Kolyma Tales (49 page)

The woman was not at all upset or embarrassed when she was found in a room in the men’s hospital.

‘The fellows asked me to help them out, so I came,’ she explained calmly.

It is not difficult to understand that almost all the criminals and their female companions become ill with syphilis, and chronic gonorrhea is endemic – even in this age of penicillin.

There is a well-known classic expression: ‘Syphilis is not a disease but a misfortune.’ Here syphilis is not viewed as a cause for shame but is considered to be the prisoner’s luck rather than his misfortune. This is yet a further example of the notorious shift of values.

First, all cases of venereal disease must be treated, and every thug is aware of that. He knows he can ‘brake’ in the hospital and that he won’t be sent to some God-forsaken place but will live and be treated in relatively comfortable settlements where there are venereologists and specialists. This is so well known that even those criminals whom God has spared the third and fourth cross of the Wassermann reaction claim that they have venereal disease. They are also well aware that a negative laboratory result is not always reliable. Self-induced ulcers and false complaints are encountered along with real ulcers and genuine symptoms.

Venereal patients are kept in special treatment areas. At one time no work was done in these areas, but this system converted them into virtual resorts, a sort of
mon repos
. Later these ‘zones’ were set up in special mines and wood-felling areas, and the prisoners had to produce the normal work quotas, but received medication (Salvarsan) and a special diet.

In point of fact, however, relatively little work was demanded of the prisoners in these zones, and life there was considerably easier than in the mines.

Male venereal zones were always the source from which the hospital admitted the criminals’ young ‘wives’ who had been infected with syphilis through the anus. Almost all the professional criminals were homosexuals. When no women were at hand, they seduced and infected other men – most often by threatening them with a knife, less frequently in exchange for ‘rags’ (clothing) or bread.

No discussion of women in the criminal world is complete without a mention of the vast army of ‘Zoikas’, ‘Mankas’, ‘Dashkas’, and other creatures of the male sex who were christened with women’s names. Strangely enough the bearers of these feminine names responded to them as if they saw nothing unusual, shameful, or offensive in them.

It is not considered shameful to be kept by a prostitute, since it is assumed that the prostitute will value highly any contact with a professional criminal. Furthermore, young criminals who are just trying their wings are very much attracted by the prospect of becoming pimps:

This is a prison song; the ‘working girls’ are prostitutes.

There are occasions when vanity and self-pity, emotions that take the place of love, cause a woman in the world of crime to commit ‘unlawful acts’.

Of course, more is expected of a thief than of a prostitute. A female thief living with an overseer is, in the opinion of the zealots of thug jurisprudence, committing treason. The ‘bitch’s’ error might be pointed out to her by means of a beating, or they might simply cut her throat. Similar conduct on the part of a prostitute would be regarded as normal.

When a woman has such a run-in with the law, the question is not always resolved even-handedly, and much depends on the personal qualities of the person involved.

Tamara Tsulukidze, a twenty-year-old thief and former companion of an import mobster in Tiflis, took up with Grachov, the head of cultural activities. Grachov was thirty, a lieutenant, and a handsome bachelor with a gallant bearing.

Grachov had a second mistress in camp, a Polish woman by the name of Leszczewska, who was one of the famous ‘actresses’ of the camp theater. When the lieutenant took up with Tamara, she did not demand that he give up Leszczewska. The rakish Grachov thus lived simultaneously with two ‘wives’, showing a preference for the Muslim way of life. Being a man of experience, he tried to divide his attention equally between the two women and was successful in his efforts. Not only love but also its material manifestations were shared; each edible present was prepared in duplicate. It was the same with lipstick, ribbons, and perfume; both Leszczewska and Tsulukidze always received the same ribbons, the same bottles of perfume, the same scarves on the same day.

The impression this made was very touching. Moreover, Grachov was a handsome, clean-cut young man, and both Leszczewska and Tsulukidze (who lived in the same barracks) were ecstatic at their lover’s tactful behavior. Nevertheless, they did not become friends, and Leszczewska was secretly delighted when Tamara was called to task by the hospital mobsters.

One day Tamara fell ill and was hospitalized. That night the doors of the women’s ward opened, and an ambassador of the criminal world appeared on the threshold. He reminded Tamara of the property laws regarding women in the criminal world and instructed her to go to the surgical ward and carry out ‘the will of the sender’. The messenger claimed there were people here who knew the Tiflis mobster whose companion Tamara had been. Here in camp he was being replaced by Senka, ‘the Nose’. Tamara was to submit to his embraces.

Tamara grabbed a kitchen knife and rushed at the crippled thug. The attendants barely managed to save him. The man departed, threatening and cursing Tamara. Tamara checked out of the hospital the next morning.

There were several attempts – all of them unsuccessful – to return the prodigal daughter to the proud standards of the criminal world. Tamara was stabbed with a knife, but the wound was not serious. Her sentence ended, and she married an overseer – a man with a revolver – and the criminal world saw no more of her.

The blue-eyed Nastya Arxarova, a typist from the Kurgansk Oblast, was neither a prostitute nor a thief, but she voluntarily linked her fate to the criminal world.

Even as a child, Nastya had been surrounded by a suspicious respect, a sinister deference for the criminal world, whose figures seemed to have come from the pages of the detective novels she read. This respect, which Nastya had observed while still in the ‘free world’, was present in prison and in the camps as well – wherever there were criminals.

There was nothing mysterious about this; Nastya’s older brother was a well-known burglar in the Urals, and, since childhood, Nastya had bathed in the rays of his criminal glory. Without even noticing it, she found herself surrounded by criminals, became involved in their interests and affairs, and did not refuse to hide stolen goods for them. Her first three-month sentence angered and hardened her, and she became part of the criminal world. As long as she remained in her home town, the criminals were reluctant to declare their property rights to her for fear of her brother. Nastya’s ‘social’ position was more or less that of a thief; she had never been a prostitute and was sent as a thief on the usual long trips at the expense of the mob. She had no brother on these trips to protect her. On her first release from prison, the leader of a local mob in the first town she came to made her his wife and in the process infected her with gonorrhea. He was soon arrested and crooned a criminal parting song to her: ‘My buddy will take you over.’ Nastya didn’t stay long with the ‘buddy’, since he too was soon arrested, and Nastya’s next owner exercised his rights to her. Nastya found him physically repulsive, because he slobbered constantly and was ill with some form of herpes. She attempted to use her brother’s name to defend herself, but it was pointed out to her that her brother had no right to violate the immortal rules of the criminal world. She was threatened with a knife, and her resistance ceased.

At the hospital, when ‘romance’ was called for, Nastya showed up meekly and often spent time in the punishment cells. She cried a lot – either because it was in her nature or because her own fate, the tragic fate of a twenty-year-old girl, terrified her.

Vostokov, an elderly doctor at the hospital, was touched by Nastya’s lot, even though she was only one of thousands in such a situation. He promised to help her get a job as a typist at the hospital if she would promise to change her way of life. ‘That is not in my power,’ Nastya answered him in her beautiful handwriting. ‘I cannot be saved. But if you wish to help me, buy me a pair of nylon stockings, the smallest size. Ready to do anything for you, Nastya Arxarova.’

The thief Sima Sosnovskaya was tattooed from her head to her feet. Her entire body was covered with amazing interwined sexual scenes of the most unusual sort. Only her face, neck, and arms below the elbow were free of tattoos. Sima had acquired fame in the hospital through a bold theft – she had stolen a gold watch from the wrist of a guard who had decided to exploit the attractive girl’s favorable disposition. Sima was of a much more peaceable nature than was Aglaya Demidova, or else the guard would have lain in the bushes until the Second Coming. She viewed the incident as an amusing adventure and considered that a gold watch was not too high a price for her favors. The guard nearly went crazy and, right up to the last minute, demanded that Sima return the watch. He searched her twice – quite unsuccessfully. The hospital was near, and the group of convicts being taken there was small; the guard couldn’t risk a scandal in the hospital. Sima remained in possession of the gold watch. It was not long before she had sold it for liquor, and all trace of the watch vanished.

The moral code of the professional criminal, like that of the Koran, prescribes contempt for women. Woman is a contemptible, base creature deserving beatings but not pity. This is true of all women without exception. Any female representative of any other, non-criminal world is held in contempt by the mobster. Group rape (‘in chorus’) is not at all rare in the mines of the Far North. Supervisors bring their wives to Kolyma under armed guard; no woman ever walks or travels anywhere alone. Small children are guarded in the same fashion, since the seduction of little girls is the perpetual dream of every thug. This dream does not always remain a mere dream.

Children in the criminal world are educated in a spirit of contempt for women. The criminals beat their prostitute companions so much that it is said that these women are no longer able to experience the fullness of love. Sadistic inclinations are honed by the ethics of the criminal world.

The criminal is not supposed to experience any comradely or friendly emotion for his ‘woman’. Nor is he supposed to have any pity for the object of his underground amusements. No justice can be shown toward the women of this world, for women’s rights have been cast out of the gates of the criminal’s ethical zone.

There is, however, a single exception to this black rule. There is one woman whose honor is not only protected from any attacks but who is even put on a high pedestal. There is one woman who is romanticized by the criminal world, one woman who has become the subject of criminal lyrics and the folklore heroine of many generations of criminals.

This woman is the criminal’s mother.

The thug sees himself surrounded by a vicious and hostile world. Within this world, populated by his enemies, there is only one bright figure worthy of pure love, respect, and worship: his mother.

According to his own ethics, the criminal’s attitude to the female sex is a combination of vicious contempt for women in general and a religious cult of motherhood. Many empty words have been written about sentimentality in the prisons. In reality this is the sentimentality of the murderer who waters his rose garden with the blood of his victims, the sentimentality of a person who bandages the wound of some small bird and who, an hour later, is capable of tearing this bird to shreds, since the sight of death is the best entertainment he knows.

We should recognize the true face of those who originated this cult of motherhood, a face that has been concealed by a poetic haze.

The criminal deifies his mother’s image, makes it the object of the most sensitive prison lyrics, and demands that all others pay her the highest respect
in absentia
. He does this with the same heedlessness and theatricality with which he ‘signs his name’ on the corpse of a murdered renegade, rapes a woman before the eyes of anyone who may care to watch, violates a three-year-old girl, or infects some male ‘Zoika’ with syphilis.

At first glance, the only human emotion that seems to have been preserved in the criminal’s obscene and distorted mind is his feeling for his mother. The criminal always claims to be a respectful son, and any crude talk about anyone’s mother is always nipped in the bud. Motherhood represents a high ideal and at the same time something very real to everyone. A man’s mother will always forgive, will always comfort and pity him.

One of the classic songs of the criminal world is entitled ‘Fate’:

Knowing that his mother will remain with him till the end of his brief and stormy life, the criminal spares her his cynicism. But even this one supposed ray of light is false – like every other feeling in the criminal soul. The glorification of one’s mother is camouflage, a means of deceit – at best, a more or less bright expression of sentimentality in prison.

Even this seemingly lofty feeling is a lie from beginning to end – as is everything else. No criminal has ever sent so much as a kopeck to his mother or made any attempt to help her on his own, even though he may have drunk up thousands of stolen rubles. This feeling for his mother is nothing but a pack of lies and theatrical pretense. The mother cult is a peculiar smokescreen used to conceal the hideous criminal world. The attitude toward women is the litmus test of any ethical system. Let us note here that it was the coexistence of the cult of motherhood with contempt for women that made the Russian poet Esenin so popular in the criminal world. But that is another story.