Today Vorkuta is still a coal basin. This basin consists of thirteen mines, laid out in a large loop around the town. Next to each mine is a miners’ settlement, and parts of these settlements are former camps, still inhabited. The settlements and the mines are linked by a ring road, along which two buses run in opposite directions. Because a car is still a rarity here, the bus is the sole means of transportation.
And so I took such a bus to visit Genady Nikolayevich, knowing only that I must ask for Komsomolski Posiolek, house number 6. After an hour, the driver pulled up to a place that was supposed to be the stop for Komsomolski Posiolek, opened the doors, and pointed in the direction in which I was to walk, but he pointed so indistinctly that it could have been interpreted as meaning that I was to walk in the direction of any one of the millions of stars making up the Milky Way. But the imprecision of his gesture was of no consequence anyway, for after getting off the bus I quickly lost all sense of where I was.
First, I became aware of standing in total darkness. Initially I could see nothing, but when my eyesight began to adjust to the gloom, I perceived that I was surrounded by large mountains of snow. Every few moments powerful gusts of wind struck the peaks of these mountains, lifting up toward the sky enormous clouds of white; it looked as if geysers of white lava were exploding again and again on these summits. Everywhere only mountains of snow, no lights, no people, and a cold so terrible that I was unable to take a deep breath without piercing my lungs with pain.
The instinct for self-preservation should have told me that the only way out of this situation was not to budge from the bus stop, to wait for the next bus, which would surely arrive sooner or later (although it was already after midnight). But the instinct failed me, and so, propelled by some fatal curiosity, or maybe by mere thoughtlessness, I set off in search of Komsomolski Posiolek and house number 6. The thoughtlessness lay in not realizing what it means to find myself at night beyond the Arctic Circle, in a snowy desert, in cold that gripped my face and choked me so I could not breathe.
I walked straight ahead not knowing where I was or what to do next. I would select one of the mountains as a goal, but before I managed to get close to it — floundering through deep snow, choking, and growing weaker — the mountain would vanish. It was the continuing gale, that pernicious polar purge, that moved the mountains of snow from one place to another, changed their location, their composition, changed the entire landscape. I had nothing on which to fix my eyes, nothing by which to orient myself.
At a certain point I saw before me a pit, and in the pit a wooden single-story house. I slid, partly rolled, down the ice-covered mountain slope — down into the pit. But it was a shop, locked and barred. The place seemed quiet and cozy, and I even wanted to stay here, when I remembered all the warnings of polar explorers, who said that such a warm niche, in a snowy desert, is a tomb.
So I pulled myself back up and set forth again. But where to? Which way should I walk? I could see less and less, for the snow was sticking to my face, covering my eyes. I knew only that I must keep walking, that if I were to lie down I would perish. And the fear, the animal fear of a man baited to death by some frightful force that he can neither recognize nor oppose and that — he senses — is pushing him, ever weaker and more powerless, into the white abyss.
Already at the end of my strength, but still rousing myself every now and again so as to take a few more steps, I spotted the silhouette of a woman struggling against the gale, bent, hunched over. I dragged myself up to her and gasped: “House number six.” And again: “House number six”—with such hope in my voice as if my entire salvation lay concealed at this address.
“You are walking in the wrong direction, man,” she said, shouting above the wind. “You are walking in the direction of the mine, and you should be walking … that way,” and, like the bus driver, she indicated with her hand one of the millions of stars that compose the Milky Way.
“But I’m also going there,” she added. “Come, I will show you where it is.”
ONE ENTERS the house in which Genady Nikolayevich lives just as one enters all the other houses in this settlement. First one must spot, from a distance, the right mountain of snow; in its interior, at the bottom of it, stands the house. One must clamber up to the summit of the mountain. Below will be visible the roof of a one-story building. From the peak of the mountain to the door there are steps dug out in the wall of snow and ice. With great effort, fear, and the utmost caution one descends to the bottom. There, with the help of the residents, wrestling with the banks of snow, one forces the door open just enough to get inside.
The arrival of each new person is such an extraordinary occurrence here that all the residents of the house (there are several apartments in each) come out to greet him. Each one asks that you come visit, if only for a minute.
Genady Nikolayevich, a miner, just turned fifty and retired. Such an early retirement is one of the perks one receives for work in such dreadful, polar conditions. Although it is a rather dubious perk — only twenty percent of miners live to be fifty. A large, swollen thorax. When he talks, he is hoarse and whistles — he has advanced black lung. He arrived here to work when he was sixteen. A camp? No. There was hunger at home, in a kolkhoz near Kursk. Someone told him: If you want to eat, go to Vorkuta, there’s apparently food there. And in fact he could buy bread, and sometimes even a piece of meat. Now it’s worse, because the only thing one can get is reindeer meat, hard as a rock. “It’s a waste of one’s teeth,” says Genady Nikolayevich, baring his teeth in a smile. Some are gold and some are silver. The color of teeth is important here; it indicates one’s place in the social hierarchy. The higher the personage, the more gold teeth. The lower situated have silver teeth. The lowest — artificial teeth, resembling the natural ones in color and appearance. I am tempted to ask what kind of teeth Stalin had. But I know the answer: nobody knows; Stalin never smiled.
I ask him about the barracks that I saw along the way. Those are the old camps, he explains. But I saw lights in the windows! Yes, he says, because people live there. The camps were officially shut down in the sense that there are no sentences being passed out; there are no guards; there is no torture. Many of the former inmates left. But some of them stayed — they have nowhere else to go; they have no families, friends. Here at least there is a roof over their heads, and work, and buddies. Vorkuta is their only place on earth.
For Genady Nikolayevich, the border between the camp and the world beyond the camp is not very distinct. It is not the border between slavery and freedom, just a matter of degrees of captivity. It is said that he arrived in Vorkuta voluntarily. Voluntarily? He arrived because he was chased out of his home by the whip of hunger! It is also said that he could leave this place at any time. Leave? And go where? And where would he live? What would he live on? Genady Nikolayevich is rather inclined toward the opinion of Ivan Solonievich, one of the few inmates who in 1934 succeeded in escaping to the West: all of Russia is a camp.