by Tig Hague
The most difficult part about being in prison had been living without the woman I loved, and my greatest fear always was that she was going to leave me. Only now that she had gone did I truly understand what Lucy had done for me: she hadn’t gone to such lengths to arrange for us to become man and wife because it was a sensible, obvious thing to do. What she had done was create a lifeline for me, a means of survival, a source of strength to help carry me through the last difficult period of my sentence. She could have waited until I was released to get married, in a church, in a flowing white dress, with all our family and friends present. But by spending four months battling the bureaucrats to organize the ceremony, and by travelling 2,500 miles across the world to get hitched in a smelly little prison visiting block – the most unromantic setting imaginable – she was making a massive statement of her commitment to me. My eyes welled up, but a smile spread across my face as I realized what that beautiful little angel had done for me and I strode into the exercise yard a different man from the one who had left two days earlier. I can handle anything now, I thought.
32
Udo was an obsession in Zone 22. Parole meant just one thing – freedom! Udo ate up our thoughts and our conversations like an insatiable animal. Except for those who were in for the long term, say anything longer than five years, everyone else in the Zone was scheming their escape, using every means at their disposal to bring pressure to bear on their claim. Bribes in the form of goods and information were handed over to the governors, legal loopholes and technicalities were researched in the library, and those with influential embassies pressurized them into action as best they and their families could.
At the other Zones, the Russian ones, parole hearings took place twice a month in the nearest High Court. At Zone 22 they happened every six to eight weeks, which meant there was a massive backlog of cases. At any one time there were between fifty and seventy-five prisoners, roughly a quarter to a third of the entire prison, waiting for parole. Part of this congestion was caused by the confusion in legal circles caused by the new Russian code of criminal law, which had come into force only a couple of years earlier. But it was mainly that there was no urgency in the system to see us released, and no pressure from the outside to motivate the Zone officials and local judges who held our destinies in their hands.
It was rare for more than a dozen prisoners to be released at one hearing, so there were always a few dozen inmates who were left crushed by the news that the judge hadn’t got round to considering their cases. It was easy to understand why Zone 22 had come to be known as the ‘Forgotten Zone’. We were the system’s lowest priority. No good reasons, only vague excuses, were ever given for the failure of the system. The standard line the governors peddled to desperate prisoners was: ‘You’ve been in for however many years, what’s another few months?’ In a handful of cases, those months had become years.
Udo was spoken of as a race, a competition, in which timing the burst for the line was the key to winning. Following Papi’s advice, my plan had been to launch my push for parole in the middle of autumn: that gave me roughly the four or five months I needed to move up from the back of the grid, through the congested pack of applicants ahead of me, so that come the final laps in February I was in with a realistic chance of a podium finish. Like any race, there were going to be dangerous manoeuvres, bumps, collisions and acts of chicanery along the way, and some of us were going to see our hopes crash and burn. We all played by the same ruthless set of rules. It was every man for himself, and at the end of it there was going to be a handful of winners cracking open the champagne and a whole lot of losers left to start the race all over again.
My chances looked to have gone up in smoke before the starting flag had even been raised when I’d been given a black mark in the summer. But the night after Lucy had left, I had a plan to get me back on track, a plan so bloody simple it made me chuckle out loud when it came to me as I lay on my bunk scheming my escape.
Without looking up, Zanpolit pulled open the deep drawer on the right hand side of his desk as I slid my boots through the melted snow on the linoleum floor left by the procession of inmates before me.
‘Nachalnik,’ I said, nodding my head and standing two yards closer to his desk than I’d done in the past so that I could look straight down at him. He looked up at me and glanced over at his drawer, which had been emptied of earlier bribes. I looked at the drawer and stared back at him as he furrowed his brow, bemused that for the first time in a dozen visits I hadn’t walked straight round and unloaded some goods for him and his wife. He put his right arm out over the drawer to indicate that he was ready to receive my offerings.
‘No,’ I said quietly, continuing to stare at him impassively.
There was a pause.
‘No?’ he replied, leaning back in his chair and linking his hands over his groin. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Hague Tig has no more Nescafé, or Marlboro?’
‘I have Nescafé and Marlboro, thank you.’
‘He forgets today?’
‘No, I don’t want to give you any.’
Silence.
I continued to stand with my legs apart, holding my woolly black hat with both hands in front of me. Zanpolit got to his feet and walked towards the first of the three windows on the wall to his right. Outside, the light snowfall was brilliantly lit up by the camp lights. A guard ambled past the window, his fur trooper hat turned down over his ears, his Alsatian at his side.
‘Hague Tig is angry with Zanpolit?’ he said, with his back to me.
‘No, the British Embassy is angry with Zanpolit.’
Zanpolit turned round sharply, quickly trying to wipe the look of alarm from his face.
‘The British Embassy?’
‘Yes, my wife told me they are disappointed with you. My family gives you many gifts, and you give me nothing. No support, nothing. You only take. They are angry about my black mark, Zanpolit, and they are surprised that you have made no effort to change the decision.’
‘Is Hague Tig threatening me?’
‘No, Zanpolit, I’m just telling you that the British Embassy is preparing a letter for your superiors in Moscow. They like to see fair play.’
‘A letter? So what do they want?’
‘They want the black mark overturned, and they want my name on the parole list when my time comes in February.’
‘And what if that is not possible?’
‘I don’t know, Zanpolit. It’s not my decision.’ I paused for a few seconds before continuing. ‘But I do know my family will always be very generous to you. They have many gifts for you…’
Zanpolit ran his hand through his gelled hair a few times while he thought, before swivelling round and saying, ‘Come back and see me at the end of the week.’
My mouth was dry and sticky, as it always was when I’d been lying through my teeth, and I gulped back two mugs of freezing cold tap water as soon as I returned to the atrad.
‘Did he go for it?’ asked Boodoo John, sticking his head through the doorway of the washroom.
‘Hook, line and sinker.’
Two nights later I slipped the atradnik two Marlboro and made my way across to the office building.
Zanpolit was leaning against the front of his desk, his legs stretched out in front of him, one foot over the other, and his arms crossed tightly against his chest.
‘Nachalnik!’ I said, nodding respectfully.
‘You tell the Embassy all is good with Zanpolit, all is good with Zone 22 and I will help Hague Tig.’ He walked round to the other side of his desk, picked up a document, tore it in half and then into quarters and eighths and sprinkled the shreds into the wastepaper basket below.
‘Your parole is February again,’ he smiled, as he leant over and pulled open his drawer.
‘Thank you, Zanpolit, thank you,’ I beamed, suppressing a powerful urge to shout with joy as I approached his desk. He turned away and examined the snowy landscape print on his w
all as I reached into my pants, pulled out a sweaty jar of Nescafé Gold Blend and placed it into his drawer. From my jacket pockets I took out sixty Rothmans, a bar of Lindt, a metal lighter and a Parker fountain pen and laid them alongside the coffee before sliding the drawer shut.
‘Thank you again, Zanpolit,’ I said, as he looked inside the drawer and I walked backwards towards the door.
‘Don’t expect more favours from me. I will do my best to make sure your name is on the February list for parole, but the rest is up to the judge.’
‘I understand, thank you.’ The race for parole was back on.
33
I was as confident and optimistic as I ever had been as I joined my competitors in preparing to start making the first moves. Lucy had brought down 1,000 dollars’ worth of goods – mainly cigarettes and coffee – and together with a large parcel delivery, sent by Mum and Dad via the Embassy, my bribery stocks were full. Even after the guards had helped themselves to the bags in the accommodation block when Lucy came, I still had twelve medium-sized jars of Nescafé Gold and twelve small (the large size was too big for my locker and my trousers), twenty-four bars of Lindt chocolate, a dozen salamis, a few pens and lighters and 5,000 Western cigarettes. Anything with English writing on it was considered a luxury, but in a nation of heavy smokers Marlboro Man was king and Mr Rothman the next in line to the throne. In order to avoid drawing attention to the amount of food I had after a delivery, I started paying ‘rent’ in cigarettes to some of the African boys in return for the use of their lockers.
I faced stiff competition from my main rivals who were also up for parole at the end of February. In addition to the scores of prisoners whose parole date had already passed and who would be pressing their cases harder than ever, there were a handful of characters with whom I was in direct competition: Benny Baskin, Ergin and Boodoo John in particular. All three of them were big hitters with strong cases for prompt release, and it was highly unlikely we’d all go at once. Those who didn’t would have to wait a couple of months, at least, for another shot, and the realization of this was going to put a strain on our relationships as we all set about trying to win Zanpolit’s favour.
Benny’s case looked the strongest of all. He could speak Russian like a native, he was on first-name terms with Zanpolit and he had bribes to burn. Boodoo John had no money and only basic Russian, but he was a model prisoner who had earned widespread respect for his quiet, unassuming manner and five years of hard work in the toil of the boiler room. By coincidence, we were both due for release on 15 February, and though we joked over our noodles about walking out of the Zone arm-in-arm, we both understood the uncomfortable fact that we were rivals for freedom.
Ergin’s Russian was also very good; he too was in Zanpolit’s good books and he had recently been appointed as the head prisoner in Atrad 1. He also had one very influential contact in Moscow, who moved in high judicial and political circles and who had written a letter in his support. Ergin thought he was in pole position. In the sewing factory we talked of little else but udo and he kept saying to me, ‘Tig, watch what I do and learn from it and maybe you’ll be out a couple of months after me.’ He meant it kindly, but it really fucked me off.
My store of bribes and my good relations with Zanpolit, Raisa Petrovna and to a lesser extent Regime were good assets. Papi had advised me to concentrate all my efforts on one ‘cop’, but I realized after a few months that if I had bribes to spare, there was no harm in sharing them around with the others, especially since the other governors all had a say in who got parole. So every third or fourth visit to the office building, I went to Regime or Raisa instead of Zanpolit and gave them the chocolate, the cigs and the coffee. (Raisa had become noticeably friendlier since Lucy had bought her off with a new double bed to make sure our wedding took place.) It became increasingly important that I kept her on side, because I needed to start using the phone as much as possible. In the first twelve months inside Zone 22 I’d made no more than five or six calls – and that was stretching my luck – but from early December I started phoning the Embassy every fortnight to put pressure on them to begin exerting some influence over Zanpolit. The Embassy was my only trump card.
The networking began every evening after the final head-count of the day. We returned to the atrads and milled around anxiously, waiting for signs that Zanpolit had returned to the Zone after his evening meal, trying not to let on to each other that that was what we were doing. It was one of the unspoken rules of the race that we didn’t acknowledge that we were networking. Sometimes Zanpolit decided to park his Ford Escort inside the Zone and we watched him twirl his keys around his finger and whistle his way towards the admin office before making our move. Every night it was like a dramatic performance being staged right in front of us: when the lights went on in Zanpolit’s office, the curtain was effectively up, and Benny Baskin, for instance, would steal through the dark, hunched against the cold, and disappear into the low wooden block opposite. Moments later, I’d see him standing in Zanpolit’s office, smiling from ear to ear as he tried to work his charm on the young governor. Ten minutes later, Ergin or Boodoo John or any of the other dozens who had pinned their hopes for freedom on the man, made the walk across the tarmac to have their go. And so the evening continued, until Zanpolit decided he’d had enough, turned off his light and went home with his briefcase full of goodies, leaving those left in the queue and shivering in the exercise yard to melt away and try again the following day.
On the surface, the monotonous grind of daily life was no different from the way it had always been. The routine never changed. Head-counts, meals, factory work, bed… head-counts, meals, factory work, bed… head-counts, meals, factory work, bed… the cycle was as endless as it was soul-crushingly predictable. But below the surface, tensions were constantly simmering, hopes were burgeoning and nerves were fraying. The spectre of parole haunted the Zone. There was no greater, more dramatic event than a parole hearing if a prisoner was in the frame for release. But there were no set dates for the hearings and we were constantly guessing, speculating and yearning for news of the next one. Parole hearings took place when the judges at the local High Court of Zubova Paliansky decided to have one, and since my arrival in the Zone they’d been taking place roughly every six weeks. In order to try and keep a lid on the tensions that news of a hearing stirred up throughout the Zone, they never gave us any advance warning of when one was to take place. Instead, we watched Zanpolit’s every move, waiting for him to walk out of the office building carrying a bundle of our blue files in his arms. That was the sign.
While myself, Ergin, Boodoo John and the dozens of other hopefuls began jockeying for position for the February parole race, dozens of others were bracing themselves for the hearing that was due to take place at some point in mid-December. Julian was the only prisoner among them that I knew even reasonably well, and I watched him become increasingly distracted and nervous as the days went by. His booming laugh was one of the few sounds of joy I’d heard in the Zone, and it often got him into trouble with the guards because it was so loud and far too happy for their liking. But by the beginning of December the foghorn boom had become a nervous chuckle as he waited for Zanpolit to make his move. It was Julian’s third parole application, and after the pain of two setbacks his desperation this time round was plainly visible. The suspicion was that they were stalling his release because he’d worked in the boiler room longer than anyone and they didn’t want to lose his expertise at maintaining the ancient machinery. A cool character normally, he became fretful and withdrawn, biting his nails and pacing up and down the exercise yard, along with the other hopefuls, hoping to see Zanpolit emerge from the offices.
We were all at work when the news raced round the factory that Zanpolit had finally gone to court with his blue bundle, and that evening all the parole candidates to a man donned extra layers of clothing to stand out in the freezing cold and await the governor’s return. The names of the successful applicants were ne
ver released until after preverka the following morning, but still they waited for his return, pressed up against the mesh fencing, stomping their feet and blowing furiously into their hands. And when his brown Ford Escort finally sped through the gates, the headlights sweeping two shafts of bright light across their expectant faces, everyone started shouting at him for information as he stepped from the car. ‘How many names on the list?… Please tell us tonight… Zanpolit, when will we know?… Was the judge in a happy mood?’
The following morning we took up positions for preverka after we’d got up from the ice after our squat thrusts. There was a hum of nervous chatter, followed by absolute silence as one of the junior officials began to read out a list of those who were to go and see Zanpolit. Julian was standing two prisoners away from me, one row in front to my left, and he was peeling his thumbnail and tapping his foot rapidly as the official worked his way through the list. All around me I could hear stifled yelps of joy and congratulation and sighs of relief, like the gentle popping of champagne corks, but then the list ended and the official walked away. Julian was left rooted to the spot, his hands covering his face, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
I hated seeing a prisoner’s desolation over the days that followed a failed parole application, even when I didn’t know him, or even like him. With Julian, it was painful to witness. Physically, he was a big, powerful man and there was something particularly pathetic and upsetting in seeing him reduced to a sobbing, hunch-shouldered wreck. It was made all the worse because, although confident of my own release, I knew there was still a chance that I was going to suffer exactly the same misery as him. For years a prisoner had one date fixed in his mind – his parole date – and he looked forward to it with growing anticipation, so that by the final months, weeks, then days, he was virtually high with excitement. When the sun set and that day passed just like any other, and the prison authorities collectively shrugged their shoulders and waved him away, ready to punish him with another six months if he complained, that prisoner’s fragile hope, what little faith he had left, was shattered and it took weeks to pick up the pieces. Julian’s slump in mood was dramatic and visible, and he became restless, fidgety, gloomy and inconsolable where once he had been upbeat, optimistic and bursting with good humour. There was little his Nigerian brothers or I could do to help him, other than pat him on the back and offer him hollow words of reassurance and encouragement.