An American in the Gulag

by Alexander Dolgun

  130. But Sidorov’s jacket, which he had filled out very well when I first saw him, was hanging loose, and his face, which had had roles of fat under the chin, was drawn. He was doing everything he could in this battle of wits, or battle of tactics, and while he was not exactly losing, he was not winning either. Even though I was weak and hungry and exhausted, I could feel good about the stalemate. I had no idea where this was going to end, but I still felt I could make him stop before he made me stop.

  His beatings were not getting what he wanted. His attempts to twist my statements in the protocols (to make me admit things I had not really said by changing a comma or deleting a not that I might not notice when I signed) had not worked: I always read carefully, and if my eyes would not focus because he had hit me too hard or because I had not managed to get some sleep because the mean woman was on duty, I refused to sign until I could read clearly. I suppose he may have caught me in minor things but never in anything significant.

  So there he was looking tired, and I thought, You bastard, I’m going to win this.

  I enjoyed the drive in the Champagne van to Lubyanka and back, despite the pain in my knees from crouching, because in the daytime I could hear the hubbub of traffic and could imagine joining it again one day. I knew that people were watching me spin along Kuznetsky Most, and they thought I was a crate of champagne. And some day I would get out and tell them what I really was.

  When I got back in my cell I tapped two taps: I’m back. Two taps from him: Me too.

  The satisfaction of passing six months and getting under Sidorov’s skin all in one day had given such an impetus to my spirits that I was even thinking more clearly than usual. I had done a lot of work on the tapping code, especially the familiar, daily pattern of 2,4; 3,6; 3,2... 1,3; 5,2. (I knew it so well by memory it sounded like a complete rhythm, a recognizable form, the way Morse code letters come to sound to you when you become adept.) I spread it out on my blanket in match stubs and studied it every way I could. Today I had a feeling that I was bright enough to make some kind of breakthrough. I had tried and discarded a number of approaches. I had tried to pick something out of a remembered story by Poe, “The Gold Bug,” I think, in which the frequency of occurrence of certain letters had been the key. That had led me nowhere. There was not enough material to work with. But it had started me thinking about the whole science of ciphers. Could the numbers be subtracted one from another to give a straight 1, 2, 3—right through to 31, for the thirty-one letters of the Russian alphabet? That did not work. I had tried various methods of adding and multiplying, but they led nowhere.

  I kept puzzling away at the code. I took the familiar 2,4; 3,6; 3,2… 1,3; 5,2, and used thirty-one pieces of matchstick to arrange these numbers in a sort of checkerboard pattern on my bed, thus:

  II III III

  IIII IIIIII II

  I IIIII

  III II

  No luck with that.

  Something was nagging at my mind. Why did he persist every night with the arithmetic lesson? 1,1; 1,2; 1,3 and so on to 1,6 until the patter was completed with 5,6.

  I was puzzling away at it when I noticed my mouth filling with saliva and realized that the sound of the elevator had started the conditioned response without my even being aware I had heard it. Now the guards would be busy distributing food. I knew he would start the lesson soon. Patient friend! Keep patience, I thought. I think I’m getting close. I gave him a greeting, a signal to start.

  Tap tap.

  Back it came: 1,1; 1,2. All the way through.

  1 thanked him: Tap tap. I. sat on my bunk and chewed my watery porridge and forced my brain. The peephole started again. I stared at the wall.

  What the hell is it with 1,1; 1,2; 1,3?

  Then I thought: Should I read it as 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16? And if so, why does he skip from 16 to 21, from 26 to 31, from 46 to 51? Was there something in the interval of five? In groupings of five? But there was also a grouping of six: 11 to 16, 21 to 26.

  I wanted to lay out matches for the whole pattern but I did not have nearly enough of them. I set a few matches down on the blanket and tried to imagine how the rest would look. Groupings of five and six. Five plus six is the first number he always sends. Eleven. So what?

  Five times six is thirty. So what? There is no 30 in the code. Wait a minute.

  Wait a minute!

  If you leave out the “hard” sign, you could say that the Russian alphabet has thirty letters.

  Five rows of six letters. Of course! That’s what he sends me every night! The whole goddamn alphabet! How could I have missed it for so long? The numbers have to be coordinates on a simple grid. A checkerboard! My hands were shaking with excitement. I tried to mark numbers on the blanket with a match. Even though the impression faded almost immediately, I could see it in my mind as if it were still there:

  1,1

  1,2

  1,3

  1,4

  1,5

  1,6

  2,1

  2,2

  2,3

  2,4

  2,5

  2,6

  3,1

  3,2

  3,3

  3,4

  3,5

  3,6

  4,1

  4,2

  4,3

  4,4

  4,5

  4,6

  5,1

  5,2

  5,3

  5,4

  5,5

  5,6

  А

  Б

  В

  Г

  Д

  Е

  Ж

  З

  И

  К

  Л

  М

  Н

  О

  П

  Р

  С

  Т

  У

  Ф

  Х

  Ц

  Ч

  Ш

  Щ

  Ы

  Ь

  Э

  Ю

  Я

  Oh God! I was so sure I had it! I almost didn’t have to fake—sitting on the toilet, my stomach was churning so much. How much time before they took me back to Sidorov? I had been so absorbed I had no idea, but I had to tell my friend I could understand him!!

  But as soon as I calmed down, I realized I couldn’t do it yet because I had not memorized the grid and I hadn’t even checked out the familiar morning pattern. I pulled up my pants and went back to the bed and tried to see a mental pattern of letters on the blanket. To help myself I just put thirty pieces of matches on the blanket and then I could mentally place a letter on each match. I checked out the well, remembered message:

  2,4; 3,6; 3,2... 1,3; 5,2

  KTO VY

  “Kto vy?” Who are you?

  Oh, God! A pure rush of love in my chest for a man who has been asking me for three months now who I am, and I can’t even tell him. Quick. Piece out the numbers for Aleksandr Dolgun. Look at the thirty matches on the bed. It will be 1,1; 2,5; 1,6; 2,4; 3,5… (Close my eyes and try to memorize it.) Then, dizzy with excitement, I can hardly stand, start for the toilet, forget the numbers, look back on the blanket. Think, No, that’s not what to send. Send him... send him a question, send him...

  Oh, no! The door is being unlocked. Not yet! Please! “Prepare for interrogation.”

  But it was all right! It was all right! I grinned at the impassive guard. I followed him with real spring in my step for the first time in months. I was exalted. I told myself that I would have a good night in the interrogation room. A good night. I would spend it mentally working through the code. By the morning I would have it memorized. Then I could really talk to my friend. Ask him for news. Tell him my hopes and fears. I chuckled to myself as we walked. The guard looked around and frowned. I smiled back at him, a broad, cheery smile.

  When I arrived in the interrogation room, Sidorov was staring glumly at the pages of a novel and did not even look up. I sat down in m
y chair and went over the kto vy again to make sure it fit the numbers. It fit perfectly. I began to giggle. It was like giggling in church. The fact you know you shouldn’t makes it worse. I giggled and giggled. Sidorov looked up sourly. I was afraid he might want to take it out on me for my afternoon joke about 58.10 but he seemed more interested in his book. He went back to reading. I thought 58.10 doesn’t work in the code, but 51.11 would mean, let me see, oh yes, shcha. I said out loud, “Shcha!” and giggled uncontrollably.

  Sidorov slammed his book down. “What the hell’s wrong with you!”

  “I’m going crazy!” I said merrily.

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I giggled.

  “Well, try to go crazy quietly. I’m reading.” He went back to his book.

  All night long he read. Played right into my hands. All night long I worked on the code. I decided on the question I would surprise my friend with in the morning. I would send, “What is your name?” Kak vas zvat? I would open the conversation with two taps as usual. He would reply with two taps as usual. Then I would ask him his name, and the dear, patient invisible man would fall right off the toilet with surprise and delight.

  Toward morning Sidorov put his book down and stared listlessly at me. “You thought you were pretty smart today, did you?” I giggled sleepily.

  “Stop that!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Six o’clock.

  Back in the cell, trembling with anticipation. The peephole was very regular and the guard on duty was a very tough customer. I decided against risking the toilet until the meal came. Just two taps, Hello, and he sent back the same. Very hard waiting until seven. I laid out thirty matches on the bed as a checkerboard matrix into which I could fit the letters and keep them straight. An age until I finally heard the clanking old elevator and the juice began to flow inside my mouth. I was ravenous as usual. I tore off a hunk of bread, swallowed a mouthful of the hot colored water, stepped close to the wall, held my breath, mentally reviewed the numbers I had memorized for Kak vas zvat, and was just poised to tap two taps, I’m ready, when he tapped.

  Tap tap.

  Watch this! I thought. I began to tap.

  Tap tap, tap tap tap tap,

  Tap tap,

  Tap tap, tap tap tap tap.

  “What is your name?”

  There was a silence from the other side of the wall. Then I heard a sound like a table falling over, and some sort of faint scrambling sound.

  Then, like a waterfall or a typewriter, a regular fusillade of taps from across the barrier of stone.

  I looked at my checkerboard of matches. Medlenno, I thought—slowly. I tapped it out.

  Tap tap, tap tap tap tap tap tap.

  And when I had it all out, back came, in agonizingly slow taps, so careful not to run away from me: DMITRI RAGOZIN. I sent him my name.

  Back came STATYA.

  “Article.” I understood—under what article was I charged? I sent the numbers. He sent his.

  It would have been so easy to become absorbed in this conversation, but I knew it was the most precious possession I had now, and I was determined to risk nothing through lack of vigilance. I sent the word toilet, thinking it would be best to be there when the peephole came back into full-time action once the meal was all served, which would be soon. We had ten minutes of it. Pretty laborious stuff, at first. I often had to ask him, Snova? Again? And watching my matrix carefully, I was able to pick up his story.

  Ragozin was an engineer ten years older than I. He had spent some time abroad in the thirties and, like so many Soviets who did so, got into trouble for it later. Among his articles were 58.4, which I found out much later meant conspiracy with the international bourgeoisie, and 58.1, high treason. He also had 58.10 it seemed.

  Although I was eating up this human contact as if it were food, I knew that I had to conserve myself and take every precaution not to be caught. I sent him, slowly, painstakingly, “Sleep now.” And then our own private, comfortable, all-purpose tap tap.

  I composed myself on the edge of the bunk facing the door.

  I set my hat at the correct angle to conceal my eyes in shadow. I waited through two peeps at the peephole just to be extra safe. This guard was a tough guy, but I had trained him well. Not even a pause, just a routine glance. I let my burning eyes close gratefully. It was like going off to sleep with the image of your lover in your mind. I’m sure that for the next hour or so, while I slept bolt upright, the broad smile of achievement and contact, of satisfaction and joy, never completely left my mouth.

  For the next several nights Sidorov looked exhausted, and from time to time he dozed off and so did I. Even though I was getting better than two hours of sleep every weekday, unless the woman guard was on duty, I was still close to mental exhaustion most of the time and would nod off instantly whenever there was the slightest opportunity. We did little “work.”

  One night, when Sidorov caught me a couple of times, he just came over and slapped my cheeks very casually and said in a low, bitter voice, “Wake up, wake up,” and went back to his desk and tried to concentrate on his novel.

  It was a warm night. When he came back from tea he left the door of the interrogation room ajar to get a little circulation. From a closed room down the hall I could hear the low murmur of a man’s voice, and then suddenly a loud scream of a woman, subsiding to a sort of moan, and then a yell that made my scalp lift. I imagined the terrible tortures that must have been applied to her. The voice would subside to silence. Then the quiet man’s voice and almost immediately this poor woman yelling and screaming. It was the strangest yell, it had a bizarre tone. I was shaking, listening to it. After a while Sidorov pressed the button and a guard looked in and Sidorov signaled him wearily to close the door and shut out the sound. I was haunted the rest of that night by those screams. At five or five thirty Sidorov pressed the button and when the guard came told him to leave the door ajar for fresh air.

  “I’ll keep him a while longer,” he said, without even looking at me.

  I heard the guard go next door and heard the door there open and some quiet words from the guard. To my surprise he was answered by a woman. Then there was a pause. Then the same screaming voice I had heard before began again. But this time I could hear the words and the woman was the interrogator! She was screaming filthy accusations at someone, language as bad as Sidorov’s and sounding much more terrible from a woman, all the hideous things she was going to do to this poor man’s lower body and so on, and then just a soft, beaten murmur of a man’s voice as he answered.

  When the guard took me out I saw her standing in the corridor. A middle-aged woman, fifty perhaps, not bad-looking, very composed. She was wearing major’s insignia on her shoulder boards.

  I asked Sidorov about her the next day. He just shook his head and would not answer. I often asked him personal things in those daytime sessions. He never answered. I never gave up. It was one more way to keep him off balance. What was his wife’s name? I would ask, after he had been phoning his mistress. Or how many children, did he have? Or did he ever suffer from piles? He just refused to answer.

  The only thing he ever told me was that he was a law graduate and that the diamond-shaped button on his lapel was a sign of that degree.

  As the time went by I tried to think of more and more sarcastic things to put to him. My hatred was growing and growing with every blow and every kick. I used to find myself watching the gun when he played with it to frighten me, and wish for the strength to leap across the room arid take it and shoot him or knock him out with it and dress in his uniform and walk out of Lefortovo. I was too weak even to begin such an escapade, but the fantasy was sweet and I replayed it and replayed it and savored my hate. The need to kill Sidorov became a hunger.

  I would make an effort to suppress that need and concentrate on my fantasies. Walking home, I had negotiated the Prohibited Zone at the border, dodged dogs and patrols of soldiers, and
had made it through the woods into Poland. The sense of freedom and of covering ground helped a lot. Now I had no more Russians to watch out for, even though Poland was an iron curtain country. I concentrated on the map and tried to remember the names of towns and the approximate distances between them. I had to guess a lot, but the heavy black line I was drawing across my mental map of Europe stretched longer and longer.

  After several days Sidorov returned to the photographs and the Soviet officers.

  Realizing, with repeated help from me, that broad general questions propelled by beatings did not seem to be producing what he wanted, Sidorov tried being more specific. He reminded me that 1 had admitted meeting some Soviet officers and drinking with them on V-E Day at the Metropole. I said, “That’s right, but I don’t recognize any of them in these pictures.”

  Sidorov finally showed me one man. “His name is Commander George Tenno,” Sidorov said. “You know him. He tried to establish contact with you to give you information, don’t you remember?”

  I stared at the face. I was so tired and so confused. The face looked familiar. Sidorov’s voice was soothing and relaxing. It would be so easy just to say, “All right, George Tenno, that’s right, I tried to recruit him and he tried to sell me information,” or anything like that. It would have been so comfortable to give Sidorov something he wanted and get off early and go and sleep. Maybe he would reward me with a cigarette or some food. Maybe all this could stop. As I stared at the face of this George Tenno, I decided that, yes, I did recognize him, and yes, maybe I could say something .... And then I caught myself. Alex, for God’s sake, don’t give in. You’ve gone this far. Keep going, kid. I silently did a couple of lines of “Roll Out the

  Barrel.” I said, I’m getting near the border of East Germany, just east of Dresden. I’ve heard the East German police are rough and smart so I’ll have to be careful. I could smell Sidorov leaning over me, which brought me back to Lefortovo.