It all happened so quickly no one else in the room noticed. Then he went back into the registry office, while I sat there puzzled. Misha had been a fellow student of mine at the Russicum. I never expected to bump into him here. I wasn’t sure what his caution meant, but I had learned in prison not to push a man who doesn’t want to talk, or to insist on the identity of a man who denies it. After a while, the crowd thinned out and Misha again stepped out of his office. He walked over to me with several cards in his hand and said, very officially, “Are you Ciszek?” I nodded. “Come into the office, we have to straighten out this card.”
Only when all the doors of his office were closed, and he was sure no one could overhear us, did Misha drop his pose of official business and greet me warmly. “However,” he said, “don’t let anyone know you know me!” We talked a little then about the old days, but Misha was very cautious; he never said an extra word. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you stay home and rest; I’ll put your name on the sick list. If anyone asks, you have a high fever.” With that we shook hands and he mumbled, “I’ll see you around.”
I slept like a log that night, just knowing that I didn’t have to get up at 5 A.M. The next morning, when the gong rang, I just stretched in my bunk and rolled over. Other members of the brigade crowded around asking, “What’s wrong with Valodga?” The brigadier came over and threatened to throw me out of the bunk onto the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said. “Get out of that bed!” “I’m sick,” I said. “Why don’t you go to a doctor, then?” “I did, last night, and I think I’m exempted for the day.” “You ‘think?’ What do you mean, you ‘think?’ Get out of that bunk!” The foreman had not yet been around to the barracks with the sick list, so the brigadier made me dress, eat breakfast, and be ready to go.
Just as we were leaving the barracks, though, the foreman came in and read out my name among the list of those who were exempted from work. The brigadier was mad because I hadn’t told him the night before about my visit to the doctor. That was the standard procedure, but this was the first time I had had any time off at Camp 4, and I was so elated that I forgot to tell the brigadier. The rest of the brigade wished me good luck and a good rest, and left for the morning lineup.
About ten o’clock, Misha dropped over to the barrack. We talked for a while about the old days in Rome, about life in the camps and his work at the medical center. But he said nothing about his arrest, his own prison days, or his sentence. He did promise, though, to use his influence to try and get me another job. “It will take a while,” he said, “so don’t tell anybody anything. Right now, let’s take a walk.”
We walked over to the barrack where he lived with the doctors and medical technicians. He made a few sandwiches, which we shared for lunch. Food was plentiful in this barrack, because the free doctors from the city brought all sorts of food for the staff. Misha was popular with the doctors, but I discovered he wasn’t particularly liked by the other prisoners; they suspected him of working hand in glove with the authorities. In all my dealings with Misha, I never noticed any grounds for such suspicions. Perhaps a certain amount of it was jealousy, because he had such a plush job and got along so well with the officials, who allowed him many privileges.
About 11:30, he told me to come with him to the medical center. When we got there, he told me not to say anything, and especially not to act familiar, then led me into one of the reception rooms. There were two young women doctors there, free doctors from the town, who gave me a thorough going-over—chest, heart, lungs, eyes, etc. Then they began to write up my history. Actually, I was strong as a bull here in Camp 4, but what they wrote was more in line with Misha’s “diagnosis.” From there, Misha took me to another doctor, a prisoner and a Pole from Warsaw. Misha had a short conversation with him before I entered, then ushered me in.
The doctor was a tall, heavyset man named Gregori, big-boned, but with gentle hands, and a serious, full face topped with a thatch of chestnut hair. He was a warm, congenial fellow, quite frank and outspoken. During the course of his examination, I told him I was a priest. When he had finished, he said, “Well, you’re a pretty healthy specimen, but I’ll take care of that.” I thanked him, we shook hands, and Misha took me to a third doctor. He was also a prisoner, a lanky, jovial Ukraine from Lvov. We talked a little bit about Lvov, then he also gave me a clean bill of sickness and I left.
The next day, the foreman read out my name on the sick list again. The brigadier was a little suspicious; he told me frankly I didn’t look sick. “Well,” I said, “I do feel a little better today, but the doctors told me I better lay off work for another day, and they know best.” That afternoon, the weather turned bitter and the first of the season’s storms swept over Norilsk. For the next two days, outside work was impossible. My vacation, therefore, lasted over four days and I was beginning to feel pretty good.
On the evening of the fourth day, Misha sent for me. He told me he had arranged for me to work in the medical center as an orderly. “You begin tomorrow morning,” Misha said, “but keep it quiet.” That night I said nothing to anyone—I didn’t want any slipups—and the next morning I walked out before the foreman came to announce any changes. I didn’t want to have to explain things to the brigadier. I slipped across camp to the medical barrack, and my breakfast ration was waiting for me there, a sure sign I had been assigned to that barrack.
The place was spotless, with two sheets on every bunk, white and sparkling. I felt dirty by contrast. Misha got me a change of clothes; then, after breakfast, I reported to the medical center. What a place to work! It was clean and warm and comfortable, and compared with life on the construction gangs, there was almost nothing to do. There were three other orderlies beside myself, a Chinese and two Estonians; one of the Estonians showed me my job. When the morning examination of prisoners started, I was in the wardrobe checking coats and giving out tickets—a far cry from jackhammers and a shovel.
When the morning examinations ended, we orderlies went to work. I was assigned two rooms, one about 8 by 10 feet, the other about 12 by 15. I swept them, washed the floors, then turned on the medical heat lamps so the floor would dry. Meanwhile I cleaned the windows and tables, sterilized the instruments, changed the disinfecting solutions and the sheets on the examination tables, put everything back in its place, locked the door, hung up the key in the registry room, and was free for the morning! What a life!
I went over to the medical barrack for lunch and met the doctors, all prisoners. Beside Gregori and the other doctor who had examined me before, there was Leonid, a Russian who had worked in China; he was delighted to learn I was an American, and he spoke a few words to me in English, not good, but intelligible. The surgeon was a Jew from Moscow named Abrikasov. He was an extremely knowledgeable surgeon, who had even taught the subject for a while, but he was a bit weak on practice. Some even went so far as to hint he was a bit of a butcher on the operating table. He had, however, two very skilled interns, a Rumanian named Tollya and a Russian named Vashya, who performed most of the actual operations.
There was Sergei, the pharmacist, a thin and sickly Georgian who was a graduate pharmacist from Moscow. The head doctor among the prisoners was a young, silent Pole from Lvov named Pavlik. He was a highly skilled surgeon, frequently called to the city hospital in Norilsk to perform difficult heart and brain surgery. Highly esteemed by his colleagues, he operated mostly in the prison infirmary on more critical cases, and left the medical center surgery to Dr. Abrikasov and his two assistants.
Counting the orderlies and Misha, there were only fourteen men in our medical barrack, including a Ukranian dentist named Anatoly. He certainly had his work cut out for him; all the prisoners who had been in the camps for any length of time had extremely bad teeth, if not literally rotten. Anatoly, a graduate of the Lvov Medical Institute, used to work far into the night in his laboratory to help his swarms of patients here in Camp 4.
We ate a leisurely lunch and sat around talking for a long whil
e; we weren’t due back to the medical center until 5 P.M. All the men in the barrack were most gracious to me.
When the evening examinations began, I saw to it there was plenty of hot water in the doctors’ cubicles, emptied the surgical trays and cleaned them, ran errands to the barracks for the doctors to check on those who were sick, and even helped carry the stretcher cases, if necessary. The doctors finished up by about 9:30 or 10:00 P.M. When they left, I began my cleanup as before, washing and scrubbing the floors, changing linen, sterilizing the instruments, etc. This might take until midnight, but the Chinese orderly would duck over to the kitchen and bring us kasha and soup from a friend of his who worked there.
The first night, Father Viktor came to see me and brought with him everything I needed to say Mass. He gave me a handwritten copy of the Oriental liturgy, a little metal chalice, paten and all, in a small portable box, and he even had real Mass wine and altar breads. When all the orderlies and doctors had finished, long after midnight, Misha stepped out of his office and beckoned me in. There I said Mass, and Misha assisted. Every night after that, with rare exceptions, I said Mass in the medical center. On holidays, as well as on Sundays, one or two of the doctors would also attend my Mass. Several of them also went to confession and Communion regularly.
Father Viktor was a little fellow, stocky, with chestnut hair, a pointed chin, thin nose and glasses. He had a peculiar, mincing step to his walk which made it easy to pick him out of a crowd, even all the way across the camp. He worked at the factory site as head of a crew which measured the temperature of the poured concrete to indicate how it was drying. Because of the weather, and the fact that construction went right through the winter, the concrete was heated by anodes connected to certain of the reinforcing rods. It was Father Viktor’s job to walk around two or three times a day writing down the temperatures. The rest of the time he sat in a little construction shed out of the wind.
Viktor had friends galore, both among the workers and the camp officials, so he was hardly ever assigned to work at hard labor. Consequently, he had time to do a tremendous amount of spiritual work. He was always on the go, visiting the sick and hearing confessions. His little shack at the construction site was an ideal location for hearing confessions during the day, or giving guidance and counseling to one or two of the prisoners.
Another priest, call him “Father Joe,” was a tall, heavyset, and balding Pole. He had a booming voice, and punctuated everything he said with emphatic gestures. He was an extremely zealous priest, but, unlike Viktor, steady and slow. A friend of his, Father Leonid, was also tall and almost completely bald. Like Viktor, he was highstrung, always on the go. Both he and “Father Joe” had great followings among the men.
Beside Father Casper and I, there were also two Lithuanian priests, who always went around together, and three Greek Orthodox priests who joined us from time to time. We all said Mass regularly, thanks to Father Viktor, who supplied everything—and never seemed to run out. Each priest was assigned his own little group or “parish,” and we tried to make our work inconspicuous by keeping the groups separate and distinct. Yet Viktor saw to it that every prisoner, if he wanted to, knew at least one priest in the camp.
Working in the medical center, with a certain amount of free time and a greater amount of freedom, I was appointed by Viktor to give a three-day retreat, or spiritual exercises, to the others. I’d give one talk before they went to work, one after the day’s work, and another in the evening about nine o’clock. At the same time, I was giving some retreats to individual prisoners who had asked for greater spiritual direction. On Sundays and holidays, we priests would all get together. Each would give a ten-minute sermon. We confessed to each other at least every Saturday, and we tried to hold frequent discussions of the moral problems which came up in camp and how best to handle them.
After my first month in the medical center, I began to wonder what would happen to my new job when the officials went over the list at the end of the month, as was customary. Misha admitted that there might be some difficulty, but he said he hoped to work it out. On the last day of the month, the new assignments were posted on the camp bulletin board; I was surprised to find myself still assigned to the medical center. This time, however, I was listed as an intern—thanks to Tollya and Vashya.
For the next month, I worked with them. At first I did only simple jobs, such as unbandaging and cleaning the wounds for them to treat, and observing how they did it. After a few days, though, I could treat simple wounds according to their directions; I even lanced sores, cut away proud flesh, and performed minor operations of that nature. The first couple of days, I admit, I almost got sick. In fact, I got stomach cramps trying to keep myself from vomiting.
From time to time, I also assisted Tollya and Vashya at appendectomies, setting bones, treating fractures, and so forth. I even learned how to make a perfectly acceptable splint or plaster cast. All in all, I found it a fascinating month, once my stomach settled down. After office hours, in return for my “appointment” to the crew, I cleaned and disinfected all our surgical instruments and kept the surgery spotless. After that, I said Mass every night.
It was too good to last, and toward the end of the month new difficulties arose. Even Misha, this time, was worried, but the new list again assigned me to the medical center—in the pharmacy. Sergei and I were good friends by this time, and he had managed to snare me. I found the work, if anything, even more interesting than the previous month. Sergei certainly needed the help. A tremendous number of pills and powders had to be prepared every day, for very few of our medicines came already packaged. I measured out the ingredients on the scales for Sergei, who was quite literally adept at pill rolling; after a short while, I could make up most of the ordinary prescriptions by heart. I got so interested in the work, in fact, that I forgot all about the dangers of working here. I left the worrying strictly to Misha. Whenever officials came from Norilsk for an inspection tour, for instance, I was always warned to disappear. Then, just when everything seemed to be going so well, the roof fell in!
Just before the new monthly list was to be posted, I was called out one morning to the guards’ quarters. When I reported, I was sent immediately to the penal brigade—no questions asked. That same evening, Misha and Father Viktor also arrived in the penal brigade. Misha, though, was out within three days, as soon as the director of the medical center could spring him. He was almost indispensable.
The penal brigade was engaged in building a new camp prison. We tore down the old one, cleared the site, and set to work digging foundations, again all by hand. It would have been brutal work at any time, but I was out of condition after my three months of easy living in the medical center, and I really felt it. Father Viktor was set to making bricks. All this was our punishment for tampering with the prison lists and removing my name from the hard-labor category my sentence required.
After a week, Misha succeeded in getting Father Viktor out, but it took him a while to free me from the penal brigade. Finally, when the new monthly lists were made out, Misha and Viktor succeeded in getting me re-assigned to a construction crew at the factory site. The first morning I reported to work, I was amazed at how much had been done in the three months since I’d seen it. It seemed to me the buildings had sprung up overnight. I was assigned to work as an electrician, but I told the brigadier I didn’t know the first thing about it. He gave me odd jobs which required little technical training.
One day, though, all the lights in the plant went out. The only “electricians” in the main shanty were myself and Aloysha, who knew less about electricity than I did. Since the foremen were demanding lights, however, we went out to have a look. We opened the fuse box—on the theory that even we could change a fuse—and discovered we were working with a three-phase system. I replaced two of the fuses and started to work on the third. I was so nervous for fear of electrocuting myself that Aloysha was convulsed with laughter. I turned around to tell him to be quiet, my finger slipped in
to the contacts, and—I got the full 320 volts! I was knocked flat on my back, unconscious, and was out for almost half an hour.
When I came to, Aloysha was still there laughing; when I stopped shaking, I began to laugh myself at the absurdity of it all. Later, we reported the accident to the brigadier. “Who told you to do that?” he said. “Well, they needed an electrician,” I said, “and I figured anyone could change a fuse.” “Yeah,” he said, “well, no more of that! From now on you and Aloysha are demoted to cable carriers.”
Still, Aloysha and I managed to find trouble. They told us one day to carry a high-voltage cable to the other end of the factory. As we walked into the building out of the snow, we were temporarily blinded. I stepped on a live, high-voltage line—there was a brilliant flash and a cloud of smoke. Aloysha, behind me, dropped his end of the cable and took off at a gallop. Somebody pulled the master switch; everything in the building went black. The men on the crew began to holler my name, thinking I was dead or perhaps unconscious. I answered that I was all right, but afraid to move. “The line is dead,” they shouted. I scrambled out. The rubber on my shoe was a blob of jelly, and everyone in the crew “reassured” me by telling me that my survival was a miracle.
Even without such reassurances, I had had enough. I told Father Viktor about it that night and he arranged for me to join his brigade; he was supposed to have only four men, but he persuaded the officials to assign me as a fifth. Two days later, I was officially transferred to his temperature-measuring crew.
With God in Russia Page 24