The Day Will Pass Away

by Ivan Chistyakov

  The guards are permanently in a foul mood because their food is so bad.

  ‘They’re stashing food away for Revolution Day, so we get no fats.’

  The camp administration have everything: meat, butter, everything.

  In the evening we get an escape alert and everyone fans out. I walk along the track towards Ussuriysk. It’s very still. The sun hovers over a hilltop, its last rays playing over the russet brown leaves of the trees, creating fantastic colours that contrast with equally fantastic shadows. It’s exotic scenery for a European: a dwarf oak forest, the hills receding, one higher than the other far into the distance, their summits fanciful, humped animals. The haystacks look like the helmets of giants half rooted in the soil.

  Construction of the Second Track is nearing completion. Only yesterday this was a graceless, jagged precipice with gnarled shrubs jutting out of it, but today? Today a women prisoners’ brigade appeared and now for 150 metres there is an even, two-storey high embankment with regular lines and a smooth surface that is a sight for sore eyes.

  Hills are sliced through, marshes drained, embankments embanked, bridges straddle streams coaxed into drainage conduits. It’s the result of concrete, iron, human labour. Stubborn, persistent, focused labour.

  And all around, the taiga, the dense forests of Siberia. As Pushkin never said, how much that word contains! How much that is untouched, unknown, unknowable! How many human tragedies, how many lives the taiga has swallowed up. I shudder when I think about the trek to Siberia, to exile, to prison. And now here is Petropavlovka, a village whose buildings bear the mark of a past of direst penury, but where a collective farm now thrives.

  30 October 1935

  To the bathhouse, the miraculous bathhouse! It’s just a wooden shed, its inside walls pointed with cement, although you could stop up scores of cracks and still be left with as many again. There’s a layer of slime on the floor, a cauldron plastered in place on top of the stove. The bathhouse is warm now, but how will it be in winter? The roof leaks – but still, I have a good scrub. It feels so good after twenty days!

  I couldn’t help getting nostalgic over the bathhouse in Moscow. It would be so nice to have a proper night’s sleep too, but we are here to work. Nightfall brings disturbances, escapes, killings. For once, though, may the gentle autumn night extend its protective mantle over the captive. Two runaways this time. There are interrogations, pursuits, memoranda, reports to HQ. The Third Section takes an interest, and in place of rest night brings unrest and nightmares.

  31 October 1935

  I didn’t write a diary entry yesterday, and now I remember nothing. The days hurtle by, faster and faster, a spiral narrowing towards the end of a life, except that here at BAM the spiral is rusty and distorted and may snap at any moment.

  1 November 1935

  Then there are prisoners who refuse to go out to work. They’re just the same as all the others, no less human. They get just as upset at losing that roving red banner as anyone else.# They cry just as bitterly. They have the same psychology as anyone serving a sentence, the same oppressive thoughts about backbreaking toil, bad conditions, hopes for the future. The same faith that some day they will be free, the same disappointed hopes, despair, and mental trauma. You need to work on their psychology, be subtle, be kind. For them kindness is like a second sun in the sky. The competitiveness here is cut-throat. A foul-up in recording their work credits can drive them to attempt escape, commit murder, and so on. No amount of ‘administrative measures’ help, and nor does a pistol. A bullet can only end a life, which is no solution, and a dead prisoner can cause a lot of grief. A wounded zek is a wild beast.

  4–5 November 1935

  (On 3 November), the duty officer bangs at the door. What’s up?

  Urgent telephone message!

  I read, ‘Your responsibility to unload fifty wagons of railway sleepers.’ Head of Security, signature.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘03.00 hrs, Comrade Commander!’

  We must commence unloading at dawn, so I have to get up, walk 1.5 km to the siding, rouse the brigade, brief them, deploy them and so on.

  It’s a spring-like day. I wear lighter clothing. After lunch the wind picks up from the west. Winter is on its way. The sleeper layers work fast, followed by those laying the rails. And-one, and-two, and move it through! Eastward! Eastward! Come on, come on! They waddle rhythmically along, followed by the spikers:

  Aaargh-clunk, aaargh-clunk.

  It turns cold and starts snowing. Minus 16 Celsius. I hop on a passing train, travel 25 km out to the phalanx and walk back on foot. I feel fine, the hike doesn’t leave me too tired.

  Five hours’ sleep in the past forty-eight. It snowed during the night, icy cold. At five in the morning there’s a noise, a knock. I hear the duty guard reporting to the deputy head of GHQ that it’s not easing off. It’s as cold in the room as outside in the snow.

  We check out the huts. Oh, life! How can you do this to people? There are bare bunks, gaps everywhere in the walls, snow on the sleeping prisoners, no firewood. A mass of shivering people, intelligent, educated people. Dressed in rags filthy from the trackbed ballast. Fate toys with us all.** To fate, none of us matter in the slightest.

  They can’t sleep at night, then they spend the day labouring, often in worn-out shoes or woven sandals, without mitts, eating their cold meals at the quarry. In the evening their barracks are cold again and people rave through the night. How can they not recall their warm homes? How can they not blame everyone and everything, and probably rightly so? The camp administration don’t give a damn about the prisoners and as a result they refuse to go out to work. They think we are all bastards and they are right. What they are asking for is the absolute minimum, the very least we are obliged to give them. We have funds that are allocated for it, but our hoping for the best, our haphazardness, our reluctance, or the devil only knows what, means we deprive them of the very minimum they need to work.††

  6 November 1935

  The frost is really setting in. Minus 18. I’ve put on my felt boots, a very good invention. We go through another one of our farces, searching the zeks for knives etc. They are so indignant. People need to be able to slice bread, peel potatoes, chop firewood, don’t they? If they had any serious weapons, they certainly wouldn’t store them in the huts. Budnikova (Article 35)‡‡ rightly protests, and very forcefully. I would have done the same.

  I give them a talk in the evening. They listen silently, mistrustful of every word. There is tension whenever we are present. I decide to leave. Budnikova has a way of petulantly kicking off her shoes. They dream of having boots, glance at my leather coat and say, ‘Nice boots that would make up into.§§

  ‘I’ll nick silk stockings just for you, but only tell me yes or no,’ a baby-faced zek serenades me sarcastically.

  7 November 1935

  Revolution Day. We’re run off our feet. The prisoners are supposed to be behind the barbed wire but one has gone off looking for milk, another to see the management, a third here, a fourth there. They all have some reason, some human reason, some trivial reason they think is tremendously important.

  White grinning teeth, his mouth twisted in soundless laughter. His eyes flicker open for a moment, then close again.

  There is not a single joyous expression. Where are all the smiles and happy dreams? Even m sleep they’re still living m a labour camp. Sleep brings not peace and rest, but nightmares and delirium.

  A day at work. Ram, snow, mud At night, more raving. Conditions like these inevitably make you think everyone is guilty. The camp administration does not take care of its prisoners. It wastes and embezzles the rations they are entitled to. The railway labourers can’t see that Soviet power has anything to give them.

  What they get they drink or gamble away and, of course, they never get anything above the official allocation.

  ‘They deprive us of even the little things, like milk for today’s holiday, the bastards.’
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  23.00. A delivery of ballast needs to be unloaded, so out we go. A delay here, a cock-up there, and we end up freezing in the cold. And there is always a mischief-maker not far away.

  8 November 1935

  Fight.

  The zeks are fighting. The women beat up the carpenter and threw logs at him. I talked them out of it, it’s possible to do that. It’s in the tone of voice, stern and masterful at the right moment, or gentle and coaxing. Women are all primarily women.¶¶

  9 November 1935

  I walked 50 km down the track. Wandering along the Ussuriysk line, right in the middle of nowhere.

  10 November 1935

  This life is nomadic, cold, transient, disordered. We are getting used to just hoping for the best. That wheezing accordion underscores the general emptiness. The cold click of a rifle bolt. Wind outside the window. Dreams and drifting snow. Accordion wailing, feet beating time. There’s heat from the stove, but as soon as it warms up one side, the other gets cold. A fleeting thought: am I really going to have to put up with this for long? Is life just one perpetual shambles? Why? I want to let everything go hang and just float downstream, but I’d probably get banged up myself. Come on, head, think of something and I’ll buy you a cap!

  Alas, the days here are filled with longing and anger, sorrow and shame. Your work is slapdash and you just hope for good luck. It’s degrading. Nobody thinks of us as people; they think of us as platoon commanders and that’s it. Periodically someone calls you a representative of the USSR government. I ‘sadly look back at the life I have lived’,## and kick myself yet again. I have to get out of this place! Think of something, wise up!

  11 November 1935

  Commanders’ training day. I spend it instructing squad commanders ‘at home’, in the warm (while the heating is on). It goes all right. The lads sing, ‘How many thoughts those bells recall.’*** They surely do. I look back from the railway bridge at my ark and smile wryly. Here we are, stuck in the middle of the taiga, living our lives, laying a railway, worrying about things, doing our geometry. There is life everywhere (only, what sort of life?).

  12 November 1935

  An influx of juvenile delinquents: the zeks call them ‘sparkies’. We count them: five short. Count them again: still five short. We check them again: ten short, so another five have got away. We bring out extra security. Thirty sparkies are working; there is no way any of them can escape. We count again: twenty-nine. They cover themselves with sand or snow and, when everyone else has left, come out and leg it. Three more escaped during the night.

  I talk to their top dog.

  ‘Can you find them?’

  ‘Sure!’

  He did. They won’t do it again. It turns out he sent them off himself and they got drunk but they’re back now. Others will do the same tomorrow. I let a man out for a pee and he just disappeared. I saw a woman standing there. She pulled out a skirt she’d tucked into her trousers, put a shawl over her head, and before I knew it she’d vanished.

  One of the sparkies says: ‘There’s this woman selling ox meat, so I sit there watching how much she’s making, beg some money off her, then nick her bag and scarper. I fill another bag with stuff, old rubbish, find someone to buy the meat, take their money while holding the bag between my legs, another kid swaps the bags round and the deed is done.’

  13 November 1935

  I walked to Arkhara this morning. Twenty km hardly counts here. We talked shop: someone got killed, someone else got killed. In 3 Platoon a bear ripped the scalp off a hunter and smashed up his rifle. They bayoneted it.

  I bought frozen apples. They were a delight to eat. I spent the day hanging around at the station, which is regarded as normal. What can you do if there are no trains? Hang around.

  14 November 1935

  I went to check the rails and sleepers and so on with the political instructor. We are building BAM, but whether that is our job or not we haven’t been told. It’s difficult to know who’s supposed to be doing what. We met a commissioner who cheered us up by asking, ‘Have they been stealing sleepers from the Ussuriysk track? Been using them as firewood, have they?’

  As if we are going to tell him. Here’s the thing: if there’s no firewood, cold, hungry people refuse to go out to work and I’m to blame. If there is firewood and those people get fed and keep warm, I’m still to blame. I decide to be to blame for one thing. One of life’s lessons: learn to steal but don’t get caught.

  15 November 1935

  The day fades slowly here. It seems endless. I’m up at five in the morning and go to bed at eleven at night. The west wind is blowing in cirrus thunderclouds through which the last rays of the setting sun stream, creating a fabulous picture in the sky. The background is grey, the horizon amazingly distant. The firmament is suffused with pale yellow; pink clouds edged with crimson look like poppies. The horizon, a red line, burns ever brighter until it overflows and spills out, flooding the sky and turning everything purple. As a blindingly red sun begins to sink below the horizon, purple yields to hues of yellow tinged with green, and these in turn give way to violet and deepest blue. The base of the hills becomes shrouded in mist and the reddish-brown grass on their summits is streaked with gold before slipping slowly into blackness. The darkness deepens upwards and downwards. A last red line limning the horizon narrows and then, lingering a moment in your imagination, dies. A tardy ray flashes out, as if hastening after the sun and, as it vanishes, bestows a smile, like a girl who has said goodbye and, walking away, looks back from a distance.

  Night. It’s dark outside. I can only sense the thirty-metre high embankment, just fifty metres away, because I know it’s there. With a clattering and scattering of sheaves of sparks, a freight train steams across the bridge. Smoke comes from the little chimney of a wagon heated by a stove. Conscripts. Perhaps they look at us and think, even out here, there are people living. Yes, even out here there is some godforsaken gypsy encampment.

  These years of impressions are going to leave their mark on me.

  16 November 1935

  It’s 26 degrees below zero and a gale-force wind is blowing. Cold. Cold outside, cold indoors. Our building seems to have more holes than wall. The building’s superintendent comes in and cheers us up:

  ‘Don’t worry, lads, it’s going to get twice as cold as this.’

  How wasteful human mismanagement is. Nobody thought to lay the sub-grade before the frost came and now the labourers are forced to dig a trench, 30 cm deep, into frozen clay as viscous as tin.

  The days roll by. What lies ahead? I have no desire to serve in the army, let alone at BAM, but what else can I do? It would be bearable if we could at least relax in a warm building, but we don’t have even that. The stove heats you on one side of your body††† while the other freezes. You become lackadaisical: why care about anything? Yet every day that passes is part of my life, a day I could have lived instead of wasted. There is no one to talk to here. I can’t talk to the zeks, obviously, and if I talked to the guards they’d become overfamiliar and I’d lose my authority. We are just a prop for the system, and when the project is finished we will leave the stage unnoticed. The whole, or a large part, of the burden of this project is borne by us, the guards and platoon commanders.

  17 November 1935

  Midnight. The duty officer calls the guards out to supervise the unloading of ballast. I get to join them. It’s a shambles. The shuttle truck hasn’t arrived and probably won’t, so people are freezing in the minus 35 degrees cold. This isn’t how I would do it. I would lay a secondary track and run the ballast and backfill along that.

  Do you know what it feels like to be out in the taiga at night?

  Let me tell you. There are oak trees, perhaps three hundred years old, their branches bare, like giants’ arms, like tentacles, paws, beaks of prehistoric monsters, and they seem to reach out to seize and crush anyone they can catch.

  You sit round a campfire and the flickering shadows make all these limbs look like
they’re moving, breathing, animated, alive. The quiet rustling of the remaining leaves and the branches tapping other branches make you think even more of the Cyclops or other monsters. You are overhearing a conversation you can’t understand. There are questions being asked and answers given.

  You hear melodies and rhythms. The flames of the fire pierce the darkness for five metres or so, and sparks fly like long glowworms in the air, swirling, colliding and overtaking each other. The face of your comrade opposite, vividly lit by the flames against the backdrop of the night, with shadows darting from his nose and the peak of his Red Army helmet, looks theatrically grotesque. You don’t want to talk loudly. It would be out of place. You want to sit and doze and listen to the whispering of the trees.

  18 November 1935

  I ride out in the morning to Phalanx 13.

  We have been sent juveniles: louse-ridden, dirty, without warm clothing. There is no bathhouse because we cannot go sixty rubles over budget, which would work out at one kopek a head. There is talk of the need to prevent escapes. They look for causes, use guns, but fail to see that they themselves are the cause, that escapes are a result of their slothfulness, or their red tape, or just plain sabotage. People are barefoot and inadequately dressed even though there is enough of everything in the stores. They don’t issue supplies even to those who are able and willing to work, claiming it would just be wasted. So the prisoners don’t waste it, don’t work, and run away.

  19 November 1935

  An empty sort of day. Apathy, indifference. In the political study class I ask, ‘Who is Vasiliy Blyukher?’ He’s only the military commander of this entire Far East Region. The best guess I get is, ‘Ex-commissar of the Second Track?’

  20 November 1935

  An escape. A 58.8-er.‡‡‡ Silly bugger. In frost like this, with no money, he doesn’t stand a chance. What was he thinking of? The professional criminals are a different matter. They could bring it off.