Siberian Education

by Nicolai Lilin

  To make the elastic we generally used old bicycle inner tubes, but often they didn’t produce enough power in the shot. Much better were the tourniquet bandages that we found in military first-aid packs: the ones that are used for compressing the arteries, to stop blood loss. If these bandages were properly attached, we could shoot a round stone or steel bolt – or one of Grandfather Bosya’s sweets – over a hundred metres through a window, and it might even break something inside the room.

  But the most deadly elastic of all was an invention of mine: the one made from Soviet army issue gas masks.

  Fixing the elastic on, too, was something that each of us did in our own way; I preferred a secure but complicated form of attachment, and I never got hit in the eye or on the nose by the elastic, which is very painful. I used a thin thread, wound round the elastic a number of times and tied with a simple fisherman’s knot. To make it extra secure I then smeared it with a little chewed-up bread, which created a kind of substance which was like glue but didn’t dry the thread.

  In the middle of the elastic you fixed the piece of leather where you would put the object you wanted to fire. I used leather which was not very thick but was tough, because if it was too thick it would crack and eventually break.

  There were a lot of little tricks for improving the ballistic capability of your catapult, once you had a good basic structure. For example, whenever possible, I always used to damp the frame of the catapult before firing it; that way it was softened and I could be confident of using it to maximum effect without breaking it. Then I would grease all the knots of the catapult: this guaranteed more precision, because it eliminated those little movements of dry materials which might influence the trajectory.

  I invented the method of setting fire to the cars in the yard of the police station using a catapult. The yard was surrounded by a very high wall, and in order to fire something into it you had to venture too close and they would, inevitably, catch you as soon as they saw you arrive. Molotov cocktails were too heavy to throw, and whenever we tried they didn’t even reach halfway up the wall before smashing. We would always end up exchanging disconsolate looks, thinking that all the effort we’d made to prepare those bottles was burnt up in an instant against that grey wall. We had begun to lose heart, until one day I came across some liquor belonging to my uncle in the cupboard. What I found was a lot of small bottles containing various kinds of spirit – those little bottles for alcoholic dwarves. I emptied some of them; after all my uncle was in jail, and in any case he wouldn’t have scolded me, because I was making good use of them. I made a mini-molotov, then I constructed a special catapult, slightly stronger than usual, and after carrying out some preliminary tests, which it passed with flying colours, I prepared a box full of mini-molotovs (which we called ‘mignons’) and ten catapults for firing them.

  We broke into an old abandoned printing works near the police station and from there we had a perfect view of our targets. We positioned ourselves carefully, and like a battery of howitzers we fired the first shot. Ten of us did the shooting; one boy would pull back the catapult with the little bottle in it and another boy standing behind him would light his bottle and that of the next shooter, using two cigarette lighters which he held at the ready. All our actions were perfectly synchronized. Our little bottles flew spectacularly, whistling like bullets as they disappeared over the wall of the police station. When I heard the small explosions followed by the cries of the cops and the first signs of black smoke, which rose in the air like fantastic dragons, I felt like bursting into tears, I was so happy.

  Our position was ideal: before our victims realized what had happened, we had already fired off our whole arsenal and ridden calmly homeward on our bikes.

  It was the talk of the town: ‘There’s been an attack on the police station,’ said one. ‘Who was it?’ asked another. ‘A gang of strangers, apparently,’ replied a third – and we felt very important; every time I heard someone talking about that episode I wanted to shout in his face, ‘It was us, us!’

  I was proud, no doubt about it. I thought I was a genius and for some time after I behaved towards my friends like a general towards his army.

  After that, we set fire to the police station car park a few more times, but then the police covered it with wire netting, so our molotovs couldn’t get through. Many bounced on the netting and then hit the ground, plof!, on the outer side of the wall, but without exploding. It wasn’t very interesting any more.

  For a while we tried to think up something new, but then suddenly we grew up and someone suggested simply shooting the policemen with guns. That was interesting, too, but it wasn’t like burning them with mini-molotovs. There was something medieval about those ‘mignons’ which made us feel like knights fighting valiantly against dragons.

  And so, as we walked towards Aunt Katya’s restaurant with our beautiful plant, we crossed the Bridge of the Dead. At that time this was a stretch of asphalted road with some old stones sticking out of it, but once it had been a real bridge. When the bridge was destroyed, it had first been covered with earth and then asphalted over, but for some inexplicable reason the stones kept breaking back up to the surface, making holes in the asphalt. It was weird to see those large old black, shapeless patches sticking out of the cracked asphalt. An old man of our area had told me the mystery could easily be explained as an ‘engineering error’. But when I was a child I preferred another story which explained that strange movement of the stones of the Bridge of the Dead as a supernatural phenomenon.

  The story ran that during the nineteenth century the workers in our town, tired of being exploited by a rich and noble lord who had a reputation comparable to that of Count Dracula, had revolted. The pretext for their revolt had been the fact that the master had raped a young peasant girl. The girl had not, like many others before her, suffered in silence, but had told everyone the truth, even at the risk of being despised and of losing her dignity. The peasants and the workers, however, had not despised her but had supported her and risen up immediately. They had killed the guards and entered the master’s palace, then dragged him out of bed and taken him into the street, where they had kicked and beaten him to death. Afterwards, they had tied his body to the palace gate and prevented his family from removing it. ‘It must rot up there,’ they had said.

  The next day, the revolt had been put down. But the people said that if the master’s body were taken down from the gate and buried under a cross, a curse would fall on all his family. Naturally nobody had heeded those words, and the master had been buried with full honours, like a hero who had fallen in battle.

  After a few months his wife had fallen ill and died. His eldest son, now a young man, had also died not long afterwards, having fallen off his horse. Finally, some time later, his daughter had died while giving birth to her first child, a baby boy, who did not survive either.

  The palace had been abandoned and soon fell into ruins: nobody wanted to live there any more. The land of that nobleman was occupied by the peasants. Over the family tombs they built a bridge, which was accordingly known as ‘The Bridge of the Dead’.

  The legend says that every night the ghosts of the family gather to take the body of that cruel man out of the ground, so that they can hang it up on the gate again, because they want to lay the curse and be able to rest in peace. But they never succeed in getting him out, because the bridge was built over his grave, and all the ghosts manage to do in one night is to pull up a few stones, which the next day the people, when they pass over the bridge, put back in place.

  When we were small we sometimes went hunting for those ghosts at night. To keep up our courage we carried our knives, as well as various ‘magic’ Siberian objects, such as the dried foot of a goose, or a tuft of grass taken from the river bank during a night of the full moon.

  As we hid in a little ditch and waited for the ghosts we filled the time with horror stories to frighten ourselves so much that we stayed alert. But we soon all fell asleep, one
after another.

  The first would say:

  ‘Wake me up if you see something, boys,’ then we’d all fall asleep, lying at the bottom of the ditch like corpses.

  In the morning the one who had held out longest would tell the others some tall tale about what he had seen.

  The others, of course, would be angry.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake us up, you idiot?’

  ‘I couldn’t move, or even open my mouth,’ he would claim. ‘It was like being paralysed.’

  Mel had once told us that the ghosts had carried him up into the air and flown him around the town. The idea of Mel flitting around in the company of aristocratic ghosts from the previous century made a deep impression on me.

  Whenever we passed that way I would remind Mel of the story of his flight. He would gape at me.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’ And I’d burst out laughing, flapping my arms to imitate the movement of the wings, whereupon Mel wouldn’t be able to restrain himself any longer and he too would start laughing.

  Crossing the Bridge of the Dead, both flapping our arms, we finally reached the street where Aunt Katya’s restaurant was.

  We found her among the tables, serving her regular customers – old criminals who lived on their own and went to eat in her restaurant every day. They had spent so long in prison that they had got used to the collective criminal life, and consequently they tried to be together all the time, though you would hardly have thought it, because they looked as if they couldn’t stand each others’ company. The expressions on their faces seemed to indicate great unhappiness, but in fact those were simply their normal expressions. I think they missed prison, in a way, and even missed the hardship in which they had grown accustomed to living. They continued to live the life of prisoners, despite having been free for years. Many of them couldn’t get used to the rules of the civil world, to freedom. Almost all of them preferred to live in one-room flats where they’d had the walls of the bathroom and the kitchenette knocked down to create a single space that reminded them of their cell. I knew some old men who even put barbed wire and bars across their windows, because otherwise they felt uneasy and couldn’t get to sleep. Others slept on wooden bunks like those of the prisons and always left the tap running, as it had in their cells. Their whole life became a perfect imitation of the one they had lived when they were incarcerated.

  Aunt Katya allowed all those criminals to re-create a kind of make-believe prison in her restaurant, because they were her regular customers, but also because she loved every one of them and, as she herself used to say:

  ‘I wouldn’t presume to re-educate elderly people.’

  So entering Aunt Katya’s restaurant was like entering a prison cell. All the men sat with their heads bowed, as if something were preventing them from looking up. This is an unmistakable mark of the ex-convict: he’ll always keep his head down, because in prison you spend most of the time lying on bunks and you have to be careful not to bang your head on the bunk above. Even people who have only spent a few years in jail don’t find it easy to break this habit when they come out.

  The old men usually played cards at Aunt Katya’s, but not with normal playing cards: they used kolotushki, hand-painted cards made in prison.

  They all dressed the same, in grey, and all wore the fufayka, the standard heavy jacket, which is thick and warm.

  As in their cells, they smoked by passing a cigarette from one to another, even though they could afford to smoke one each. Out of that smoke, which filled the whole restaurant, their ravaged faces loomed, wearing an expression that was an eternal question, as if they’d been struck by some strange fact which they couldn’t make head nor tail of: wide eyes that looked at you and in the space of three seconds gave you a complete X-ray, and knew who you were even better than you did yourself.

  Among themselves they talked only in slang and in fenya, the old Siberian criminal language, but they spoke quietly and little; they communicated more in gestures, mostly secret ones.

  They called Aunt Katya ‘mama’, to emphasize the importance of her role and of her authority.

  They followed many of the prison rules of behaviour; for example, they never went to the toilet while someone was eating or drinking, even though the toilet wasn’t in the same room but on the other side of the yard. Nor did they ever discuss politics, religion, or differences between nationalities.

  There was strict hierarchy among them: the highest Authorities sat near the windows and enjoyed the best places; the others sat nearer to the doors. The ‘garbage’ – people considered to be beneath contempt – and those who had been ‘lowered’, or demoted to the lowest ranks of society, were not admitted: outside prison there is not the same compulsion to share the same space as there is inside. There were only two or three ‘sixths’[8] – a kind of slave, people who performed tasks deemed unworthy of a criminal: they were allowed to touch money with their hands, so they paid for everyone’s meals, taking the money from a common kitty. Whenever anyone ran out of cigarettes, the ‘sixth’ had to hurry off to get him some more: a service for which he was paid but also treated with slight contempt – not offensive, but indicative, to remind him of his place on the hierarchical scale. It was strange to see these old men being treated like little boys; they were always on the alert, constantly looking to see whether anyone in the room needed them. When they brought the cigarettes they would bow, with a humble expression on their faces, wait for the highest Authority to open the packet and offer them a few for the service, and then, thanking him, return to their place, walking backwards, like crayfish, so as not to turn their back on the person with whom they had been dealing.

  So when you entered Aunt Katya’s restaurant you had to follow prison rules, and behave as you would when you entered a real cell. It may seem ridiculous, but for those people, for those elderly ex-convicts, it was a sign of respect, a way of showing them that you had come with good intentions and were astute.

  When you enter a cell you have to know how to greet people in an appropriate manner. You can’t just say ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’: if you do, the criminals will immediately understand that you know nothing of their culture, and if you’re lucky they’ll dismiss you as ‘someone who’s just passing through’, who is irrelevant to them; they won’t communicate with you, they’ll act as if you don’t exist. You must greet them like this: open the door, take just one step and then stop – woe betide you if you take another step. Then say ‘Peace to your (or our) house’ or ‘Peace and health to honest vagabonds’ (this is a safe variant, worthy of a true criminal), or ‘Good health to the honest company’, ‘It’s the hour of your joys’: in short, there are many forms of greeting used in the criminal world. After saying the appropriate phrase, it’s essential not to move, but to wait for the reply. Usually the criminals don’t reply immediately; they let a few moments pass, to assess your reaction. If you’re clever you’ll keep calm, gaze at a point in front of you and never look anyone in the face. The highest Authority, or one of his men, will eventually answer you, again with a set phrase: ‘Welcome with honesty’ or ‘May the Lord guide you’, or ‘Enter with your soul’.

  According to the rules, before doing anything else you must personally greet the highest Authority. In my case, on this occasion I knew him. He was sitting near one of the windows on the other side of Aunt Katya’s restaurant. He always sat there, with his companions.

  All the people present belonged to the caste of the Men, who in the criminal hierarchy are also called Grey Seed. They are hardened criminals, alcoholics, simple people, thieves and murderers, who for personal reasons had never wanted to join the caste of Black Seed, whose members formed a kind of ‘aristocracy’ among the criminals.

  In the criminal world Black Seed was a young but powerful caste, which had succeeded in exploiting the philosophy of personal sacrifice. Its members appeared to be pure and perfect men, who devoted their lives to the welfare of people in prison. They worshipped prison: they ref
erred to it affectionately as ‘home’, ‘church’ or ‘mother’, and were happy to spend time there, even their whole lives. Whereas all the other castes, including that of the Siberian Urkas, despised prison and put up with detention as you might a misfortune.

  Thanks to the enormous number of scum and lowlifes that had joined its ranks, Black Seed had become the largest caste in the Russian criminal world: but for every wise and good person that you could find among them, you would meet another twenty uncouth and sadistic ones, who showed off and threw their weight around in every possible situation.

  Then there was another very unusual caste: Red Seed, whose members collaborated with the police and believed in the nonsense purveyed by the prison administrations, such as ‘redemption of the personality’. They were called ‘cuckolds’, ‘reds’, ‘comrades’, sucha, padla – all very pejorative words in the criminal community.

  All the people in the middle were called Grey Seed, or neutrals. They were opposed to the police and observed the rules of criminal life, but they didn’t have the responsibilities, let alone the philosophy, of Black Seed, and they certainly didn’t want to spend their whole lives in prison.

  The members of Black Seed were required to disown their relatives; they weren’t allowed to have either a home or a family. Like all the other criminals they idolized the figure of the mother, but many of them didn’t respect their own mothers; on the contrary, they treated them very badly. Many is the poor woman I’ve known with sons who, while they were in prison, declared to each other in a theatrical manner that the only thing they really missed was their mother and then, when they got out, turned up at home only to exploit her, and sometimes even rob her, because that is what their rule says: ‘Every Blatnoy – member of Black Seed – must take everything away from his home; only in this way can he prove that he is honest through and through…’