One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Signet Books)

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn;Ralph Parker

  The barracks commander was one of the biggest bastards. After all, just think, he's locked in with us all night, but the way he acts, not afraid of anyone! On the contrary, everyone's afraid of him. Some of us he betrays to the guards, others he wallops himself. He lost a thumb in a scrap and is classed as an invalid, but his face is the face of a thug. Actually he _is_ a thug with a criminal record, but among the charges against him was one under Article 58, 14, and that's how he landed in with us.

  He wouldn't think twice about taking your number and passing it to the guard--and that means two days in the guardhouse, with work. So instead of just trailing to the door one by one they all rushed out in a crowd, tumbling down from the bunks as if they were bears and pressing to the narrow exit.

  Shukhov, the cigarette in his palm--he'd craved it so long and had already rolled it--sprang nimbly down, and slipped his feet into the valenki. He was on the point of leaving when he felt a twinge of pity for Tsezar. It wasn't that he wanted to make anything more out of the man; he felt genuinely sorry for him. For all his high opinion of himself, Tsezar didn't know a thing about life--after collecting his parcel he shouldn't have gloated over it; he should have taken it to the storeroom right away before the evening count. Eating's something that can wait. But now what was Tsezar going to do with all that stuff? He couldn't carry his sack with him to the count. What a horselaugh that would bring! Four hundred zeks roaring their heads off. But to. leave it in the barracks no matter how briefly meant that the first to run back from the count would swipe it. (At Ust-Izhma it was even crueler: there, when we came back from work, the crooks got in first and cleaned out all our lockers.) Shukhov saw that Tsezar realized the danger. He was bustling here and there, but too late. He was stuffing the sausage and salt pork under his jacket. That at least he could save by taking it to the count.

  Pityingly, Shukhov gave him some advice: "Sit here till the last moment, Tsezazr Markovich. Hide here in the shadow and stay till everyone has left. And when the guard comes by the bunks with the orderlies and pokes into everything, come out and say you're feeling bad. I'll go out first and I'll be back first. That's the way. . . ."

  And he ran off.

  At first he elbowed his way through the crowd mercilessly (protecting his cigarette in his fist, however). In the corridor, which served both halves of the barracks, and near the door, the men in front were hanging back, the cagy beasts, clinging in two rows to the walls on each side, leaving just enough room for any fool who liked the cold to squeeze through. They were going to stay here; they've been out all day. Why should they freeze needlessly for another ten minutes? No fools here! You croak today but _I_

  mean to live till tomorrow.

  At any other time Shukhov too would have clung to the wall. But now he strode to the door and even grinned.

  "What are you scared of, you idiots? Never seen Siberian frost before? Come outside and warm yourselves by the wolf's sun. Give us a light, uncle."

  He lit his cigarette at the door and moved out onto the porch. "Wolf's sun," that's what they'd called the moon in Shukhov's village.

  The moon rode high now. As high again, and it would be at its zenith. The sky was greenish-white; the rare stars shone brilliantly. The snow gleamed white, the barracks walls gleamed white. The lamps had little effect.

  There was a dense black crowd outside one of the barracks. The zeks had come out for the count. They were coming out over there too. But it wasn't the sound of voices you heard from the barracks--it was the creaking of boots on the snow.

  Some prisoners were coming down the steps and lining up, opposite the barracks.

  Five in front, then three behind. Shukhov joined the three. After an extra bit of bread, and with a cigarette between your lips, it wasn't so bad standing there. Good tobacco--the Lett hadn't gypped him. Strong, and smelled good.

  Gradually, other prisoners trailed through the door. Two or three more lines of five were forming behind him. They came out angry now. Why were those rats jostling in the corridor? Why weren't they coming out? Why should we have to freeze for them?

  No zek ever saw a clock or a watch. What use were they to him anyway? All he needs to know is: will reveille sound soon? How long to roll call? How long to dinner?

  To the last clanging of the rail?

  The evening count, everyone said, was at nine. But it never finished at nine--they would sometimes recount two or even three times. You never got away before ten. And at five o'clock next morning they hounded you out of your bunk with the first clanging of the rail. No wonder that Moldavian had dozed off down at the shop before work was over today. Wherever a zek gets a bit of warmth into him he falls asleep on the spot. You lose so much sleep during the week that on a Sunday--provided they don't send you to work--whole barrackfuls of zeks sleep the day through.

  Now they're streaming forward. At last! The barracks commander and the guard were dragging them out, kicking them in the ass. Serve 'em right, the tricky bastards.

  "What?" the zeks in front shouted at the late corners. "Pretty smart, huh? Want to lick the cream off the shit, you rats? If you'd come out earlier we'd be through now."

  The whole barracks had been emptied. Four hundred men--eighty ranks of five.

  They lined up in a column, the ones in front strictly in fives, the others any old way.

  "Get into line there, you at the back," the barracks commander shouted from the steps.

  They didn't move, fuck 'em.

  Tsezar came out shivering, pretending he was sick. At his heels were four orderlies, two from each half of the barracks, and a prisoner who limped. They stood in front so that Shukhov was now a row farther back. Tsezar was sent to the rear of the column.

  The guard came out too.

  "Form fives!" he shouted to the rear of the column, furiously.

  "Form fives!" shouted the barracks commander even more furiously.

  The men didn't budge, fuck 'em.

  The barracks commander rushed from the porch to the rear of the column, swearing and hitting out.

  But he was careful whom he hit. Only the meek ones.

  The ranks formed. He came back. He shouted:

  "First. Second. Third . . ."

  As soon as they'd been counted the men broke away and rushed into the barracks.

  All square for today with the authorities.

  All square, unless there's a recount. Those parasites were such morons, they counted worse than any herdsman. For all that he may be unable to read or write, a herdsman knows if there's a calf missing when he's driving the herd. And these parasites had been trained-- whatever good it'd done them.

  The previous winter there'd been no drying sheds at all for the boots, and the zeks had had to leave their valenki in the barracks night after night. So if the count was repeated, everyone had to be driven outside again, a second, a third, a fourth time--already undressed, just as they were, wrapped in blankets. Since then a drying shed had been built; it wasn't big enough for all the boots at one time, but at least each of the squads could get the benefit of it once every two or three days. So now any recount was held inside. They merely shifted the zeks from one half of the barracks to the other, counting them as they filed through.

  Shukhov wasn't the first to be back, but he kept an eye on anyone ahead of him.

  He ran up to Tsezar's bunk and sat on it. He took off his boots, and climbed onto the top of a tier of bunks close by the stove. He put his boots on the stove--first-corner's prerogative-- then back to Tsezar's bunk. He sat there cross-legged, one eye on guard for Tsezar (they might swipe his packages from under the head of his bunk), the other for himself (they might push his boots off the stove).

  "Hey," he shouted, "hey you, Red. Want to get that boot in your teeth? Put your own up but don't touch other peoples'."

  The prisoners poured in like a stream.

  The men in the 20th shouted: "Give us your boots."

  As soon as they'd left the barracks with the boots the door was locked
after them.

  When they ran back they shouted: "Citizen chief. Let us in."

  And the guards gathe'red in their quarters with their boards and did the bookkeeping: had anyone escaped, or was everything in order?

  Well, Shukhov needn't think about such things that evening. Here came Tsezar, diving between the tiers of bunks on his way back.

  "Thank you, Ivan Denisovich."

  Shukhov nodded, and shot up to his bunk like a squirrel. Now he could finish his bread, smoke a second cigarette, go to sleep.

  But he'd had such a good day, he felt in such good spirits, that somehow he wasn't in the mood for sleep yet.

  He must make his bed now--there wasn't much to it. Strip his mattress of the grubby blanket and lie on it (it must have been '41 when he last slept in sheets-- that was at home; it even seemed odd for women to bother about sheets, all that extra laundering).

  Head on the pillow, stuffed with shavings of wood; feet in jacket sleeve; coat on top of blanket and--Glory be to Thee, O Lord. Another day over. Thank You I'm not spending tonight in the cells. Here it's still bearable.

  He lay with his head near the window, but Alyosba, who slept next to him on the same level, across a low wooden railing, lay the opposite way, to catch the light He was reading his Bible again.

  The electric light. was quite near. You could read and even sew by it.

  Alyosha heard Shukhov's whispered prayer, and, turning to him: "There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don't you give it its freedom?"

  Shukhov stole a look at him. Alyosha's eyes glowed like two candles.

  "Well, Alyosha," he said with a sigh, "it's this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across

  'em."

  Outside the staff quarters were four sealed boxes-- they were cleared by a security officer once a month. Many were the appeals that were dropped into them. The writers waited, counting the weeks: there'll be a reply in two months, in one month.

  But the reply doesn't come. Or if it does it's only "rejected."

  "But, Ivan Denisovich, it's because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That's why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move. . . ."

  Shukhov grinned and rolled another cigarette. He took a light from the Estonian.

  "Don't talk nonsense, Alyosba. I've never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I've never seen a mountain at all. But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist society of yours--did you make a single mountain move?"

  They were an unlucky group too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every damn one of them had been given twenty-five years. Nowadays they cut all cloth to the same measure--twentyfive years.

  "Oh, we didn't pray for that, Ivan Denisovich," Alyosha said earnestly. Bible in hand, he drew nearer to Shukhov till they lay face to face. "Of all earthly and mortal things Our Lord commanded us to pray only for our daily bread. 'Give us this day our daily bread.'"

  "Our ration, you mean?" asked Shukhov.

  But Alyosha didn't give up. Arguing more with his eyes than his tongue, he plucked at Shukhov's sleeve, stroked his arm, and said: "Ivan Denisovich, you shouldn't pray to get parcels or for extra stew, not for that. Things that man puts a high price on are vile in the eyes of Our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit--that the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from our hearts. . . ."

  "Listen to me. At our church in Polomnya we had a priest . . ."

  "Don't talk to me about your priest," Alyosha said imploringly, his brow furrowed with distress.

  "No, listen." Shukhov propped himself up on an elbow. "In Polomnya, our parish, there isn't a man richer than the priest. Take roofing, for instance. We charge thirty-five rubles a day to ordinary people for mending a roof, but the priest a hundred. And he forks up without a whimper. He pays alimony to three women in three different towns, and he's living with a fourth. And he keeps that bishop of his on a hook, I can tell you. Oh yes, he gives his fat hand to the bishop, all right. And he's thrown out every other priest they've sent there. Wouldn't share a thing with 'em."

  "Why are you talking to me about priests? The Orthodox Church has departed from Scripture. It's because their faith is unstable that they're not in prison."

  Shukhov went on calmly smoking and watching his excited companion.

  "Alyosha," he said, withdrawing his arm and blowing smoke into his face. "I'm not against God, understand that. I do believe in God. But I don't believe in paradise or in hell. Why do you take us for fools and stuff us with your paradise and hell stories? That's what I don't like."

  He lay back, dropping his cigarette ash with care between the bunk frame and the window, so as to singe nothing of the captain's below. He sank into his own thoughts. He didn't hear Alyosha's mumbling.

  "Well," he said conclusively, "however much you pray it doesn't shorten your stretch. You'll sit it out from beg inning to end anyhow."

  "Oh, you mustn't pray for that either," said Alyosha, horrified. "Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you!re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the Apostle Paul wrote: 'Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.'"

  Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn't know either whether he wanted freedom or not. At first he'd longed for it. Every night he'd counted the days of his stretch--how many had passed, how many were coming. And then he'd grown bored with counting. And then it became clear that men like him wouldn't ever be allowed to return home, that they'd be exiled. And whether his life would be any better there than here--who could tell?

  Freedom meant one thing to him--home.

  But they wouldn't let him go home.

  Alyosha was speaking the truth. His voice and his eyes left no doubt that he was happy in prison.

  "You see, Alyosha," Shukhov explained to him, "somehow it works out all right for you: Jesus Christ wanted you to sit in prison and so you are--sitting there for His sake.

  But for whose sake am _I_ here? Because we weren't ready for war in forty-one? For that? But was that _my_ fault?"

  "Seems like there's not going to be a recount," Kilgas murmured from his bunk.

  "Yeah," said Shukhov. "We ought to write it up in coal inside the chimney. No second count." He yawned. "Might as well get to sleep."

  And at that very moment the door bolt rattled to bieak the calm that now reigned in the barracks. From the corridor ran two of the prisoners who'd taken boots to the drying shed.

  "Second count," they shouted.

  On their heels came a guard.

  "All out to the other half."

  Some were already asleep. They began to grumble and move about, they put their boots on (no one ever took his wadded trousers off at night--you'd grow numb with cold unless you wore them under your blanket).

  "Damn them," said Shukhov. Mildly, because he hadn't gone to sleep yet.

  Tsezar raised a hand and gave him two biscuits, two lumps of sugar, and a slice of sausage.

  "Thank you, Tsezar Markovich," said Shukhov, leaning over the edge of his bunk.

  "Come on now, hand up that sack of yours. I'll put it under my mattress." (It's not so easy to swipe things from the top bunks as you go by. Anyway, who'd look for anything in Shukhov's bunk?)

  Tsezar handed up his sack and Shukhov hid it under the mattress. Then be waited a little till more men had been sent out--he wouldn't have to stand barefoot so long in the corridor. But the guard scowled at him and shouted: "Come on, you there in the corner."

  Shukhov sprang lightly to the floor (his boots and footrags were so well placed on the stove it would be a pity to move them). Though he'd made so many slippers for others
he hadn't a pair of his own. But he was used to this--and the count didn't take long.

  They confiscate slippers too if they find them in daytime.

  As for the squads who'd sent their boots to be dried, it wasn't so bad for them, now the recount was held indoors. Some wore slippers, some just their footrags, some went barefoot.

  "Come on, come on," growled the guard.

  "Do you want to be carried out, you shits?" the barracks commander shouted.

  They shoved them all into the other half of the barracks, and loiterers into the corridor. Shukhov stood against the wall near the bucket. The floor was moist underfoot.

  An icy draft crept in from the porch.