His girlfriend, too, is a Nazi. They met through one of the relevant websites, when he was on bail pending trial. They plan to get married.
The conversation is made all the more surreal by what’s going on around us. Every so often there’s a yell in accented Russian from one of our work-station colleagues: ‘Hey, Sasha – another box.’ Alexander carefully hands over a packed box, and himself requests, ‘More paper.’ There’s no doubt our co-workers can hear what we’re talking about, and now and again they throw in a good-natured comment.
Sasha, I ask, so what are you going to do with the immigrants? – Deport them.
And the economy? – We’ll nationalize it.
Who’s going to do all the work? – The Russians.
And head up the businesses? – Committed National Socialists.
But where are you going to find enough good specialists with National-Socialist ideas? – We’ll nurture them.
Economics, by the way, isn’t Sasha’s strong point, and after two or three hours of unhurried conversation he clearly begins to see that National-Socialist ideas on the economy are going nowhere. I reassure him with the thought that liberals welcome pretty much any experiment with socio-economic structures, offering as an example the Israeli kibbutz and recommending that they too try out their economic theories on small voluntary communities.
We then turn to a more contentious issue – that of nationality, or, more precisely, race. There is no common ground of understanding on this one.
Sasha, what if your granddaughter was black, do you mean you couldn’t love her? – I’m not going to have a black granddaughter!
But Sasha, what if it just happened like that? Who knows what the grandmother of your future son’s intended might have been? – I’m not going to have a black granddaughter! Okay. A dead end.
On the whole Sasha isn’t an obstinate person, but on this one emotions have evidently clouded his logic. Never mind, we’ll come back to it later.
I tackle the issue from another angle. I try to clarify his vision for the existence of a nation of whites surrounded by those of mixed race. It’s fairly quickly clear that he doesn’t have such a vision, and I’m treated to a discourse on Hitler’s successful conquest of Europe.
It’s worth noting the extent to which Hitler is idolized as a man, and the SS and Gestapo as organizations. I remind him about Hitler’s friendship with the Japanese – the ‘yellows’ (in Nazi terminology). This gives him pause, before he comes back with: ‘Well, they’re not completely yellow.’
I agree that this approach could be helpful. The Japanese and Chinese are not completely yellow; Africans and African-Americans aren’t completely black, and so on. We both laugh.
We move on to the Holocaust. ‘There was no Holocaust’ – Sasha is unshakeable. He’s read a book about the concentration camps; it said that the crematoria didn’t have the capacity to process that many bodies. The same thing with the gas chambers. And in general it just wasn’t ‘like that’ in the concentration camps.
Sasha, I say, I personally knew several concentration camp survivors. I met the first one in 1978 – I was fifteen, he was fifty, so it wasn’t as if he was losing his marbles. He came to my school, gave a talk. And the most recent of my concentration camp acquaintances – Tom Lantos – died not long ago. And they all say the same thing: it happened!
In prison you never cast doubt on first-hand testimony. It’s one of the worst insults. Sasha goes quiet. It’s difficult for him. I can understand that.
The National-Socialist community had given the kid a sense of security, of being part of a team with a defined role, a sense of being part of something bigger than himself. They worked out together, went to football matches together, took on other gangs of (often ethnic) youths together. And it was there, amongst ‘his own’, that he met the girl who will soon be his wife. What’s more, his comrades-in-arms from various cities even write to him in prison. He’s not forgotten.
And Hitler? What about Hitler? For my generation – Alexander’s parents’ generation – he’s an enemy of the human race. But for many of today’s sixteen-to-twenty-year-olds, he’s simply a historical figure, like Genghis Khan. And this is a problem only of the last few years: there are vanishingly few Nazis over the age of twenty-five.
A state that crushes society and stakes everything on the dehumanization of its people does resolve some of its ongoing political problems. Competition for power is weakened. Bureaucracy is able to take advantage of universal apathy and arbitrary political control. But ‘when a country turns too grey, the brown will always come out’ (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God). And so it has come to pass. And it has spattered our children with a vile, stinking slurry.
As for Sasha, we can still fight to keep him. We’re no worse than today’s Germans after all. And they’ve pretty much managed to deal with the problem there …
The Suicide
Tall, skinny, with sloping shoulders – the immediate impression was one of utter dejection. His story, though not an untypical litany of vicissitudes by prison standards, was also desperately sad.
He worked as a civil engineer. He’d been employed by a newly formed company, with responsibility for deliveries and the quality of construction – a good position and a decent salary. For eight months, while all the preliminary work was going on, everything went fine. Then his boss went on leave, and his deputy fell ill. Artyom (as our new cellmate was called) was asked to stand in for the bosses for a couple of weeks. At this point he became aware that nobody had ordered in the construction materials. Somewhat alarmed, he kept trying to contact the boss, but he was never in. His deputy was likewise unavailable. He went to the police, but they told him to get lost.
Shortly afterwards he started getting calls from anxious investors. Not only had the firm’s managers disappeared without trace, so too had eight million dollars.
The very same policeman who had refused to deal with his earlier allegation now demanded a million roubles, or else he’d make sure the buck stopped with Artyom. Clearly he’d kept that promise. Artyom got eight years. His car and many of his possessions were confiscated ‘to pay for the lawsuit’. His wife came to see him only once. The conversation didn’t exactly flow.
You feel sorry for the guy, but in this place every other person has exactly the same story. You simply don’t have the energy or time to listen to other people’s woes. Every day there are court hearings, another stack of papers you have to read through. You just don’t have the time for him! And yet he doesn’t seem to understand this. He goes around whining on about how hopeless he feels, how the judge couldn’t care less whether he was guilty or not, how his children are too ashamed to look him in the eye because ‘Dad’s a swindler who robbed people’, how the truth is irrelevant if you haven’t the money for a bribe …
Come on, we all know this already, and plenty more besides! It’s not exactly earth-shattering news. Your own misery is always greater, obviously, but what’s that got to do with anyone else?! Anyone will lend you a hand with the everyday stuff, but as for the mental anguish – sorry, pal, you just have to learn to deal with that yourself …
Prison has taught me to sleep lightly, so the throaty gurgling in the toilets wakes me instantly. I jump up, fling myself at the door, yank at it so that it bursts open – oh woe!
The light-bulb on the toilet wall is protected by a heavy-duty grille, some two and a half to three metres above the floor. Attached to this grille I see a cord made out of a torn bed-sheet, and hanging from the cord – Artyom. By the look of it, he’s clambered on to the toilet and jumped off, but the cord has stretched a bit and so his feet – the very tips of his toes – are just touching the ground as the rope bounces up and down.
He’s wheezing, clearly no longer aware of what’s happening. I dash towards him and grab him, lifting him up with one hand and attempting to pull the cord off with the other. I can’t do it. You wouldn’t think he’d be that heavy but he’s like a dead
weight and I just can’t lift him.
Grabbing him with both hands I just manage to hoist him up a little so that he can breathe, and I then call in a hoarse whisper (so that security don’t come running): ‘Guys, help me!’
This minute locked in an embrace with a semi-corpse feels like one of the longest in my life.
At last the others wake up, rush over and together we pull him out of the noose. We lay him down, press down on his chest – he starts to breathe, coughs, throws up. Okay, he’s alive.
In the morning we give him a scarf to wrap around his neck, but the screws inevitably notice the circular bruise and soon Artyom is summoned ‘with his belongings’.
The administration has no truck with suicides. They mess up the statistics. A failed attempt means the cooler, the ‘attempted suicide’ mark on your chest, and no early parole.
As for the rest of us, we avoided each other’s eyes, ashamed. After all, we could have known that he was on the edge, but we chose to ignore it. Indifference is a terrible sin. It’s only one short step away from the professional fish-eyed look of the unscrupulous judge who believes that the happiness of his own family is justification enough for any such ‘Artyoms’.
Can we really be at peace with ourselves, pretending that someone else’s fate is no concern of ours? How long can a country survive when indifference becomes the norm?
The time of reckoning always comes eventually.
The Rat
Small and balding, with dark, almost jet-black eyes, agile but somehow always on edge, N. N. found a permanent berth in the detachment’s kitchen, officially called the ‘mess room’.
It’s here that you can come after work to have some tea and heat up a simple sandwich in the microwave – if there’s anything to make one with. Though, in fact, a piece of bread from the canteen, slightly heated up, isn’t bad on its own.
Then there are those who have it rather better: regular parcels, the chance to purchase more than the usual pitiful amount allowed from the shop. Anything is possible if you have a profession, if you work, if your family hasn’t forgotten about you.
And of course, although it’s officially forbidden, ‘resources’ get shared around. Things are shared with a friend, or the person sitting next to you at the table or sleeping in the adjacent bunk; or else you get your laundry done or something mended in exchange for food.
Working in the kitchen isn’t the most prestigious job but it pays. You wipe the tables, fetch the boiling water, wash the dishes, cut the sausage. And the many other things people don’t want to do after a trying day. And in return people will always ask you to share a cup of tea, give you some sweets or sugar, or cut you a piece of the sausage they’ve received from home.
In fact most of the food is kept right here under the control of N. N., whose job it is to remember what belongs to whom, where it is, and whose stuff is kept with whose, so that no one can make off with somebody else’s by mistake. So when I find myself being treated to my own coffee, which I immediately recognize by its taste, I’m a little surprised.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘N. N. gave it to me, or to be precise swapped it for some fags. Why?’
‘It’s my coffee, and I haven’t shared it with anyone yet.’
‘I smell a rat …’
Accusing someone of stealing from fellow inmates is, according to prison tradition, one of the most serious accusations you can make. Being labelled a ‘rat’ is not a situation you ever want to find yourself in. And the reason is clear: this is an enclosed group of men, there’s a lot of pent-up aggression around. Mutual suspicion quickly leads to bitter conflict. The enquiry is swift and exhaustive.
The suspect’s locker is broken open. The container found in the locker is carefully compared with the one I bring out of my bag. There can be no doubt. All his personal stuff gets checked out. There’s a pile – literally a pile – of food in there. It all gets laid out for people to see and recover what belongs to them – this doesn’t take long.
A lot of terse remarks.
‘I was wondering where that had got to.’
‘There, you see, you shouldn’t have picked on me after all …’
The only item that’s not found is a very conspicuous box of ‘Moscow’ sweets given to someone by his wife and now, as a result of this ‘inspection’, found to be missing from his bag. Yet another rat?!
A couple of hours later N. N. is summoned, with his ‘belongings’. He’s getting transferred to another detachment. The administration has its own informers and its own understanding of the risks of leaving a rat among an irate ‘community’. A pretty acute understanding, in fact.
There’s one final search before he’s transferred. Lo and behold – the Moscow sweets. Sewn into the sleeve of his jacket!
When did he manage to do that? We just keep silent and exchange a few looks.
That evening we get into a heated discussion: why did he need all that stuff? He couldn’t have eaten it. It was obviously going to be discovered sooner or later. And it’s not as if he was hungry – everyone was always sharing things with him. No one refused when he asked. Was he a klepto? Didn’t seem to be. It was a mystery …
On the other hand, when you think about the way things are in our country now, you come across this type of mystery all the time. The pilfering just keeps on going. People buy islands and vast impersonal villas, they build dozens of palaces and fleets of yachts, they stuff their garages full of expensive cars they can’t drive anywhere, and their coffers with jewellery they’re probably too ashamed to wear. It’s as if they intend to live for ever. As if they don’t understand that you can’t hide all this stuff or justify it on any salary.
Kleptomania then?
Or do they get a bogus sense of stability from accumulating such a vast quantity of things?
Perhaps they’re simply fools? More foolish still is the idea that ‘this lot have already stolen just about everything, so better to keep the devil we know!’
You wouldn’t hear this said in the camp barracks. Here people know for sure that a rat won’t stop, you have to deal with him, humanely or not.
It’s very strange to expect anything positive to come from ‘stability’, when the entire political regime is gradually turning into a nest of greedy, vile rats.
The Father
He was the quarantine overseer. There’s a separate building where all new arrivals are quarantined for the first week or two to check for any infectious diseases and to find out ‘what makes them tick’. From here they then get assigned to a particular detachment. And, in fact, how your life works out in prison can pretty much hinge on the results of the quarantine inspection. So they tend to make only serious, reliable people overseers. I might add that there is also something called ‘red quarantine’, but that’s another discussion entirely, and probably best conducted with a criminal investigation team. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid this experience.
He introduced himself as Konstantin. Older than many fellow lags, well over forty, thick-set and with a calm look in his almost jet-black eyes. We shook hands. It can get pretty boring in the quarantine block – most of the detainees they bring in are young. We gradually got talking.
Konstantin was a professional driver, but he’d spent his whole life working with sheep. He’d been tending the flocks at the local state farm. These flocks, some 9,000 strong, belonged to the state. Konstantin had been selling lambs on the side. When they caught up with him, he admitted everything. The loss was calculated at a million roubles, and he was offered the chance to repay it – but he refused. He got nine years. He had already done six and was getting ready for conditional release on parole.
‘They’ve told me they’re going to let me out.’
‘So, was it worth it?’ I asked.
‘Of course’ – not a moment’s doubt. ‘My daughter’s now at school in St Petersburg. A straight-A student. Where would she have gone otherwise? To work at the uranium-enrichment plant
? No way! My wife and I are happy for her.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘They’ll take me on as a driver again, I was promised. They know that I won’t touch anyone else’s stuff, everything’s privatized now, the owners are locals, our people. You don’t steal from your own, that’s about as low as it gets.’
‘What about going to St Petersburg, to your daughter?’
‘How would my wife and I do that? We don’t have that kind of money, anyway it’s too late.’
We sit there drinking our tea. Two men no longer young, who have both made a choice to go to prison. Loved ones are waiting for us at home, and we’re here, and it’s our decision. Was it the right one – who knows? I’m certainly not the one to judge Konstantin …
The Addict
There was something totally dejected about him. Tall, nearly two metres in height, skinny and stooping, his nose badly broken, with small eyes, and huge swollen hands on long arms – hands that you couldn’t fail to notice immediately – Oleg was always to be found standing on the first floor of the barracks.
In fact, that’s what everyone called him – ‘First Floor’.
‘Hey, First Floor, where’s Abdulayev? They’re looking for him!’
‘First, the inspector’s coming. Let everybody know!’
‘Tell the supply officer to come over, will you, First …’
And so it would continue, all day long. The duty orderly’s assistant, a human walkie-talkie …
Things had been a bit different before, however. The first-floor position had been occupied by a professional grass, who had no compunction in planting a prohibited item (like a shank, a homemade knife) in the bedside table of anyone who crossed his path – and then tipping off the detention officer that he might want to do a ‘thorough inspection’.
My Fellow Prisoners Page 5