The Zone

by Sergei Dovlatov

  But Fidel yelled, “Why is there injustice all around us, Sergeant? Explain why! A thief does time for what he did, but what are we rotting here for?”

  “Who’s to blame for that?” the sergeant said.

  “If someone could show me the man who’s to blame for all my misfortunes,” I said, “I would strangle him on the spot.”

  “Better go to sleep,” Yevchenko said.

  At this point we stood up and filed past the sergeant, brushing his shoulder. We sat on the logs in the courtyard and had a smoke, then we set off towards the administration compound.

  “Bob, go into the zone and get some fuel, my engine is shutting down,” Fidel said.

  “Aha,” Balodis said, catching on, “there’s no potion in the commissary, but there’s always plenty in the zone. The crooks’ll give us some without a murmur. They know we won’t be in their debt.”

  He tugged at Fidel’s sleeve. “Give me a cigarette.”

  “Smoking is unhealthy,” Fidel said. “Nicotine has an adverse effect on the heart.”

  “No, it’s healthy,” Balodis said. “Healthier than vodka. What’s unhealthy is standing around in a watchtower.”

  I wasn’t allowed into the zone. The controller on watch asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To the zone.”

  “On private business?”

  “No,” I said, “public.”

  “After vodka, is that it?”

  “Well, so what?”

  “Turn back.”

  “Oho,” I said, “so this is socialist justice! You think it’s all right for the recidivists to drink it all up and then go commit another punishable offence?”

  “You go after vodka, you get friendly with the contingent, then he uses you for precarious purposes.”

  “Who’s that – he?”

  “The contingent, that’s who. You’re supposed to feel antagonism towards the convicts. You’re supposed to hate them. And can you say that you hate them? Not that I can see. Where’s your antagonism, I ask?”

  “I don’t hate anyone. Not even you, numbskull.”

  “That’s my point,” the controller said, and added, “Want a shot from my private reserves?”

  “Sure,” I said, “only don’t expect any antagonism.”

  I returned to the barracks, stumbling as I went. I crossed the snow-covered parade ground in the dark and wound up in the drying room, where the stove was going and felt snow boots and sheepskin jackets were hanging from hooks. Fidel rushed over to me, knocking over his chair, but I told him there was no vodka and he started to cry. “But where’s Balodis?” I asked.

  “Everyone’s asleep,” Fidel said. “We’re the only ones left.”

  Then I almost started crying myself. I imagined we were all alone in the wide world. Who was there to love us? Who was there to take care of us?

  Fidel picked up a harmonica and made a shrill, piercing sound on it. “Oho,” he said, “I pick up the instrument for the first time and the result is not bad. What shall I play for you, Bach or Mozart?”

  “Mozart’s quieter,” I said. “If the next shift wakes up, they’ll come in here and kill us.”

  We were silent for some time.

  “Dzavashvili has some home-brewed chacha,”* Fidel said, “only he won’t give us any. Should we try?”

  “I don’t feel like messing with him.”

  “Maybe you’re scared of him?”

  “What is there to be scared of? I don’t give a damn about him.”

  “No, you’re scared. I noticed a long time ago.”

  “Maybe I’m scared of you too? Maybe I’m even scared of Kogan?”

  “You’re not scared of Kogan, and you’re not scared of me, but you are scared of Dzavashvili. All Georgians go around with hunting knives. They’ll pull out their knives over nothing. You should see the size of Dzavashvili’s saksan!* It wouldn’t fit in the top of his boot.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Andzor Dzavashvili was sleeping right by the door. Even in sleep his face was handsome and a little anxious. Fidel woke him up and said, “Listen, you non-Russian, give us some chacha.”

  Dzavashvili woke up in fright, the way any soldier in the guard section did if awoken suddenly. He put his hand under the mattress, then took a look at us and said, “This is no time for chacha, friend – it’s time for sleep.”

  “Give, I say. Bob and I have hangovers to get rid of.”

  “How are you going to work tomorrow?” Andzor asked.

  “Keep your moustache out of our business,” Fidel answered.

  Andzor turned over, his back to us.

  Here Fidel shouted, “So, you son of a bitch, you won’t give a Russian soldier any chacha?”

  “Who’s a Russian,” Andzor said, “you? You’re not a Russian, you’re an Alcoholist!”

  Then it started.

  Andzor yelled out, “Gigo! Vakhtang! Vai me! Arunda!”*

  Georgians came running in their underwear, showing deep tans even here in the north, and they started making gestures in such a way that Fidel immediately began to bleed from the nose. Then a fracas began that would be remembered in the barracks for many years. I went down six times and got up around three. In the end they tied me up with telephone wire and carried me into the Lenin Room, but even there, lying on the rough planks, I was still going after someone. It was probably the man who was to blame for all the reverses in my fortune.

  Towards morning my mood always goes bad. Especially after sleeping on a cold floor, tied up with telephone wire.

  I heard the cook dropping firewood with a crash onto the metal shingles by the stove, and buckets clattering, and an orderly walking down the corridor. Then doors started slamming, and everything filled with the special noise of an all-male barracks where everyone walks around in heavy boots.

  After a few minutes Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room and then, bending over me, he cut the telephone wire with a bayonet.

  “Thank you, Comrade Yevchenko,” I said, “I won’t forget this when I tell the Voice of America correspondent the whole story.”

  “Sure,” the sergeant said, “we’ve got a whole zone of correspondents for you out there.” Then he told me that Captain Tokar wanted to see me.

  I entered the main office rubbing my wrists. Tokar rose from behind his desk. By the window sat Bogoslovsky, who had recently replaced me as company clerk.

  “This time I do not intend to forgive,” the captain said. “You drank with the trusties?”

  “Who, me?”

  “You.”

  “Well, yes, I drank, so I had a drink, so…”

  “Just out of curiosity, how much?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “I remember I was drinking from a tin can.”

  “Comrade Captain,” Bogoslovsky said, “he’s not denying it. He won’t do it again.”

  “I know. I’ve heard that before. I’m sick of it! This time let the military court decide. The days of the old camp garrison are past. We belong to the Regular Army, thank God. And don’t you forget it.”

  He turned to me. “You have brought about several ‘incidents’ in the detachment. You disrupt political lessons, you put demagogical questions to Lieutenant Khuriyev. Yesterday you instigated a fight that had a bad chauvinist smell to it. That’s enough. Let HQ decide.”

  The captain glanced suspiciously at the door, then flung it open. Fidel was standing there eavesdropping.

  “Hello there, Comrade Captain,” he said.

  “Well, here we are,” the captain said. “Petrov can serve as your escort to the stockade.”

  “I can’t serve as his escort,” Fidel said. “He’s my friend. I can’t escort a friend. I feel no antagonism towards him.”

  “But you can drink together?”

  “Drinking is another matter,” Fidel said thoughtfully.

  “Enough!” The captain slammed his palm on the table. “Take off your belt!”

  I took it off. />
  “Put it on the table.”

  I threw the belt on the table. The brass buckle struck the glass. “Pick up the belt!” the captain shouted.

  I picked it up.

  “Put it on the table!”

  I laid it on the table.

  “Lance Corporal Petrov, take a weapon with you and march him to the first sergeant for the documents.”

  “What’s the gun for?”

  “Follow orders.”

  At this point I said, “I should have something to eat. You don’t have the right to starve me to death.”

  “You know your rights,” Tokar said, grinning, “but I also know mine.”

  When we went out into the corridor I said to Fidel, “Don’t feel bad. If it wasn’t you, it would be somebody else.”

  After that we ate some cooked millet and stuffed some bread in our pockets. We put on warmer clothes and walked out on the porch. Fidel took a clip from his cartridge pouch and right there on the steps he loaded his sub-machine gun, and without looking back we walked to the crossing, where we could hitch a ride with a passing car or a log-carrier.

  We marched along the mud path, leaving behind us the dark walls of the barracks, the transparent trees above the fence and the dull white sun.

  The railroad barrier was down. Fidel smoked, and we stood there for several minutes watching a train speed by with a roar. We could make out blue curtains, a thermos flask and a man with a cigarette in one of the windows. I even noticed that he was wearing pyjamas.

  It was all a little sickening.

  A log-carrier braked nearby. Fidel waved to the driver, and we climbed into the cab, which was crowded and smelt of gasoline.

  Fidel put the sub-machine gun between his knees, and we lit up.

  The driver turned to me and asked, “What’d they get you for, fella?”

  I said, “I criticized the authorities.”

  When we passed by the old brick pump house, where the road turned into the settlement, I took a watch without a band out of my pocket and showed it to the driver.

  “Buy it,” I said.

  “Does it work?”

  “Two hours more accurate than the Kremlin clock.”

  “How much?”

  “Five sticks.”

  “Five?”

  “All right, seven.”

  The driver stopped the truck, took out his money, and gave me five roubles. Then he asked, “What do you need money in the stockade for?”

  “To help the poor,” I said.

  The driver grinned. Then he examined the watch for a long time and put it to his ear. “For my father-in-law,” he said. “I’ll present it to him on his name day, the old dog.”

  We got out of the truck and made our way along a darkening path through the snowdrifts to the settlement, which greeted us with the knocking sound of a generator, the squeak of a sleigh’s runners, and the wind from deserted streets on which there were more dogs than people. Farther downhill the grey fences of the main camp section began, circling a two-storey brick staff building. Our way lay across the whole settlement, past the dilapidated stone gates of the shipping section, past the huts buried in snow, past the mess hall with white steam pouring from its open doors, past the garage where automobiles all faced one way like cows in a meadow, past the clubhouse with a silvery loudspeaker under the attic window, then along the interminable fence with its barbed-wire cornice, to the gate with the five-pointed tin star, and up the path to the staff building, crammed with foppish officers, the clattering of typewriters and numberless military trophies. There, behind an iron door, was a well-equipped stockade with a cement floor.

  “We’ll bail you out,” Fidel said. “I’ll have a talk with the boys.”

  “Yeah, have a talk with them.”

  We crossed over a ditch on an ice-covered log. Then I said, “Do your orders say anything about time of arrival?”

  “No,” Fidel said. “Why?”

  “So then what are we in a hurry for?” I said. “Let’s go to the torfushki.”

  That was the name for the seasonal women workers from the peat-packing plant who lived in barracks on the edge of the settlement.

  “Well…” Fidel said.

  “Well, what? We’ll get a bottle. I’ve got money.”

  At this point I noticed that Fidel didn’t like the idea and was looking at me sadly.

  “What’ll we do with the gun?” he said.

  “Put it under the bed. Let’s go – at least we can sit for a while where it’s warm.”

  Fidel walked along without saying anything.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll sit, we’ll smoke. I don’t like whorehouses myself. We’ll just sit there calmly for a while where it’s warm, with no noise.”

  But Fidel said, “Listen, there’s headquarters just close by. If we walk straight ahead across the bog we’ll be there in five minutes and you’ll be warm.”

  “In the stockade, you mean?”

  “So?”

  “With a cement floor?”

  “What difference does the floor make? There’s a bunk there. And a stove. According to regulations the temperature can’t be under sixty degrees.”

  “Listen,” I said, “you’re not getting my point. All that lies ahead: the stockade, the bunk, the sixty degrees, Prosecutor Voyshko. Right now, let’s go to the torfushki.”

  “In search of adventure?” Fidel said with annoyance.

  “Ah, so that’s how you talk! So that’s what happens to a man when they give him written orders and a weapon! Go on – give the orders, Comrade Commander!”

  Fidel started yelling, “What are you getting so riled up about, huh? What are you getting so riled up about? All right, we’ll go wherever you want! We’ll go to the torfushki! Wherever you want, we’ll go there!”

  We made a turn back to the commissary, climbed some steps to the porch, shook off the snow, and went inside, where it smelt of kerosene and fish. A stack of barrels shadowed one corner, and the shelves were stocked with cigarettes, soap, biscuits in old-fashioned packages, a block of halva with melted edges, and gingerbread the colour of marble. On the counter a cat dozed by a red-hot heater, and beneath it a rooster was pecking at something in a crack between the floorboards.

  I paid, and Tonechka held out two bottles of wine, which Fidel dropped in the big side pockets of his fatigues. Then we bought some halva and two jars of salt pork.

  Fidel said, “Buy some herring.”

  Tonechka said, “The herring smells.”

  “What, bad?” Fidel asked.

  “Yes,” Tonechka said, “not too good.”

  We left the commissary and walked uphill until we came to a barracks with a dim light bulb above the entrance. Sinking in the snowdrifts, we went up to the window and knocked. A flat face immediately looked out, and a girl with her hair undone nodded several times, pointing to the door.

  A bucket covered with a piece of plywood stood by the entrance. Quilted jackets hung in the corner, and there were ropes, scoops and hooks lying under them.

  It was warm in the barracks. The pipe of a cast-iron stove, filled with rosy warmth, stretched diagonally from corner to corner. Overcoats and quilted jackets had been thrown onto the bunks. Fragments of a mirror and colour photographs from magazines were tacked to the rotten beams. Unwashed dishes were piled up on the night tables.

  We took off our sheepskin jackets and sat down at the plank tables. A few feet away somebody was sleeping, covered with a coat. A woman in a fatigue shirt was sitting by the window, her back to us, reading a book. She didn’t even say hello.

  “Make yourselves at home, since you’re here,” said the girl with her hair down. She was wearing loose raspberry-coloured trousers and badly made cheap leather boots. Her friend, who had a pale and spiteful face, was wearing a maroon ski jacket, a tight cloth skirt and slippers.

  We took out the bottles and salt pork.

  The girls brought out some enamelled mugs and bread. They kept nudging each other
and laughing.

  On the window sill was a transistor radio, looking out of place among all the rubbish.

  The girl in the red trousers was called Zina, and her girlfriend in the skirt introduced herself in a bass voice as Nadezhda Amosova.

  “Boys,” Zina asked, “are you from the camp guards?”

  “No,” Fidel said, “we’re artists. Prize winners. And here’s my sax.” He waved the sub-machine gun above his head.

  “Boys,” Nadya asked, “you a little cracked or something?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “we’re mental cases. Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

  Fidel poured out the wine, clinking the bottle against the enamelled mugs. “To our health!” he said.

  “To our health!” I said.

  “You’ll be healthy, don’t worry,” Zina said. “We get check-ups.”

  Someone kept walking the length of the barracks behind us, somebody cursed, somebody slammed a book shut when we turned on the radio, somebody was drinking water by the door. After that some men from the sawmill showed up. They saw our sheepskin jackets on the bench and wouldn’t sit down, and instead they milled around the window for a long time, plotting something.

  But I paid no attention to any of that because I had suddenly thought back to the time when I arrived in Vozhayel with the first snowfall for the orientation sessions of the supervisory staff. They quartered us in a forty-man tent with two tiers of bunks. The stove made the lower tier hot, but the wind whipped under the sides of the sagging tarpaulin. Each morning we went in a disorderly group to the training-ground mess hall. Then we did exercises in the gym, or leafed through our instructions so that we could disperse at six o’clock after eating – some of us going to visit people we knew, some to dances at the local club, where an orchestra rumbled, and excited girls searched for officers in the crowd, and privates in stuffy dress coats and boots shining like fake jewellery huddled against the wall, smelling of aftershave and the stables. Once the jazz stopped, they would leave the club and walk home in the dark or ride in the back of a battalion truck. Then for a long time under the vault of the forty-man tent gross and filthy swearing would be heard, directed without exception at all the women in the world.

  One night I turned off the road, which was already rock hard from the first freeze, and walked down a path hugged by snowdrifts to the library. I climbed up the steep wooden steps to the third floor, opened the door, and stood at the threshold.