The sentry, bundled up in a sheepskin jacket, cursed at him lazily.
A shout rang out from the southernmost barracks. I ran there, unbuttoning my cuffs as I went. There on the plank walkway lay the recidivist Kuptsov, howling and pointing at something. A cockroach moved on the wall, black and shiny as a racing car.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oy, I’m afraid, Chief! Who knows what that cockroach has in mind!”
“You’re a joker,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“In winter Victor, and in autumn Adam.”
“What are you in for?”
“Jaywalking… with somebody else’s suitcase.”
“Excuse him, Chief,” Zek Brigadier Agoshin said amicably, “that’s our kind of humour. A little harmless ribbing among friends, as they say. Better come inside and have some supper.”
“I’ll eat something with them,” I thought. “After all, they’re people too. And man by nature… And so on…”
We ate meat roasted in the barracks on the camp stove. Then we smoked. Someone picked up a guitar and softly sang in a sentimental voice:
“Keep your chin up, darling, I will never cease waiting,
My conscience is clean, though my clothes are all dusty;
Above me the scorching tent of Kazakhstan,
The endless steppe shining like gold in the distance…”
“Nice people, basically,” I thought, “even if they are bandits, of course.”
“Hey, Chief,” Brigadier Agoshin said, “do you know who you just ate?”
Everybody burst out laughing. I stood up.
“Do you know what those cutlets you just ate were made from?”
The feeling in my stomach was of a bomb going off.
“From the captain’s pooch, that’s what. Such a smart doggie, you know the one…”
“…Above me the scorching tent of Kazakhstan,
The endless steppe shining like gold in the distance,
And wherever I go, I fail to find you,
The feather grass refuses to talk to me of you.”
“So just go and tell him,” Fidel said.
“The captain won’t survive this. The old man has no one, no friends except for that dog. I can’t do it, I swear to God.”
“Look, you’re a boxer. You have strong nerves.”
“I swear to God, I can’t.”
“No matter what, he has to be told.”
“It would be easier for you to do it. You don’t have to deal with the captain.”
“What have I got to do with it? Let the one who ate tell him.”
“Why do you have to keep reminding me! As it is, the whole business is tearing me inside out every second.”
“He carries a pistol in his pocket. How do you know he won’t – you know, do it. Once he finds out about everything.”
“What’s the use of talking? The old man’s on the brink. His wife doesn’t write, his son is some kind of bum… Brooch was his only friend.”
“What about sending a telegram?”
“That won’t work.”
“In any case, he has to be told. And you’re an educated person. You know how to talk to people.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t keep you at headquarters for nothing. You can find a common language with everyone.”
“What do you mean to say by that?”
“Half the officers address you formally, with respect.”
“Well, so what?”
“So that’s why some people say you’re a composer.”
“A what?”
“Nothing. A composer. You write operas. Meaning you write up the operational workers; you know, security guys, your friends…”
I leant across the table and hit Fidel with a metal ruler. A crimson mark stayed on his cheek. Fidel jumped off his chair and yelled, “Ooh, headquarters’ bitch! Officers’ lackey!”
Then I felt the onrush of a wave of fury which put an end to all thought. Fidel moved slowly, like a swimmer. I hit him with a left, then again. Saw not more than a step away a round, distinctly formed chin. That was exactly where I drove my grievances, bitterness, pain… A stool flew out from under Fidel’s legs. After that, blood on the pages of a rationing report. And the hoarse voice of Captain Tokar, who had appeared in the doorway: “As you were! I order both of you – as you were!”
Lowering my eyes, I told Captain Tokar everything. He heard me out, straightened his shirt, and suddenly began talking in a rapid, senile whisper: “I’ll make them pay. See if I don’t. I gave thirty roubles for Brooch in Kotlas.”
That evening Captain Tokar got drunk. He started a brawl in the settlement beer hall. Tore up the photograph of the horse. Cursed his wife with the very dirtiest words, the kind of words that lost their meaning long ago. And at night he walked off somewhere by the hydroelectric generator, and tried, breaking match after match, to light a cigarette in the wind.
Early in the morning, I was again shovelling the porch. Then I headed for the gates past the dirty piles of snow.
I walked beneath a moon as harsh and blunt as graffiti on a wall, and waited for the captain, who arrived upright, carefully shaven, unruffled. I snapped my hand to my temple, then let it fall as if completely sapped. And at last I asked in a courteous, challenging, amiable voice, “Well, how goes it, Uncle Lenya?”
Twenty years have passed. Captain Tokar is still alive. And so am I. But where is that world, full of hatred and fear? Did it go away? And what is the reason for my melancholy and shame?
June 11, 1982. Dartmouth
Dear Igor,
Just read your piece about American crime. And to be frank, I was a little surprised.
Theft, murder, rape – of course these are horrible crimes. They are committed in America; they are also committed in the USSR.
But I would like to raise another issue – the crimes that Soviet people don’t even notice, the ones that have become habitual and commonplace. The crimes that don’t even appear as such in the eyes of an average Soviet citizen.
Blatant rudeness – isn’t that a kind of crime? I suppose it is a matter of taste, but personally I would prefer to be robbed once in my life than to be humiliated every moment.
Think of the gloomy faces of Soviet salespersons, the sullen expressions of train conductors, the notes of perpetual irritation in the voices of countless administrators.
Do you agree? You have to agree that the average American policeman is three times as polite as the average Moscow waiter.
That is not all. Soviet rudeness often takes a legitimized form of injunction. I have read many announcements in my life that startled me, but I especially remember three. The first one I saw on the wall of a Leningrad food store. It read: “THE GUILTY WILL BE PUNISHED!” After that, not a word. A threat ominously addressed into space.
Apropos: In this same food store, a friend of mine saw a note lying on the cover of a zinc tub: “Zina, don’t water the sour cream. I already watered it.”
The second announcement was on a wall in the office of the head of the militia in the city of Zelenogorsk. It read: “DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS!” This order reeked of hopelessness.
But the most surprising announcement of all was one I saw in the admissions office of a country hospital. It consisted of two words – “NOT ALLOWED” – followed by three exclamation points.
But all of this is a digression. The real matter at hand is the following: I have wanted to write down a certain camp story for a long time. Somehow I never got around to it. But I came to visit Lev here at Dartmouth, sat around doing nothing, and then finally managed to put myself to work. The story is not part of the original version of The Zone. Think of it instead as a later stratification. I don’t think readers will notice the difference. Let there at least be one relatively whole section in the book. Something like a separate chapter.