THERE WERE THREE OF US sitting in the Command Patrol Station. Security Officer Bortashevich was shuffling creased, worn cards. Gusev, on watch, was trying to get some sleep without taking a lit cigarette out of his mouth. I was waiting for the kettle to boil and the dry bread propped against it to warm.
Bortashevich drawled limply, “Take broads as an example. Say you and she are getting on: movies, sugar wafers, polite conversations… You quote her Gogol with Belinsky…* Go hear some bloody opera… Then, naturally, it’s into the bunk. But Madame tells you: Marry me, you louse. First the registry office, then the baser instincts. The instincts, you see, don’t suit her. But if they’re holy to me, then what?”
“So again, it’s those kikes,” Gusev said.
“What do you mean, kikes?” Bortashevich said.
“They’re everywhere, I said, from Raikin to Karl Marx. And they breed like fungi. Take the VD clinic at Chebyu. The doctors are Jewish, the patients are Russian. Is that the Communist way?”
Just then the telephone from the main office rang. Bortashevich put the receiver to his ear, then said to me, “For you.”
I heard Captain Tokar’s voice. “Come over and see me, and right away.”
“Comrade Captain,” I said, “it’s already nine o’clock, by the way.”
“Oh?” the captain said. “You only serve your country till six?”
“Then why bother posting work schedules? I’m supposed to report out tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning you will be in Ropcha. There’s an assignment from the Chief of Staff – to bring one prisoner from the Ropcha transit camp. To make it short, I’m waiting.”
“Where are you off to?” Bortashevich asked me.
“Someone has to escort a zek here from Ropcha.”
“For retrial?”
“Don’t know.”
“By regulation there should be two of you.”
“What in the guards is ever done by regulation? By regulation all they do is lock you up in the detention.”
Gusev raised his eyebrows. “And did you ever see a Jew in detention?”
“You’ve got Jews on the brain,” Bortashevich said. “We’re tired of it. You take a good look at Russians. One look and you turn to stone.”
“I won’t argue,” Gusev replied.
The tea kettle suddenly came to the boil. I moved it onto a roofing tile next to the strongbox. “All right, I’m off.”
Bortashevich pulled out a card, looked at it, and said, “Oho! The queen of spades awaits you.” Then he added, “Take handcuffs.”
I took a pair.
I walked through the zone, even though I could have gone around it on the patrol footpath. For a year now I’d been intentionally going through the zone at night. I kept hoping I’d get used to the feeling of terror. The problem of personal courage was posed to us here in a rather severe way. The champions in this category were generally acknowledged to be the Lithuanians and the Tartars.
I slowed down a little near the machine shop. At night this was where the chifir drinkers gathered. They would fill a soldier’s mug with water and empty a whole packet of loose tea into it. Then they would lower a razor blade attached to a long steel wire into the cup. The end of the wire was then thrown onto a high-voltage wire. The liquid in the cup boiled within two seconds. The brown beverage had an effect somewhat like alcohol. People began to gesticulate excitedly, to shout and laugh for no reason.
The chifir drinkers didn’t inspire serious alarm in anyone. Serious alarm was inspired by people who could cut your throat without drinking chifir.
Shadows moved in the darkness. I came closer. Prisoners were sitting on potato cartons around a small tub of chifir. Once they saw me, they went quiet.
“Have a seat, boss,” a voice said from the darkness. “The samovar’s ready.”
“Sitting it out,” I said, “is your department.”
“He’s literate,” the same voice commented.
“He’ll go far,” a second said.
“No farther than checkpoint,” a third said wryly.
Everything normal, I thought. The usual blend of friendliness and hate. Though to think of all the stuff I’d brought for them, the tea, margarine, cans of fish…
I lit a cigarette, rounded Barracks Six, and came out by the camp transport depot. The rosy window of the administration office swam out of the darkness.
I knocked. An orderly let me in. In his hand was an apple.
Tokar glanced out of his office and said, “Chewing on post again, Barkovets?”
“Nothing of the kind, Comrade Captain,” the orderly protested, turning away.
“Do you think I can’t see? Your ears are moving. The day before yesterday you fell asleep entirely.”
“I wasn’t sleeping, Comrade Captain. I was thinking. But it won’t happen again.”
“Too bad,” Tokar said, and then turned to me: “Come in.”
I entered, reported for duty according to regulation.
“Excellent,” the captain said, tightening his belt. “Here are the documents, you can depart at once. Convey here a zek by the name of Gurin. He’s serving eleven years. Fifth conviction. Code man. Be careful.”
“Just who,” I asked, “needs him in such a hurry? Don’t we have enough of our own recidivists here?”
“We’ve got enough,” Tokar agreed.
“So what’s this all about?”
“I don’t know. The orders are from top command.”
I unfolded the travel papers. Under the heading marked “Designation” was this order: “To convey to the Sixth Subdivision Gurin, Fyodor Yemelyanovich, in the capacity of performer of the role of Lenin.”
I asked, “What does this mean?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. Better ask the Political Instructor. Most likely they’re staging a theatrical production for the sixtieth anniversary of Soviet power. So they’re inviting a guest actor. Maybe he’s got talent, or the appropriate mug… I don’t know. For now, deliver him here, and then we’ll find out what it’s all about. If anything happens, use your weapon. Godspeed.”
I took the papers, saluted, and withdrew.
We neared Ropcha close to midnight. The settlement seemed dead. The darkness muffled the dogs’ barking.
The logging-truck driver who had given me a ride asked, “Where did they send you in the middle of the night? You should have gone in the morning.”
I had to explain. “This way I’ll be returning in daylight. Otherwise I’d be coming back at night. What’s more, in the company of a dangerous recidivist.”
“Could be worse,” the driver said. “We’ve got dispatchers in logging who are scarier than the zeks.”
“It happens,” I said. We said goodbye.
I woke the orderly in the checkpoint cabin, showed him my papers and asked where I could spend the night. The orderly had to think about it.
“It’s noisy in the barracks. The convoy brigades get back in the middle of the night. If you take someone’s bunk, they might swing their belts. And in the kennels the dogs bark.”
“Dogs – that’s better.”
“You can stay here with me. All the comforts. You can cover yourself with a sheepskin jacket. The next shift comes in at seven.”
I lay down, put a tin can near the trestle bed, and lit a cigarette.
The main thing is not to think about home, to concentrate on some urgent daily problem. Here, for instance: I’m running out of cigarettes and the orderly, it seems, doesn’t smoke.
I asked, “You don’t smoke, or what?”
“If you offer me one, I’ll smoke.”
Still no better.
The orderly tried to start a conversation with me. “Is it true that your soldiers in the Sixth poke she-goats?”
“I don’t know. Doubtful. The zeks, now, they indulge.”
“In my opinion, it’s better in a fist.”
“Matter of taste.”
“Well, all right,” the orderly said, taking pity on me, “sleep. It’s quiet here.”