One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Outside, under the bright moon, it was getting lighter all the time. All the lamps were dim, and the huts cast black shadows. The entrance to the mess hut was up four steps and across a wide porch, also now in the shadows. But a little lamp swayed above it, squeaking in the cold. Frost, or dirt, gave every light bulb a rainbow-colored halo.

  Another of the commandant’s strict orders was that the gangs should go in two at a time. On reaching the mess, the order went on to say, gangs should not mount the steps but re-form in ranks of five and stand still until the mess orderly let them in.

  Limpy had hooked the mess orderly’s job and held on to it for dear life. He’d promoted his limp to a disability but the bastard was fighting fit. He’d found himself a birch thumb stick and stood on the porch using it to pin back anybody who started up the steps before he gave the order. Well, not everybody. Limpy had a quick eye and knew who was who even in the shadows and from the rear. He wasn’t going to strike anybody who might give him a smack in the kisser. He only beat those who’d been beaten into shape for him. He’d nailed Shukhov once.

  “Orderly” he was called. But when you thought of it, he was a prince. The cooks were his pals!

  This time, whether because the gangs had all rolled up at once, or because it had taken so long to get things sorted out, a dense crowd swarmed around the porch, with Limpy, his stooge, and the mess manager up above. The sons of bitches could do without warders.

  The mess manager was an overstuffed swine with a head like a pumpkin and shoulders a yard and a half across. He was so strong he looked fit to burst, and walked in jerks as though his legs and arms had springs instead of joints. He wore a white fur hat, without a number patch. Not one of the free workers had a hat like that. He also wore an Astrakhan waistcoat, with a little number patch no bigger than a postage stamp on his chest—to humor Volkovoy. There wasn’t even a patch of that size on his back. The mess manager bowed to nobody, and the zeks were all afraid of him. He held thousands of lives in one hand! He nearly got beaten up once but the cooks all rushed to the rescue—and what a bunch of thugs they were!

  It would be a disaster if 104 had gone through already. Limpy knew the whole camp by sight, and with the mess manager there, he wouldn’t let you past with the wrong gang. He’d be looking for somebody to make a monkey of.

  Prisoners sometimes sneaked over the porch rails behind Limpy’s back. Shukhov had done it himself. But, with the manager there, you couldn’t do it—he’d bounce you so hard you’d just about make it to sick bay.

  Quick now, up to the porch and try to find out in the dark whether 104 are among that mass of identical black coats.

  Just then the gangs began heaving and shoving (nothing else for it—lights-out soon!), as though they were storming a fortress, taking the steps one at a time and swarming onto the porch.

  “Halt, you bastards!” Limpy roared, raising his stick at those in front. “I’ll split somebody’s head open in a minute!”

  “We can’t help it!” those in front yelled in reply. “They’re shoving from behind.”

  The shoving was coming from behind, all right, but the front rows were hoping to go flying through the mess-hut door and didn’t put up much resistance.

  Limpy held his staff across his chest like the barrier at a level crossing and charged the front rank full-tilt. His stooge also gripped the staff, and even the mess manager wasn’t too proud to soil his hands on it.

  They were pushing downhill, and they were stronger—they got meat to eat—so the zeks gave ground. The front rank reeled back down the steps onto those behind them and they in turn onto those still farther back, toppling them over like sheaves.

  Some of the crowd yelled, “Eff you, Limpy, you bastard,” but they took care not to be spotted. The rest collapsed in silence, and rose in silence, quick as they could, before they were trampled.

  The steps were cleared. The mess manager withdrew along the porch, and Limpy stood on the top step, laying down the law:

  “Sort yourselves out in fives, you blockheads, how many more times do I have to tell you? I’ll let you in when I’m good and ready!”

  Shukhov was so happy it hurt when he spotted what looked like Senka Klevshin’s head right up by the porch. He set his elbows to work as fast as they’d go, but there was no breaking through that solid wall of backs.

  “Gang 27!” Limpy shouted. “In you go!”

  Gang 27 hopped onto the porch and rushed for the door. The rest surged up the steps in their wake, pushed from behind. Shukhov was one of those shoving with all his might. The porch shook and the lamp above it was squeaking.

  Limpy flared up. “At it again, you scum?” His stick played on backs and shoulders and men were knocked flying into those behind.

  The steps were clear again.

  From down below, Shukhov saw Pavlo up beside Limpy. Pavlo always led the gang to the mess, Tyurin wouldn’t rub shoulders with a mob like this.

  “104, form up in fives,” Pavlo shouted down at them. “And you make way there, friends!”

  The friends would be hanged first.

  Shukhov shook the man in front. “You with your back to me, let me through! That’s my gang.”

  The man would have been glad to let him through, but was wedged in himself.

  The crowd swayed, risking suffocation for the sake of its skilly, its lawful entitlement of skilly.

  Shukhov tried something else: he grabbed the rails to his left, shifted his hold to the post supporting the porch, and took off from the ground. His feet bumped against somebody’s knees, he collected a few punches in the ribs and a few foul names, but then he was in the clear: standing on the top step, with one foot on the porch. His teammates spotted him and reached out to help him.

  The mess manager, leaving the porch, looked around from the door.

  “Two more gangs, Limpy.”

  “104!” Limpy shouted. “Where do you think you’re going, scum?” He brought his staff down on an intruder’s neck.

  “104!” Pavlo shouted, letting his men through.

  “Phew!” Shukhov burst into the mess. And was off, looking for empty trays, without waiting for Pavlo to tell him.

  The mess was its usual self—frosty air steaming in from the door, men at the tables packed as tight as seeds in a sunflower, men wandering between tables, men trying to barge their way through with full trays. But Shukhov was used to all this after so many years, and his sharp eye saw something else: Shch-208 was carrying only five bowls, so that must be his gang’s last tray, otherwise it would be a full one.

  Shukhov, behind him, slipped the words into his ear: “I’ll come and get the tray, pal—I’m right behind you.”

  “That fellow over by the window’s waiting for it, I promised him…”

  “He can take a running jump—should’ve kept his eyes open.”

  They made a deal.

  Shch-208 carried his tray to the table and unloaded it. When Shukhov grabbed it, the other man, the one who’d been promised, rushed over and started tugging at the other side. He was a weakling compared with Shukhov, though. Shukhov pushed the tray at him as he pulled, he reeled back against a roof support, and the tray was wrenched from his hands. Shukhov tucked it under his arm and trotted off to the serving hatch.

  Pavlo, standing in line there, dismally waiting for trays, was overjoyed to see him.

  “Ivan Denisovich!” He pushed past the deputy foreman of Gang 27. “Let me through! No good you standing there! I’ve got trays!”

  Sure enough, Gopchik, the little scamp, was lugging another one over.

  “They took their eyes off it, so I nicked it,” he said with a laugh.

  Gopchik had the makings of a really good camp dweller. Give him another three years, let him grow up a bit, and fate had something good in store for him—a bread cutter’s job at least.

  Pavlo ordered Yermolaev, the tough Siberian (another ex-POW doing ten), to take the second tray and sent Gopchik to look for a table where supper was n
early over. Shukhov rested one corner of his tray on the counter and waited.

  “104!” Pavlo announced through the hatch.

  There were five hatches altogether: three to serve ordinary prisoners, one for those on special diet (a dozen with stomach ulcers, and all the bookkeepers for a kickback), and one for the return of dirty bowls (with people around it fighting to lick them). The counters were not much more than waist-high. The cooks couldn’t be seen through the hatches, only their hands and ladles.

  This cook’s hands were white and well manicured, but strong and hairy. A boxer’s hands, not a cook’s. He took a pencil and ticked off something on a list pinned up behind the partition.

  “104—twenty-four.”

  So Panteleyev had crawled over to the mess. Not ill at all, the son of a bitch.

  The cook picked up a huge ladle, a three-liter one, and stirred the pail busily. (It had just been refilled, almost to the top, and steam billowed out of it.) Then he grabbed a smaller, 750-gram ladle, and began dishing out the skilly, without dipping very deep.

  “One, two, three, four…”

  Shukhov took note which dishes had been filled before the solids had sunk to the bottom of the pail, and which held thin stuff, nothing but water. He lined up ten bowls on his tray and carried it off. Gopchik was waving to him from near the second row of pillars.

  “Over here, Ivan Denisovich, over here!”

  Carrying a tray laden with bowls is not as easy as it looks. Shukhov glided along, taking care not to jolt the tray, and leaving the hard work to his vocal cords.

  “Hey, you, Kh-920! Look out, man!… Out of the way there, lad!”

  In a crush like that, it’s a tricky business carrying just one bowl to the table without spilling it, and Shukhov had ten of them. All the same, there were no fresh splashes on the tray when he set it down gently on the end of the table liberated by Gopchik. He even skillfully turned the tray so that he would be sitting at the corner with the two bowls of really thick skilly.

  Yermolaev arrived with another ten bowls, and Gopchik and Pavlo hurried over with the last four in their hands.

  Kildigs came next, with some bread on a tray. Food today was according to the amount of work done—some had earned two hundred grams, some three hundred, and Shukhov four hundred. He took his four hundred—a big crust—and two hundred grams from the middle of the loaf, which was Tsezar’s ration.

  The gang trickled in from all over the mess to take their supper away and lap it up wherever they could sit. Shukhov handed out the bowls, ticking off each man as he collected, and keeping an eye on his own corner of the tray. He had slipped his spoon into one of the bowls of thick skilly to show that it was taken. Fetyukov was one of the first to pick up a bowl. He carried it off, realizing that there would be slim pickings in his own gang today and that he might have more luck scavenging around the mess. Somebody might leave a spot. (Whenever a man pushed his bowl away without emptying it, others swooped like birds of prey, sometimes several at once.)

  Shukhov and Pavlo counted up the portions. It looked about right. Shukhov slipped Pavlo a bowl of the thick stuff for Andrei Prokofyevich, and Pavlo poured it into a narrow German flask with a lid. He could carry it out hugged to his chest under his coat.

  They turned in their trays. Pavlo sat down to his double portion, and Shukhov to his two bowls. No more talk. The sacred minutes had arrived.

  Shukhov took off his cap and put it on his knees. He checked one bowl, then the other, with his spoon. Not too bad, there was even a bit of fish. The skilly was always a lot thinner in the evening than in the morning: a zek had to be fed in the morning so that he could work, but in the evening he’d sleep, hungry or not, and wouldn’t croak overnight.

  He began eating. First he just drank the juice, spoon after spoon. The warmth spread through his body, his insides greeted that skilly with a joyful fluttering. This was it! This was good! This was the brief moment for which a zek lives.

  For a little while Shukhov forgot all his grievances, forgot that his sentence was long, that the day was long, that once again there would be no Sunday. For the moment he had only one thought: We shall survive. We shall survive it all. God willing, we’ll see the end of it!

  When he had sucked up the hot juice from both bowls, he emptied what was left in one into the other—tipping it up and then scraping it clean with his spoon. He would feel easier not having to think about the second bowl, not having to guard it with his eyes or his hand.

  Now that his eyes were off-duty, he shot a glance at his neighbor’s bowls. The man to his left had nothing but water. Dirty dogs—treating fellow zeks like that!

  Now Shukhov was eating cabbage with the remains of his slop. The two bowls between them had caught a single potato—in Tsezar’s bowl it was. An average-sized potato, frostbitten of course, sweetish, and with hard bits in it. There was hardly any fish at all, just an occasional glimpse of a boiled-bare backbone. Still, every bone and every fin had to be thoroughly chewed, and the juice sucked out of them—the juice did you good. All this, of course, took time, but Shukhov was in no hurry. Today was a holiday for him: he’d lifted two portions for dinner and two for supper. Any other business could be put off while he dealt with this.

  Though maybe he ought to call on the Latvian for his tobacco. There might be none left by morning.

  Shukhov was eating his supper without bread: two portions with bread as well would be a bit too rich. The bread would come in useful tomorrow. The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

  Shukhov finished off his skilly, not taking much notice of those around him—it didn’t much matter, he was content with his lawful portion and had no hankering after anything more. All the same, he did notice the tall old man, Yu-81, sit down opposite him when the place became free. Shukhov knew that he belonged to Gang 64, and standing in line in the parcel room he’d heard that 64 had been sent to Sotsgorodok in place of 104, and spent the whole day stringing up barbed wire—making themselves a compound—with nowhere to get warm.

  He’d heard that this old man had been in prison time out of mind—in fact, as long as the Soviet state had existed; that all the amnesties had passed him by, and that as soon as he finished one tenner they’d pinned another on him.

  This was Shukhov’s chance to take a close look at him. With hunched-over lags all round, he was as straight-backed as could be. He sat tall, as though he’d put something on the bench under him. That head hadn’t needed a barber for ages: the life of luxury had caused all his hair to fall out. The old man’s eyes didn’t dart around to take in whatever was going on in the mess, but stared blindly at something over Shukhov’s head. He was steadily eating his thin skilly, but instead of almost dipping his head in the bowl like the rest of them, he carried his battered wooden spoon up high. He had no teeth left, upper or lower, but his bony gums chewed his bread just as well without them. His face was worn thin, but it wasn’t the weak face of a burnt-out invalid, it was like dark chiseled stone. You could tell from his big chapped and blackened hands that in all his years inside he’d never had a soft job as a trusty. But he refused to knuckle under: he didn’t put his three hundred grams on the dirty table, splashed all over, like the others, he put it on a rag he washed regularly.

  No time to go on studying him, though. Shukhov licked his spoon and tucked it inside his boot, crammed his cap on his head, rose, picked up the bread—his own ration and Tsezar’s—and left. You went out by the back porch, past two orderlies with nothing to do other than lift the catch, let you out, and lower the catch again.

  Shukhov left with a well-filled belly, at peace with himself, and decided to pop over to the Latvian even though it was nearly lights-out. He strode briskly toward Hut 7, without stopping to leave the bread at No. 9.

  The moon was as high as it would ever be, it looked like a hole cut in the sky. The sky was cloudless. With here and there the brightest stars you ever saw. But Shukhov had less time st
ill for studying the sky. All he knew was that the frost wasn’t easing up. Somebody had heard from the free workers—it had been on the radio—that they were expecting thirty degrees below at night and forty by morning.

  You could hear things a long way off. A tractor roaring in the settlement. The grating noise of an excavator over toward the highroad. The crunch of every pair of felt boots walking or running across the camp.

  There was no wind now.

  He was going to buy homegrown tobacco at the same price as before—a ruble for a tumblerful. Outside the camp, it cost three rubles, or more, depending on the quality. But prices in the camps weren’t like those anywhere else. You weren’t allowed to hang on to money, so what little you had bought more. This camp paid no money wage.* (In Ust-Izhma, Shukhov had earned thirty rubles a month—better than nothing.) If a man’s family sent him money, it wasn’t passed on to him but credited to his personal account. This credit gave him the right to buy toilet soap, moldy gingerbread, and Prima cigarettes once a month in the camp shop. Whether you liked them or not, you had to buy the goods once you’d ordered them through the commandant. If you didn’t buy, the money was written off and you’d seen the last of it.

  Money came Shukhov’s way only from the private jobs he did: two rubles for making slippers from rags supplied by the customer, an agreed price for patching a jerkin.

  Hut 7 wasn’t divided into two large sections like No. 9. In Hut 7, ten doors opened onto a large corridor. Seven double-decker bunks were wedged into every room, and occupied by a single gang. There was also a cubicle below the night-tub storeroom, and another for the hut monitor. The artists had a cubicle as well.

  Shukhov went into the room where his Latvian was. He was lying on the lower bed space with his feet up on the brace, gabbling away to his neighbor in Latvian.

  Shukhov sat down by him, and mumbled some sort of greeting. The other man answered without lowering his feet. It was a small room, and they were all curious to know who this was and why he had come. Both of them realized this, so Shukhov sat there talking about nothing. How’re you getting along, then? Not too bad. Cold today. Yes, it is.