Words Will Break Cement

by Masha Gessen

  ———

  THREE DAYS AFTER Maria was transferred to Unit 11, seven inmates showed up in the late afternoon, just as Lena was leaving to work the night shift. Lena had an idea of who these seven were: they were all known to do the administration’s dirty work. Now they were all in Unit 11, supposedly moving in, except all they had with them were their rolled-up mattresses. It was like they were here for a special-assignment sleepover. Maria had not yet been assigned a shift, so she would be here, in the unit, while Lena was at work. “Don’t talk to them,” Lena said quickly. “We’ll talk in the morning.” But even as she was leaving, she saw the seven women surround Maria. She heard them saying, “It’s your fault.”

  When Lena came back from her shift, Maria was gone. Someone had seen her crying and signing some papers and the duty officer taking her away. She had asked to be moved to solitary for her own protection.

  I think it was the day after we saw each other that they brought me a package from Mama, and in it was everything I had asked for. There was a watch, and I put it on. I think they had already brought the books.[15] It was evening. It is almost always quiet in this cell—not at all like the barracks where the unit is—and so I put on the watch, and it was ticking on my hand, and I started reading a book. I think it was Gandelsman[16]—(I keep writing “I think,” it’s like a parasitic word, but this is because I cannot remember anything with certainty—the days blend into one another)—I just wanted to say that it was a very poignant moment. I am not a very good person, and here I was, surrounded with such wonderful poetry and things sent by people who love me. It’s hard to explain, but all of this becomes incredibly important when you are in prison. Don’t worry about my blabbing on about silly things when you were here. I just can’t let myself feel things here like I can there. Here it cannot be. And at the trial it could not be.

  It’s December 3. I am attending trade school, have been for two days. I am sewing mittens. They are big and warm. They have cotton stuffing on the inside. I get there, take off my coat, put a kerchief on my head, and dive straight into socialist realism. Then again, I am submerged in it all the time. I have on a white kerchief with sharp ends that stick out, and the machine is burring and is made up of parts with frightful names. I see fat iron constructions covered with thick paint and black cables that take the electrical current away, into the ground next to the barracks. If earth conducted electricity, the current coming out of all the barracks and the factory and everywhere would make worms jump, and bugs too, creating tiny hills on the surface. Being humane, of course, we would find a way to breed the kind of worms who feel no pain from this. As for humans, to whom we are not generally humane, they will wear boots with a special isolating sole. The state will supply this place with these special boots, but corruption will do its thing and the supply will be sporadic and the Chinese-made soles will be unreliable, while human rights defenders will say all is well (this part requires no imagination). In time, inmates will figure out how to make their own soles, but the process of making them will be considered a violation, so we have to be careful. I mean, we will have to be careful. But that’s in the future—for now everything is good. I spend my time in the company of remarkable interesting people: Hemingway, Shakespeare, Grass—well, you know them all. I seem to have lost the ability to write. Or is it just that sort of evening?

  ———

  AS A CONVICTED FELON, Maria was entitled to one four-hour visit with up to two adults and one child every two months and one conjugal or family visit of three days every three months. Natalya Alyokhina and Olya Vinogradova visited in November. Nikita came in December. They talked mostly about Philip, who had looked so scared when Nikita brought him for a visit at the pretrial detention center. He had turned red and sat very straight, and Nikita had grown anxious and tried hurrying both him and Maria, who was tongue-tied: “Dudes, we don’t have much time, don’t just sit there.” Two subsequent visits went better—Nikita actually thought the third one was great, it was like talking to his mother behind a glass partition was natural for Philip now—and then Maria was transferred to the penal colony.

  Nikita had told Philip what happened right away: “They’ve put Mama in jail.” It was hard to explain why, of course—not because Philip was a child, but because how could you explain it to anyone. Nikita said that Maria had gone into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and Philip had heard it as “the savior’s castle,” which seemed perfect to Nikita. So he said, yes, she had gone into the savior’s castle and sung a loud song, which you are not allowed to do there.

  Maria filed an application to have her sentence deferred until Philip turned fourteen. There was precedent: a woman in Irkutsk had recently been convicted of vehicular homicide for running over three young women on a sidewalk and had had her sentence deferred. But that woman was a prosecutor’s daughter, and Maria realized that the court would not be so charitable to someone who had sung a loud song in the savior’s castle. Still, there was value in fighting for the sake of fighting. And there was value in getting out of her cell and into a courtroom where she would see familiar faces. And there was just a little bit of hope too.

  The Civilian Collegium in Berezniki got a paint job in anticipation of all the media who would come for the hearing January 16. Petya had mounted a successful campaign to draw media attention—and to force the authorities to move the hearing from colony grounds to the town. A glass case was constructed in the courtroom, which had not, apparently, previously been equipped to host dangerous felons. The courtroom was filled with journalists and supporters—a ragtag group that had assembled around Petya over the last months—and an overflow of several dozen people were watching the proceedings in the lobby, on a monitor the court had installed for the occasion.

  Maria and Nadya had both fired the lawyers who had represented them. In Moscow, they had been embarrassing, but once the women were transferred to colonies, the lawyers were simply absent. This time Maria was represented by a local attorney experienced in working with inmates, along with a former Soviet political prisoner from Moscow. The prosecutor and a representative of the penal colony, a copper-haired woman in a sky-blue uniform, argued that Maria did not deserve to have her sentence reduced because she had been racking up infractions in the colony. Twice she had failed to rise when awakened by a staff member at five thirty. Once she had been caught carrying notes to a meeting with her lawyer, and these were deemed to be correspondence that she was trying to smuggle out past the censors. And once she had refused to testify in a disciplinary hearing against herself—this too was an infraction.

  The local lawyer badgered the penal colony’s representative with requests for documentation and a printed copy of the colony rules. The former dissident pointed out that all of these supposed violations were of the nuisance variety, the sort of thing a colony would normally ignore unless it was out to get an inmate. Maria said, “This is where one would mention Gogol, Kafka, and Orwell, but that seems redundant.”

  ———

  Olya, I am having trouble with my emotions. I cannot manage them, and I despise myself for this. Some little thing, an underhanded little thing, begins to look like a whole big act of injustice. I know they are not going to release me, so what difference does it make whether they pin one more or one less infraction on me? I am indifferent to the whole idea of release. What is it, then? I know what it is, and I despise myself—no, I do not despise myself, I pity myself and this humiliates me. It is their triumph, their petty power—and it is, their power is itty-bitty, but they use it to the fullest. This is so low… They serve the state. Think about what kind of state it is, Olya: I see it every day now, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me to see the monster they re-create with every one of their actions. This is what we mean when we say “the system,” but this is not a system at all, it is incapable of creating anything or even destroying anything, it is nothing but a bloated desert. And I will leave, but this thing will stay here and continue to reproduce itself… There is
only one thing I want: to preserve this memory. And if I don’t have the gift or the strength to show what I have seen here, then maybe someone else will. Otherwise, why am I seeing this and feeling it so acutely? Possibly because I am neurotic.

  After about six hours, the judge, an older woman with a kindly school principal’s way about her, retired to her chambers to write the decision. The support group sent a runner out for fast food. Journalists recharged their equipment and recorded stand-ups outside the courtroom. An hour and a half later, the journalists and assorted others were herded into a closed corridor off the lobby so Maria could be marched back into the courtroom without seeing any of us.

  “It has been demonstrated that the child is harmed by his mother’s absence,” the judge read out. “However, said absence is the result of the mother’s committing a felony. Having a child did not keep Alyokhina from committing a felony. Furthermore, it is the court’s opinion that Alyokhina will not be reformed if she lives at home and concentrates on raising her child.”

  Hi, Olya! We finally talked today. February 25. You said, Get out already. You said, Get out of prison. But I can’t even get out of solitary and into the barracks.

  “It’s all for your own safety.” Television news is full of tanks and guns—VVP’s[17] favorite toys. Expensive toys. The message is similar: ALL OF THIS (a pile of metal scrap no one needs) “for your own safety.” Rising defense capability, rising interest meaning investment, rising, rising, rising—it’s a Freudian nightmare: how far can it rise, and what for? We keep raising it and it keeps falling—falling: rockets fall, salaries fall, interest falls. But they keep up the pomp, the noise, and the moments of silence. Parliament members held a moment of silence when a child adopted from Russia died in the U.S. If they held a moment of silence for every child who dies in Russian adoptive families, for every inmate who dies in jail, for everyone who loses her mind in a hospital, then their work would turn into mourning 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. And I want—I demand—to see real mourning, not the ritual laying of a wreath at the eternal flame but the kind of mourning that makes them sweat.

  26 February

  You are very lucky in the way you get your news. I’ve been getting it from television for the last year and now I hate journalism. And don’t tell me that what I’m watching has nothing to do with journalism. People like me—the ones who watch TV—are in the majority, and what’s worse, only the very few view any of it at all critically…

  Our wonderful penitentiary system has a special place for so-called malevolent violators. The “malevolents” go in a special “prophylactic registry,” which mandates close monitoring of the inmate’s behavior and “prophylactic activity.” You can be deemed a “malevolent” for committing a dangerous violation, planning to commit, or “having a tendency” to commit one (this is my favorite part). Dangerous violations are: smuggling drugs into prison; attempting to escape; stealing; petty hooliganism, belonging to a criminal group—Article 115 contains a full list, and this list also contains male homosexuality and lesbianism… I wonder what sorts of “prophylactic activities” these people are subjected to. Most likely, they just repeat, robotlike, that this is wrong, this is an infraction, read the rules out loud to you—but what else? What do they tell the person? They probably say it’s a sickness—I’m willing to bet that’s exactly what they say. Getting back to the point that you can be put in the registry for “having a tendency.” I love Oscar Wilde, ancient Greeks, and Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry. If I declaim their poetry, would that be seen as proof of a “tendency”? I’m sure it could. And if you are in the registry, they make a special mark in your personal file, and once that’s done, there can be no parole. That’s all, I have to go to trade school.

  I’ve come back for lunch. I have good news: I have received written responses to my queries and proposals. I now have a piece of paper that says I have the right to wash my hair every day! That it’s not a violation! This is a victory. Another small victory is this: I am no longer subjected to the gynecological chair before and after meeting with my lawyer. This went on for a month, and now I have finally managed to get this canceled. It was painful and disgusting, and anyway, no one can stand being subjected to this 4 times a week.

  These were not Maria’s only victories. She kept writing official complaints. She appealed all the infractions with which she had been charged. The court in Berezniki convened again on the last day of January to review the infractions, and a hearing that should have taken fifteen minutes went on for a week. This time the prison authority did not let her go to the courthouse in Berezniki. The journalists were there—not as many as two weeks earlier, but still at least a dozen people—and the support group was there, though her mother did not come this time, but Maria herself was only an image on a small flat-screen to the right of the double-headed eagle that is the symbol of Russia, and a voice in the loudspeakers.

  “Maria Vladimirovna, can you see us?” asked the judge when the trial began.

  “I can barely see you,” she answered, squinting on screen. “To me you are just a dark silhouette. And I can neither see nor hear the prosecution at all.”

  “You can hear us,” stated the judge.

  The hearing went on in fits and starts. Maria insisted on her rights—the right to be represented by counsel with whom she could consult in confidence, which would mean being in physical proximity—and the judge allowed the defense attorney to go to the penal colony and sit next to Maria on the screen. Maria also insisted on reviewing procedures and demanded paperwork from the colony. As the days dragged on, what began as a humiliating bureaucratic procedure turned into something resembling a court hearing. At the end, the judge did something perhaps no other Russian judge had ever done in such a situation: she struck down two of Maria’s supposed infractions and she ordered the penal colony to put its house in order.

  In her final statement at that hearing, Maria said, “A philosopher named Heidegger once said that language is the house of being. And I have to tell you that being within the language of these secure objects and special-purpose objects and decrees and amendments and administrative orders and mandated procedures and transport is a nightmare. And I feel it during this hearing, I am dying here. I need to realize my potential, I need to work on what I believe I was born to do. And I would very much like to do it. I would like to get out as soon as possible and do my work. I believe that this all-out, all-around victimization of inmates will stop. And I assume that the decision in my case has already been made and it’s probably not in my favor, but this hearing this week has perhaps made the administration of the penal colony understand something. More than anything else I want them to understand that we are human beings and that their uniform and badge does not change that. We are human beings.”

  After that hearing Maria stopped dying inside the language of legalese and started living in it. The administration, apparently realizing it could not get rid of her and could not keep her in solitary indefinitely without facing more complaints and legal sanctions, released her into the barracks. Lena Tkachenko was transferred to a different unit, but she and Maria found ways to meet and organize: Lena would pass Maria notes instructing her to go to the infirmary at a particular time and they would meet there as if by accident. Maria accumulated documentation of violations; everywhere she went, she carried a bulging folder. Many of the inmates at Penal Colony 28 started working eight hours a day instead of twelve.

  Hi, Olya!

  It looks like it’s been a month since I last sent you a letter. The last one went out February 26. What in the world have I been doing? Today is March 27. Spring is here. We were smoking on the trade school porch today when snow fell off the roof—so much snow that several people were pinned under it. Could the coming of spring have been announced any more clearly? A whole mountain of wet snow—I wish you had seen it. All the smokers jumped away from the porch and wouldn’t return even though there was no snow left on the roof. They still kept their distance, smoking
in a flock.

  What should I write about? About the fact that I live behind bars and I sew? Those are silly words. I live behind a multitude of doors and a multitude of bars, and I have been sewing for 4 months. I’ll tell you in detail. I’m not sure my story will have literary value, but I’ll try to make it interesting.

  Look at your bedsheets. See how their edges are folded in? Now I too know how to do this. First you fold 0.7 mm over, then 1 cm, then you lay down a stitch 0.2 mm from the edge. 0.2 mm is important, and it also turns out to be possible. Actually, I would even say more: it’s a simple operation. The word operation used to put me in mind of hospitals or the police, but now I think of sewing machines as well. The entire clothing manufacturing process is subdivided into operations (division of labor). There are simple operations and complex ones, and the complex ones are to be performed by seamstresses who have a higher ranking. What’s considered complex? Stitch a collar into the orifice (what a creepy word, don’t you think?)—I can do that. I can also set up piping, which is also not simple but has a great sound to it.[18] But a motorized sewing machine is a regular object—many people own something similar, as do you (or do you?), but you definitely don’t have a machine that sews on buttons and makes buttonholes. I can do this too.