In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  But transportation strikes like a bolt from the blue to destroy his little life, always without warning, always contrived to take the zek unawares and at the last possible moment. Then letters from loved ones are torn up and dropped into the hole of the latrine. And then the escort—if transportation is to be in red cattle trucks—cuts off all the zek’s buttons and sprinkles his tobacco and tooth powder on the breeze, since they might be used to blind one of the guards in the course of the journey. If transportation is to be in locked passenger-train cars, the escort guard stamps furiously on cases that refuse to go into the baggage compartment, smashing the photograph frame while he is at it. In either case, they take away the books (not allowed on the journey) and the needle, which might be used to saw through bars and stab a guard; the rag slippers are thrown away as trash, and the spare pair of breeches confiscated for general camp use.

  And purged of the sin of property ownership, of his predilection for a settled life, of his hankering after petit bourgeois comfort (justly stigmatized by Chekhov all those years ago), deprived of his friends and his past, the zek puts his hands behind his back and in columns of four (“One step to the right or one step to the left and the escort guard opens fire without warning!”), surrounded by dogs and guards, walks toward the car.

  You have all seen him on our railroad stations at that moment but have faintheartedly lowered your eyes in a hurry, loyally turned away, in case the lieutenant in charge of the convoy suspects you of something and arrests you.

  The zek enters the carriage or truck, and it is hitched on so that it stands alongside a mail truck. Tightly caged in on all sides, invisible from the platforms, he travels according to a leisurely timetable, carrying with him in that airless confined space hundreds of memories, hopes, and apprehensions.

  Where are they taking him? They aren’t saying. What awaits the prisoner in his new place? The copper mines? A lumber camp? Or a coveted reassignment to an agricultural working party where he may sometimes be lucky enough to bake a potato and can eat his fill of the cattle’s turnips? Will the prisoner be laid low by scurvy or malnutrition after one month on “general assignment”? Or will he be lucky enough to grease a palm or meet somebody he knows and latch on to a barracks orderly’s or hospital orderly’s or even storeroom assistant’s job? And will they allow him to write and receive letters in his new place? Or will his letters be intercepted year after year, until his loved ones write him off as dead?

  But perhaps he won’t even reach his appointed destination? Perhaps he will die in the cattle wagon? Of dysentery? Or because they are kept on the move for six days without bread? Or perhaps the guards will beat him to death with hammers because someone else has made his escape? Or maybe at the end of the journey in a freight car with an unheated stove, the zeks will be frozen stiff and their bodies slung out like so much firewood?

  It takes the red trains a month to reach Sovgavan.

  Remember, O Lord, those who did not arrive!

  THOSE LEAVING WERE TREATED LENIENTLY, even allowed to keep their razors as far as the first prison, but all these questions tormented the twenty prisoners detailed for transportation during the Tuesday morning room inspection.

  For them, the untroubled, half-free life of the special prison was over.

  Chapter 95

  Farewell, Sharashka

  PREOCCUPIED AS HE WAS with preparations for his transfer, Nerzhin felt a sudden itch, which became a burning desire, to give Major Shikin a piece of his mind by way of farewell. So when the bell sounded for work, although his twenty had been ordered to wait in their quarters for a guard, he darted through the doors with the other nineteen. He rushed up to Shikin’s office on the third floor, knocked, and was told to enter.

  Shikin was sitting at his desk looking gloomy. Something had snapped in him since yesterday. One foot of his had hovered over the abyss, and he knew now what it would be like to have the ground cut out from under him.

  But he could not vent his hatred of that young pup directly and at once. What Shikin could do, with least danger to himself, was to wear Doronin to a frazzle in the hole, then send him back to Vorkuta with a stinking report, ensuring that he was assigned to a punitive work team and would be checking out in a hurry. That would be just as good as putting him on trial and shooting him.

  He would have called Doronin in for interrogation early that morning, but he was expecting endless protests and delaying tactics from the men who were to be transported.

  He was not mistaken. In came Nerzhin.

  Major Shikin had never been able to stand this lean, openly hostile prisoner with his imperturbable self-confidence and precise knowledge of the law. He had for some time past been trying to persuade Yakonov to transfer Nerzhin, and he was maliciously pleased to see the angry look on the man’s face.

  Nerzhin had a talent for putting a complaint into a few trenchant words. He could utter his protest in a single breath, while the food hatch in the cell door was momentarily open, or find space for it on a scrap of the absorbent toilet paper made available for submissions from prisoners. In five years of incarceration he had also perfected his own uncompromising way of talking to the authorities—“politely blowing them off,” fellow prisoners called it. He never used improper language, but his loftily ironic tone, though there was nothing for his hearer to pick on, was that of a superior to an underling.

  He began speaking as he entered.

  “Citizen Major! I have come to reclaim a book unlawfully taken from me. I feel entitled to assume that communications in the city of Moscow being what they are, six weeks is long enough to ascertain that it is permitted by the censor.”

  “Book?” Shikin, taken by surprise, could think of nothing sensible to say offhand. “What book?”

  “I likewise assume,” Nerzhin rapped out, “that you know to which book I refer. The Selected Poems of Sergei Yesenin.”

  “Ye-se-nin?” As if only just remembering and shocked by this treasonable name, Major Shikin rocked back in his chair. His grizzled crewcut seemed to express indignation and disgust. “How can you find it in yourself to ask about Ye-se-nin?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? He was published here in the Soviet Union.”

  “That makes no difference.”

  “Moreover, he was published in 1940, i.e., he does not fall within the prohibited period, 1917 to 1938.”

  Shikin frowned. “Prohibited period? Where d’you get that from?”

  Nerzhin replied as succinctly as if he had memorized his answers in advance.

  “A camp censor kindly clarified things for me. During a search before the holiday, my copy of Dahl’s Dictionary was taken from me on the grounds that it was published in 1935 and therefore subject to the most rigorous scrutiny. When I showed him that the dictionary was a photomechanical copy of the 1881 edition, the censor promptly returned it and explained that there are no objections to pre-Revolutionary editions, since the ‘enemies of the people were not then active.’ And the unfortunate fact is that Yesenin was published in 1940.”

  After a moment’s magisterial silence, Shikin said, “Have it your way. But have you”—he asked weightily—“have you read that book? Have you—read all of it? Can you confirm that in writing?”

  “You have at present no legal grounds for requiring a signature from me under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. But orally I confirm that I have a bad habit of reading those books that are my own property and, conversely, keeping only those books that I read.”

  Shikin threw up his hands. “So much the worse for you.”

  “So, then, let me summarize my request. In accordance with point 7 of section B of Prison Regulations, give me back the book illegally taken from me.”

  Cowering under this torrent of words, Shikin rose. When he was sitting at his desk, his head did not look like that of a little man, but when he rose, he became smaller, and his arms and legs were seen to be very short. Looking black, he went over to the cupboard, opened it, and took out a miniatu
re Yesenin, with a maple-leaf pattern on its jacket.

  There were markers in several places. Shikin made himself comfortable in his armchair, still without inviting Nerzhin to sit down, and began a leisurely inspection of the marked passages. Nerzhin calmly seated himself, leaned forward with his hands on his knees, and fixed Shikin with a hostile stare.

  “Take this, for instance,” the major said with a sigh, and read the lines with as much feeling as if he were kneading dough:

  “ ‘Lifeless hands, alien hands!

  These songs cannot live where you are!

  But the ears of corn that are horses

  Will grieve for their old master forever.’

  “Who, I ask you, is this master? Whose hands does he mean?”

  The prisoner looked at the security officer’s own puffy white hands.

  “Yesenin had the limited vision of his class, and there were many things he did not fully understand, just like Pushkin and Gogol.”

  Something in Nerzhin’s voice made Shikin glance at him apprehensively. What was to stop him from suddenly hurling himself at the major now that he had nothing more to lose? Just in case, Shikin rose and opened the door an inch or two.

  “And what does this bit mean?” he said, returning to his chair.

  “ ‘A rose all white and a crab all black

  I tried to join in wedlock.’

  “Et cetera. . . . What is he getting at?”

  The prisoner’s taut throat quivered.

  “It’s very simple,” he answered. “You shouldn’t try to reconcile the white rose of truth with the black crab of wickedness.”

  The short-armed, big-headed, dark-faced godfather sat before him like a black crab.

  “However, Citizen Major”—Nerzhin spoke rapidly, his words tumbling over one another—“I do not have time to enter into textual analysis with you. My escort party awaits me. You announced six weeks ago that you would refer the matter to the All-Union Censor’s Office. Did you do so?”

  Shikin shrugged and noisily closed the little yellow book.

  “I am not accountable to you for my actions. I shall not return the book to you. And if I did, you would not be allowed to take it away with you.”

  Nerzhin stood up angrily with his eyes fixed on Yesenin. He remembered that his wife’s loving hands had once held the little book and written in it: “So may all that you have lost be returned to you!”

  Words like a hail of bullets sped effortlessly from his lips.

  “Citizen Major! You have, I hope, not forgotten that over two years I repeatedly requested the Ministry of State Security to return some Polish zlotys improperly confiscated from me, and although it was converted to rubles at a twentieth of its value, I did get my money back through the Supreme Soviet. And I hope you have not forgotten how I insisted on being given five grams of Grade One flour? I was laughed at, but I got them! And I could mention many other instances! I warn you that I will not let you keep that book! If I’m sent to Kolyma, I’ll wrest it from you before I die there! I’ll stuff the letterboxes of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers with complaints about you. So hand it over now, and save yourself trouble!”

  The major in the State Security Service could not hold out against this doomed prisoner, stripped of his rights and on his way to a lingering death in a labor camp. He had, in fact, made inquiries of the Central Censorship and, to his surprise, been told that the book in question was not formally prohibited. Formally! Shikin’s unerring sense of smell told him that this was a blunder on somebody’s part and that the book certainly should be forbidden. But he needed to defend his name from the imputations of this indefatigable troublemaker.

  “Very well, then, you can have it back. But we won’t let you take it away with you.”

  Nerzhin walked triumphantly to the stairs, pressing his beloved shiny yellow volume to his breast. It was a token success at a moment when everything was collapsing around him.

  On the landing, he passed a group of prisoners discussing the latest developments. Siromakha was holding forth (but taking care that his voice would not carry to their masters).

  “What do they think they’re doing? Sending guys like that off to the camps! What for? And what about Ruska Doronin? What bastard’s informed on him, eh?”

  Nerzhin made for the Acoustics Laboratory, in a hurry to destroy his notes before a guard took charge of him. Prisoners due to be transferred were not supposed to walk around the special prison freely. Nerzhin could enjoy this last brief interval of freedom only because so many were to be transported and because the junior lieutenant was as negligent and easygoing as ever.

  He flung open the laboratory door and saw that the steel cabinet was wide open, and Simochka, now wearing her ugly striped dress again, and a gray goat-hair scarf around her shoulders, was standing between its doors.

  She sensed Nerzhin’s presence without looking and froze, as if she could not make up her mind what to take out of the cabinet.

  Without stopping to think, he took refuge between the steel doors and whispered, “Serafima Vitalievna! After what happened last night, it’s heartless of me to turn to you. But things I’ve been working on for many years are in danger. What shall I do? Burn them? Or can you keep them for me?”

  She already knew that he was leaving. She raised sad eyes, red from lack of sleep, and said, “Give them to me.”

  Somebody came in, and Nerzhin hurried over to his desk, where he found Roitman.

  Roitman looked dismayed. “Gleb Vikentich! This is most annoying!” he said. “Nobody warned me. . . . I had no idea. . . . Until today—too late to change anything.”

  Nerzhin gave the man whom until now he had thought sincere an icily pitying look.

  “Adam Veniaminovich, this isn’t my first day here. Such things aren’t done without consulting the heads of laboratories.”

  He started emptying the drawers of his desk.

  Roitman looked pained.

  “Believe me, Gleb Vikentich, I didn’t know, nobody asked me, I wasn’t warned. . . .”

  He said it loudly enough for the whole laboratory to hear. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. He watched uncomprehendingly while Nerzhin collected his belongings.

  It was true. He had not been consulted.

  “Shall I give my notes on articulation to Serafima Vitalievna?” Nerzhin asked casually.

  Roitman walked slowly toward the door without replying.

  “Here you are, then, Serafima Vitalievna,” Nerzhin said, bringing her the first load of files and folders, and loose sheets of graph paper.

  He was about to slip his most treasured possession—the three notebooks—into one of the files. But an inner voice warned him against it.

  Her outstretched hands were warm enough, but how long would she stay a virgin and faithful to him?

  He transferred the notebooks to one of his pockets and gave the files to Simochka.

  The library at Alexandria had burned down. Manuscripts in monasteries had been burned to keep them out of the wrong hands. And soot from the Lubyanka’s chimneys—soot from countless bundles of burned paper—had fluttered down onto the heads of prisoners led out for exercise in the pen on the prison roof.

  More great thoughts had gone up in smoke, perhaps, than had ever been made public. . . . He felt sure that if he survived, he could reproduce his work.

  Nerzhin rattled a box of matches, ran out of the lab . . . and returned ten minutes later pale and expressionless.

  Pryanchikov walked in.

  “It’s incredible,” he said. “We’ve lost all sense and feeling! We don’t even kick up a fuss! We’re ‘transported,’ ‘shipped,’ ‘forwarded.’ You can transport luggage, but what gives them the right to ‘transport’ people?”

  Valentulya’s outburst found an echo in the prisoners’ hearts. Disturbed by news of the transfer, not one of those in the laboratory was working. A transportation was always a terrifying reminder that “we may be next.” A transportation made eve
ry prisoner, even if unaffected by it, reflect that his fate was in the balance and that the ax of the Gulag was poised to cut short his existence. Even zeks with no black marks against them were invariably sent away from the special prison two years or so before the end of their sentence, so that they would forget all they had done there and lose their skills before they were freed. Men serving twenty-five years would never see the end of their sentence, so the security services happily recruited them for the special prisons.

  Prisoners surrounded Nerzhin, some of them sitting on desks instead of chairs, as if to emphasize the unusual importance of the occasion. Their mood was one of melancholy resignation.

  Like mourners at a funeral recalling all the good things the deceased had done, they praised Nerzhin as a zealous defender of prisoners’ rights. They remembered, among other things, the famous story of the fine flour. He had showered the prison authorities and the Ministry of Internal Affairs with complaints about the failure to issue him personally five grams of the best flour per day. (Prison rules forbade collective complaints or complaints from one person on behalf of others. The prisoner was supposedly being reeducated in the spirit of socialism, but he was forbidden to suffer for the common good.) At that time, convicts in the special prison were still underfed, and the fight for those five grams generated more excitement than any event on the international scene. The gripping epic had ended in victory for Nerzhin. The commandant’s deputy in charge of stockrooms was relieved of his duties, and the flour allowance supplied the whole prisoner population with extra noodles twice a week. They remembered, too, Nerzhin’s campaign for a longer exercise period on Sundays—which had, however, ended in defeat.

  Nerzhin himself, however, hardly listened to these graveside eulogies. He was thinking that the moment for action had arrived. The worst had happened, and only he could do anything to improve matters. He had handed over his notes on speech tests to Serafima and all secret material to Roitman’s assistant, burned or torn up all his personal papers, stacked all his library books in piles, and was now rummaging in his drawers and distributing what was left to his friends. It had already been decided who was to have his revolving yellow chair, his German rolltop desk, his inkwell, his roll of colored and marbled sheets of paper made by the Lorenz company. The deceased distributed his legacies in person, and beneficiaries gave him two, or sometimes three, packs of cigarettes in return. This was standard practice in the sharashka: In “this world” (their world) cigarettes were plentiful; in “the next world” (the Gulag) they were more precious than bread.