by Frank Martin
“How do you mean ‘educated,’ exactly?” Anton asked.
The Colonel laughed. “Not like these poor souls you see here! But still, they got the point. It is not too wise to hide a prisoner from us. No, not a good idea at all. You too will receive an education while you are here –”
Anton turned to him sharply.
“But not in the same way, of course! No, I promised your mother I would help you get a respectable position in the prison service. She would never forgive me if anything was to happen to you.”
Anton was squinting his eyes against the intrusive cold. He still found this place difficult to cope with, even though he had a lifetime familiarity with Russian winters.
“What are they doing with that prisoner up there?”
“Let’s take a closer look!” The Colonel led the way.
A rough circle of people formed around the man kneeling in the snow. The guards were spread out, hands clutching rifles to their chests, a tactical distance kept between them and the prisoners.
“And here we find ourselves …” The Bear addressed the man crouched in the snow; there was no other sound but the wind. The man waited. The Bear looked off somewhere in the distance. “Are you sorry for what you have done?”
In what seemed to take a very long time the man lifted his head to look at The Colonel. He had one hand holding the frayed edges of his blanket together, keeping the hungry cold out, and Anton realized the man had nothing on beneath that blanket.
“I am … sorry,” said the prisoner.
“Well, my friend,” The Colonel stomped forward in a comical manner, he clasped his hands behind his back and leant closer to the prisoner, “Sorry just isn’t fucking good enough this time.”
At once, the two guards behind the prisoner ripped his blanket away, holding it up high as though he might try to jump to reach it. The prisoner hugged himself fiercely, squeezing himself into a ball. The cold was like a living thing greedily licking at his stacked ribs and skinny limbs, seizing him from all directions.
“You see, I’m not going to educate just you, I’m going to educate fucking everybody.”
A second guard rushed to The Colonel’s side, his face lean and brutal. He was tiny beside The Colonel, but strong. He held a wooden pale in his gloved hands. It was brimming with water.
Anton opened his mouth to scream, knowing what was about to happen and trying to stop it, his voice beginning and dying as the water was cast from the bucket, a giant silver plume in the air colliding with the prisoner’s chest as he reared back in horror. He had time for his own agonized scream as the water did its work, freezing almost instantly, trapping him in a pose of a man pleading with God.
The ice on his body began to turn the prisoner’s body blue, and Anton remembered a stupid American video game that had been unrealistic but fun to play, where one of the fighters in the game had the ability to freeze people with an ice blast from his hands, and then he could walk up to them and punch them. In the game, the unfortunate person who had been frozen was stuck inside their ice prison for a few seconds before they could shake it off and be free. The prisoner did not have that option.
Anton’s mouth hung open, his heart was racing and he didn’t know what to do. He was hardly aware of the other prisoners sharing his horror, or of the guards who seemed indifferent.
“Hammer,” The Colonel called out, and instantly, another guard marched up to him with a hammer, placing it in his hand as though he was about to perform life-saving surgery.
The Colonel adjusted his grip slightly, finding the balance of the taped handle. He walked up to the frozen statue, gaining velocity as he moved, rearing his arm back for a giant swing.
The hammer clashed with the frozen prisoner who shattered like glass. Fragments of a human being sparkled and fell in the snow. The top half of his body was gone, smashed away, and as the final pieces fell, Anton watched in silence.
The Colonel turned away, and as he walked, he clapped an arm around Anton, making him walk with him. The prisoners were also rounded up by the guards and led back towards the prison building. The Colonel was smiling beneath his moustache and his head was held high.
“You see why we don’t have a fucking discipline problem in my prison?”
***
Anton had a small room in the office area of the prison. It was functional and quiet, and at least the cold didn’t get in here. The plumbing and electrical wiring were visible on the walls. A small barred window looked out on the frozen courtyard. There were several people in furs outside working and moving vehicles, but Anton didn’t watch them. He was reading through his psychology books instead. The bunk bed above where he lay reading held his suitcases because there was not enough room to put them anywhere else. His jacket hung in the skinny closet. A small cracked mirror hung from its door.
Turning the page delicately, he sighed deeply. He had lost any concentration he was going to have today, and he felt it might even be a week before he could get into a book again. His mind kept snatching back to the unfortunate incident outside, the one where he had seen a man killed. He had no idea what the man had done to receive such a harsh punishment or even what the man had been a prisoner for. In the end, he felt that didn’t matter – the man had been treated brutally beyond all reason and there was no justification for that. This was a modern-day civilized society.
Placing the book on his chest, he put his hands behind his head and thought deeply. Did he really even want to be here anymore? His uncle was obviously a severe man who was not shy about enforcing discipline. Perhaps that was necessary in a place like this, in order to keep the most dangerous criminals in line and prevent them from becoming violent, but Anton didn’t like it. He didn’t know what the answer was, but there had to be something better than what he had witnessed this morning. What did he hope to gain from being here? A valuable insight to the criminal mind, some work experience that would look impressive on his record and show that he was more than just a “theory man” trained by the university; he was someone who knew what he was talking about and had interacted with criminals firsthand.
He put the book very carefully beside him – like all his books, it had cost him a lot of money, a lot of which had come from working as a waiter at “Pizza Mania.” Any time he ever went back to that place, he always tried to leave a small tip. The person serving him would always frown, surprised, but Anton insisted they take the money. After all, he remembered all too well what it was like struggling to get by. Now, of course, thanks to an education fund set up by his grandfather, Anton had enough money to live comfortably. The education fund had become his only when he turned twenty-one, but it meant he could really concentrate on his studies instead of living hand to mouth and month to month. That made the world of difference. And so, when he went into Pizza Mania as a customer, he would order a gourmet pizza and smoke a sheesha, maybe even drink some pivo or whiskey while he studied a book or chatted with a university friend, and he always made a point of tipping the staff.
Could he really stay here for another three months with his psychopathic uncle? What he had witnessed this morning was a type of brutality he had never even heard about before. No matter what the prisoner in question had done, freezing him and executing him like that had to be the most brutal thing Anton had ever witnessed. So what was he going to do? March into The Bear’s office and tell him he had had enough? That he was leaving? He had one thing in his favour and that was that he was related to The Bear, so The Bear might actually say yes and send him home immediately, but what if he said no? Anton still had another three months placement out here, and he had no doubts at all that The Bear could make that time extremely unpleasant for him indeed if he wished, especially if he felt that Anton had disrespected him in his own house.
The best and most realistic option was to try and formulate some other reason for leaving; a family emergency, perhaps. He would need to leave it at least a week or two first, to make it look as though his reason for leaving wa
s completely unrelated to the incident out in the yard. Maybe he could call his mother and explain what was going on, or at least that he was sick of this place and wanted to come home. She loved him with all her heart and would deny Christ three times for him if that’s what it meant to make her son happy. She would support any story that he told to The Bear.
Anton took the door handle in his hand. It felt frail. Dimly, he felt vibrations from the door, the result of some manual work going on somewhere in the prison. He opened the door and headed to the cafeteria. A coffee and a small meal would help ease his nerves.
***
His meal was borsch soup and dumplings which he ate with a large loshki, or spoon. The dumplings weren’t bad, but they were the instant stuff – he had certainly eaten better. Having his meal, Anton watched the other staff. They wore woolen jumpers and many of them had their hats on even inside, because this part of the prison wasn’t heated. Close by, a guard in a jacket and sharpka hat was drinking from a cup of noodles and reading a cheap war comic, something you might pick up for a few rubles in a convenience store. For some reason he didn’t understand, this made Anton sad.
The furniture was basic but functional, like most of the prison. There were a lot of repairs to be done that just weren’t seen as urgent; here, the linoleum floor was torn away, revealing aged wood beneath, there, the pistachio-coloured paint on the ceiling had peeled away to show the green surface that used to be there, and elsewhere, the piping and electrical cables on the outside of the walls needed attention.
The lighting inside this great room was minimal, concentrated on the serving area where several prisoners silently dished up food according to what the staff ordered. Anton felt a rush of panic seeing the prisoners walking around free like that – if they were working in the kitchen, then surely they had access to knives and rolling pins and other similar weapons? It would be quite easy for them to overwhelm the staff in this room and then from here spread out in a rebellion, and quite possibly take over the entire prison. He could imagine that would be quite easy even with just a little planning – the prisoners could all seize a knife out of the kitchen and then attack the guards in this room, killing them all before the alarm could be raised, maybe keeping a few alive as hostages if they needed to negotiate later on. From there, they could spread out and make their way to the cells, opening each cell door and liberating the prisoners inside, quickly building up their ranks and turning the tide in their favour.
Of course, there were lockdown procedures and sturdy doors between every part of the prison, and only the most obedient prisoners were given duties such as working in the kitchens. Still, Anton couldn’t help being afraid of the prisoners.
Anton watched the prisoners more closely. The prisoners who prepared and served the food and brought the guards coffee all had a defeated look about them. Not one of them would look the guards in the eyes. They did their job and no more, barely speaking even to each other.
Anton thought of the prisoner who had been killed this morning, his body frozen and then shattered into a thousand pieces. He didn’t think that insubordination would be a real problem here; no one wanted to risk be killed like that. The example had been set and the message understood by everyone. Even those who hadn’t seen would learn very soon what had happened this morning out in the snow. Disturbingly, he wondered if The Bear might actually have used a legitimate method for keeping control over the prisoners.
He sipped his coffee. It was weak and tasted vaguely like metal. He had gotten it from the machine. Grimacing from the coffee, he made a mental note to ask around for some real tea. All kinds of goods were up for trade here, especially since the postal service in Russia was an embarrassment and it was so difficult to get luxury items brought in. It was common for people to trade items with each other, even between prisoners and guards, although that was against procedure. Anton had been surprised that cold cash meant very little here … but some cough lozenges or chocolate bars seemed to take on the value of gold. He had traded one set of extra woolen mittens for some soft cheese wrapped in brown paper and string and a small flask of vodka. It had been a guilty pleasure to sit in his room at night and enjoy them.
A moment after Anton placed his cup on the table, a big hand clapped him on the back.
“Ah, nephew! How are you liking it here?”
Anton looked up to see The Bear accompanied by two guards. The two guards were stone-faced, neutral, relaxed but predatory.
“Very well, thanks. I’ve been tending to my studies and I stepped out to get a coffee.”
“Well, you can come with us while I do my rounds. You can see where the real prisoners are kept, the ones we don’t want mixing with the general crowd.”
Anton had picked his coffee up again, “I really just came out for a quick break, I should be –”
“Nonsense! You’ll learn a lot more from real life than you ever will from a textbook. Get that coffee down and I’ll show you the real world, how it really is. You won’t want to miss it.”
Anton considered the coffee for a moment. Despite his fear of The Bear, he was still curious to see who these prisoners were, the ones who were kept away from everyone else. He swirled his coffee once and put it back on the table. Then stood to join The Bear on his rounds. Besides, he didn’t really have a choice, did he?
***
They walked through a corridor that seemed to belong to a different prison entirely. Here, there were old stone walls, and if the wiring had been bad before, then here it was positively dangerous. A number of lights had burned out and were waiting to be replaced. The floor wasn’t even, but seemed to gradually descend, as if they were making their way underground to some ancient chambers. For all Anton knew, they were. Once, he brushed his hand along the soft stone edges of the wall. He felt a chill through him, as though the wind had somehow found its way into this ancient part of the prison.
The Bear led the way with Anton closely behind. The two guards walked shoulder to shoulder. Anton found he could barely tell them apart. The doors here were heavy studded iron, set into the walls with thick brackets and held by large locks. The Bear stopped by the first door and grinned through the barred window of the door. Then he moved aside. Anton hesitated a moment, somehow expecting that if he got too close to the door, a hand would reach out and grab him – he had no doubt that all the prisoners feared The Bear, but they would recognize instantly that Anton was soft, an easy target. He moved closer to the door.
Inside, the cell was lit by grey light that came in from a long way up in the ceiling. Dust motes swam in the chambered light. The walls were bare, some patches of paint clung to the brickwork in many places. For some reason, there was a raised section of brickwork on the floor, almost like a pedestal of some sort, although more likely it had served another purpose when this building had been in other hands. There was no bed in this section, just some straw laid out on the floor with some rags and old sacks that served as blankets and a pillow. The cell’s one occupant looked as surprised to see Anton as he was to see the prisoner. Anton shared a moment looking into The Bearded skinny man’s eyes. The Bear’s voice beside him almost made him scream.
“Doesn’t look like much, does he? No, you wouldn’t expect much from one that looks so weak, would you? And yet it’s funny to think, he’s in there for a very good reason.”
The Bear moved away, apparently not concerned about imparting the reason why the skinny man was locked up.
“Why is he in there?” Anton couldn’t resist asking.
The Bear answered instantly, “He beat his wife to death with her own artificial leg. I’ve certainly seen worse things, but something about this man’s crime sickened even me. So I put him where he is now. Away from the other prisoners. Now he won’t be able to hurt anybody.”
Anton glanced into the cell again. The prisoner had changed his position on the floor. His eyes were wide as if he could understand nothing of what was being said.
“And who was he before?”
Anton said, still looking at the prisoner.
“A shoe salesman,” The Bear said without looking back. “He snapped quite unexpectedly, quoting the reason for the murder was that his life revolved around selling people two shoes, and he couldn’t bear having a wife with only one foot. He was just a normal man living with the daily struggles of a normal life, struggling to put bread on the table. Then one night he lost it. Went totally out of his mind.”
The Bear paused for a moment, considering. Then he turned on Anton, standing at his full height, one finger raised threateningly. Anton shrank against the wall. All his life, it seemed, he had been a scared man. Now, he expected The Bear to tell him off, something like, “Listen, you little shit, I know you’re thinking of leaving. Well, if you even try, I’m giving you a cell like that guy you see in there. Then you’ll really know what it means to want to be free from here. See, this is the real reason for our little journey underneath the prison.”
Instead, The Bear said, “Do not let these guys control you. I know you’re an educated person, you’re book smart, but in here is a different world. These people are in here because this is exactly the right place for them. It’s a constant assault; they are constantly trying to feel you out, to sense any weakness.
Anything they do for you is not free. It will be used as leverage against you at some point. And then before you know it, you are smuggling drugs in here for them. I had one officer who even brought in a fucking guard uniform for a prisoner, who planned to escape. Can you fucking believe it? Fucking outrageous. I questioned the officer, and as it turns out, it all began with little things – he felt sorry for the prisoner so he started bringing him in biscuits, which is not a big thing, but he was doing it without openly confirming it with his supervisor. That’s clearly against procedure. Straight away, the prisoner knew he had something over this man, that he was weak, that he would let the small things slide.