As for quiet, he was wrong. The checkpoint cabin adjoined the penal isolator. In the middle of the night, a zek woke up inside it. He jangled his handcuffs and sang loudly: “And I go, walking about Moscow…”
“Tomcat’s in the mood for Pussy,” the orderly grumbled. He looked into the peephole and yelled, “Agayev, blow one out and go to sleep! Or you’ll get my fist in your eye!”
In answer, we heard, “Chief, pull your horns in!”
The orderly responded with a torrent of ornate obscenity.
“Suck me till you’re good and full!” the zek retorted.
This concert lasted about two hours. On top of everything, I ran out of cigarettes.
I went up to the peephole and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigarettes or tobacco?”
“Who are you?” Agayev asked, astounded.
“I’m on assignment from the Sixth Camp Subdivision.”
“And I thought you were a student. Is everyone so cultured in the Sixth?”
“Yes,” I said, “when they’re out of cigarettes.”
“There’s a ton of tobacco here. I’ll push it under the door. You wouldn’t happen to be from Leningrad?”
“From Leningrad.”
“A fellow countryman. I thought so.”
The rest of the night was passed in conversation.
In the morning I went looking for Dolbenko, the officer in charge of operations. I presented my orders to him. He said, “Have breakfast and wait at the checkpoint. Do you have a weapon on you?… Good.”
In the mess hall, they gave me tea and rolls. They had run out of hot cereal. To make up for it, they gave me a piece of lard and an onion for the road, and an instructor I knew shook out ten cigarettes for me.
I sat in the checkpoint cabin till the convoy brigades moved out. The orderly was relieved close to eight. It was quiet in the penal isolator. The zek was slumbering after a sleepless night. Finally I heard, “Prisoner Gurin, with belongings!”
The bolts clicked in the transit corridor. A security officer entered the cabin with my ward.
“Sign out,” he said. “You have a weapon?”
I unbuckled my holster.
The zek was in handcuffs.
We walked out onto the porch. The winter sun blinded me. The dawn had come up quickly. As always.
On the gently sloping hill before us, cabins stood out black. The smoke above their roofs rose straight up.
I said to Gurin, “Well, let’s go.”
He was a man of medium height, well built. His hat was likely covering a bald spot. His soiled quilted jacket was shiny in the sun.
I decided not to wait for a ride with a log-carrier but to walk to the railroad crossing right away. If a truck or tractor going our way happened to come along, fine. If not, we could make it on foot in three hours.
I didn’t know that the road had been closed off near Koyna. Later I learnt that two zeks had stolen a grapple trailer the night before. By daylight, military police had set up roadblocks at every crossing. So Gurin and I had to travel all the way back to the zone on foot. We only stopped once, to eat. I gave Gurin some bread and the lard – no great sacrifice, since the lard had frozen and the bread was in crumbs.
Silent till then, the zek kept repeating, “What a fiesta – choice calories! Chief, let’s party it up!”
The handcuffs hampered him. He asked, “If you could lose my cuffs – or are you afraid I’ll give you the slip?”
All right, I thought. In daylight it’s not dangerous. Where’s he going to run to in the snow?
I took off the handcuffs, fastened them to my belt. Gurin immediately asked permission to go relieve himself. I said, “Go do it there.”
Then he crouched behind some bushes, and I trained my rifle on the black Vorkuta hat.
About ten minutes went by. My hand got tired. Suddenly, behind my back, a foot crunched in the snow. At that moment, a hoarse voice called out, “Let’s go, Chief.”
I jumped up. Before me stood Gurin, smiling. Evidently he had hung his hat on the bush. “Don’t shoot, fellow countryman.”
It would have been silly to bawl him out.
Gurin had acted straight with me. He had shown me that he didn’t want to run away, or maybe he wanted to but didn’t choose to.
We took the forest path and reached the zone without incident. On the way there, I asked, “So what kind of production will this be?”
The zek didn’t understand. I explained, “In the orders it says you’re the one who will play the role of Lenin.”
Gurin burst out laughing. “It’s an old story, Chief. Even before the war, I had the nickname ‘Actor’. In the sense of a man who was clever, who could, as they say, move his ears. So they wrote on my record: ‘actor’. I remember I was tied up in the Criminal Investigation Section, and the investigator wrote it down just as a joke. In the ‘profession before arrest’ column. As if I had a profession! From the cradle, I’m an inveterate thief. I never worked a day in my life. But the way they wrote it down, that’s how it stuck – ‘actor’. From one paper to another. All the political instructors sign me up for amateur productions: ‘After all, you’re an actor, an artist…’ Ech, if I could only meet one of those political instructors at a kolkhoz market, I’d show him what kind of artist I am.”
I asked, “So what are you going to do? You’re supposed to play Lenin himself.”
“What, read a piece of paper? Simple. I’ll polish my bald spot with wax, and it’s in the bag. I remember we hit a bank once in Kiev, and I got dressed up as a cop – and my own people didn’t recognize me. If it has to be Lenin, then let it be Lenin. As they say, a day off work is a month of life.”
We walked up to the checkpoint. I turned Gurin over to the sergeant major. The zek waved his hand. “Be seeing you, Chief. Merci for the fiesta.”
He said the last words softly, so the sergeant wouldn’t hear.
Since I’d been taken off work duty, I loafed for the next twenty-four hours. I drank wine with the weapon repairmen, lost four roubles to them at cards, wrote a letter to my parents and brother, even planned to see a young lady I knew in the settlement. But just then an orderly came looking for me and told me to report to Political Instructor Khuriyev.
I made my way to the Lenin Room. Khuriyev was sitting under an enormous map of the Ust-Vym camp. The escape points were marked with little flags.
“Have a seat,” said the PI. “We have something important to discuss. The October holidays are approaching. We are beginning rehearsal of a one-act play called Kremlin Stars. The author” – here Khuriyev glanced at some papers lying in front of him – “is Chichelnitsky, Yakov Chichelnitsky. The play is ideologically mature, recommended by the cultural section of the Department of Internal Affairs. The events take place at the beginning of the twenties. There are four characters: Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, a Chekist named Timofei and his fiancée, Polina. The young Chekist Timofei is yielding to the bourgeois manner of thinking. Polina, a merchant’s daughter, is dragging him down into the maelstrom of the petite bourgeoisie. Dzerzhinsky engages in educational work with them. He himself is incurably ill. Lenin insistently urges him to take care of his health. ‘Iron Felix’ refuses, which makes a strong impression on Timofei. In the end, Timofei throws off the bonds of revisionism. The merchant’s daughter, Polina, shyly follows after him. In the closing scene, Lenin addresses the public.” Here Khuriyev again rustled his papers. “‘Who is this? Whose are these happy, young faces? Whose are these cheerful, sparkling eyes? Can this really be the youth of the Seventies? I envy you, messengers of the future! It was for you that we lit the first lights of the new-builds! For your sake that we rooted out the dark forces of the bourgeoisie! So then let your way be lighted, children of the future, by our Kremlin stars.’ And so on. And then afterwards, everyone will sing the ‘Internationale’. On a single impulse, as the expression goes. What do you say to all this?”