One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And they made for the guardhouse.

  Five roads met at the guardhouse and an hour earlier they had all been crowded with prisoners from other work sites. If someday those roads became streets lined with buildings, the future civic center would surely be where the guardhouse and the frisking area now were. And where work parties now pressed in from all sides, parades would converge on public holidays.

  The warders were there waiting, warming themselves in the guardhouse. They came out and formed up across the road.

  “Undo your jackets! Undo your jerkins!”

  Warders’ arms wide open. Ready to embrace and frisk. Ready to slap each man’s sides. Same as in the morning, more or less.

  Unbuttoning wasn’t too terrible now they were nearly home.

  Yes—that’s what they all called it, “home.”

  Their days were too full to remember any other home.

  After they’d frisked the head of the column, Shukhov went up to Tsezar and said, “Tsezar Markovich! When we get past the guardhouse, I’ll run and line up at the parcel room.”

  Tsezar turned his heavy black mustache (white now at the bottom) in Shukhov’s direction.

  “What’s the point, Ivan Denisovich? There may not be a parcel.”

  “So what have I got to lose? I’ll wait ten minutes, and if you don’t come, I’ll get back to the hut.” (Thinking to himself, If Tsezar doesn’t come, somebody else may, and I can sell him my place in the line.)

  But it looked like Tsezar wanted that parcel pretty badly.

  “All right, then,” he said, “run and get a place, Ivan Denisovich. But don’t stay more than ten minutes.”

  The search was getting closer. Shukhov moved along without fear. He had nothing to hide this time. He took his time unbuttoning his jacket, and loosened the canvas belt around his jerkin.

  He hadn’t remembered having anything forbidden, but wariness had become second nature after eight years inside. So he plunged his hand into the sewn-on pocket to make sure that it was empty—though he knew very well that it was.

  Ah, but there was the little bit of broken blade! The one he’d picked up at the work site that morning, not wanting to see it wasted, but hadn’t meant to bring into the camp.

  He hadn’t meant to—but now that he had brought it, it would be a terrible pity to throw the thing away. You could hone it into a nice little knife—shoemaker’s or tailor’s type, whichever you wanted.

  If he’d thought of carrying it in, he’d also have thought up some good way of hiding it. There were only two ranks in front of him—and now the first of those peeled off and went to be frisked.

  He had to decide quick as a flash whether to use the cover of the rank in front and drop the blade on the snow while nobody was looking (it would be found afterward, but they wouldn’t know whose it was), or to keep it.

  That bit of steel could cost him ten days in the hole if they decided it was a knife.

  But a cobbler’s knife was an earner, it meant extra bread!

  Pity to throw it away.

  Shukhov slipped it into his padded mitten.

  The next five were ordered to step forward for frisking.

  That left the last three men in the full glare of the lights: Senka, Shukhov, and the fellow from Gang 32 who had run after the Moldavian.

  Just the three of them, and five warders stood facing them. So Shukhov could play it smart and choose which of the two warders on the right to approach. He ignored the young one with a high flush and chose the older man with a gray mustache. He was more experienced, of course, and could easily have found the blade if he had wanted to, but at his age he must hate the job like poison.

  He’d taken off both mittens and was clutching them in one hand, with the empty one sticking out. He grasped the rope girdle in the same hand, unbuttoned his jerkin completely, obligingly plucked up the skirts of jacket and jerkin—he had never been so forthcoming at the search point before, but he wanted to show that he had nothing to hide—and at the command went up to Gray Whiskers.

  The gray one patted Shukhov’s sides and back, tapped the sewn-on pocket from outside—nothing there—fingered the skirts of the jerkin and jacket, gave a farewell squeeze to the mitten Shukhov was holding out, and found it empty …

  When the warder squeezed his mitten, Shukhov felt as if somebody had his guts between pincers. A squeeze like that on the other mitten and he’d be done for—into the hole, on three hundred grams a day, no hot food for two days at a time. He imagined himself getting weaker and weaker from hunger, and thought how hard it would be to get back to his present wiry (not too well fed, but not starving) condition.

  And he offered up a silent agonized prayer: “Save me, Lord! Don’t let them put me in the hole!”

  All these thoughts passed through his head while the warder was feeling the first mitten and letting his hand stray to the one behind it (he would have felt both at once, if Shukhov had held one in each hand). But at that very moment they heard the warder in charge of the search, in a hurry to get off-duty, call out to the guards:

  “Bring up the engineers!”

  So the gray-mustached warder, instead of tackling Shukhov’s other mitten, waved him through. Scot-free.

  Shukhov ran to catch up with his teammates. They were already drawn up in fives between the two long log rails that looked like the hitching place at a country market and formed a sort of paddock for the column. He ran lightly, no longer feeling the ground under his feet, forgetting to say another prayer, of gratitude this time, because he was in too much of a hurry, and anyway there was no point in it now.

  The guards who had marched Shukhov’s column in had now all moved over to make way for the engineers’ guards and were only awaiting their commander. The wood dropped by the column before the frisk had been picked up by the convoy guards, while that confiscated by the warders during the search was piled up by the guardhouse.

  The moon was sailing higher and higher and the frost was tightening its grip in the bright snowy night.

  The guard commander, who had gone to the guardhouse to recover his receipt for 463 men, had a word with Pryakha, Volkovoy’s second-in-command, who called out, “K-460.”

  The Moldavian, who had buried himself in the depths of the column, heaved a sigh and went over to the right-hand hitching rail. He kept his head down and his shoulders hunched.

  “Over here!” Pryakha’s finger showed him the way around the hitching rail.

  The Moldavian went. He was ordered to put his hands behind his back and stand still.

  So they meant to pin a charge of attempted escape on him. He’d be slung in the camp jail.

  Two sentries took their stand to the right and left behind the paddock and just short of the gates. The gates, three times the height of a man, opened slowly, and the order rang out:

  “Form up in fives!” (No need for “Get away from the gates” this time: camp gates always open inward, so if the zeks should mob them from inside they can’t unhinge them.)

  “Number One! Two! Three!”

  Standing there to be counted through the gate of an evening, back in camp after a whole day of buffeting wind, freezing cold, and an empty belly, the zek longs for his ladleful of scalding-hot watery evening soup as for rain in time of drought. He could knock it back in a single gulp. For the moment that ladleful means more to him than freedom, more than his whole past life, more than whatever life is left to him.

  The zeks go in through the camp gates like warriors returning from a campaign—blustering, clattering, swaggering: “Make way there, can’t you!”

  The trusty looking at the wave of returning zeks through the staff-hut window feels afraid.

  After the evening count, the zek is a free man again for the first time since roll call at 6:30 in the morning. Through the great camp gates, through the smaller gates to the inner compound, along the midway between another pair of “hitching rails”—and every man could go his own way.

  But not the foremen. A work assigner round
s them up with shouts of “Foremen! To the PPS!”

  To try on tomorrow’s horse collar.

  Shukhov hurtled past the jailhouse, between the huts, and into the parcel room. While Tsezar, preserving his dignity, walked at a leisurely pace in the other direction, to where there was already a buzzing swarm of zeks around a plywood board nailed to a post and bearing the names written in indelible pencil of those who had parcels waiting for them.

  They generally write on plywood, not paper, in the camps. It’s tougher and more reliable. The screws and the work assigners jot down their head counts on plywood. You can scrape the figures off next day and use it again. Quite economical.

  Another chance here for those left behind in camp to toady: they read on the board the name of a man who’s got a parcel, meet him out on the midway, and tell him the number. It’s not worth a lot—but even that may earn you the odd cigarette.

  Shukhov ran to the parcel room—a lean-to built onto one of the huts, with a lobby tacked onto it. The lobby had no outer door, and the cold was free to enter—but it was still somehow cozier than outside. At least it had a roof.

  The queue was all around the lobby wall. Shukhov got in line. There were at least fifteen in front of him. More than an hour’s wait, which would take him exactly to lights-out. Those from the Power Station column who’d gone to look at the list would be behind him. So would the engineers. They might have to come back first thing in the morning.

  The men on line had bags and sacks. On the other side of the door (Shukhov had heard said—he had never himself received a parcel in this camp) they opened the regulation boxes with a hatchet and a warder took every article out with his own hands, cutting it up, breaking it in two, prodding it or pouring it out to examine it. Jars or cans containing liquid would be broached and emptied—all you’d get was what you caught in your hands or netted in a towel. For some reason they were afraid to hand over the containers. If there was any sort of pie or cake, any unusual sweet, any sausage or smoked fish, the warder would take a bite. (Start demanding your rights and he’d give you the treatment—this is forbidden, that isn’t allowed—and you’d end up with nothing. Whoever gets a parcel has to give and keep on giving—the warder’s only the beginning.) When they’ve finished searching, they still won’t give you the box it came in—just sweep the lot into a bag, or the skirts of your jacket, and clear off. Next, please. They can hurry a man up so much he leaves something on the counter. He needn’t bother going back. It won’t be there.

  Shukhov had received a couple of parcels back in Ust-Izhma, but he’d written to his wife not to send any more, not to rob the kids, it only went to waste.

  It had been easier for Shukhov to feed his whole family as a free man than it was to feed just himself in the camps, but he knew what those parcels cost, and you couldn’t go on milking your family for ten years on end. Better to do without.

  That’s what he’d decided, but whenever anybody in the gang or the hut got a parcel (somebody did almost every day) he felt a pang—why isn’t it for me? And although he had strictly forbidden his wife to send anything even at Easter, and never went to look at the list on the post—except for some rich workmate—he sometimes found himself expecting somebody to come running and say:

  “Why don’t you go and get it, Shukhov? There’s a parcel for you.”

  Nobody came running.

  As time went by, he had less and less to remind him of the village of Temgenyovo and his cottage home. Life in camp kept him on the go from getting-up time to lights-out. No time for brooding on the past.

  Standing among men who were savoring already the fatback they’d shortly sink their teeth into, the butter they’d smear on their bread, the sugar they’d sweeten their tea with, Shukhov’s mind ran on one single desire—that he and his gang would get into the mess hut in time to eat their skilly hot. Cold, it wasn’t worth half as much.

  He reckoned that if Tsezar hadn’t found his name on the list he’d have been back in the hut washing himself long ago. If his name was there, he’d be collecting sacks, plastic mugs, and wrapping paper. That was why Shukhov had promised to wait ten minutes.

  Standing in the line, he heard a piece of news. No Sunday off this week, they were being cheated out of Sunday again. Just what he, and everybody else, had expected. If there were five Sundays in a month, they were allowed three and hustled off to work on the other two. He’d expected it, all right, but hearing it nevertheless cut him to the quick. Who wouldn’t be sorry for his precious Sunday rest? Of course, what they were saying in the queue was true enough: your day off could be hell even in camp, they could always think up something for you to do, build a bit on to the bathhouse, or wall up a passage between huts, or tidy up the yard. Then there was changing mattresses, shaking them, and squashing the bugs in the bunks. Or else they could take it into their heads to check the description in your dossier. Or else there was stock-taking: get all your belongings out in the yard and sit there half the day.

  Nothing seemed to upset them more than a zek sleeping after breakfast.

  The line moved forward, slowly but steadily. Some people went inside, out of turn, shoving past the man at the head of the queue without a by-your-leave. The barber for one, and a bookkeeper, and a man from the CES. These weren’t common or garden zeks but well-fixed trusties, the lousiest bastards of the lot, who spent all their time in camp. The working zeks regarded these people as utter filth (and they thought the same of the zeks). But it was useless to pick a quarrel with them: the trusties were all in cahoots with each other, and with the warders, too.

  Anyway, there were still ten men in front of Shukhov, and another seven had fallen in behind, when Tsezar, wearing the new fur hat somebody had sent him from outside, came in through the opening, ducking his head. (Really something, that hat. Tsezar had greased somebody’s palm, and gotten permission to wear it—a neat new town hat. Other people had even their shabby old army caps snatched from them, and were given ratty camp-issue caps instead.)

  Tsezar smiled at Shukhov and got talking to an odd-looking fellow in glasses who’d been reading a newspaper all the time he was in the line.

  “Aha! Pyotr Mikhailych!”

  They opened up for each other like poppies in bloom.

  “Look, I’ve got a recent Evening Moscow. Sent in a wrapper,” the odd fellow said.

  “Have you now!” Tsezar stuck his nose into the same paper. The bulb hanging from the ceiling was as dim as dim—how could they make anything out in that small print?

  “There’s a most interesting review of Zavadsky’s premiere!”

  These Muscovites could scent each other a long way off, like dogs. And when they got together they had their own way of sniffing each other all over. And they gabbled ever so fast, seeing who could get the most words in. And when they were at it there’d only be the odd Russian word—it was like listening to Latvians or Romanians.

  Anyway, Tsezar had all his bags ready.

  “So, I’ll er … be off now, Tsezar Markovich,” Shukhov lisped.

  Tsezar raised his black mustache from the newspaper. “Of course, of course. Let’s see, now, who’s ahead of me? Who’s behind me?”

  Shukhov carefully explained who was where, and, without waiting for Tsezar to mention it, asked: “Shall I fetch your supper for you?”

  (Meaning bring it in a mess tin from the mess hall to the hut. It was strictly forbidden, and any number of orders had been issued on the subject. If you were caught the mess tin was emptied on the ground and you were put in the hole—but people went on doing it, and always would, because a man with jobs to do would never get to the mess hut on time with his own gang.)

  Shukhov’s real thought was “You’ll let me have your supper, won’t you? You wouldn’t be that stingy! You know there’s no gruel at suppertime, just skilly without trimmings.”

  Tsezar gave him a little smile. “No, no, eat it yourself, Ivan Denisovich.”

  That was all he was waiting for. He fluttered o
ut of the anteroom like an uncaged bird and was off across the compound as fast as he could go.

  Zeks were dashing around all over the place! At one time the camp commandant had given orders that zeks were not to walk about the camp singly. Whenever possible, they should be marched in gangs. And where it was quite impossible for a whole gang to go together—to sick bay, say, or the latrine—a group of four or five should be made up and one man put in charge to march them there, wait, and march them back again.

  The commandant set great store by that order. Nobody dared argue with him. The warders grabbed lone wanderers, took down their numbers, hauled them off to the jailhouse—but in the end the order was ditched. Quietly—as so many loudmouthed orders are. Suppose they themselves wanted to call somebody in to see the godfather—they weren’t going to send an escort party with him! Or suppose one man wanted to collect his food supply from the storeroom—why should another man have to go with him? Or say somebody took it into his head to go and read the papers in the CES—who on earth would want to go with him? One man has to take his boots to be mended, another is off to the drying room, somebody else just wants to wander from hut to hut (that’s more strictly forbidden than anything else!)—how are you going to stop them?

  The fat pig was trying to deprive the zek of the last scrap of liberty remaining to him. But it didn’t work.

  Meeting a warder on the way, and raising his cap to him just to be on the safe side, Shukhov ran into the hut. Inside, there was uproar: somebody’s rations had been rustled during the day. Men were shouting at the orderlies, and they were shouting back. But 104’s corner was empty.

  Shukhov’s idea of a happy evening was when they got back to the hut and didn’t find the mattresses turned upside down after a daytime search.

  He rushed to his bed place, shrugging off his jacket on the way. Up went his jacket, up went the mittens with the bit of metal in one of them, deep into the mattress went his fumbling hand—and his bread was still where he had put it that morning! Lucky he’d sewn it in!

  Outside at a trot! To the mess hut!

  He dashed to the mess without bumping into a warder. Only zeks wandered across his path, arguing about rations.