by Tig Hague
The smallest incidents, magnified by the mindless monotony, assumed a crazily disproportionate significance. When, three days earlier, the dark pinprick of a Russian military transport plane had rumbled overhead as we smoked our cigarettes during morning break, we’d stood out in the yard watching it as though we were witnessing the transit of Halley’s Comet, 100 black-hatted heads slowly turning from east to west until it disappeared into the grey distance. It was the first plane I’d seen since the day of my arrest at the airport almost nine months earlier.
My head was bowed with anxiety, the images from my recurring nightmare still lodged in the forefront of my mind as I joined the file of black figures tramping across the white expanse of the yard, then through the factory door, and walked down past the rows of sewing stations to my table at the end. The machine operators blew and coughed into their cupped hands to try to warm them up before getting to work; Maximovich, puffy-faced from another night of vodka abuse, patrolled the aisles itching for an excuse to exercise his riot stick, which he wagged behind his back; three men silently, sullenly began to distribute piles of cloth from their baskets; Ergin stood at the top end of the room by the entrance, hands behind his back, overseeing the start of production as the first sewing machines spluttered into life. The piece of chalk I’d been using for over a week was now no bigger than a peanut and it was difficult for my frozen fingers to grip as I took it from my trouser pocket. My hands were numb with cold and it was as if I was trying to hold the chalk wearing gardening gloves or using someone else’s hands, because there was no sensation. I placed the cardboard model over the black smock, lightly brushed the stub of chalk over the four cut-out buttonholes, then nodded towards Raza as I tossed the jacket into his pile and turned to my right to pick up another. Raza was now operating the button machines after Baska had replaced Rakim as the Zone horseman.
And so it continued for two hours, just as it had done the day before that, and the week before that… pick, chalk, chuck… pick, chalk, chuck… pick, chalk, chuck… the repetition of it slowly squeezing the life out of me so that by the time break came at ten o’clock, my brain was fully in idle mode, just a black screen, the last coherent, interesting thought having sunk to the bottom of my consciousness an hour or so earlier.
Suddenly Molloi, the young Vietnamese boy from Ergin’s office, came bursting through the door on my right from the big delivery area, shouting in Russian: ‘Quick! Quick!’ and waving to us to follow him. Maxi-movich was back in his office, and was usually sleeping off his hangover by this time, so we stopped what we were doing and hurried next door. Babushka, the grey mare, had given birth and a slimy little foal was lying on a bed of straw in its makeshift stable, which had been set up inside for the greater warmth. It was desperately trying to stand up, while Baska, his arms and black shirt smeared with fluid and blood, cut away the umbilical cord and afterbirth with the confidence and expertise of a vet. We all jostled for position to get a closer look and it was difficult to say what was the more shocking, exhilarating and uplifting: the spectacle of that vulnerable, bamboo-legged grey horse emerging into the world, bursting with new life and energy – or the incredible joy and awe that lit up the faces of the prisoners as I looked along the line. It was as if we were witnessing a miracle.
The rumour had started after lunch and it took no more than two minutes to spread from the chesspiece workshop, through the delivery area where the new foal, now a week old, was still being stabled, round the floor of the sewing factory and finally into the office where Ergin was congratulating me on my button-chalking efforts and hinting that I might be promoted to be his assistant if I kept up the hard work. Mafia, returning from a visit to the chess workshop, walked through the door with a look of excitement on his face. ‘Shop open tonight! Ikram at doctor and saw truck with boxes and bags!’
Back on the factory floor, the room was abuzz with chatter among the machine operators for the rest of the afternoon, blowing away the usual atmosphere of grim boredom and weariness and only falling quiet when Maximovich or one of the other factory guards came back to patrol the floor. Normally we returned to the shelter of the atrad for the fifteen minutes or so between the head-count in the factory yard and the final one back in the Zone, but on this occasion most chose to remain in the three exercise yards, as close to the gate as possible, jumping up and down and jogging on the spot to keep warm. When the first blast of the alarm rent the freezing night air and the electric gate was buzzed open, 300 men stopped short of breaking into a run to take up their positions for preverka. The ‘shop’, such as it was, was situated at the far end of the office building closest to the kitchen/canteen area, opposite Atrad 3, and the general aim of the mob was to find a position as close to it as possible to be first in the queue. Everyone being present, the head-count took no longer than five minutes before the guard walked away, shouting, ‘Magazin!’ – triggering a barely restrained rush towards the far end of the admin building. Within a few moments I was one of only half a dozen people left standing on the concourse; 300 others had formed into a line that was more scrum than queue. The only ones who hadn’t sprinted into the mêlée were the very poor prisoners or the better-off ones, including the Dutchman Sacha Costa and Benny, who I’d learned was a Jewish guy from Latvia or Lithuania – I could never remember which one – with connections in Israel. We slowly gravitated towards each other, hands buried deep in our pockets as we walked round the corner and watched the others pushing and elbowing to try to get to the front. Two elderly women stood behind hatches handing over items as the mob of bodies pressed forward.
‘So what’s the big fuss?’ I asked, blowing into my hands and kicking the toes of my boots into the ground behind me.
‘Nothing – unless you want an onion, or some black tea, plain biscuits or boiled sweets,’ said Sacha, in English. ‘If they’re lucky, there may be some sachets of coffee and milk powder! Fucking pitiful, isn’t it?’
Sacha, who’d used to own a successful marine transport business, was four years into a twelve-year sentence for smuggling 500 kilograms of hashish into Russia. He insisted he was innocent, claiming he had been stitched up by a Russian guy who had hired a sea container from him and used it to smuggle the drugs. The guy had been convicted but, unknown to Sacha, he had won his appeal, claiming they had been Sacha’s drugs. When Sacha and his young family flew into southern Russia for a holiday with his wife’s parents a few months later, he was arrested at the airport. You never knew whether people were telling the truth in Zone 22 – and no doubt there were many who didn’t believe my claim that the Customs officers had exaggerated the weight of my hash so they could get me for smuggling. But I believed Sacha. Benny was doing time for smuggling two kilos of hash, but I never heard him claim his innocence. (It just bothered me that his sentence was only marginally longer than mine, even though he was carrying fifty or sixty times more than me.) Like so many others, he’d made the mistake of flying back from the sub-continent on a cheap flight via Moscow.
In silence we watched 300 grown men jostle each other to get their hands on a couple of sweets and a couple of cups’ worth of tea. The ones stepping away from the hatch stashed their handful of goods into their pockets, grinning as if they had just won the lottery and been given a presidential pardon all at once. It was a part pathetic, part heartening spectacle, like an aid truck in a famine zone, and I wasn’t too sure whether to be happy or sad for them.
‘Most of them only have a few kapeets – pennies – in their account, which is enough to buy maybe three or four sweets or a couple of biscuits,’ explained Benny.
‘Account?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Yeah, have you not opened yours yet? You get money paid in from home, and you can buy stuff from the shop or use it for phone calls.’
‘Phone calls! What do you mean? Phone calls?’ I asked, turning round to face him.
I had been in Zone 22 for almost two months, all the time with my ear close to the ground and my eyes wide open, tryin
g to learn about prison life as quickly as I could, but not once had I heard anyone mention using the telephone!
‘Come on, we’ll show you,’ said Sacha, and we walked round to the front of the building and stopped in front of a peeling light-blue noticeboard with faint Russian script in black, just about readable in the light from the distant floodlights. Icicles hung down from the gutters above, and a spray of frozen snow obscured half the wording.
‘This board lists the rights to which prisoners are entitled, such as the delivery of food parcels, medical treatment and so on,’ said Sasha. ‘It’s been there for fucking years and it doesn’t mean much really. The governors and guards have created their own version of our rights over the years, but one of the original ones on here states that prisoners in obshi regime are allowed to make two phone calls every three months… and before you get too excited, this is the catch… to a number in Russia. Most people don’t use the right because they’ve got no one in Russia to make a call to. It’s one of their sick jokes. We’re foreigners in here, but we can’t call abroad even if we pay for it. But maybe you should do what I do, call your Embassy and see if they will patch you through to the UK to… what’s your girlfriend called again?’
‘Lucy!’ I blurted out with a grin, exhilarated by the prospect of being able to talk to her. The image of her smiling face flashed into my mind. ‘Yeah, Lucy! She’s my girlfriend!’
‘Well, first you have to open a prison account and write a zevlanya, a formal application, to make the call, which will take a few days to clear. I’ll help you write the application back in the atrad if you like.’
Sacha spoke Russian fluently and he translated at the rate he wrote out the zevlanya at the kitchen table: ‘I, prisoner Tig Hague, born on December X, of Y address in the United Kingdom, charged with statya 228 and 118 for the possession and smuggling of illegal contraband, hereby submit a formal request to the Russian state for permission to make a phone call, lasting no longer than five minutes, to the British Embassy and that I, Tig Hague, further undertake to pay, in full, the sum of X roubles to the Zone 22 authorities…’ It probably took less time to write out the Treaty of Versailles.
The following evening Sacha and I went to see Raisa Petrovna, the almost friendly liaison officer, submitted my zevlanya and filled in a form to set up a Zone account.
‘Ask her how long it will take to get permission to make the call to the British Embassy,’ I said to Sacha.
‘Two to four days. It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether they’re feeling in the mood or they can be fucking bothered to say yes. They generally like to keep you sweating for a few days.’
And so I waited, for the full four fucking days, growing ever more agitated and impatient as my application sat in a pile somewhere in the office. Once the hope of being able to talk to Lucy, or to Mum and Dad, had been dangled before me, I was able to concentrate on nothing else. At night I lay awake for hours, cursing the wankers in the office for denying me five minutes of joy. ‘Man, they’ll do anything in here to wipe the smile off your face,’ Boodoo John said as I paced around the kitchen on the third night, rubbing my bum where I had fallen on it on the ice outside the atrad. ‘Sad thing is, no matter how much you come to expect the shit, it never gets any easier. Wherever you got hope, they’re going to replace it with frustration and misery. It’s prison policy.’
I had just returned from seeing Raisa Petrovna to ask about my application, by making an imaginary phone with my thumb and little finger, lifting it to my ear. Puffing out my lips, raising my eyebrows and stooping my shoulders, I gave myself the look of a hopeless simpleton in the hope that it might excite her maternal instincts, or at least a spasm of sympathy, and encourage her to go and chase up my application with the governors. But she just shrugged and held out her hands, and I exhaled loudly and stomped from the room, trying to rein in my fury. As I marched back across the yard to the atrad I kicked the snow a couple of times in frustration, and was taking a third swipe when my other foot gave way on the ice below. The momentum from my swinging boot sent my body spinning up into the air and I landed on the frozen ground with a mighty thud, my bum and lower back taking most of the weight. For a couple of minutes I hopped around in agony, brushing the snow off my clothes and arching my back to relieve some of the pain, and when I turned round to motion to the observation room to let me through the gate, half a dozen guards were standing in the window, jack-knifing with laughter, their distorted shadows stretching out over the white expanse outside. The Undertaker was enjoying himself so much he was clapping at the same time.
The following night I returned, this time with Sacha in tow, to quiz Raisa about whether there was still a problem, having once again paid off the atradnik with two Marlboro and a teaspoon of instant coffee. She looked almost proud to be able to tell me, via Sacha, that the governors had considered my application and on this occasion they were willing to grant my request. With a half-smile she motioned me through to the guards’ observation room, where an old rotary dial-up phone, the same as Regime’s but black, sat on a table in the corner on the right as we walked in. There were four guards in the room, two in chairs with their backs to me watching a game show on TV, and two standing by the window, who looked at me with the customary indifference bordering on disdain. She dialled the number of the British Embassy herself and waited for an answer. I chewed my nails as I looked over the heads of the seated guards and out of the window towards the shadowy forms of the prisoners smoking in the exercise yards of the atrads. Raisa suddenly started talking in Russian into the receiver, then handed me the phone and walked from the room.
‘Is that Tig? Hello, I’m Alla. I’m new in the Embassy. I’m working on your case. I’ve been speaking to Lucy and your mum and dad very much. They are very worried for you. Can you write them a letter? How are you anyway?’
‘I’m all right, I’m all right. Just. It’s a terrible place but right now I’m coping, and I’m learning all the time,’ I said, my head crowding with things to say and panic spreading through me that they’d not received one of my letters. ‘I’ve written about ten letters to them in total over the last couple of months! Why haven’t they got them? I haven’t had any from them either. What’s going on?’
‘I’ll check for you with the state prison authorities here in Moscow. By the way, we will be visiting you soon with some food, and clothes and cigarettes, once the weather starts to improve in the next few weeks. Can you send a list of your requirements, but remember you are only allowed basic foods…’
‘The woman down here at the Zone said I’ve only got five minutes on the phone, so we must be quick. I have to set up a prison money account for phone calls and I’ll need Mum and Dad to put maybe 5,000 roubles [about 200 pounds] into it. Tell them I’m sorry and I know how much they’ve sacrificed already and that I’m going to pay them back every bloody penny when I get home… But I’ve got to speak to Lucy. Please, can you put me through right now? Try the home number first. She’ll probably just be getting in from work.’
The sound of the distinctive ‘trim-trim’ British ring-tone of the phone in Lucy’s mum’s house in Waltham-stow triggered a flood of adrenaline and I took three rapid, deep breaths to try to calm myself down when the phone clicked.
‘Hello?’ It was Lucy.
‘I’ve got Tig on the line for you, Lucy,’ said Alla.
‘OH, MY GOD!’ she screeched down the line, her voice bouncing off a satellite dish hundreds of miles above us in space.
I couldn’t talk.
‘Tig, Tig… are you there? Can you hear me?’
‘Babe, I’m here. I’m here for you. I’m always here for you,’ I said finally, trying to keep my voice steady and not show her that I was crying. ‘How are you? What’s been going on? How is everyone? Are you coping? How’s your mum?’
‘They’re all good, Tig. We’re all doing great. It’s horrible without you, but don’t worry about us…’
; ‘What’s your news? When are you coming out? How’s Mum and Dad and Rob? Are you working?’
‘Yeah, yeah, everyone’s great, Tig. All missing you like hell… All right, Mum, I’m just coming. It’s Tig! I’ll be with you in a minute… Yeah, I’m still temping at Wiggins in the City. I’m saving up to come and see you, Babes, in the spring. Your mum and dad are coming first, once your dad’s all right to travel with his new hip… OK, Mum, just give me two minutes…’
‘You’re coming out? You know you’re only allowed one visit a year!’
Raisa Petrovna tapped me on the shoulder and held up her index finger.
‘Luce, I’ve only got a minute. I can’t tell you how much I miss you. I love you so much. The thought of seeing you again is the only thing that gets me through each day here. It’s bollocks in here, Babe. Fucking freezing. Everyone’s ill, or fucking mad. I’ve got about three mates. I love you, I love you, I love you…’
‘I love you and miss you too, honey. So much. I’m dying to see you. All right, Mum, I’m coming… Tig, my love, I’ve got to go,’ she said impatiently. ‘I love you. Stay strong…’ And then the line went dead.
23
Sacha was waiting for me back in the reception area, and looking into my puffy, bloodshot eyes he patted me on the shoulder. As we approached the door the guard on duty at the desk, who was still wearing his blue fur-lined trooper hat, wagged his finger and said, ‘Zanpolit,’ pointing back down the corridor.
Zanpolit was leaning back in his chair, already wearing his long leather coat in preparation for leaving, and he was jangling the keys of his 1980s Ford Escort. He was very proud of that car. Most of the prison officials lived in the little wooden houses in the village around the Zone and walked to work, but Zanpolit was one of the few to live further afield. Each morning he accelerated through the main gates and parked up with a flourishing rev of the engine, like he was James Bond himself. None of the others had a car anything like as glamorous as his.