In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  Shikin’s “case” was based on that fatal crack. It might not be the reason why the lathe was still not working (Shikin had heard doubts expressed), but the implications of the crack were much wider than the crack itself. The crack signified that hostile forces, as yet unmasked, were at work in the institute. It signified also that those in charge of the institute were blindly trusting and criminally slack.

  If the investigation was successful, and the criminal and real motives of his crime exposed, it would be possible not only to punish one man and deter others but to make the crack the occasion of a major political-educational campaign in the collective. And, finally, Major Shikin’s professional honor demanded that he unravel this sinister tangle!

  But it was not easy. So much time had been lost. The prisoners who had moved the lathe would by now have made a criminal compact and agreed to vouch for one another. Not a single free worker (a horrifying oversight, this!) had been present, and there was only one informer among the ten carriers, a worm-eaten character whose greatest feat to date had been to report a bedsheet cut up for dickeys. He had helped to complete the list of ten men but had nothing else to offer. For the rest, all ten zeks, brazenly confident that they would escape punishment, maintained that they had carried the lathe to the basement undamaged, had not slid it downstairs on its mounting, and had not bumped it from step to step. Moreover, according to their evidence, no one had been holding that part of the lathe under the rear mandrel where the crack had developed; they were all gripping it beneath the sheave and the spindle. In pursuit of the truth, the major had drawn several diagrams of the lathe, showing where each of the carriers stood. But as the interrogations proceeded, Shikin seemed more likely to master the turner’s trade than to discover who was responsible for the crack. The only person who could be accused, if not of sabotage, of intent to carry out sabotage, was the engineer Potapov. Losing his temper after three hours of questioning, he had blurted out, “Look, if I’d wanted to wreck that old washtub, I’d simply have sprinkled a handful of sand in the bearings, and that would have done the trick! Why bother to smash the mounting?”

  This statement from a hardened saboteur Shikin promptly recorded, but Potapov refused to sign it.

  What made this investigation so difficult was that Shikin could not resort to the usual means of getting at the truth: solitary confinement, the punishment cell, a smack or two in the kisser, short rations, nighttime interrogations. . . . He could not even take the elementary precaution of holding those under investigation in separate cells. They had to put in a full day’s work and so must be allowed to eat and sleep normally.

  Still, as early as Saturday, Shikin managed to wring out of one prisoner the admission that when they were descending the last steps and blocking the narrow doorway, Spiridon the yardman appeared, shouted, “Hold on, boys, let me give a hand!” took hold of it—so becoming the eleventh man—and helped to carry it to its destination. The only conclusion to be drawn from the diagram was that he had gripped the base beneath the rear mandrel.

  It was this valuable new thread that Shikin proposed to unravel that Monday, neglecting reports on “The Trial of Prince Igor” received from stoolies early in the morning. Immediately before lunch, he summoned the ginger-haired yardman, who came from work just as he was, in a donkey jacket held together by a frayed canvas belt, took off his big-eared cap and fumbled with it guiltily, the very picture of a peasant waiting on his lord to beg a patch of arable land. He was careful, too, not to step off the little rubber mat and leave footmarks on the floor. Shikin glanced disapprovingly at his wet boots and sternly at the man himself, then let him stand there while he sat in his easy chair silently scanning various documents. From time to time, as if shocked by the evidence of Yegorov’s criminality, he shot a startled glance at this bloodthirsty beast, caged at long last. (Procedures prescribed by the science of interrogation for denting a prisoner’s morale.) A half hour of unbroken silence went by behind Shikin’s locked door, the lunch bell rang loud and clear, reminding Spiridon of the letter he expected from home, but Shikin paid no attention to bells. He went on silently shuffling thick folders and transferring things from one drawer to another, frowning over document after document, and glancing briefly at dejected, hangdog, shamefaced Spiridon, as though astounded by what he read.

  The last drop of water from Spiridon’s boots had finally trickled onto the mat and left them quite dry when Shikin said, “All right, then: Come closer!” (Spiridon moved toward him.) “Stop there! This here—what is it?”

  He held out a photograph of a youngster in German uniform, bareheaded.

  Spiridon bent over, screwed up his eyes, glanced at it, and said apologetically: “I’m a little bit blind, see, Major. Let me get a close look.”

  Shikin gave permission. Still holding his shaggy cap in one hand, Spiridon framed the photograph with all five fingers of the other, turned it to catch the light from the window at different angles, moved it past his left eye, and scrutinized it minutely.

  “No,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Never seen him.”

  Shikin took the photograph back.

  “Yegorov,” he said sadly, “denial will only make it worse for you. All right, then, sit down”—he indicated a distant chair—“we’re in for a long talk, too long for you to stay on your feet.”

  After which he fell silent and buried himself in his papers again.

  Spiridon backed over to the chair and sat down. At first he laid his cap on the chair next to him, but after a sideways look at its spotless soft leather, he changed his mind. Resting his cap on his knees, he sat hunched up, drooping, a picture of abject contrition.

  He was, in fact, thinking, What a snake you are! What a dirty dog! When am I going to get my letter? Maybe you’ve got it here?

  To Spiridon, who had undergone investigation twice in his time, been “reinvestigated” once, and seen thousands of prisoners under investigation, Shikin’s little game was crystal clear. But he knew that he must pretend to take it seriously.

  “The fact is we’ve received further information about you,” Shikin said, with a deep sigh. “It seems you got up to all sorts of mischief in Germany.”

  “It might not have been me, though,” Spiridon said reassuringly. “Believe me, Citizen Major, us Yegorovs were like flies in Germany. I’ve even heard say there was a General Yegorov.”

  “What do you mean, not you? Of course it’s you! Look here”—he jabbed the file with his finger—“Spiridon Danilovich! And your date of birth.”

  “My date of birth? So it isn’t me,” Spiridon said confidently. “I always kidded the Germans I was three years older.”

  “All right, then.” Shikin’s face brightened, and he spoke more briskly, as if he saw no need to continue this tedious interrogation. He pushed all the documents away.

  “Before I forget. You helped to carry a lathe down to the basement ten days ago. Remember, Yegorov?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “So where did you run into a bit of trouble? On the stairs or down in the hallway?”

  “Bit of trouble?” Spiridon sounded surprised. “There wasn’t any fighting.”

  “Where did you bash the lathe?”

  “God bless you, Citizen Major, why would we be bashing a lathe? How could a lathe upset anybody?”

  “Yes, well, that’s just what I’m wondering. Why did it get broken? Maybe you just dropped it?”

  “Dropped it? We held its little hands and went ever so carefully, like it was a child.”

  “And you yourself, where were you holding it?”

  “Me? On this side, of course.”

  “Which side?”

  “My side.”

  “Did you grip it under the rear mandrel or under the spindle?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about mandrels, Citizen Major. Let me just show you.”

  He rose, slapped his cap down on the next chair, and turned around as if lugging the lathe through the office door.

 
“I was bent over like this, see. Backing. And those two got stuck in the door, see.”

  “Which two?”

  “I don’t know them from Adam. We haven’t stood godfathers to each others’ kids. I shouted, ‘Stop! Let me get a better grip!’ And that great big what-do-you-call-it goes. . . .”

  “What what-do-you-call it?”

  “You know what I mean!” said Spiridon, over his shoulder. He was beginning to get angry. “The thing we were carrying, of course.”

  “The lathe, you mean?”

  “The lathe, then! I shifted my grip.” He bent his knees and tensed his body to show how. “One fellow squeezed in at the side, another shoved his way through, and between the three of us, we managed to keep hold of it easy enough.”

  He straightened up.

  “In my time on the kolkhoz, we shifted heavier things than that. Six of our women could have managed that lathe, easy as pie, and carried it a verst. ‘Where’s that lathe?’ they’d say. ‘Let’s go and lift it just for fun!’ ”

  “Do you mean it wasn’t dropped?” the major asked menacingly.

  “I’m telling you it wasn’t!”

  “So who broke it?”

  “It really did get busted?” Spiridon sounded surprised.

  “Hmmm, well. . . .”

  He had finished showing how the lathe was carried, so he sat down again and was all ears.

  “Was it undamaged? When they collected it?”

  “I didn’t see, so I can’t say. Maybe it was broken before.”

  “And when you set it down, how was it?”

  “It wasn’t damaged then, I keep telling you!”

  “Except for the crack in the mandrel?”

  “There wasn’t any crack,” Spiridon answered confidently.

  “How could you see there wasn’t, you walleyed devil? You’re as good as blind, aren’t you?”

  “I’m blind, Citizen Major, when it comes to paper. When I’m doing my job, I can see everything. You and the other citizen officers keep dropping your cigarette butts when you walk across the yard, and I have to rake it clean; even when there’s white snow on the ground, I rake it all up. You can ask the commandant.”

  “So what are you saying? You put the lathe down and looked it over carefully?”

  “What do you think? We’d done the job, so we stopped for a smoke, as usual. We all gave the lathe a friendly slap.”

  “Friendly slap? What with?”

  “The flat of the hand, of course, like this, on its side, like you might a horse in a sweat. One of the engineers said, ‘A nice little lathe, this. My granddad was a turner; he worked on one like this.’ ”

  Shikin sighed and reached for a clean sheet of paper.

  “It looks very bad, Yegorov, your refusal to confess even now. We will have to bring charges. It’s obviously you who broke the lathe. If it wasn’t, you’d point to the culprit.”

  He spoke confidently, but inside he was no longer so sure of himself. He had been master of the situation, he had been the interrogator, the yardman had answered readily and in great detail, but the first hours of the investigation—the prolonged silence, the photographs, the raising and lowering of the voice, the lively discussion of the lathe—had been a complete waste of time. That this ginger-headed prisoner, with the permanent obliging smile and the deferentially bowed shoulders, had not yielded immediately meant he never would.

  When Spiridon had mentioned General Yegorov, he had already firmly concluded that this confrontation had nothing at all to do with Germany, that the photograph was a fake, that the godfather was bluffing and had summoned him precisely because of the lathe. It would have been a miracle if he had not been sent for. The other ten had been shaken like pear trees in autumn for a whole week. After a lifetime of hoodwinking authority, Spiridon had easily held his own in this tiresome game. But so much pointless talk grated. What vexed him most was the further delay in handing over his letter. And although Shikin’s office was a nice, warm, dry place to sit in, nobody else would be doing Spiridon’s work out in the yard, and it would just mount up for tomorrow.

  Time was going by, and the bell for the end of the break had rung long ago, when Shikin ordered Spiridon to sign an admission of responsibility under Article 95 for making false depositions, recorded his own questions, and twisted Spiridon’s answers to the best of his ability.

  At this point, there was a sharp tap on the door.

  As he showed out Yegorov, whose muddleheadedness had gotten on his nerves, Shikin encountered the businesslike reptile Siromakha, who could always give you the gist in a few words.

  Siromakha glided in noiselessly. The startling news he had brought and his special position among the informers put Siromakha on the same footing as the major. He closed the door behind him and, before Shikin could take hold of the key, raised his hand in a melodramatic gesture. He was playacting. Speaking clearly but quietly, so that no one could overhear him through the door, he reported that “Doronin is going around showing people his money order for 147 rubles. He’s fingered Lyubimichev, Kagan, and five others. Doronin’s lot ganged up in the yard and trapped them. Is he one of yours?”

  Shikin grabbed his collar and tugged at it to ease his neck. His eyes looked as though they had been squeezed out of deep holes. His thick neck was a dull red. He rushed to the telephone. His face, usually supremely complacent, was that of a madman.

  Siromakha arrived not at walking pace but in a series of catlike jumps to prevent the major from lifting the receiver.

  “Comrade Major!”—as a prisoner he ought not to say “Comrade” but as a friend he was obliged to—“not right away! Catch him unawares.”

  Elementary prison wisdom! But even this he had to be reminded of!

  Zigzagging as though he saw a bear behind him, Siromakha backed toward the door. He did not take his eyes off the major.

  Shikin took a drink of water.

  “Can I go, Comrade Major?”

  It was hardly a question.

  “If I learn anything more, I’ll come back this evening or tomorrow morning.”

  Sense slowly returned to Shikin’s goggling eyes.

  “Nine grams of lead, that’s what the swine can expect” were his first hoarse words. “I’ll fix him!”

  Siromakha left noiselessly, as though from a sickroom. He had only done his duty as he saw it and was in no hurry for his reward.

  He was not altogether sure that Shikin had a future as a major in the Ministry of State Security.

  This was an exceptional event not just at the Marfino Institute but in the whole history of the security services. Rabbits had every right to die. They had no right to fight back.

  THE CALL TO THE HEAD of the Vacuum Laboratory came not from Shikin directly but through the man on duty at a desk in the hallway of the institute: Doronin was to report to Engineer Colonel Yakonov immediately.

  The overhead lights had been on for some time in the Vacuum Lab, although it was only four in the afternoon. It was always dark there. The head of the laboratory was absent, so it was Klara who took the call. She had just arrived for the evening shift, later than usual, had been chatting with Tamara, and had not once looked at Ruska, though Ruska’s burning gaze never left her. The hand that held the receiver was still wearing a scarlet glove. She spoke with downcast eyes, while Ruska stood at his pump three steps away devouring her with his gaze, imagining how that evening, when everybody else had gone to supper, he would take that head in his hands and kiss it. With Klara so close, he lost all awareness of his surroundings.

  She raised her eyes (no need to look for him, she sensed his presence) and said: “Rostislav Vadimovich! Anton Nikolaevich wants to see you at once, urgently!”

  She could not have spoken differently with people watching and listening—but her eyes! Her eyes were different! Substitutes! As though a dull, lifeless film had formed over them.

  Ruska obeyed mechanically, without wondering what this unexpected summons to the engineer colonel mig
ht mean. He could think of nothing but Klara’s expression. He looked back at her from the doorway: Her eyes were following him, but she averted her gaze immediately.

  Unfaithful eyes. She had looked away because she was afraid.

  What could have happened to her?

  With his mind on her alone, he went up the stairs to the duty officer, his normal wariness in abeyance, unmindful of the need to prepare himself for surprise questions, for a head-on attack, as a nimble-witted prisoner should—and the orderly officer barred the way to Yakonov’s office and pointed to Major Shikin’s door in the depths of the dark lobby.

  Except for Siromakha’s advice, Shikin would have called himself, and Ruska would immediately have expected the worst, alerted a dozen friends, and above all contrived to speak to Klara, find out what was wrong, and either carry away ecstatic belief in her or be released from his commitment. There, at the godfather’s door, realization came too late. Under the eyes of the institute’s orderly officer, he ought not to hesitate; he could not turn back; he must not arouse suspicion (if he was not already suspect). Ruska did nevertheless turn around to hurry back downstairs, but the prison duty officer, Lieutenant Zhvakun, the former executioner, summoned by telephone, was already on his way up.

  So Ruska went in to Shikin and took a few steps forward, bracing himself and trying to look unconcerned. Drilled by two years under investigation and a gambler of genius by nature, he stilled the storm within him and rapidly switched his mind to new dangers. Looking boyishly guileless and eager to please, he went in, saying, “May I? I’m at your service, Citizen Major.”