An American in the Gulag

by Alexander Dolgun

  “George Tenno,” he said. “What was your relationship with George Tenno?”: I took a breath. I looked up at Sidorov. I said truthfully, “I don’t know that name. If this is the man you’re talking about, I might have had a drink with him or I might not. I don’t remember. We all got pretty drunk that day. Didn’t you?”

  I knew it was coming. He loosened a tooth and I went backwards off the chair.

  He kicked me and he cursed me. I pleaded for him to stop, but I never admitted anything because now my defenses, which had been lulled nearly asleep, were aroused again to fighting form.

  The blows and the kicks that Sidorov hammered on me that night would become part of the cement, years and years later, of one of the finest friendships in my life. But this night they kept raining down as I rolled and ducked and yelled for him to stop until my head began to break into torn, terrible pieces just before I lost consciousness. The next thing I knew I was on the floor of my cell, shivering and wet. The summer was gone. The crisp air of September was outside Lefortovo now, and they were letting it have its way with my shrinking terrible cell. I had been in Lefortovo prison more than nine months.

  Chapter 10

  I was not able to speak coherently for some time after that tremendous beating. I remember that at some time Sidorov showed me a protocol, signed by an unidentified operative, indicating that I had been seen drinking with Commander Tenno on May 8, 1945, and that the operative suspected the intentions of this conversation, as Tenno was an intelligence officer of doubtful loyalty and I was under suspicion as a foreigner. Sidorov asked me if I would like to spend another night like the last one in which we discussed Tenno. I just stared at him with the hard, grim, resigned look that I have come to know now in my own mirror. I do not think I even shook my head. I know I did not answer. He persisted quietly with a few questions about Tenno, and waited a long time for answers. Finally I said, “I have told you all I know about George Tenno.” He seemed to know I meant that, which I did.

  He wrote a protocol. I read it through severely swollen eyelids. I reread it several times because I found concentration so difficult. My shrunken buttocks pained me on the hard seat and my breath was shallow and noisy. I hated Sidorov so much that I wanted somehow to violate this—bland piece of paper on which he depended for his living. But I could find nothing inaccurate in it and I could think of nothing to say and I was too hurt and frightened to tempt another beating so I signed with a shaking and entirely illegible hand and he took it back silently.

  By now I was so weak I fell off the chair in the interrogation room or fell over on the bunk in the psychic cell almost immediately after I went to sleep. And so I would be awakened. Days went by when I got no sleep at all, days that I was simply not aware of; certainly I have no memory of them, except a blurred sense of time passing, and a lot of pain, and the cell getting colder and colder as it wore on into autumn.

  When I could read again Sidorov showed me another protocol. He had opened the question of the sharpshooting once more and indulged in a few desultory beatings that hardly penetrated the numbness of my body, though they made me terribly dizzy and sick to my stomach. The protocol he finally brought out made me laugh in a way that might have sounded hysterical to Sidorov but was just a relief for me.

  I had made friends soon after the war with the Syrian chargé d’affaires. He was actually called Ali Baba. He was an amiable guy and quite a drinker. He was fascinated with America, and I loved to talk about America and boast about its accomplishments. We had spent the Fourth of July together in 1946. I don’t remember quite why that was. I know we began drinking at his place, and that his secretary came in while I was telling him about a book I had just read, all about the FBI. I think it was called Inside the FBI. I remember showing him how the FBI agents were taught to shoot from the hip, and he thought that was great stuff and I loved having an appreciative audience.

  To keep up the dramatics around shooting and cops and that sort of thing, I invited him over to my room at American House, where the second part of Sidorov’s story came from. The first part came from Ali Baba’s secretary, who, it turned out, was MGB. The protocol Sidorov showed me was signed by her. It had evidently been taken in prison. Apparently she had been arrested for not reporting this incident with Ali Baba, which she, for the benefit of her interrogator, had interpreted as showing that I was—an intelligence agent of the United States, trained to shoot from the hip. (Her English was not good. I remember that.) They asked her: “Why did you not report this earlier? You might have saved yourself being imprisoned.” She answered: “I thought Mr. Baba was drunk and that it was not a serious conversation.”

  I described the whole day to Sidorov, giggling with relief, although I felt pretty angry at Ali Baba’s secretary. She always seemed such a nice girl. Baba and I had left her and gone to my room, where I kept my air pistol that shot tiny darts into a target and looked just like a Luger. We had stood in my room for some time while I showed Ali Baba what a great shot I thought I was. I remember it very clearly. So did Sidorov. He had a whole protocol on it. Not from Ali Baba, but from an operative with binoculars, stationed on a rooftop half a mile away by the Moscow River, who had observed me through the window all afternoon on the Fourth of July, 1946, “training with a high-powered, high-accuracy hand weapon, possibly of German manufacture.”

  I told the story to Sidorov. He said, “How can you remember it so clearly, when you can’t remember anything else I ask you about?”

  I said, “Because it was the Fourth of July, I guess.” He said, “What’s distinctive about the fourth of July?”

  I said a bit snappishly, “How can you expect to interrogate an American citizen intelligently if you don’t even know about our Independence Day?”

  I don’t remember the beating that followed. I remember him sweeping across the room at me. After that I only remember how I was later. Perhaps the next day. I stood in front of Sidorov’s desk, thick-lipped and aching in every emaciated muscle. I don’t recall what it was I had to sign. I just remember that, as I turned away from his desk to stumble back to my chair, I saw from the corner of my eye that he had picked up his rubber overshoe, and I thought, with a dim hope, Maybe he’s going home early and I can get some sleep. Then, with my back turned, he brought the overshoe up between my legs with a terrific swing and caught my testicles in a really terrible blow. I had thought nothing could be much worse than those repeated blows on the shins, but this traveled through my entire abdomen as if it were ripping open. I fell to the floor and vomited whatever was in my stomach. It was porridge, I think, so that must have been a nighttime session. Sidorov just called in a guard. “Clean that up and get him out of here,” he said sourly. I was groaning on the floor but I managed to shriek at him—I did not recognize my own voice—“I will never sign another protocol for you! Never!” It seemed, somehow, the nastiest thing I could think of at the moment.

  I don’t know what the time sequence was next. It is terribly blurred. I know that I was standing in front of Sidorov’s desk once again, some hours or days later, I don’t remember. I was trembling with weakness, but I remember the scene with complete clarity, so perhaps I had had some sleep.

  He had seven or eight sheets, protocols, that had not been signed yet. I said, “I told you, I’m not signing any more protocols!”

  I picked the sheets up and tore them in half and strode back to my chair.

  Sidorov grabbed the overshoe and let me have it between the legs again. This time he was less accurate and I was not paralyzed by the blow. I was stung into an anger so total that it took account of nothing. I leaned against my chair. I looked around.

  Sidorov was standing with his back to me at the desk, picking up the torn protocols. I called on every remnant of strength I had, for just this one moment, and swung the chair at Sidorov’s head to kill him at last. But I was too weak; it was a poor blow, slow and badly aimed. He heard it coming and ducked and turned, and I just grazed his forehead. I saw that I had d
rawn blood, but I was dismayed that I had not crushed that hateful, pock-marked skull. Sidorov just knocked me down. He looked a bit frightened. He signaled for the guard. I said, “I’m going to kill you, you know.”

  Sidorov said, “No, you’re not. You’re going to the hard punishment cells for the maximum. That’s twenty-one days and you’ll never come out alive. I’m through with you!”

  They dragged me out. I yelled going through the door, “I’ll get out of here someday and I’ll kill you!”

  They dragged me across to the prison and down steep stone stairs. I remember being thrown in an absolutely bare cell. It was terribly cold. There was no bed, no sink, just a bucket with a lid. No window. Gray stone and black asphalt. I lay on the floor and shivered and called out with the loudest voice I could make, shaking and quivering though it was, “I’ll kill you!!!”

  I knew I could not survive that cell. I had only a shirt and trousers. The temperature was below freezing. Outside it was late October and Moscow dips way below zero Fahrenheit in November. When they brought me water my hands shook so hard that some of the water spilled on the filthy floor. The next time I looked it was frozen.

  At night they brought in a wooden pallet for me to sleep on. I was dying for sleep but shivering too hard to do more than doze off, wake up, doze off.

  I knew with complete certainty that I could not last five days in that cell, let alone twenty-one, and I thought confusedly that I had better keep a calendar to see how long I did last. It never occurred to me that I would not know the outcome. I was too confused.

  The morning came and I did not even have a running nose. They brought me bread and water. I deliberately spilled a little more water in the corner. Later, when it froze, I skated on it, sliding around on my shoes for exercise and warmth. I sang all my songs at the top of my voice and nobody bothered me. I fainted often, and came to shivering on the ice. My only clothes during this period were my prison underwear of light cotton, and the shirt and pants I was arrested in. There was no blanket at night.

  I believe I never stopped shivering, if that is humanly possible. After a few days they brought hot soup made with salt herring. I drank it all down before I realized it was saturated with salt. I tried to ration myself on water, but I was too weak to be disciplined and I drank the whole cup right down. By nightfall I was screaming for more water. Before morning I began to have hallucinations of swimming. Was it in the sea or in a lake? Did I drink the water I was swimming in? Was it salt or fresh? I just remember the shock of coming to my senses and realizing that I was stroking feebly on the bottom of my cell, weak but frantic swimming strokes. Sometimes the cell would fill with water. Every third day they brought the salt-herring soup and I was so starved I ate it even though I knew I would go mad for water.

  The days passed in almost total confusion, except that I forced myself to mark the wall every morning when they brought the bread. That was the one clear moment in the day. Incredibly the strokes passed five, and then ten. I shivered, slept a bit, skated on my rink, what else I don’t know. Once I wanly tapped out a message in code on the wall. There was no response. I was so lonely I would have been glad if a guard had come in to tell me to quit tapping.

  I think they took my bucket out once a day. I know they never spoke.

  The strokes on the wall passed twenty-one. They passed thirty. I had been in the cell a month. I think some days I was delirious all day, but I am not sure of much except that I often said, Hold on, Alex, hold on till the end! I expected The End.

  Forty-one days. A mouse has come into the cell. I will catch it and eat it. It comes in through tiny holes in the bottom of the cell. If there is one mouse there must be more. I salivate at the thought of chewing on the live mouse. I wait for him on the floor. He comes out of his hole and sniffs at me. I try to catch him but he slips through my hands. I wait with infinite patience, day after day, for my mouse.

  Then I watch myself lying, shivering on the floor, covered in filth, a skeleton waiting for a mouse. I watch for hours, but the mouse never comes to the man on the floor.

  I lie on the floor and stare at the mouse. He runs in the hole. I cannot find the hole.

  Forty-nine days on the wall.

  I am trying to catch the mouse and they are watching me through the slot in the door, but they won’t come in and help me get the mouse.

  By now I know there is no mouse, no hole, but for a while I keep on trying to catch him. Then I give up trying to catch him. He still comes in through the hole in the wall that does not exist.

  They are watching me through the slot in the door.

  Fifty-two days on the wall, and I will die soon, and that’s all right, but I still do not have a cold or a runny nose.

  The door of the cell opens. “Prisoner, get up!”

  I can make it to my hands and knees. They help me. Not kindly, not roughly, just get the prisoner moving. I think there is a doctor with them. Was that later? I stand in the door of my own cell, 111, the psychic cell. At least there is a blanket and pillow here.

  I did not understand their words. Wrap up the blanket and pillow? Will they take them away from me? I thought. Then I realized I was leaving cell 111.

  Something still alive inside me said, Alex, you made it.

  They’re moving you. You got through it.

  You’re going to be all right! You have survived and the bad part is finished now. I was lightheaded, still shivering uncontrollably, but something akin to happy, floating.

  I think they took me upstairs on an elevator. That is the impression I have, though the memory is not clear. I know that it was the sixth floor. I was surprised at that. I thought I had worked out the layout of Lefortovo from my frequent trips to interrogation by different routes to avoid meeting other prisoners, and I had somehow figured that there were only five floors. This sixth floor had a small corridor with a wooden floor and looked centuries newer than the other parts of the building. When we reached the cell (it was 216, and I still see the number) the guard did a strange thing. He stopped and opened the peephole and peered in. My chest caught in the way people describe as your heart skipping a beat. There could be only one reason for looking in the cell. There had to be another person inside. I was not going to be alone. After two months shivering on the floor in the hard punishment cell with never the sound of a human voice, I was going to have company!

  The cell door was pushed open. It had a polished wooden floor and was bright and airy with a big window. My eyes were unfocused from the sudden transition to light after fifty-two days of near darkness. I saw the shape of a man on one of the two beds. As the door was locked behind me he got up and came toward me. He looked ferocious, and for a minute I had a terrible misgiving. Quarter-inch stubble of black hair, black stubble of beard, intense eyes, very old, faded army breeches. I thought they had put me in a cell with a murderer. The apparition put out a strong hand. I took it in a bewildered way. He shook my hand firmly and gently, and said in a soft voice and clear, musical Russian, “Let me please introduce myself. My name is Orlov. Captain Grigori Orlov.”

  Chapter 11

  Several times during my interrogation Sidorov had tried to influence me with the promise of better meals, a full night’s sleep, and company in the cell if only I would confess. I was certain, whenever he mentioned putting me in a cell with someone else, that the person would be a stool pigeon and I would have to be extremely careful of what I said because all of it would be reported. They knew that a prisoner kept alone for a prolonged period and then suddenly given company could not refrain from talking. I could not stop talking to Orlov. I told myself the man was a stool pigeon, but I thought, I don’t care: it is such a joy to talk. And Orlov seemed so genuine and so sympathetic and so interested that I just let it pour out and out.

  He had been saving some extra bread and sugar for himself. He immediately offered them to me. “I ask you not to hesitate,” he said. “Just eat it all up. There will be more.” He was gravely courteous. I got over the
shock of his strange appearance quickly. I realized I must look monstrous myself. I took a deep and heartfelt liking to Orlov, and although. I have never seen him since he left me in that cell a month later, I still have warm feelings for him.

  For the first few days in cell 216 it was all sleep and talk, with me doing most of both. The expression “verbal diarrhea” is the same in Russian: I had it. I told Orlov my whole life story. I grew sentimental and expansive over my wonderful Mary, who would be my wife as soon as I got out. I boasted about the way I handled Sidorov. I remember that some feeling of caution made me withhold the story of Dina and the trip to Kiev, but I think that was the only thing I censored.

  Orlov chuckled over the story of my Valentine’s Day visit to Zagorsk. Zagorsk is a beautiful old city forty miles or so from central Moscow. It has a collection of medieval monasteries and churches and so of course it is a strong tourist attraction.

  Mary and I and a man my age from the Canadian Embassy and his girl, who worked at the British Embassy with Mary, went there for the Valentine’s Day weekend in 1948. The Canadian boy and I shared a bedroom and the two girls shared another.

  After we went to bed the girls took advantage of Valentine’s Day custom and slipped notes under our door proposing marriage. Mary’s letter promised that she would make a fine man out of me, help me cut down my drinking, make a very happy life for me and so on, and if I refused her I would have to pay a forfeit of a dozen pairs of nylons or something like that. The trouble was we boys were so absorbed in our own conversation that we did not see or hear the notes come under the door. The girls went back to their room and lay there breathless and giggling for some time. Then they began to get madder and madder when we never replied. We saw the letters for the first time when we woke up next morning and the girls were so furious they would not speak to us.