Words Will Break Cement

by Masha Gessen

  All talk in the “spec” was now of life in penal colonies. This struck Kat as nothing more than a coincidence: one of her cellmates had also recently been sentenced, and another one would be sentenced imminently, so the only experienced one in the cell, a woman who called herself Irina Orlova, was telling them about life in the colonies morning to night now. To be more precise, she was telling them how awful it would be. She started with the hardships of the transport; some women spent grueling weeks going from train to transit jail back to train, lugging all their crap each time, facing hazing and sleepless nights at every step. “I don’t know if you’ll make it,” Orlova would say before moving on to the ways of the colonies. There would be hundreds of people to a barracks, she said. There would be work, unremitting, backbreaking slave labor. There would be no hot water, and the toilets would be outdoors. And the colony would likely be someplace where it was winter most of the year—with a break for a short scorching summer when the mosquitoes ate you alive and the smell spreading from the outdoor toilets knocked you over. The two less experienced inmates acted terrified. They sighed, perhaps cried a little; one of them kept repeating “I hope they don’t make me go” over and over again, and then asked for more detail.

  The technique of placing an older, more experienced inmate in a cell to cow and pressure younger ones into a pliable state in which they might sign confessions and testify against themselves and others—in the usually unfounded hope of securing release—went back to at least the middle of the twentieth century. Kat did not wonder why Orlova was apparently doing everything she could to frighten her cellmates. She did not wonder if it was too much of a coincidence that three of the four of them faced sentencing at roughly the same time. And, of course, she did not wonder what Orlova or whoever might have sent her could possibly want from her; after all, the trial was over and Kat was about to be shipped off to a penal colony. She just hoped it would not be that far away and the toilets would be indoors. And she really worried about surviving the transport. Whatever Orlova might or might not have been trying to do was working.

  Kat escaped the harping and the whining by thinking back over the trial, reviewing it in her head day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. It had all happened so fast. As she rewound and replayed her mental recording, she noticed new things—many new things—and they made her very angry. The defense attorneys had handled so many things so badly. There was the time Volkova ran out of the courtroom. The time Feigin snapped at the judge. The time Volkova read out the very long text of an expert opinion they had commissioned—it seemed to Kat that Volkova was simply unprepared and had nothing to say at the hearing that day. And anyway, how could she be prepared when she barely spoke to Kat? She rarely came to see her at the jail, and now, after the sentencing, with an appeal pending, she seemed to have disappeared altogether: friends were telling her they could not get hold of her.

  She also suspected that the lawyers were in cahoots with Petya. They had bad-mouthed him to Kat, but this meant nothing, and anyway, they all seemed interested in the same thing: money. Petya wanted to trademark Pussy Riot, to produce a record, to have the group go on tour, and the lawyers were right there with him. They had even had Kat sign a document allowing them to register Pussy Riot the brand. This was what they discussed with her during their infrequent visits in jail—instead of talking about her defense strategy. In fact, they probably realized it was better, from the point of view of commerce, to have her and Nadya and Maria do time. It would make the story more compelling and the enterprise more profitable.

  Some of the episodes Kat recalled had reasonable explanations of which she was not aware. For example, Volkova’s reading expert testimony out loud was an ingenious ploy to get it into the court record after the judge had refused to allow the expert’s opinion into evidence. Other incidents, such as the running out of the courtroom or the snapping at the judge, were true lapses that could only be explained by the lawyers’ lack of experience and the extreme stress they were under. Still others really were expressions of profit seeking and, to an even greater extent, vanity. For example, as Kat lay on her bunk day after day mentally sifting through evidence from the trial and her friends kept dialing Volkova and the other lawyers to no avail, the lawyers were in New York, helping Petya collect the LennonOno Grant for Peace on behalf of Pussy Riot; Petya had not asked for their help.

  Could the women have gotten a lighter sentence if they had had different lawyers? Kat grew convinced that they could have. After all, their lawyers had been objectively terrible: unprepared, incoherent, in addition to being rude, disrespectful of the court, and just plain ugly and stupid. Was Kat supposed to believe that if she had had, say, a smart, professional, attractive, well-spoken, hardworking, well-prepared defense attorney, she would still have been sentenced to two years behind bars? Was she supposed to believe that having a lawyer made no difference whatsoever and you could dispense with the whole pretense of the trial and just wait for Putin to name his price? That is probably what the legal trio would want her to believe—that would conveniently absolve them of all responsibility past and future—but Kat refused to believe that nothing could have made any difference. And if the choice of lawyers mattered, then the fact that she had had the worst ones on earth had to matter. It was their fault she had been in jail for six months and was about to be shipped off to an overcrowded, freezing penal colony with outdoor toilets.

  Orlova and the other two kept going over the same depressing details of penal colony life; it was like their conversation was stuck in an endless loop. But inside Kat, something was changing. Despair was giving way to a new feeling, a desire to act—a desire for vengeance. It was probably too late to do something about her sentence. But it was not too late to teach the lawyers a lesson. She would disgrace them by firing them from the biggest trial of their careers.

  ———

  KAT KNEW SHE WAS RIGHT, but she also knew she should try to talk to Nadya and Maria about this. How, though? Ask one of the three lawyers to carry a note saying she wanted to fire them? They had offered their services before, saying they would deliver notes back and forth without looking at them, but Kat had never quite trusted their assurances—and she certainly did not now. She decided to write a note that suggested adding another lawyer to the team. Maybe that would get them thinking.

  The ploy did not work. Volkova said she was searched on the way out of the jail that day and had to dispose of the note; communication between defenders in the same criminal case is strictly forbidden, and a lawyer can be disqualified for facilitating it. Kat did not believe Volkova; she was sure lawyers never got searched. (She was wrong; lawyers do get searched, though the law forbids this.)

  Kat found herself agreeing to have her fortune told by Orlova. The senior cellmate had some technique: you had to have drunk a cup of coffee yourself and dumped the grounds on a napkin that preserved whatever picture they had formed at the bottom of the cup. Orlova told fortunes incessantly—mostly her own—and Kat the computer programmer, Kat who did not have a mystical bone in her body, looked upon this disdainfully. But Orlova kept offering, and as Kat found herself growing closer and closer to Orlova—she had to admit she had been warming to her since early in the summer, the woman was so consistently kind and attentive to her—she also found herself saying, “Yeah, whatever, go ahead, I don’t care.”

  Orlova said, “I see space all around you buzzing. I see a man running toward you.” Kat thought maybe it was her new lawyer.

  Two women from a human rights organization came to see Kat; they were the only people, aside from lawyers and immediate relatives, who could get visitation rights, and they had been coming occasionally. Kat had her doubts about whether she could trust them, but she decided to tell them she was firing her lawyers. They told her to be cautious, to think twice, to consider her own reputation, and Nadya’s and Maria’s. She told them she did not care. Once she convinced them of her resolve, one of them gave her detailed instructions about getting it
done: make sure you have the motion in writing; tell the court you have a difference of opinions on your defense; and tell the court you already have a new lawyer—if you have no one to represent you, the court may deny your motion because then you will be lawyerless. Kat did not have a new lawyer. But by this time she was convinced that having no lawyer was better than having Volkova or the other two.

  The next day one of the human rights women came back. “Don’t do it,” she told Kat. “It’s not going to help. You are still going to go to the penal colony, but your reputations will be ruined.” Kat objected. She said the lawyers were dishonest; she said they had been signing commercial contracts on the group’s behalf; she said they and Petya were in cahoots. “What does it all matter?” the woman said, exasperated. It mattered to Kat. Also, she was certain this woman, who claimed to be a human rights advocate, was doing the lawyers’ bidding. This only strengthened her resolve.

  In fact, the human rights advocate had had virtually no contact with the lawyers. She was just sincerely convinced that, since Kat had no hope of changing her sentence, her firing the lawyers would be seen by the public as what it was: an act of vengeance. With so much attention still fixed on the trial, this seemed like an ill-chosen coda.

  ———

  THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 1, when Pussy Riot’s appeal was scheduled to be heard in Moscow City Court, Orlova gave Kat a pill. She said it was for her nerves, something mild. Kat figured they wouldn’t have let her have a serious sedative in the cell. She took it, and she did not feel anything in particular.

  Then they had their hair done. It was another misplaced act of goodwill; someone from the support group had paid for hair services for them, and the woman in charge of the jail’s so-called salon thought it would be a good idea to give each of them a wash and blow-dry the morning of the appeal. So six weeks after they were sentenced, Kat, Nadya, and Maria met at the hair place.

  Kat started by broaching the subject of money and contracts the lawyers had apparently been signing on their behalf. Maria said she knew something about this and had asked Polozov to provide the documents.

  “Why should you be asking him to provide stuff?” Kat was outraged. “He should be bringing all this stuff to you without being asked.”

  “Why are you being so loud?” Nadya asked Kat.

  “Because I’m irritated. I’m angry.”

  “So I guess you’ll be firing them,” said Nadya.

  “I’m firing them,” Kat confirmed.

  “I’m not,” said Maria.

  “I’m not either,” said Nadya. Then she said it was going to look bad. She said the lawyers were perceived as opposition lawyers and the firing would look like a split in the group, or even like they had broken Kat. She asked Kat to give it some more thought. Kat said she had given it all the thought it needed.

  In the prisoner transport going to court, Kat threw up. It might have been that pill.

  In court, things went just as the human rights activist had predicted: the judge tried to ignore Kat’s attempts to make a motion, then finally asked if she had it in written form, accepted it reluctantly, and, hearing that Kat already had another lawyer lined up but that the lawyer needed time to get acquainted with the case, granted the motion and continued the hearing until October 10. Then there were a lot of cameras clicking, most of them aimed at Kat for the first time since the trial began, and a lot of microphones and Dictaphones being pushed out of the way by the court marshals, and then they were back in the prisoner transport and back at the jail. Nadya and Maria did not seem to be angry at Kat; they even said that now, thanks to her, they could pressure their lawyers into working harder and being more attentive—lest they also get fired by the two of them.

  ———

  THE NEXT DAY, a prison guard told Kat to come out of her cell “lightly.” That was the opposite of going “with your stuff.” If you are being transferred, or even going to court, you always go with your stuff—all your stuff, including soap and books and food—because you do not know if you are coming back to your cell. If you are told to come out “lightly,” you are just going for a talk, probably within the jail compound.

  Kat was taken to see one of the female inspectors.

  “I heard you fired your lawyers.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll probably be going after you now, trying to come see you, pressure you.”

  Kat had no idea what this woman wanted.

  “So just so you know, if one of the three of them comes, we are going to let you know and you can say you don’t want to see them. You should put it in writing, and then we can tell them to get lost.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat in silence for a minute.

  “Can I go back to my cell now?” Kat asked.

  “Wait, sit here awhile,” the officer said. She seemed sympathetic, and Kat felt, if not touched exactly, at least surprised by the concern she was showing. “I heard there is now a vodka called Pussy Riot,” the inspector continued. “Your old lawyers seem to have had something to do with it.”

  Kat was surprised by her familiarity with Pussy Riot and its issues. She had never thought prison staff paid attention. But she had no desire to discuss this with her.

  “Can I go back to my cell?” she asked again.

  The inspector, apparently peeved, had her escorted back.

  ———

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, they came for her again; again she had to come “lightly.”

  “Your lawyer is here.”

  “The old one?”

  “The new one.”

  The new lawyer was definitely not the man Orlova had seen in the coffee grounds. She was a diminutive blonde in her midthirties. She wore her hair in a ponytail. She handed Kat a letter from her closest friends in the support group; the letter said the lawyer’s name was Irina Khrunova, and she was “big guns.” She did not look like big guns, but she got right down to business.

  “I want to know why you fired your lawyers,” she said. “I doubt you have enough information about the trial to have ‘a difference of opinions’ on the defense, so I’m assuming that’s just a phrase you used. What’s the real reason?”

  Kat told her as much as she could of what she noticed as she had thought back over the trial, and the money stuff, the contracts, and even the vodka.

  “I see,” said Khrunova. “That’s called loss of trust. I’ll be your lawyer, then.” And she said she had to go read the case and think about their next step.

  Back in the cell, Orlova was reading Kat’s coffee grounds. “I see a lot of media attention,” she said. “I see the penal colony, with a tall fence around it. I don’t see you behind that fence. I don’t know why, but I don’t see you behind that colony fence.”

  The new lawyer came back a few days later, two days before the next hearing. “I am pleased,” she said. “I have found a lot of mistakes.” She was going to tell the court what Volkova and the others had omitted: that Kat had not actually taken part in the actions for which the three of them were convicted of hooliganism.

  The omission had been intentional: Volkova, Polozov, and Feigin had respected Pussy Riot’s commitment to anonymity in their defense. More important, they had pointedly refused to engage the court on charges they and their defendants considered absurd. But what might have been a coherent political stand looked absurd as a legal strategy, thought Khrunova. What she was doing was going back to the venerable tradition of defense attorneys who had represented Soviet dissidents: they had often had a clear division of roles with their clients. While the defendant objected to the charges as such and sometimes even claimed not to understand them, the lawyer would look for ways to lessen his client’s punishment within the existent legal framework. Khrunova would now do the same: while Kat as a person might choose not to be differentiated from her comrades who committed the sacrilege of lip-synching, Kat as her client should get the benefit of having bungled her way out of performing.

  “What are my chances?
” asked Kat.

  “I don’t know,” said Khrunova. “You know how unpredictable it all is. All I can tell you is I see a legal mistake here and I am doing everything I can to correct it. But I can’t promise you anything.”

  Kat felt she should talk to Nadya and Maria, so she decided to do something she had not dared to do in her six months in the jail: she would try to talk to Maria through one of the forbidden routes. She knew Maria was in the cell right above hers. Normally, that would open the way for passing notes and even simply talking through the open windows, but the first and second floors were separated by an additional horizontal barrier that extended out from the building’s outside wall; it made passing notes extremely difficult and it even got in the way of shouting.

  So Kat decided to knock on the ceiling using a bucket. Orlova gave her blessing. If an inmate was caught communicating with other inmates, the entire cell was penalized, but Orlova said, “We see that you have to get in touch with her, so go ahead. We’ll cover for you.”

  While one of her cellmates stood watch by the door to make sure no one was looking in from the hallway, Kat knocked. And knocked again. And again. Finally, she got a response: a single knock. What in the world could a single knock mean? For that matter, what could a series of knocks mean?

  “Either you are really stupid and can’t figure out how to communicate, or something else is going on,” said Orlova. In fact, something else was going on: an inspection in Maria’s cell just as the knocking began—at the worst possible moment. Maria had simply stomped on the floor to try to get Kat to stop.

  Orlova, meanwhile, let fly a series of curses and instructed Kat to try shouting out the window. Since sound would not carry over the horizontal barrier, Kat needed to ask a cell kitty-corner from hers but on the second floor to relay a message. Orlova had taught her she could not just stick her head out and ask for a favor; she had to make small talk first.