Every five days we were allowed to change our underwear, socks, and sheets. And every ten days was shower day.
On shower day, the usually strict security was relaxed somewhat. The bathhouse was located in the same building that housed the kitchen, on the other side of the gate, to the left as you walked toward the administration building. We were taken there at the same time as five to seven of the work-camp prisoners. There were several guards. And conversation was supposedly forbidden. But it went on anyway.
Each man was locked in a separate shower stall. The water was scalding hot, and the guards let you soak in it almost as long as you wanted.
There were several washbasins, and since hot water was available, which was not so with the sinks in our cellblock, the prisoners often used this opportunity to shave. Some, like Zigurd, had small pieces of mirror. One man had taken a regular double-edged razor blade and fastened it onto a stick with a bent nail. He shaved with it as deftly as if it were a straight razor.
The only other time we were taken outside our cells, other than for walks or to go to the toilet, was when we received a package. My first from the American Embassy in Moscow arrived on the twenty-fifth of September, and from then on, with one notable exception, the package came every month.
Escorted downstairs to the office of the building superintendent, we had to open the container in the presence of prison officials. On top were various magazines—Time, Newsweek, Life. These were placed in a stack to the side. Zahpretne. Unfavorable to the USSR. Not allowed. But, with scarcely a glance at their titles, books were allowed. As were the writing tablets, pen and pencil set, cigarettes, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, Chapstick; several items of clothing; and food.
We could now not only vary our menu somewhat—there were six cans of meat, four cans of fish, one jar of pickles, one jar of mustard, and nine boxes of cookies—but for breakfast we could have instant coffee, complete with sugar and Pream.
Zigurd also received one package a month, from his parents, usually containing some kind of smoked meat. The two package days became major events in our lives.
There were other, unexpected variations in our routine, not always pleasant.
Occasionally the lights would go off, power failures being fairly common in our part of Russia. If this happened at night it was a startling experience. We were accustomed to a light twenty-four hours a day, and it was amazing how dark the dark was. The only thing similar I had experienced was a spelunking expedition while in college, when a friend and I had become lost in a cave and turned out the flashlight—very briefly—to conserve the batteries.
At such times the guard would go from cell to cell distributing candles. Blowing them out, I was informed, was a punishmentcell offense.
I’d seen the outside of the punishment cells, located in the basement of the building between the administration building and the work-camp barracks, but had never seen inside one. Zigurd—whether from personal knowledge or hearsay, I never knew—said they were located half-underground, with a single window at the top for light and air. The furnishings consisted of one wooden bench. No blankets. And there were no sanitary facilities.
Late one night, within several weeks after my arrival at Vladimir, I discovered the one thing a prisoner fears more than any other.
Zigurd was already asleep. As usual, I was restlessly tossing and turning, when I caught the first acrid whiff.
“Zigurd” I cried; “something’s on fire!”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t in our cell. As the smoke smell grew stronger, we could hear running feet; that sound was soon drowned out by prisoners in other cells yelling or banging on their doors.
I had never known pure panic before. Not even when I thought I was trapped in the falling U-2 matched what I felt then. The building was old, the floors wood, we were locked in with no way to get out.
After a while the acrid smell diminished, and finally the cellblock became quiet again.
The next morning, although sure he already knew the answer, Zigurd asked the guard what had happened.
One of the prisoners had gone mad and set his mattress on fire.
Even though I was not allowed American newspapers or news magazines, we could obtain, fairly regularly, Pravda and the French Communist newspaper L’Humanité, and, occasionally, the American Worker and the British Daily Worker.
Of the last two, I preferred the British version. Though it had just as much propaganda, it also contained straight news dispatches from Reuters.
As for the other two papers, they played special roles in our lives.
Although Russian cigarettes could be purchased from the commissary, and I obtained American cigarettes in my embassy package, once a week each prisoner was issued a few ounces of coarse tobacco, made from ground-up tobacco stalks, for roll-your-owns.
There was a saying in the prison: Pravda best for cigarette paper, L’Humanité for toilet tissue.
Communist propaganda does have its uses.
Eleven
On September 21 I was told I would be allowed to write four letters per month. I decided, initially, to write two to Barbara, one to my parents, then, on different months, to alternate the remaining one among my sisters.
Unlike at Lubyanka, there was no attempt to dictate contents, nor were the letters edited, then rewritten. They were read, however, and we left the envelopes unsealed for that purpose.
As yet I hadn’t received any mail from home. Though the move from Moscow had probably delayed it, it still concerned me. Zigurd suggested that in the future I do what he did. Work up an arrangement with my correspondents to number our letters. That way we could tell if any were missing.
I tried to make my letters as cheery as possible. This took some imagination, and even then didn’t always come off. For example, in my first letter I noted, “Don’t worry about me. Where I am there is very little that can happen to me. I am safer here than in an airplane. Think of it that way.”
I neglected to add that, given a choice, I’d pick the sky.
Airplanes were very much on my mind, particularly after I had discovered that jets would occasionally pass overhead. Apparently we were near a letdown pattern. Several times, on our walks, I recognized MIG 17s and 15s.
Because to me flying had always been a form of freedom, the sound and sight of those MIGs filled me with special longing.
Although there was no evidence that our cell was bugged, we automatically presumed this to be the case, and by unspoken agreement saved certain topics of conversation for our walks. Escape was one.
We didn’t admit it was impossible. To do so would have been to surrender one of our few hopes. But, considered realistically, we had to face the fact that our prospects were less than good.
Sawing bars and dropping two stories to the ground was out. We couldn’t even reach the bars, without first breaking several windows.
The guards inside the prison had no guns. But those in the towers did. No prisoner ever crossed the yard alone. Even service personnel—cooks and others—were escorted. Seeing a prisoner without escort, guards were under orders to shoot.
I tried to remember some notable POW escapes during World War II. Most had involved digging tunnels. We weren’t near any ground. The walk area was asphalt. And we were watched every minute.
During the war POWs were usually housed in barracks, in large groups. Thus they could plan, assign duties, establish cover, create diversions. Except for shower day, when there were guards present, we had no contact whatsoever with other prisoners. There was never a time, not even in the toilet, that we weren’t subject to surveillance.