A couple of women are stoking a fire and a hearty smell is rising over two buckets boiling on the flame.
Under the spruce where Ignatov and Kuznets are sitting there’s a heap of crates, boxes, sacks, bundles of shovels and pitchforks covered in burlap, large baskets, buckets, and kettles. Yes, it’s a genuine stockpile.
“Outstanding,” is all Ignatov can say. “You’ve really taken charge here…”
“You bet I have!” Kuznets motions significantly with his powerful Roman chin, cleft by a lengthwise dimple. “After all, what was I before? A guarding function. And you? An accompanying function! And now you and I are unquestionably in charge. All this kulakdom is now ours, my friend.”
This is how Ignatov learns that, in 1931, all labor settlements established for habitation and labor-based re-education of the dekulakized were handed over to the Joint State Political Administration and entered into the Gulag system, which had been officially created only a half-year before but was already demonstrating its efficacy. Responsibility for oversight, organization, and the management, regulation, and use of the exiles’ labor had been placed upon this young and successful administration.
“You and I, Ignatov, won’t fall flat on our faces. We’ll go all out. We’ll teach the exploiters about proletariat labor and show them what genuine Soviet life is. We’ll build an infirmary out of logs over there, by the forest. And a dining hall by the barracks, to the side. And the commandant’s headquarters on the hill.” Kuznets looks long and hard at Ignatov.
“When do I go home?” Ignatov is scanning the river and finds only Kuznets’s launch, bobbing at anchor not far from shore; the barge apparently left straight after unloading the people.
“I’m leaving this evening.” Kuznets places his pencil in the hard leather map case, firmly fastening the strap. “I’ve already been sitting too long here with you.”
Ignatov feels his jaws tighten until they slowly and painfully crunch; there’s even an ache in his temples.
“We,” he says a minute later through his teeth. “We’re leaving in the evening.”
“You planning to go far?” Kuznets is calm and peaceable, as if he were discussing whether the two of them should go berry picking.
“Home,” hisses Ignatov. “I’m planning to go home, you grinning bastard.”
“Uh-huh, go on then. This happens to be a very heated time back in your Kazan. Another day, another underground cell uncovered. It’s either ‘wreckers’ or Mensheviks or German spies or English ones, the devil alone knows who they are. Things got rolling as soon as the mayhem started last spring. There are thirty from the Tatar Central Executive Committee already in jail, the crooked bastards. And the Administration’s not without its Judases. They’ve arrested everybody at your State Political Administration, Ignatov. It’s unclear who’s left at work. There was even an article in Pravda called ‘The Tatar Hydra.’”
“You’re lying, you son of a bitch!”
“Then I’ll bring it for you, that newspaper.” Kuznets is imperturbable, even affectionate. “I’ll sit at the library all night if I have to, I don’t mind spending the time. I’ll find it – you can read it yourself.”
You’re lying, Ignatov says over and over to himself, lying, lying. But he already sees Bakiev’s office before his eyes, turned upside down, two soldiers with tense gazes by the door, and a gray silhouette sorting stacks of papers on the desk. Could it really be they hadn’t let Bakiev go back then? Is he the hydra? Stupidity. Nonsense. Gibberish.
“But you wouldn’t make it there anyway,” says Kuznets. “I’ve seen your file. It’s just like a bedtime story – A Thousand and One Nights, it’s called. There’s the overwhelming attrition on the train and an organized escape to the count of around four dozen souls and harboring an important witness from an investigation (and not simply a witness, a kulaker woman, mind you!) and – just think, Ignatov! – giving bribes to a public servant, a train station director. You really outdid yourself. Nobody else could keep pace.”
Ignatov’s hitting the ground with his fist; his eyes are closed. Kuznets is right. Right on all counts.
“So you stay put, my friend. We’ll register you here officially, add you to the rolls. You’ll stay for now and pray behind my broad back, atoning for your sins. In a couple years, when they notice you’re missing, well, there you’ll be – a respected commandant, a big shot fulfilling a plan they could only dream of. The toiler of Siberia! Who’d touch you then?” Kuznets stands, adjusting his belt and the map case on his hip. “Let’s go. I’ll turn the documents over to you, introduce you to people. Give yourself a wash first, though, and change into clean clothes or you’ll frighten the personnel. They’ll take you for a hobgoblin.”
“Why do you need me?” Ignatov asks this wearily, looking up at Kuznets’s powerful frame.
“There aren’t enough people. There’ll be about a hundred settlements around the taiga soon. Who can you leave them with? Who do you trust? And it’s on me if anybody asks. It’s obvious looking at you, Ignatov, that you’re committed right down to the fingernails. That’s why I can calmly turn two hundred souls over to you. You kept your no-hopers alive during the winter – you’ll keep these alive, too.”
“How do you know?” says Ignatov. He slowly rises, leaning his hand into white streaks of sticky pitch on the spruce trunk. “Maybe I’m a hydra?”
His legs are still weak and they shake, but they’re already holding him. He can walk.
“You’re a dense one, Ignatov. A hydra’s got a lot of heads, more than you can count. You could be one baby snake on the hydra’s head but you can’t be the whole hydra, oh no. You should know things like that.”
Kuznets does bring the newspaper. He shows up a month later, in early summer. Ignatov’s window has a good view of Kuznets’s long, black launch with antennas like a rapacious mustache and lamps like bugged eyes when it suddenly takes shape on the dark blue mirror of the water. The commandant’s headquarters are on the knoll’s very highest point so the settlement, the broad ribbon of the shore, and the Angara itself can be surveyed equally well from here.
I won’t go and greet him, thinks Ignatov. He quickly tosses some rusks, sun-dried fish, and a kettle with yesterday’s leftover porridge stuck to the sides on the overturned crate he uses as a table so it’ll look like he’s been eating lunch. Hiding behind the window opening – the frame and glass haven’t been installed yet, but they’ve promised to bring them by mid-summer – he observes as the craft quickly, proprietarily, casts anchor by the shore and spits a small wooden boat into the water.
On shore, a figure runs hastily and intently toward the boat. Pebbles are even flying out from under his feet. Gorelov. In his hurry to show his face to the chief, he’s left the area entrusted to him – construction’s finishing up on the infirmary. He should be slapped with a couple days in an isolation cell for that, the bootlicker. But there’s no lockup in the settlement.