The Zone Read online

  I saw a man who had been completely reduced to an animal state. I saw what he could be gladdened by. And it seemed to me that my eyes opened.

  The world in which I found myself was horrifying. In that world, people fought with sharpened rasp files, ate dogs, covered their faces with tattoos and sodomized goats. In that world, people killed for a package of tea.

  In that world, I saw men with a gruesome past, a repulsive present and a tragic future.

  I was friends with a man who had once upon a time pickled his wife and children in a barrel.

  The world was horrible. But life continued. What is more, life’s usual proportions stayed the same. The ratio of good and evil, grief and happiness, remained unchanged.

  That life had in it whatever you could name. Diligence, dignity, love, depravity, patriotism, wealth, poverty. There were lumpenproletariat and rich profiteers, careerists and profligates, conformists and rebels, functionaries and dissidents.

  But the content of these concepts was radically changed. The usual hierarchy of values had been demolished. What had once seemed important receded into the background. Trivialities blocked the horizon.

  A new scale of values for “the good things of life” arose. On this scale, people especially valued food, warmth, the chance to avoid work. The commonplace became precious. The precious – unreal.

  A postcard from home precipitated an emotional upheaval. A bumblebee flying into the prisoners’ barracks could cause a sensation. A squabble with a guard was experienced as an intellectual triumph.

  In maximum security I knew a man, a long-term recidivist, who dreamt of becoming a bread-cutter. This job carried with it enormous advantages. Once he got it, a zek* could be likened to a Rothschild. The heels of bread were comparable to diamond deposits.

  Fantastic efforts were required to land such a position. You had consciously to sell out, lie, climb over corpses. You had to bribe, blackmail and use extortion – fight to win at all costs.

  This kind of effort in the outside world would have opened the way to the sinecures of the Party, economic and bureaucratic leadership. The highest levels of government power are reached by the same means.

  Once he became a bread-cutter, the zek fell apart psychologically. The struggle for power had exhausted his inner strength. He was a gloomy, suspicious, lonely man. He reminded me of a Party boss, tortured by oppressive complexes.

  One episode comes to mind. Some prisoners were digging a trench outside of Yosser. Among them was a burglar named Yenin.

  It was getting on towards lunchtime. Yenin shovelled one last clod, reduced it to fine sand, then leant over the pile of dirt.

  He was surrounded by zeks who had fallen silent.

  He lifted a tiny thing out of the dirt and rubbed it on his sleeve for a long time. It was a shard of a cup, the size of a three-copeck piece. It still had on it the fragment of a design – a girl in a blue dress. The only thing left intact was her little shoulder and a blue sleeve.

  You could see tears in the zek’s eyes. He pressed the glass to his lips and said quietly, “Seance!”

  In prison-camp jargon, “seance” signified any experience of an erotic nature, and even beyond that, any instance of positive sensual emotion. A woman in the zone was “seance”. A pornographic photograph – “seance”. But a piece of fish in the slops was “seance”, too.

  “Seance!” Yenin said.

  And the zeks who surrounded him confirmed in unison, “Seance!”

  The world in which I found myself was horrible. Nevertheless, I smiled no less frequently than I do now, and was not sad more often.

  When there is time, I’ll tell you about all this in more detail.

  How did you like my first pages? I’m enclosing the fragment that follows.

  PS: In our Russian émigré colony you come across wonderful advertisements. There’s one posted across from my apartment house: “Seamster Wanted!” A little to the left, on a telephone booth: “Translation from the Russian and back. Ask for Arik.”

  AT ONE TIME MISHCHUK had worked in an aerial photography corps. He was a good pilot. Once he somehow even managed to land a plane in a snowdrift – with an unhinged valve in his cylinder and his left engine indisputably on fire.

  So he should have known better than to start profiteering in fish, which he flew down from the far north, from Afrikanda. Mishchuk bartered for it from the Samoyed* natives there, and then would let a waiter friend of his have it for six roubles a kilo.

  Mishchuk was lucky for a long time because he wasn’t greedy. Once, a radio operator from the control tower signalled to him in flight: “Ice storm ahead, do you read me, ice storm ahead…”

  “Understood, understood,” Mishchuk answered. At which point he dumped nine sacks of pink kumzha* over the Yenisei River without a qualm.

  But when Mishchuk stole a roll of parachute silk, they nabbed him. The friendly radio operator broadcast to his friends, to Afrikanda: “The runt got the burn, looks like three years…”

  Mishchuk was sent to Corrective Labour Colony No. 5. He knew that with an effort he could get his sentence cut in half. Mishchuk became a model worker, an activist, a reader of the newspaper Towards an Early Release. And, most important, he signed up for the Section of Internal Structures, the SIS. Now he walked between barracks wearing a red armband.

  “SIS,” the prisoners hissed. “Sell-out Ingrate Sonofabitch.”

  Mishchuk didn’t care. A pickpocket friend taught him how to play the mandolin. And they gave him a prison-camp nickname – Boob.

  “Some name you’ve got,” a zek named Leibovich said to him. “You ought to call yourself King. Or Bonaparte.”

  At that point, a well-read “doll-maker” named Adam joined in. “Just what do you think a bonaparte is? Some kind of title?”

  “Kind of,” Leibovich agreed amicably. “Like a prince.”

  “It’s easy to say, bonaparte,” Mishchuk protested. “But what if I don’t look like one?”

  A hundred metres from the camp was a wasteland. Chickens wandered among the daisies, broken glass and muck. A brigade on sanitation duty had been led out there to dig a trench.

  Early in the morning, the sun appeared from behind the barracks, just like Guard Chekin. It moved along the sky, touching the treetops and sawmill chimneys. The air smelt of rubber and warmed grass.

  Each morning, prisoners pounded the dry ground. Then they went to have a smoke. They smoked and chatted, sitting under a shade. Adam, the doll-maker, told the story of his first conviction.

  His stories had something of the quality of this wasteland. Maybe it was the smell of dusty grass, or the crunch of broken glass underfoot. Or maybe it was the muttering of the chickens, or the monotony of the daisies – the dry field of a fruitless life.

  “And what do you suppose the prosecutor does then?” Adam said.

  “The prosecutor then makes conclusions,” Leibovich answered.

  The guards napped by the fence. And this is how it was every day.

  But one day a helicopter appeared. It looked like a dragonfly. It was flying in the direction of the airport.

  “A turboprop Mi-6,” Boob observed, standing up. “He-ey,” he yelled lazily. Then crossed his arms over his head. Then stretched them out as if they were wings. Then crouched down. And finally repeated all this over and over again.

  “Oh-h-h…” Boob shouted.

  And that was when the miracle occurred. It was acknowledged by everyone. Everyone including Chaly the pickpocket, Murashka, who came from an old line of “jumpers”, Leibovich, the embezzler of government property, Adam the doll-maker, and even the black-marketeer Beluga. And they were hard people to surprise.

  The helicopter hovered and then began to descend.

  “Incredible,” Adam was the first to confirm.

  “May I live so long!” Leibovich said.

  “I’d give a tooth,” Chaly swore.

  “Seance,” Murashka said.

  “Phenomenal,” Beluga said,
and then, in English, “It’s wonderful!”

  “Not supposed to be happening,” said Corporal Dzavashvili, the guard, getting nervous.

  “He’s weathervaning the propeller!” Mishchuk bawled at the top of his lungs. “He’s slowing the rotations! Oh f-f-f—”

  The chickens ran to all sides. The daisies bent down to the ground. The helicopter gave a little jump and then stopped. The cabin door opened, and down the gangplank ladder came Marconi. This was Dima Marconi, a self-assured and brawny fellow, philosopher, wit and man of obscure origins. Mishchuk rushed at him.

  “You’re too scrawny!” Marconi said.

  Then for an hour they pretended to slug each other.

  “And how’s Vadya doing?” Mishchuk asked. “How’s Zhora?”

  “Vadya’s hitting the bottle. Zhora’s training to fly passenger Tupolevs. He’s sick of layovers in the sticks.”

  “Well, and you, old dog?”

  “I got married,” Marconi said in a tragic tone, and hung his head.

  “Do I know her?”

  “No. I hardly know her myself. You’re not missing much.”

  “Hey, do you remember that flight of woodcock over Lake Ladoga?”

  “Of course I remember. And do you remember that outdoor party at Sozva when I sank the ship’s rifle?”

  “Are we going to get juiced when I get back? In one year, five months and sixteen days?”

  “Oh and how! It’ll be great! It’ll be greater than Goethe’s Faust.”

  “I’ll go to Pokryshev himself, I’ll get down on my knees before him…”

  “I’ll drop in on Pokryshev, don’t worry. You’ll fly again. But first you’ll work for a while as a mechanic.”

  “Naturally,” Mishchuk agreed. He was silent for a moment, then added, “I should have known better than to pinch that silk.”

  “There are different opinions on that subject,” Marconi said tactfully.

  “What do I care?” Corporal Dzavashvili said. “Regulations make no provisions—”

  “Right,” Marconi said. “I know Caucasian hospitality when I see it. Shall I leave money?”

  “Having money is not allowed,” Mishchuk said.

  “Right,” Marconi said. “Looks like you’ve already achieved true Communism. In that case, take my scarf, watch and lighter.”

  “Merci,” said the former pilot.

  “Should I leave my shoes? I have a reserve pair on board.”

  “Forbidden,” Mishchuk said. “We have to wear standard issue.”

  “So do we,” Marconi said. “Right. Well, I’ve got to be going.” He turned to Dzavashvili. “Take three roubles, Corporal. To each according to his abilities.”*

  “Forbidden,” the escort guard said. “We’re on an allowance.”

  “Goodbye.” Marconi put out his hand to him. And then climbed up the gangway.

  Mishchuk smiled. “We’ll fly again,” he yelled. “We’ll pull a corkscrew out of some bottles yet. We’ll spit on hats from up there yet!”

  “For real,” Murashka said.

  “I’d give a tooth,” Chaly repeated.

  “The heavy shackles will fall!” Beluga shouted.

  “Life continues, even when in essence it doesn’t exist,” Adam observed philosophically.

  “You may laugh at this,” Leibovich said shyly, “but I’ll say it anyway. It seems to me that not everything is lost yet.”

  The helicopter rose above the ground. Its shadow became more and more transparent. And we watched it go until it disappeared behind the barracks.

  Mishchuk was released after three years, having served the full term. By that time, Pokryshev had died. The newspapers wrote about his death. Mishchuk was not permitted to work in an airport. His conviction prevented it.

  He worked as a mechanic at the Science Research Institute, married, and forgot prison slang. Played the mandolin, drank, grew old, and rarely thought about the future.

  And Dima Marconi crashed over Uglegorsk. Among the fragments of his plane they found a forty-pound canister of Beluga caviar.

  February 23, 1982. New York

  Dear I.M.,

  Thank you for your letter of the 18th. I’m glad that you seem well disposed towards my notes. I’ve prepared a few more pages here. Write and tell me your impressions.

  To answer your questions:

  A “doll-maker” is camp slang for a con man. A “doll” is a swindle of some kind.

  A “jumper” means a burglar. A “jump” is a burglary. Well, it seems that’s it. Last time I stopped at the horrors of camp life. What happens around us is not important. What’s important is how we experience ourselves in the face of it. In so far as any of us really are what we sense ourselves to be.

  I felt better than could have been expected. I began to have a divided personality. Life was transformed into literary material.

  I remember very well how this happened. My consciousness emerged from its habitual cover. I began to think of myself in the third person.

  When I was beaten up near the Ropcha sawmill, my consciousness functioned almost imperturbably: “A man is being struck by boots. He shields his face and stomach. He is passive and tries not to arouse the mob’s savagery… But what revolting faces! You can see the lead fillings in that Tartar’s mouth.”

  Awful things happened around me. People reverted to an animal state. We lost our human aspect – being hungry, humiliated, tortured by fear.

  My physical constitution became weak. But my consciousness remained undisturbed. This was evidently a defence mechanism. Otherwise I would have died of fright.

  When a camp thief was strangled before my eyes outside of Ropcha, my consciousness did not fail to record every detail.

  Of course, there is a large measure of immorality in all this. The same goes for any activity that has a defence mechanism at its base.

  When I was beginning to freeze, my consciousness registered the fact. What’s more, in artistic form: “Birds froze in flight…”

  However much I suffered, however much I cursed that life, my consciousness functioned without fail.

  If I faced a cruel ordeal, my consciousness quietly rejoiced. New material would now be at its disposal.

  Flesh and spirit existed apart. The more dispirited the flesh, the more insolently the spirit romped.

  Even when I suffered physically, I felt fine. Hunger, pain, anguish – everything became material for my tireless consciousness.

  In fact, I was already writing. My writing became a complement to life. A complement without which life would have been completely obscene.

  What was left to do was to transfer all this to paper. I tried to find the words.

  THE SIXTH CAMP SUBDIVISION was located far from the railway line, so getting to that cheerless place was not easy. You had to wait for a long time to hitch a ride from a passing log-carrier, then jolt over potholes while sitting inside an iron cabin, then walk for two hours on a narrow path that was always disappearing into the bushes. In short, you had to proceed as if there were a pleasant surprise awaiting you just over the horizon. All this, in order finally to reach the prison gates, to see the grey plank gangway, the fence, the plywood guard booths and the orderly’s gloomy mug.

  In this labour colony, Alikhanov was a guard in the penal isolator, where zeks who had committed offences were kept.

  These were peculiar people. In order to land in the penal isolator of a maximum-security camp, you had to commit some incredibly evil deed. Strange as it may seem, many managed to do so. What operated here was some principle contrary to natural selection. Conflicts arose between the horrible and the even more monstrous. The ones who landed in the isolator were considered thugs even among the most hardened criminals.

  Alikhanov’s job was a truly wretched one. Nevertheless, Boris Alikhanov carried out his duties conscientiously. The fact that he stayed alive can be taken as a qualitative indicator.

  One could not say that he was brave or cool-headed. But he did have a tale
nt for switching off in moments of danger. Obviously, that was what saved him.

  As a result, he was regarded as cool-headed and brave. But a stranger. He was a stranger to everyone: zeks, soldiers, officers and civilian workers. Even the guard dogs considered him a stranger.

  A smile both absent-minded and anxious played constantly over his face. An intellectual can always be recognized by that smile, even in the taiga.

  This was the expression he maintained in all circumstances: when the cold made fences split and sparrows freeze in flight; when the vodka, on the eve of a scheduled demobilization, overflowed from the soldiers’ borscht tub; and even when prisoners broke his rib by the sawmill.

  Alikhanov had been born into an intellectual family which looked down upon poorly dressed people. Now he dealt with prisoners in striped jackets, with soldiers who used poisonous hair tonic that smelt like shoe polish, and with civilian workers at the camp who gambled away their civilian rags before they reached Kotlas, the regional centre.

  Alikhanov was a good guard, and that, at any rate, was better than being a bad guard. The only ones worse than bad guards were the zeks in the penal isolator.

  The dark army barracks stood a hundred metres away from the isolator. An over-laundered pale-pink flag hung above the attic window. Behind the barracks, in the kennel, German shepherds could always be heard, their barking deep and resonant. The German shepherds were trained by Volikov and Pakhapil. For months on end they taught the dogs to hate people wearing striped jackets. However, the hungry dogs also snarled at soldiers in green padded vests, and at re-enlistees in officers’ overcoats, and at the officers themselves. And even at Volikov and Pakhapil. To walk between the mesh cages of the kennel was not without its dangers.

  At night Alikhanov monitored the isolator, and then he was off for the next twenty-four hours. He could smoke, sitting on the parallel bars of the outdoor gym, play dominoes beneath the wheezing of the loudspeaker or, as a last resort, familiarize himself with the company library, where writings of Ukrainian authors predominated.