The Zone

by Sergei Dovlatov

  “Do you know, Felix Edmundovich, what I have here in my hand?”

  “A suitcase, Vladimir Ilych.”

  “And just what it’s for – can you guess?”

  “As you were!” the PI shouted. “It says here, ‘Lenin, with a tinge of irony.’ Where’s the tinge of irony? I don’t see it.”

  “It’s coming,” Gurin assured him. He stretched out the arm with the case and winked insolently at Dzerzhinsky.

  “Excellent,” Khuriyev said. “Continue. ‘And just what it’s for – can you guess?’”

  “And just what it’s for – can you guess?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tsurikov said.

  “Not so churlish,” the PI said, breaking in again. “Milder. Before you is Lenin himself. The leader of the world proletariat.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tsurikov said, as sullenly as before.

  “That’s better. Continue.”

  Gurin winked again with even more familiarity. “The suitcase is for you, Felix Edmundovich. So that you, dear fellow, can go off and take a rest at once.”

  Without special effort, Tsurikov scratched his shoulder blade. “I can’t, Vladimir Ilych – there is counter-revolution all around us. Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries,* bourgeois spouts—”

  “Scouts,” Khuriyev said. “Go on.”

  “Your health, Felix Edmundovich, belongs to the Revolution. The comrades and I have discussed it and decided: you must take a rest. I say this to you as a member of the ruling body.”

  Suddenly we heard a female yowl. Lebedyeva was sobbing, her head against the tablecloth.

  “What’s the matter?” the PI asked nervously.

  “I’m sorry for Felix,” Tamara explained. “He’s skinny as a tapeworm.”

  “Dystrophics happen to be hardier,” Gesha said with hostility.

  “Break,” Khuriyev announced. Then he turned to me. “Well, what do you think? I would say they’ve grasped the main thing.”

  “Och,” Lebedyeva exclaimed, “it’s so close to life! Like in a fairy tale.”

  Tsurikov was giving his belly a good scratch. While he did this, his eyes clouded over.

  Gesha was studying the escape map. This was considered suspicious, even though the map was displayed openly.

  “Let’s continue,” Khuriyev said. The actors put out their cigarettes. “Next come Timofei and Polina. The scene is the reception room of the Cheka. Timofei is manning the switchboard. Polina enters. Begin!”

  Gesha sat on a stool and grew pensive. Polina took a few steps towards him, fanning herself with a rose-coloured handkerchief. “Timosha! Yoo-hoo, Timosha!”

  Timofei: “Why have you come? Or is something wrong at home?”

  “I can’t live without you, my grey-winged dove.”

  Timofei: “Go home, Polya. This is no village reading room.”

  Lebedyeva pressed her fists to her temples and let out an oppressive, piercing howl: “You don’t love me any more, don’t fancy me… You’ve ruined the best years of my life… I’m all alone now, like a mountain ash in a meadow.”

  Lebedyeva had trouble suppressing her sobs. Her eyes turned red. Mascara ran down her wet cheeks. Timofei, on the other hand, behaved almost mockingly. “Our work demands it,” he said through his teeth.

  “Why can’t we run off to the ends of the earth!” Polina wailed.

  “To join General Wrangel and the White Army,* is that it?” Gesha said, tensing up suddenly.

  “Excellent,” Khuriyev said. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your behind. Chmykhalov, don’t upstage the heroine.” (This was how I learnt Gesha’s real name, Chmykhalov.) “Let’s go. Enter Dzerzhinsky. ‘Ah, the younger generation!’”

  Tsurikov cleared his throat and said gloomily, “Ah, the fucking younger generation!”

  “What kind of parasitical words are those?” Khuriyev broke in.

  “Ah, the younger generation!”

  “Good health, Felix Edmundovich,” Gesha said, rising a little.

  “You’re supposed to be flustered,” Khuriyev said.

  “I think he should stand up.” Gurin gave his opinion.

  Gesha jumped up, overturning the stool. Then he saluted, touching his palm to his shaved head.

  “Good health, sir!” he shouted.

  Dzerzhinsky reached out and squeamishly shook his hand. Homosexuals were not liked in the zone, especially passive ones.

  “More dynamic!” Khuriyev urged.

  Gesha started talking faster. Then even faster. He rushed on, swallowing words. “I don’t know how to proceed, Felix Edmundovich. My Polinka has gone completely mad. She’s jealous of my service, do you understand?” (Gesha pronounced it “un-stan”.) “‘I’m lonesome,’ she says. And I really do love her, that Polinka. She’s my beloved, un-stan? She’s captured my heart, un-stan?”

  “Again, parasite words,” Khuriyev shouted. “Be more careful!”

  Lebedyeva, her back to us, was freshening her lipstick.

  “Break!” the PI announced. “That’s enough for today.”

  “Too bad,” Gurin said. “I was just starting to get inspired.”

  “Let’s sum up.” Khuriyev pulled out a notepad. “Lenin more or less resembles a human being. Timofei gets a B minus. Polina is better than I thought she’d be, to be honest. As for Dzerzhinsky – unconvincing. Manifestly unconvincing. Remember, Dzerzhinsky is the conscience of the Revolution. A knight without fear or blemish. But the way you do him, he looks like some kind of recidivist.”

  “I’ll try to do better,” Tsurikov assured him indifferently.

  “Do you know what Stanislavsky* said?” Khuriyev continued. “Stanislavsky would say, ‘I don’t believe it!’ If an actor read a line in a phoney way, Stanislavsky would stop the rehearsal and say, ‘I don’t believe it!’”

  “Cops say the same thing,” Tsurikov said.

  “What?” The PI didn’t understand.

  “The cops, I said, give you the same line. ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it…’ They nabbed me once in Rostov, and the investigator was a real douche—”

  “Don’t forget yourself!” the PI shouted.

  “Especially with the weaker sex present,” Gurin said.

  “I’m an officer in the Regular Army,” Khuriyev said, raising his voice.

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” Gurin said. “I meant Lebedyeva.”

  “Ah-h,” Khuriyev said. Then he turned to me. “Next time, be more active. Prepare your remarks. You’re a person who’s cultured, educated. And now you’re all dismissed. We meet again on Wednesday. What’s the matter with you, Lebedyeva?”

  Tamara was quivering with little sobs, wringing her handkerchief.

  “What is it?” Khuriyev asked.

  “I’m feeling it so deeply…”

  “Excellent. That’s what Stanislavsky called ‘transformation’.”

  We said goodbye and we separated. I walked with Gurin to Barracks Six. We were going the same way.

  By this time, it had grown dark. The path was lit by yellow light bulbs above the fences. In the free-fire zone, German shepherds ran back and forth, rattling their chains.

  Suddenly, Gurin asked, “So how many people did they really do in?”

  “Who?” I didn’t understand.

  “Those dogs, of course – Lenin with Dzerzhinsky. ‘Knights without fear or radish.’”

  I kept quiet. How could I know whether to trust him? And anyway, why was he being so open with me?

  The zek wouldn’t let it go. “Now me, for example – I’m in for theft. Stilts, we assume, stuck it where he shouldn’t have. Gesha’s in for something on the order of black-marketeering. As you can see, not one wet job between us. While those two flooded Russia with blood, but that’s all right.”

  “Look,” I said, “you’re going too far.”

  “What’s going too far about it? Those people were the bloodiest transgressors ever.”

  “Listen, let’s end thi
s conversation.”

  “Good enough,” he said.

  After that, there were three or four rehearsals. Khuriyev would get worked up, mop his forehead with toilet paper, and shout, “I don’t believe it! Lenin is overacting, Timofei is hysterical. Polina is wagging her behind. And Dzerzhinsky looks like a thug.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to look like?” Tsurikov asked sullenly. “It is what it is.”

  “Did you ever hear of transformation?” Khuriyev asked him.

  “I heard,” the zek said uncertainly.

  “What did you hear? Just out of curiosity, what?”

  “Transformation,” Gurin explained for Dzerzhinsky, “is when backstabbing thieves work as stoolies. Or else, let’s say there’s a prancing homo, but he struts around like a hard ass…”

  “Some conversation,” Khuriyev said angrily. “Lebedyeva, don’t stick out your form. Think more about the content.”

  “My bosoms are shaking,” Lebedyeva complained, “and my legs are swollen. I always gain weight when I’m nervous. And I eat so little, cottage cheese and maybe eggs.”

  “Not another word about ingesta,” Gurin said to silence her.

  “Come on,” Gesha fussed, “let’s try it again. I have a feeling this time I’m going to transform all the way.”

  I made an effort to take an active part. Not for nothing had they crossed my name off the convoy schedules. Better to rehearse than to freeze out on the taiga.

  I said something or other, using expressions like “mise-en-scène”, “super-task”, “public solitude”…

  Tsurikov practically never joined in these discussions. Or if he did say something, it was always totally unexpected. I remember once, we were talking about Lenin, and Tsurikov suddenly said, “It can happen that someone looks like the lowest of the low, but his prick is healthy. Type of A-one salami.”

  Gurin grinned. “You think we still remember what it looks like? I mean, that salami.”

  “Some conversation,” the political instructor said angrily.

  Rumours about our dramatic circle spread through the camp. Attitudes towards the play and the leaders of the Revolution were ambivalent. Lenin was generally respected, Dzerzhinsky not very much. In the mess hall, one zek foreman made a crack to Tsurikov in passing: “So, you found yourself a nice job, Stilts! Made yourself into a Chekist.”

  Tsurikov’s response was to hit him over the head with a ladle. The foreman fell down. It became very quiet. Later the morose truck drivers from logging said to Tsurikov, “At least wash the ladle. You can’t dip it in the slops now.”

  Gesha was always being asked, “Well, what about you, Cleanup? Who do you play? Krupskaya?”* To this, Gesha would answer evasively, “Well, just… a working lad… an insider.”

  And only Gurin walked around the camp with an air of importance, practising his Lenin’s Rs. “You ag following the tgue goad, Comgade Gecidivists!”

  “Looks like him,” the zeks would say. “Pure cinema.”

  Khuriyev got more nervous each day. Gesha waddled, spoke his lines jerkily, and kept adjusting a non-existent Mauser. Lebedyeva sobbed almost without interruption, even at her regular daytime job. She put on so much weight that she no longer zipped up her brown imported boots. Even Tsurikov – he too was slightly transformed. He was overcome by a hoarse, tubercular cough, which distracted him from his scratching.

  The day of the dress rehearsal arrived. They glued little beards and moustaches on Lenin and Dzerzhinsky. To assist with the make-up, they temporarily released a counterfeiter named Zhuravsky from solitary. He had a steady hand and professional, artistic taste.

  At first, Gurin had wanted to let his beard grow, but the security officer said it was against regulations. Still, for a month before the performance, the actors were permitted to let their hair grow. Gurin remained with his historically authentic bald head, Gesha turned out to be a redhead, and Tsurikov sprouted an entirely appropriate skewbald crew cut.

  For costumes they dressed Gurin in a tight civilian suit, which corresponded to Lenin’s real-life attire. For Gesha, they borrowed a leather jacket from Lieutenant Rodichev. Lebedyeva shortened a velvet party dress. Tsurikov was allotted a khaki tunic.

  And so the seventh of November* finally came around. Four red flags hung on the fences from early morning. A fifth was fastened to the building of the penal isolator. The sounds of the ‘Varshavyanka’* carried from all the metal loudspeakers.

  The only ones to work that day were flunkies from the housekeeping services. The logging sector was closed. The production brigades all stayed in the zone.

  Prisoners roamed aimlessly about the open yard. By one in the afternoon, some began to appear drunk. It was more or less the same in the barracks. Many had gone for liquor early in the morning. The rest wandered about the area in loosened fatigue shirts.

  The weapons room was guarded by six trusted re-enlistees. A sergeant stood guard outside the provisions storeroom. On the announcement board, a memo had been posted, entitled “On the intensification of military alertness on the occasion of the Jubilee.”

  Towards three o’clock, they assembled the prisoners on the square by Barracks Six. The camp commander, Major Amosov, gave a short speech. He said, “Revolutionary holidays touch every Soviet citizen. Even those who have temporarily stumbled… killed someone, stolen, raped, generally speaking, made a commotion… The Party gives to these people the opportunity to reform, leads them through unrelenting physical labour towards Socialism. In short, all hail the jubilee of our Soviet nation! But as for drunkards and stoners, we will, as they say, call them to account… not to mention the bestiality. As it is, half the she-goats in the area have been messed with, you no-good—”

  “That’s a funny one,” a voice called out from the rows of men. “What’s the big deal? I tapped the daughter of Second Regional Party Secretary of Zaporozhye, but you tell me it’s hands off a goat?”

  “Quiet, Gurin,” said the commander. “You’re showing off again! We entrust him with playing Comrade Lenin, and all he can think about is a goat… What kind of people are you?”

  “People, like people,” one of the prisoners shouted from the columns. “Wretches and thugs.”

  “You’re a hopeless lot, as I see it,” the major said.

  Political Instructor Khuriyev popped up behind his shoulder. “Just a second, you’re not dismissed yet. At six thirty there will be a general assembly. After the ceremonial, there will be a concert. Attendance is mandatory. No-shows will be sent to the isolator. Are there any questions?”

  “A ton of questions,” came a voice out of the ranks. “Want to hear? Where’s all the cleaning soap gone to? Where are the warm foot cloths that were promised? Why is this the third month no films have been shown? Are they or are they not going to give work gloves to the branch-cutters? Want more? When is an outhouse going to be put up in the logging sector?”

  “Quiet, quiet!” Khuriyev shouted. “Complaints in the prescribed manner, through the brigadiers! And now, you’re all dismissed!”

  Everyone grumbled a little and went off.

  Towards six o’clock, the prisoners began to gather in groups near the library. Here, in what had been the shipping workshop, general assemblies were held. The windowless wooden barn could hold about five hundred people.

  The prisoners had shaved and cleaned their shoes. The one who served as the zone’s barber was the murderer Mamedov. Every time he opened his razor, Mamedov would say, “One little slit and there goes your soul!” It was his favourite professional joke.

  The camp administrators had put on full-dress uniform. Political Instructor Khuriyev’s boots reflected the dim lights which twinkled above the free-fire zone. The civilian women who worked in the Division of Economic Administration smelt of powerful eau de Cologne. The male office workers wore their imported jackets.

  The barn was still closed. Re-enlistees crowded near the entrance. Inside, final preparations for the ceremonial were still going on. Inmate b
rigadier Agoshin was fastening a banner above the door. Letters in yellow gouache had been painstakingly stencilled onto a crimson background: “The Party is our Helmsman!”

  Khuriyev was issuing his final directions. He was surrounded by Tsurikov, Gesha and Tamara. Then Gurin appeared. I also drew near them.

  Khuriyev said, “If everything goes well, I will give each of you a week off. Besides that, a visiting performance is being planned for Ropcha.”

  “Where’s that?” Lebedyeva asked with interest.

  “In Switzerland,” Gurin answered.

  At six thirty, the barn doors were thrown open. The prisoners noisily took places on the wooden benches. Three guards carried in chairs for members of the presidium. The highest officials moved in a stately line down the aisle towards the stage.

  The hall became quiet. Someone clapped uncertainly. Others joined him.

  Khuriyev rose before the microphone. The PI smiled, showing his durable silver crowns. Then he glanced at a piece of paper and began, “It is already sixty years…”

  As usual, the microphone wasn’t working. Khuriyev raised his voice. “It is already sixty years… Can you hear me?”

  Instead of answering, someone called from the audience, “For sixty years we haven’t seen freedom!”

  Captain Tokar rose slightly, to identify the transgressor.

  Khuriyev now spoke even louder. He listed the main accomplishments of Soviet power, recalled the victory over Germany, shed light on the current political situation, then fleetingly touched on the problem of the all-out building of Communism.

  After him, a major from Syktyvkar spoke. His speech was about escapes and camp discipline. The major spoke softly; no one listened.

  Then Lieutenant Rodichev came onstage. He began his speech like this: “Among the people, a document was born…” What followed was something like a list of socialist resolutions. One phrase stuck in my mind: “…to reduce the number of camp murders by twenty-six per cent…”

  Close to an hour had gone by. Prisoners were conversing quietly, smoking. In the back rows they were already playing cards. Guards moved noiselessly along the walls.

  Then Khuriyev announced, “The concert!”

  First on was a zek I didn’t know, who read two of Krylov’s fables. To portray the dragonfly, he rolled open a paper fan. Switching over to the ant, he dug and swung an imaginary shovel.