In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  “Shoes off,” Krasnogubenky said to Nerzhin.

  Nerzhin lifted one foot onto a stool, unlaced his shoe, and kicked it off without looking where it landed, exposing a hole in his sock. Krasnogubenky picked up the shoe, groped inside it, and flexed the sole. Nerzhin kicked off the other shoe, with the same deadpan expression, and revealed another hole. Perhaps because there were such big holes in those socks, Krasnogubenky did not suspect that anything was hidden in them and did not ask Nerzhin to remove them.

  Nerzhin put his shoes back on. Krasnogubenky lit a cigarette.

  The lieutenant colonel had winced when Nerzhin kicked his shoes off. It was a deliberate show of disrespect to his guard. If he did not stand up for guards, prisoners would soon be thumbing their noses at senior prison staff. Klimentiev regretted his act of kindness yet again and almost decided to find some excuse for canceling Nerzhin’s visit; the wretch was obviously unashamed of his criminal status and indeed seemed to revel in it.

  “Pay attention!” he said sternly, and seven prisoners and seven guards turned to look at him. “You know the rules? You must give nothing to your relatives. You must receive nothing from them. Parcels may be handed over only through me. In your conversation you must not mention your jobs here, your working conditions, your living conditions, your daily routine, the layout of the plant. You are not to mention names. About yourselves you may say only that all is well with you and that there is nothing you need.”

  “So what are we supposed to talk about?” someone called out. “Politics?”

  Klimentiev did not trouble to answer this blatant absurdity.

  “About your crime,” another prisoner grimly suggested. “And how sorry you are.”

  Klimentiev imperturbably rejected this.

  “Talking about your case is also forbidden. Judicial proceedings are an official secret. Inquire about your family, your children. One more thing. Starting today, shaking hands and kissing are forbidden.”

  Nerzhin, who had been unmoved by the search and the stupid rules, which he knew how to circumvent, saw red when he heard that kissing was prohibited.

  “We see each other just once a year. . . ,” he croaked, and Klimentiev looked around, joyfully anticipating the continuation of his outburst.

  Nerzhin could almost hear him barking, “Permission for visit withdrawn.” He choked back his anger.

  He had been given permission to receive a visit at the very last moment. It seemed somehow irregular and might easily be withdrawn.

  Some such thought generally prevents people from blurting out the truth or demanding justice.

  He was a veteran prisoner and should be able to control his anger.

  Once the threat of mutiny had subsided, Klimentiev added dispassionately: “If there is any kissing or handshaking, the visit will be terminated immediately.”

  “But my wife doesn’t know that!” the engraver said angrily.

  Klimentiev was ready for this. “Your relatives will be warned,” he said.

  “It never used to be like this!”

  “Well, this is how it’s going to be now.”

  Idiots! And their indignation was idiotic. As if he personally, and not fresh instructions from above, were responsible for this procedure.

  “How long will the visit last?”

  “What if my mother comes? Will she be allowed in?”

  “Each visit will last thirty minutes. I will admit only one person, the one previously notified.”

  “What about my five-year-old daughter?”

  “Children under the age of fifteen are allowed in with adults.”

  “What about sixteen-year-olds?”

  “They won’t be admitted. Any questions? Time to get on the bus. This way out!”

  Amazing! They were being taken not in a prison truck, as they always had been of late, but in a small-size, light blue city bus.

  The bus was standing at the door of the staff building. Three guards, new ones apparently, in civilian dress and velour hats and keeping their hands in their pockets (on their revolvers), got on the bus first and occupied three of the corners. Two of them looked like retired prizefighters or perhaps gangsters. They were wearing very nice overcoats.

  The morning frost was vanishing, but the thaw had not yet set in.

  The seven prisoners stepped onto the bus by way of the only door, at the front, and took their seats.

  Four uniformed guards followed.

  The driver slammed the door and started the engine.

  Lieutenant Colonel Klimentiev got into his car.

  Chapter 36

  Phonoscopy

  AT NOON YAKONOV HIMSELF was missing from the velvety hush and glossy comfort of his office. He was in Number Seven, officiating at the “wedding” of the clipper and the scrambler. The idea of uniting those two devices, born that morning in the mercenary mind of Markushev, had been snapped up by many others who saw some advantage to themselves. Only Bobynin, Pryanchikov, and Roitman were against it, and nobody listened to them.

  Present in the office were Selivanovsky, General Bulbanyuk (representing Ryumin), Marfino’s Lieutenant Smolosidov, and the prisoner Rubin.

  Lieutenant Smolosidov was an unpleasant character. Perhaps you believe that there is some good in every living creature? Your search for it in Smolosidov would be rendered difficult by that unsmiling iron-hard stare and the sour twist of those thick lips. He occupied one of the lowliest positions in his laboratory; he was little more than a radio fitter, and he was paid no more than that of the lowliest female employee, less than two thousand a month. True, he stole another thousand from the institute in the form of the otherwise unobtainable radio parts he sold on the black market, but everyone knew that there was more than this to be said about Smolosidov’s position and income.

  The free employees in the sharashka—even the friends with whom he played volleyball—were afraid of him. They were frightened by his face, in which it was impossible to awaken a spontaneous reaction. And by the special trust that the highest authorities showed him. Where did he live? Did he in fact have a home? A family? He never accepted invitations from colleagues, never shared his leisure with them beyond the boundaries of the institute. He had three war medals on his chest and in an unguarded moment had boasted that all through the war Marshal Rokossovsky had not spoken a single word that he, Smolosidov, had not heard. When asked how this could be, he replied that he had been the marshal’s personal radio operator. Nothing more was known about his past.

  No sooner did the question arise as to which of the free workers could be trusted with the red-hot secret tape than the minister’s inner office gave the order: Smolosidov.

  Smolosidov was now installing a tape recorder on a little varnished table, and General Bulbanyuk, whose head was like a grotesquely overgrown potato with three bulges for ears and nose, was saying:

  “You, Rubin, are a prisoner. But you were a Communist once, and you may be a Communist again some day.”

  Rubin would have retorted, “I’m a Communist right now!” but trying to convince Bulbanyuk of that was beneath his dignity.

  “So the Soviet government and our Organs feel that they can trust you. The tape you are going to hear contains a state secret of world importance. We hope that you will help us to isolate this scoundrel who wants to see his native land menaced by the atomic bomb. It goes without saying that if you make the slightest attempt to divulge the secret, you will be annihilated. That clear?”

  “Quite clear,” snapped Rubin, whose greatest fear now was that he might not be allowed to hear the tape. Having lost all chance of private happiness long ago, Rubin had made mankind at large his family. The tape he had yet to hear was already of personal concern to him.

  Smolosidov pressed the Playback button, and the quiet of the office was broken by the dialogue between a slow-witted American and a desperate Russian, with a faint rustling in the background. Rubin peered into the mottled diaphragm of the loudspeaker as though straining to discern the f
eatures of this enemy. Whenever he looked at anything so intently, his face became taut and harsh. It would be no good begging for mercy from a man with a face like that.

  After the words (in bad Russian), “Who are you? Say your name,” Rubin threw himself back in his chair. He was a different man. He had forgotten that others present were high-ranking officers, forgotten that it was a long time since major’s stars had blazed on his shoulders. He relit his cigarette and rapped out, “All right. Just once more.”

  Smolosidov rewound the tape.

  Everyone was silent. Everyone felt the touch of the fiery wheel.

  Rubin chewed and mumbled the mouthpiece of his cigarette. He felt ready to burst. Suddenly he, of all people, the dishonorably discharged Rubin, was urgently needed! He, too, would have his chance to give Dame History a helping hand! He was back at his post! Once more defending the World Revolution!

  Malignant Smolosidov hung over the tape recorder like a sullen dog. Pompous Bulbanyuk, elbows on Anton’s spacious desk, supported his imposing potato head in hands half hidden by his loose-skinned neck. From what stock had this impenetrably complacent breed proliferated? From the weed of Commie-cockiness, maybe? How quick and clever his comrades had once been. Now the whole apparatus had fallen into the hands of these people. And they were bulldozing the whole country along the road to perdition. How could it have happened?

  Rubin could not look at them. They disgusted him so much that he would have liked to toss a hand grenade at them then and there, in that office, and blow them to bits!

  But, as things were, at this crossroads in history, they represented the positive forces, embodying as they did the dictatorship, and the fatherland, of the proletariat.

  He must rise above his feelings! As hateful as they were, he must help them!

  Hogs of this sort, from an Army-Group Political Department, had f lung Rubin in jail because his cleverness and his honesty were more than they could bear. Hogs of the same sort, in the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Department, had in the space of four years tossed a dozen anguished protestations of innocence from Rubin into the trash.

  Yes, he must rise above his own unhappy lot! To save the idea! To rescue the banner! To serve the world’s most advanced society!

  The tape came to an end.

  Rubin crushed his dead cigarette in an ashtray.

  “All right. We’ll give it a try,” he said. “But if you haven’t got a suspect, what are we looking for? We can’t tape the voices of everybody in Moscow. Whose voice do we compare this with?”

  Bulbanyuk reassured him: “We picked up four people on the spot, near the telephone booth. But our man is most probably not one of them. There are five people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who could have known. Not counting Gromyko and one or two others, obviously. I’ve jotted down those five names, without initials, titles, or the posts they occupy, so you needn’t be afraid to accuse any one of them.”

  He held out a page torn from a notebook. The names written on it were:

  1. Petrov

  2. Syagovity

  3. Volodin

  4. Shevronok

  5. Zavarzin.

  Rubin read the names and made as if to copy the list, but Selivanovsky hastily prevented him.

  “No, no! The list will be with Smolosidov.”

  Rubin handed it back. He was not offended but amused by all these precautions. As if the five names were not burned into his memory already! Petrov! Syagovity! Volodin! Shevronok! Zavarzin! Linguistic speculation had become a matter of habit with Rubin, and he had automatically registered the derivation of the names Syagovity (“bouncy”) and Shevronok (= zhavoronok, “skylark”).

  “Please record other phone calls made by each of the five,” he said curtly.

  “You’ll get them tomorrow.”

  “Another thing. Put the age of each by his name.” Rubin thought a bit. “And a list of the foreign languages he knows.”

  Selivanovsky assented. “I’ve been wondering myself why he didn’t switch to a foreign language. What sort of diplomat is he? Maybe he’s just very crafty?”

  “Maybe our man got some uneducated simpleton to do it for him,” Bulbanyuk said, slapping the table with his flabby hand.

  “Whom could you trust with a job like that?”

  “What we need to find out as quickly as possible,” Bulbanyuk explained, “is whether the culprit is in fact one of these five. If he isn’t, we’ll try another five, or another twenty-five for that matter!”

  Rubin waited till he had finished and nodded at the tape recorder.

  “I will need the tape the whole time, starting today.”

  “It will be with Lieutenant Smolosidov. You and he will be allocated a room to yourselves in the Top-Secret zone.”

  “They’re clearing it now,” Smolosidov said.

  Rubin’s service experience had taught him to avoid the dangerous word “when,” in case he was asked the same question. He knew that there was only work for a week or two in this, but that if you spun it out, it could be good for months, whereas if you asked “When do you want it?” the bosses would say “By tomorrow morning.” He asked a different question: “With whom can I discuss this work?”

  Selivanovsky exchanged a glance with Bulbanyuk and answered. “Only with Major Roitman. With Foma Guryanovich. And with the minister himself.”

  “You remember my warning?” Bulbanyuk asked. “Want me to repeat it?”

  Rubin rose without asking permission, looked at the general through half-closed eyes as though he was something very, very small, and said to no one in particular:

  “I must go and think.”

  Nobody objected.

  Rubin’s face showed no emotion as he left the office. He walked unseeingly past the duty officer and down the strip of red stair-carpet.

  He would have to draw Gleb into this new group. He would need to talk things over. The job would be a very difficult one. They had just barely begun working on voices. Preliminary classification. Provisional terminology.

  He looked forward to his research with a true scientist’s excitement.

  This was, in effect, a new science: identifying a criminal by a voiceprint.

  Till then, criminals had been identified by their fingerprints. That technique was called “dactyloscopy”—“finger scanning”—and it had evolved over the centuries.

  The new science could be called “voice scanning” (that would be Sologdin’s term), or “phonoscopy.” And it had to be created in a matter of days.

  Petrov. Syagovity. Volodin. Shevronok. Zavarzin.

  Chapter 37

  The Silent Alarm

  NERZHIN FOUND A PLACE BY A WINDOW, leaned back comfortably on the soft seat, and yielded to the gentle swaying of the bus. He was sharing a double seat with Illarion Pavlovich Gerasimovich, the optics expert, a short, narrow-shouldered man with a markedly intellectual face and pince-nez, the typical spy portrayed in Soviet posters.

  Nerzhin confided in him, keeping his voice down: “I ought to be used to it by now. I can sit quite happily on my bare backside in the snow; I can travel twenty-five to a truck on a freight train and watch the guards smash our suitcases—none of that upsets me; it never makes me blow my top. But there’s only one live nerve that connects me with the world outside, my love for my wife; nothing can ever deaden it, and I can’t bear anyone touching it. When we see each other once a year for half an hour, how can they forbid us to kiss? Those swine make us pay for this one visit by spitting on our finer feelings.”

  Gerasimovich’s faint eyebrows came together in a frown. They made him look dejected even when he was only pondering his diagrams.

  “There’s probably only one way to make yourself invulnerable,” he replied. “That’s to kill all your affections and suppress all your desires.”

  Gerasimovich had been at the Marfino sharashka only a few months, and Nerzhin had not yet gotten to know him well. He liked the man, though he couldn’t say why.

  They said no
thing more during the journey; traveling to see a relative is too great an event in a prisoner’s life. It is time to awaken your forgotten soul from its slumber in the burial vault. Memories suppressed on other days now come to the surface. You rehearse the thoughts and feelings of a whole year, of many years, so that you can fuse them with those short minutes of union with someone dear to you.

  The bus came to a stop outside the guardroom. The sergeant of the guard got up on the step and poked his head inside while his eyes counted the excursionists twice over. (The senior guard had already signed for seven head of prisoners inside the guardroom.) Then he crawled under the bus to make sure that no one was clinging to the springs (a disembodied devil couldn’t have held on there for a minute) and went back inside. Only then did the inner and, after a short delay, the outer gate swing open. The bus crossed the enchanted boundary and with a cheerful swish of tires ran along the frosted Bishop’s Road and past the Botanical Garden.

  The zeks of Marfino could thank those who had made their establishment top secret for these outings. Relatives who came to see them were not allowed to know where the living dead were housed, whether they were transported from a hundred kilometers away or picked up at the Spassky Gate, whether they were driven in from the airport or from the next world; they were only allowed to see well-fed, neatly dressed people with white hands who had lost their old talkativeness and could only smile sadly and insist that they wanted for nothing.

  These meetings were rather like those ancient Greek stelae, columns with bas-reliefs on which the deceased and their living relatives who had set up the monument were depicted together. But there was always a little space between this world and the world beyond the grave. The living gazed lovingly at the dead, while the dead looked toward Hades, with eyes neither cheerful nor sad, empty eyes, eyes that had seen too much.

  As they went uphill, Nerzhin turned around to look at a view he had never seen properly before: the building in which they lived and worked, the dark redbrick seminary with its dull rusted hemispherical dome over their semicircular beauty of a room. Above it rose the “sixer,” as hexagonal towers were called in Old Russia. From the south facade, behind which were the Acoustics Lab, Number Seven, the design office, and Anton’s room, neat rows of unopenable windows gazed on the world with uniform blankness.