From that moment on, as the rubber stamp chopped down, I was – like Avel, Kostya, Ylli, Titian, Dmitri and Kirill – a filed dossier in a locked cabinet in the vaults of the Lubyanka, a lost man, a non-person.
Kirill sits up.
Listen.
Far away down the gallery, someone is blowing a long blast on a whistle. It stops. There is a silence deeper than that on the inert surface of the moon. A dull thud reaches us as if someone far away has slammed shut a heavy dungeon door. The light over Avel’s head flickers a few times. The air seems momentarily dense and stifles breath.
Kirill puts his hands on his knees and pushes himself up. Avel slips the half-shaped rook into his pocket and secrets his home-made, contraband tool into the folds of his clothing. Kostya stops fidgeting with his lamp.
‘They’ve blown the charge,’ Kirill announces laconically. ‘Time to be dignified again.’
We set off towards the coal face, walking in a line between the steel rails. As we reach the passing place and siding which exists in every gallery at every level of the mine, Kostya starts to hum, loudly. The tune is familiar but it takes me several minutes to place it. He must have picked it up at the movies, on one of his many voyages around the world. It is the Heigh Ho! song from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
And there are seven of us.
* * *
Sosnogorsklag 32 forced labour camp consisted of fifty wooden barracks, assorted administrative buildings, stores, quarters for the guards and a large parade ground or mustering area where we were counted before leaving for the mine or returning from our shifts there. The whole camp was surrounded by several five-metre high barbed wire and electrified fences surmounted by watch towers, wire entanglements and a three-metre deep moat filled with more wire and iron stakes. The land around was covered in grass and scrub, more or less flat and treeless. Had it sand and had it not had the Arctic Circle bisecting it, it would have been a desert.
Work Unit 8 was housed in Hut 14, the last barrack in the first row alongside the wire. In it lived 160 prisoners, all of them men. The bunks, one per prisoner, were erected in tiers of four down either side of the hut with just sufficient space between them to allow access. Down the length of the hut ran an aisle, just two men wide. Every three metres, a light socket fitted with a 40 watt bulb hung from the roof beams, protected from any leaks in the roof or dripping condensation by a tin shade. There were no cupboards, foot lockers or the like except, at one end, there was a small and usually empty storage room not much larger than a lavatory cubicle by the door of which a sack of fuel was kept for the stove.
My bunk was on top of the last tier at the end of the hut close to the storage cubicle, bounded by two outside walls which, despite their insulation, did not keep out the cold. It was not unknown for the nails holding the wooden panels in place to conduct the Arctic winter in and become so cold as to have the heads ice up with condensation and crack.
At the farthest end of the hut from the door was an area devoid of bunks. Here, a large table stood surrounded by several benches. It was here we ate, three work units at a time for there were insufficient benches to seat more than twenty-five prisoners. Beyond the table was an open space in the centre of which stood the stove. It was large, made of cast-iron and the only form of heating in the hut other than our own bodies. It was our responsibility to light the stove every day, stoke it up with fuel before we were called out to roll call and a day in the mine. If we could get it really going before we left, and closed the air vent right down, it would stay alight through the day and have the place warm for our return.
It was as a result of this stove that I learnt what Kirill termed my first instruction in the philosophy of endurance from the Faculty of Incarceration of the University of the Gulag.
I had been in the camp about a month when, one morning, it came round to be Ylli’s turn to tend to the stove. He was out of his bunk before the rest of us, riddling the ashes, huffing and puffing on a few remaining embers which he had surrounded with several fistfuls of wood shavings one of the pit head carpenters had filched from the workshop where they cut the pit props. The fuel we were issued with consisted of lumps of compacted coal dust and clay which were bastards to ignite but which smouldered slowly for hours once they were alight.
As I settled my feet into my valenki, the Russian felt boots with which we were issued, there was a commotion by the stove. A Muscovite thug called Genrikh, the leader of the blatnye, had discovered it to be barely warm. The shavings were only just catching.
The blatnye were the criminal class inmates, arrested not for crimes against ideology and dogma but because they had broken heads and bones, slit some sucker’s throat in a dark alley and made off with his wallet. They lacked the close-knit camaraderie of our little group, were a more disparate bunch, individuals thrown together in a brotherhood of disdainful violence rather than souls, forced by a common circumstance rather than the powerful wills of sadistic men, into a common predicament.
There were eleven blatnye under Genrikh’s leadership. He was serving twenty years for murder, arson and the rape of six women which, he was proud to proclaim, he had had over a period of 65 hours. The murder charge was for the third woman, whom he had strangled because of her resistance to his fornication, the arson for the sixth whose apartment he torched. His fellow blatnye called him the Tsar, in which sobriquet he revelled for he saw himself as an emperor although he would have preferred himself to be coupled with Ivan the Terrible rather than Nicholas II, whom he referred to as His Milksop Majesty.
‘You!’ he shouted at Ylli. ‘You! The Balkan turd. The Mohammedan shit cake.’
Ylli turned. He was not the sole Muslim in Hut 14 but he was the only Albanian.
‘You! Allah’s bum-boy! You call this a fire?’ Genrikh growled, stepping towards his victim.
Ylli made no reply. Genrikh grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and shook him, thrusting him towards the stove, forcing him down on his knees in front of the fire-door through the stained mica window of which the first flames were beginning to flicker.
‘You call this a fucking fire?’ Genrikh repeated. ‘Feel it!’
He slammed Ylli’s head against the cast-iron carcass of the stove. The metal was hot but not enough to scald him. Ylli, with an animal cunning, allowed himself to go limp, to be completely at the mercy of the Tsar. After a moment, the blatnoi dropped him to the concrete floor and kicked him, not too viciously, upon the thigh.
‘You limp prick!’ Genrikh said, his voice thick with contempt.
Ylli, doubled at a crouch, headed back in our direction and did not stand upright until he was out of Genrikh’s sight between the rows of bunks.
We said nothing, just gave him a quick smile of encouragement and got on with readying ourselves for the day ahead. Ylli was no less in our eyes for his cravenness. We were there to survive. Any one of us might have done the same. He lost his dignity, perhaps, but he kept his life, his self-respect and our esteem and that was what was valuable.
Lining up at the door to go out for muster and counting, Kirill leaned over to me.
‘Are you ashamed, Shurik?’ he enquired.
‘Ashamed?’
‘Yes. Ashamed for Ylli, ashamed you did nothing to help him, ashamed we live like this.’
I nodded my head, embarrassed to admit I was. Outside, the guards were calling for Hut 13. It would soon be our turn to head out into the freezing darkness.
‘Don’t be,’ Kirill advised. ‘Just learn the lesson, Shurik. Take it to heart and hold it there, like a long-lost love. After all, what is the difference between Genrikh and the Politburo? Or, come to that, Genrikh and Winston Churchill? President Eisenhower? General De Gaulle? Nothing! All you have seen is the exercise of authority, the exploitation of power. It is always cruel, to suit its purpose. As for us? We fight and die, or adapt and live.’
* * *
The drill hit an unexpectedly hard vein of rock, the bit screaming. I flick
ed the switch to increase the flow of water from the spray nozzle by the chuck but it made no difference. The screeching continued, rising in pitch to the intolerable level of a dog whistle.
‘You see him?’ Titian yelled, jerking his head over his shoulder.
Glancing in the direction his head indicated I nodded, partly in recognition of his question and partly in response to the vibration of the drill. By the coal trucks stood a man with a scar upon his left biceps which showed white against the coal-caked remainder of his arm. The damaged tissue was devoid of hairs and was so smooth his sweat consistently sluiced it clean.
I eased back on the trigger. The drill slowed to a dull whine. Unclipping it from its tripod, I swung it back on its bracket, retracting the bit from the coal face. The cutting surfaces at the tip were as bright as molten mercury and just as blunt.
‘Lousy Ukrainian steel,’ Titian remarked. ‘Wrong carbon content. They can never get it right. You know his name?’ he added in an undertone, no longer competing with the drill to be heard.
I shook my head and, turning the compressed air tap shut, started to release the chuck. Dmitri, seeing what I was doing, went off down the gallery to fetch a new bit.
‘Vachnadze, a Georgian from Kutaisi. He’s the leader of 39. They usually work at the pit head.’
‘What’s he doing down here?’
Titian shrugged and said, ‘Someone blotted his copy book. But he’ll be back up in a week or two. Safe above ground with the birds and the clouds. You know what they call him?’
I shook my head again. The chuck was loose and the bit starting to slide out. I tilted the drill forward, the bit clattering onto the rock at my feet, spitting where the hot metal touched a puddle of standing water.
‘They call him Odds-On.’ Titian saw the puzzlement on my face. ‘He was caught embezzling Party funds,’ he continued, ‘to pay off his debts. He’s a gambler.’
‘What did he gamble on?’
‘Football matches, boxing fights, cards, dice.’
I looked at Vachnadze. He was leaning on a shovel, looking like any other prisoner in the mine but, now I knew his story, he took on a different aura. It was always like this: we were such a uniform-looking bunch in our regulation prison issue clothing and layering of coal dust that all that really distinguished us, apart from our heights, was our backgrounds. When you learnt that so-and-so had been a rocket scientist or a farm-worker, a general or a tram driver, it coloured them in your eyes. You started to perceive those pieces of their past which fitted their present character and you used the information to judge them and know them.
‘I would imagine,’ I said, ‘that a long stretch in the gulag will cure him.’
Dmitri returned with a new bit wrapped in oiled paper which he started to strip off.
‘Don’t bet on it!’ Titian replied with a broad grin. Even his teeth were speckled with coal. ‘He’s still at it.’
‘Wagering on what?’ I asked, somewhat incredulously.
‘Anything. Anything at all. He has to gamble just as a miser has to count money, a whore screw or a priest pray.’ He gave Dmitri a glance. ‘Shall we?’
Dmitri slid the bit into the chuck and I started to tighten the teeth on it. He thought for a moment as he held the bit in place.
‘Shame to miss the chance,’ he mused.
‘Could do…’ Ylli contemplated.
‘We’ll have to be good, comrades,’ Titian commented. ‘He’s as cunning as a viper.’
‘Could do what?’ I wanted to know.
Titian glanced at Vachnadze. He was now back at work, shovelling the last of the previous shift’s coal and rubble into one of the trucks.
‘Lay a bet with him,’ said Titian.
‘And where do we get so much as a kopeck, never mind a rouble, to put on the table?’
‘Ah, Shurik!’ Dmitri exclaimed. ‘You have been here now for – how long? Don’t say. We don’t count such things. But still you don’t know Russians.’
‘We don’t need money,’ Titian said. ‘Do you have any makhorka?’
‘I don’t smoke,’ I reminded him.
‘No, but you get the issue all the same and you trade it like the others who don’t use it. Now, have you any?’
The bit was tight in the chuck. Some way down the pressure hose, compressed air was escaping from a weak seal. If I did not turn the tap on soon, it might blow, we would be forced to stop drilling, the holes would not be ready for the explosives team, we should be docked rations for not meeting our quota and life would be tougher than it was already.
‘No, I don’t,’ I admitted and I began to open the air valve, the chuck starting to spin once more.
‘But tomorrow is issue day,’ Dmitri pointed out over the rising whine, ‘so when you get some, keep it. Don’t trade it. And in four days, when everyone’s smoked their makhorka, we’ll have a bit of fun.’
In the next rest period, whilst the dynamite charges were set, Titian and Dmitri huddled together with Kostya. They whispered and chuckled. When I enquired what they were up to, they just smirked and told to me save my tobacco. By the fourth day, their plan was in place.
We were hard at work shovelling newly-blasted coal into the trucks. Odds-on Vachnadze was attached to the team installing the new props. Dmitri and Titian kept exchanging glances and winks. At one stage, Titian leaned over to check I had my tobacco ration on me. Finally, the new props were installed and the trucks filled. The locomotive appeared down the track, its wheels grinding and its brake pads sparking, to tow the filled trucks away and bring down an empty train to replace them. This gave us three or four minutes’ respite from our labours.
‘What I’d like right now,’ Titian observed in a marginally louder than normal voice, ‘is a smoke. A good long drag on a Virginia, an American cigarette. A Lucky Strike would do.’ To add emotion to this statement, he mimicked putting a butt to his mouth and drawing on it, exhaling with a leisured sigh.
Kostya interjected, ‘Lucky Strike! I’d like a fat cigar, thicker than a negro’s penis. And longer. A real three-hour smoke. Cuban tobacco. One of those cigars that comes in a metal tube like a toy torpedo.’
Dmitri said, a little wistfully, ‘I’d just settle for makhorka. But I’m clean out. The old trouble. Smoke it all at once. We zeks,’ it was the slang word for an occupant of the gulag by which we referred to ourselves, ‘savour a cup of soup with gristle like an old tart’s lips in it, and sip it as slowly as if it was French champagne just to make it last longer. But tobacco…’ He turned to me and winked. ‘You don’t puff, Shurik. You still in possession?’
‘Yes,’ I said, taking my cue.
Vachnadze, I noted, was standing by a pit prop, watching us and listening to the conversation.
‘Will you trade it?’ Dmitri enquired, but his eyes told me to refuse.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘How much do you have, English?’ asked Vachnadze, stepping forward.
‘My full ration.’
‘Why haven’t you traded yet?’
There was a touch of suspicion in his voice. Just as Titian had said, he was, I thought, a crafty sod.
‘It’s best to wait a day or two after the issue,’ I explained.
‘Then I get a better deal.’
I could sense the machinations of his mind shift into motion, the gear wheels of thought beginning to churn.
‘You got it on you now?’ the Georgian enquired.
‘I’ve got it where I can get it,’ I replied, sliding my hand over my waistband.
‘What do you want for it?’
I caught Titian’s eye. He was willing me to refuse to trade, to up the stakes, to play the game.
‘I haven’t thought,’ I said. ‘What do you have?’
‘Dried fish,’ Vachnadze answered. ‘Not the usually salty shit we get in the stew. Not crushed into dust. Whole fish. Head, gills, tails – the lot.’
I pretended to give his offer consideration then rejected the offer.
‘Salted fish makes me thirsty,’ I complained.
‘And dried meat,’ Vachnadze continued.
‘What meat?’ Avel asked, joining in the conversation.
‘He doesn’t want cat,’ Kostya butted in.
‘Some beef, some reindeer,’ Vachnadze declared. ‘Good quality jerky. Tough but you can chew it or boil it.’
‘How much do you have?’ I asked.
‘Enough,’ Vachnadze assured me. ‘How much tobacco do you have?’
‘Why trade?’ Titian suggested. ‘You’re said to be a gambling man, Georgian. Make a bet. What do you say, Shurik?’
Vachnadze looked at me for confirmation of my agreement and I knew then he was hooked.
I nodded my agreement and said, I hoped not too nonchalantly, ‘Why not? I shan’t be smoking it. It seems a fair risk.’
The wager was made: forty grams of makhorka against two hundred and fifty grams of jerky. Then, of course, the question arose as to what the bet would be based upon. A few ideas were mooted – how many trucks full of coal would be carted in the next shift, how many times the lights would dim when the dynamite was detonated, how many drips of water would fall from a certain cracked pipe in a certain length of time. These were all discarded. What constituted a truckful of coal? It could be manipulated. Who would count the dimming of the light, which was not finite? How could we time the drips when none of us possessed a watch?
The quandary was answered by Ylli who had taken no part in the discussion at all so far. Indeed, for the preceding few days he had hardly spoken to any of us when down the mine and I had assumed he was in one of his periodic huffs. Yet it was all part of the grand design. Ylli was our ringer.
‘What have we in the mine, which is unpredictable, often seen, easily counted and does not require timing?’
Everyone looked at him.
‘Well what?’ said Vachnadze testily.
‘Mice,’ replied Ylli.
It was true. There were mice in the mine, as far down as the very bottom-most gallery. They lived by nibbling crumbs of bread the prisoners accidentally dropped, seeds carried in the mud on the soles of our boots and the packaging of machine parts: it was even rumoured they gnawed sticks of dynamite.
The Industry of Souls Page 4