He suddenly feels like the sky has stopped rotating above him. He looks up. In the distance, dark against the bright blue Angara water, is the long brown spot of a barge and a bold black dot alongside it. It’s the launch.
THE SETTLEMENT
Kuznets springs out of the boat. Big, cold splashes of water fall on sturdy boots carefully polished with wax, then skitter away and roll back into the Angara. He walks along the riverbank, unhurried, as his imperious gaze takes in the rocky beach and the knoll hanging over it. Other boats sputter behind him as their bows land against the shore. Oars knock, chains clank, and escort guards’ shouts carry, blending with their charges’ meek voices.
“What the … ? Where the hell’re you taking all that? Toss it over by the water, let them sort it out themselves!”
“Stand still, you dogs! Closer together! Straighter!”
“Don’t you cry, Dima, we’re here now, see …”
“Comrade Kuznets! Should we put them in formation or let them stand like this, like rabble?”
“I thought we were going to a real settlement, where there are people, but there’s …”
“The lists, where’re the lists?”
“Count those heads again, Artyukhin! Some mathematician you are …”
The voices abruptly drop off. Kuznets turns his proud profile to the tense quiet that has set in behind his back.
A strange, dark figure is walking down from the knoll, reeling and bobbing oddly, as if it’s dancing on legs that won’t bend well. A person. The person’s wearing dirty, worn-out, and colorless rags, and something’s wound around his formless boots. There’s a threadbare woman’s shawl criss-crossed over his chest, his hair is like a mane, and his beard is scraggly. He’s walking slowly; it requires exertion. Soon they can see his mud-smeared face, along with his bugged, completely wild eyes, and the revolver in his tensely extended hand.
Kuznets narrows a brown eye. Is he imagining, or is it really … ?
“Ignatov, it’s you! Holy Mother, he’s alive! I didn’t even think …”
Ignatov trudges along, seeing just one target in front of him: Kuznets’s radiant, round, ugly mug, which looks like it was outlined by a compass, with its dumbfoundedly wide-open slots of well-fed, kindly eyes. The despicable sky is spinning again, pulling Ignatov into its frenzied whirl but he stubbornly plods along, not giving in. The ugly round mug approaches for a long time, a very long time, hurriedly muttering something. Kuznets’s voice is carrying from far away, maybe from the forest, maybe from underwater.
“How’re you doing here, my friend? Where are your feeble buddies? They survive? Well, well, look at you, you devil, huh? Oh, you won’t believe how crazy things got after we left you! They’ve been dumping the kulaks on us by the trainload. There was no time for you, forgive me.”
The ugly mug is finally right alongside him. Ignatov wants to say some final words but they’ve all left his memory. He mumbles and places the shaking revolver to Kuznets’s broad chest. The trigger is heavy and tight, as if it’s taken root. He clenches his teeth and directs all his will, the remainder of his energy, into his index finger. He squeezes the trigger and the revolver dryly clicks.
Kuznets’s mug laughs, its eyes nearly shutting:
“Let bygones be bygones, as they say …”
Ignatov’s dry throat swallows and he squeezes the trigger again. Yet another click.
“Stop being offended, Ignatov,” says Kuznets. He’s laughing hard. “That’s it, your new life is starting. Look at these charges I brought you: you can plow away at the land with them.”
Someone’s hands carefully take the revolver from Ignatov’s bent fingers. Kuznets’s smile blurs and dissolves in the unbearably bright sunlight. The sky takes one final spin and covers Ignatov like a bedspread.
Kuznets’s round, satisfied face is the first thing he sees when he comes to. Ignatov starts moaning, as if from pain and Kuznets slaps him on the arm. “It’s fine, brother,” he’s saying, “you’ll be back to your old self soon. You slept through,” he adds, “two days. You woke up yesterday for a little while, chowed all my officer’s chocolate, then went back to sleep. You really don’t remember anything?” Ignatov shakes his head and raises himself a little on his elbows. He’s lying by a large spruce on some sort of sacks under a tarpaulin. Covered by a sheepskin coat. He’s surrounded by screeching saws, thudding axes, tapping hammers, and salty language.
“Where am I?” he says.
“Same old place,” laughs Kuznets. (Enough laughing, you mustached ass!) He’s sitting on a slab of wood next to Ignatov, scribbling in his map case.
“Where are my people?”
“Your deceased are alive, have no fear. Every last one of them. Hardy, the devils! I’ve never seen such gaunt people. We left them in the underground house for the time being so the wind doesn’t blow them away.”
Ignatov settles on his back again. He could lie like this forever, looking at the evergreen needles lazily stirring above his head, sensing the smell of spruce pitch, and hearing people’s businesslike voices. His hand gropes at the taut sides of the sacks under him.
“What’s this?”
“New provisions.” Kuznets pronounces this as simply as if he were speaking about water or air.
Ignatov turns on his side with a quick motion, ending up on the ground. His weak hands fumble with the ties, pull, and tear toward him, opening one of the bags. There’s fine loose grain inside; it’s sharp and dirty gray, in scrappy silvery husks. He plunges a hand into the sack’s cool depths and takes out a whole handful so a bitter, mealy, and slightly dusty smell touches his nostrils. Oats.
Kuznets is looking at Ignatov in a fatherly way, as if Ignatov were a small son delighted by a new toy. “Even better, take a look around – take a look.”
Ignatov overcomes his weakness, sits next to the sacks – he can’t lie on the grain – and leans his back against a spruce trunk sticky with pitch so he can look around. The camp has been transformed during the days that have passed. The underground house is still in place, with a thin creased ribbon of smoke spiraling out. (“They heated the stove up,” he sighs with relief. “Something to be thankful for.”) And life is simmering away around him. Unfamiliar people – a hundred? more? – are scurrying around, dragging logs that display even, shiny, creamy-yellow saw cuts, waving axes, and pounding hammers. The ground is generously sprinkled with sawdust and woodchips, pieces of bark, and scraps of wood, and the air is so thick with the fragrance of pitch that you could eat it with a spoon. A dozen rank-and-file soldiers, wearing gray and carrying weapons, are right there to oversee, urge on, and shout from time to time. Foundations for three long, broad structures – future barracks – are growing in the middle of the knoll.
A couple of women are stoking a fire and a hearty smell is rising over two buckets boiling on the flame.
Under the spruce where Ignatov and Kuznets are sitting there’s a heap of crates, boxes, sacks, bundles of shovels and pitchforks covered in burlap, large baskets, buckets, and kettles. Yes, it’s a genuine stockpile.
“Outstanding,” is all Ignatov can say. “You’ve really taken charge here …”
“You bet I have!” Kuznets motions significantly with his powerful Roman chin, cleft by a lengthwise dimple. “After all, what was I before? A guarding function. And you? An accompanying function! And now you and I are unquestionably in charge. All this kulakdom is now ours, my friend.”
This is how Ignatov learns that, in 1931, all labor settlements established for habitation and labor-based re-education of the dekulakized were handed over to the Joint State Political Administration and entered into the Gulag system, which had been officially created only a half-year before but was already demonstrating its efficacy. Responsibility for oversight, organization, and the management, regulation, and use of the exiles’ labor had been placed upon this young and successful administration.
“You and I, Ignatov, won’t fall flat on our faces. We’ll go all out
. We’ll teach the exploiters about proletariat labor and show them what genuine Soviet life is. We’ll build an infirmary out of logs over there, by the forest. And a dining hall by the barracks, to the side. And the commandant’s headquarters on the hill.” Kuznets looks long and hard at Ignatov.
“When do I go home?” Ignatov is scanning the river and finds only Kuznets’s launch, bobbing at anchor not far from shore; the barge apparently left straight after unloading the people.
“I’m leaving this evening.” Kuznets places his pencil in the hard leather map case, firmly fastening the strap. “I’ve already been sitting too long here with you.”
Ignatov feels his jaws tighten until they slowly and painfully crunch; there’s even an ache in his temples.
“We,” he says a minute later through his teeth. “We’re leaving in the evening.”
“You planning to go far?” Kuznets is calm and peaceable, as if he were discussing whether the two of them should go berry picking.
“Home,” hisses Ignatov. “I’m planning to go home, you grinning bastard.”
“Uh-huh, go on then. This happens to be a very heated time back in your Kazan. Another day, another underground cell uncovered. It’s either ‘wreckers’ or Mensheviks or German spies or English ones, the devil alone knows who they are. Things got rolling as soon as the mayhem started last spring. There are thirty from the Tatar Central Executive Committee already in jail, the crooked bastards. And the Administration’s not without its Judases. They’ve arrested everybody at your State Political Administration, Ignatov. It’s unclear who’s left at work. There was even an article in Pravda called ‘The Tatar Hydra.’”
“You’re lying, you son of a bitch!”
“Then I’ll bring it for you, that newspaper.” Kuznets is imperturbable, even affectionate. “I’ll sit at the library all night if I have to, I don’t mind spending the time. I’ll find it – you can read it yourself.”
You’re lying, Ignatov says over and over to himself, lying, lying. But he already sees Bakiev’s office before his eyes, turned upside down, two soldiers with tense gazes by the door, and a gray silhouette sorting stacks of papers on the desk. Could it really be they hadn’t let Bakiev go back then? Is he the hydra? Stupidity. Nonsense. Gibberish.
“But you wouldn’t make it there anyway,” says Kuznets. “I’ve seen your file. It’s just like a bedtime story – A Thousand and One Nights, it’s called. There’s the overwhelming attrition on the train and an organized escape to the count of around four dozen souls and harboring an important witness from an investigation (and not simply a witness, a kulaker woman, mind you!) and – just think, Ignatov! – giving bribes to a public servant, a train station director. You really outdid yourself. Nobody else could keep pace.”
Ignatov’s hitting the ground with his fist; his eyes are closed. Kuznets is right. Right on all counts.
“So you stay put, my friend. We’ll register you here officially, add you to the rolls. You’ll stay for now and pray behind my broad back, atoning for your sins. In a couple years, when they notice you’re missing, well, there you’ll be – a respected commandant, a big shot fulfilling a plan they could only dream of. The toiler of Siberia! Who’d touch you then?” Kuznets stands, adjusting his belt and the map case on his hip. “Let’s go. I’ll turn the documents over to you, introduce you to people. Give yourself a wash first, though, and change into clean clothes or you’ll frighten the personnel. They’ll take you for a hobgoblin.”
“Why do you need me?” Ignatov asks this wearily, looking up at Kuznets’s powerful frame.
“There aren’t enough people. There’ll be about a hundred settlements around the taiga soon. Who can you leave them with? Who do you trust? And it’s on me if anybody asks. It’s obvious looking at you, Ignatov, that you’re committed right down to the fingernails. That’s why I can calmly turn two hundred souls over to you. You kept your no-hopers alive during the winter – you’ll keep these alive, too.”
“How do you know?” says Ignatov. He slowly rises, leaning his hand into white streaks of sticky pitch on the spruce trunk. “Maybe I’m a hydra?”
His legs are still weak and they shake, but they’re already holding him. He can walk.
“You’re a dense one, Ignatov. A hydra’s got a lot of heads, more than you can count. You could be one baby snake on the hydra’s head but you can’t be the whole hydra, oh no. You should know things like that.”
Kuznets does bring the newspaper. He shows up a month later, in early summer. Ignatov’s window has a good view of Kuznets’s long, black launch with antennas like a rapacious mustache and lamps like bugged eyes when it suddenly takes shape on the dark blue mirror of the water. The commandant’s headquarters are on the knoll’s very highest point so the settlement, the broad ribbon of the shore, and the Angara itself can be surveyed equally well from here.
I won’t go and greet him, thinks Ignatov. He quickly tosses some rusks, sun-dried fish, and a kettle with yesterday’s leftover porridge stuck to the sides on the overturned crate he uses as a table so it’ll look like he’s been eating lunch. Hiding behind the window opening – the frame and glass haven’t been installed yet, but they’ve promised to bring them by mid-summer – he observes as the craft quickly, proprietarily, casts anchor by the shore and spits a small wooden boat into the water.
On shore, a figure runs hastily and intently toward the boat. Pebbles are even flying out from under his feet. Gorelov. In his hurry to show his face to the chief, he’s left the area entrusted to him – construction’s finishing up on the infirmary. He should be slapped with a couple days in an isolation cell for that, the bootlicker. But there’s no lockup in the settlement.
Gorelov darts into the water without taking off his shoes. He catches the boat’s pointy bow and pulls it to shore. He hurriedly says something, his shaggy, dog-like head nodding slightly and his spine bending to one side, then the other. He’s trying to win favor. The chief’s not listening. He jumps ashore, tosses the line to Gorelov, and strides off to the commandant’s headquarters.
Ignatov sits at the table and places a tough little fish with white streaks of salt on a half-crisped, crumbling rusk. He doesn’t have a chance to take a bite before Kuznets abruptly flings the door wide open without knocking. He enters quickly, as if he’s at home. He looks at Ignatov, frozen with the rusk in his hand, and plunks a newspaper folded into quarters on the table in front of him. “Read,” he says, “and I’ll take a look around here on my own – don’t worry about me.” And out he goes.
The newspaper is worn along the edges, badly yellowed, and coming apart at the folds. Ignatov takes it as carefully as if it were a snake and unfolds it. There’s a violet stamp of the Krasnoyarsk Municipal Library in the upper right-hand corner and two ragged holes in the side, as if the newspaper had been torn out of a binder. Ignatov’s heart thumps low and cold in his chest. No, Kuznets hadn’t bluffed about the library.
The front-page feature tells of a speech by Kalinin about heroes of industrialization. Further on, there’s a group letter from female weavers in Paris that calls on female workers in the Soviet Union to envelop the Red Army’s fighters with special love and care, as well as a plea from unemployed people in Germany for the ‘wreckers’ who sabotaged socialist construction in Soviet Siberia to face the firing squad. Ignatov pages through rough, brittle paper that smells of sweetish dust. “Achieve the Five-Year Plan in Four Years!” “Let’s Produce More Steel!” “Exemplary Tending of Sugar Beets!” In the feuilletons are pieces from worker correspondents and worker-peasant correspondents, a poem about a tram …
And then suddenly, huge letters hurry, slanting, across the center spread: “They Sheltered the Hydra.” Unknown and vaguely familiar faces flash from an array of photographs. (Maybe we met in the hallways?) And there’s Bakiev, his face stern and solemn. He’s taken off his glasses so his gaze is a little childlike and dreamy; the Order of the Red Banner is silvery on his chest. This photograph of Bakiev was t
aken for his Party membership card. The article is long and detailed, with the small type spilling over the double spread. There’s a drawing in the corner of someone’s powerful hand squeezing the neck of an old woman whose insane eyes are bugging out and who has a good dozen snakes instead of hair. Her neck is skinny and flabby, like it’ll snap any minute now, and the snakes are as mean as demons, baring their fangs and attempting to bite the hand that’s caught them.
Ignatov rubs his throat, which is suddenly ticklish and starting to itch.
And so Bakiev sent him on this trip specially. Yes, that’s obvious now. What did he say back then? “It’s for you, you damned fool …” something like that? He wanted to save him, that was it, pull him out of danger, send him far, far away. And Bakiev had been acting strangely around then, downcast, because he knew. He knew but hadn’t fled, sitting in his office, sorting papers, and waiting.
Ignatov takes his head in his hands. Mishka, Mishka … Where are you now?
The half-strangled hydra gawks from the table.
The freshly planed door swings open and Kuznets’s broad smile is in the opening.
“Well, how about that, comrade commandant,” he says. “Nice work! Your dining hall’s a palace. The infirmary, too – you could put everyone in there at once. You’re straightening out these exploiters’ lives. It’s about time to talk about regular workdays now. They’ll need to labor doubly hard to earn a dining hall like that.”
Ignatov smoothes the newspaper with his hand and throws a couple of fish on it.
“Sit down, chief.”
“I thought you’d never offer,” smirks Kuznets. He sits, plunges his hand into the voluminous map case on his hip, and pulls out a long, narrow, transparent bottle.
“They still haven’t brought glasses,” says Ignatov, trying to cut the little fish bodies. They’re as tough as wood on the newspaper. “We’ll have to swig from the bottle.”
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