Despite his skills as a thief his appointment to vory status had been controversial. The others looked down on his background of petty crime. It didn’t seem worthy of entry into their ranks. He’d never murdered, he’d never spent time in a Gulag. Fraera brushed these concerns aside. She’d taken a liking to him even though he was solemn and withdrawn, rarely speaking more than a couple of words. The others accepted, reluctantly, that he was now one of them. He accepted, reluctantly, that he was one of them. In reality, he was hers and everyone knew it. In return for her patronage Malysh loved Fraera in the same way that a fierce fighting dog would love its owner, circling her feet, snapping at anyone who came too close. All the same, he was not naïve. With her authority under scrutiny their history counted for nothing. Fraera was determinedly unsentimental. Malysh had not only drawn the blood of another vory, he’d jeopardized her plans. Unable to drive the truck, he and the girl had been forced to walk back into the city, a journey on foot that had taken almost eight hours. They could’ve been stopped and arrested. He’d explained to the girl that if she screamed for help, or let go of his hand, he’d slit her throat. She’d obeyed. She hadn’t complained about being tired, never asking to rest. Even in crowded streets where she could have caused him problems, she’d never let go of his hand.
Fraera spoke:
— The facts are not in dispute. According to our laws, the punishment for harming another vory is death.
Death wasn’t meant in the ordinary sense of the word. He wouldn’t be shot or hung. Death meant exile from the gang. A tattoo would be forced upon him in a visible place — his forehead or the tops of his hands — a tattoo of an open vagina or anus. Such a tattoo was a signal for all vory, no matter what allegiance they held, that the bearer of the tattoo was deserving of any kind of physical and sexual torment, which could be delivered without fear of recourse from the other gang. Malysh loved Fraera. But he would not accept this punishment. Moving his leg, his hand slipped into position. There was a knife secreted in the folds of his trousers. He freed it from the fabric, his finger ready on the spring mechanism, as he calculated his escape.
Fraera stepped forward. She’d come to a decision.
* * *
FRAERA STUDIED THE FACES OF HER MEN, expressions of intense concentration fixed upon her, as if this alone would deliver the verdict they desired. She’d spent years earning their loyalty, generously rewarding obedience and ruthlessly striking at dissent. Despite this, so much now hinged on so slight an incident. An uprising needed a unifying cause. Popular, dumb — Likhoi had rallied her men. They saw him as the epitome of a vory. They understood his urges as their urges. If he was on trial, so were they. Trivial though the disagreement was, the problems this skhodka created were far from simple. To their minds, there was only one acceptable verdict: she would have to authorize Malysh’s death.
Listening to them quote vory law as though it were sacred, she marveled at their lack of self-awareness. Her rule was founded upon transgressions of traditional vory structures as much as abidance by them. Most obviously, they were men led by a woman, unprecedented in vory history. In contrast to other derzhat mast—the leader of a community of thieves — Fraera wasn’t motivated by a desire to exist apart from the State. She sought revenge upon it and those who served it. She described that revenge to them in terms that they could understand, claiming that the State was nothing other than a larger, rival gang, with which she was in the most bitter of blood feuds. Yet at heart she knew vory were conservative. They would prefer a male leader. They would prefer to be concerned only with money and sex and drink. Her agenda of revenge was something they tolerated, as indeed was her gender — tolerated only because she was brilliant and they were not. She funded them, protected them, and they depended on her. Without her, the center would fall apart and the gang would break into squabbling, irrelevant factions.
Their unlikely alliance had been formed in Minlag Gulag, a northern camp southeast of Arkhangelsk. Originally a political prisoner convicted under Article 58, at that time Anisya, as she’d been known, had no interest in the vory. They existed within separate social spheres, layers like water and oil. The focus of her life had been her newly born son — Aleksy. He’d been something to live for, a child to love and protect. After three months of nursing him, three months of loving him more than she’d ever imagined she was capable of loving, the child had been taken from her. She’d woken in the middle of the night to find that he was gone. At first the nurse had claimed that Aleksy had died in his sleep. Anisya had grabbed the nurse, shaking her, demanding her child back until being beaten off by a guard. The nurse had spat at her that no woman convicted under Article 58 deserved to bring up a child:
You’ll never be a mother.
The State was Aleksy’s parents now.
Anisya had fallen ill, sick with grief. She’d lain in bed, refusing food, delirious with dreams that she was still pregnant. She’d felt it kicking and moving and screaming for her help. The nurses and feldshers had impatiently waited for her to die. The world had arranged every possible reason for her to die and given her every opportunity. However, something inside of her resisted. She’d examined this resistance to death forensically, like an archaeologist carefully sweeping away fine desert dust, wanting to know what lay beneath it. She’d unearthed not the face of her son, or the face of her husband. She’d found Leo, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand on hers, the deceit and betrayal, and, like a magical elixir, she drank these memories in one long gulp. Hatred had brought her back from the brink. Hatred had rejuvenated her.
The idea of seeking revenge on an MGB officer, a man hundreds of miles away, would have been laughable had she spoken it aloud. Far from depressing her, her powerlessness was a source of inspiration— she would start from nothing. She would build her revenge from nothing. While other patients slept, doped on doses of codeine, she spat her pills out, collecting them. She’d stayed in the infirmary, feigning sickness while secretly regaining her strength and accumulating dose after dose of medicine, pills that she hid in the lining of her trousers. Once she’d accumulated a significant quantity she’d left the infirmary, much to the nurses’ surprise, returning to the camp with nothing except her wits and trousers lined with pills.
Until her arrest Anisya had always been defined in relation to someone else: one man’s daughter, another man’s wife. On her own, she’d set about redefining herself. Each of her weaknesses she’d appointed to the character of Anisya. Each of her strengths were gathered together and knitted into a new identity — the woman she was about to become. Overhearing the vory, familiarizing herself with their slang, she’d selected a new name for herself. She would be known as Fraera, the outsider. A vory term of contempt, she would take that insult and make it her strength. She’d traded the codeine with the leader of a gang, seeking his favor, asking permission to join them. The vory leader had scoffed, agreeing to her suggestion only if she proved herself by executing a known informer. He’d taken all the codeine as a nonrefundable down payment, setting her a challenge he considered beyond her skills. Only three months previously she’d been nursing her baby. Even if she dared to make some attempt on the informer’s life, she would be caught and sent to an isolation unit, or executed. The derzhat mast had never expected that he would need to honor his promise. Three days later the informer had started to cough during dinner, falling to the floor, his mouth full of blood. His stew of cabbage and potato had been laced with slivers of razor blade. The derzhat mast had been unable to go back on his agreement — the vory code forbade him. Fraera had become the first female member of his gang.
Fraera had no intention of remaining a subordinate. Her plans required that she be in charge. Using the education they’d given her, she’d sought her independence. They had taught her to see her body as a commodity to be traded like any other, a resource to which they attached no concept of shame. She’d set about seducing the Gulag commander. Since he could order any woman to his office for s
exual gratification, Fraera had needed him to fall in love with her. She’d viewed her revulsion as merely another obstacle to overcome. Within five months, at her request, he’d transferred the entire vory gang to another camp, leaving Fraera free to start her own.
Since no self-respecting vory would accept a woman’s patronage, Fraera had turned to the outcasts, the outsiders — the vory scavenging on scrapheaps, sucking on fish bones and munching rotten root vegetables. They’d been shunned due to a disagreement, or a betrayal, or some act of incompetence. Some had fallen to the level of a chuskhi, so disgraced that it was forbidden for another vory to even touch them. According to their laws such disgrace was irreversible. Despite this, she’d offered them a second chance when no other vory would condescend to utter their name. Some had been terminally weakened, mentally or physically. Some had repaid the debt by attempting to overthrow her as soon as they’d regained their strength. Most had accepted her patronage.
With Stalin’s death freedom had come early — women and children granted an amnesty. The members of her gang were already on shorter sentences since they were not political criminals. Fraera had no intention of hunting Leo down: plunging a knife in his back or putting a bullet in his head. He needed to suffer as she had suffered. Her ambitions required time and resources. Many gangs traded in black market goods. The opportunities such a market presented were limited since there was already in place a highly developed system. She had no interest in being a small-time trader, cutting a modest profit from imported groceries, not when she had access to a far more precious commodity.
During the persecution of the Church, at the high-water mark of the antireligious movement, many artifacts had been hidden. Icons, books, and silverware, all of which would’ve have been burnt or melted down. Most priests had resisted, taking action to save the Church’s heritage. They’d buried items in fields, stashed silver in chimneys, and even wrapped paintings in waterproof leather, hiding them inside the engine of a disused, rusting tractor. No maps were drawn. Only a few knew the locations, whispered from one to another, beginning with the words:
In case I die…
Most of the guardians of these secrets had been arrested, shot, starved in the Gulags or worked to death. Of those who knew, Fraera had been among the first to be released. She’d unearthed the treasures one by one. Using her vory’s knowledge of the black market infrastructure, the people who needed to be bribed, she’d shipped items out of the country, negotiating sales to Western religious organizations as well as private buyers and international museums. Some had balked at the idea of purchasing another Church’s treasures. Yet Fraera’s sales technique had been savagely effective: were her prices not met the safety of the items could no longer be assured. She’d sent her buyers a seventeenth-century icon of Saint Nikolas of Mozaisk. Once painted in bright colors, the egg tempera had discolored, and to recapture the brilliance it had been covered in gold and silver sheet. She’d imagined the priests weeping as they’d opened the parcel to find the icon smashed into fragments, the saint’s face scratched off except for the eyes. Fraera had not confessed to her role in this vandalism. In the interests of maintaining a functioning business relationship, she’d blamed overzealous Party members. After that, she’d been able to name her price, depicting herself as a savior rather than a profiteer.
Paid in gold, she’d brought in the riches that she’d always promised her vory, unearthing each treasure one by one in case any should consider her leadership redundant. Cautious, trusting no one, the first thing she’d spent money on was a cyanide tooth which she’d proudly displayed to her men, assuring them if they thought she could be tortured for the locations of the missing artifacts they were wrong. She would die to spite them. Judging from the reactions of the gang, two men had been thinking along those lines. She’d killed them before the week was out.
One final loose end had been the Minlag camp commander, who’d come seeking a life with Fraera, as they’d dreamed, and to collect his share of her profits:
Here’s your share.
A knife dragged up through his stomach, it hadn’t been fair — she owed him her life. It had taken him a little less than an hour to die, wriggling on the floor, wondering how he’d been so wrong. Up until the moment the blade tip had entered his stomach he’d been sure that she loved him.
* * *
THE ROOM WAS HEAVY WITH ANTICIPATION. Fraera raised her hand:
— We do not follow ordinary vory laws. You once had nothing. You could not feed yourselves. I saved you when the law said I should let you die. When you have fallen sick, I have provided you with medicine. When you are well, I have provided you with opium and drink. My only demand has been obedience. That is our only law. In this regard, Likhoi has failed me.
No one moved. Their eyes flicked from side to side, each man trying to figure out what the next man was thinking. Leaning on his crutch, Likhoi’s mouth twisted into a snarl:
— Let us kill the bitch! Let us be governed by a man! Not some woman who thinks fucking is a crime.
Fraera stepped closer to Likhoi:
— Who would run this new gang, you, Likhoi? You who once licked my boot for a crust of bread? You are governed by impulse, and made stupid by them. You would lead a gang to ruin.
Likhoi turned to the men:
— Let us make her our whore. Let us live like men!
Fraera could have stepped forward and slashed Likhoi’s throat, ending his challenge. Understanding that she needed to win this argument by consent, she countered with the statement:
— He has insulted me.
It was now up to her vory to decide.
No one did anything. Then, a hand grabbed Likhoi and another— his crutch was kicked away. Pushed to the ground, his clothes were ripped from him. Naked, he was pinned down: one man crouched on each arm and leg. The remaining men turned to the stove, taking a red-hot coal from the fire. Fraera looked down at Likhoi.
— You are no longer one of us.
The coal was pressed against his tattoos, the skin bubbling. His skin would be rendered blank, disfigured so no new tattoos could take their place. According to practice, he should then be let go, exiled. But Fraera — who knew the pull of vengeance too well — would make sure his injuries left him no chance of survival. She glanced at Malysh, communicating her desire. He drew his knife, flicking open the blade. He would cut the tattoos off.
* * *
IN HER CELL ZOYA GRIPPED THE BARS, listening to the screams as they echoed through the corridor. Her heart beating fast, she concentrated on the sounds. They were the screams of a man, not a young boy. She felt relief.
KOLYMA
FIFTY KILOMETERS NORTH
OF THE PORT OF MAGADAN
SEVEN KILOMETERS SOUTH OF GULAG 57
9 APRIL
THEY WERE STANDING SIDE BY SIDE, staring at the next man’s shoulder, rocking with the motion of the freight truck. Although there was no guard stopping them from sitting down, there were no benches and the floor was so cold that they’d taken a collective decision to stand, shuffling to keep warm, like a captured herd of animals. Leo occupied a space closest to the tarpaulin sheet. It had come loose, rendering the compartment’s temperature subzero but offering, by way of exchange, a partial view of the landscape as the material flapped open. The convoy was climbing into the mountains following the Kolyma highway — a surface that unrolled meekly across the landscape as though conscious it was trespassing across a wilderness. In the convoy, there were three trucks in total. Not even a car bothered to follow behind to make sure prisoners didn’t jump down and try to escape. There was nowhere to escape to.
Abruptly the highway steepened, the rear of the truck tilting down, angled toward the snow-covered valley to such an acute degree that Leo was forced to grip the steel frame, the other prisoners pressing against him as they slid down. Unable to make the climb, the truck remained stationary, teetering and ready to roll back. The handbrake was yanked up. The engine stopped. The guards u
nlocked the back, spilling the prisoners onto the road:
— Walk!
The first two trucks had managed to climb over the crest of the hill, disappearing from view. The remaining truck — without the weight of the prisoners — started its engine and accelerated up the hill. Left behind, the convicts trundled, huffing like old men, the guards at the back, guns ready. Set against the terrain, the guards’ swagger seemed slight and absurd — an insect strutting. Observing them through a convict’s eyes, Leo marveled at how different the guards believed themselves to be — men marshaling cattle. He wanted to say, just to see their surprise:
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