“Stand up!” he bawled out, although without exception we were all on our feet as soon as we heard the door with the iron bars opening. The man from Caucasus Region, whose hand was wracked with pain, was closer to the door than everyone else. He was just getting ready to ask something when the baton came crashing down on his head with crippling strength. The man crashed to the concrete floor without a sound. “Bastards! Damned bandits! Fuck you all! I will shoot you all. Lie down!” the guard shouted, flying into a rage and grasping at his automatic pistol. I had no doubt that he would open fire upon us. We instantly lay down, sometimes on top of each other, because there wasn’t enough floor space for everybody. “Mongrels! Live for the time being!” the red-eyed one finally relented, enjoying our implicit obedience. He paused for a few minutes, then turned and opened the door. The other security guards left with him, and the door closed. The storm had blown over for the time being, and the morning rounds were over. The slumped-over man was groaning near the door. One of the prisoners tried to stop the blood that was trickling from a dark spot under the wretched fellow’s shiny black hair.
An hour later the door opened again, and some people dressed in dirty white overalls appeared, accompanied by a guard. One of them announced, “Breakfast!” They started scooping pearl-barley porridge onto the tin plates. They had also brought water. When my turn came, I drank some water and got a plate of porridge, but there was no spoon. Probably they supposed that a decent prisoner should have brought his own. One of the other prisoners saw that I was at a loss and offered me his own. I accepted it with gratitude and tried to eat something. The porridge was utterly loathsome, disgusting, and it was absolutely impossible to eat it. I saw that many people took margarine or some seasoning out of their bags and put it into the food, trying to turn the mash into something edible. Since I had nothing of the kind, I quickly gave it back to the men who were dishing it out, after a few spoonfuls of porridge. I wanted to use the toilet, but I was warned that no one, not even a sick man, was allowed to go there until the last man in the cell had finished his breakfast. So I waited patiently. I went only after one of the murderers had finished his meal with gusto. He was the last obstacle on my way to the toilet. This time I wasn’t nearly as ashamed as I had been in Cell 81 of Lefortovo Prison, in October 1992. “I am making progress!” I thought bitterly.
The people in the cell revived, started talking, and drinking more chefir. However, it didn’t last long. The cell had to be cleared for the arrival of new prisoners. There were about 50 of us (in 30 square meters!) They divided us into groups of 10 prisoners and sent us for medical examinations, one group at a time. I was in the third group. We moved along the filthy corridor in the direction of the passage I came through the day before. Then we entered a side corridor where someone in white overalls was sitting at a table. Near him a security guard was sprawled in a chair, with a gun round his neck and a baton in his right hand. However, we were told to continue on farther, to a dark room where we had to remove our clothes and go through an examination, one by one. It was damp and cold. We had to go when we heard the order, “Next!” Finally, it was my turn. I came up to a man in white overalls. Another man in white was bustling about. He looked less important, and I understood that he was a low level medic or an orderly.
“Well, bandit, how are you feeling?” the doctor addressed me.
“I am not any kind of bandit. I am a scientist and a chemist,” I answered as politely as I could.
“Wha-a-a-a-a-a-at? Shut up, you mangy dog!” the command rang out and I felt a jab in my back with the baton. It didn’t hurt that much, but it was enough for me to instantly “grow wiser.” People talked to you here only to make you understand that henceforth you were nobody and your duty was to obey and agree with servility, so as not to get a crushing blow from the baton on your head. I turned to the security guard whose eyes were sparkling with anger.
“Remember, mongrel, once and for all. Decent people don’t come here. This is why you are a bandit to me, just like all the rest, you damned bastard!” my jailer lectured me.
Yes, after such a lesson it made no sense to react in a human way to anything that happened. So when the medic stuck a needle from a suspiciously unclean syringe into my vein to withdraw blood (apparently they were checking us for HIV), I was terrified but said nothing. The doctor asked with a smirk: “Any complaints?”
I nodded, “No.”
“Next!” shouted the orderly.
We were sent to be fingerprinted and photographed. I was one of the last to go through this procedure. I thought I knew what to expect from my experience at Lefortovo Prison, but there was a big difference between the large empty rooms of the KGB jail and the cramped cell for fingerprinting at Matrosskaya Tishina.
It was already about 2 P.M. when they gathered us together in the holding cell again. From there we were taken through a dirty corridor and upstairs to the baths on the second floor. Newspapers, wrapping paper, potato peels, and pieces of plaster mixed with broken glass were strewn about everywhere. It was damp and chilly on the second floor. Steam seeped out from somewhere, and women’s voices could be heard. The “veterans” immediately explained that we were waiting for the women to finish their baths.
Finally, we all got undressed. Most of the men displayed unique jail tattoos. I forced myself not to gawk at this artwork. I was very curious, but I was sure it wasn’t safe to stare.
The concrete floor was horribly cold. You could stand only in your shoes. We had to jump around quite a bit, not to become totally numb and frozen.
The bath was a spacious cell with lots of pipes running along the ceiling. Water was continuously trickling from the pipes. First they gave each of us each a piece of dark disinfectant soap, but no wash cloths. There were no towels, either. It reminded me of my childhood, when as boys we quivered terribly and couldn’t stop our teeth from chattering, after swimming in the almost frozen Belaya River in early spring. After a little time had passed, we got right back into the water, so we could boast to the other boys about how many times we had been in after the breakup of the ice.
Many prisoners were standing on newspapers that they had brought with them. It proved that experience was a great thing, and there was always a way out of any situation. After the bath, we pulled our clothes back on our wet bodies and were ready for whatever came next. We were escorted back to the first floor and found ourselves in a winding corridor. We were taken to a woman sitting behind a window. She asked a few questions – the year of my birth and other personal details such as my educational background, which article of the Criminal Code I had been arrested under, etc. When I told her I was a Doctor of Chemical Science, she looked at me attentively and marked something on her papers. Then we went to a crowded stockroom on the second floor, where all of our so-called bedding and dishware was being dispensed through two windows. The line near the windows was long and didn’t move. Most of the prisoners had already made friends, and they stuck together in groups by cell, like a collective. One of the prisoners took a place in line, and didn’t let anyone get to the window before the other members of his collective. I stood and waited patiently until everyone received their mattresses, blankets, mugs, spoons, and plates. Then I realized that I had made a serious blunder. I was given only an aluminum plate and a spoon. There were no pillows, mattresses or blankets left…
I was one of the last to be taken to a cell on the third floor. When the door opened, I saw a few people standing around, (the rule was – prisoners had to stand up every time the doors opened and the supervisor came in), and they looked me over with curiosity. A small television set was standing on a long table in the middle of the cell. It was switched on. A set of iron bunk beds stood on one side of the cell and another was near the washbasin. I quickly counted that I was the eighth person, but there were only four beds. It was strange that one mattress was on the floor, lying almost in the door, opposite the toilet. I saw a young blond man with blue eyes standing near that mattress, and I understood that it was his place. I was surprised but didn’t ask about it, because I had realized by then that excessive curiosity wasn’t welcome here. Later, when I was transferred to the other half of the jail with better conditions, I found out that the blond guy was an outcast who was turned into a passive homosexual by his cellmates. They had sent him to sleep on the floor near the door. All seven prisoners recognized me.