Kolyma Tales (53 page)

In Kolyma a tin can is a poem. It is a convenient measuring cup that is always at hand. Water, various grains, flour, pudding, soup, tea can be stored in it. It is a mug from which to drink
chifir
. It is also a good vessel in which to brew
chifir
. The mug is sterile, since it has been purified by fire. Soup and tea can be heated in a tin can – either on a stove or over a camp-fire.

A three-liter tin can fastened to the belt with a wire handle is the classic cooking pot of every ‘goner’. And who in Kolyma has not been or will not eventually become a ‘goner’?

In a wooden window-frame, tiny pieces of broken glass, like cells, are arranged to serve as panes to let in light. A transparent jar can conveniently be used to store medication in the outpatient clinic. In the camp cafeteria, a pint jar is a serving dish for fruit compote.

But neither thermometers, nor laboratory glassware, nor simple jars make up the principal shortage of glass in Kolyma – the shortage of electric light-bulbs.

In Kolyma there are hundreds of mines, thousands of sites, sections, shafts, tens of thousands of mine faces with gold, uranium, lead, and tungsten, thousands of work groups dispatched from the camps, civilian villages, camp zones, guard barracks, and everywhere there is one crying need – light, light, light. Kolyma has no sun, no light for nine months. The raging, never-setting summer sun provides no salvation, for in winter nothing is left of it. Light and energy come from pairs of tractors, or from a locomotive.

Industrial tools, gold washers, mine faces all demand light. Mine faces lit up by floodlights lengthen the night shift and make labor more productive. Electric lights are needed everywhere. Three-hundred-, five-hundred-, one-thousand-watt bulbs are shipped in from the mainland to provide light for the barracks and the mines, but the uneven supply of electricity from the portable-generator motors guarantees that these bulbs will burn out earlier than they should.

The electric-light-bulb shortage in Kolyma is a national problem. It is not only the mine face that must be lit up but also the camp grounds, the barbed wire and the guard towers, which are built in greater and not lesser quantities in the Far North.

The guards on duty must have light. In the mines insufficient light is simply noted in the log, but in camp it might lead to escape attempts. Obviously there is nowhere to escape to from Kolyma, and no one has ever attempted to escape, but the law is the law, and if there isn’t sufficient lighting or enough bulbs, burning torches are carried to the outer perimeters of the camp and left there in the snow until morning. A torch is made from a rag soaked in oil or gasoline.

Electric bulbs burn out quickly and cannot be repaired.

Kipreev wrote a note that amazed the chief of Far Eastern Construction. The chief could already feel the medal he would add to his other military decorations (military, not civilian).

It seemed the bulbs could be repaired if the glass was in one piece.

All over Kolyma stern instructions were hurriedly circulated to the effect that burned-out bulbs must be delivered carefully to Magadan. At the industrial complex forty-seven miles from Magadan, a factory for the repair of electric light-bulbs was built. Engineer Kipreev was appointed director of the factory.

All other personnel was civilian. This happy invention was entrusted to the hands of dependable civilians working on contract. Kipreev, however, paid no attention to this circumstance, believing that the creators of the factory could not help but take notice of him.

The result was stupendous. Of course, the bulbs didn’t have a long life after being repaired, but Kipreev saved Kolyma a definite quantity of hours and days. There were many of these days, and the state reaped an enormous profit, a military profit, a golden profit.

The chief of Far Eastern Construction was awarded the Order of Lenin. All supervisors who had anything to do with repairing the bulbs received medals also.

Neither Moscow nor Magadan, however, ever considered rewarding the convict Kipreev. For them Kipreev was a slave, an intelligent slave, but nothing more. Nevertheless, the chief of Far Eastern Construction did not consider it possible to forget all about his pen-pal in the taiga.

A celebration of great pomp took place in Kolyma, a celebration so great that a small group of people in Moscow took note of it. It was held in honor of the chief of Far Eastern Construction, of all those who had received medals and official expressions of gratitude for work well done. Aside from the official expressions of gratitude for work well done, aside from the official governmental decree, the chief of Far Eastern Construction had also issued bonuses, awards, and official expressions of gratitude. All those who participated in bulb repair, all the foremen of the factory with the bulb-repair shop were presented with American packages, in addition to the medals and certificates. These packages, which had been received during the war under Lend-Lease, contained suits, neckties, and shoes. One of the suits had evidently disappeared during delivery, but the shoes were of red American leather and had thick soles – the dream of every foreman.

The chief of Far Eastern Construction consulted with his right-hand man, and they came to the conclusion that there could be no higher dream for a convict-engineer. As for shortening his sentence or releasing him altogether, the chief would not even dream of asking Moscow about that in such troubled political times. A slave should be satisfied with his master’s old shoes and suit.

All Kolyma buzzed about these presents – literally all Kolyma. The local foremen received more than enough medals and official expressions of gratitude, but an American suit and American shoes with thick soles were in the same category as a trip to the moon or another planet.

The solemn evening arrived, and the cardboard boxes gleamed on a table covered with a red cloth.

The chief of Far Eastern Construction read from a paper in which Kipreev’s name was not mentioned, could not be mentioned. Then he read aloud the list of those who were to receive presents. Kipreev’s name came last in the list. The engineer stepped up to the table which was brightly lit – by his light-bulbs – and took the box from the hands of the chief of Far Eastern Construction.

Enunciating each word distinctly, Kipreev said in a loud voice: ‘I won’t wear American hand-me-downs.’ Then he put the box back on the table.

Kipreev was arrested on the spot and sentenced to an additional eight years. I don’t know precisely which article of the criminal code was cited, but in any case that is meaningless in Kolyma and interests no one.

But then, what sort of article could have covered the refusing of American presents? And that wasn’t the only thing. There was more. In concluding the case against Kipreev, the investigator said: ‘He said that Kolyma was Auschwitz without the ovens.’

Kipreev accepted his new sentence calmly. He was aware of the likely consequences when he refused the American presents. Nevertheless, he did take certain measures to ensure his personal safety. These measures consisted of asking a friend to write to his wife on the mainland to tell her that he had died. Second, he himself gave up writing letters.

The engineer was removed from the factory and sent to hard labor. The war was soon over, and the system of camps became even more complex. As a persistent offender, Kipreev knew he would be sent to a secret camp with no address – merely a number.

The engineer fell ill and ended up in the central prison hospital. There was a compelling need for Kipreev’s skills there: an X-ray machine had to be assembled from old machine parts and junk. The chief physician, whose name was ‘Doctor’, promised to get Kipreev released or at least to get his sentence shortened. Engineer Kipreev had little faith in such promises, because he was classified as a patient, and special work credit could be received only by staff employees of the hospital. Still, it was tempting to believe in this promise, and the X-ray lab was not the gold-mine.

It was here that we learned of Hiroshima.

‘That’s the bomb we were working on in Kharkov.’

‘That’s why Forrestal
^*
committed suicide. He couldn’t bear all those telegrams.’

‘Do you understand why? It’s a very hard thing for a Western intellectual to make the decision to drop the bomb. Psychic depression, insanity, and suicide is the price that the Western intellectual pays for decisions like that. A Russian Forrestal wouldn’t have lost his mind.’

‘How many good people have you met in your life? I mean real people, the kind you want to imitate and serve.’

‘Let me think: Miller, the engineer arrested for sabotage, and maybe five others.’

‘That’s a lot.’

The General Assembly signed the agreement on genocide.

‘Genocide? Is that something they serve for dinner?’

We signed the convention. Of course, 1937 was not genocide. It was the destruction of the enemies of the people. There was no reason not to sign the convention.

‘They’re really tightening the screws. We cannot be silent. It’s just like the sentence in the child’s primer: “We are not slaves; no one’s slaves are we.” We have to do something, if only to demonstrate to ourselves that we are still people.’

‘The only thing you can demonstrate to yourself is your own stupidity. To live, to survive – that’s the task at hand. We mustn’t stumble. Life is more serious than you think.’

Mirrors do not preserve memories. It is difficult to call the object that I keep hidden in my suitcase a mirror. It is a piece of glass that looks like the surface of some muddy river. The river has been muddied and will stay dirty for ever, because it has remembered something important, something eternally important. It can no longer be the crystal, transparent flow of water that is clear right down to its bed. The mirror is muddied and no longer reflects anything. But once the glass was a real mirror – a present unselfishly given that I carried with me through two decades of camp life, through civilian life that differed little from the camps, and everything that followed the twentieth party congress, when Khruschev denounced Stalin.

The mirror that Kipreev gave me was not part of any business scheme on his part. It was an experiment conducted in the darkness of the X-ray room. I made a wooden frame for this piece of mirror. That is, I ordered it; I didn’t make it myself. The frame is still in one piece. It was made by a Latvian carpenter who was a patient recovering in the hospital. He made it in exchange for a ration of bread. At that time I could permit myself to give up a ration of bread for such a purely personal, totally frivolous wish.

I am holding the mirror in front of me right now. The frame is crudely made, painted with the oil-paint used for floors; they were renovating the hospital, and the carpenter asked for a smidgen of paint. Later I shellacked the frame, but the shellac wore off long ago. You can’t see anything in the mirror any more, but I used to shave before it at Oimyakon, and all the civilian employees envied me. They envied me until 1953 when some civilian, some smart civilian, sent a package of cheap mirrors to the village. These tiny mirrors – some round and some square – should have cost a few kopecks, but they were sold for sums reminiscent of the prices paid for electric light-bulbs. Nevertheless, everyone withdrew his money from his savings account and bought one. The mirrors were sold in a day, in an hour. After that, my home-made mirror ceased to be the envy of my guests.

I keep the mirror with me. It is not an amulet. I don’t know whether it brings luck. Perhaps the mirror attracts and reflects rays of evil, keeping me from dissolving in the human stream, where no one except me knows Kolyma and the engineer, Kipreev.

Kipreev was indifferent to his surroundings. A thief, a hardened criminal with a modicum of education, was invited by the administration to learn the secrets of the X-ray laboratory. It is always hard to tell if the criminals in camp are using their own real names, but this one called himself Rogov, and he was studying under Kipreev’s tutelage. The hope was that he would learn to pull the right levers at the right time.

The administration had big plans, and they certainly weren’t terribly concerned about Rogov, the criminal. Nevertheless, Rogov ensconced himself in the lab together with Kipreev, and watched him, reported on his actions, and participated in this governmental function as a proletarian friend of the people. He was constantly informing and made conversation and visits impossible. Even if he didn’t interfere, he was constantly spying and was a model of vigilance.

This was the primary intent of the administration. Kipreev was to prepare his own replacement – from the criminal world. As soon as Rogov acquired the necessary skills, he would have a lifelong profession, and Kipreev would be sent to Berlag, a nameless camp identified only by number and intended for recidivists.

Kipreev realized all of this, but he had no intention of opposing his fate. He instructed Rogov without any concern for himself.

Kipreev was lucky in that Rogov was a poor student. Like any common criminal, Rogov knew what was most important – that the administration would not forget the criminal element under any circumstances. He was an inattentive student. Nevertheless, his hour came, and Rogov declared that he could do the job, and Kipreev was sent off to a numbered camp. But the X-ray lab somehow broke down, and the doctors had Kipreev returned to the hospital. Once more the lab began to function.

It was about this time that Kipreev began experimenting with the optic blind.

The dictionary of foreign words published in 1964 defines the ‘blind’ as follows: ‘a diaphragm (a shutter with variable-size opening) which is used in photography, microscopy, and fluoroscopy.’

Twenty years earlier the word ‘blind’ was not listed in the dictionary of foreign words. It is a creation of the war period, an invention having to do with electron microscopes.

Somewhere Kipreev found a torn sheet from a technical journal, and the blind was used in the X-ray laboratory in the convict hospital on the left bank of the Kolyma River.