‘I knew they wouldn’t. It’s all Kroshka’s fault. She knifed that woman doctor, and they’re taking it out on me.’
‘No one’s taking anything out on you,’ the doctor said.
‘I know better.’
Demidova left ahead of the guards, the outside door slammed, and the truck engine roared.
Immediately a door opened from the corridor, and the head of the hospital entered with a whole retinue of security officers.
‘Where is she? Where is Demidova?’
‘They’ve already taken her away, sir.’
‘That’s a shame, a real shame. I wanted to get a look at her. It’s all your fault, Peter Ivanovich – you and your jokes.’ And the director and his companions left the reception room.
The director wanted at least to get a glance at the famous Demidova, a thief with a truly unusual story.
Aglaya Demidova had been sentenced to ten years for killing a woman whose responsibility it was to make job assignments. Demidova strangled her victim with a towel for being too pushy. Six months ago Demidova was being taken from court to the mine. There was a single guard, since it was only a few hours by car from the local court where they tried her to the mine where she worked. Space and time are analogous in the Far North. Space is generally measured in units of time; such is the practice of the Yakut tribesmen, who calculate the distance from one mountain to another as, for example, six days. Those who lived near the main artery – the highway – measured distances by the length of time it took to get there by motor vehicle.
Demidova’s guard was a young ‘old man’ who had stayed on for a second hitch and who was used to the liberties and peculiarities of life as a guard, the total master of the prisoners’ fates. It was not the first time that he had ‘accompanied’ a woman, and this sort of trip promised a form of amusement that most soldiers in the North enjoyed only rarely.
The three of them – the guard, the driver, and Demidova – ate at a roadside cafeteria. The guard drank some grain alcohol to get up his courage (in the North only higher-ups drink vodka) and took Demidova into the bushes. Rose willow, aspen saplings, and willow thickets grow luxuriously around any taiga settlement.
When they entered the bushes, the guard laid his automatic rifle on the ground and approached Demidova. Demidova tore herself free, grabbed the rifle, and in two criss-crossing bursts riddled the body of the amorous guard with nine bullets. She then threw the rifle into the bushes, returned to the cafeteria, and hitched a ride on a passing truck. The driver sounded the alarm, and the body of the guard along with the rifle was soon found. Demidova herself was arrested a couple of days later only a few hundred miles from where her tryst with the guard had taken place. She was again brought to trial and this time sentenced to twenty-five years. Even before she had shown no willingness to work and had occupied herself with robbing her neighbors in the barracks, so the head of the mine decided to get rid of her at any price. The hope was that she would not be returned to the mine after the hospital but would be sent somewhere else.
Demidova specialized in robbing stores and apartments – a ‘city girl’ in the terminology of the criminal world. This world acknowledges only two types of women: thieves, whose profession, like the men’s, is stealing, and prostitutes, the men’s sweethearts.
The first group is considerably smaller than the second but enjoys a certain respect among criminals, who consider women to be creatures of a lower order. Their professional abilities and services, however, demand recognition. The female companion of a thief will, not infrequently, participate in working out the plans for a robbery and even in the robbery itself, but she does not take part in the male ‘trials of honor’, where criminals actually try and sentence each other for violating their own peculiar code of ethics. These special male and female roles have been dictated in part by a life where men are imprisoned apart from women – a circumstance that has influenced the lifestyles, habits, and rules of both sexes. Women are not as hard as men, and their ‘trials’ are neither as bloody nor as cruel. In a thieves’ den, the women commit murder less frequently than their male comrades.
Prostitutes constitute the second and larger group of women connected with the world of crime. They are the thieves’ companions, and they are the breadwinners. Naturally, they participate, when necessary, in break-ins, casing a building and staking it out, concealing the stolen merchandise, and eventually fencing it, but they by no means enjoy equal rights with the men of the criminal world. Any celebration is unthinkable without their presence, but they can never even dream of participating in ‘courts of honor’.
A third- or fourth-generation criminal learns contempt for women from childhood. ‘Theoretical’ and ‘pedagogical’ sessions alternate with the personal example of his elders. Woman, an inferior being, has been created only to satisfy the criminal’s animal craving, to be the butt of his crude jokes and the victim of public beatings when her thug decides to ‘whoop it up’. She is a living object, used by the criminal on a temporary basis.
When a criminal needs to ‘get to’ a camp official, it is considered quite normal and proper for him to send his prostitute-companion to the man’s bed. She herself shares this view. Conversations on this topic are always extremely cynical, laconic in the extreme, and descriptive. Time is precious.
The criminal code of ethics renders jealousy and courtship meaningless. Time-honored tradition permits the leader of a gang to select the best prostitute as his temporary wife. And if only yesterday this prostitute had been considered the property of a different thug, property that he could loan to his comrades in crime, today all his rights transfer to the new owner. If he is arrested tomorrow, the prostitute will return to her former companion. And if the latter, in turn, is arrested, she will be told who her new owner is to be – the master of her life and her death, her fate, her money, her actions, her body.
What place can there be for such a feeling as jealousy? It simply does not exist in the thug’s ethical system.
A criminal, they say, is human, and no human feeling is alien to him. It may be that he regrets having to give up his woman, but the law is the law, and those responsible for observing ‘ideological’ purity, the purity of criminal ethics (without any quotation marks), will immediately point out the jealous criminal’s error to him. And he will yield to the law.
There are instances when hot tempers and the hysteria characteristic of all criminals will make him defend ‘his woman’. On such occasions the question is taken up in a criminal court, and criminal prosecutors will cite age-old traditions, demanding that the guilty man be punished.
Usually the parties concerned do not come to blows, and the prostitute submits to sleeping with her new master. There are no ménages à trois in the criminal world, with two men sharing one woman. Nor is it possible for a female thief to live with a non-criminal.
Men and women are separated in the camps. However, there are hospitals, transit prisons, outpatient clinics, and clubs where men and women can hear and see each other.
One cannot but be amazed at the inventiveness of the prisoners, their energy in reaching goals that they have set for themselves. The amount of energy expended in prison to obtain a piece of crumpled tin which can be transformed into a knife to commit murder or suicide is incredible.
The energy expended by a criminal intent on arranging a meeting with a prostitute is enormous. The most critical factor is finding a place to which to summon the prostitute; the criminal need have no doubt as to whether or not she will come. The hand of justice will always find the guilty woman. She will dress in men’s clothing and have sexual relations an extra time with her supervisor – just to slip away at the appointed hour to her unknown lover. The love drama is played out quickly – the way grass drops its seed in the Far North. If seen by the overseer when she returns to the women’s zone, she will be put in a punishment cell, sentenced to a month of solitary confinement, or sent to a penal mine. She will endure all this with complete submiss
ion and even be proud of her actions; she has fulfilled her duty as a prostitute.
There was an instance in a large northern hospital for convicts when a prostitute was sent to spend an entire night with an important thug who was a patient in the surgical ward. The attendant on duty was threatened with a knife, and a stolen suit was given to the civilian orderly. Finally, the woman had relations with all eight of the criminals who were sharing the room. The suit’s real owner recognized it and presented a written complaint. Considerable effort was expended to conceal the affair.
The woman was not at all upset or embarrassed when she was found in a room in the men’s hospital.
‘The fellows asked me to help them out, so I came,’ she explained calmly.
It is not difficult to understand that almost all the criminals and their female companions become ill with syphilis, and chronic gonorrhea is endemic – even in this age of penicillin.
There is a well-known classic expression: ‘Syphilis is not a disease but a misfortune.’ Here syphilis is not viewed as a cause for shame but is considered to be the prisoner’s luck rather than his misfortune. This is yet a further example of the notorious shift of values.
First, all cases of venereal disease must be treated, and every thug is aware of that. He knows he can ‘brake’ in the hospital and that he won’t be sent to some God-forsaken place but will live and be treated in relatively comfortable settlements where there are venereologists and specialists. This is so well known that even those criminals whom God has spared the third and fourth cross of the Wassermann reaction claim that they have venereal disease. They are also well aware that a negative laboratory result is not always reliable. Self-induced ulcers and false complaints are encountered along with real ulcers and genuine symptoms.
Venereal patients are kept in special treatment areas. At one time no work was done in these areas, but this system converted them into virtual resorts, a sort of mon repos. Later these ‘zones’ were set up in special mines and wood-felling areas, and the prisoners had to produce the normal work quotas, but received medication (Salvarsan) and a special diet.
In point of fact, however, relatively little work was demanded of the prisoners in these zones, and life there was considerably easier than in the mines.
Male venereal zones were always the source from which the hospital admitted the criminals’ young ‘wives’ who had been infected with syphilis through the anus. Almost all the professional criminals were homosexuals. When no women were at hand, they seduced and infected other men – most often by threatening them with a knife, less frequently in exchange for ‘rags’ (clothing) or bread.
No discussion of women in the criminal world is complete without a mention of the vast army of ‘Zoikas’, ‘Mankas’, ‘Dashkas’, and other creatures of the male sex who were christened with women’s names. Strangely enough the bearers of these feminine names responded to them as if they saw nothing unusual, shameful, or offensive in them.
It is not considered shameful to be kept by a prostitute, since it is assumed that the prostitute will value highly any contact with a professional criminal. Furthermore, young criminals who are just trying their wings are very much attracted by the prospect of becoming pimps:
They’ll be sentencing us soon,
March us off into the mines;
Working girls will sing a tune
And get a package through the lines.
This is a prison song; the ‘working girls’ are prostitutes.
There are occasions when vanity and self-pity, emotions that take the place of love, cause a woman in the world of crime to commit ‘unlawful acts’.
Of course, more is expected of a thief than of a prostitute. A female thief living with an overseer is, in the opinion of the zealots of thug jurisprudence, committing treason. The ‘bitch’s’ error might be pointed out to her by means of a beating, or they might simply cut her throat. Similar conduct on the part of a prostitute would be regarded as normal.
When a woman has such a run-in with the law, the question is not always resolved even-handedly, and much depends on the personal qualities of the person involved.
Tamara Tsulukidze, a twenty-year-old thief and former companion of an import mobster in Tiflis, took up with Grachov, the head of cultural activities. Grachov was thirty, a lieutenant, and a handsome bachelor with a gallant bearing.
Grachov had a second mistress in camp, a Polish woman by the name of Leszczewska, who was one of the famous ‘actresses’ of the camp theater. When the lieutenant took up with Tamara, she did not demand that he give up Leszczewska. The rakish Grachov thus lived simultaneously with two ‘wives’, showing a preference for the Muslim way of life. Being a man of experience, he tried to divide his attention equally between the two women and was successful in his efforts. Not only love but also its material manifestations were shared; each edible present was prepared in duplicate. It was the same with lipstick, ribbons, and perfume; both Leszczewska and Tsulukidze always received the same ribbons, the same bottles of perfume, the same scarves on the same day.
The impression this made was very touching. Moreover, Grachov was a handsome, clean-cut young man, and both Leszczewska and Tsulukidze (who lived in the same barracks) were ecstatic at their lover’s tactful behavior. Nevertheless, they did not become friends, and Leszczewska was secretly delighted when Tamara was called to task by the hospital mobsters.
One day Tamara fell ill and was hospitalized. That night the doors of the women’s ward opened, and an ambassador of the criminal world appeared on the threshold. He reminded Tamara of the property laws regarding women in the criminal world and instructed her to go to the surgical ward and carry out ‘the will of the sender’. The messenger claimed there were people here who knew the Tiflis mobster whose companion Tamara had been. Here in camp he was being replaced by Senka, ‘the Nose’. Tamara was to submit to his embraces.
Tamara grabbed a kitchen knife and rushed at the crippled thug. The attendants barely managed to save him. The man departed, threatening and cursing Tamara. Tamara checked out of the hospital the next morning.
There were several attempts – all of them unsuccessful – to return the prodigal daughter to the proud standards of the criminal world. Tamara was stabbed with a knife, but the wound was not serious. Her sentence ended, and she married an overseer – a man with a revolver – and the criminal world saw no more of her.
The blue-eyed Nastya Arxarova, a typist from the Kurgansk Oblast, was neither a prostitute nor a thief, but she voluntarily linked her fate to the criminal world.
Even as a child, Nastya had been surrounded by a suspicious respect, a sinister deference for the criminal world, whose figures seemed to have come from the pages of the detective novels she read. This respect, which Nastya had observed while still in the ‘free world’, was present in prison and in the camps as well – wherever there were criminals.
There was nothing mysterious about this; Nastya’s older brother was a well-known burglar in the Urals, and, since childhood, Nastya had bathed in the rays of his criminal glory. Without even noticing it, she found herself surrounded by criminals, became involved in their interests and affairs, and did not refuse to hide stolen goods for them. Her first three-month sentence angered and hardened her, and she became part of the criminal world. As long as she remained in her home town, the criminals were reluctant to declare their property rights to her for fear of her brother. Nastya’s ‘social’ position was more or less that of a thief; she had never been a prostitute and was sent as a thief on the usual long trips at the expense of the mob. She had no brother on these trips to protect her. On her first release from prison, the leader of a local mob in the first town she came to made her his wife and in the process infected her with gonorrhea. He was soon arrested and crooned a criminal parting song to her: ‘My buddy will take you over.’ Nastya didn’t stay long with the ‘buddy’, since he too was soon arrested, and Nastya’s next owner exercised his rights to her. Nastya found him physicall
y repulsive, because he slobbered constantly and was ill with some form of herpes. She attempted to use her brother’s name to defend herself, but it was pointed out to her that her brother had no right to violate the immortal rules of the criminal world. She was threatened with a knife, and her resistance ceased.
At the hospital, when ‘romance’ was called for, Nastya showed up meekly and often spent time in the punishment cells. She cried a lot – either because it was in her nature or because her own fate, the tragic fate of a twenty-year-old girl, terrified her.
Vostokov, an elderly doctor at the hospital, was touched by Nastya’s lot, even though she was only one of thousands in such a situation. He promised to help her get a job as a typist at the hospital if she would promise to change her way of life. ‘That is not in my power,’ Nastya answered him in her beautiful handwriting. ‘I cannot be saved. But if you wish to help me, buy me a pair of nylon stockings, the smallest size. Ready to do anything for you, Nastya Arxarova.’
The thief Sima Sosnovskaya was tattooed from her head to her feet. Her entire body was covered with amazing interwined sexual scenes of the most unusual sort. Only her face, neck, and arms below the elbow were free of tattoos. Sima had acquired fame in the hospital through a bold theft – she had stolen a gold watch from the wrist of a guard who had decided to exploit the attractive girl’s favorable disposition. Sima was of a much more peaceable nature than was Aglaya Demidova, or else the guard would have lain in the bushes until the Second Coming. She viewed the incident as an amusing adventure and considered that a gold watch was not too high a price for her favors. The guard nearly went crazy and, right up to the last minute, demanded that Sima return the watch. He searched her twice – quite unsuccessfully. The hospital was near, and the group of convicts being taken there was small; the guard couldn’t risk a scandal in the hospital. Sima remained in possession of the gold watch. It was not long before she had sold it for liquor, and all trace of the watch vanished.
Kolyma Tales Page 38