Gorelov hastily wipes off his hands on his brown minder’s uniform jacket, gets up from the table, and hurries to Ignatov.
“They’ve already finished their work, comrade commandant!” Gorelov’s standing at attention, with his chest bulging and his short-fingered hands stretched at his sides.
Ignatov casts a muddled glance at two hundred bent heads and two hundred dishes of unfinished thin soup on the tables.
“You’re gobbling it down, you sons of bitches,” he bitterly concludes.
“Yes, sir, comrade commandant!” Gorelov answers, with such resonance and passion it makes the ears ring.
“Insatiable vermin.” Ignatov’s voice is quiet and tired. “You feed and feed them… When will you ever get enough…”
“They worked up an appetite, comrade commandant! Striving to meet their daily quotas. Fulfilling the plan!”
“Ah, the plan…” Ignatov’s brows gently rise along his wrinkled forehead. “And so?”
“They exceeded their quotas, comrade commandant! By an entire ten cubic meters!”
“Good.” Ignatov is walking through the rows, peering into sullen faces with lips pressed together, eyes lowered, and cheekbones tense. “Very good.”
His unsteady hand slaps the sunken scoliotic chest of a skinny, stooped man with a closely shaven head and large ears that stick out like a child’s. Ignatov takes a bowl from the table – clumps of something grayish-green splash around in it – and puts it on the man’s head, like a hat.
“We must abide by the plan!” From his warrior-like height, Ignatov bends toward the skinny man, looks confidingly into eyes narrowed from fear, and whispers into ears with thin soup trickling into them. “We won’t get anywhere without the plan!” He shakes his head with grief and knocks the bowl with his revolver. The sound is muted and dulled, unlike the gong.
Greens mixed with fish heads are sliding down the skinny man’s face. Ignatov nods with satisfaction and threatens everyone else with the barrel of his gun, as if it were an index finger telling them to watch out. He turns and slowly goes to the exit. Finally, he swipes his revolver at the gong. Now that sounds better!
After Ignatov’s footsteps have faded, the exiles sit down one at a time, silently take their spoons, and continue eating. Vibrations from the gong hang in the air, creeping into their ears. Still standing, the skinny man pulls the dish from his head, breathing shallowly and wiping his dirty face with his sleeve; someone warily touches him on the shoulder.
“Here,” says Achkenazi, sullen as usual. He holds out another dish, filled to the brim with soup that’s thick, obviously from the very bottom of the kettle. “Take it, Zaseka. I’m giving you seconds.”
“Our commandant’s essentially a decent person,” says Konstantin Arnoldovich, leaning across the table toward Ikonnikov. “He’s moral in his own way. He has his own principles – even if he’s not fully aware of them – as well as an undeniable inclination for justice–”
“A good man,” Izabella cuts him off. “It’s just he’s very troubled.”
The faces started appearing to him in 1932. For some reason it was before falling asleep that he remembered the first time he’d seen Zuleikha, sitting like a sack on the large sledge, wrapped in a thick headscarf and an oversized sheepskin coat. Then her husband’s face suddenly flashed, with bushy brows gathered in a lump on his forehead, a nose with wide and fat nostrils, and a chin like a split hoof. Ignatov saw him as clearly as a photograph. He placed no significance on it and fell asleep, but then Murtaza up and appeared in Ignatov’s dream, looking at him silently. Ignatov woke up from that gaze and rolled on his other side, irritated, and then he dreamt of the husband again. He wouldn’t leave.
It had gone on from there. The dead began coming at night and watching him. Each time he looked at yet another guest, Ignatov excruciatingly recollected the where, the when, and the how. He would wake up from the pressure of each memory, which would remain fresh, even after turning the pillow over for the tenth time so the cold side was on his cheek. That one was near Shemordan, winter of 1930; that one was in Varzob Gorge, near Dushanbe, in 1922; that one was on the Sviyaga River, in 1920.
He’d killed many in gunfights and battles without seeing their faces, but they came and watched him, too. He recognized them in some strange way that’s only possible in dreams, by the turn of a neck, the shape of the back of a head, slouched shoulders, or a saber’s stroke. He recalled them all, from the very first, in 1918. They were toughened, dangerous, out-and-out enemies to a man: Denikinites, Czechs in the White Army, Basmachi, and kulaks. He reassured himself that not one was to be pitied. If he were to meet them, he would kill them again without hesitation. He reassured himself but he’s almost stopped sleeping.
Those strange, silent dreams – where faces long-forgotten and completely unfamiliar look at him wordlessly and impassively, not asking for anything and not wishing to tell him anything – are more agonizing than the nightmare about the sinking Clara, a dream that Ignatov has stopped having in recent years for some reason. His long-term, insomniac tiredness doesn’t help, nor does the warmth of a female body beside him. Sometimes home brew helps.
And so Ignatov is glad of Kuznets’s unexpected arrival. It’s much more pleasant to drink with him than alone or with Gorelov, who’s growing more insolent – and more brazenly so – with every passing year.
Ignatov’s standing on the front steps of the commandant’s headquarters when he throws his arms wide open and shouts, “He’s here!” after seeing the chief’s long black launch beyond a hill.
“Huh, so you were expecting me, my good man,” Kuznets smirks as he jumps ashore, accurately assessing the strength of the stale alcohol on Ignatov’s breath and the circles under eyes as black as coal.
Kuznets shows up for regular inspections every month or two, and after the formality of taking a walk around Semruk and the logging sites, they head to the commandant’s headquarters to sit for a while. They sit thoroughly, sometimes for two or three days. Gorelov doesn’t participate, though he does provide ample assistance. He himself will bring food from the dining hall. Under Gorelov’s personal supervision, Achkenazi takes from his pantries sun-dried bream and preserved lingonberries stored away for the occasion, and braises herbs and game procured in the forest in short order; fruit puddings and drinks are also served “for a sweet and pleasant start to the day.” In addition, Gorelov will command bathhouse preparations, ensuring the fire is stoked and bundles of leaves readied (the bathhouse was built the previous year beyond a river bend some distance from the settlement and they take turns bathing: men one Sunday, women the next); and he will make the women scour Kuznets’s launch, moored at the tiny wooden berth, until it sparkles.
By all appearances, their get-together can be expected to be genial this time. Gorelov sweats profusely as he drags Kuznets’s case up from the shore and it’s as heavy as if it were stone, with something clinking and gurgling inside, sounding muffled and expensive. Kuznets is wary of the local home brew so usually brings his own drink with him, something he has purchased.
They take a walk along the shore and inspect the timber landing by the river, which is swarming with people and filled with high piles of logs as tall as a person. They go inside the freshly constructed log building that will be a school; classes are set to begin in September. They admire the uprooting of stumps on new land for crops. Their experiments with cultivating grains have been successful and it’s been decided to use another piece of the taiga as a field. They look at each other with relief: Well, so, is it time to sit for a while? And they go.