The guards brought in kettles of soup and kasha, with clouds of steam rolling from the pots and the smell quickening every nostril. The cook himself distributed the portions. To make sure no one got two portions, as soon as a prisoner got his tureen he was sent outside to eat. But you can’t beat the prisoners. At the other end of the barn, some of the thieves pulled out a loose plank and crawled back into the barn for a second helping.
The cook hadn’t been counting, but he could tell the food was running low. He put down his ladle and began to look around suspiciously. The plank was already back in place. The cook couldn’t figure it out; there was still a line to be served and the food was almost gone. When he scraped the last ladleful from the pot, there were still twenty men standing in line who hadn’t gotten anything to eat. The poor cook told these last twenty that there simply wasn’t any more food; he didn’t even have any more in the kitchen. He had cooked all the portions he’d been given and there was nothing left. The twenty men were furious. They had waited in good faith, patiently, for their first food since morning. The cook promised to see what he could do and went out to call the commandant.
All that developed was a big inquiry that went on long into the night. Everyone was questioned in turn. The commandant even suspected there had been some skulduggery in the kitchen before the food was served. Trouble we got, but no more food. After that, everyone resolved never to be last in line. The last of the soup might be the best and the thickest, but it might also be gone before you got there.
We slept on the loose planks that night, with nothing to cover us except what extra clothes we had. Some of the men didn’t sleep at all, but just kept walking around the room all night to keep the blood circulating. The wind came at you underneath the planks, from above, from cracks in the wall right next to you. In the morning, the sun was out, but the wind was still from the north and keen as a knife. Those of us who had slept on the planks were so stiff and cold we could hardly roll over to stand up; the tips of our fingers were blue. Yet when breakfast was distributed, everyone managed to move outside. We were lined up and called out by name, one by one, to get our bread so there would be no repetition of last night’s mix-up. With the bread we got a cup of boiling kipiatok which helped us to thaw out.
About noon, the orderlies brought out big tables and some benches from the guards’ barracks. A group of officials arrived with stacks of documents and papers. Everyone was ordered out of the barn to line up in the courtyard. A guard stood at the door and wouldn’t let anyone back in, even those who said they had forgotten this or that bag or piece of clothing. The tables were set up outside, but near the barn and out of the wind. At the table, as our names were called, the members of the commission would look us up and down, consult, point out our good and bad features like horse traders at a country auction, and then ultimately say, “Stand over there!” or “There!” In this way, different groups were formed up, each with its separate set of guards.
I ended up in a group with about thirty Chinese and ten Russians. Most of the other groups were bigger than ours, but the men in this group were all young (twenty to twenty-six) and strong, with the exception of myself and one old Chinaman. I stood there, stamping from foot to foot in the cold, trying to figure out what we had in common. When the commission finished, the guards marched us off toward the main camp. We walked five abreast, our arms behind our backs, each group separated from the group ahead and behind by 200 yards.
I tried to talk to the young Chinese, but their Russian was poor. All of them, for instance, confused the masculine and feminine form of address. Then I turned to two of the young Russians and found out they were from Manchuria. Their parents had fled there at the time of the Revolution; they themselves remembered nothing of Russia. From all my conversations, I could only guess that the common denominator in our group was the fact we were all accused of being spies: Chinese, Manchurian, and Vatican.
It was a short walk to the main gates of Dudinka. Like most camps, the approach to the gates was well beaten down by the marching prisoners who left and entered the camp only through the main gate, three shifts a day. The gates themselves were wooden, set in the outer row of the two rows of barbed wire which ringed the whole camp. The wire was strung on posts, higher than a man could reach. At the top of each post there were two wooden arms set at an angle, one leaning forward and the other backward. Along these arms in front and back were strung strands of loose barbed wire that would pull loose and wrap itself around anyone who tried to grab it. The space between the two rows of wire was the zapretnaya zona (forbidden strip). Within it, the guards would shoot on sight.
Beside the main gate was a long low building parallel to the line of barbed wire. It contained a sentry box, a guard room, and the headquarters for the officer on duty. Next to the gate, and between it and the guardhouse, was a narrow passage through which the guards could move in and out without opening the main gate. There was always a sentry on duty in the sentry box, peering out through a little slit so he could see any activity at the gate or receive pieces of paper or passes. Across the narrow passage was a little half-gate which he could raise or lower with a lever inside the box to let guards or officers pass through.
We halted at the main gate while our guards turned over their documents to the sentry in the box. He went in and used the phone in his quarters which connected the various departments in the camp. After about twenty minutes, he came out and told us to line up in fives. Then, and only then, did he proceed to open the high wooden gates.
Still we waited. Finally, an official came out through the gates and called us one by one, by name. When we reported, he lined us up again in fives right in the gateway, between the two strands of barbed wire and abreast of the sentry box. Then he stepped back inside the camp and told the first rank of fives to move forward. They moved through the gates, marched a short distance down the main road of the camp, and were told to halt. Then the second five were called, passed through, marched up behind the first five, and halted. So it went, five men at a time, by fits and starts, until we were all lined up inside the gates of the camp.
We were marched off in groups. My group marched down the main road and took a right turn at the first intersection. The barracks were set in orderly rows along the road, and between every two or three sets of barracks, a smaller road ran at right angles from the main road to the barracks down the line. They were built of logs or planks, some two-stories high and some a single story. I guessed the one-story barracks were the older ones, because they were plastered outside and whitewashed. Most of the two-story barracks at the farther end of camp were simply of lumber, unplastered and already weather-beaten.
We “spies” were led to a large canvas tent, perhaps 14 feet high, next to a large frame building we soon discovered was the officers’ headquarters, and not too far from the guards’ barracks. The canvas of the tent was stretched around posts dug into the ground, from which crossbeams also arched up to support the canvas roof. There were no windows. The tent was divided in the middle by a rough plank wall, with a door at each end of the tent. Separate brigades were lodged on each side of the plank wall.
There was no floor except the ground itself. Two rows of free-standing, double-decker bunks ran the length of each section, separated by a small middle aisle. The uprights for the bunks ran to the roof and helped support the canvas top. There was no separation between the bunks, which were just rough planks laid end to end on crossbeams. They could accommodate as many men as could be squeezed into them, with one man’s head right up against another’s heels. There were no ladders used in boarding the bunks; just crossbeams nailed to the uprights. Immediately, everybody rushed to get a top bunk, in order to be as far as possible from the cold dirt floor. The boards of the lower bunks were only a foot off the floor at best; in some places they touched the ground. Unfortunately, I got a lower berth.
There was an old oil drum set up on bricks in the center of each section. That was our stove. Holes had been
hacked in the side to stuff in the fuel, and smaller holes punctured all around it so the heat wouldn’t just go straight up. The flue ran out a big hole cut in the canvas roof. Since the hole was extra large to avoid any chance of a fire, it also provided an excess of “ventilation.” It was a real nuisance when it was raining or snowing outside. There were two or three washstands outside, tin tanks set up on a wooden trellis with two or three faucets and a trough below to catch the water. The dirty water simply ran off onto the ground, which was always muddy, if not frozen.
At suppertime that night, we were told to report to the office to be outfitted with working clothes. The general issue was a pair of trousers and a jacket, work shoes, and a cap. The clothes were made of a sort of synthetic fiber we called chlopchato bumaznaya, a blend of cotton mixed with wood-pulp fiber. We reported to the clerk individually, told him our name, then he filled out a registration card for each of us. As he did so, he told us the price of each item. We didn’t pay for them, of course, but we worked off the price at prison camp wages; if we lost one of the items, we paid ten times its price.
The sizes were large, medium, and small, but nobody ever seemed to get the right size; it was a standing source of camp humor. There were a number of new brigades in camp that day, so this process of registration took until almost 9 P.M. Then we went back to the barrack and had our 200 grams of kasha, while the brigadier and his helpers went to the warehouse with the cards for our brigade and brought back whatever was thrown at them across the counter—new clothes, second-hand clothes, old clothes.
About eleven o’clock, the brigadier and his boys came in with the clothes and began to hand them out by name. As usual, nothing fit anybody. Everybody began to swap with his neighbor; the haggling would have done credit to a pair of Arab merchants. If you wanted a really good pair of trousers or shoes, you had to throw in a little something extra from your personal belongings. This carnival took until about 1 A.M., when we finally turned in for the night.
At six o’clock the next morning, we were awakened by the guards beating on the signal rails (short pieces of iron beams or railroad rails suspended from posts near the main gate, beaten with an iron pipe). We were told to be ready for work at seven o’clock. We made a quick trip to the toilet outside in the biting wind, then made a half-hearted gesture of washing up at the troughs. Breakfast was the usual 600 grams of bread, kipiatok, and 10 grams of sugar. We got nothing to eat again until we returned to camp in the evening, so we soon learned the trick of saving part of the morning’s bread ration for our noon meal.
At 6:15, just as we were taking the first sips of hot water and beginning to feel the warmth spread to our stomachs, the first signal was given to form up outside. The second signal was given at 6:30, by which time the barracks were to be cleared. Each brigade had its assigned place in the compound to form up, and its own set of guards. By seven o’clock, all the brigades had to be formed into fives. The commandant of the camp would be there with the adjutant to hand out the work assignments for the day.
Each brigadier told the adjutant the number in his brigade. This figure was checked against the adjutant’s list, which also contained the names of those who were sick—or who, by hook or crook, had wangled a doctor’s permit freeing them from work that day. If the brigade tally checked with the adjutant’s tally sheet, we would be marched out the main gate in groups of five and formed up there. Then the guard would go through the whole checklist again and count us. But if the brigadier’s tally wasn’t right, we’d stand there in the freezing cold while a search was instituted for the missing man or men. The system was organized so that the brigades that worked farthest from the camp were processed and sent off first. Everyone was supposed to be at work by 8 A.M.
Our brigade marched off through Dudinka and down to the docks. Inside a fenced-off area were the huge banks of coal waiting to be loaded aboard ships. Conveyor belts led out onto the dock. We were given big coal scoops and told our quota for the day, a quota which had to be filled no matter how long it took. Part of the brigade climbed up onto the coal pile and cascaded it down, while ten of us shoveled continually onto the belt.
All winter long, coal was brought from the mines inland to be stacked up along the river bank at Dudinka. The river was open to navigation for only a short time in the summer, so the coal piled up during the winter had to be loaded furiously onto the barges or freighters waiting to export it. Our quota for the day, therefore, was usually to load one ship; we worked until it was finished.
At noon we had a half hour to eat the bread we had brought with us. After we got used to the work, we also took that opportunity to sneak down on the docks and board the ships, looking for food. It was risky, and it meant a severe beating if you were caught, but starving men will run any risk for food. These first days, however, we were glad just to lie down on the frozen ground and straighten out our backs. Our hands and arm muscles were cramped from gripping and swinging the shovels continuously since eight o’clock that morning, with no break at all.
In the afternoon, as the ship’s hold began to fill, the brigadier would send four of us down into the hold to scatter the coal around so the rest could be loaded. It was dark in the hold; there was coal dust everywhere. Still the coal kept roaring off the conveyor belts and flying down the chute. It was hard to see or to breathe, even harder to work; but our overriding anxiety was to avoid getting killed by the flying lumps of coal, some as big as a man’s head.
As the hold filled up, the danger increased. There was no room to move and there was more chance you might slip on the shifting piles of coal and fall into the path of the chunks roaring down the chute. When it finally got too bad, we would shout as loud as we could and bang on the deck with our shovels. The belt would stop for a minute, we’d scramble out, then continue distributing the coal from the hatchway. There were a lot of injuries on this job, and everyone hated it. But the work schedule had to be met; we were expendable.
Still, work in the holds had its rewards. As soon as we entered a hold, for instance, we would immediately explore every nook and cranny, looking for ears of wheat that might be stuck in the timbers or in crevices along the walls. Whatever we found was crammed into our pockets like so many pieces of gold, dirt and all. Sometimes we scavenged as many as five or six pocketfuls between us. We’d share it that night in the barracks—if we could get it past the guards.
When the ship was full, or the day’s quota finished, the guards lined us up quickly and marched us off, anxious to get back to camp themselves. The whole crew would have to undress at the gate, despite the piercing wind and bitter cold, and submit to a search. It was then we might lose our precious bits of grain. Everyone was as black as the coal itself, but once past the search and the check-in, nobody bothered to wash. Our first concern was food. We hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, except for whatever part of the morning’s ration we managed to save for lunch.
That first night, they brought us a half liter of soup apiece and 200 grams of kasha, plus hot water. We wolfed it down. Then everyone collapsed on the plank bunks like a company of dead men. After years in prison with little exercise, this first full day of hard work had been torture. My muscles were too numb even to ache; every sinew felt like a piece of twine which had been unwound and shredded into string.
The next morning, though, when the alarm rails rang at 6 A.M., every joint had tightened up like welded iron. It was sheer torture just to get out of bed. Muscles that had hardened in the overnight cold simply refused to function. Yet, somehow, we managed to form up in fives by seven o’clock and totter painfully, our arms behind our backs as per marching orders, down through the town and back to the coal piles to begin another long day with the shovels.
Toward the end of our first week in Dudinka, Father Casper came looking for me in the barracks one night. Some of his Poles had told him there was another priest in camp. He found me before I had a chance to look him up and asked me if I wanted to say Mass. I was overwhelmed! My last M
ass had been said in Chusovoy more than five years ago. I made arrangements to meet him in his barrack next morning as soon as the six o’clock signal sounded.
The men in Father Casper’s barrack were mostly Poles. They revered him as a priest, protected him, and he tried to say Mass for them at least once a week. They made the Mass wine for him out of raisins they had stolen on the docks, the altar breads from flour “appropriated” in the kitchen. My chalice that morning was a whiskey glass, the paten to hold the host was a gold disc from a pocket watch. But my joy at being able to celebrate Mass again cannot be described.
Father Casper had the prayers of the Mass written out on a piece of paper. Although I knew them by heart, I was so moved and so excited that morning I was glad to have them. Afterward, he made me a copy. I tore them up when I left Dudinka, for fear they would be discovered in the routine processing inspections at the next camp. I wrote them again from memory inside the camp.
The rest of the time I was in Dudinka, I said Mass frequently in Father Casper’s barrack. I was encouraged by his example, too, to work among the men as a priest. I heard confessions regularly and, from time to time, was even able to distribute Communion secretly after I’d said Mass. The experience gave me new strength. I could function as a priest again, and I thanked God daily for the opportunity to work among this hidden flock, consoling and comforting men who had thought themselves beyond His grace.
August in Dudinka is cold, bitterly cold. We were still working in the light cotton summer clothing we had been issued when we arrived. Working at a furious pace, as we were, we could stay warm enough. But the long cold walk to work in the morning and especially the trudge home at night, when the sweat would almost freeze on our bodies, was an excruciating experience. The wind drove through the cotton clothing like a knife. Everyone tied rags around his ankles and shoe tops; an old potato sack that could be tied around the belly or the shoulders was a man’s most prized possession.
With God in Russia Page 19