by Tig Hague
The truth was that I didn’t want friends. There wasn’t space in my little world to fit them in. All my emotions were drained by my love and thoughts for Lucy and my family, by my shame and guilt, by my fears of what was to become of me in Zone 22, by my effort not to rise to the provocation of the guards and by my anxiety about how to restart my life again on the outside when I eventually got out. There was simply nothing left in the tank to give. I just wanted my ‘friends’ to be people I could rub along with OK, who wouldn’t grass on me or fight me, and at the back of my mind I was always aware that when I left the Zone I would never see my fellow inmates again. What was the point in making another friend, only to abandon him like I’d abandoned Zubi?
28
It was the beginning of June and I had been back in the Zone for a week, ticking off the days to my parole day, when a rumour spread around the factory like bushfire that a female visitor had arrived and that it was me she had come to see. The first I knew of it was when I walked on to the factory floor from the office, carrying a new bundle of material, and some of the African boys immediately started taking the mickey. ‘Hey, English is going to get his nuts wet tonight… English boy will be pushin’ the cushion, eh?…’
After years of working in the office building, Alan and the other prisoners employed there had become masters at identifying the nationality of passports from the quickest glimpse. Alan had let the word out that morning that he had spotted Raisa Petrovna processing a burgundy red passport. That meant the visitor was almost certainly from Europe – and that could only mean they were coming to visit one of two people: me or the Dutch guy, Sacha. My heart jumped at the thought that Lucy might be just a few hundred yards beyond the prison walls, and I could barely sit still when I returned to the office. We hadn’t spoken since our hurried five-minute chat on the phone three months earlier. All the letters she’d written me had turned up in a bundle in April and I knew she was planning a visit some time in the summer, but I didn’t know exactly when. They didn’t tell a prisoner that he had a visitor until a couple of hours before they arrived in the accommodation block. It was a way of keeping happiness to a minimum. After an hour, I could stand the tension no longer and went next door to see Maximovich, who was sitting at his messy desk with a blank expression on his face. The top two buttons of his olive shirt were undone and he was flapping the collars up and down to try to cool himself down. Two dark patches spread out from under his arms.
‘Spasiba, nachalnik,’ I said, nodding respectfully. ‘Visitor for me?’ He shrugged his shoulders and blew the air through his lips, as if to say, ‘I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck,’ and he waved me away as if I was a fly as he slouched back in his chair.
Around four o’clock, towards the end of the shift, I’d given up hope, convinced that the rumour of my visitor was no more than that, just a phantom hope. It was by no means the first time a rumour had come to nothing in Zone 22, where we were so desperate for excitement and novelty, anything to talk about and distract us from the monotonous grind, that we were all constantly fuelling speculation and peddling gossip. It was a way of keeping hope alive.
As we began to pack away the materials and tools and tidy up, one of the guards opened the door and flicked his head behind him, urging me to follow him. A burst of adrenaline coursed into my system and I jumped to my feet, trying not to rush or smile and betray my excitement. The guards didn’t like to see us smiling because they took it to mean that the regime obviously wasn’t harsh enough and that they weren’t doing their jobs properly. Ergin gave me a little salute and the Vietnamese boys just grinned as I bounded from the room. Every fibre in my body was yearning to break into a sprint and cry out with joy, but I had to hold myself in check as I followed him out into the muggy June heat, out of the Zone and into the reception area of the visitors’ block.
Raisa Petrovna was grinning as she handed me a form that I had to fill in before a young, pale, spotty-faced guard with spiky blond hair led me through the first of two barred gates and down a long, unlit corridor into the little visitors’ apartment where I’d stayed with Mum and Dad. I knew that as Lucy and I weren’t married we were only entitled to three hours in each other’s company before I returned to the Zone and she was driven the twelve hours back to Moscow. The guard sat down on the chair by the door as I paced the room, looking down the corridor and listening for signs of her arrival. It was part of the same unofficial prison policy that outlawed smiling and laughter that when a prisoner was presented with a reason to be happy, like a visit from a loved one (except when it was a mother) or the arrival of a food parcel, the authorities would make a concerted effort to remove as much of the joy from the occasion as they could. So when your visitor arrived, they kept you waiting as long as possible in order to eat into the time that you were officially allowed together, and when you received a food parcel, the guards, who checked the contents for illicit possessions, helped themselves to what they wanted before they handed it over. So it was that day, as I waited for an hour while they made Lucy sit in the reception area, fifty yards down the corridor, just for the sheer spite of it. It was agonizing because I knew she was there, although out of sight and sound, and I had to suppress a rage of hatred and frustration as I fidgeted and walked up and down the room, desperate to lay eyes on her after seven long months. Every minute we waited was a minute less we’d have together. The guard must have noticed my discomfort, and I looked at him from time to time to try to stir up some sympathy, but he just leant back in his chair, a combat boot slung over a knee, yawning, drawing on his cheap Russian cigarettes and wiping the sweat from his brow.
But what an entrance when she did come! All I could see was Lucy’s dark profile against the light as she stood at the end of the corridor waiting for the guard to unlock the barred gate, her mane of wavy brown hair bouncing around as she waved at me with both hands. When the guard let her through she came bursting down the tunnel, letting out an almost primeval scream, ‘Aaaaaaaaaah!’ as she dived into my arms and smothered my face with kisses and tears. I was crying too, but I was holding back because the guard was sitting just a few feet away and I could feel the contempt of his glare as he watched us embrace. I wanted to dance around the room with her and burst out laughing, but I knew the risks that came with overt displays of happiness and I just held her to me as tight as I could and whispered in her ear, over and over again, ‘I love you so much, Lucy!’
After twenty seconds or so the guard grunted at us and motioned for us to sit down, Lucy on the old brown sofa and me on the orange armchair across the other side of the room. Physical contact with visitors was not allowed unless they were your wife or your parents. For two hours Lucy and I sat facing each other, five yards apart, tears running down our cheeks as we talked, while the guard sat halfway between us like a tennis umpire, making sure we didn’t touch each other. The prison authorities said this policy was a form of discipline, a means of control, but to me it was a form of torture, for us both. The woman I loved, and who loved me, had spent three days travelling to the other side of Europe to see me; she had spent the better part of two thousand pounds in flights, hotels, petrol and provisions for me – money she could not afford, working as a temp in the City, and had had to borrow from the bank; she was only allowed to see me for two hours after their malicious delaying tactics, and then – to rub our noses a little further into the dirt – we were made to sit on opposite sides of the room to each other, like strangers on a bus. What sick, perverse Soviet bastard thought that one up?
When the guard went to the kitchen to plunder his fill from the supermarket shopping Lucy had brought for me from Moscow, I darted across the room to give her a hug. I leant down and buried my face in her neck, breathing in the familiar smell of her shampoo and perfume, but almost immediately I was swivelling round as the guard shouted ‘Nyet! Nyet!’ and pulled me away from her by the arm, pushing me back across the other side of the room. I was so enraged by the little shit that I had to restrain eve
ry instinct in my body from throwing myself at him and pummelling his zitty face into the floor. I slowly sat back down, glaring at him, while he looked back at me with mocking contempt, a half-nervous smile riding up his cheek.
It must have been at least 30 degrees outside, the hottest day of the year so far, and Lucy, bless her woollen socks and jumper, was clearly in some discomfort. The last time she’d been to visit me, back in December, the temperature had been 15 degrees below; she had no idea that Russia also had blistering hot summers, so she’d packed only her warmest clothes, and arrived in the Zone wearing her fake fur coat! She couldn’t take her woollen top off because she was wearing only a bra underneath, so I gestured to the guard that she was feeling the heat and pointed to the window for permission to open it, but he just shook his head. I threw him a full packet of Marlboro Reds from the roll Lucy had brought me, but still he refused, so I threw him another… and another… until finally, eighty Western cigarettes to the good, he got up and opened it – about six inches.
‘Stupid thing is, Babes, that if we were married we’d be allowed to hold each other and this cock wouldn’t be in the room,’ I sighed, exasperated. ‘You could even come and stay the night! A sleepover! But being in love, without a certificate to prove it, is no good. How screwed up is that?’
‘Well, why don’t we get married?’ said Lucy, wiping her forehead with a tissue.
‘You’re kidding! What? In this dump? Where would we go for a honeymoon? Solitary confinement? Lucy, I’d marry you tomorrow if I could. One of the thoughts – well, more of a dream really – that has kept me going all these months, is the image in my mind of you and I walking up the aisle, arm in arm, husband and wife… besides, they wouldn’t let anyone get married in here. They don’t do happy occasions in here.’
‘Well, you never know. It may be one of your official rights. If we did get married, I’d be able to see you twice more before you get out. As it is, we won’t see each other till next year…’
We both looked down at the floor as Lucy’s voice trailed away.
‘Anyway,’ she continued. ‘I think it would be romantic to get married in a prison! How many people can say that?’
‘Yeah, that’d be something NOT to tell the grandchildren.’
If the plan – and I’m absolutely convinced that it was a policy – was to ruin my happiest two hours since flying out of London almost a year earlier, then the authorities of Zone 22, and especially the little pizza-faced wanker of a guard, were able to reflect on a job well done. When we got up to say goodbye Lucy and I walked towards each other for a hug, but when we were about a yard apart, the guard rose from his chair and brought his arm down between us, turning to me and shaking his head.
‘Please, come on…’ I protested.
‘Will you marry me?’ Lucy said, tears running down her face as she turned round at the doorway.
‘Yes!!’
Lucy smiled through the tears and disappeared down the corridor to make the long journey back to Moscow.
*
I tried not to show how much the little bastard Joe-90 of a guard had upset me as he escorted me back through Sniper Alley and into the Zone. Back at the atrad, I paced up and down the exercise pen like a wounded animal, kicking the dirt and aggressively swatting away the swarms of mosquitoes and midges that had recently arrived with the hot weather. In the smoking shelter I drew on my cigarettes with a fury, exhaling long and hard into the muggy air. Boodoo John and the African boys were talking in a huddle near the entrance but they kept their distance and said nothing. For once, no one asked me for a cigarette. Like a madman muttering to myself, I cursed the guard, I cursed Zone 22, I cursed Russia. Fucking Russian bastards!
Chan, as ever, was near the wall of the atrad, drenched in sweat as he held the two smaller weights out at his sides, slowly bending his arms to bring them up to his shoulders and then back down again, over and over. For a brief moment our eyes met and locked as I ground out my cigarette butt with the sole of my trainer and started pacing up and down the small yard, spinning on my heel each time I reached the fence. I was walking a line about two yards in front of Chan, and each time I passed him he gave me the eyeball, like it was pissing him off that I was in his personal space. I stared back at him, my anger about Lucy’s visit giving me the courage not to be intimidated by him. I was enjoying pissing him off, dumping my frustration on a guy who’d spooked me from the day I’d arrived in the atrad. Normally he scared me shitless, but right then, seething with fury, his menacing stares went straight through me and he could see I wasn’t scared… so he gobbed on me.
I’d turned round at the fence nearest the door to the atrad and was striding back to the other side, head down, wiping the sweat from my brow with my sleeve, when I heard Chan clear his nose and spit noisily in my direction. As I put my right foot forward a streak of gluey, green phlegm landed with a slap at the ankle of my baggy black trousers. In one motion I swung round, bringing my left fist down towards Chan’s head, but he ducked and my momentum carried me past him so that I slammed against the wooden wall of the atrad. I tried to turn round but Chan was on top of me, smashing his fist into my ribcage, each of the three blows sending a streak of pain up the side of my chest. I swung out with my right arm and my elbow caught him on the side of the head and he stumbled backwards. As I turned round, a hand grabbed my shirt and pulled me backwards and aside as Julian, Eke Jude, Boodoo John and Hulk steamed past and shoved Chan hard into the corner of the yard. They didn’t throw a single punch between them but just put their bodies between him and me, with Julian and Eke Jude pushing right up to him and towering over his squat frame. Chan stood with his fists out in front of him, ready to take on all-comers, staring at me between the bodies as I stared back at him, trying to get my breath back.
Boodoo John peeled away from the posse, put his arm on my shoulder and said: ‘You OK?’
‘Yes, I am. Thank you, my friend.’
29
After making so many cock-ups and wrong decisions in the weeks following my arrest in Moscow, when I arrived in Mordovia I’d been determined to learn how the system worked as quickly as I could. My Russian began to improve: by June I knew all the important words relating to prison life and the parole procedure and I had a wider grasp of the language, albeit a fairly basic one. When I went to see Zanpolit on the pretext of asking him about an aspect of my case but really to butter him up with a few bribes, I was able to hold simple conversations with him. At the same time, I was milking Boodoo John, Ergin and Yevgeny the librarian for information about the Russian judicial system, finding out how I could work the system from the inside, and how Lucy and my family could ratchet up the pressure on the outside. The better I could communicate and the more I learned, the more confident I began to feel about getting out of the Zone on time.
Roughly once a week I bribed my way into the admin offices to see Zanpolit and shuffled across from the atrad with various items of Western goods stuffed down my pants and trousers. He sometimes greeted me with an easy smile, almost as if he was genuinely pleased to see me, immediately opening the deep drawer of his desk for me to unload the offerings from my underwear. You never got more than a few minutes with one of the governors, but in that time Zanpolit would reassure me that he was certain, when it finally came round, that my case would be put to the top of the pile, and that he was confident, with his influence over the local judge, that it would be looked upon favourably. The message he was sending out to me was: ‘Don’t worry, it’s all under control.’
What’s more, I’d agreed to every single one of his invitations for me to make a ‘contribution’ to the Zone, each time calling the Embassy and asking for the funds to be paid into my prison bank account, or arranging for the Embassy to buy the goods directly and deliver them when they sent down a driver with some more provisions, every two months or so. Since March, my family had bought ‘the Zone’ a new television, a video recorder, two sofas, two computers and a large quantity of expensive
paints, wallpaper and brushes, not to mention an endless supply of cigarettes, coffee, chocolates and a few more expensive luxury items such as lighters, pens and watches. It was no surprise that not one of these larger items was ever seen in the camp, all of them being shifted straight out the back door and into the homes of the top officials. I didn’t give a toss if they went to the moon so long as they were winning me favour with the administration and smoothing my passage out of the place.
I was in a strong position, I thought. My supplies were good, I was playing the udo game with increasing skill and I’d so far managed to avoid falling foul of the guards. With them, just as I did with the governors, I played the humble, grovelling prisoner, repenting the error of his ways by working hard and avoiding trouble. When a guard entered the room I always made extravagant displays of respect, whipping off my hat, standing to attention and looking straight down to the ground. With the more severe guards, like the Undertaker, I sometimes even found myself making a little bow to them, just to be on the safe side. It was just as well that the vindictive, callous bastards had no idea of the true regard in which I held them. To me, with the exception of Yuri, they were all low-life scumbags, no better than the majority of the prisoners they treated with such contempt and brutality.