I spent about a week and a half in the hospital. A loudspeaker hung over my head, a smooth plywood box inhabited by peaceful news. Chess pieces stood side by side with vials of medicine on the night table. Outside the window, the frozen days unfolded. A landscape in a window frame.
Dry, clean bed linen. Soft slippers, a warm, washed-out bathrobe. Cheerful music from the loudspeaker. Clinical directness and a frank manner of contact. All this blocked out the isolator, the yellow lights above the sawmill, the sentries freezing to their sub-machine guns. And still, I thought of Kuptsov quite often. I might not have been surprised if he had come walking in on me in his prison jacket, with a book in his hand, no less.
I didn’t know who had struck me beside the fire extinguisher. And yet I could sense that, not far from the white blade, Kuptsov’s smile had flashed, had dropped, like a shadow, on his face.
I crossed the snowy yard in slippers and a bathrobe. Once I got to the dark annexe, I pulled on my boots. Then a log-carrier gave me a lift to headquarters. I appeared before Lieutenant Colonel Grechnev. On his desk, a wrought-iron warrior lifted a lance. The officer’s tone was administrative-casuaclass="underline" “They tell me there was an attempt on your life.”
“They just stuck a shiv in my behind.”
“And what’s so good about that?”
“Well,” I said, “nothing.”
“How did it happen?”
“They were playing cards. I took away their money.”
“When you were found, there was no money.”
“Naturally.”
“Why do you go looking for trouble?”
“Because those games usually end in slaughter.”
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel…”
“In slaughter, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel.”
“That might be in our interest.”
“I think the law should be observed.”
“Fine, forget I said that. You’re from Leningrad?”
“Yes, from Okhta.”
“There’s a joke they tell at HQ: Major Berezhnoy arrives at Ropcha. The orderly won’t admit him. Berezhnoy shouts, ‘I’m from top command!’ The orderly replies, ‘And I’m from the Ligovka.’ Are you familiar with judo techniques?”
“More or less.”
“As the saying goes, ‘There’s no way to sidestep the crowbar and hatchet.’ We’ll send you to another command.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“That’s stupid. We’ll send you to Sindor.”
“And there are no zeks at Sindor? The same sons of bitches and total lawlessness.”
“You planning to stand on your rights?”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel…”
“I wasn’t going to, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t last long. Your physical dimensions are respectable, you make an easy target.”
The truck from HQ took me to the crossing. I walked along the smooth, graded road, then along the plank road, dirtied with horse droppings. I took a shortcut across a small frozen brook and farther on, down a stretch where sparrows yammered alongside bluish snowdrifts and barbed wire.
To the barking of guard dogs, I entered the zone. I saw the washed-out pink flag above the attic window of the barracks, the rickety plywood booth and the orderly with a dagger in his belt, a soldier I didn’t know by the well, clean pieces of firewood stacked under an awning. And suddenly I realized how much I had missed this difficult male life, the cheap tobacco and bad language, the accordions, sheepskin jackets, machine guns, photographs, rusty razor blades and cheap cologne.
I dropped off my rations card with the sergeant, then headed for the drying room. There, around a platform piled with rusty barbell disks, the soldiers sat peeling potatoes. No one asked me anything. Only Lukonin, a company clerk, grinned and said, “We just about entered your name for all time on the Honour Roll.”
Later I learnt that HQ had sent a military investigator. He had given a lecture entitled “The Degeneration of Bourgeois Art”. Afterwards, he had been asked, “How’s our musclehead doing?”
The speaker answered, “The investigation is on the only true path, comrades.”
I saw Kuptsov in the zone. This happened just before the changing of the convoy brigades. He walked over and asked without smiling, “How’s your health, Chief?”
“All right,” I said. “And you, as before, still refusing to work?”
“As long as the law feeds me.”
“That means you’re not working?”
“I’m abstaining.”
“And you won’t?”
Prisoners were walking past us to the clanging of the signal rail. They walked alone or in pairs towards the gates. Inmate guards were out hunting for recusants around the zone. And here Kuptsov stood, in full view of everyone.
“You won’t work?”
“Nicht,” he said. “The green prosecutor is coming – spring! Under every tree, a refuge.”
“You thinking of escaping?”
“Aha, a little jogging. They say it’s good for you.”
“Take into consideration that in the forest I’ll finish you without warning.”
“Consideration taken,” Kuptsov said, and he winked.
I grabbed him by the breast of his quilted jacket. “Listen, you’re all alone! Your Code doesn’t exist. You’re alone.”
“Exactly.” Kuptsov grinned. “A soloist. I sing without chorus.”
“Well, you’ll croak. You’re one man against everyone. Which means you’re wrong.”
Kuptsov said slowly, distinctly and severely, “One is always right.”
And suddenly I understood that this zek who wanted to kill me made me glad, that I was constantly thinking of him, that I couldn’t live without Kuptsov.
It was so unexpected, silly, disgusting… I decided to think everything out, so as not to lie to myself.
I let him go and walked on. I began to guess at something, more exactly to sense that this last upholder of the Code in the Ust-Vym complex was my double, that the recidivist Kuptsov (aka Shalikov, Rozhin, Alyamov) was dear and necessary to me, that he was dearer to me than the camaraderie of the soldiers which had swallowed the last pitiful crumbs of my idealism, that we were one. Because the only person you could hate that much was yourself.
And I also felt how tired he was.
I remember that winter, February, vertical smoke above the barracks. When a prison goes to sleep, it becomes very still. Only from time to time a wolfhound chained to a post raises its head, rattling its long tether.
There were three of us in the Command Patrol Station. Fidel was warming his hands by the stove grating. The peak of his cap was broken and it looked like a bird’s beak. Beside him sat a woman in felt boots dark with melted snow.
“Our name be Kuptsov,” she was saying, unknotting her scarf.
“A meeting is not authorized.”
“But I’ve come so far.”
“Not authorized,” Fidel repeated.
“Boys…”
Fidel was silent, then he leant over to the woman and whispered something. He said something insolent and shameful to her.
They brought in Kuptsov. He strutted, stooping and hiding his fists in his sleeves, as he would on the outside. And again I got the feeling of a storm above his head. The zek stopped in the transit corridor, looked into the cabin, recognized, and stared, stared… didn’t tire of staring. Only his fingers whitened on the steel grating.
“Borya,” the woman whispered. “You’re all green.”
“Like a young pickle.” He grinned.
“This meeting isn’t authorized,” Fidel said.
“They suggested,” the woman said, looking at her husband with anguish, “they suggested… I’m ashamed to repeat it…”
“I’ll find you,” Kuptsov said quietly, to himself, “I’ll find you, boys… And when you get it, there’ll be no discount given.”
“You punk!” Fidel said threateningly. “There’s no shortage of cells in the isolator.” And then, to the escort guard: “Take him away!”
The woman cried out, wept. Kuptsov stood there, nestling his cheek against the grating.