Just As I Thought (37 page)

Before the ink had dried on this complaint, I was ready with another. A Gypsy convict mentioned to me casually that he was suffering from syphilis. Horrible thoughts assailed me! I must prevent the spread of the dreaded disease that was sure to engulf me as well as the other prisoners.

Another sheet of paper. Again pen and ink. To make the complaint stronger, one copy was dispatched to the Inspector of Prisons, another to the Minister of Justice, and a third to the arbiter of my own destinies, the Minister of Interior Affairs. A little later I found out that 20 percent of the prisoners were syphilitic.

An avalanche of complaints and communications bearing on prison life followed. Kuzma regarded my activities without enthusiasm. Where did he come in? There was no makhorka or vodka or any other emoluments in the present line of my legal activity. His shy look was exchanged for a surly one. He wasn’t in a great hurry to unlock my door whenever I felt like limbering my legs by a saunter in the hall.

The chief warden regarded my legal efforts on behalf of the convicts with condescension and amusement. Every communication with the higher powers passed through his hands. Perhaps he even had to sign them, but when I started on my new tack, he expressed his displeasure. Not, of course, directly to me. He knew better than to argue with a fresh youth who was in prison because he defied authorities immeasurably more exalted than himself. He couldn’t risk an insult.

He sent an emissary to me, the fat office clerk who really ran the prison. He came over to my window one day. He acted nonchalantly, as if he were taking a leisurely walk.

“How are you, Zinovy?” he asked, leaning on the outside sill.

“W-e-ll,” I said indefinitely. “And how are you, Anton?”

“Not bad! Not bad at all. Except my wife. Ovaries. I am thinking of taking her to Charkow. There isn’t a decent doctor here in Bachmut,” he said.

He proceeded to clean his left nostril of numerous clinkers, half of his index finger disappearing into it. Having done a pretty thorough job, he looked at me with an air of intimacy.

“Stop that, Zinovy! You are not doing anybody any good. Peter Mikhailovich (the chief warden) doesn’t like it.”

A mere chief warden wasn’t going to tell me what to do and what not to do. I told Anton to transmit that to his boss.

He sighed. “That’s what they told me. You politicals don’t respect either age or rank.”

He was right in one respect: My legal efforts, as far as prison was concerned, were bare of results. The Regional Inspector of Prisons, the Chief of Gendarmes, and all other pertinent authorities knew perfectly well that the first step in correcting the Bachmut prison would be to demolish it completely.

Whenever the office of the warden was in receipt of an answer to my complaint, I was called to the office, where the warden would read it to me with an impassive face.

“Your petition of such and such a date, addressed to this or that official, has been denied. Please sign your name acknowledging that the answer to your petition has been read to you.” This formula occasionally varied. Instead of “your petition has been denied,” it might read: “Upon investigation, your complaint was found to be groundless.”

But whatever the wording, my legal activity had not changed the archaic prison one little bit.

Still and all, the chief warden was worried. The turnkey, the office, and even the convicts knew very well the reason for his perturbation. He was about to retire on a pension. He had already changed his epaulets to a form indicating that he was a retired officer. The chances that the steady stream of my complaints would hurt him were infinitesimal. So far, all my complaints were turned down. But who could tell when some absurd official would decide to take in earnest the silly complaint of that eighteen-year-old whippersnapper! And before you knew it, your pension, your rest from worries would be jeopardized. Better not take any chances. The emissary was dispatched to me once more.

The fat clerk with his scavenging finger rested his weight on the outer windowsill.

“How are things, Zinovy?”

“W-e-l-l,” I said, “so-so.”

“How’s the food?” he inquired.

I got red in the face. “You call the slops served here food?” The prison food was one of my most frequent complaints. The meat was particularly vile. But the food would improve remarkably when an inspection was impending.

Whenever my mother came to see me, I would complain of the food. Living in another town, she couldn’t help me very much. However, she found a cousin in town and arranged to have her send me at least one meal a day. But as luck would have it, my mother’s cousin turned suddenly vegetarian, and being a wretched and unimaginative cook, she brought to the prison every day exactly the same meal: thin dairy tasteless borscht and spinach fried in sunflower oil. After a month of this diet, I was ready to chew the bark off the trees rather than eat her monotonous fodder.

Anton looked at me speculatively.

“How would you like to have
zharkoye
with potatoes every single day?” he asked. The above dish is a sort of Irish stew or a goulash, minus the tomatoes. One shouldn’t attempt to pronounce it unless one has imbibed a Slavic language with his mother’s milk. The first letter is made up of all the sibilants gathered from the whole world and fused into one sound.

I was full of suspicion.

“And who is going to get the meat and the potatoes?” The turnkey, the office staff, and the warden all ate outside the prison. The prison meat would turn the stomach of a hungry dog.

“Peter Mikhailovich, out of his own pocket,” answered Anton.

He must really be in a panic, I thought. His offer couldn’t come at a more opportune time. I was about to discontinue anyhow the dispatching of complaints connected with the prison. The authorities had turned down every one of those complaints. (I was on the point of stopping them of my own account.) I was being offered a divine
zharkoye
every single day!

Strange as it may seem, the last consideration was the least important one. It’s true I had subsisted for months on black, soggy rye bread and tea, but recalling my state of mind in that remote era, I cannot honestly say that I was particularly distressed by the horrible diet. I complained; I felt hungry always, but it was of minor importance in the greater scheme of things.

Another suspicion crossed my mind. “And who is going to cook?” I knew perfectly well that the regular cooks would steal the meat, the potatoes, and the pot.

“Don’t you worry!” answered Anton. “Peter Mikhailovich wasn’t born yesterday. He assigned a convict who is going to cook and eat with you.”

I meditated for a while as if considering whether to accept the peace offering or to refuse it. Noticing my seeming hesitation, Anton added with alacrity, “Peter Mikhailovich said you can draw up for the convicts all the petitions you want. He likes to read them. He said you write with passion and sincerity, but he does not think you know any criminal law.”

“Very well, Anton, let’s try the arrangement, but I reserve the right,” I added haughtily, “to terminate it if any grave injustice should crop up.”

Anton shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t understand you, Zinovy. At times I believe you are a very clever fellow, and then you talk like a child. Did you really expect to change anything in the prison?”

I wouldn’t lower myself by arguing with him. The nerve of a man who doesn’t know what surplus value is, who is ignorant—absolutely ignorant!—about such elementary matters as dialectical materialism, daring to criticize me!

The very next day at twelve o’clock, when I was expecting my slops, there was the clang of Kuzma’s keys, and the door was widely opened, ushering in the shifty-eyed Grishka Koval (a pickpocket who had spent almost all his life in prison) bearing a steaming and odoriferous pot of
zharkoye.
He placed it on a box, which served me as a table. The stew looked very good. The potatoes were brown. The meat looked like real meat and not like trimmings consisting of dirty fat, tendons, and often disgusting and unmentionable things.

I anticipated a Lucullan repast. I looked inside the pot—we dispensed even with wooden plates—there wasn’t too much of the stew.

Grishka understood my questioning glance. He said, “I ate my part.” I had a sense of momentary nausea. Did he at least use a fork or spoon? Or did he use his fingers?

I looked closer at the stew. What the dickens! It was chockful of laurel leaves and aromatic pepper. The odor was pleasant at the beginning, but there was a little bit too much of it.

I began to eat the aromatic
zharkoye.
I shoved aside the masses of laurel leaves and the aromatic pepper. The meat and the potatoes were permeated with spicy odors.

I puckered my nose and said to Grishka, who was watching me benevolently, “Don’t you think it is overspiced?”

“It’s just right!” You can’t get
zharkoye
like that in the best restaurant!”

Halfway through the meal I was almost suffocated by the aromatic odor. I couldn’t finish it.

“I’ll tell you what you do, Grishka,” I said firmly. “Don’t put in so much of the laurel leaves and the pepper.”

“Goodness gracious! I didn’t expect that!” Grishka was offended. “Even the head cook…”

For hours the pungent odor hung not only in my cell but also in the corridor through which the
zharkoye
had traveled twice.

Next day I was still in an anticipatory mood when Grishka arrived with the steaming pot. I glanced into it. The same amount of laurel leaves, the same mass of aromatic pepper.

I looked up from the pot and said with indignation, “Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I don’t like the
zharkoye
overspiced?”

“But it is much tastier like that.”

“That’s what you say!” I remarked, but my sarcasm was lost on Grishka.

“I just love it like that,” he said.

“But you are cooking for me! And I want you to put in as little spice as possible or, better still, don’t put in any spice at all!”

“But how will it taste?” He stretched his hands pleadingly.

“It tastes like medicine now! Listen, Grishka, I want a plain, ordinary
zharkoye!
Did you get that?”

He sighed deeply, his face full of grief. I fished out a few pieces of meat, but I could not finish the meal. I stopped eating. I was thinking hard. What should I do? The vast experience of my eighteen years did not cover this situation. An idea suddenly occurred to me.

“Say, Grishka! Can you cook anything else but
zharkoye?
”

He did not answer me at once. He gazed at the ceiling. He scratched his head with all his five fingers. He rubbed his hands together. He had finally come to a conclusion.

“No, Zinovy! That’s all I can cook.” He fastened his crafty eyes on me. They said quite plainly, “Whether you believe me or not,
zharkoye
is all you are going to get.
I
like it.”

“Take it away,” I said, “and remember tomorrow, just a touch of spices!”

When I saw him coming into my cell the next day, I caught a sly expression on his face. A feeling of hatred began to well up in my chest.

But when he set the pot in front of me, I looked into it and exclaimed, “Thank God!” There were no laurel leaves, nor any aromatic pepper. But my nostrils were at once assailed by the same strong pungent odor. I tasted the food. It had exactly the same medicinal taste. He must have picked out the leaves and the pepper after stewing the meat and the potatoes together with them.

“You are laughing at me, Grishka,” I exclaimed. “I told you twice.”

“You can ask anybody you want, Zinovy. Anyone will tell you that this is the best way to make
zharkoye.
Why, when I pass by Kuzma, he always grabs a piece of meat out of the pot.”

What upset me particularly was not the fact that, as of yore, I would have to satisfy my hunger by eating black bread, but the utter stubborn stupidity of the man!

“Did it ever occur to you, Grishka, that you would be out of luck if I refuse to eat your stuff?” I inquired.

“But why should you refuse to eat it? The Czar would not refuse to eat
zharkoye
like that.”

And then he added innocently, “When you get used to it, you will like it.”

I made an effort to eat the stew, but it got stuck in my throat, and it was an even toss whether I would swallow it or vomit it up.

“Take it away!” I said angrily.

“Some people are never satisfied. You do the best you can, but instead of gratitude…” he grumbled.

Next day it was exactly the same. Apparently he had made up his mind that I would have “to get used to it.” It never entered his mind that I might return to my black bread and tea. Most likely the spices were supplied by the cook, who liked overspiced food and who probably took his cut of the
zharkoye
first of all. I also had no doubt that my hardly tasted portion was sold by Grishka or exchanged for the vicious makhorka.

He knew, of course, that if I complained to the chief warden he would be replaced at once by another convict. He either took a chance on that or he judged correctly that I wouldn’t complain.

He was right in the last supposition. Day after day, exactly at twelve o’clock, Grishka would appear with his steaming pot of aromatic stew, only to take it away hardly touched. I ruminated on the steps I should take. Complaining to the chief warden was out of the question. I could just imagine the hilarity of everyone connected with the prison when it became known that a highly respected “political” ran to the warden like a petulant baby complaining of too much spice in his
zharkoye!
Outside of the ridiculousness of the complaint, telling on another convict, however truthful, was always viewed by both “political” and “criminal” offenders in the light of “informing,” than which there is no greater crime.

In addition, I began having qualms about my agreement with the warden. I felt that I had traduced my principles for a pot of
zharkoye.
“Never mind that you were 100 percent unsuccessful! No fight is ever wholly lost,” my conscience stormed at me. Would my conscience have bothered me if the
zharkoye
had been exactly to my taste? I do not know.