“It’s a case of mistaken identity and false accusations of criminal conspirators,” I said. “The efficient Soviet justice system will ferret out the truth and I will be released and returned to my former role as a valuable asset to our socialist society.”
“Good, good, that’s a nice speech for the investigator,” the Gypsy said. “And your friend is right.” He nodded at Ivan, who had turned to give another inmate the benefit of his long years in the justice system. “Five years. It is probably worth ten, but because of your tender age and lack of a prior record, you’ll get off with a lesser sentence, unless you annoy the investigator.”
“And you, comrade? What is the false accusation against you?”
“Oh, it’s not false at all. I killed my lover, my mistress. There are, however, extenuating circumstances. I was drunk, so drunk that I had passed out. When I awoke later, I started drinking again. While in that state, I discovered that my lover had stolen my papakha and sold it. Comrade, can you imagine being in Leningrad in the winter without a fur hat? I beat her to death while under the influence of the vodka and the sudden rage that erupted when I discovered the theft.”
“Ah,” I nodded knowingly. I was already becoming an expert on the justice system. “So the crime lacks the need for an ‘exceptional measure of punishment’ that often is prescribed when there is a killing.” The exceptional measure referred to was the death penalty. In the Soviet system that constituted a single shot to the head, often given by a “volunteer.”
“Exactly so,” he said. “Because there is a lack of exceptional measure, I am criminally ill. I can be cured, re-educated and returned to society as a useful member.”
A guard appeared at the bars of the cell and called out, “Nicholaus Pedrovich Cutter.”
“Yes, comrade.”
“Your turn to see the investigator.”
I gave my lit cigarette to Ivan and followed the guard, ideas buzzing in my head. This was the critical interview. Unlike the system in my father’s homeland in Britain, where common law developed and was exported to America, neither the Soviet Union nor the rest of continental Europe used a jury system, nor were criminal proceedings battles between gladiatorial lawyers.
Instead, before a defense attorney entered the picture, a criminal case was thoroughly investigated, including questioning of the defendant by an investigator or even by the “procurator,” what the prosecutor was called in the Soviet system. A defendant did not have a right to refuse to answer questions.
When the matter was brought to trial, the defendant was given a defense attorney, who usually received a copy of the investigation file just before the trial was to start. The trial was held before a judge and two lay “assessors.” These assessors were common citizens who were nominated by the factory or other entity they worked for to serve two weeks a year. While in theory the two assessors had a right to vote against the sitting judge’s decision, in practice it was the judge who found guilt or innocence and the assessors merely rubber-stamped the judge’s decision.
However, even though the judge had the final say, in actuality the matter was usually decided through the investigation process. Everybody even remotely concerned with the case was questioned and allowed not only to state what they said or heard, but what they thought or believed. A defendant was not expected to deny guilt but to admit it and be given the opportunity to explain why he committed the offense. The chief investigator’s final report and conclusions were generally accepted as the case would be decided.
The objective was that no innocent person would be brought to trial and no guilty person would escape punishment. Bottom line, rather than a trial being a search for truth, as it was under the common-law system, only guilty people were put on trial in the Soviet Union.
One could be convicted of a crime even if there were no witnesses or physical evidence that a crime had been committed. “Conviction by analogy” and being a “social danger” were classes of crime that were extremely vague and gave the authorities great leeway in punishing persons who they could not actually prove committed a precise, physical act. There were also secret crimes, ones not published in statutes but known only to a specific set of investigators, procurators and judges.
While I could come up with many objections to the reliability of the Soviet justice system, in this particular case I was guilty and my main concern was how to use the system to avoid being justly punished. The theft, counterfeiting and marketing of perfume were just a few of the crimes I had committed since leaving the orphanage at the age of fifteen and hanging out on the streets as a nonproductive member of society.
Cured, re-educated and returned to society as a useful member. The phrase used by the Gypsy ran around my head like a dog chasing its tail. It was the key I needed.
Unlike the British-American system, the Soviet system did not focus on the crime but on the defendant. Everything about the defendant, from the day he was born to the day of the crime, was considered important. Criminal acts, they believed, were caused by mental illness, and if the defendant could be “cured” of the illness and “re-educated” through medical treatment, he could be returned to society as a useful member.
It was a no-brainer. I could either go off to Siberia for five years, aging two or three years for every year I spent on the frozen tundra, or I could get “treatment” while confined in a mental facility.
There were rumors that the “mental illness” theory about crime had been grossly misused by the authorities, that intellectuals and dissenters who objected to the Soviet political system were thrown into mental hospitals and declared mentally ill, but I was more worried about my tender skin than the theory and practice of Communism.
I had it—I needed to be taught a trade that would benefit Soviet society. I was a poor orphan who never had a chance. I could not earn an honest living because I had no training. If I was sent, say, to a tractor factory, and learned how to make tractors, I would benefit the heroic farmers of our nation.
“It’s the task of the justice system to ‘remake’ me into a good citizen,” I said.
“You will get what you deserve,” the guard said.
That was the last thing I wanted.
I was running the spiel through my mind when I was led into an interrogation room. A cold fist grabbed my heart when I saw the investigator. I had hoped for one of the women investigators, one I could bring to tears with my poor orphan story as I laid my head against her breasts.
But Comrade Chief Investigator Nevski was a bastard. He was snake-eyes, the black marble, a bad draw at cards. It wasn’t just bad luck to have him assigned as the investigator on your case, it was the worst luck. He was not the clever detective Porfiry Pedrovich, who used psychology to get Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov to confess, nor the relentless Javert who pursued Jean Valjean even into the sewers of Paris in Hugo’s Les Misérables.
Nevski had none of the finesse of these fictional detectives. Rather, he had the mentality of an ox. The government put a yoke on him and sent him down a straight line to plow—and that is what he did, plowing through crime and criminals without ever looking right or left.
Rumor among the criminal milieu of Leningrad was that Nevski totally and completely lacked imagination, that his head was incapable of handling more than one thought at a time, and that he even slept sitting up with his eyes open because he had no need for rest. The word also was that he began his services with the police by cleaning toilets. It goes without saying, no one cleaned toilets as well as Nevski did.
I didn’t know which, if any, of the observations were true, but I did know that the bastard had a thick dossier on me and had been waiting patiently for me to trip up so he could hang me by my heels on the spokes of Soviet justice.
He had his head down, light reflecting on his close-shaven skull, when I walked in. He was reading something, my dossier no doubt.
I waited a minute, shifting my weight from one foot to another and cleared my throat. “Comrade—”
“Shut up,” he spoke without looking up.
My mind reeled. The poor orphan story was my only defense. I had used it repeatedly over the years. It wouldn’t work on Nevski, but at the trial, the defendant is given the last word so he could explain his acts and throw himself on the mercy of the court. I still had an opportunity. If I were lucky enough to get a female judge …
Nevski finally looked up at me. His eyes were totally blank.
“You have a disease.”
My jaw dropped. “I do?”
“A social disease, one that affects everyone you come into contact with. Do you know what Lenin said about crime?”
I shifted uncomfortably on my feet. “He said many things.”
“He said that the smallest illegality, the tiniest violation of the legal order, is a crack in our armor that is used by enemies of the Soviet workers to destroy all they have toiled for. Do you recall learning that in school?”
“Yes, Comrade Investigator.”
“You’re a liar. You never went to school. You lived on the streets where you became infected by the disease of criminality.”
“I’m a poor orphan—”
“Hundreds of thousands of children were left orphaned by the Great Patriotic War. Only a few became career criminals. And only a few of those organized gangs. Only one of those few organized a gang to rob, steal and exploit the Soviet economy. That one person is you.”
Nevski had more imagination that I realized. I was nowhere near the gang king he imagined me to be. He was also a great judge of character.
He pointed his finger at me, a fat finger that looked like the barrel of a pistol aimed between my eyes. “It’s in your blood. Your father was a bourgeois traitor to the Soviet state.”
“My father was a hero who fought for socialism on the streets when you were cleaning shit off of toilet seats.”
A red flush began at his bull neck and worked its way up his face. I was a tough kid, I could handle the Gypsy, but Nevski was built much more like a T-34 tank than the barracks matron. He could rip off my arms and legs and beat me with the bloody stumps.
My knees began to shake. I was not only in imminent danger of getting beaten, but I had probably talked myself into ten years instead of the five that the knowledgeable Ivan predicted.
The door opened behind me. A secretary popped her head in.
“The official is here from the British Consulate.”
17
John Byrd, the consulate representative, had a long, arched nose, unhealthy blotches on his skin, and as far as I was concerned, the wings of an angel.
“You are a British citizen, young man.”
I sat quietly and listened without opening my mouth, a not-very-common experience for me.
“Your grandfather, Charles Lawwood Cutter, died three years ago. In his will, he left funds to conduct an investigation to find you. His son died nearly ten years ago, and the last word he had from your mother was news of your father’s death. Following the war, he made inquiries that revealed that your mother had died during the war and that you ended up at an orphanage. However, it was discovered that you left the orphanage—”
“Escaped,” Nevski said, “to take to the streets as a criminal.”
“Yes, well, as I was saying, it took considerable time to track you down. It was the very fact that you had incurred a police record that resulted in our being able to locate you.”
“Does that mean I get an inheritance?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. Your grandfather was a man of some means, but far from wealthy. His first wife, your grandmother, the mother of your own father, passed away and he remarried. That marriage produced a daughter, Sarah, who is your aunt, half-blood aunt technically. I suppose because there was thought to be little likelihood that you survived the war or would ever be found, funds were set aside to try and locate you but there is no legacy.”
I sighed and looked over at Nevski. I couldn’t read anything in his eyes. I grinned at him. “I guess we are right back where we were a few minutes ago when you were questioning me.”
“Not exactly,” Mr. Byrd said. “As I said, you are a British citizen. While technically the Soviet state could also claim you as its own, or detain you in regard to certain acts”—he coughed politely into his hand—“because of your youth and the tragic circumstances of having lost both parents, arrangements have been made to have you rejoin your last living relative, your aunt.”
My jaw dropped for the second time that day.
“I’m going to Britain?”
“No, at least not permanently. Your aunt lives in a colony. Have you ever heard of British Honduras?”
I shook my head.
I heard a strange noise beside me. It was Nevski. He was shaking. His face had gone beet-red. I stared at him. He looked like the top was going to blow off his head, a volcano about to erupt. I realized that he was convulsed with laughter and trying to control it.
He leaned toward me and shot spittle at me as he laughed and choked.
“Fuck your mother! You’re going to Devil’s Island!”
18
Aboard the Queen Elizabeth, North Atlantic, 1949
The smell of money. That was the difference between the communists and the capitalists. The stacks of rubles Sergi the Rat counted back in Leningrad smelled of piss, sweat and bureaucracy. The smell of money in the West was the sensuous scent of Chanel No. 5, the masculine power of a Montecristo cigar from Cuba, a bubbling Chateâu-Thierry champagne and an aged Charente brandy. Born and raised under the dreary austerity of communism, I was hopelessly seduced by the smell of money and the sexual opulence of the West as I experienced the swish of shapely legs in silk stockings and the dynamic clout radiating from men in black tuxedos.
Walking down the ship’s deck, stunned by the opulence, I realized that I was stuck on this earth and that there were two types of people on it—the ones with and the ones without. My father had talked about the “haves” and “have nots” as if being poor was a privilege. He was wrong. He had lost his life because he lacked two necessities—power and influence.
And having or being without had nothing to do with the difference between communism and capitalism. The Soviet Union was supposed to be a land of equals, but I knew that a privileged few lived lives of luxury while the general masses stood in long lines and worked long hours for basics.
I saw my mother die of starvation while fat-cat apparatchiks with power and influence ate well.
I was never going to be without again.
I was going to get everything those rich people had.
And more.
* * *
Six days before boarding the great ship Queen Elizabeth, I sailed out of Leningrad on a freighter flying the Union Jack, sharing a cabin with the ship’s oiler. The ship delivered fine machine parts to the Soviets and took on a load of fifty kilo gunny sacks of potatoes. Other than a few conversations with Mr. Byrd, aboard the ship was the first time I’d heard English spoken in any meaningful way since my father died. I started rolling English through my mind and thinking in English from the moment Nevski sent me back to the cell to await processing out. Mr. Byrd was pleased that I spoke English with a British accent. Since I learned it by mimicking my father’s accent, it wasn’t a surprise to me.
Besides getting what amounted to a refresher course in English aboard the freighter, there were books, a world globe and a complete set of encyclopedias. I used my finger to trace the route that was taking me almost halfway around the world—Leningrad to Liverpool by freighter, Liverpool to New York on the Queen, then on another ship down America’s Atlantic seaboard, past the tip of Florida and Cuba, across the Caribbean to Belize Town, the capital of the British colony called British Honduras. The colony was tucked right under the southernmost part of Mexico, the region called the Yucatán.
From the encyclopedias, I learned that British Honduras was nowhere near Devil’s Island, but like the infamous French island prison, it had considerab
le jungle and beaches. No one aboard the freighter had been to the colony or knew much about it. But I was assured that there were real paradises in that part of the world.
Not even Mr. Byrd of the British consulate seemed to know anything about the colony, although he was certain it wasn’t as bad as Devil’s Island.
After the cold, mean streets of Leningrad, not to mention the dungeonlike stink and dampness of a city jail, I was ready for a lush, warm paradise.
I laid over in Liverpool only for a day before I boarded the floating palace for the trip across the Atlantic to New York. Not that I was treated royally aboard—I traveled steerage class, sharing a room deep in the bowels of the ship with three other, dark-haired, olive-skinned men speaking a tongue unfamiliar to me, Turkish or Greek, I thought.
I was awed by the great transatlantic liner. It was both a floating city and a Leviathan, a monster of the sea, over a thousand feet long. It introduced me to that strange and wondrous new phenomenon—the smell of money.
I got my first sniff of money when I sneaked up to the deck where first-class passengers promenaded. Walking down the deck, I gaped like a country bumpkin on his first trip to the city as women in spike heels, diamond necklaces and sleek dresses came by on the arms of men wearing tuxedos and gold watches. Everything was new and strange to me, but I now realized the difference between communism and capitalism. It had nothing to do with class differences—hell, there were class distinctions in the Soviet Union, the higher up the Party you got, the better your food and housing and car became.
No, there were obvious class differences under communism. The real difference between the Soviets and the West was in consumer products, especially the luxury kind. We Soviets led the world in making battle tanks and refrigerators that didn’t work, but try to find a diamond bracelet or sheer silk stockings. Chanel No. 5 dominated the opulent West; in Russia, the government put out a perfume that was jokingly—and only on the sly—referred to as Stalin’s Breath.
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