With every nerve primed and ready, we stood our ground. Suddenly, the footsteps were louder. They had turned the bend and could behold us now but we could not yet see them.
Gradually, as ghosts manifesting themselves upon the black void of the grave, or as figures looming out of a jet black mist, the figures slowly materialised. They were dressed in the same prison issue clothes as ourselves and they carried the same aluminium hats.
‘Are they blatnye?’ Avel murmured.
I did not respond. There was something indefinable about them which counteracted any sense of intimidation or menace.
Yet still no one spoke, challenged them or told them to sod off.
Kirill put down the pick axe he had chosen to defend himself. The steel head briefly rang on the stone by his foot. It was then I noticed the approaching figures were unarmed.
‘Who are you, comrades?’ Kirill called out with a certain courtesy. It was not a challenge for identification but a request for an introduction.
‘Work Unit 91,’ came the reply, the voice barely audible in the confines of the mole hole.
‘91!’ exclaimed Titian under his breath.
‘How many are you?’ the voice asked.
‘The usual seven,’ Kirill answered back.
‘So are we,’ came the response.
‘You know what 91 is, don’t you?’ Titian said, keeping his voice low. ‘Any number prefixed by 9 or 11?’
Dmitri nodded and said, ‘Women.’
We put down our weapons as the leader of the work unit approached Kirill. She was a thin, sinewy woman possibly in her late thirties, her hair cut close as was our own: indeed, they all had cropped hair, their bodies made shapeless by their clothing. For some curious reason, their faces were cleaner than ours.
‘My name,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘is Dusya.’
Kirill took it but, instead of shaking it, raised it to his lips and, bowing his head, lightly kissed her fingers.
‘I am Kirill,’ he introduced himself. ‘This is Work Unit 8.’
The remainder of us just stood around like embarrassed schoolboys at their first dance. It had been so long since any of us had addressed a woman that we were temporarily at a loss. Above ground, the women were held in a separate camp two kilometres from our own and although we occasionally saw them at the muster by the pit head, we never spoke to them or gave them any thought. It was beyond all expectation that we would ever meet them.
Dusya smiled and said, ‘Such gallantry!’
Kirill smiled back and asked, ‘What’s happening?’
‘There’s been a roof collapse on N,’ Dusya confirmed Titian’s report. ‘Two work units trapped.’
‘Do they have much of a chance?’
She grimaced and said, ‘Not a lot. The emergency teams’re there burrowing like rats. They’ve gone ten metres in but…’
There followed an awkward silence. Somewhere, a few hundred metres above us, men were slowing dying, the air about them growing foul with the stink of their own sweat and dread. I glanced at Ylli. His face was drawn and I knew he was fighting the panic which was trying to engulf him.
One of the women stepped towards me, easing her way past Dusya. She was, I reckoned, in her mid-twenties. Her hair, or what remained of it after the scissors had wreaked their havoc, was blonde under its coating of black dust and her eyes dark blue.
‘I am Valya,’ she said, stopping within my reach. ‘Who are you?’
For a moment, I could say nothing. No words came. Just looking at her eyes was like leaving the mine and travelling to a far and peaceful country.
‘I am Shurik,’ I replied at last.
She took my hand, pulled me very gently towards her.
‘Come and talk to me,’ she invited.
We walked a little way down the mole hole and around the bend. Where the roof lowered, she swept the rock floor clear of pebbles with her boot and sat down. I joined her, leaning my back against the side of the tunnel. In the meagre glow coming from around the corner, her features faded. Her spiky, short hair disappeared and her face seemed to glow almost ethereally.
‘Where are you from, Shurik?’ she enquired.
‘I am English,’ I said.
She looked at me for a moment, assimilating the information, then she took a square of damp cloth from her pocket and started to wipe the coal dust from my forehead. When she had washed my entire face, and without so much as another word, she kissed me. Her lips touched mine, her tongue just licking at the edge of my mouth. Two figures came towards us round the corner, momentarily blocking out the faint light. Titian and one of the other women stepped over our legs and disappeared into the gloom. I could hear their footsteps receding until they reached the next dip in the tunnel.
Valya took my hand and pressed it inside the waistband of her regulation issue trousers, undoing the top button to ease my access. Her belly was warm and exquisitely soft, the muscles tight with the labour of working in the mine, her pelvis angular with the bone not far under the skin.
‘When did you last touch a woman?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘I do not remember,’ I replied and it was the truth.
‘No man has touched me since…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Well, no man has touched me who loved me since before the world ended.’
She pulled my vest out from my trousers and stroked her fingers along my sternum. Her nails were broken short and a rough patch of skin on the ball of her thumb teased my skin, snagging the hairs on my chest.
‘Push your hand down,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t be afraid, Shurik.’
I moved my fingers slowly over her skin, down the flat surface of her belly, slipping them between her legs. Even the muscles on the inside of her thighs were tensioned by her years of cutting and carting coal. She moved her fingers, searching for me in the folds of my clothing. There was an urgency about her movements and yet she did not hurry.
‘Have you been to Zagorsk, Shurik?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I answered.
‘Do you know where it is?’
‘No,’ I admitted again.
She laughed lightly and said, ‘North of Moscow. Not far. An hour’s drive, no more.’
‘Is that your home?’
‘Does it matter any more?’ she answered, her fingers stroking the base of my belly.
At the end of the tunnel, the light went out. It might have been Kirill unscrewing the bulb for the sake of modesty or it might have been the power supply failing. I gave it no thought.
‘You and me, Shurik,’ she whispered in the Stygian subterranean night. ‘Let us go to Zagorsk.’
For a while, we explored each other’s invisible bodies, testing each other, touching and kissing. Valya pulled her vest over her head and pressed my face into her breasts. They were small, smooth and firm, the nipples hard against my tongue. Finally, removing her trousers as well as my own, she moved over and sat across me, her thighs solid against my own.
‘Can you do this?’ she enquired quietly as she lowered herself onto me.
‘I think so,’ I said, feeling her moist and warm against my groin.
She guided me into her then and put her arms around my neck for I was still sitting against the tunnel wall. Very gradually, she started to rise and fall. I put my hands about her waist to steady her but she did not need my assistance.
‘Can you see them, Shurik?’ she suddenly asked, her voice disembodied in the darkness.
‘See what, Valya?’ I replied.
‘The houses,’ she answered, her voice whispering as if she was praying. ‘The houses with their green walls. And the windows of the izba with their carved frames. And the sky reflecting in the black glass. The snow on the roof. The drift of smoke.’
She started to move more urgently, pushing herself down lower on me.
‘Can you smell it, Shurik? They’re burning apple wood. And pine. Someone is roasting chestnuts.’
I could feel her sliding onto me, withdrawing herself
almost from me then dropping once more, her belly brushing against my own. Her hands slipped down to my shoulders, her long fingers gripping me.
‘Listen, Shurik! Listen! In the church of St. Sergius. They’re chanting.’ She rose and fell, her breath coming in sharp gasps. ‘Chanting. Chanting. Chanting. Can you hear them, Shurik! Shurik!’
‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘I can hear them.’
For just the most fleeting of moments, that lasted no longer than the lifespan of a meteor burning across the heavens between Merak and Muscida, I was far away with Valya: and I could scent the smoke of burning apple wood drifting over a landscape of deep snow, and smell the perfume of chestnuts roasting on a stove plate, and hear a patriarch intoning in a church in which the icons glistened on the gloomy walls like predatory angels, the glow of the incense in the censer like the gleam in the eye of a cruel and vindictive god.
* * *
That night, as I was sitting on my bunk trying to sew a tear in my coat, Kirill hoisted himself up beside me.
‘So, Shurik,’ he enquired, ‘are you a happy man?’
‘How do you mean?’ I replied. ‘Am I happy because I have survived another day, happy because I have twine to mend my coat, or happy because I was screwed by a scrub-headed girl thousands of metres under the ground?’
‘Any of those,’ Kirill retorted.
‘Then, yes, I am a happy man,’ I conceded. ‘I could be happier…’
‘It’s better to count your eggs and plan your omelette than dream of getting a few more and making a plateful of blinis.’
‘What is a blini?’ I asked.
‘Of course, you never had one!’ Kirill replied. ‘They don’t serve them in the cells.’ He lowered his voice. ‘A blini is – how do I describe such a simply thing? – flat, round. Made of batter…?’
‘Thin,’ I cut in, ‘usually circular with a ragged edge, like a piece of pale yellow fabric. Like an edible table mat.’
‘That’s it! Exactly! If you had paper other than to wipe your arse on, you should be a poet, Shurik. Such command of language!’
‘So what’s in it?’
‘You want to know?’ He wagged his finger at me, playing the KGB inquisitor. ‘These are dangerous thoughts, comrade. They can drive a man crazy.’
‘Are they a state secret?’
‘No, but you can die from them.’ For a moment, he was serious. ‘Do not forget, just as you must never look forward to your release, so must you never let your thoughts dwell on food. If you want to run for the cover of your soul, dream of other things.’
I tightened the twine and the rip in my coat closed up.
‘So, are you going to tell me the secret?’
Kirill glanced around as if he was in possession of a piece of real information any secret agent would be pleased to pass onto his spymaster in the hope of promotion and a comfortable desk job back at HQ.
‘Flour, yeast, water, butter, salt, sugar, milk, frying oil. And eggs!’
‘In what quantities?’
‘I didn’t get a look at the formulæ,’ Kirill answered conspiratorially. ‘Only the basic plan. But,’ he closed his eyes, ‘you serve them very hot, with a ladleful of melted butter, sour cream, dried fish and caviar.’ He licked his lips as if tasting a final smear of butter and opened his eyes.
‘Look on the bright side of the street, Kirill,’ I told him. ‘We get dried fish in our rations. That’s a start.’
He laughed. I bit off the remaining length of twine from my coat and spat out the hairs of the cord adhering to my tongue.
‘You’ll make it, Shurik,’ he declared, slapping my shoulder. ‘If you can laugh when the world is black, you’ll make it. The man who sees the funny side survives.’
Down at the far end of the hut, there were raised voices. Kirill peered down the aisle between the bunks. Several of the men whose bunks were at that end of the hut – which was to say, the warm end near the stove – were arguing. Others climbed down from their bunks, joining in the altercation.
‘It’s the blatnye,’ Kirill remarked with obvious loathing.
The shouting grew louder. The argument was getting heated. Kirill nodded to me and we quit our bunks to see what was going on. In the middle of a circle of men, two of the blatnye were yelling at each other, waving their hands and fists but holding back from physical confrontation. The other blatnye egged them on or took the side of the larger of the two. The rest of us, the ideinye, political prisoners who had had their hands caught in the wheel of fortune rather than trying to filch it, merely observed: one did not join in the affairs of the blatnye.
‘Who are they?’ I asked Kirill.
‘The little one’s called Styopa,’ he replied, keeping his voice down to avoid being dragged into the melée, ‘a pickpocket from Leningrad, specialised in sailors coming out the navy yards. The big one’s Kabanov. They call him Kaban. An appropriate name.’
‘Why?’
‘Kaban means boar. You ever seen anyone who looks more like a pig?’
‘What is he sitting in here for?’ I enquired, using the gulag vernacular.
‘He was a pimp in Moscow. When his girls grew tired or their cunts grew loose, he killed them.’
‘How long did he get?’
‘Ten years,’ Kirill said. ‘For killing girls you’ve duped onto their backs then rubbed out, you get ten. For standing on the wrong street corner with your hands in your pockets, you get twenty-five. That’s Soviet justice for you, Shurik!’
There was no animosity or angst in his voice but neither was there resigned acceptance. This was the way it was for all of us. We could do nothing about it: we just did the best we could in the circumstances. Better to smile than sulk was one of Kirill’s mottoes.
‘So where is it?’ Kaban the Boar bellowed. ‘You’ve got my fucking…’
‘It’s not me!’ Styopa screamed back. ‘Ask Shifrin! Ask Novikov!’ He spun round looking for another target for his accusation and pointed at one of the ideinye, a man called Zverev with a bright scar on his face. ‘Ask old Two Mouth here!’
Zverev went white, the scar all the more livid against his paling skin.
‘Zverev!’ Kaban roared. ‘He was down at the other end, playing with himself.’
The blatnye parted and Genrikh came forward. Immediately, the two protagonists shut up.
‘What’s going on?’ Genrikh asked with quiet menace.
Neither Kaban nor Styopa replied. The former looked at a point midway between Genrikh’s eyes and belt, the latter contemplated the top of the table.
‘Who’s up to what?’ Genrikh spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully, as if speaking to an idiot child.
‘Styopa’s stolen,’ Kaban answered.
‘Stolen what?’
‘A piece of dried herring. It was under my blanket.’
Genrikh faced Styopa.
‘Where’s the herring?’
‘I didn’t take it. It must have fallen down the cracks in the boards. Or he’s eaten it and forgotten. Or some fucking enemy of the people,’ he cast a quick sideways glance at the assembled ideinye, looking for Zverev, ‘lifted it.’
‘Lifted it?’ Genrikh said in an almost insouciant tone. ‘You mean the best dipper in Leningrad has a rival in the ranks of the run-and-hides?’
Styopa made no response.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ Genrikh began his soliloquy. ‘Kaban’s hungry and angry, Styopa’s met his match amongst the spies and stoolies, and a bit of fish has vanished down a hole. The question is,’ he turned his head to survey the other blatnye, ‘which hole?’
Like a snake striking, his arm flicked out to grasp Styopa by the throat, hauling him across the floor. He rammed his face into Styopa’s.
‘What did we have for rations tonight, Pasha?’ he asked.
‘Stew,’ informed one of the blatnye behind him.
‘Fish or flesh?’ he went on, still nose to nose with Styopa.
‘Flesh.’
‘W
hat did we have tonight, Styopa?’
‘Flesh,’ hissed Styopa through a restricted windpipe.
‘Say, “We had flesh stew for supper, comrade Genrikh.”’
As Styopa spoke, Genrikh inhaled hard, like a man pulling on an expensive cigar. His hand shifted round to the back of his captive’s neck, preventing him from moving away.
‘Now we need an independent opinion,’ Genrikh declared and he looked at me. ‘You, English!’ he ordered. ‘Come here.’
‘Take care,’ Kirill whispered.
I had no other choice and stepped forward.
‘Yes, comrade,’ I said.
‘Comrade! That’s rich!’ Genrikh retorted but he made nothing more of it. ‘Put your head here,’ he commanded me, pointing to the air a few centimetres from Styopa’s face.
I did as I was bid. Genrikh jammed his index finger hard into Styopa’s ribs. The pickpocket inhaled sharply then let his breath out as the pain subsided.
‘So, English,’ Genrikh demanded, ‘what do you smell? The sea or the field?’
There was no alternative but to tell the truth. Had I lied, I would have been quickly accused of being an accessory: besides, Genrikh had made his mind up.
‘The sea,’ I admitted. ‘I can smell fish.’
The words were hardly out of my mouth when Genrikh gave the nod. Two of the blatnye seized Styopa by the shoulders, pinioning his arms and thrusting him face down on the table. Another grabbed his legs, swiftly binding them at the ankle with a belt. Unable to move, a fourth blatnoi tugged Styopa’s right arm out from his side and held it there. In one fluid movement, Genrikh twirled round and brought a short-handled axe down on Styopa’s wrist. It went clear through to jam in the table. The severed hand jumped away from the forearm, the fingers scrabbling as if it had suddenly received a life of its own and wanted to make its getaway. Styopa passed out.
Genrikh prized the axe out of the table and said, ‘Stick it in the ashes.’
The blatnye manhandled Styopa to the stove. Dark, heavy drops of blood stained the boards of the floor. They opened the little door to the fire and thrust his arm into it. There was a hissing sound as the glowing embers cauterised the stump.
‘Don’t think about it, Shurik. You could do nothing,’ Kirill quietly reassured me as we returned to our end of the hut. ‘Consider it just another lesson in the long semester of our university education. Remember it well, my friend,’ he added grimly. ‘Not only the man who laughs survives.’
The Industry of Souls Page 9