The guard stalked out of the barracks. There was silence for a few moments, until the prisoners started murmuring to each other. I knelt to check the sick woman, who was conscious, moaning. A minute later, the front door was thrown open, smacking loudly against the wall behind it, and heavy boots pounded down the aisle. The guard had returned with a middle-aged woman who shrieked orders to the awakened prisoners, telling them to be silent and stay in their beds, that anyone who left her bed would be shot. I stood next to my bunk. The male guard proceeded to drag the injured woman by her arms toward the door. As she was pulled across the uneven floorboards, the wrapped bandage on her wounded foot came undone, unfurling into a white cotton trail.
Staring at me with bald hostility, the female guard pointed to the sick woman’s empty cot. “Clean up this mess,” she ordered.
When they were gone, I stripped the bed and rolled the dirty sheets into a ball, covering my mouth and nose with a hand. I had no idea how to “clean up this mess.” There was a tiny bathroom at the back of the dormitory with a perpetually backed-up toilet and a spigot that dripped cold water into a stained sink. The central washroom was bigger, with about the same level of functionality. The prisoners were responsible for laundering their own bedding and uniforms, which was impossible given the time we were allotted and the ludicrous facilities, so few items were ever washed. As far as I was concerned, there was no point in even trying to clean the soiled sheets.
I felt eyes on me, prisoners watching to see what the American spy would do. It came to me that I was dog tired of being scared and cautious, of keeping my head down. The job in the medical center had given me a certain status that I was willing to trade on now. I slipped my feet into my rubber shoes and shrugged on my parka.
“Where are you going, Natalya?” Yvonne whispered from her upper bunk.
“To get clean sheets.”
“No, Natalya. Please don’t go outside! If they see you, you could be shot.”
I stuffed the balled sheets under my arm and headed down the aisle toward the door. An old veteran started to cackle. A few women urged me on; someone else laughed mockingly. They had no idea what I was doing; they were just hoping for another dramatic scene.
The night was pitch black, moonless; the frigid air was like a million tiny icicles pricking every centimeter of my skin. Powerful floodlights illuminated the recreation area, but the edges of the compound were completely dark. Strangely, there was no one in sight. I cut to the rear of the barracks, and trekked north along the row of evenly-spaced dormitories, running my hand along the back of each building to guide myself. At the last one, I turned east, headed back toward the center of the compound, guided by a light over the entrance to the long, one-story infirmary. A couple of filthy dumpsters behind the building overflowed with trash. I found my way to them carefully, stumbling in the pitch dark, and tossed the sheets onto a hulking pile. My teeth were chattering, and my tear ducts streamed in the fierce cold.
I waited in the shadows near the entrance until the two guards left, having deposited their human package, then I strode inside with confidence. “I’ve been sent to help look after the new patient,” I informed Nurse Latypova, who was slouching at the desk.
She shrugged as if to say better you than me, and gestured toward the ward. “She’s down there, on the right. She needs to be cleaned up.”
Wide awake and still in her filthy pajamas, the sick woman was lying akimbo on top of the blanket, as if she’d been dropped there from a considerable height.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“My head hurts.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Her wild black hair made a dirty halo around her head. I took a closer look at her face. She had widely spaced eyes of a strangely golden color, the whites tinted dull yellow. High, jutting cheekbones. A long, flat nose with flaring nostrils. Thin, flexible lips that seem on the verge of movement. A disappearing chin.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said in a tone of mild offense.
“It’s this way to the shower.”
“Are you an English woman?”
“American. Dr. Natalie March from Washington, D.C. And you are?”
“Zara Chernovskaya. From Krasnoyarsk.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you trying so hard to take care of me?”
“Habit, I suppose.”
While she was in the shower, I got the key to the storeroom from Latypova. I selected a hospital gown, bandages, and three sets of clean, folded sheets. I recorded the patient’s vitals, picked the needle tip out of the flesh between her toes, cleaned and dressed her wounds, ordered bed rest: no reading. Right now, I was more concerned about a possible concussion than the drug withdrawal process. Latypova sat up front with her magazines and cell phone, happy to be oblivious.
More slowly this time, given the bulky load zipped inside my parka, I retraced my steps to the barracks, keeping well away from the floodlit recreation yard. At one point, I stumbled on uneven ground, and a frenzy of deep-throated barking erupted from over by the guard house. Three or four dogs were going wild, but they didn’t close in on me; they must have been chained.
A few women were still awake. They watched as I swayed down the aisle, and dumped the fresh sheets on my bed. One gave a low approving whistle; another chuckled quietly.
Yvonne’s sleepy head popped over the edge of the top bunk. “Oh my god. Where did you go?”
“I didn’t go anywhere, sweetheart. I was here all along. Wasn’t I?” I said, shivering mightily from my sojourn in sub-zero temperatures.
She leaned over, nearly rolling off the bunk. “What’s that?”
“A present for you.” I passed a set of sheets up to her, and she received it with a muted little squeal. When her delight subsided, she said, “Be careful, Natalya. You’re playing with fire.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve become a model prisoner, thanks to your advice. People at the infirmary are quick to say how useful and obedient Prisoner Marchova is.”
I put a set of clean sheets on Zara’s bed, made up my own bed, and fell, exhausted, onto it. I refused to worry about the risk I’d just taken, refused to second-guess myself. That little lick of freedom had made the blood sing in my veins. And I’d gained crucial knowledge: the prison was poorly lit and poorly guarded in the dead of night. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that information, but having it made me feel powerful.
Zara was expelled from the infirmary first thing the next morning, as Dr. Chereshkevich had no tolerance for addicts, whose suffering during the withdrawal process was, in her opinion, not only well-deserved, but also an effective deterrent to future drug use. Meanwhile, the other patients on the ward were in an excited buzz. Apparently, Zara Chernovskaya was no stranger to Female Prison 22. She’d been released from the prison six months earlier after serving five years for possession of narcotics. She and Svetlana had ruled opposing gangs, and it had only been Zara’s release that had allowed Svetlana to rise to unopposed dominance. Zara’s unexpected reappearance promised a return to hostilities—the news was flying around the camp.
The word was that Zara’s former loyalists had gone on to make other alliances, some with Svetlana herself. So Zara was completely unprotected. The patients on the ward agreed that she had little chance of surviving more than a few months. Murders within the walls were rare, but not surprising. The administration raised a cry afterwards while doing little to prevent them.
That night, as we were undressing shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow space between our beds, Zara spoke to me in a low voice. “Do you know who I am?”
“I heard.” I made a point of sounding unimpressed. So far, I’d managed to avoid Svetlana’s corrosive attention, and I intended to stay far away from this piece of bad news as well. Where Svetlana was sadistic and stupid, which made her fairly predictable, Zara was rumored to alternate periods of hostile solitude with sudden bouts of impulsive, crack-pot craziness, the latter of which I could cer
tainly attest to, having witnessed her suicidal taunting of the guard the night before. She’d been linked to two deaths inside the walls, both times managing to hide her tracks.
“And what do the rumors say about me—that I’m not an angel? Does that make you scared?” Zara said.
I turned to meet her gaze. I was afraid of Zara, as any sane person would be, but I wasn’t going to submit. “People say you’ve got some problems, and given the way you behaved last night, I have to say I agree.”
She cackled at the unexpected honesty. “I do! I’ve definitely got some problems! You want to be one of them?”
“No. I really don’t.”
“Good. So the next time I tell you to leave me the fuck alone, that’s what you will do.”
We stared into each other’s eyes. We were exactly the same height. My heart was clanging against my ribs. I willed myself into my long-practiced clinician’s role, noting that the raw, scaly patches on her skin were less inflamed than they’d been the night before. But there was still a sour odor coming off her body, and she was holding herself too stiffly, as if disguising pain or tremors. She’d probably never been strong, even when she was well. Her frame was too slight. It would have been intelligence that brought her into power, and that was what I saw glowing in her tawny eyes—an alert, predatory shrewdness.
I said, “Believe me, Zara Chernovskaya, I have no desire to mess with you, now or ever. But if there’s ever a medical emergency, I’ll act as I see fit.”
“Ah, well said! You are a true humanitarian. The world needs more people like you.” She continued undressing. Under the dark green tunic was a filthy tank top, something silver glinting on a leather cord between small, high breasts.
A few moments later, she asked, “How did you get to this place, Natushka?” The endearment was confusing. A prelude to friendship? A power play? A veiled threat?
“They think I’m a spy.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
Her lips quivered into a smile. “You are a very bad liar, my friend.”
She turned to her cot, yanked the tank top over her head. A multi-colored tattoo, well and intricately drawn, covered her entire back. A Siberian tiger, just its head, with mellow, complacent eyes staring out from her shoulder blades, and short, erect ears that twitched when her shoulders moved. Another tattoo—a twisting vine of roses, the thorns as big as the blossoms—ran the length of her right arm. There was something small on the back of her neck, too, just under the hairline, that I couldn’t make out.
She pointed to the folded sheets on her bed. “Who did that?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“They ordered me to.”
A pause. A tilted head. “How did you wash them so fast?”
“I didn’t. I stole a new set from the infirmary.”
She nodded thoughtfully, as if what she was hearing was strange, but not too strange. “I’ve heard that Americans go all over the world taking whatever they want.”
“And you believe that?”
She said with an amused lilt to her voice, “You’re the first American I’ve met. And so far, you are proving it to be true.”
She made her bed and climbed into it naked, her hips narrow and frail-looking, her buttocks drooping like an old person’s jowls. Folding her legs tightly into her chest as she had the night before, she shrank into a compact lump under the blanket. The great Zara Chernovskaya. A little pile of lunatic flesh and bone.
The first of November came and went. The temperature dropped below zero during the day, occasionally as low as twenty-five degrees below. The sun was a dimly glowing yellow orb that briefly traversed the southern horizon, vanishing each day by three o’clock. Snow was scarce, but what fell remained. Beyond the web of perimeter fencing, a thin, white crust glittered on the meadow, where the wolves occasionally strolled like kings.
The scant mental and emotional resources that had remained to me after I’d given up hope of being rescued by the CIA withered away. I became increasingly despondent. At times, the mental pressure got so great it felt as if my brain itself was burning up. In silent agony, I did in fantasy what reality wouldn’t allow. I mounted passionate defenses to invisible committees; imagined squinting down the barrel of a stolen Kalashnikov, calmly picking off the guards in the sentry towers, one by one, as if it were a carnival game, then evacuating the prisoners en masse, and blowing the whole place up.
An ugly, croaking voice took up residence in my head: You’re going to rot in this place. Rot like a living carcass, until you’re shriveled and dry, your only remaining pleasure masticating twice-daily pieces of stale bread. Until you don’t know who you are anymore, and don’t care. Until insanity is your refuge, and death looks like a sweet release.
My dreams turned into a regular shop of horrors: deafening volleys of machine gun fire, bubbling lakes of yellow sludge, sky-high piles of human skeletal remains. Balls of fire in the night sky, torrents of burning rain, the seared flesh of children peeling off in ghastly, glowing bands. Things lost, things abandoned. Myself lost and forgotten in a desolate environment at the farthest edge of the civilized world, where the only religion was gross inhumanity and death. On waking, I didn’t experience the dreamer’s relief at finding myself safe and sound in a cozy bed. I woke to find the nightmare true.
Then one morning I woke to find everything changed. My mind was sharp and supremely focused; my emotions were as smooth and glassy as the surface of a resting lake. My anguish had dissolved and disappeared during the night, as if it had been mere illusion all along, and a new diamond-hard clarity had taken its place. I had the impression that even my eyesight had improved.
I started to observe my surroundings closely. A truck being packed with boxes of finished uniforms. Local men in torn coats unloading eggs, potatoes, and loaves of bread from the back of a small van—good food that never showed up in the prisoners’ dining hall. Uniformed guards with shoulder-slung guns standing stock-still, like painted wooden toys, in the watch towers, their fur ushankas with the fiery red insignias perched high on their heads. They must drowse on their feet at least some of the time, I thought, numbed by cold and drugged by colossal boredom.
Usually, the main gate was closed and the mechanical arm was down. Once, I noticed that the door to the sentry house was ajar, the guard huddled outside it to puff on a cigarette with a thickly gloved hand. Any lapse on the part of the staff, however tiny, was a point of interest to me.
While I was working, giving sponge baths or mopping floors, I compiled mental lists of potentially useful items: forks, light bulbs, a German Shepherd’s leather harness, the hook-and-eye closure on a door. From the infirmary: scissors, needles, gauze pads, medical tape, a patient’s gold cross on a chain. My mind listed and sorted compulsively.
I didn’t dream anymore; I barely slept. Night after night, I lay rigidly on my bed, breathing the fetid smells of sixty unwashed women, while my mind coolly and methodically kneaded the pertinent facts: it was fifteen kilometers to the village; I had only prison garb, no money, and it was rumored that the villagers were paid handsomely to return escapees. Heading in the opposite direction, into the frozen taiga, would be certain death. The only viable strategies, it seemed, were to stowaway in a van or truck, blackmail a worker, or take one hostage. Or something I hadn’t thought of yet.
I had one mantra, which I repeated over and over whenever my thoughts strayed. I will escape from Female Prison 22. I had no idea how it would happen, or when; only that it must and would. I believed the dream completely, worked at it constantly, and my perfect faith and dedication kept my terror and despair at bay.
I told myself not to force anything, not to overthink it. The plan would come together in its own time, and I’d know when it was right. But I couldn’t wait too long, as winter was setting in. Afternoons had become a long limbo of twilight during which objects blurred and eventually disappeared. Then blinding blackness descended like a hood yanked over t
he eyes, and the cold got even deadlier. One night, it snowed again, a fine mist falling softly through the auras of the floodlights. In the hushed barracks of sleeping prisoners, I lay awake on my cot, listening to the melancholy howls of the wolves in the forest. Soon, I would be on their side of the fence.
Films were screened in the dining hall on Sunday nights at 8 p.m. The long refractory tables were pushed aside, and about a hundred folding chairs were set in rows, facing a pull-down screen. Attendance varied depending on the film. Tonight, it was an educational documentary about the unusual creatures of the Galapagos, and only about a third of the seats were filled.
Zara, Yvonne, and I slid into the empty last row, following Zara’s lead. She was much better, steadier and stronger, with some color in her face. To my surprise, we’d become friends, to the extent that friendship could exist without privacy or trust, in an environment of constant threat. Zara was a talker, it turned out. She liked to brag about all the friends she had back in Krasnoyarsk, where she was born and had spent her life. Apparently, during her last incarceration, she’d received visitors every single month for five straight years.
Yvonne whispered peevishly in my ear that she’d rather be sitting at the front of the hall. We both knew she wouldn’t dream of crossing Zara; no one did, except me. I’d made a point of standing my ground with the former warlord, and seemed to have been granted a kind of special adviser status as a result, a role I hadn’t courted and didn’t want.
As we waited in the gloomy hall for the movie to start, Zara rather secretively showed me a photo of her son—a fearsome-looking adolescent with his mother’s wide cheekbones and thin lips. His expression was ominously flat and vacant, which made him look older than his sixteen years. Yet she was as proud as any mother, displaying the photo without letting me touch it, as if it were too precious to be entrusted to another person’s grubby paws.
FINDING KATARINA M. Page 25
