Pavel assured us that he would do all he could to find out who the bastard was. Then he offered us a drink, but we asked permission to leave, since we still had a lot of calls to make.
As we left we noticed that cars and scooters were already beginning to arrive outside the bar: clearly old Pavel had called the people of his district together to explain the matter to them.
Our second port of call was the district of Railway. The criminals of Railway specialized mainly in burglaries from apartments. Theirs was a multiethnic community, with criminal rules which also applied in most of the prisons in the Soviet Union. It was all based on collectivism; the highest Authorities, the Thieves in Law, handled everyone’s money.
Railway, as I have already mentioned, was an area dominated by Black Seed, the caste that officially governed the Russian criminal world because of the large number of its members, and above all of its supporters.
Between Black Seed and us there had always been a kind of tension; they described themselves as the leaders of the criminal world, and their presence was very evident both inside prison and outside, but the foundations of their criminal tradition, most of their rules, and even their tattoos, were copied from us Urkas.
Their caste emerged at the beginning of the century, exploiting a moment of great social weakness in the country, which was full of desperate people – vagabonds and small-time criminals who were happy to go to prison for the sake of the free meals and the certainty of having a roof over their heads at night. Gradually they became a powerful community, but one with a lot of flaws, as many Authorities of Black Seed themselves acknowledged.
In Railway everything was organized more or less as it was among us. There was a Guardian responsible for what happened in his area, who was answerable to the Thieves in Law; and there were checks on those who entered and left the district.
And sure enough, at the border of Railway our car was stopped by a roadblock of young criminals.
To show that we were relaxed, we waited in the car until one of them came over and started talking to Gagarin. The others leaned against their cars, smoking, and now and then threw an abstracted glance at us, but casually, as if by chance.
I knew one of them; I had stabbed him in the fight in Centre. Afterwards, however, everything had been sorted out, and according to the rules, once settled, the matter must never be mentioned again. He looked at me; I waved to him from inside the car and he grimaced as if he were still in pain from where I had wounded him. Then he laughed and made a sign to me with his index finger which meant ‘watch out’ – a playful gesture, as if to say that he wasn’t angry with me.
I answered him with a grin, then I showed him my hands: I showed them empty, with the palms upwards, a positive gesture, which is made to emphasize your humility and straightforwardness and indifference to what is happening.
While I was exchanging gestures of goodwill with this guy, Gagarin was explaining to one of them the reason for our visit. They called someone on a mobile phone, and a few minutes later a boy arrived on a scooter. He was our guide; he had to take us to the Guardian of the area, ‘Barbos’, who was so nicknamed because he was a dwarf, and barbos is a joking name for small, weak dogs.
Barbos was a remarkable person – very well-educated, intelligent, shrewd, and with a rare sense of humour which enabled him to laugh about everything, even his stature. But there was also a less positive side to his character: he was very quick-tempered, and in forty-six years of life had accumulated no fewer than four convictions for murder.
A lot of crazy stories were told about him. For example, that his mother was a witch and had made him immortal by feeding him on the ashes of diamonds. Or that he had devoured his twin brother in his mother’s womb, and because of this she had cursed him, stunting his growth.
My uncle, who had known him all his life, said that when he was a boy Barbos used to go to the butcher’s to practise hitting people on the head with an iron bar: he used to bash the skinned beasts hanging on the hooks, and thus perfected his technique with the iron bar until he became a skilled assassin.
It was very strange that in the community of Black Seed, where murder was almost despised as a crime, at least by the highest Authorities, a man like him had succeeded in reaching such an important position in the hierarchy: I suspect he had been given the role of Guardian to keep everyone quiet during a delicate period for Black Seed, which in recent times had been getting a bit out of control and seemed to be in need of a firm hand.
Following the guy on his scooter we entered the side streets behind the railway tracks. Suddenly the boy stopped and pointed at an open door. We got out of the cars and at the same moment Barbos emerged, with three young criminals.
He came over to us and we exchanged greetings. Following the Siberian rules, as our host he first inquired after the health of some elders of Low River. Each time, after our replies, he crossed himself and thanked the Lord for showing His goodness to our elders. After the formalities he asked us the reason for our visit.
Gagarin briefly explained the whole story to him, and when he mentioned the money offered as a reward for accurate information about the rapist the dwarf’s face changed, becoming like a sharpened blade, taut with anger.
He called one of his assistants, whispered something in his ear, and then hurriedly apologized to us, assuring us that he would soon explain everything. After a few minutes his man returned with a small holdall, which he handed to Barbos. Barbos gave it to Gagarin, who opened it and showed it to all of us: it was packed with wads of dollar bills and two guns.
‘There are ten thousand here; I take the liberty of adding them to your reward for the head of that bastard… As for the guns,’ the dwarf gave an evil smile, ‘they’re for you too: when you find him, pump lead into him on behalf of all the honest thieves of our area, since we wouldn’t presume to do it ourselves. This justice is yours.’
We couldn’t refuse – it would have been rude – so we thanked him.
We left the district feeling pleased at the welcome Barbos had given us and at his generosity, but I was miserable. I felt even worse than before: the thought of Ksyusha continued to haunt me. Something told me the wound had been too deep; I realized I was thinking of her almost as if she were dead.
The next call we had to make was at a district called ‘Bam’, an acronym of Baykal-Amur Magistral, the railway line connecting the famous Lake Baikal with the great Siberian river.
A motorway had been built alongside the railway, and in the 1960s many new industrial towns had been erected where large numbers of people had come to live, their purpose being to work in order to guarantee the progress of the socialist country. All these towns were identical: they consisted of five or six areas known as ‘microdistricts’, and on the whole presented an awfully dreary landscape. The houses were all built to the same model: nine-storey apartment blocks in rows of three with small front gardens where the grass never grew and the trees never lasted more than one season for lack of sunlight. On those little plots of land there was also a playground for children, with monstrous toys made of remnants of iron and cement, full of sharp edges and painted in the communist style – in a single colour, regardless of what they were supposed to represent, just like the ideal of communist society, where everyone is obliged to be the same as everyone else. Although Mother Nature had made the crocodile green and the lion tawny, both animals were painted red, so that they seemed like the creations of some maniac painter. All these toy animals, which were supposed to be for the children’s entertainment, were cemented into the asphalt, and after the first few showers of rain became covered with rust. The risk of getting tetanus by cutting yourself was extremely high.
This brilliant playground initiative in the new towns was immediately dubbed ‘goodbye kids’, because of the many injuries to children that occurred every day. So after a few years, the first thing anyone who came to live there did was to dismantle those playgrounds, to guarantee their offspring a healthy and h
appy childhood.
In our town, Bam was the area of nine-storey houses inhabited by poor people, down-and-outs: most of them were hooligans, or the kind of people who in Siberia are described as ‘off limits’ – delinquents who because of their ignorance are not able to follow the laws of an honest, worthy criminal life.
Addiction had almost become a social convention in Bam. Drugs were always circulating, day and night. Kids started using them at twelve years old and were lucky if they reached adulthood; the few who did already seemed old by the age of eighteen – they were toothless and had skin that looked like marble. They committed minor crimes such as burglary and pickpocketing, but also a lot of murders.
Some of the stories that were told about Bam were chilling – terrible illustrations of the depths of ignorance and despair to which man can be driven: newborn babies thrown out of windows by their mothers, sons who brutally murdered their parents, brothers who killed their brothers, teenage girls forced into prostitution by their brothers or fathers or uncles.
It was a fairly multiethnic area – there were a lot of Moldovans, gipsies, Ukrainians, people from southern Russia, and a few families from the Caucasus. They had only one thing in common: their total inability to live in a civilized manner.
There was no law in Bam, and no person who could take responsibility before honest criminals for all the terrible things that went on there.
Consequently, the people who lived there were described as zakontachenye, ‘contaminated’. According to the criminal laws you cannot associate with them as with normal people. It is forbidden to have any physical contact with them; you are not allowed to greet them, either vocally or with a handshake. You cannot use any object that has previously been used by them. You cannot eat with them, drink with them or share their table or their house. In jail – as I’ve already mentioned – tainted prisoners live in a corner of their own; often they are made to sleep under the bunks and to eat with plates and spoons that have been marked with a hole in the middle. They are forced to wear dirty, torn clothes, and are not allowed to have pockets, which are removed or unstitched. Every time they use the latrine they have to burn some paper inside it, because according to the criminal beliefs only fire can cleanse a thing that has come into contact with a tainted person.
People who have once been classified as tainted can never rid themselves of that stigma; they carry it with them for the rest of their lives; so outside prison they are forced to live with others like them, because nobody else wants them anywhere near them.
Homosexual relations are common among them, especially among the young drug addicts, who often prostitute themselves in the big cities of Russia and are much appreciated in homosexual circles for their youth and their modest demands. In St Petersburg many respectable citizens abuse them, then pay them with dinner in a beer hall or by letting them spend the night in a hotel room, where they can sleep in a warm bed and wash under the shower. The age of these boys ranges from twelve to sixteen: by seventeen, after four years spent in the ‘system’ – as drug addiction is called in criminal slang – they’re completely burnt out.
According to the criminal rules, a tainted person can never be struck with the hands: if it is necessary to strike him it must be done with the feet, or better still with a stick or an iron bar. But he mustn’t be stabbed, because death by knife is considered to be almost a sign of respect for your enemy, something the victim has to deserve. If an honest criminal stabs a tainted person, he too is permanently tainted and his life is ruined.
So when dealing with the people of Bam you had to be careful and know how to behave, otherwise you risked losing your position in the community.
There was a place in Bam called ‘the Pole’. On this site there stood a real pole, made of concrete, which had been put there at some time in the past for an electric cable which had never in fact been completed. The criminals who represented power in the area at the time used to assemble around this pole; it was like a king’s throne, you might say. Power changed hands so often that the honest criminals of Low River jokingly called the continual internal wars in Bam ‘the dance around the pole’.
In Bam, since there was no criminal code or morality, the wars between criminals were very violent; they seemed like the chaotic scenes of a horror film. The clans gathered around an old criminal, who with the help of his warriors, all junkies and juveniles, tried to take control of the drugs trade in the area by physically eliminating their adversaries – the members of the clan which was handling the drugs at the time and was therefore the most powerful. They used knives, because they didn’t have many firearms, and in any case they weren’t very expert at using them, not having been brought up to have a familiarity with pistols and rifles. During their wars they even killed the women and children of the clans they were fighting against – their ferocity knew no bounds.
Entering the district, we headed straight for the Pole. We drove along a series of streets the mere sight of which induced sadness and anguish, but also a certain relief, if you thought how lucky you were not to have been born in this place.
The Pole was in the middle of a small square, round the sides of which there were benches, as well as a school desk with a plastic chair. Sitting round the desk were some kids, about fifteen in all, and on the chair sat an old man whose age was impossible to tell, he was so decrepit.
We got out of the cars. According to the rules we had to act tough, so we took out the sticks we’d brought in the boots of the cars and advanced towards them. The air was filled with a tension which, when we stopped a few metres away from them, became pure terror. It was important not to go too close, to keep our distance, so as to emphasize our position in the criminal community. They said nothing and kept their eyes down; they knew how to behave towards honest people. According to the rules, they could not initiate the conversation; they were only allowed to answer questions. Without giving any greeting, Gagarin addressed the old man, telling him we were looking for the guy who had raped a girl near the market, and that we would give twenty thousand dollars to anyone who helped us find him.
The old man immediately jumped down from his chair, went over to a bench and grabbed by the lapel a little boy whose face was disfigured by a large burn. The boy started screaming desperately, saying it was nothing to do with him, but the old man hit him repeatedly on the head till he drew blood, shouting:
‘You son of a bitch, you bastard! I knew you’d rape her in the end, you scum!’
The other boys, too, jumped down from their benches and all started hitting their classmate.
Leaving him in their hands, the old man turned towards us, as if he wanted to say something. Gagarin ordered him to speak, and he immediately started pouring out a flood of words (mingled with various curses and insults which in our district would have got him killed), the gist of which was what we had already gathered: the person who had raped the girl was the little boy with the disfigured face.
‘We were together at the market,’ said the old man. ‘I saw him follow the girl; I shouted to him not to, but he disappeared. I didn’t see him again; I don’t know what happened afterwards.’
His story was so stupid and naive that none of us believed it for a second.
Gagarin asked him to describe the girl, and the old man became flustered; he started whispering something incomprehensible, gesticulating with his hands, as if to sketch a female figure in the air.
A moment later I saw the stick that Gagarin was holding come down with tremendous force and speed on the head of the old man, who fell down unconscious, bleeding from the nose.
The others immediately stopped hitting the accused rapist – who looked so weak and demoralized he wouldn’t even have been able to wank himself off, let alone rape a girl – and fled in all directions.
The only people left under the Pole were the old man with the broken head, sprawling in his own blood, and the boy they had intended to use as a scapegoat in exchange for the money. That scene, and the thought
of that treachery, made my already sad and despairing heart sink even further.
So without having achieved anything we left the area, hoping the boys who had fled would start searching for the real rapist in order to sell him to us.
We decided to go to a place called ‘Grandmother Masha’s Whistle’. This was a private house where an old woman cooked and ran a kind of restaurant for criminals. The food was excellent, and the atmosphere friendly and welcoming.
In her youth Grandmother Masha had worked on the railways, and she still wore round her neck the whistle she had used to announce the departure of the trains: hence the name of the joint.
She had three sons, who were serving long sentences in three different prisons in Russia.
People went to the Whistle to eat or spend a quiet evening discussing business and playing cards, but also to hide things in the cellar, which was like a kind of bank vault, full of stuff deposited by the criminals: sometimes grandmother gave them a receipt, a piece of paper carefully torn out of her notebook on which she wrote in her almost perfect handwriting something like:
‘The honest hand (i.e. a criminal) has turned over (in slang the phrase means ‘to deposit something carefully’) into the dear little tooth (a safe place) a whip with mushrooms preserved in oil, plus three heads of green cabbage (these are an automatic rifle with silencer and ammunition, plus three thousand dollars). May God bless us and avert evil and dangers from our poor souls (a way of expressing the wish for criminal luck, the hope that some business done together will have a successful outcome). Poor Mother (a way of referring to a woman whose sons or husband are in prison; in the criminal community it is a kind of social definition, like ‘widow’ or ‘bachelor’) Masha.’
Grandmother Masha made excellent pelmeni, which are large ravioli filled with plenty of meat, a Siberian dish that was common all over Soviet territory. When she decided to cook them she spread the word a couple of days beforehand: she would send out the homeless boys whom she took into her house in exchange for help in the kitchen and the occasional errand. The boys would get on their bikes and ride round all the places where the right people gathered, to tell them what Grandmother Masha was cooking.
Siberian Education Page 27