Katya breathed on the window pane. Yegorov set a log on its end. For some time he looked closely at the little branches. Then he gave the axe a short swing up and let it fall sharply, slanting it a little.
‘The Turkish March’ came over the radio. Katya imagined a platoon of Turkish soldiers. They trudged through deep snow in heavy turbans, fighting their way from the Division of Economic Administration to the machine shop. Their yataghans have frozen to their scabbards, the turbans gone white…
“My God,” Katya thought, “I’m losing my mind!”
Yegorov returned with an armful of firewood and dumped it by the stove. Then he pulled out of his pocket a prison knife with a locking pin, confiscated during a personal search, and began to chip off kindling.
“Once I used to love winter,” Katya thought, “but now I hate it. I hate frost in the morning and dark evenings. I hate dogs barking, fences, barbed wire. I hate boots, down vests… and ice in the washbasin.”
“Be quiet,” she said aloud. “I hate your always being right!”
“How’s that?” Yegorov did not understand. Then he said, “Well, if you’d like, I’ll go to Vozhayel and get apples and champagne, and we can invite Zhenya Bortashevich and Larissa.”
“Your Bortashevich cuts his nails during supper.”
“Then Vakhtang Kekelidze. His father is a count.”
“Kekelidze is a vulgarian!”
“Meaning?”
“You don’t know.”
“Why do you think I don’t know?” the captain said. “I know. I know he plays up to you. That’s the way Georgians behave. The guy’s unmarried. It’s unpleasant, of course. Actually, he deserves a punch in the jaw.”
“A woman needs it.”
“What, exactly?”
“For a man to pay attention to her.”
“You need to have a baby,” the captain said.
The hoarse, vibrating baying from the kennel grew stronger. One swelling timbre stood out in particular among the other voices.
“Why is it I was never bothered by seagulls,” Katya said, “or wild ducks? I cannot, cannot, cannot endure that barking.”
“It’s Harun,” Yegorov said.
“What a horror.”
“You haven’t heard wolves yet. That’s a really terrible business.”
The firewood in the stove hissed as it flared up. And there was already a smell of wet snow.
“Pavel, don’t be angry.”
“What’s there to be angry about?”
“Bring some apples from Vozhayel.”
“By the way, the ice in the washbasin is melting.”
Katya came up behind him and put her arms around him.
“You’re big,” she said, “like a tree in a thunderstorm. I’m afraid for you.”
“Fine,” he said, “everything will be all right. Everything will be simply wonderful.”
“Is it really possible everything will be all right?”
“Everything will be wonderful. If we are good ourselves.”
“And is it true the ice is melting in the washbasin?”
“It’s true,” he said, “it’s normal. A law of nature.”
In the kennel, Harun began to howl again.
“Wait a second,” Yegorov said, pulling away from Katya. “I’ll be right back. This will just take a minute.”
Katya let her hands drop. She went into the kitchen and lifted the heavy cover of the washbasin. Inside, a small lump of ice was melting.
“It really is melting,” Katya said out loud.
She went back, sat down. Yegorov was still out.
Katya put on a scratchy phonograph record. She remembered some lines from a poem that had been dedicated to her by Lyonya Mak, a weightlifter and unacknowledged genius:
It’s plain I’ve come at an awkward moment,
The phonograph has long since stopped, it whispers,
Better let’s wait for a waltz, Katya,
It’s easier for me not to dance this one…
In the kennel, a shot rang out. The hoarse canine howl changed to a screech and then stopped.
After a few moments, the captain returned. He walked past the windows. He was carrying something wrapped in a tarpaulin.
Katya was afraid to lift her eyes.
“So, what do you think?” Yegorov said, grinning. “It’s a bit quieter now, isn’t it?”
Katya tried to ask, “What’s this? Now what?”
“It’s not a problem,” the captain assured her. “I’ll call over a flunky with a shovel.”
May 17, 1982. Princeton
Dear Igor,
As you know, Shalamov regards the camp experience as entirely negative.
I knew Varlam Tikhonovich slightly through Gena Aygi.* He was an astounding man. And all the same, I don’t agree with him.
Shalamov hated prison. I think that’s not enough. To have that feeling does not yet signify having a love of freedom, or even a hatred of tyranny.
Soviet prison is one of countless manifestations of tyranny, one of the forms of total, all-embracing violence.
But there is beauty even in prison life. And if you only use dark colours you won’t get it right.
In my opinion, one of its delightful adornments is language.
The laws of linguistics do not apply to prison-camp reality, inasmuch as camp speech is not a means of exchange. It is not functional, in fact is designed least of all for practical use. Camp life, which is nauseating in essence, endows language with a preference for particular expressiveness. It is a goal in itself and not a means.
Very little of camp speech is wasted on communication: “Duty officer wants to see you.” “Was looking for him myself.” You get the feeling that the zeks economize on everyday verbal material. In its essence, camp speech is a creative phenomenon, aesthetic through and through, and artfully purposeless. It is fanciful, picturesque and ornamented. It is close to the euphonic orchestration of the Remizov school.*
A camp monologue is an absorbing verbal adventure. It’s a kind of drama, with an intriguing beginning, a fascinating climax and a stormy finale – or else an oratorio, with deeply significant pauses, unexpected accelerations of tempo, rich tonal shading and heart-rending vocal fioriture. It is an accomplished theatrical spectacle, buffoonery, an exuberant, daring and free creative expression.
Speech for an experienced camp inmate takes the place of every usual civil adornment – specifically: haircuts, imported suits, shoes, ties and glasses and, beyond these, money, position in society, awards and regalia.
Well-turned speech is often the only weapon of a camp old-timer, his only lever of social influence, the unshakable and steadfast foundation of his reputation.
Top-notch speech evokes the respect a master gets. Work skills in camp do not count for much; usually, it’s the opposite. Achievements on the outside are forgotten. What remains is the word.
In camp, scrupulously chosen speech means having an advantage on the same order as physical strength. A good storyteller in the logging sector means much more than a good writer in Moscow.
It is possible to imitate Babel, Platonov, Zoshchenko* and Hemingway. Dozens of young writers do so, not without success. Camp speech is impossible to fake, inasmuch as its main condition is to be organic.
Allow me to reproduce here a not entirely proper entry from my army notebook.
They sent us a sergeant from Moscow. A highly intelligent young man, the son of a writer. Desiring to pass himself off as a veteran guard, he made constant use of obscenities.
Once he yelled at one zek, “What are you, fucked off?”
The zek responded with solidly grounded objections. “Citizen Sergeant, you are wrong. You can say that someone’s ‘fucking off’, ‘fucked up’, or ‘getting fucked’. But ‘fucked off’ – that doesn’t exist, pardon me, in the Russian language.”
The sergeant got a lesson on how to speak Russian.
A dupe pretending to be a confidence man is a funny and indecent spectacle. They say of such, “The prancing homo’s playing at Code man.”