Everything was so arranged in the camp that the prisoners egged one another on. It was like this: either you all got a bit extra or you all croaked. You're loafing, you bastard--do you think I'm willing to go hungry just because of you? Put your guts into it, slob.
And if a situation like this one turned up there was all the more reason for resisting any temptation to slack. Regardless, you put your back into the work. For unless you could manage to provide yourself with the means of warming up, you and everyone else would give out on the spot.
Pavlo brought the tools. Now use them. A few lengths of stovepipe, too. True, there were no tinsmith's tools, but there was a little hammer and a light ax. One could manage.
Shukhov clapped his mittens together, joined up the lengths, and hammered the ends into the joints. He clapped his hands together again and repeated his hammering.
(He'd hidden his trowel in a nearby crack in the wall. Although he was among his own men, one of them might swap it for his own. That applied to Kilgas too.) And then every thought was swept out of his head. All his memories and worries faded. He had only one idea--to fix the bend in the stovepipe and hang it up to prevent it smoking, He sent Gopchik for a length of wire--hang up the pipe near the window with it; that would be best.
In the corner there was another stove, a squat one with a brick chimney. It had an iron plate on top that grew red-hot, and sand was to be thawed and dried on it. This stove had already been lit, and the captain and Fetiukov were bringing up barrows of sand. You don't have to be very bright to carry a handbarrow. So the squad leader gave such work to people who'd been in positions of authority. Fetiukov had been a bigshot in some office, with a car at his disposal.
At first Fetiukov had spat on the captain, bawled at him. But one punch on the jaw was enough. They got on all right after that
The men bringing in the sand were edging over to the stove to warm up, but Tiurin drove them off.
"Look out, one of you is going to catch it in a hurry. Wait till we've got the place fixed up."
You've only to show a whip to a beaten dog. The frost was severe, but not as severe as the squad leader. The men scattered and went back to their jobs.
And Shukhov heard Tiurin say to Pavlo: "Stay here and keep them at it. I'm going to hand in the work report."
More depended on the work report than on the work itself. A clever squad leader was one who concentrated on the work report. That was what kept the men fed. He had to prove that work which hadn't been done had been done, to turn jobs that were rated low into ones that were rated high. For this a squad leader had to have his head screwed on, and to be on the right side of the inspectors. Their palms had to be greased, too. But who benefited, then, from all those work reports? Let's be clear about it. The camp. The camp got thousands of extra rubles from the building organization and so could give higher bonuses to its guard-lieutenants, such as to Volkovoi for using his whip. And you? You got an extra six ounces of bread for your supper. A couple of ounces ruled your life.
Two buckets of water were carried In, but they had frozen on the way. Palvo decided that there was no sense in doing it like this. Quicker to melt snow. They stood the buckets on the stove.
Gopchik brought along some new aluminum wire, used for electric leads.
"Ivan Denisovich," he said, as be turned it over to Shukhov, "It's good for making spoons. Teach me how to cast them."
Shukhov was fond of the kid. His own son had died young, and the two daughters he had left at home were grown up. Gopchik had been arrested for taking milk to the forest for Bendera's men, *[* General in the Soviet Army who betrayed his country in World War II.] and had been given an adult's term of imprisonment. He was like a puppy and he fawned on everyone. But he'd already learned cunning: he ate the contents of his food packages alone, sometimes during the night.
After all, you couldn't feed everyone.
They broke off a length of wire for the spoons and hid it in a corner. Shukhov knocked together a couple of planks into a stepladder and sent Gopchik up to hang the stovepipe. The boy, as nimble as a squirrel, climbed up into the beams, pounded in a nail or two, slipped the wire around them, and passed it under the pipe. Shukhov didn't begrudge him his energy; he made another bend in the pipe close to the end. Though there was little wind that day, there might be plenty tomorrow, and this bend would prevent the pipe from smoking. They mustn't forget that it was for themselves that they were fixing the stove.
Meanwhile, Senka had finished making the laths, and Gopchik was again given the job of nailing them up. The little devil crawled about up there, shouting down to the men.
The sun had risen higher, dispersing the haze. The two bright columns had gone.
It was reddish inside the room. And now someone had got the stove going with the stolen wood. Made you feel a bit more cheerfuL
"In January the sun warmed the flanks of the cow," Shukhov chanted.
Kilgas finished nailing the mortar trough together and, giving it an extra smash with his ax, shouted: "Listen, Pavlo, I won't take less than a hundred rubles from Tiurin for this job."
"You get three ounces," said Pavlo with a laugh.
"The prosecutor will make up the difference," shouted Gopchik from above.
"Stop that," Shukhov shouted, "stop." That wasn't the way to cut the roofing felt.
He showed them how to do it.
The men crept up to the stove, only to be chased away by Pavlo. He gave Kilgas some wood to make hods, for carrying the mortar up to the second story. He put on a couple more men to bring up the sand, others to sweep the snow off the scaffolding where the blocks were to be put, and another to take the hot sand off the top of the stove and throw it into the mortar trough.
A truck engine snorted outside. They were beginning to deliver the blocks. The first truck had got through. Pavlo hurried out and waved on the driver to where the blocks were to be dumped.
They put up one thickness of roofing felt, then a second. What protection could you expect from it? It was paper, just paper. All the same, it looked like a kind of solid wall. The room became darker, and this brightened the stove up.
Alyosha brought in some coal. Some of them shouted to tip it onto the stove, others not to. They wanted to warm up with the flames. Alyosha hesitated, not knowing whom to obey.
Fetiukov had found himself a cozy corner near the stove and, the fool, was holding his boots right up to the flames. The captain took him by the scruff of the neck and lugged him off to the barrow.
"You haul sand, you bastard."
The captain might still have been on board ship--if you were told to do something you did it. He had grown haggard during the past month, but he kept his bearing.
In the end, all three windows were covered. Now the only light came through the door. And with it came the cold. So Pavlo had the upper half of the doorway boarded up but the lower left free, so that the men, by stooping, could get through it.
Meanwhile three trucks had driven up and dumped their loads of blocks. Now the problem was how to get the blocks up without the mechanical lift.
"Masons, let's go and look around," Pavlo called.
It was a job to be respected. Shukhov and Kilgas went up with Pavlo. The ramp was narrow enough anyhow, but now that Senka had robbed it of its rails you had to make sure you pressed close to the wall if you weren't going to fall off it. And still worse-
-the snow had frozen to the treads and rounded them; they offered no grip to your feet.
How would they bring up the mortar?
They looked all around to find where the blocks should be laid. The men Pavlo had sent up were shoveling the snow from the top of the wails. Here was the place. You had to take an ax to the ice on the old workings, and then sweep them clean.
They figured out how best to bring up the blocks. They looked down. They decided that, rather than carry them up the ramp, four men would be posted down below to heave the blocks up to that platform over there, that another couple would
move them on, and that two more would hand them up to the second story. That would be quicker than carrying them up the ramp.
The wind wasn't strong but you felt it. It would pierce them all right when they started laying. They'd have to keep behind the bit of wall that the old crew had begun on; it would give them some shelter. Not too bad--it'd be warmer that way.
Shukhov looked up at the sky and gasped--the sun had climbed almost to the dinner hour. Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he'd often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp--they were over before you could say "knife." But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second.
When they went down, they found that everyone had settled around the stove except the captain and Fetiukov, who were still hauling sand. Pavlo flew into a rage and sent eight men out at once to move blocks, two to pour cement into the box and mix it with sand, another for water, another for coal. But Kilgas gave his own orders:
"Well, men, we must finish with the barrows."
"Shall I give 'em a hand?" Shukhov volunteered.
"Yes, help them out," said Pavlo with a nod.
Just then they brought in a tank for melting snow. Someone had told the men that it was already noon.
Shukhov confirmed this.
"The sun's already reached its peak," he announced. "If it's reached its peak," said the captain reflectively, "it's one o'clock, not noon."
"What do you mean?" Shukhov demurred. "Every old-timer knows that the sun stands highest at dinnertime."
"Old-timers, maybe," snapped the captain. "But since their day a new decree has been passed, and now the sun stands highest at one."
"Who passed that decree?"
"Soviet
power."
The captain went out with a barrow. Anyway, Shukhov wouldn't have argued with him. Mean to say that the sun up in the sky must bow down to decrees, too?
The sound of hammering continued as the men knocked together four hods.
"All right, sit down awhile and warm yourselves," said Pavlo to the two masons.
"And you too, Senka. You can join them up there after dinner. Sit down."
So now they had a right to sit by the stove. Anyway they couldn't start laying the blocks before dinner and there was no point in carrying the mortar up there--it would freeze.
The coals were gradually glowing red-hot and throwing out a steady heat. But you felt it only when you were near them--everywhere else the shop was as cold as ever.
They took off their mittens. All four men held their hands up to the stove.
But you never put your feet near the flame if you're wearing boots. You have to remember that If they're leather boots the leather cracks, and if they're valenki the felt becomes sodden and begins to steam and you don't feel any warmer. And if you hold them still nearer the flame then they scorch, and you'll have to drag along till the spring with a hole in your boot--getting another pair can't be counted on.
"What does Shukhov care?" Kilgas said. "Shukhov has one foot almost home."
"The bare one," said someone. They laughed (Shukhov had taken his mended boot off and was warming his footrags).
"Shukhov's term's nearly up."
They'd given Kilgas twenty-five years. Earlier there'd been a spell when people were lucky: everyone to a man got ten years. But from '49 onward the sthndard sentence was twenty-five, Irrespective. A man can survive ten years--but twenty-five, who can get through alive?
Shukhov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term's nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been "retained pending special instructions" and had been released only in '46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five.
The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, "Here's another ten for you." Or exile you.
Yet there were times when you thought about it and you almost choked with excitement. Yes, your term really _is_ coming to an end; the spool is unwinding. . . .
Good God! To step out to freedom, just walk out on your own two feet.
But it wasn't right for an old-timer to talk about it aloud, and Shukhov said to Kilgas: "Don't you worry about those twenty-five years of yours. It's not a fact you'll be in all that time. But that I've been in eight full years--now that is a fact."
Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.
According to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that--a mission.
Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed.
But what really happened was this. In February 1942 their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses--the horn could be soaked In water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone. So the Germans rounded them up in the forest, a few at a time. Shukhov was In one of these groups, and remained in German captivity for a day or two. Then five of them managed to escape.
They stole through the forest and marshes again, and, by a miracle, reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot, a third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser they'd have said they'd been wandering in the forest, and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth: they said they were escaped POW's. POW's, you fuckers! If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally and they might have been believed. But with two it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story, they were told.
Deaf though he was, Senka caught on that they were talking about escaping from the Germans, and said in a loud voice: "Three times I escaped, and three times they caught me."
Senka, who had suffered so much, was usually silent: he didn't hear what people said and didn't mix in their conversation. Little was known about him--only that he'd been in Buchenwald, where he'd worked with the underground and smuggled in arms for the mutiny; and how the Germans had punished him by tying his wrists behind his back, hanging him up by them, and whipping him.
"You've been In for eight years, Vanya," Kilgas argued. "But what camps? Not
'specials.' You bad breads to sleep with. You didn't wear numbers. But try and spend eight years in a 'special'--doing hard labor. No one's come out of a 'special' alive."
"Broads! Boards you mean, not broads."
Shukhov stared at the coals in the stove and remeinbered his seven years in the North. And how he worked for three years hauling logs--for packing cases and railroad ties.
The flames in the campfires had danced up there, too--at timber-felling during the night. Their chief made it a rule that any squad that had failed to meet its quota had to stay In the forest after dark.
They'd dragged themselves back to the camp in the early hours but had to be in the forest again next morning.
"N-no, brothers, . . . I think we have a quieter life here," he said with his lisp.
"Here, when the shift's over, we go back to the camp whether our job's done or not. That's a law. And bread--three ounces more, at least, than up there. Here a man can live. All right, it's a 'special' camp. So what? Does it bother you to wear a number? They don't weigh anything, those numbers."
"A quieter life, do you call it?" Fetiukov hissed (the dinner break was getting near and everyone was huddling around the stove). "Men having their throats cut, in their bunks! And you call it quieter!"
"Not men--squealers." Pavlo raised a threatening finger at Fetiukov.
True enough, something new had started up. Two men, known to be squealers, had been found in their bunks one morning with their throats cut; and, a few days later, the same thing had happened to an innocent zek--someone must have gone to the wrong bunk. And one squealer had run off on his own to the head of the guardhouse and they'd put him inside for safety. Amazing. . . . Nothing like that had happened in the ordinary camps. Nor here, either, up till then.
Suddenly the whistle blew. It never began at full blast. It started hoarsely, as though clearing its throat.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Signet Books) Page 7