“Get off my dick,” Yerokhin said, “cut your crap. Or you get one in the smacker.”
“Fine,” Zamarayev stopped him, “whatever. But I’m doing time because some people are envious of others’ millions. With money I was a total boss. Money is power.”
“When Communism arrives,” Yerokhin said with malice, “you’ll be without money, and worse than dirt. Under Communism they will abolish money.”
“Not likely,” Zamarayev said. “Without money all will be looted. So they won’t abolish it. And with money even Communism doesn’t frighten me.”
“What do you need money for, you blockhead? To light your gas ring with? Have you ever even put on a pair of ordinary shoes? An imported shoe? Even a Chinese one?” Yerokhin said, raising his voice and looking in wonder at his beat-up prisoner’s boots.
“My boots were of real leather,” Zamarayev said in response, “sewn by my brother-in-law.”
“Stolen by who?” Yerokhin did not understand.
“You’re a savage, you don’t even understand Russian.”
But Yerokhin’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Now if I had that forty grand. Wouldn’t I show them all! According to you, life is – what? It’s a kaleidoscope! I could throw on a show when I was free. I’d come to a cocktail hall. Throw down three gold pieces. They bring me cognac, beef Stroganoff, fillet… And there’s music playing, girls everywhere. Would you permit, as they say, a turn of the waltz? In the sense of a tango… She dances, all dressed up, shining like a pike… Afterwards you drive her to her place. On the way, you see something from the newspaper, Sergei Yesenin,* flying saucers… How I put on a show! And if they suddenly refused, I had a method that could convince any girl in a nice way. The method was simple: I’d say, ‘Lie down, you bitch, or I’ll kill you!’ Yes, I knew how to move my horns. The ladies certainly screamed under me!”
“Why scream for no reason?” Zamarayev asked.
“Ooh, what a bumpkin! And sex?”
“What?” Zamarayev did not understand.
“Sex, I said.”
“Talk like a human being.”
“Well then, love, love… According to you, love is – what? Love is… Love is… a kaleidoscope. Kind of, one thing today, another – tomorrow.”
“Love,” Zamarayev said, “is in order to have harmony at home. In order to have respect. But with your kind of girls, it’s better not to show your face in the village. You would be ashamed before the people.”
“So you’ve gone through life on one mare. While I have a legal wife in every Department of Construction. Of course, I don’t say… It happens… You can catch something on your tip.”
“What?” Zamarayev did not understand.
“On your tip, I said… Well, that… Gonorrhoea.”
“What?”
“That’s a peasant for you, doesn’t know what gonorrhoea is! It’s the clap, the clap!”
“Ah-ah.” Zamarayev moved away slightly. “So how did you get here, anyway? Not for that, by any chance?”
“They nabbed me at a dance. I slipped a shank into this fellow’s rib cage.”
“And that was the end of him, was it?”
“No end at all. He pulled through, the snake. Shouts out in the courtroom, that son of a bitch, ‘I forgive Yerokhin!’ But the prosecutor shakes his head and says, ‘You maybe, yes, but society cannot forgive him.’ In the beginning I claimed total incapacity. I yell, ‘I got drunk, I forgot everything that happened!’ Well, in the end the cops broke me. I confessed. I yell, ‘Shoot me! Why don’t you shoot me, you pig? If Lenin only saw your reprobate puss.’ That’s what I said to the prosecutor. So he went and got me three years for nothing. There was an article about me in the newspaper. You don’t believe me? I swear to God! It was called ‘Fungus’.”
“That makes sense,” Zamarayev said.
“You want me to tell you a secret?” Yerokhin said suddenly. “If you want, I’ll tell you a secret that will make you turn green. Only – you can’t tell anyone.”
“I know your secrets. You’re digging a tunnel under the bread room.”
“A tunnel – that’s nothing… Well, you want me to tell you? But just to you as a friend. Here, listen: I’m an Epstein on my mother’s side.”
“Epstein,” Zamarayev said, frowning in disbelief. “We’ve seen Epsteins the likes of you. You’re a gentile like the rest of us. And if you’re an Epstein, why are you here for hooliganism? Why didn’t you go into the business end?”
“I take after my father,” Yerokhin explained briefly.
“Epstein,” Zamarayev repeated.
“Peasant,” the other muttered in reply.
The gonging of the signal rail slowly sank into the spacious October sky. Knocking sounds could be heard from the power-saw bench. Behind the trees, thundering, a log-carrier went by.
“I’m off to the grindstone,” Yerokhin said. He got up, brushed off some tobacco crumbs. Then, without looking back, he started on his way through the forest to the machine shop.
“What a peasant, doesn’t know what gonorrhoea is,” Yerokhin smirked.
“A shallow person, not serious,” Zamarayev said under his breath, watching him go.
“The types they get in here,” Yerokhin thought.
“Where do people like him come from?” Zamarayev wondered.
The forest filled with mist. A dog tethered to a chain post began barking. Security Officer Bortashevich appeared, wearing narrow box-calf boots.
The prisoners stood up reluctantly, put out the campfire, and went their ways.
In the watchtowers, the new shift came on. Out of boredom, someone turned on a searchlight.
April 17, 1982. New York
Dear Igor,
I keep thinking about our conversation. Maybe the problem is that evil is arbitrary, that it is determined by time and place, and to put it more broadly, by the general tendencies of the historical moment.
Evil is determined by the state of affairs, by demand, by the function of its carrier. Besides all this, there’s the factor of chance, the unlucky conjunction of circumstance, and even bad aesthetic taste.
We endlessly rail against Comrade Stalin – and, of course, with reason. All the same, I would like to ask – who wrote four million denunciations at the time of the Stalinist terror? (This number appeared in closed Party documents.) Dzerzhinsky? Yezhov? Abakumov and Yagoda?*
Nothing of the kind. They were written by simple Soviet people. Does this imply that Russians are a nation of informers? Not in the least. It’s simply that the tendencies of the historical moment were being manifested.
Of course, an inborn predisposition to good or evil does exist. What is more, there are angels and monsters in this world, saints and villains, but they are rare. Shakespeare’s Iago, as the embodiment of evil, and Myshkin, who personifies good, are unique. Otherwise Shakespeare would not have created Othello or Dostoevsky The Idiot.
In normal cases, though, I am sure now that good and evil are arbitrary.
The same people can display an equal ability for virtue or villainy. I could easily imagine almost any of the recidivists as war heroes, dissidents, defenders of the oppressed. The opposite is also true: a war hero could dissolve into the camp mass with astonishing ease.
Of course, evil cannot be proselytized as an ideological concept. The nature of good gravitates more towards trumpeted publicity. Still, arbitrary factors operate in both cases.
For this reason, any categorical moral position seems ridiculous to me. Man is good! Man is base! Man is to man – a friend, a comrade, a brother… Man is to man a wolf… And so on.
Man is to man – how shall I put it best? – a tabula rasa. To put it another way – anything you please, depending on the conjunction of circumstances.
For this reason, may God give us steadfastness and courage and, even better – circumstances of time and place that are disposed to the good.