Because of Nikola I won friends among the urki. Because of Vanya I won friends among the guards. Because so many other workers were improved by my scheme, I won friends in almost every barrack. I had friends everywhere, so many friends. “Expert!” they exclaimed, a good-natured joke, one of the rare good-natured jokes, because in Kolyma the good-natured jokes do not seem safe from the wind.
I had so many friends and these friends could not keep me warm as I pushed my wheelbarrow through the frost. They could not make me younger or stronger. I was happier for a short time but popularity was a hollow solace. You pass a man and exchange a smile, and it is worthless the moment you have stepped away, along the ice-packed path, into the next mud-smudged footprint. I lay in my bunk and watched the bugs squirming in the spruce. My friends had not banished my nightmares. “Expert!” they exclaimed, a greeting said and heard, and then their voices fell away. When you are quickly dying — which we still were, despite the extra herring — it is not thin friends, shambling, night-blind, that give you a reason to live.
Across miles of taiga, so much green and golden country, an ocean, I wondered if you were raising your arms in the air.
THE MAJOR SUMMONED ME one morning, after the prisoners had been counted. His emissary, a Cossack, sent another man to take my place. I resisted: “No, this is my brigade — this is my brigade!” So quickly I became hysterical. I did not want to be sent to the mines. I did not want to be sent to the woods. I did not want to lose my place on this lucky work crew, blessed by technology. “This is my team!” Finally, Vanya exchanged looks with the Cossack, and the Cossack nudged my replacement, and he warned him, “This is only temporary.”
I went to see the major in the office with the radio, the piece of sausage, the photograph of a little boy and his older sister.
He told me to sit down. He congratulated me on my scheme. I did not thank him but I said I was proud to have contributed to the Soviet effort in Kolyma.
At first it seemed that the major simply wanted to fine-tune the use of runners. Was an eight-man team, with two rail haulers, the best configuration? Would ten be more efficient? Twelve? Would twelve men require three sets of rails?
He asked me to review some calculations. His maths were all right. “Ten men,” I agreed, “and two haulers.”
The major stretched back in his chair. “You studied at Petrograd University?”
“That’s right.”
“Mathematics?”
“Physics. And also music theory, at the conservatory.”
He nodded. He seemed to be waiting for something.
“Did you attend university?” I asked.
“Horticulture,” the major said.
“Plants?”
“Gardens.”
“This is not much of a garden,” I said. He observed me, unmoving.
I folded my hands on my lap. “I wondered … If you want more help here, in the office … Coordinating work groups, or arranging …” I trailed off.
The major’s face looked like a woodcut.
What was I trying to prolong?
I said, “I have some ideas about telephones. Perhaps the camp could be wired up.”
The major shifted in his chair. “Termen,” he said, “you are a fifty-eight.”
“Yes.”
He said, “Politicals do not belong behind our desks.”
“Yes of course.” I took a breath. I was already dead.
“This is what will happen,” the major said. “You will work in the field, work hard, and when you have given eight years to your country, you will be a free man.”
“Yes.”
“It has already been how long?” he asked. He pulled a piece of paper toward him. He took a beat. “About seven months?”
“Yes.”
“Already seven months! So just seven years left. Seven years and five months. Does it feel like a long time?”
“Yes,” I said.
He laughed. But he saw that this was not a joke, that it was my life, and he leaned forward, toward me, toward the photograph of his children. “You’ll be all right, Termen,” he said gently. “You’re smart and strong. You’ll be on the roads a long while yet.”
“Maybe music?” The question jerked out of my throat. I saw a flicker of interest in the major’s face and then I did not stop talking, babbling, sketching a scheme that could buy me a few days of warmth. “Maybe I could arrange a concert? Something for the officers? A performance. To help pass the long days. A surprise recital. The officers would be able to—”
“No, not for the officers,” the major said. “But perhaps for the workers …”
“The workers?”
“Like you.”
A concert for the workers would have no purpose except self-delusion. An entertainment for the half disappeared. “What a wonderful idea!” I said. “It would have an excellent effect on morale.”
“It’s not a bad notion.” The major pursed his lips.
I tried to smile as evenly as I could, neither nervous nor overenthusiastic.
“I think there may even be some violins somewhere,” he said. “A cello.”
That word, cello, seemed to lift up into the air. It was like a relic from another time. Cello. I had forgotten that the cello existed.
“I’ll think about it,” the major said.
My pulse was racing. “All right,” I said.
He observed me for a few moments. He picked up the piece of sausage that was sitting on a dish on his desk. “Here,” he said. I kept the piece of sausage in my hand until all the doors had closed behind me.
WE WERE BROUGHT TOGETHER two days later: eleven rag-wrapped prisoners, hustled into a room. I knew only one of them, a spindly man called Babu. I recognized a few others. We took a moment to survey each other while the Cossack guard stood with crossed arms. “Go on,” he said finally.
I remembered that I was to be the leader. I swallowed. “You’re musicians?”
The men and women looked around. They were like skeletons. “Yes,” they said.
Four were violinists; two played the cello. Two bassists, a clarinet player, a trumpeter. One thereminist. I do not know how the major found them. The Cossack brought me to a long closet at the back of the cultural-education building, where we were supposed to see films, sometimes. No films were shown while I was at Kolyma. The closet had a box of grimy sheet music and a dark pile of instrument cases. I did not want to know where these instruments had come from. Incredibly, I found four working violins. There was a splendid old cello, like new. A battered double bass. Several cheap trumpets. Although I uncovered a couple of clarinets, the closet contained no reeds. “Do you play anything else?” I asked Babu when I came out.
“Some lousy flute,” he said. So he played that.
They gave me an upright piano, on wheels.
How had this piano come to be in Kolyma?
The major allowed us to rehearse for two afternoons. We used the sheet music we had found. Chopin’s first piano concerto. Some Mozart. A clumsy arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon. I led from the piano. The bassists and cellists shared parts. It was a hopeful cacophony.
At the end of the second rehearsal, the major listened from a doorway. “Good,” he said. “You’ll perform tomorrow morning.”
I had imagined that we would play at night, in the cultural-education building, for everyone. I had imagined rows of dark faces, silence, then the careful opening notes.
“In the morning,” he said, “as everyone goes to work.”
The next morning the Cossack wheeled the piano into the no man’s land near the fence. The squalid little orchestra stood in the snow. Everything was floodlit; the sun had not risen. There was just the grey sky and the grey earth and the silhouetted wood-line. The prisoners were standing or kneeling with their bowls of soup. They were looking at us with a mixture of fear and elation. Bigfoot was a few feet to my left, like a doting parent. I had not slept the previous night. He could see that I was unsure, my raw hands on the keys. I kept reaching up and pulling my coat around my neck. The orchestra was waiting for my signal. Our audience had fallen silent. Two night birds darted in the space above our heads.