoulder. “Just a second, you’re not dismissed yet. At six thirty there will be a general assembly. After the ceremonial, there will be a concert. Attendance is mandatory. No-shows will be sent to the isolator. Are there any questions?”

“A ton of questions,” came a voice out of the ranks. “Want to hear? Where’s all the cleaning soap gone to? Where are the warm foot cloths that were promised? Why is this the third month no films have been shown? Are they or are they not going to give work gloves to the branch-cutters? Want more? When is an outhouse going to be put up in the logging sector?”

“Quiet, quiet!” Khuriyev shouted. “Complaints in the prescribed manner, through the brigadiers! And now, you’re all dismissed!”

Everyone grumbled a little and went off.

Towards six o’clock, the prisoners began to gather in groups near the library. Here, in what had been the shipping workshop, general assemblies were held. The windowless wooden barn could hold about five hundred people.

The prisoners had shaved and cleaned their shoes. The one who served as the zone’s barber was the murderer Mamedov. Every time he opened his razor, Mamedov would say, “One little slit and there goes your soul!” It was his favourite professional joke.

The camp administrators had put on full-dress uniform. Political Instructor Khuriyev’s boots reflected the dim lights which twinkled above the free-fire zone. The civilian women who worked in the Division of Economic Administration smelt of powerful eau de Cologne. The male office workers wore their imported jackets.

The barn was still closed. Re-enlistees crowded near the entrance. Inside, final preparations for the ceremonial were still going on. Inmate brigadier Agoshin was fastening a banner above the door. Letters in yellow gouache had been painstakingly stencilled onto a crimson background: “The Party is our Helmsman!”

Khuriyev was issuing his final directions. He was surrounded by Tsurikov, Gesha and Tamara. Then Gurin appeared. I also drew near them.

Khuriyev said, “If everything goes well, I will give each of you a week off. Besides that, a visiting performance is being planned for Ropcha.”

“Where’s that?” Lebedyeva asked with interest.

“In Switzerland,” Gurin answered.

At six thirty, the barn doors were thrown open. The prisoners noisily took places on the wooden benches. Three guards carried in chairs for members of the presidium. The highest officials moved in a stately line down the aisle towards the stage.

The hall became quiet. Someone clapped uncertainly. Others joined him.

Khuriyev rose before the microphone. The PI smiled, showing his durable silver crowns. Then he glanced at a piece of paper and began, “It is already sixty years…”

As usual, the microphone wasn’t working. Khuriyev raised his voice. “It is already sixty years… Can you hear me?”

Instead of answering, someone called from the audience, “For sixty years we haven’t seen freedom!”

Captain Tokar rose slightly, to identify the transgressor.

Khuriyev now spoke even louder. He listed the main accomplishments of Soviet power, recalled the victory over Germany, shed light on the current political situation, then fleetingly touched on the problem of the all-out building of Communism.

After him, a major from Syktyvkar spoke. His speech was about escapes and camp discipline. The major spoke softly; no one listened.

Then Lieutenant Rodichev came onstage. He began his speech like this: “Among the people, a document was born…” What followed was something like a list of socialist resolutions. One phrase stuck in my mind: “…to reduce the number of camp murders by twenty-six per cent…”

Close to an hour had gone by. Prisoners were conversing quietly, smoking. In the back rows they were already playing cards. Guards moved noiselessly along the walls.

Then Khuriyev announced, “The concert!”

First on was a zek I didn’t know, who read two of Krylov’s fables. To portray the dragonfly, he rolled open a paper fan. Switching over to the ant, he dug and swung an imaginary shovel.

Then Tarasyuk, manager of the bathhouse, juggled electric light bulbs. The number of them kept increasing. For the finale, Tarasyuk tossed them all up in the air at once, then stretched out his elastic waistband, and all the light bulbs fell into his loose satin pants.

Then Lieutenant Rodichev read a poem by Mayakovsky.* He stood with his feet wide apart and tried to speak in a bass voice.

He was succeeded by the recidivist Kuptsov, who performed a tap dance called ‘The Little Gypsy Girl’ with no accompaniment. As he was being applauded, he exclaimed, “Too bad – without patent-leather boots you don’t get the full effect.”

Then they announced a zek foreman, Loginov, “accompanied by a guitar.” Loginov walked out, bowed, touched the strings, and sang:

“A gypsy reads my cards, her eyes cast down,

An ancient necklace and a string of beads.

I wanted to try Fate for a queen of diamonds

But once again it was the ace of spades.

Why is it, my unhappy fate,

Again you lead me on a road of tears?

The barbed wire’s rusty, the iron bars close,

A railway prison car, the noise of wheels…”

They applauded Loginov for a long time and called for him to sing an encore. However, Khuriyev was against it. He walked out and said, “As they say, the good in little doses.”

Then he adjusted his chest strap, waited for silence, and shouted out, “The revolutionary play Kremlin Stars. The roles will be played by inmates of the Ust-Vym camp complex. Vladimir Ilych Lenin – prisoner Gurin. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky – prisoner Tsurikov. Red Army soldier Timofei – prisoner Chmykhalov. The merchant’s daughter Polina – Economic Administration worker Lebedyeva, Tamara Yevgenyevna… And so, Moscow, the year 1918.”

Khuriyev backed off the stage. A chair and a blue plywood stool were carried onto the proscenium. Then Tsurikov climbed up onstage wearing the khaki tunic. He scratched his leg, sat down and fell into deep thought. Then he remembered that he was sick, and began to force a cough. He coughed so hard that the tunic came up out of his belt.

Meanwhile, there was still no sign of Lenin. From the wings, a stagehand belatedly brought out a telephone without a cord. Tsurikov stopped coughing, picked up the receiver, and fell into even deeper thought.

A few emboldened prisoners in the audience started yelling, “Come on, Stilts, don’t drag it out!”

At that moment, Lenin appeared, carrying an enormous yellow suitcase. “Greetings, Felix Edmundovich.”

“Hello there,” Dzerzhinsky answered without getting up.

Gurin set down the suitcase, squinted cunningly, and asked, “Do you know, Felix Edmundovich, what I have here in my hand?”

“A suitcase, Vladimir Ilych.”

“And just what it’s for – can you guess?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea.” Tsurikov even turned away slightly, showing complete indifference.

From the audience, some shouted again, “Get up, Stilts! That’s no way to talk to the boss!”

“Sha!” Tsurikov answered. “We’ll sort it out… Too many of you here are overeducated.” Reluctantly, he rose slightly.

Gurin waited for silence and continued. “The suitcase is for you, Felix Edmundovich. So that you, dear fellow, can go off and take a rest at once.”

“I can’t, Vladimir Ilych. There’s counter-revolution all around us. The Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries” – Tsurikov glanced angrily at the audience – “bourgeois… what do you call them?”

“Scouts?” Gurin prompted.

“’At’s it, ’at’s it…”

“Your health, Felix Edmundovich, belongs to the Revolution. The comrades and I have discussed it and decided: you must take a rest. I say this to you as a member of the ruling body.”

Tsurikov was silent.

“Do you understand me, Felix Edmundovich?”

“I understand,” Tsurikov replied, and grinned stupidly. It was blatantly obvious that he had forgotten his lines.

Khuriyev came near the stage and whispered loudly, “Do what you want…”

“And what can I want to do,” Tsurikov said in the same loud whisper, “if my memory’s gone full of holes?”

“Do what you want,” the PI repeated louder, “but I’m not leaving service.”

“Everything’s clear,” Tsurikov said. “I’m not leaving—”

Lenin interrupted him. “The main asset of the Revolution is people. To care for them is our arch-important task. So get your things together, and to the Crimea, dear fellow, to the Crimea!”

“It’s still early, Vladimir Ilych, it’s still early. Let us first finish with the Mensheviks, decapitate the bourgeois cobra—”

“Not cobra, but hydra,” Khuriyev said.

“Same bugger,” Dzerzhinsky said, and waved his hand.

Beyond that, everything went more or less smoothly. Lenin reasoned, Dzerzhinsky wouldn’t give in. A few times, Tsurikov raised his voice shrilly.

Then Timofei came out onstage. Lieutenant Rodichev’s leather jacket did remind one of the double-breasted Chekist coat. Polina asked him to go to the ends of the earth with her.

“To join General Wrangel and the White Army, is that it?” Timofei asked, and grabbed his imaginary Mauser.

From the audience, zeks yelled, “Play your hearts, Cleanup! Drag her to your berth! Show us something’s still clucking in your pants!”

Lebedyeva stamped her foot wrathfully, straightened her velvet dress, and again drew near Timofei. “You’ve ruined the best years of my life! You’ve left me, I’m all alone now, like a mountain ash in a meadow.”

But the sympathy of the audience was with Timofei. Their cries carried from the hall: “Look how she’s laying it on, the hussy! You can see her candle’s burning out!”

Others yelled back, “Don’t frighten the actress, you morons! Let the seance gather steam!”

Then the barn door flew open and Security Officer Bortashevich cried, “Legal convoy, report for duty! Lopatin, Gusev, Koralis – get your weapons! Sergeant Lakhno, get the documents, on the double!”

Four of the guards headed for the door. “Excuse me,” Bortashevich said.

“Continue,” Khuriyev said, and waved his hand.

The performance moved to the final scene. The suitcase was stored away for better times. Felix Dzerzhinsky stayed at his battle post. The merchant’s daughter Polina forgot her personal claims…

Khuriyev sought me out with his eyes and nodded with satisfaction. In the first row, Major Amosov squinted contentedly.

Finally, Vladimir Ilych stepped up to the microphone. For a few seconds he was silent. Then his face lit up with the light of historical prescience. “Who is this?” Gurin exclaimed. “Who is this?”

Out of the darkness, thin pale faces focused on the leader.

“Who is this? Whose are these happy, young faces? Whose are these cheerful, sparkling eyes? Can this really be the youth of the Seventies?”

Romantic notes sounded in the voice of the actor. His speech was coloured with unfeigned excitement. He gesticulated. His powerful palm, covered with tattoos, swept upwards. “Can it really be the splendid grandchildren of the Revolution?”

At first, there were a few uncertain laughs from the front row. After a few seconds, everyone was laughing hard. You could hear Major Amosov’s bass in the general chorus. Lebedyeva yelped in a reedy voice. Chmykhalov held his sides. Onstage, Tsurikov took off his beard and shyly laid it beside the telephone.

Vladimir Ilych tried to speak. “I envy you, messengers of the future! It was for you that we lit the first lights of the new-builds. It was for your sake… Hear me out, you dogs! There’s just a sparrow’s beak of this junk left!”

The hall answered Gurin with a terrible, irrepressible yell: “Be still, Lisper, before the rule of lawlessness!”

“Hey, whoever’s closest, give that Maupassant a good tickle!”

“Beat it, uncle, your pretzels are burning!”

Khuriyev pushed through to the stage and tugged at the leader’s pants. “Sing!”

“Already?” Gurin asked. “There are literally two lines left. About the bourgeoisie and the stars.”

“Dismiss the bourgeoisie. Go on to the stars. And start the ‘Internationale’ right away.”

“Whatever you say.” Straining his voice to the utmost, Gurin yelled, “Stop this racket!” Then he added, in a vengeful tone, “So then let your way be lighted, children of the future, by our Kremlin stars!”

“Let’s go!” Khuriyev ordered, and then, lifting a rifle-cleaning rod, he began to conduct.

The hall became a little quieter. Gurin broke into song in an unexpectedly beautiful, pure and ringing tenor:

“Arise, you prisoners of starvation…”

And further, in the silence that had fallen:

“Arise, you wretched of the earth…”

Suddenly he became strangely transformed. Now he was a country peasant, mysterious and cunning, like his recent ancestors. His face seemed aloof and coarse. His eyes were half closed.

All of a sudden, someone began to sing with him. At first, one uncertain voice, then a second and a third. And then a whole dissonant, unorganized chorus of voices:

“For justice thunders condemnation –

A better world’s in birth.

’Tis the final conflict, let each stand in his place…”

The multitude of faces joined into one trembling spot. The actors onstage froze. Lebedyeva pressed her hands to her temples. Khuriyev waved his cleaning rod. A strange, dreamy smile had set on the lips of the leader of the Revolution.

“No more shall chains of violence bind us,

Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall,

The earth shall rise on new foundations…”

Suddenly, my throat contracted painfully. For the first time, I was part of my unique, unprecedented country. I was entirely made of cruelty, hunger, memory, malice… Because of my tears, I couldn’t see for a moment. I don’t think anyone noticed.

And then the singing died down. The last stanza was finished out by a few isolated, embarrassed voices.

“The performance is over!” Khuriyev said.

Overturning the benches, the prisoners headed for the door.

June 16, 1982. New York

Dear Igor,

I guess our work is drawing to a close. The only thing left is a chunk of about twenty pages. There is something else, but I’ve decided not to include it.

I decided to reject the wildest, bloodiest, most monstrous episodes of camp life. It seemed to me they would have come out looking purely sensational. The effect would have come from the material itself rather than the texture of the writing.

I am not in the business of writing physiological sketches. Anyhow, I don’t write about prison and zeks. What I wanted to write about was life and people. I’m not inviting my readers into a freak museum.

Needless to say, I could have come up with God knows what. I knew a man who had the words “Slave of the MVD”* tattooed on his forehead. After which he was “naturally” scalped by two prison doctors. I saw mass orgies of lesbians on the roof of a barracks. I saw a man sodomizing a sheep. (For the sake of convenience, the recidivist Murashko shoved its back legs into canvas boots.) I attended the wedding of two camp homosexuals and even shouted, “Kiss!”

I say once again that I am interested in life and not in prison, and in people, not monsters.

And I absolutely do not want to be known as the modern-day Virgil who leads Dante through Hell (however much I may love Shalamov). It’s enough that I worked as a guide on the Pushkin estate.

Not long ago, mordant Genis said to me, “You’re always afraid your work will be compared to Shalamov’s. You should stop worrying. It won’t.”

I know that this is just mild, friendly irony. Still, what would be the use of paraphrasing Shalamov? Or even Tolstoy together with Pushkin, Lermontov? What is the point of rehashing Alexander Dumas, like Fitzgerald did? The Great Gatsby is a wonderful book, yet I still prefer The Count of Monte Cristo.

I always dreamt of being a disciple of my own ideas. Maybe I’ll still get there in my declining years.

So I have omitted, as they say, the most heart-rending details of camp life. I did not lure my readers on with promises of thrills and strange sights. I would have preferred to lead them up to a mirror.

There was also another extreme that had to be avoided, namely, submerging oneself in aesthetics to the point of oblivion, losing sight of the fact that prison camp is revolting, and painting it in the ornamental tradition of the south-western school.

So there were two extremes to stay away from. I could have told the story about the man who sewed his eye shut, or the one about the man who nursed and raised a baby goldfinch in the logging sector, or the one about an embezzler named Yakovlev who nailed his scrotum to his bunk, or the one about Burkov the pickpocket who sobbed at the burial of a May beetle.

In a word, if it seems to you that there isn’t enough vileness, we can put some in. And if the opposite is true, well, that can also be easily remedied.

AFTER THEY HAD TIED ME UP with telephone wire, I calmed down. My head lay under a steam-heat radiator, and my feet, in badly made cheap leather army boots, were under the chandelier in the middle of the Lenin Room, where the New Year’s tree had stood a week earlier.

I could hear the soldiers of the escort platoon being issued their weapons and Lieutenant Khuriyev giving them instructions. I knew they’d be going out in the freezing cold now, starting to walk along the black gangways by the zone, past the straining dogs, and each soldier would shine his flashlight on his face so the guard in the watchtower could recognize him.

As the first order of business, I decided to declare a hunger strike and began waiting for supper in order to refuse it. But no one came.

I could hear the off-duty shift coming down the corridor, dumping their two-magazine cartridge pouches and their sub-machine guns, which would be white with hoarfrost, on the weapons-room counter. Then I heard the sentries moving aluminium stools in the mess hall, where the cook Balodis would have saved them a few onions, a loaf of bread and a piece of lard, but must have forgotten some salt, to judge by the cursing.

As I grew sober from the cold and pain, I began to recall everything as it happened.

In the daytime we had been drinking with the trusties. They all tried to hug me and kept repeating, “Bob, you’re the only human being in the whole Ust-Vym camp.” Then we made our way all across the settlement to the commissary and met Stern, the logging unit’s medic, and Fidel walked up to him, pulled off his beaver hat, scooped some snow up in it, and put it back on his head. We walked on, while the dirty snow started to trickle down the doctor’s face.

Then we went inside the commissary and asked Tonechka for some swill. She said there wasn’t any cheap drink, to which we shouted back that it didn’t matter since we were out of money anyway. She said, “Wash the floors in the storeroom, and I’ll give you each a little bottle of eau de Cologne.” Tonechka went out and came back in a few minutes with a bucket of steaming water. We took off our fatigue shirts and twisted them into plaits, dipped them into the bucket, and began to scrub the plank floor. Balodis and I worked hard, and Fidel was hardly in our way. Afterwards we drank the cologne, which trickled slowly into our mugs. The taste was awful and we snacked on hard candies, chewing them together with the bits of wrapping paper that were still stuck to them.

Tonechka said, “To your health!”

Balodis, the Latvian, pointed at her and asked Fidel, “Could you?”

And Fidel answered, “For a million, and then only on a hangover.”

When we left it was already dark. Lights were going on over the sawmill and in the settlement. We walked past the stables, where wagons without horses were standing, the wagon tongues resting on the ground. Fidel started playing ‘We’re on Our Way through Uruguay’, but Balodis grabbed the guitar from him and smashed it against a tree. We threw the pieces in an ice hole.

I looked up at the stars and my head began to spin.

Just then Fidel climbed up a telegraph pole with a knife in his teeth. He was a competent technician and hoped to do some damage. He climbed higher and higher, and when his shadow on the snow had grown enormous he suddenly shrieked “Mama!” and fell from a height of ten metres. We rushed to him, but Fidel stood up, brushed off the snow, and said, “Getting down is the easy part.”

We looked for the knife but couldn’t find it. “Obviously you swallowed it,” Balodis said. “That’s OK,” replied Fidel, “I have two of them.”

Then we set off for the barracks, and when the bakery van came towards us around the turn, we kept walking ahead until the driver had to back up and run through somebody’s fence.

When we got back the duty detail were cleaning their weapons. We went to the mess hall and ate some cold pickle soup. Fidel wanted to relieve himself in the water can that stood on a stool in the corner, but Balodis talked him out of it.

Then we went into the Lenin Room and sat around a table covered with a red calico cloth. The walls were hung with bulletin boards, posters and printed slogans; the chandelier glittered, and a New Year’s edition of Lightning, the bulletin-board newspaper, lay rolled in a tube in the corner.

“Will Communism be here soon?” Fidel asked. “Because my needs are piling up.”

“And how about your abilities?” I asked.

“No problem,” Fidel said. “I have plenty of abilities.”

“For cursing,” Balodis said.

“Not only that,” Fidel said.

Fidel started setting up chess pieces. I rested my head on the tablecloth, and Balodis stood looking at photographs of the members of the Central Committee.

“That’s some name,” he said. “Comrade Dentures.” Just then Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room. “You’d better go to bed, boys,” he said.

But Fidel yelled, “Why is there injustice all around us, Sergeant? Explain why! A thief does time for what he did, but what are we rotting here for?”

“Who’s to blame for that?” the sergeant said.

“If someone could show me the man who’s to blame for all my misfortunes,” I said, “I would strangle him on the spot.”

“Better go to sleep,” Yevchenko said.

At this point we stood up and filed past the sergeant, brushing his shoulder. We sat on the logs in the courtyard and had a smoke, then we set off towards the administration compound.

“Bob, go into the zone and get some fuel, my engine is shutting down,” Fidel said.

“Aha,” Balodis said, catching on, “there’s no potion in the commissary, but there’s always plenty in the zone. The crooks’ll give us some without a murmur. They know we won’t be in their debt.”

He tugged at Fidel’s sleeve. “Give me a cigarette.”

“Smoking is unhealthy,” Fidel said. “Nicotine has an adverse effect on the heart.”

“No, it’s healthy,” Balodis said. “Healthier than vodka. What’s unhealthy is standing around in a watchtower.”

I wasn’t allowed into the zone. The controller on watch asked, “Where are you going?”

“To the zone.”

“On private business?”

“No,” I said, “public.”

“After vodka, is that it?”

“Well, so what?”

“Turn back.”

“Oho,” I said, “so this is socialist justice! You think it’s all right for the recidivists to drink it all up and then go commit another punishable offence?”

“You go after vodka, you get friendly with the contingent, then he uses you for precarious purposes.”

“Who’s that – he?”

“The contingent, that’s who. You’re supposed to feel antagonism towards the convicts. You’re supposed to hate them. And can you say that you hate them? Not that I can see. Where’s your antagonism, I ask?”

“I don’t hate anyone. Not even you, numbskull.”

“That’s my point,” the controller said, and added, “Want a shot from my private reserves?”

“Sure,” I said, “only don’t expect any antagonism.”

I returned to the barracks, stumbling as I went. I crossed the snow-covered parade ground in the dark and wound up in the drying room, where the stove was going and felt snow boots and sheepskin jackets were hanging from hooks. Fidel rushed over to me, knocking over his chair, but I told him there was no vodka and he started to cry. “But where’s Balodis?” I asked.

“Everyone’s asleep,” Fidel said. “We’re the only ones left.”

Then I almost started crying myself. I imagined we were all alone in the wide world. Who was there to love us? Who was there to take care of us?

Fidel picked up a harmonica and made a shrill, piercing sound on it. “Oho,” he said, “I pick up the instrument for the first time and the result is not bad. What shall I play for you, Bach or Mozart?”

“Mozart’s quieter,” I said. “If the next shift wakes up, they’ll come in here and kill us.”

We were silent for some time.

“Dzavashvili has some home-brewed chacha,”* Fidel said, “only he won’t give us any. Should we try?”

“I don’t feel like messing with him.”

“Maybe you’re scared of him?”

“What is there to be scared of? I don’t give a damn about him.”

“No, you’re scared. I noticed a long time ago.”

“Maybe I’m scared of you too? Maybe I’m even scared of Kogan?”

“You’re not scared of Kogan, and you’re not scared of me, but you are scared of Dzavashvili. All Georgians go around with hunting knives. They’ll pull out their knives over nothing. You should see the size of Dzavashvili’s saksan!* It wouldn’t fit in the top of his boot.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

Andzor Dzavashvili was sleeping right by the door. Even in sleep his face was handsome and a little anxious. Fidel woke him up and said, “Listen, you non-Russian, give us some chacha.”

Dzavashvili woke up in fright, the way any soldier in the guard section did if awoken suddenly. He put his hand under the mattress, then took a look at us and said, “This is no time for chacha, friend – it’s time for sleep.”

“Give, I say. Bob and I have hangovers to get rid of.”

“How are you going to work tomorrow?” Andzor asked.

“Keep your moustache out of our business,” Fidel answered.

Andzor turned over, his back to us.

Here Fidel shouted, “So, you son of a bitch, you won’t give a Russian soldier any chacha?”

“Who’s a Russian,” Andzor said, “you? You’re not a Russian, you’re an Alcoholist!”

Then it started.

Andzor yelled out, “Gigo! Vakhtang! Vai me! Arunda!”*

Georgians came running in their underwear, showing deep tans even here in the north, and they started making gestures in such a way that Fidel immediately began to bleed from the nose. Then a fracas began that would be remembered in the barracks for many years. I went down six times and got up around three. In the end they tied me up with telephone wire and carried me into the Lenin Room, but even there, lying on the rough planks, I was still going after someone. It was probably the man who was to blame for all the reverses in my fortune.

Towards morning my mood always goes bad. Especially after sleeping on a cold floor, tied up with telephone wire.

I heard the cook dropping firewood with a crash onto the metal shingles by the stove, and buckets clattering, and an orderly walking down the corridor. Then doors started slamming, and everything filled with the special noise of an all-male barracks where everyone walks around in heavy boots.

After a few minutes Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room and then, bending over me, he cut the telephone wire with a bayonet.

“Thank you, Comrade Yevchenko,” I said, “I won’t forget this when I tell the Voice of America correspondent the whole story.”

“Sure,” the sergeant said, “we’ve got a whole zone of correspondents for you out there.” Then he told me that Captain Tokar wanted to see me.

I entered the main office rubbing my wrists. Tokar rose from behind his desk. By the window sat Bogoslovsky, who had recently replaced me as company clerk.

“This time I do not intend to forgive,” the captain said. “You drank with the trusties?”

“Who, me?”

“You.”

“Well, yes, I drank, so I had a drink, so…”

“Just out of curiosity, how much?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I remember I was drinking from a tin can.”

“Comrade Captain,” Bogoslovsky said, “he’s not denying it. He won’t do it again.”

“I know. I’ve heard that before. I’m sick of it! This time let the military court decide. The days of the old camp garrison are past. We belong to the Regular Army, thank God. And don’t you forget it.”

He turned to me. “You have brought about several ‘incidents’ in the detachment. You disrupt political lessons, you put demagogical questions to Lieutenant Khuriyev. Yesterday you instigated a fight that had a bad chauvinist smell to it. That’s enough. Let HQ decide.”

The captain glanced suspiciously at the door, then flung it open. Fidel was standing there eavesdropping.

“Hello there, Comrade Captain,” he said.

“Well, here we are,” the captain said. “Petrov can serve as your escort to the stockade.”

“I can’t serve as his escort,” Fidel said. “He’s my friend. I can’t escort a friend. I feel no antagonism towards him.”

“But you can drink together?”

“Drinking is another matter,” Fidel said thoughtfully.

“Enough!” The captain slammed his palm on the table. “Take off your belt!”

I took it off.

“Put it on the table.”

I threw the belt on the table. The brass buckle struck the glass. “Pick up the belt!” the captain shouted.

I picked it up.

“Put it on the table!”

I laid it on the table.

“Lance Corporal Petrov, take a weapon with you and march him to the first sergeant for the documents.”

“What’s the gun for?”

“Follow orders.”

At this point I said, “I should have something to eat. You don’t have the right to starve me to death.”

“You know your rights,” Tokar said, grinning, “but I also know mine.”

When we went out into the corridor I said to Fidel, “Don’t feel bad. If it wasn’t you, it would be somebody else.”

After that we ate some cooked millet and stuffed some bread in our pockets. We put on warmer clothes and walked out on the porch. Fidel took a clip from his cartridge pouch and right there on the steps he loaded his sub-machine gun, and without looking back we walked to the crossing, where we could hitch a ride with a passing car or a log-carrier.

We marched along the mud path, leaving behind us the dark walls of the barracks, the transparent trees above the fence and the dull white sun.

The railroad barrier was down. Fidel smoked, and we stood there for several minutes watching a train speed by with a roar. We could make out blue curtains, a thermos flask and a man with a cigarette in one of the windows. I even noticed that he was wearing pyjamas.

It was all a little sickening.

A log-carrier braked nearby. Fidel waved to the driver, and we climbed into the cab, which was crowded and smelt of gasoline.

Fidel put the sub-machine gun between his knees, and we lit up.

The driver turned to me and asked, “What’d they get you for, fella?”

I said, “I criticized the authorities.”

When we passed by the old brick pump house, where the road turned into the settlement, I took a watch without a band out of my pocket and showed it to the driver.

“Buy it,” I said.

“Does it work?”

“Two hours more accurate than the Kremlin clock.”

“How much?”

“Five sticks.”

“Five?”

“All right, seven.”

The driver stopped the truck, took out his money, and gave me five roubles. Then he asked, “What do you need money in the stockade for?”

“To help the poor,” I said.

The driver grinned. Then he examined the watch for a long time and put it to his ear. “For my father-in-law,” he said. “I’ll present it to him on his name day, the old dog.”

We got out of the truck and made our way along a darkening path through the snowdrifts to the settlement, which greeted us with the knocking sound of a generator, the squeak of a sleigh’s runners, and the wind from deserted streets on which there were more dogs than people. Farther downhill the grey fences of the main camp section began, circling a two-storey brick staff building. Our way lay across the whole settlement, past the dilapidated stone gates of the shipping section, past the huts buried in snow, past the mess hall with white steam pouring from its open doors, past the garage where automobiles all faced one way like cows in a meadow, past the clubhouse with a silvery loudspeaker under the attic window, then along the interminable fence with its barbed-wire cornice, to the gate with the five-pointed tin star, and up the path to the staff building, crammed with foppish officers, the clattering of typewriters and numberless military trophies. There, behind an iron door, was a well-equipped stockade with a cement floor.

“We’ll bail you out,” Fidel said. “I’ll have a talk with the boys.”

“Yeah, have a talk with them.”

We crossed over a ditch on an ice-covered log. Then I said, “Do your orders say anything about time of arrival?”

“No,” Fidel said. “Why?”

“So then what are we in a hurry for?” I said. “Let’s go to the torfushki.”

That was the name for the seasonal women workers from the peat-packing plant who lived in barracks on the edge of the settlement.

“Well…” Fidel said.

“Well, what? We’ll get a bottle. I’ve got money.”

At this point I noticed that Fidel didn’t like the idea and was looking at me sadly.

“What’ll we do with the gun?” he said.

“Put it under the bed. Let’s go – at least we can sit for a while where it’s warm.”

Fidel walked along without saying anything.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll sit, we’ll smoke. I don’t like whorehouses myself. We’ll just sit there calmly for a while where it’s warm, with no noise.”

But Fidel said, “Listen, there’s headquarters just close by. If we walk straight ahead across the bog we’ll be there in five minutes and you’ll be warm.”

“In the stockade, you mean?”

“So?”

“With a cement floor?”

“What difference does the floor make? There’s a bunk there. And a stove. According to regulations the temperature can’t be under sixty degrees.”

“Listen,” I said, “you’re not getting my point. All that lies ahead: the stockade, the bunk, the sixty degrees, Prosecutor Voyshko. Right now, let’s go to the torfushki.”

“In search of adventure?” Fidel said with annoyance.

“Ah, so that’s how you talk! So that’s what happens to a man when they give him written orders and a weapon! Go on – give the orders, Comrade Commander!”

Fidel started yelling, “What are you getting so riled up about, huh? What are you getting so riled up about? All right, we’ll go wherever you want! We’ll go to the torfushki! Wherever you want, we’ll go there!”

We made a turn back to the commissary, climbed some steps to the porch, shook off the snow, and went inside, where it smelt of kerosene and fish. A stack of barrels shadowed one corner, and the shelves were stocked with cigarettes, soap, biscuits in old-fashioned packages, a block of halva with melted edges, and gingerbread the colour of marble. On the counter a cat dozed by a red-hot heater, and beneath it a rooster was pecking at something in a crack between the floorboards.

I paid, and Tonechka held out two bottles of wine, which Fidel dropped in the big side pockets of his fatigues. Then we bought some halva and two jars of salt pork.

Fidel said, “Buy some herring.”

Tonechka said, “The herring smells.”

“What, bad?” Fidel asked.

“Yes,” Tonechka said, “not too good.”

We left the commissary and walked uphill until we came to a barracks with a dim light bulb above the entrance. Sinking in the snowdrifts, we went up to the window and knocked. A flat face immediately looked out, and a girl with her hair undone nodded several times, pointing to the door.

A bucket covered with a piece of plywood stood by the entrance. Quilted jackets hung in the corner, and there were ropes, scoops and hooks lying under them.

It was warm in the barracks. The pipe of a cast-iron stove, filled with rosy warmth, stretched diagonally from corner to corner. Overcoats and quilted jackets had been thrown onto the bunks. Fragments of a mirror and colour photographs from magazines were tacked to the rotten beams. Unwashed dishes were piled up on the night tables.

We took off our sheepskin jackets and sat down at the plank tables. A few feet away somebody was sleeping, covered with a coat. A woman in a fatigue shirt was sitting by the window, her back to us, reading a book. She didn’t even say hello.

“Make yourselves at home, since you’re here,” said the girl with her hair down. She was wearing loose raspberry-coloured trousers and badly made cheap leather boots. Her friend, who had a pale and spiteful face, was wearing a maroon ski jacket, a tight cloth skirt and slippers.

We took out the bottles and salt pork.

The girls brought out some enamelled mugs and bread. They kept nudging each other and laughing.

On the window sill was a transistor radio, looking out of place among all the rubbish.

The girl in the red trousers was called Zina, and her girlfriend in the skirt introduced herself in a bass voice as Nadezhda Amosova.

“Boys,” Zina asked, “are you from the camp guards?”

“No,” Fidel said, “we’re artists. Prize winners. And here’s my sax.” He waved the sub-machine gun above his head.

“Boys,” Nadya asked, “you a little cracked or something?”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’re mental cases. Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Fidel poured out the wine, clinking the bottle against the enamelled mugs. “To our health!” he said.

“To our health!” I said.

“You’ll be healthy, don’t worry,” Zina said. “We get check-ups.”

Someone kept walking the length of the barracks behind us, somebody cursed, somebody slammed a book shut when we turned on the radio, somebody was drinking water by the door. After that some men from the sawmill showed up. They saw our sheepskin jackets on the bench and wouldn’t sit down, and instead they milled around the window for a long time, plotting something.

But I paid no attention to any of that because I had suddenly thought back to the time when I arrived in Vozhayel with the first snowfall for the orientation sessions of the supervisory staff. They quartered us in a forty-man tent with two tiers of bunks. The stove made the lower tier hot, but the wind whipped under the sides of the sagging tarpaulin. Each morning we went in a disorderly group to the training-ground mess hall. Then we did exercises in the gym, or leafed through our instructions so that we could disperse at six o’clock after eating – some of us going to visit people we knew, some to dances at the local club, where an orchestra rumbled, and excited girls searched for officers in the crowd, and privates in stuffy dress coats and boots shining like fake jewellery huddled against the wall, smelling of aftershave and the stables. Once the jazz stopped, they would leave the club and walk home in the dark or ride in the back of a battalion truck. Then for a long time under the vault of the forty-man tent gross and filthy swearing would be heard, directed without exception at all the women in the world.

One night I turned off the road, which was already rock hard from the first freeze, and walked down a path hugged by snowdrifts to the library. I climbed up the steep wooden steps to the third floor, opened the door, and stood at the threshold.

The reading room was quiet and empty. Bookcases shimmered against the wall. Several old-fashioned pictures gave the room a solemn air. I walked up to the wooden counter. A woman of about thirty, wearing glasses, with a thin face and pale lips, came towards me. She had delicate skin and a rather long nose. When she looked at me, taking off her glasses and touching the bridge of her nose, I felt her looking at me with an unexpectedly sure, impertinent, boyish stare. I asked for a book of Bunin’s stories which I had loved when I was still in school, and after signing it out on a square bluish form, I sat down by the window. I switched on a goose-necked lamp, put my elbows on the cold table, and got absorbed in reading.

The woman got up several times and walked out of the room, and sometimes she looked at me, and suddenly I realized that she wasn’t afraid of anything happening but just liked being silent. Then she started to move chairs, and I stood up to help, and I noticed that she had on an old-fashioned dress of very stiff, dark, cool material and fur-lined Chukchi slippers.* Then I accidentally touched her hand, and for an instant my heart stopped, and I thought with fear of how unaccustomed I had grown to the things which made life worth living, of how much I had lost, of what had been taken from me, of how much happiness had swept by me on those nights full of hatred and fear, when the floorboards crack from the frost and dogs bay in the kennel and you sit in the isolator and listen to Anagi-Zadye clinking his manacles behind the wall and the miserable, frozen, unchanging days drag on outside the window, delaying the mail.

I went back to the table and slammed the book shut, and without looking back I went down the stairs, struggled to light a cigarette, and walked the kilometre and a half back to the military settlement.

Now I remembered all this and I said to Fidel, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Now what!” Fidel said.

“Finish the wine and let’s go.”

The girls asked, “What’s wrong with you guys? Brides waiting for you or something?” And they burst out laughing as we left.

We walked under the stars, everything silent, and made our way along the fence to the hollow which ended in the dark and bulky silhouette of HQ. Suddenly shadows fell on the path and the men from the sawmill appeared in front of us, but Fidel immediately swung the sub-machine gun to his chest like an SS man and said simply, “In the forest I shoot without warning!”

They cursed and disappeared among the trees in the darkness.

I walked in front, orienting myself by the silhouette of the exercise frame with its hanging ropes, which was set up in front of headquarters. Dark against the background of the sky, it looked like gallows. Fidel walked behind me.

The path was narrow, no wider than a ski track, and I kept stumbling.

When we rounded the last house of the settlement, I saw a light in the window of the library. I stopped and thought of the woman who sat at the lighted table behind bastions of bookcases in a quiet and warm space with an invisible stove, and then it seemed as though I was walking up the wooden stairs and along the corridor, leaving wet footprints behind me: I throw open the door, the woman stands up, her old-fashioned earrings swing gently and the silence is so complete that I can hear their melodic sound. The woman takes off her glasses and touches the bridge of her nose with an expression of barely noticeable annoyance, and I feel her unwomanlike, bold gaze on me.

“Let’s go,” Fidel said. “My feet are freezing.”

I said to him, “I’ve got to stop in at the library.”

“Come on, what next!”

“I want to talk to a woman there.”

“Stop it,” Fidel said. “We’ve taken a whole day to get to headquarters already.”

I stood still. There was no one around. Off to one side shone the yellowish lights of the settlement, and the dark wall of the forest rose up to our right.

I said, “Fidel, have a heart – let me do it. There’s a woman I know – I’ve got to…”

He looked away and said distinctly, “I can’t.”

“Are you my friend,” I yelled, “or Citizen Chief? So this is what happens to a man when you give him a sub-machine gun and written orders to lead another man under escort!”

“Come on, walk and don’t haggle!” Fidel said.

“That explains that,” I said. “Give the orders, Commander!” But I didn’t move from the spot. Fidel stood behind me.

“I have to go to the library,” I said.

“Start walking!”

“I have to—”

“Now!”

I looked up at the square window, which glowed like a quivering beacon, and I started towards it through the deep snow, leaving behind me, dark on the horizon, the fence of the military camp and the black figure of my escort.

Then Fidel shouted, “Halt!”

I turned around and said, “Do you want to kill me?”

He said, barely audibly, “Back.”

Then I cursed him with the filthiest words that I had heard by the bonfire in the logging sector and in the isolator and at the gambling table before a fight and in transit camps during a search.

“Back!” Fidel said.

I walked on without turning around, I became huge, I overshadowed the horizon, I heard the bolt click in the empty and frozen silence, then the spring of the firing pin yield, squeaking, and then the bullet slide into its chamber with a tap.

And suddenly I felt such rage – as if it were me, actually me, taking aim at a man wandering through the snow, and this man without a belt was the one to blame for all the reversals of my fate, only I couldn’t make out his face.

I stopped, looked at Fidel, winced, seeing his face (he held his fur mitten in his teeth), shouted something, and headed towards him.

Fidel threw down the sub-machine gun and started to cry, and for some reason pulled off his sheepskin jacket and tore open his fatigue shirt, all the buttons flying off.

I walked up and stood beside him. “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”

June 21, 1982. New York

Dear Igor! (Your patronymic has got lost somewhere back there going over the potholes of our journey together.)

It’s finished. The brakes of the last ellipses will squeak through ten paragraphs.

I’m experiencing a sensation of lightness and emptiness. After all, I’ve been preparing this manuscript for publication for seventeen years. It’s “the end of something”, as Mr Hemingway would put it.

You know that I’m not a religious person. More than that – I’m a non-believer. And I’m not even superstitious. I am not afraid of funeral processions, black cats or broken mirrors, I spill salt constantly, and I married Lena (who sends you regards) on the 13th(!) of December.

I have dreams very rarely, and if I do, they’re astoundingly primitive. For example: I run out of money in a restaurant. Sigmund Freud would have absolutely nothing to do here.

I don’t have unhappy, or even happy premonitions. I don’t feel people’s stares on the back of my neck (unless the stare is accompanied by a whack). In short, nature has very obviously cheated me of my share of transcendental gifts. It turns out I’m not even susceptible to commonplace hypnosis.

Yet even I have been brushed by the light wing of the other world. My entire biography is a chain of well-planned chance happenings. At every step I can distinguish, in retrospect, the handwriting on the wall. And anyhow, who am I not to believe in fate? They’re entirely too obvious, the engraved inscriptions in which my unlucky life has been written. The delicate, bluish lines come through every page of my original drafts.

Nabokov said, “Chance is the logic of Fortune.” And actually, what could be more logical than senseless, beautiful, absolutely implausible chance?

A man named Schlaffmann, the father of an acquaintance of mine, was digging a big hole for a blackberry bush at his summer cottage when he had an attack of angina. It turned out that Schlaffmann was digging his own grave. Chance is the logic of Fortune. Then too, Schlaffmann had been an unswerving Stalinist throughout his life, and this isn’t random either, but somehow allows me to tell the story without feeling too bad about it.

I was born with the instincts of a professional boxer. In order to make me into a young man capable of reflection, inhuman efforts – literally! – were required. A chain of implausible – and therefore convincing and logical – chance events had to be linked up. One of these was prison. Obviously, someone very much wanted to make a writer out of me.

It was not I who chose this effete, raucous, torturous, burdensome profession. It chose me itself, and now there is no way to get away from it.

You are reading the last page, I am opening a new notebook…