As I said, it was a drunken evening. We saw no more of Butler. He was one of the lucky ones (trust him!) to fix himself up with one of the young Georgians. But perhaps in compensation or commiseration, Mother Hubbard himself came over to sit with us. And within seconds, gossips that we are, we were talking about leaving Moscow for a few weeks.
Well, Mother Hubbard knew exactly the place. The Georgian port of Batumi on the Black Sea. Mother Hubbard touched the graying side of his wavy black hair. “And of course,” he said, “if you wanted to go further west, I could always arrange a fishing boat to Turkey.”
We were shocked. It hadn’t for one moment occurred to us to leave the country. But as soon as Mother Hubbard left us, we plunged into the idea like a pair of excited schoolgirls. The thought of living in France, in Paris! And although Mother Hubbard’s remark had been a casual addition to the idea of going to Batumi, we both knew that he meant it. These Georgians are an amazing people. The families are so close-knit that they are able to trust one another completely. Like New York Sicilians.
We could think about nothing else. Before we left we called Mother Hubbard over.
“You were serious?” I asked him.
“About what, Peter?” He’d forgotten already.
“The fishing boat.”
“Quite serious. If you are.”
“We won’t be robbed of everything we have?”
“No. But you’ll have to pay heavily.”
“How much?” my friend asked anxiously.
“Ten thousand rubles each.”
It was a great deal of money.
“But if you’ve got Western currency tucked away, it can be done for one thousand dollars each.”
We went home, the two thousand dollars ringing in our ears. Hidden in the apartment we had exactly that sum in hundred-dollar bills from the sale to an American diplomat of an icon that had been in the possession of my friend’s family for generations.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The signs of the fast approaching General Amnesty were not difficult to read. After Anton and Zoya had been at Panaka Five just over a month, twenty truckloads of Army uniforms arrived. They included quilted jackets and boots. Eight huts of penals, at about 200 men to a hut, were issued new clothing. Two days later these first 600 men were bundled onto a long convoy of waiting trucks in the middle of the night. By dawn they had gone. The Amnesty operation was under way.
The next morning it was announced that they had been transferred to another camp. But for all the smoothness of that first night’s arrangements it was no longer possible to keep the secret. Railway officials in Krasibirsk knew the trains were traveling west. They told the whip-guards, the whip-guards threatened the penals (in excess of their authority) to withdraw the Amnesty from them. The word blazed around the camp. And the fretting impatience of men who had been previously resigned to years of imprisonment now brought Panaka to that dangerous pitch which the colonel-commandant had feared all along.
Even if he were able to command the trucks and horse wagons and rolling stock to transport 2,000 men a week, it would take fifteen weeks to evacuate the whole Panaka complex.
But 2,000 men a week from Panaka alone was totally beyond the capacity of the rail lines, forty wagons was far beyond the capacity of some of the ancient steam locomotives to pull. The colonel, desperately trying to face the future, saw no possibility of the evacuation being complete until the spring, or even early summer. But equally he knew that he could never maintain camp discipline that long.
Even worse, since he was required to evacuate the whole complex within six weeks of Amnesty Day, how could he still requisition rations for prisoners who according to Gulag orders were no longer at Panaka? And if he was unable to requisition rations, how would he control 30,000 starving men with only 1,000 guards?
Each camp commandant had been given authority by the Gulag command in Moscow to decide at what point he would announce the General Amnesty. The colonel had already been in touch with his fellow camp commandants throughout the Kraslag area and discovered that in smaller camps of perhaps 5,000 penals each, commandants had already announced the Amnesty and established a lottery to determine the order of evacuation. This seemed to be working effectively, and in the last weeks up to 5,000 penals had already been committed to the railway system. Where they now were between Krasibirsk and Moscow the camp commandants neither knew nor cared. Once the men had left the Kraslag area they were no longer the commandant’s responsibility.
At Panaka the colonel saw no alternative. He officially informed Kraslag headquarters that it was impossible to achieve the six-week evacuation schedule unless Panaka was given priority in the requisition of rail transport.
That same day he posted notices throughout the camps in his command announcing the Amnesty and setting up a lottery system. With an optimism he did not feel, he proclaimed that the Panaka complex would be fully evacuated in fifteen weeks.
It was the day of the first heavy snowfall of winter. The colonel stood at the window of his office in Panaka and congratulated himself on the quiet which had fallen over the camp. He watched the huge flakes swirl down and begin to settle across the appel-ground. He even, with the warmth of the stove on his back, began to think again of Zoya.
He heard the telephone jangle in the sergeant-clerk’s room next door and waited for the hand-cranked whirr of his own receiver. Turning from the window he crossed to the desk, lifted the receiver and adopted his telephone voice.
“This is General Satolov at Kraslag,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
The colonel smiled respectfully into the mouthpiece. “Yes, General.”
“I’ve been discussing the Panaka problem with Gulag main headquarters. There are of course several other complexes of your size. Some even containing more prisoners.”
“I understand that, General.”
“On the other hand, the peculiar problems of discipline in the large complexes has been recognized at Gulag. Your own report was not unimportant in this change of view.”
“That is kind of you to say so, General.”
“My decision is therefore, Colonel, to withdraw all transport facilities from the smaller camps in the Kraslag area and to allocate all available transport to you.”
“Excellent.”
“In addition, one thousand border guards are on their way here to Krasibirsk and will arrive this afternoon. Your camp guards will therefore hand over responsibility to KGB Border at Krasibirsk railhead.”
“This relieves a great many of my concerns, General.”
“Good. You will receive all this in writing tomorrow. The point of my telephoning now is that I have motor and horse-drawn transport available here for a further two thousand men. And the train bringing the border guards can return with your contingent.”
It was the last thing the colonel wanted to hear. He had fixed the day of the lottery for three days ahead. Could he now organize it by tonight when the transport would arrive at Panaka?
He nevertheless thanked the general profusely before replacing the receiver.
He sat down heavily in his chair. He had already issued orders to his clerks for the work to begin on the lottery. Rolls of gray roof-insulation paper were now being cut into small cards. His system called for each one to be numbered and as it was selected from the lottery box by the prisoner, for his own Kraslag number to be written on the back. Without that precaution, murder would be committed to acquire a higher number.
But there was no possibility of arranging the lottery today. He had seen how slowly his clerks were working on the lottery cards. And even if they’d been ready, large numbers of men could not easily be moved around the camp in driving snow.