Kolyma Tales (41 page)

Earlier, anyone who had returned from prison to his native village inspired in others guarded feelings (concealed or openly displayed) of animosity, contempt, or sympathy, while now no one paid any attention to such persons. The moral isolation of those marked as convicts had long since disappeared.

Former prisoners were met in the most hospitable fashion – provided their return had been sanctioned by the authorities. Any child-molester and rapist who had infected his young victim with syphilis could count on enjoying full freedom of action in those same circles where he had once ‘overstepped’ the bounds of the criminal code.

The fictionalized treatment of legal categories played a significant role in this regard. For some reason writers and dramatists wrote many works having to do with the theory of law. The law book of the prisons and camps, however, remained locked up under seven seals. No serious conclusions that might touch upon the heart of the matter were reached on the basis of service reports.

Why should the criminal element in camp have attempted to escape? The idea was remote from their minds, and they relinquished their fates totally to the camp administration. In view of all these circumstances, Paul Krivoshei’s escape was all the more remarkable.

Krivoshei’s name meant ‘crooked neck’ in Russian. He was a stocky, short-legged man with a thick red neck that was all apiece with the back of his head. His name was no accident.

A chemical engineer from a factory in Kharkov, he spoke several foreign languages perfectly, read a great deal, had a good knowledge of painting and sculpture, and a large collection of antiques.

A prominent Ukrainian engineer, he did not belong to the Party and deeply despised all politicians. He was a clever and passionate man, but greed was not one of his vices. That would have been too crude and banal for Krivoshei, whose passion was for enjoying life as he understood it – indulging in relaxation and lust. Intellectual pleasures did not appeal to him. His culture and vast knowledge combined with material possessions provided him with many opportunities to satisfy his baser instincts and desires.

Krivoshei had studied painting simply to be able to enjoy a higher status among those who loved and appreciated art and not appear ignorant before the objects of his passion – be they male or female. Painting had never interested him in the slightest, but he considered it his obligation to have an opinion even on the square hall in the Louvre.

The same was true of literature, which he read primarily in French or English and primarily for language practice. In and of itself, literature was of little interest to him, and he could spend a virtual eternity reading a novel – one page a night before falling asleep. There cannot be a single book in this world that could have kept Krivoshei awake till morning. He guarded his sleep carefully, and no detective novel could have upset his even schedule.

Musically, Krivoshei was a total ignoramus. He had no ear, and he had never even heard of, much less felt, the sort of mystical reverence Blok had for music. Krivoshei had long since learned that the lack of a musical ear was ‘not a vice, but a misfortune’, and he was quite reconciled to his ill luck. In any case, he possessed sufficient patience to sit to the end of some fugue or sonata and thank the performer – particularly if it was a woman. He enjoyed excellent health and was of a plump, Pickwickian build, in other words a shape that threatened no one in camp.

Krivoshei was born in 1900. He always wore either horn-rimmed glasses or glasses with round lenses and no rims at all. Slow and unhurried in composure with a high, arched, receding brow, he presented an extremely imposing figure. This too was probably intentional; his sedate bearing impressed the supervisors and lightened his lot in camp.

A man with no feeling for art and lacking that excitement characteristic of both the creator and the user of art, Krivoshei became absorbed in the collecting of antiques. He devoted himself to this hobby totally and with passion, since it was both interesting and profitable, and gave him the opportunity to meet new people. And, of course, this pursuit lent a certain air of propriety to his baser interests. The salary paid an engineer at that time was insufficient to permit Krivoshei to lead the opulent life of an antiques enthusiast. He lacked the means and could obtain them only by embezzling. There was no denying that Krivoshei was a decisive personality.

He was sentenced to be shot, but the sentence was commuted to ten years – an enormous punishment for the middle thirties. His property was confiscated and sold at auction, but Krivoshei had foreseen the possibility of such an outcome. It would have been strange indeed if he had not been able to conceal a few hundred thousand rubles. The risk was small and the calculation simple. As a common criminal and therefore a ‘friend of the people’, he would serve no more than half his sentence, accumulate workday credits or benefit from an amnesty, and then be free to spend the money he had salted away.

Krivoshei was not kept for long in the mainland camp, however, but was sent to Kolyma because of his heavy sentence. This complicated his plans. True, his confidence in the benefits of a criminal sentence (as opposed to a political one) and the manners of a member of the landed gentry was totally justified, and Krivoshei never spent a day in a work gang at the mines. He was sent to work as a chemical engineer in a laboratory in the Arkagalinsk coal region.

At that time the famous gold strike at Chai-Urinsk had not yet been made, and ancient larch trees and six-hundred-year-old poplars were still standing on the sites of numerous future settlements with thousands of residents. No one believed then that the nuggets of the At-Uriakhsk Valley could either be exhausted or surpassed, and life had not yet migrated northwest to Oimyakon, then the North Pole of cold. Old mines were exhausted, and new ones opened. Everything at the mines is always temporary.

The entire coal basin of Arkagala, which was ultimately to become the basic source of heating-fuel for the region, was at that time only an outpost for gold prospectors. The ceilings of the mines’ galleries were low enough to touch if one stood on a rail. They had been dug economically, ‘taiga-style’ in the expression of the camp supervisors, with pick and axe – like all the roads of Kolyma that extend for thousands of miles. These early mines are precious relics that hearken back to a time when the only other tool had ‘two handles and one wheel’. Convict labor is cheap.

Geological prospecting groups were not yet choking in the gold of Susuman and Upper At-Uriakhsk.

Krivoshei, however, clearly realized that the paths of geologists would lead them to the outskirts of Arkagala and thence to Yakutsk. The geologists would be followed by carpenters, miners, guards… He had to hurry.

Several months passed, and Krivoshei’s wife arrived in Kharkov. She had not come to visit him, but had followed her husband, duplicating the feat of the Decembrists’ wives. Krivoshei’s wife was neither the first nor the last of such ‘Russian heroines’.

These wives had to resign themselves both to the cold and to the constant torment of following their husbands, who were transferred periodically from place to place. The wife would have to abandon the job she had found with such difficulty and move to an area where it was dangerous for a woman to travel alone, where she might be subject to rape, robbery, mockery… Even without such journeys, however, none of these female martyrs could escape the crude sexual demands of the camp authorities – from the highest director to the guards, who had already had a taste of life in Kolyma. All women without exception were asked to join the drunken bachelor parties. Female convicts were simply commanded to: ‘Undress and lie down!’ They were infected with syphilis without any romancing or poems from Pushkin or Shakespeare. Treatment of convicts’ wives was even freer, since they were considered legally independent persons, and there was no article in the criminal code to protect them. If a camp supervisor were to rape a female convict, he always risked being informed upon by a friend or a competitor, a subordinate or a superior.

Worst of all – the whole colossal journey was meaningless, since the poor women were not permitted to visit their husbands. A promise to permit such a visit was always a weapon in the hands of a potential seducer.

Some wives brought with them from Moscow permission to visit their husbands once a month, on the condition that the husbands fulfill their production quotas and that their conduct be above reproach. The wives were not permitted to stay the night, of course, and the visit had to take place in the presence of a camp supervisor.

A wife almost never succeeded in obtaining work in the same settlement in which her husband was serving his sentence. On the rare occasions when a wife did manage to get a job close to her husband, the husband was immediately transferred to some different place. This was not a form of amusement invented by the camp supervisors, but official instructions: ‘Orders are orders.’ Such instances had been foreseen by Moscow.

Wives were not permitted to send any food to their husbands. There were all sorts of orders, quotas, and instructions that regulated the food ration according to work and conduct.

Could the guards not be asked to slip him some bread? The guards would be afraid of violating instructions. The camp director? He would agree, but she would have to pay with her own body. He didn’t need money, since he had long since been receiving a quadruple salary. Even so, it was highly unlikely that such a woman would have money for bribes – especially on the scale practiced in Kolyma. Such was the hopeless situation of the convicts’ wives. Moreover, if the husband had been convicted as ‘an enemy of the people’, there was absolutely no need to stand on ceremony with her. Any outrage committed on her person was considered a service to the country, a feat of valor, or at the very least a positive political action.

Many of the wives had arrived under three-year work contracts, and they had to wait in that trap for a return passage to the mainland.

Those who were strong in spirit (and they needed more strength than their convict husbands) waited for their contracts to end and left, never having seen their husbands. The weak ones remembered the persecutions of the mainland and were afraid to return. They lived in an atmosphere of debauchery, drunkenness, hangovers, and big money. They married again – and again – bore children and abandoned both their husbands and themselves.

As might have been expected, Paul Krivoshei’s wife was not able to get a job in Arkagala. She spent a short time there and left for the capital of the area – Magadan. A housewife with no skills, she got a job as a bookkeeper, found a place to sleep, and arranged her life in Magadan, where things were more cheerful than in the taiga at Arkagala.

But secret telegraph lines carried a cable from Arkagala to the Magadan chief of criminal investigations. His office was situated on virtually the only street in town, close to the barracks where Krivoshei’s wife was staying and which had been partitioned up into living quarters ‘for families’. The cable was in code: ‘Escaped: Convict, Paul Krivoshei, born 1900, Article 168, sentence 10, case number…’

They thought that Krivoshei’s wife was hiding him. She was arrested, but they couldn’t get anything out of her. Yes, she had been to Arkagala, seen him, left, and was working in Magadan. A long search and observation produced no results. Departing ships and planes were checked with special thoroughness, but it was all in vain; there was no trace of Krivoshei.

Krivoshei set off toward Yakutsk, away from the sea. He took nothing with him but a canvas raincoat, a geologist’s hammer, a pouch with a small quantity of geological ‘samples’, a supply of matches, and some money.

He made his way openly and unhurriedly along deer runs and the paths of pack animals, staying close to settlements and camps, never going far into the taiga. He spent each night in a tent or a hut. At the first small Yakut village he hired workers and had them dig test pits. That is, he had them do the very same work that he himself had formerly done for real geologists. Krivoshei knew enough about geology to pass himself off as a collector. Arkagala, where he had previously worked, was a final base camp for geological prospecting groups, and Krivoshei had managed to pick up their habits. His methodical manners, horn-rimmed glasses, daily shave, and trimmed nails inspired endless confidence.

Krivoshei was in no hurry. He filled his log with mysterious signs similar to those he had seen in geological field books and slowly moved toward Yakutsk.

On occasion he would turn back, stray off in a different direction, permit himself to be detained. All this was essential for him to ‘study the basin of the Riaboi Spring’ and for verisimilitude – to cover his tracks. Krivoshei had iron nerves and a pleasant outgoing smile.

In a month he had crossed the Yablonovy mountain chain with two Yakut bearers who were sent along with him by a collective farm to carry his ‘sample’ pouches. When they reached Yakutsk, Krivoshei deposited his rocks at the baggage section on the wharf and set off to the local geological office to ask that several valuable packages be sent to the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Krivoshei then went to the bathhouse and to the barber. He bought an expensive suit, several fashionable shirts, and some underwear. He then set off with a good-natured smile to visit the head of the local scientific society, where he was received in the most friendly fashion. His knowledge of foreign languages created a convincing impression.

Finding in Krivoshei an educated person (a rarity in Yakutsk), the directors of the local scientific society asked him to stay on a while longer. They countered his flustered protest that he had to hurry on to Moscow with a promise to pay his passage to Irkutsk at government expense. Krivoshei thanked them with dignity, but replied that he really had to be on his way. The society, however, had its own plans for Krivoshei.

‘Surely you won’t refuse, dear colleague, to give two or three lectures… on… any topic of your choice. For example, coal deposits in the Middle-Yakut Plateau?’