But then, what sort of article could have covered the refusing of American presents? And that wasn’t the only thing. There was more. In concluding the case against Kipreev, the investigator said: ‘He said that Kolyma was Auschwitz without the ovens.’
Kipreev accepted his new sentence calmly. He was aware of the likely consequences when he refused the American presents. Nevertheless, he did take certain measures to ensure his personal safety. These measures consisted of asking a friend to write to his wife on the mainland to tell her that he had died. Second, he himself gave up writing letters.
The engineer was removed from the factory and sent to hard labor. The war was soon over, and the system of camps became even more complex. As a persistent offender, Kipreev knew he would be sent to a secret camp with no address – merely a number.
The engineer fell ill and ended up in the central prison hospital. There was a compelling need for Kipreev’s skills there: an X-ray machine had to be assembled from old machine parts and junk. The chief physician, whose name was ‘Doctor’, promised to get Kipreev released or at least to get his sentence shortened. Engineer Kipreev had little faith in such promises, because he was classified as a patient, and special work credit could be received only by staff employees of the hospital. Still, it was tempting to believe in this promise, and the X-ray lab was not the gold-mine.
It was here that we learned of Hiroshima.
‘That’s the bomb we were working on in Kharkov.’
‘That’s why Forrestal* committed suicide. He couldn’t bear all those telegrams.’
‘Do you understand why? It’s a very hard thing for a Western intellectual to make the decision to drop the bomb. Psychic depression, insanity, and suicide is the price that the Western intellectual pays for decisions like that. A Russian Forrestal wouldn’t have lost his mind.’
‘How many good people have you met in your life? I mean real people, the kind you want to imitate and serve.’
‘Let me think: Miller, the engineer arrested for sabotage, and maybe five others.’
‘That’s a lot.’
The General Assembly signed the agreement on genocide.
‘Genocide? Is that something they serve for dinner?’
We signed the convention. Of course, 1937 was not genocide. It was the destruction of the enemies of the people. There was no reason not to sign the convention.
‘They’re really tightening the screws. We cannot be silent. It’s just like the sentence in the child’s primer: “We are not slaves; no one’s slaves are we.” We have to do something, if only to demonstrate to ourselves that we are still people.’
‘The only thing you can demonstrate to yourself is your own stupidity. To live, to survive – that’s the task at hand. We mustn’t stumble. Life is more serious than you think.’
Mirrors do not preserve memories. It is difficult to call the object that I keep hidden in my suitcase a mirror. It is a piece of glass that looks like the surface of some muddy river. The river has been muddied and will stay dirty for ever, because it has remembered something important, something eternally important. It can no longer be the crystal, transparent flow of water that is clear right down to its bed. The mirror is muddied and no longer reflects anything. But once the glass was a real mirror – a present unselfishly given that I carried with me through two decades of camp life, through civilian life that differed little from the camps, and everything that followed the twentieth party congress, when Khruschev denounced Stalin.
The mirror that Kipreev gave me was not part of any business scheme on his part. It was an experiment conducted in the darkness of the X-ray room. I made a wooden frame for this piece of mirror. That is, I ordered it; I didn’t make it myself. The frame is still in one piece. It was made by a Latvian carpenter who was a patient recovering in the hospital. He made it in exchange for a ration of bread. At that time I could permit myself to give up a ration of bread for such a purely personal, totally frivolous wish.
I am holding the mirror in front of me right now. The frame is crudely made, painted with the oil-paint used for floors; they were renovating the hospital, and the carpenter asked for a smidgen of paint. Later I shellacked the frame, but the shellac wore off long ago. You can’t see anything in the mirror any more, but I used to shave before it at Oimyakon, and all the civilian employees envied me. They envied me until 1953 when some civilian, some smart civilian, sent a package of cheap mirrors to the village. These tiny mirrors – some round and some square – should have cost a few kopecks, but they were sold for sums reminiscent of the prices paid for electric light-bulbs. Nevertheless, everyone withdrew his money from his savings account and bought one. The mirrors were sold in a day, in an hour. After that, my home-made mirror ceased to be the envy of my guests.
I keep the mirror with me. It is not an amulet. I don’t know whether it brings luck. Perhaps the mirror attracts and reflects rays of evil, keeping me from dissolving in the human stream, where no one except me knows Kolyma and the engineer, Kipreev.
Kipreev was indifferent to his surroundings. A thief, a hardened criminal with a modicum of education, was invited by the administration to learn the secrets of the X-ray laboratory. It is always hard to tell if the criminals in camp are using their own real names, but this one called himself Rogov, and he was studying under Kipreev’s tutelage. The hope was that he would learn to pull the right levers at the right time.
The administration had big plans, and they certainly weren’t terribly concerned about Rogov, the criminal. Nevertheless, Rogov ensconced himself in the lab together with Kipreev, and watched him, reported on his actions, and participated in this governmental function as a proletarian friend of the people. He was constantly informing and made conversation and visits impossible. Even if he didn’t interfere, he was constantly spying and was a model of vigilance.
This was the primary intent of the administration. Kipreev was to prepare his own replacement – from the criminal world. As soon as Rogov acquired the necessary skills, he would have a lifelong profession, and Kipreev would be sent to Berlag, a nameless camp identified only by number and intended for recidivists.
Kipreev realized all of this, but he had no intention of opposing his fate. He instructed Rogov without any concern for himself.
Kipreev was lucky in that Rogov was a poor student. Like any common criminal, Rogov knew what was most important – that the administration would not forget the criminal element under any circumstances. He was an inattentive student. Nevertheless, his hour came, and Rogov declared that he could do the job, and Kipreev was sent off to a numbered camp. But the X-ray lab somehow broke down, and the doctors had Kipreev returned to the hospital. Once more the lab began to function.
It was about this time that Kipreev began experimenting with the optic blind.
The dictionary of foreign words published in 1964 defines the ‘blind’ as follows: ‘a diaphragm (a shutter with variable-size opening) which is used in photography, microscopy, and fluoroscopy.’
Twenty years earlier the word ‘blind’ was not listed in the dictionary of foreign words. It is a creation of the war period, an invention having to do with electron microscopes.
Somewhere Kipreev found a torn sheet from a technical journal, and the blind was used in the X-ray laboratory in the convict hospital on the left bank of the Kolyma River.
The blind was Kipreev’s pride and joy – his hope, albeit a weak hope. A report was given at a medical conference and also sent to Moscow. There was no response.
‘Can you make a mirror?’
‘Of course.’
‘A full-length mirror?’
‘Any kind you like, as long as I have the silver for it.’
‘Will silver spoons do?’
‘They’ll be fine.’
Thick glass intended for the desks of senior bureaucrats was requisitioned from the warehouse and brought to the X-ray laboratory.
The first experiment was unsuccessful, and Kipreev fell into a rage an
d broke the mirror with a hammer. One of the fragments became my mirror – a present from Kipreev.
On the second occasion everything worked out successfully, and the bureaucrat realized his dream – a full-length mirror.
It never occurred to the bureaucrat to thank Kipreev. Whatever for? Even a literate slave ought to be grateful for the privilege of occupying a hospital bed. If the blind had attracted the attention of the higher-ups, the bureaucrat would have received a letter of commendation, nothing more. Now, the mirror – that was something real. But the blind was a very nebulous thing. Kipreev was in total agreement with his boss.
But falling asleep at night on his cot in the corner of the lab and waiting for the latest woman to leave the embraces of his pupil, assistant and informer, Kipreev could not believe either himself or Kolyma. The blind was not a joke. It was a technical feat. But neither Moscow nor Magadan was in the least interested in engineer Kipreev’s invention.
In camp, letters are not answered, nor are reminders of unanswered letters appreciated. The prisoner has to wait – for luck, an accidental meeting.
All this was wearing on the nerves – assuming they were still whole, untorn, and capable of being worn out.
Hope always shackles the convict. Hope is slavery. A man who hopes for something alters his conduct and is more frequently dishonest than a man who has ceased to hope. As long as the engineer waited for a decision on the damned blind, he kept his mouth shut, ignoring all the appropriate and inappropriate jokes that his immediate superior permitted himself – not to mention those of his own assistant who was only waiting for the hour and the day when he could take over. Rogov had even learned to make mirrors, so he was guaranteed a ‘rake-off’.
Everyone knew about the blind, and everyone joked about Kipreev – including the pharmacist Kruglyak, who ran the Party organization at the hospital. This heavy-faced man was not a bad sort, but he had a bad temper, and – mainly – he had been taught that a prisoner is scum. As for this Kipreev… The pharmacist had come to the hospital only recently, and he did not know the history of the electric light-bulbs. He never gave any thought to the difficulties of assembling an X-ray laboratory in the taiga, in the Far North.
As the pharmacist phrased it in the slang of the criminal world that he had recently acquired, Kipreev’s invention was a ‘dodge’.
Kruglyak sneered at Kipreev in the procedure room of the surgical ward. The engineer grabbed a stool and was about to strike the Party secretary, but the stool was ripped from his hands, and he was led away to the ward.
Kipreev either would have been shot or sent to a penal mine, a so-called special zone, which is worse than being shot. He had many friends at the hospital, however, and not just because of his mirrors. The affair of the electric light-bulbs was well-known and recent. People wanted to help him. But this was Point 8 of Article 58 – terrorist activities.
The women doctors went to the head of the hospital, Vinokurov. Vinokurov had no use for Kruglyak. Moreover, he valued Kipreev and he was expecting a response to his report on the blind. And, mainly, he was not a vicious person. He was an official who didn’t use his position to do evil. A careerist who feathered his own bed, Vinokurov did not go out of his way to help anyone, but he did not wish them evil either.
‘All right, I won’t forward the papers to the prosecutor’s office under one condition,’ Vinokurov said. ‘Provided there isn’t any report from the victim, Kruglyak. If he submits a report, the matter will go to trial. And a penal mine is the least Kipreev can get.’
Kruglyak’s male friends spoke to him.
‘Don’t you understand that he’ll be shot? He has none of the rights that we have.’
‘He raised his hand at me.’
‘He didn’t raise his hand, no one saw that. Now if I had a disagreement with you, I’d let you have it in the snout after two words. Don’t you ever quit?’
Kruglyak was not really a bad person, and he certainly wouldn’t do as a bigwig in Kolyma. He agreed not to send in a report.
Kipreev remained in the hospital. A month passed, and Major-General Derevyanko arrived. He was second-in-charge to the chief of Far Eastern Construction, and he was the supreme authority for the prisoners.
High-placed officials liked to stop at the hospital. They could always find quarters, and there was no shortage of food, liquor, and relaxation.
Major-General Derevyanko donned a white coat and strolled from one ward to another to stretch his legs before dinner. The major-general was in a good mood, and Vinokurov decided to take a chance.
‘I have a prisoner here who has performed an important service for the state.’
‘What sort of service is that?’
The head of the hospital explained roughly what a blind was.
‘I want to request that he be granted an early release.’
The major-general asked about the prisoner’s background, and when he heard the answer, he grunted.
‘The only thing that I can tell you,’ the major-general said, ‘is that you should forget about any blinds, and send this engineer… Korneev…’
‘Kipreev, sir.’
‘That’s right, Kipreev. Ship him off to where his papers say he should be.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A week later Kipreev was sent off, and in another week the X-ray machine broke down, so that he had to be recalled to the hospital.
It was no joking matter now, and Vinokurov lived in fear of the major-general’s anger. He would never believe that the X-ray machine had broken down. Kipreev’s papers were again prepared for him to be sent off, but he fell ill and remained.
It was now utterly impossible for him to return to the X-ray laboratory. He realized this quite clearly.
Kipreev had mastoiditis; he had picked up the inflammation from sleeping on a camp cot. His condition was critical, but no one wanted to believe his temperature or the reports of the doctors. Vinokurov raged and demanded that the operation be performed as soon as possible.
The hospital’s best surgeons prepared to perform Kipreev’s mastoidectomy. The surgeon, Braude, was virtually a specialist in mastoidectomies. There were more than enough colds in Kolyma, and Braude had had the experience of performing hundreds of such operations. But Braude was only the assistant. Novikov, a well-known otolaryngologist and a student of Volchek, had worked for Far Eastern Construction for many years, and she was to perform the operation. Novikov had never been a prisoner nor was she after the hardship pay (commonly referred to as ‘the long ruble’), but there, in Kolyma, she was not condemned for her entrenched alcoholism. After her husband’s death, this talented and beautiful woman had wandered for years about the Far North. She would begin things brilliantly but then would lose control for weeks on end.
Novikov was about fifty, and there was no one more qualified than she. At this moment she was dead drunk, but she was coming out of it, and the head of the hospital allowed Kipreev’s operation to be held up for a few days.
Novikov sobered up, her hands stopped shaking, and she performed Kipreev’s operation brilliantly. It was a parting gift, a purely medical gift to her former X-ray technician. Braude assisted her, and Kipreev recuperated in the hospital.
Kipreev realized that there was nothing left to hope for and that he would not be kept in the hospital for even one extra hour.
A numbered camp waited for him, where convicts walked in rows of five, elbow to elbow, with thirty dogs surrounding a column of prisoners.
Even in this hopeless state Kipreev did not betray himself. The head of the ward prescribed a special diet for the convict-engineer recovering from a mastoidectomy, a serious operation. Kipreev declared that there were many patients more seriously ill than he among the ward’s three hundred patients and that they had a greater right to a special diet.
And they took Kipreev away.
For fifteen years I searched for engineer Kipreev and finally dedicated a play to his memory – an effective way of guaranteeing a man’s
involvement with the nether world.
But it was not enough to write a play about Kipreev and dedicate it to his memory. A woman friend of mine was sharing an apartment in the center of Moscow, and it wasn’t until she got a new neighbor through an ad in the paper that I finally found Kipreev.
The new woman came out of her room to become acquainted with her neighbors and saw the play dedicated to Kipreev. She picked it up: ‘The initials are the same as those of a friend of mine. But he’s not in Kolyma; he’s in a different place.’ My friend phoned me. I refused to continue the conversation. It was an error. Besides, in the play the hero is a doctor. Kipreev was a physical engineer.
‘That’s right, a physical engineer.’
I got dressed and went to see my friend’s new neighbor.
Fate weaves complex patterns. Why? Why did the will of fate have to be so clearly demonstrated by this series of coincidences? We seek each other little, but fate takes our lives in her hands.
Engineer Kipreev was alive in the Far North. He had been released ten years earlier. Before that, he had been brought to Moscow and had worked in secret camps. When he was released, he returned to the North. He wanted to remain there until he reached pension age.
Engineer Kipreev and I met.
‘I’ll never be a scientist – just an ordinary engineer. How could I return, stripped of all my rights and ignorant of what has happened in my field? The people I studied with are all laureates of various prizes.’
‘But that’s nonsense!’
‘No, it’s not nonsense. I breathe easier in the North. And I’ll continue breathing easier right up to my pension.’
Mister Popp’s Visit
Mr Popp was director of an American firm that was installing gasholders in the initial construction phase of the Berezniki Chemical Factory. It was a large order, the work was going well, and the vice-president considered it essential to be present in person when the equipment was to be turned over to its new owners.
Kolyma Tales Page 42