The art of camp speech rests on traditions shaped long ago. Indestructible canons exist in it, stock expressions and innumerable regulations. It calls for the usual creative meticulousness. As with literature, the genuine artist leans on tradition while he develops the features of his own originality.
As surprising as it may be, there are very few obscenities in camp speech. A real criminal rarely condescends to use them. He spurns the unhygienic locution of obscenities. He prizes his speech and knows its value. He values quality and not decibels and prefers exactness to profusion.
The disgusted “You belong by the piss bucket” is worth more than ten choice swear words. The wrathful “What are you selling yourself for now, bitch?” kills on the spot. The condescending “That’s a real dope, can’t steal and can’t stand guard” discredits someone absolutely.
A form of verbal contest, brilliant conversational duelling, is still alive in camp. I observed such battles often, with their warm-up volleys, feigned apathy and sudden fireworks of murderous eloquence, with their sharpened formulations in the style of Krylov or La Fontaine:* “The wolf gobbles up the sick sheep too.”
In camp, people don’t swear on relatives and dear ones. You don’t hear oaths and verbose eastern protestations. Here they say, “I swear by freedom!”
The following excerpt is about the same Captain Yegorov. The piece in the middle got lost. There was a story with a horse in it – I’ll tell you sometime – and also one about a riot in Veslyana, when Yegorov was knocked out with a shovel.
All in all, about twenty pages were lost, all because our literature is equated with dynamite. This is a great honour for us, I think.
IT WAS CLEAN AND COOL in the men’s room. Yegorov sat smoking on the window sill. Outside the window, firemen were playing skittles. A bread van drove by, then heaved and braked by a bakery.
Yegorov stubbed out his cigarette and walked outside. Sunbeams lay across the hospital corridor. There were many windows here. Gauzy curtains quivered, lifted and fell.
A nurse was coming down the corridor. She looked like a nun and seemed pretty.
All the hospital nurses seemed pretty. And they really were pretty, in so far as they were young and healthy, and all around them so many transparent white curtains, so much cold light and not one superfluous thing.
“Well, how is she?” Yegorov asked.
“Condition satisfactory,” the nurse answered coldly. She had slanting eyes, neat bangs, and a bluish uniform that was tied at the waist.
The nurses in the wards and in the admitting office seemed to have no feelings. After all, they had to say things not everyone liked to hear.
“That’s clear,” the captain said. “Satisfactory means bad?”
“You are detaining me from my work,” she said in the tone of voice of a harassed postal worker.
“I’d like to stick your head in a meat-grinder,” the captain muttered under his breath.
Down the corridor, hurrying, came the surgeon with his four assistants. They were all taller than he was. The surgeon was saying something to them without turning around.
Yegorov stood in their way.
“Later, later,” the surgeon said, drawing away from him. “We physicians are superstitious.” He was almost jovial.
“If my wife,” the captain said, “if anything happens… everything afterwards will have no meaning.”
“Stop blaspheming,” the surgeon said. “Go have lunch. Drink some port. There’s a canteen around the corner.”
“How healthy you look,” the captain said.
“Who is this?” the surgeon said, bewildered. “And why? You know I asked not to be disturbed…”
As he left the hospital, Yegorov turned to the wall and burst into tears. He thought of Katya’s face, childlike and angry, remembered her fingers with their chewed nails, recalled everything that had come before.
Then he lit a cigarette and headed for the canteen. There were only a few people in it. Most of the aluminium stools were stacked in the corner.
The captain sat down by a window, ordered wine and schnitzel. The waitresses in the canteen seemed pretty and looked like nurses. They wore bright-coloured silk blouses and lace aprons. The woman at the cash register gazed into the hall with a discontented look. A thick, torn book lay in front of her.
As he ate, Yegorov watched two soldiers washing a truck.
He left the canteen, bought a newspaper, rolled it up and stuck it in his pocket. A woman with a broom was coming towards him. The woman scratched at the sidewalk, trying to sweep up flattened cigarette butts.
A railway worker rode by on a bicycle. The spokes made a light, flickering circle.
An hour later, Yegorov was back at the clinic. He stood in the corridor beneath a chandelier. A plant with hard green shoots rocked slightly by an open window. The flowers in the hospital looked artificial.
The surgeon was coming down the corridor. He carried his wet hands in front of him. The nurse handed him a towel and then turned to Yegorov.
Suddenly, she seemed ugly to him. She looked like an overly clever, serious boy. She was wearing a uniform with an ink spot on the collar and worn slippers.
“Your wife is better,” the captain heard her say. “Manevich performed a miracle.”
Yegorov looked around – the surgeon was gone. He had performed a miracle and left.
“What’s his name again?” Yegorov asked the nurse, but she had already gone too.
He walked down the stairs. The coat attendant handed him his jacket and peaked cap. The captain held out a rouble to him. The old man lifted his eyebrows respectfully.
The nurse in the admitting office was crooning:
“Give me a rock from the moon,
A talisman of your love…”
She seemed ugly to Yegorov too.
“Evidently, my wife is better,” the captain said. “She’s sleeping.” He was silent a moment, then added, “No matter what, the people in the know are the Jews. Maybe they’ve been persecuted all these centuries for nothing? Around 1960 they sent us one. Everyone said, ‘A Jew, a Jew.’ It turned out he was just a drunk.”
The nurse broke off her singing abruptly and busied herself with her paperwork in a displeased way.
The captain walked out onto the street. Coming towards him were people – in sandals, cloth caps, berets, bright shirts and dark glasses. They carried bags for their shopping and briefcases. Women in multicoloured blouses seemed pretty and looked like nurses.
But the main thing was, his wife was sleeping. Katya was safe. And, he was quite sure, she was frowning in her sleep.
May 24, 1982. New York
Dear Igor,
I have already said that the zone can be seen as a miniature replica of society. Sports, culture, ideology are all represented. There’s an equivalent of the Communist Party (the Section of Internal Order). The zone includes commanding officers and privates, academics and dunces, millionaires and beggars.
The zone has its equivalent of school, and of career-building and success. Here, life keeps the same proportions in human relations as on the outside.
Correspondence with relatives takes up an enormous part of camp life, even though only some prisoners have relatives. This is a particular problem for criminals serving long sentences. The years of camp and prison tell on them the most. Wives find themselves new admirers. Children become set against their fathers. Friends and acquaintances are either serving time themselves or have got lost in the huge world.
But those who do have relatives and dear ones treasure correspondence with them to an extraordinary extent.
A letter from home is a sacred thing in prison camp. God prevent you from laughing at those letters. They are read aloud. Insignificant details are offered up as veritable sensations.
For example, a wife informs her husband: “Little Leonid is so persistent. Got an F in chemistry.”