In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  It was a long wait. They had been told to come at ten, but eleven o’clock came, and still no one had appeared.

  A seventh visitor, a woman with gray hair, arrived late and out of breath. Nadya knew her from a previous visit; she was the engraver’s wife, his third and also his first. She was very ready to tell her story; she had always adored her husband and thought him very talented. But one day he announced that he disliked her psychological profile, abandoned her and their child, and went off with another woman. He lived three years with this other, the redhead; then he was called up. He was taken prisoner almost immediately, but he had lived in Germany as a free man and, alas, had affairs there, too. On his way back home he was arrested at the frontier and sentenced to ten years. He let the redhead know that he was in Butyrki and asked her to send food parcels, but she had said, “If he’d betrayed me and not his motherland, I would find it easier to forgive him!” After that, he had pleaded with his first wife; she had started visiting and sending parcels, and now he kept begging her forgiveness and swearing eternal love.

  A bitter remark made by the engraver’s wife had echoed in Nadya’s mind: “I dare say the best thing for us to do is to be unfaithful to our husbands while they’re in jail; then they’ll appreciate us when they come out. Otherwise they’ll think nobody wanted us, nobody would have us while they were away.” This had stayed with Nadya because she sometimes thought the same herself.

  On this occasion, too, the new arrival gave a fresh twist to the conversation around the table. She started talking about the trouble she had had with the lawyers on Nikolskaya Street. They had long styled themselves the “Model” legal-aid bureau. But lawyers belonging to it charged thousands, spent a lot of time in Moscow restaurants, and left their clients’ affairs to look after themselves. The day came when they got on the wrong side of somebody or other, were arrested, and were given ten years all around. The “Model” sign was taken down, but the bureau, though no longer “model,” was replenished with new legal advisers, who, just like their predecessors, charged thousands and left their clients’ affairs to look after themselves. They explained in confidence that big fees were necessary because they had to share them. They were charging not just for themselves; the business had to pass through many hands. The concrete wall of the law was like that of Butyrki, four times a man’s height. Women could not take wing and flutter over it; they could only walk around it, humbly pleading with some little gate to open. The course of legal proceedings behind the wall of the law was like the mysterious workings of an awesome machine, which—though the guilt of the accused was evident, though the accused was pitted against the government—might at times miraculously spit out a winning lottery ticket. The women paid lawyers not for a win but for their dream of winning.

  The engraver’s wife believed implicitly that she would win in the end. It emerged from what she said that she had amassed forty thousand rubles by selling her room and from contributions made by relatives, and had used it to overpay four lawyers in succession; three petitions for clemency had been lodged, and five appeals on the substance of the case. She had followed the progress of all these appeals closely and had been given many assurances of a favorable review. She knew by name all the regular attorneys in the three main offices of the Public Prosecutor’s Department and was acclimatized to the waiting rooms of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Soviet. As trustful people, and especially women, will, she attached exaggerated importance to every encouraging remark and every look that was not actually hostile.

  “You have to write! Write to anybody and everybody!” she insisted, urging other women to dash off down the same path. “Our husbands are suffering. They won’t be freed without an effort. You must write!”

  This talk took Nadya out of herself but also touched a sore spot. The engraver’s aging wife spoke with such passion that it was easy to believe her: She had stolen a march on them all, been cleverer than any of them; she would undoubtedly get her husband out of prison! Nadya began to reproach herself: What about me? Why couldn’t I have done the same? Why haven’t I been as loyal a wife?

  She had only once had dealings with a “model” legal-aid office, drawn up only one appeal with a lawyer’s help, and paid him only 2,500, which was probably too little. He had no doubt taken offense and done nothing.

  “That’s right,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “Have we done all we can? Are our consciences clear?”

  Those at the table did not hear her above the general conversation. But her neighbor looked around sharply, as though Nadya had elbowed her or insulted her.

  “What can we do?” she said angrily, emphasizing every word. “That’s all moonshine! Article 58 means—detain indefinitely! Article 58 means—you’re not just a criminal; you’re the enemy! You can’t buy your way out of Article 58 for a million!”

  The lines in her face were deeper. Her voice had the ring of incurable suffering.

  Nadya’s heart went out to the older woman. The tone of her voice seemed to apologize for what might sound like a pretentious reply.

  ”What I meant was that we do not sacrifice ourselves completely. The wives of the Decembrists spared themselves nothing; they gave up everything to follow their husbands. . . . If we can’t hope to free them, perhaps we can get their sentences commuted to banishment? If he was sent to the very depths of the taiga, beyond the Arctic Circle, I would be content to follow him; I would give up everything. . . .”

  The woman with the austere face of a nun under her shabby gray headscarf looked at Nadya with surprise and respect.

  “You still feel strong enough to go to the taiga? How fortunate you are! I no longer have the strength for anything. The way I feel, if some well-off old man would have me, I would marry him. . . .”

  “Could you abandon your husband? While he was behind bars?”

  The woman took Nadya by the sleeve.

  “My dear girl! Love was easy in the nineteenth century! Did any one of the Decembrists’ wives really perform such a heroic feat? Did she have ‘personnel departments’ challenging her to answer questionnaires? Did she have to conceal her marriage like a plague sore or risk being sacked and deprived of the five hundred rubles a month which was her sole income? Was she ostracized in a communal apartment? Hissed at as an enemy of the people when she went to the pump in the yard? Did her own mother and sisters urge her to be sensible and divorce her husband? On the contrary! Wherever they went the Decembrist wives were accompanied by the admiring murmurs of the best people. Their heroic legend was a gift they graciously bestowed on poets. When they set off for Siberia in their own expensive carriages, they did not lose their Moscow residence permits, and with them the nine square meters of living space that was all that was left to them, nor did they have to worry about trivial problems ahead, like a black mark in a labor book, living in something the size of a cupboard, having no saucepan, not even a crust of black bread! Fine words, those, ‘to the taiga!’ Anyway, you may not have all that long to wait!”

  Her voice seemed about to break. Her passionate eloquence brought tears into Nadya’s eyes. She tried to excuse herself.

  “My husband’s been in prison nearly five years,” she said. “And before that he was at the front. . . .”

  “That doesn’t count!” the woman retorted. “Being at the front isn’t the same thing! Waiting is easy then! Everybody else is waiting, too. You can talk about it openly; you can read his letters to people. But when you have to wait and keep quiet about him, that’s something else.”

  She said no more. She could see that Nadya didn’t need to be told about it.

  By now it was 11:30. Lieutenant Colonel Klimentiev came in at last, accompanied by the sour, fat sergeant major. The sergeant major began checking parcels, opening packages of factory biscuits, and breaking homemade cakes in two. He even broke Nadya’s pastry straws, looking for the note, the money, or the poison that might have been baked inside them. Klimentiev meanwhile collected all the permits, entered the
visitors’ names in a big book, then drew himself up as though on parade and made an announcement in his precise way.

  “Attention please! You know the rules? The visit lasts thirty minutes. Nothing must be passed directly to prisoners. Nothing must be accepted from prisoners. It is forbidden to question prisoners about their work, their living conditions, and their daily routine. Any infringement of these rules is punishable as a criminal offense. Furthermore, shaking hands and kissing are forbidden as of today. If this rule is broken, the visit is terminated immediately.”

  The women remained silent.

  Klimentiev called the first name: “Gerasimovich, Natalia Pavlovna!”

  Nadya’s neighbor rose and went out into the hallway, walking clumsily in her prewar felt boots.

  Chapter 40

  A Rendezvous

  THERE HAD BEEN TEARS while she was waiting, but Nadya went in to meet him joyfully.

  When she appeared in the doorway, Gleb was already on his feet and smiling a greeting. His smile lasted while he took one step toward her and she one step toward him, but it filled her with exultant happiness; she saw that he was as close to her as ever! He had not changed toward her!

  The bull-necked ex-gangster in the soft gray suit approached the little table and barred the way across the little room, preventing them from coming together.

  “Let me at least touch her hand!” Nerzhin said indignantly.

  “It’s not allowed.” The guard lowered his heavy jaw a fraction of an inch to emit the words.

  Nadya’s smile did not hide her dismay, but she signaled to her husband not to argue. She sank onto the chair placed ready for her. The stuffing was escaping from the leather upholstery in places. Generations of interrogators, who had sent hundreds of people to their graves and shortly followed them, had taken their turns on that chair.

  “Happy birthday,” said Nadya, trying to look cheerful.

  “Thank you.”

  “What a coincidence. Us meeting today.”

  “Must be my lucky day.”

  Talking was proving difficult.

  Nadya made an effort not to feel the guard’s eyes upon her and his oppressive presence. Gleb was trying to sit so that the rickety stool would not cause him pain.

  A small table across which prisoners faced their interrogators stood between husband and wife.

  “In case I forget. I’ve brought you a bite to eat. Some of those straws like mother makes, remember? I’m sorry that’s all it is.”

  “Silly girl, you shouldn’t have bothered! We get everything we need.”

  “I don’t suppose you get pastry straws? And you told me not to bring books. . . . Do you read your Yesenin?”

  Nerzhin’s face clouded over. It was more than a month since somebody had informed on him, and Shikin had taken the book away, saying that Yesenin was forbidden.

  “Yes, I do.”

  (They had only half an hour; he really couldn’t go into details.)

  The room wasn’t at all hot; in fact, it seemed to be unheated. But Nadya unbuttoned her collar and turned it down; she wanted her husband to see not only her new coat, made that year, which for some reason he hadn’t mentioned, but her new blouse, too, and she thought that the blouse might lend a little color to her face, which must look sallow in that dim light.

  With a single glance Gleb took in her face, her throat, her open-necked blouse. That look was the most important moment of the visit, and Nadya stirred as though offering herself to it eagerly.

  “You’ve got a new blouse. Let’s see a bit more of it.”

  She looked a little hurt. “What about the coat?”

  “What about it?”

  “The coat’s new, too.”

  Gleb caught on at last.

  “So it is. You’ve got a new coat.” He ran his eyes over the black curls, not knowing that it was astrakhan, let alone whether it was real or artificial. No man on earth was less capable of distinguishing a five-hundred-ruble coat from one worth five thousand.

  She threw the coat open, and he saw her neck, as smooth and girlish as ever, her weak slender shoulders, and, under the gathers of her blouse, her breasts, which had sagged miserably in all those years.

  Mentally he reproached her for living a life in which new finery and new friends were a matter of course, but when he saw her pathetically sunken bosom, this fleeting thought gave way to pity. Her life, like his, had been crushed beneath the wheels of the gray prison truck.

  “You’re a bit thin,” he said compassionately. “You must eat more. Can’t you eat better?”

  Am I so ugly then? her eyes asked.

  You’re as wonderful as ever, her husband’s eyes answered.

  (Although the lieutenant colonel had not prohibited these words, it was impossible to say them with a third person present.)

  “I eat a lot,” she said untruthfully, “but I’m always in a rush, and I’ve got a lot to worry about.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No, you first.”

  “Never mind me,” Gleb said, smiling. “I’m all right.”

  “Well, then. . . .” She was embarrassed.

  The guard was standing half a meter from the table, a solid bulldog of a man, staring down at husband and wife as fixedly and contemptuously as stone lions at the doors of great houses look upon passersby.

  They had to find a safe tone, a language of eloquent hints that this man, obviously intellectually inferior, would not understand.

  She changed the subject abruptly.

  “Is that your own suit?”

  “Mine? It’s like a Potemkin village. Strictly temporary. For three hours only. Don’t let the Sphinx put you off.”

  “I can’t help it,” she said plaintively, pouting like a little girl, sure now that her husband still found her attractive.

  “We’re used to seeing the funny side of it.”

  “Yes, but we aren’t,” Nadya said with a sigh, remembering her conversation with Gerasimovich’s wife. Nerzhin tried to trap his wife’s knees between his own, but even this contact was hindered by an awkward crossbar attached to the table at just the right height to prevent a prisoner under investigation from stretching his legs. The table wobbled. Supporting himself on his elbows and leaning closer to his wife, Gleb said with annoyance: “That’s how it is—obstacles everywhere.”

  His look said, Are you mine? Truly mine?

  Her gray eyes shone, telling him, I’m still the girl you loved. I’m just as I was. Please believe me!

  “What about obstacles at work? Tell me about it. You say you aren’t registered as a graduate student anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Has your thesis been examined?”

  “No again.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  She began speaking very rapidly, afraid that they might not have much time left.

  “Nobody presents a thesis in three years. They’re given extensions. One girl spent two years writing a thesis on ‘Problems of Public Catering’; then they made her change her subject.”

  (Why tell him this? It was of no importance at all.)

  “My thesis is finished and typed, but I’m held up by the need to rework a few passages. . . .”

  (Held up by the “struggle against subservience to the bourgeois West,” but this wasn’t the place to go into that!)

  “. . . and then there are photocopies to be made. And I don’t know what to do about the binding. I’ve got plenty to worry about.”

  “But do they pay your grant?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you living on?”

  “My wages.”

  “Oh, you’re working. Where?”

  “Right there in the university.”

  “What sort of job?”

  “It’s just temporary. I’m an invisible helper, if you know what I mean. In general, I live from hand to mouth really. It’s the same with the dormitory. I shouldn’t really. . . .”

&
nbsp; She glanced at the guard. She was going to say that the police should long ago have canceled her permit to live at Stromynka Street but quite by mistake had extended it for six months. She might be found out any day! All the more reason not to talk about it in the presence of an MGB sergeant.

  “I only got this visit today because . . . it just so happened that. . . .” (Oh dear, half an hour wasn’t long enough!)

  “Wait a bit, you can tell me that later. What I wanted to ask was, are there any obstacles because of me?”

  “Very serious ones, my dear. . . . They’re giving me. . . . They want to give me a special topic. I’m doing my best to avoid it.”

  “What do you mean, a special topic?”

  She sighed and glanced at the guard. His face, like that of a guard dog ready to bark or bite her head off at any moment, was suspended less than a meter from their faces.

  Nadya made a helpless gesture. She would have had to explain that even in the university there were now practically no research topics without a security classification. The whole of science was being labeled secret from top to bottom. What this meant for Nadya was a new, more detailed questionnaire about her husband, her husband’s relatives, and the relatives of those relatives. If she put down “husband convicted under Article 58,” they would not let her present her thesis, let alone work at the university. If she lied—“husband reported missing on active service”—she would still have to give his name; they could look it up in the card index at the Ministry of the Interior, and she would be prosecuted for giving false information. Nadya had chosen a third solution, but she was reluctant to talk about it with Gleb’s watchful eyes on her, and took refuge in animated chatter.

  “Listen, I’m in an amateur concert party at the university. They send me to play in concerts all the time. Not long ago I even played in the Hall of Columns on the same evening as Yakov Zak.”