“It sounds like another planet!” I had said.
“If they do put you and your boy on road detail, you must know that you are building a road that is designed for the sole purpose of making it possible for future prisoners to more easily access areas rich with gold. Maybe they won’t have to walk someday, as you will.”
“He’s using us to explore new lands, Abram.”
“Yes, there have been stories of men literally making a path for a future road by exploring the mountainous terrain on foot, creating footprints for others to follow, many falling to their deaths because of the unexplored area. They were the… how do you say in English… the—”
“Guinea pigs!” I said. “Sacrificial lambs!”
“Yes.”
“I refuse to believe that this will be our fates, Abram.”
“The terrain will be horrible, the mountains, the ice… rock-hard, the frigid air… unbreathable. Whatever thick clothing they provide, take good care of it. Keep the snow out of your boots by tucking your pants into them and tying a sock around the tops tightly. Never take your ushanka off, if they give you one. Try to keep your mouth closed and breathe lightly through your nose. Keep your head down and dig.”
“We will.”
“They don’t call that highway the Road of Bones for nothing, Prescott. Many have, and will, be buried right under it.”
It was very cold and windy when we disembarked, but not nearly as cold as the old man had said it would be in December. Nor was it as cold as it would be at the mines, which were located near the distant mountains and far beyond the closer hillsides, both of which were currently being smothered by a thick fog. Still, the old man had painted a picture.
After walking inland about four miles on a road that had been partially carved through the high Nagaev Bay cliffs, we arrived at Magadan, a lonely, depressed place that resembled nothing I’d ever imagined. And it certainly wasn’t a town in any traditional sense whatsoever. It consisted of a snow-cleared dirt road, watchtowers, barbed wire, fuel tanks, and barracks. According to the guards, thousands were being held here temporarily, and it appeared that thousands more would follow, maybe millions.
At the entryway of the camp was a large sign above that read: WORK IN THE USSR IS A MATTER OF HONOR AND GLORY. Of course, I saw it much differently. The sign was missing two key words. “Forced” at the beginning and “not” after “is.”
Based on what I’d seen upon arrival when they opened the hatch and brought in the lamps, I was guessing that at least a hundred had died in the hold. There were only nine hundred of us now. We marched through the dark clouds that had fallen, the seasickness still in our legs. We passed by columns of shabby barracks. I wondered if zeks were asleep inside or if the buildings were empty. Whatever the case, it looked like a snowy ghost town on the moon.
Walking behind us in the distance toward a different area of the camp were the women from our ship, maybe a few hundred of them, some holding babies. The old man had said there were nurseries and maternity wards in the camps. Stalin hadn’t missed a thing.
Continuing to discreetly gaze back at them, I couldn’t help but try to find a couple of black faces, but it was pointless. My wife and daughter had gone north from Moscow.
As we walked deeper inside, there were guards with big-eared, pointy-faced, mangy-looking, vicious dogs on chains patrolling everywhere. We passed by one wooden structure after another, all of them properly built actually with solid foundations and sturdy beams. A food barracks on the left that smelled of cabbage had a poster on the front door with an image of a hand clutching a snake near the head. At the bottom it read: WE WILL ERADICATE SPIES AND DIVERSIONISTS, AGENTS OF THE TROTSKYITE—BUKHARINITE FASCISTS!
With smoky fog feeling like it was coming up from the ground, we approached a nicer-looking structure where the NKVD might be stationed. Or perhaps this was also the Dalstroi headquarters, because it looked official, the red and yellow state flag blowing high above. An officer stood in front in the distance and held a megaphone.
“Davai! Davai!” he said. “Bystrey! Bystrey!”
We sped up, but he kept repeating those same words in his violent Russian. “Get going! Get going! Faster! Faster!”
With our accompanying guards repeating his command, we began to run until we arrived at the stone building, which was painted white. “Catch up, you lazy zek!” the commander said through the megaphone. I turned and, through the fog, could barely see a prisoner laboring behind in the distance. He was limping but trying like hell to join the rest of us.
“Ubey yego!” said the commander, looking up at one of the watchtowers and nodding.
An NKVD man stationed up high pointed his rifle downward and fired two shots at the zek, dropping him to the permafrost. He lay there facedown. Dead.
“Welcome to Magadan, zeks!” the commander said through the black megaphone, as if nothing had happened. “I am Commander Drugov. You are part of the new system. We may be several time zones away from Moscow, but the Central Committee has spoken to us. They have been coddling the zeks for years here in the Sevvostlag system. But our great Stalin has replaced all of the Sevvostlag commanders with new, more knowledgeable ones. There will be no more wasting time and money.”
I gazed to my left at James and was hoping he’d grown accustomed to hearing lectures that sounded far too intellectual for him. He knew I’d explain things later.
“The Central Committee has voted to make Kolyma more productive,” he continued. “The mines and roads are not being worked hard enough. The loggers are not sufficiently cutting the trees down in the taiga. The women are not harvesting peat beside the river fast enough, or washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, and sewing rapidly enough. They are being scolded for such things over in their camp.”
He pointed to the right in the distance.
“But that will all change now,” he continued. “You will get your daily ration, but it will consist of hand-sized black bread for the day, hot soup in the morning, gruel for lunch, and hot water for dinner. You are henceforth to be known as Lagpunkt Seventy-Nine. Your ship was supposed to only be for hauling ammonium nitrate, but they managed to squeeze your little unit in.”
He put the megaphone down and was handed a sheet of paper from a guard. I was still thinking about being several time zones away from Moscow. It seemed we were closer to Alaska.
“Kolyma is called ‘the island,’” he continued. “Not because it’s an actual island, but because it is all alone away from the mainland. Once you are out there some three hundred miles minimum from here, we won’t try to stop you from escaping. Just know that no one has ever made it out. Never! Understand?”
“DA!” we yelled.
“Fortunately for you, however, for the time being, you are being assigned to build more barracks here in Magadan, structures that will further serve our ever-growing Dalstroi headquarters. Nice offices for our great Stalin to sit in whenever he visits! Yes?”
“DA!” we screamed.
“Your thirty-day slog through the ice and snow won’t begin just yet. As you can see, this holding camp is very large. There are many thousands here, all with their own schedules for departure. But within the camp, there are a few cordoned-off sections for smaller communities to live as separate lagpunkts and remain here indefinitely. Magadan itself needs a myriad of jobs done for its own community. Yours will be to shut your fucking mouths and hammer nails while most of the zeks come from the ships and head straight to the mines. Yes?”