Kolyma Stories

by Varlam Shalamov

  Antonov himself had some time before been condemned by a revolutionary tribunal, sentenced to death in his absence, and declared an outlaw. All units of the Red Army received an order from the Supreme Command demanding that he be shot as an enemy of the people immediately after capture and identification.

  The Antonov movement was now on the wane. Suddenly Commander Stepanov was informed that an operation by a regiment of the Cheka had achieved complete success and that Antonov himself had been taken prisoner.

  Stepanov ordered the prisoner to be brought to him. Antonov came in and stopped in the doorway. The light of a storm lantern hanging by the door fell on an angular, hard, and inspired face.

  Stepanov ordered the guard to leave the room and wait outside the door. Then he approached and nearly touched Antonov—Stepanov was almost a head shorter—and said, “Sasha, is that you?”

  They had been shackled together in Shlisselburg for a whole year without ever quarreling.

  Stepanov embraced his prisoner, whose hands were bound, and they kissed.

  Stepanov thought for a long time, pacing the railway carriage in silence, while Antonov smiled sadly as he looked at his old comrade. Stepanov told Antonov about the order, not that this was news to the prisoner.

  “I can’t shoot you and I’m not going to,” said Stepanov, when he seemed to have hit on a solution. “I’ll find a way to let you go. But you must, in turn, give me your word that you’ll disappear, stop fighting against Soviet power—in any case your movement is doomed to perish. Give me your word, your word of honor.”

  It was easier for Antonov, who understood only too well what moral torments his comrade had suffered doing hard labor. He gave his word of honor. Antonov was then led away.

  The tribunal was to meet the next day, but that night Antonov escaped. Instead of Antonov, whom the tribunal was due to try a second time, it was the chief guard who was tried for not stationing sentries properly and thus letting such an important criminal escape. The tribunal members included Stepanov and his brother. The chief guard was found guilty and given a suspended sentence of a year in prison for his negligence.

  How was it possible for Stepanov not to know that Antonov was a former political prisoner doing hard labor? New to the Tambov front, he had not had time to familiarize himself with one of Antonov’s most important leaflets, in which Antonov had written, “I am an old member of the People’s Will and have spent many years under the tsars doing hard labor. Unlike your leaders Lenin and Trotsky who’ve never experienced anything except exile, I was kept in shackles. . . .” and so on. Stepanov had occasion to familiarize himself with this leaflet much later.

  At the time, it seemed that the matter was over and Stepanov’s conscience was clear, as far as he was concerned, for he had saved Antonov—and as far as Soviet power was concerned, Antonov was going to vanish and that was the end of the his rebellion.

  But things turned out differently. Antonov had no intention of keeping his word. He appeared to inspire his “green” troops and battles flared up with new intensity.

  “That’s when my hair turned gray,” said Stepanov. “Not later.”

  Soon Tukhachevsky took over the general command. His energetic measures to liquidate the Antonov rebellion were completely successful. The most pernicious villages were annihilated with artillery fire. The Antonov rebellion was coming to an end. Antonov himself had typhus and was in a military hospital. When the hospital was surrounded by Red Army cavalry, Antonov’s brother shot him in his hospital bed and then shot himself. That was how Aleksandr Antonov died.

  The Civil War ended, Stepanov was demobilized, and began working under Orjonikidze, who was then the People’s Commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. As a member of the party since 1917, Stepanov got the job of head of the administration of the Inspectorate.

  This happened in 1924. He worked in the Inspectorate for one, then two, then three years, but by the end of the third year he began to notice something like surveillance: someone was going through his papers and correspondence.

  Stepanov had many sleepless nights. He tried to recall every step he had taken, every day of his life—everything was completely above board, except for that Antonov business. But Antonov was dead. Stepanov had never confided anything to his brother.

  Soon he was summoned to the Lubyanka, and the high-ranking secret policeman interrogating him asked him casually whether Stepanov, as a Red Army commander, had in military circumstances released the prisoner of war Aleksandr Antonov.

  Stepanov told the truth. Then all his secrets were revealed.

  It turned out that Antonov was not the only man to have escaped that summer night in Tambov. He had been caught together with one of his officers. The officer had, after Antonov’s death, fled to the Far East and crossed the border to join Ataman Semionov in China. Several times he had returned as a saboteur. He was caught and, imprisoned in the Lubyanka, had “decided to confess.” Writing a detailed confession in his solitary cell, he mentioned that in such-and-such a year he had been captured by the Reds together with Antonov and escaped the same night. Antonov hadn’t told him anything, but as a military specialist and a tsarist officer, he thought that this had been a case of treachery on the part of the Red commanding officers. These few lines from the chronicle of a murky and chaotic life were checked up on: records were found of the tribunal at which the chief guard Greshniov was given a suspended sentence of one year for stationing sentries improperly.

  Where was Greshniov now? The army archives were searched. He’d been demobilized long ago, he was living as a peasant where he’d been born. He had a wife and three small children in a village near Kremenchug. He was suddenly arrested and brought to Moscow.

  If Greshniov had been arrested during the Civil War, he might have gone to his death without betraying his commander. But times change: what did he care about the war or his commander Stepanov? He had three children, all tiny infants, a young wife, his whole life before him. Greshniov revealed that he had carried out Stepanov’s request, or rather a personal order, which said that Antonov’s escape was necessary for the good of the cause and that the commander promised that Greshniov would not be punished for obeying.

  Greshniov was left in peace, and they went for Stepanov. He was tried, sentenced to be shot—a sentence then commuted to ten years in the camps—then he was sent to the Solovetsky Islands. . . .

  In the summer of 1933 I was crossing Strastnaya Square. Pushkin’s monument had not yet been moved across the square, and I was standing at the end, or, to be exact, the start of Tverskoi Boulevard, which was where Opekushin had put Pushkin, since he understood what architectural harmony of stone, metal, and sky was. Someone poked me with a stick from behind. I looked around: it was Stepanov! He had been released some time ago and was working as the chief of the airport. The stick was the same.

  “Do you still limp?”

  “Yes. The aftereffects of scurvy. The medics call it a ‘contraction.’ ”

  1959

  AKA BERDY

  A FUNNY story that has been transformed into a mystical symbol. . . . An actual reality, for people also treated Second Lieutenant Kijé [41] as a real person. For a long time I couldn’t take Yuri Tynianov’s fine story to be a record of real events. This striking story of the times of Tsar Paul was a brilliantly witty malicious joke, as far as I was concerned, made by some grandee of the period with too much time on his hands, a joke that changed into a testimony to a remarkable reign. The sentry invented by Leskov is the same sort of story: it proves that the autocracy’s customs were hereditary. But until 1942 I had my doubts about whether this “misstatement” by the tsar was an actual fact.

  At Novosibirsk station Lieutenant Kurshakov discovered that someone had escaped. All the prisoners were led out of the wagons and counted in the cold drizzle, then recounted according to a list of their articles of conviction and their sentences: all this proved futile. Lined up in fives, there were thirty-eight full r
ows, while in the thirty-ninth row there was only one man, not two, as when they had been dispatched. Kurshakov cursed the moment when he had agreed to take over the party of prisoners without the personal files, in which the missing prisoner was number sixty. The list he had was half-erased, as there was no way to protect the paper from the rain. Kurshakov was so worried that he could hardly make out the surnames: the letters were in fact blurred. There was no number sixty. Half the journey had been covered. The punishments for losing a prisoner were severe, and Kurshakov was now saying goodbye to his epaulets and his officer’s rations. He was also afraid of being sent to the front. The war was now in its second year, but Kurshakov had been happy serving as an escort guard. He had made himself valued as an efficient and conscientious officer. He had taken dozens of parties of prisoners, both large and small, by rail. He had been in charge of whole trainloads, he had carried out special escort duties, and he’d never had an escape. He’d even been awarded a medal “For Merit in Combat.” Those medals were awarded to men even a long way from the front.

  Kurshakov sat in the guards’ wagon. His trembling fingers, slippery because of the rain, turned over the contents of his ill-fated packet: a certificate for the food supplies, a letter from the prison to the camps where he was taking the party, and the list, the list, the list. In all the papers and all the lines all he could see was the number 192. But 191 prisoners were locked in the tightly sealed wagons. The men were soaked through and cursing. They took off their jackets and overcoats, trying to dry their clothes in the draft that came through the wagon doors.

  Kurshakov was bewildered and depressed by the escape. The guards, now off duty in a corner of the wagon, were frightened and silent. The face of Kurshakov’s assistant, Sergeant Major Lazarev, reflected in turn whatever his senior officer’s face expressed: helplessness, fear. . . .

  “What do we do?” asked Kurshakov. “What do we do?”

  “Let me see the list. . . .”

  Kurshakov handed Lazarev a few crumpled sheets of paper, held together by a pin.

  “Number sixty,” Lazarev read. “Aka Berdy, article of conviction one hundred and sixty-two, sentence ten years.”

  “A thief,” said Lazarev with a sigh. “A thief. A beast.”

  Frequent contact with the world of thieves had taught the escort guards to use criminals’ slang, in which “beasts” was the term for people from Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Transcaucasia.

  “A beast,” Kurshakov concurred. “And I expect he can’t speak Russian. He probably just grunted at roll calls. You and I, pal, are going to be flayed alive for this. . . .” Kurshakov lifted the sheet of paper close to his eyes and read, with hatred in his voice, “Berdy. . . .”

  “They might not skin us alive,” Lazarev responded in a suddenly firm voice. He raised his shining, darting eyes. “I have an idea.” He quickly whispered something in Kurshakov’s ear.

  The lieutenant shook his head in doubt:

  “Nothing will come of it. . . .”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Lazarev. “Otherwise it’s the front. Otherwise it’s the war.”

  “Go ahead,” said Kurshakov. “We’re going to be stuck here for two days, that’s what they told me at the station.”

  “Give me some money,” said Lazarev.

  He was back by evening.

  “He’s a Turkmen,” he told Kurshakov.

  Kurshakov went to the wagons, opened the door of the first one and asked the prisoners whether there was anyone who knew at least a few words of Turkmen. The reply was negative; Kurshakov went no further. He moved a prisoner and his baggage to the wagon from which a prisoner had escaped, and the guards pushed into the first wagon some bedraggled person, who had gone hoarse shouting something important and terrible in an incomprehensible language.

  “The bastards have caught him,” said a tall prisoner as he cleared a space for the fugitive. The latter embraced the tall man’s legs and burst into tears.

  “Stop it, do you hear, stop it,” rasped the tall prisoner.

  The fugitive was saying something very quickly.

  “I don’t understand, pal,” said the tall man. “Have some soup, I’ve got some left in my pot.”

  The fugitive sipped the soup and fell asleep. In the morning he was shouting and weeping again. He leapt out of the wagon and fell at Kurshakov’s feet. The escort guards chased him back to the wagon, and right until the end of the journey the fugitive lay under the bunks, crawling out only when food was being handed out. He wept silently.

  The handover of the party proceeded perfectly well for Kurshakov. After a few expletives addressed to the prison that had sent a party of prisoners without their personal files, the duty commandant came out to take over the party and used the list to begin a roll call. Fifty-nine men moved to one side, but there was no sixtieth.

  “It’s an escapee,” said Kurshakov. “He got away from me in Novosibirsk, but we found him. In the market. That was a load of trouble. I’ll show him to you. A beast: not a word of Russian.”

  Kurshakov took Berdy by the shoulder and brought him out. Rifle bolts clicked, and Berdy entered the camp.

  “What’s his surname?”

  “Here it is,” said Kurshakov, pointing it out.

  “Aka Berdy,” the commandant read. “Article one hundred and sixty-two, sentence ten years. A beast, but a fighting one. . . .”

  The commandant firmly wrote down opposite Berdy’s name: “Tends to escape, tried to escape while under interrogation.”

  An hour later Berdy was summoned. He leapt up joyfully, believing that everything would now be cleared up, that he would be free any minute now. He happily ran ahead of the guard.

  He was led to a corner of the yard, toward a barracks fenced off with a triple row of barbed wire; he was pushed through the nearest door into stinking darkness from which came the roar of many voices.

  “A beast, pals.”

  I met Aka Berdy in the hospital. By then he spoke a little Russian and told me that three years ago a Russian soldier, he thought part of a patrol, spent some time trying to talk to him. The soldier took the Turkmen off to the station to verify his identity. The soldier tore up Berdy’s identity papers and pushed him into a prisoners’ wagon. Berdy’s real surname was Toshayev, he was a peasant from a remote Asian village near Chardzhou. He and a fellow countryman were looking for bread and work, and had got as far as Novosibirsk: his comrade had gone somewhere in the market.

  Toshayev told me that he had already made several applications, but still had no reply. No case file for him ever arrived, and he was listed in a group of “unrecordeds”—persons kept in prison without any documentation. He said he had gotten used to responding to the name Aka, but that he wanted to go home, that it was cold here, that he was often ill, that he’d written home, but not gotten any letters, perhaps because he was constantly being transferred from one place to another.

  In three years Aka Berdy had learned to speak Russian well, but he still hadn’t learned to use a spoon. He took a bowl with both hands—the soup was never more than lukewarm, and the bowl wouldn’t burn your fingers or lips. . . . Berdy drank the soup and used his fingers to pick out whatever was left on the bottom of the bowl. He ate porridge with his fingers, too, leaving the spoon on one side. This was an amusement for the entire ward. After chewing a piece of bread, Berdy would turn it into dough and roll it in ash before raking it out of the stove. After mixing it into taut dough, he rolled it into a ball and sucked it. This was “hashish,” “grass,” “opium.” Nobody laughed at this ersatz: they had often found themselves having to crumble up dry birch leaves or blackcurrant roots to smoke instead of tobacco.

  Berdy was amazed that I immediately understood what had really happened. It was a typist’s mistake: she had given a new number to a continuation of nicknames belonging to the man who was number fifty-nine. Added to that were the chaos and confusion when prison parties were sent off in wartime, not to mention Kurshakov and Lazarev’s servile
fear of their bosses.

  •

  But there had been a real live person, number fifty-nine. Wasn’t he the one who could have said that the nickname Berdy was his? Of course he could have. But everyone amuses themselves as best they can. Everyone is happy to see the bosses embarrassed and panicking. The bosses can be put on the right path only by an ordinary freier, not by a thief. And number fifty-nine was a thief.

  1959

  ARTIFICIAL LIMBS, ETC.

  THE CAMP solitary confinement block was old and decrepit. It looked as if a wall might fall down, the whole block crumble, and the beams collapse, if you just knocked against a wooden cell wall. But the solitary confinement block wasn’t going to fall, and the seven cells went on doing their job. Of course, any word spoken loudly would be heard in the neighboring cell. But those who were imprisoned there were afraid of being punished. If the duty warden took a piece of chalk and marked a cell with a cross, it meant the cell got no hot food. If he drew two crosses, then it didn’t get bread, either. This was solitary for camp crimes; those suspected of anything more dangerous would be driven away to the main administration.

  This time all the heads of camp institutions, all the managers, who were also prisoners, had suddenly been arrested for the first time. Some big case was being stitched together, some camp trial was being convened. On someone’s orders.

  So all five of us were standing in the solitary block’s narrow corridor. We were surrounded by guards. We felt and understood only one thing: that once again we’d been caught up by the cogs of the same machine as several years previously, and that we wouldn’t know why until tomorrow at the earliest. . . .

  We were made to undress down to our underclothes and each led to a separate cell. The store man recorded the things we handed over for keeping, and then shoved them into bags, to which he tied labels, before writing on them. An interrogator, whose name I knew—Pesniakevich—was overseeing the operation.