Archangel

by Gerald Seymour

  They had no answers, the Major and the Captain, as they walked the snow paths, only a growing sense of humiliation that the camp was now in the possession of strangers. On that morning there was no sparring between them, and Kypov could almost feel an ooze of sympathy from the young Rudakov. There had never been disease before at ZhKh 385/3/1, not even amongst the prisoners. The Major led the way back towards the barracks, no longer able to stall the hearing of the initial reports from the experts who had invaded his territory. As they went past the Factory they could hear the drone of the working engines. Half as bad only, if the prisoners had been laid down by the disease - but it wasn't the prisoners, not the scum, the filth of the huts. It was the guards and warders who rolled in drugged discomfort in their segregated wing of the Central Hospital. That was a salted wound.

  The team from Public Health in Pot'ma had made the NCO's mess hall in the barracks their working area.

  There were charts and diagrams spread out over a ping-pong table encircled by men and women in white coats.

  There were stool bottles for paperweights, little bottles with pen markings for identification. This was Vasily Kypov's empire, but none of the interlopers stiffened to attention at his entrance.

  The man who came to him was hollow-cheeked. Wire-framed spectacles sat low on a hawk nose. He gazed at the Major as if he were a hostile creature, and when his eyes flickered to the younger officer beyond the Commandant and understood the blue collar tabs of KGB he seemed to look away with a smear of distaste. He gave Kypov and Rudakov the crystal impression that they interrupted his work.

  'Major Kypov, the Commandant. .. ? I am Superintendent of Public Health at Pot'ma . . . '

  Kypov nodded.

  'You have here an outbreak of dysentery of epidemic proportions. I have worked at Pot'ma for nine years. Yours is the most serious outbreak of this disease that I have found in any of the camps during that time . . .'

  Kypov's head seemed to droop against his chest.

  'Dysentery, Major Kypov, does not arrive by accident. It is not obligatory, not even in a place such as you supervise . . .'

  Kypov straightened himself. He spoke with a bluff optimism, half believing the suggestions that he offered. 'Somecook with filthy hands, something like that, could that be it?'

  'That most definitely would not be the cause of this outbreak, Major. You have raw sewage coming directly into the water system of the barracks building. Untreated sewage flowed directly through the waterpipes . . . '

  'Impossible.'

  'Not impossible, but proved. We have taken scrapings from several feet behind the taps, there is no area of doubt.

  You have a very serious situation on your hands. We believe there has been an act of sabotage . . . '

  impossible . . . ' But the denunciation of Major Kypov was hesitant, unsure.

  'How could it be sabotage?' Rudakov said quietly. Filth in the kitchens was within the province of the camp's Commandant. Sabotage was KGB, sabotage was his own.

  'From your own charts of the water-main route and that of the sewage pipes from both inside and outside the compound that lead to the general cesspit... they are not even close to each other. Raw sewage was introduced to the water-main. Major Kypov, I assume that the diet of your prisoners differs considerably from that of the camp officials.'

  'Correct.'

  'We have managed only a preliminary examination of the specimen from the pipes, but I am confident that a more thorough testing will show that the sewage is the product of he prisoners' faeces.'

  The Captain of KGB closed his eyes. In front of his face he palms of his hands rubbed slowly together. A man who winces at the implications of his knowledge.

  Rudakov ignored his Commandant, he stretched out his hand to the Superintendent of Public Health and led him to he door. Before they went out into the compound he had Jdraped a guard corporal's weatherproof anorak over the

  ;ivilian's shoulders.

  They walked to a place behind Hut 3 and Hut 4, and stopped beside a dug pit and a heap of earth. Rudakov shouted at the two zeks who worked in the hole and when they were slow to respond he dragged them each up from the ground heaving at their collars. The Superintendent of Public Health took the place of the zeks, looked hard at the pipes between his shoes that were half covered in mud water.

  He took a knife with a fine sliver of a blade from his pocket and first scraped at the rim of the screw top over the junction, then dropped his findings into a plastic sachet bag. Afterwards he took another bag and unscrewed the top of the junction pipe and scraped again. When he had finished he looked up and shrugged, then blew into his hands to warm them.

  i said it was an act of sabotage - there is your evidence.'

  The prisoners marched with their snow-shuffling tread back into the compound. Midday and lunch. Eight hundred men. Blank-faced, yet devouring the sight of the Captain of KGB and a civilian with a white coat peeping beneath a military anorak. Like the rustle of wind in an autumn tree the word echoed from those who could see to those who were at the back and denied sight. Rudakov scanned the faces, saw the dumb and sullen eyes of those who stared back. There was one amongst this mass who fought against him, one who had taken Yuri Rudakov as the target of his attack. Any battle against the life of the camp was a personal fight with the Captain of KGB. He bit his lip. He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket. One of them amongst that mess of filth had tossed the glove into the path of the Captain of KGB. And they seemed so barren of initiative, so deserted of spirit, and yet there was one . . . He had thought Michael Holly important. Michael Holly was a luxury, an irrelevance compared to the sabotage of the water-mains pipe.

  Where to begin?

  The eyes of the zeks bored into Yuri Rudakov's back as he walked away towards the Administration block. He abandoned the Superintendent of Public Health to find his own way back to the barracks.

  There had been a fire in the Commandant's office. Begin there.

  There had been an attempt to poison the guard troops and warders living in the barracks, follow with that. He had the beginning, he had no end. He felt the eyes trace his footsteps. Fear winnowed his gut. The regime of the camp had never been challenged before. If the worm was not stopped then it would eat out the core of submission around which the camp existed.

  In the months that he had been at ZhKh 385/3/1 he had never known that fear that slid with him into his office.

  He had the beginning, he had no end.

  On her knees, beside her pail, a rough brush in her hand, Irina Morozova scrubbed the floor of the corridor that led to the ground floor wards of the hospital. At least once a week a detachment of the Zone's prisoners were taken to the hospital for the skivvy work. The water was cold, her hands blued, her nails cracked, but it was welcome work.

  She was outside the Zone. The work separated her from the other women of her Zone. She would have liked a friend inside the Living Hut of Zone 4, someone to share with, to talk with. She was alone in her Zone. Her education and privilege dictated that she be alone. Only those with calloused minds and coarse hands who sought a lover bothered themselves with the small, pale-skinned Morozova. Kneel-

  ing in the corridor, with her bucket and her brush, she enjoyed the limit of freedom that could be hers.

  It was not easy to clean the corridor floor.

  The impatient progress of the medical staff on their way to and from the wards caused her to pull aside her bucket, rock back on her knees to make room for them. Each time the wheeled stretcher squeaked past her, she had to pull the bucket from the centre of the corridor to the wall. Some of those on the stretcher were in night clothes, some were dressed still in full winter-issue uniforms.

  And the word accompanied the stretcher and the sharp paces of doctors and nurses. The word was disease. The word was poison. The word was sabotage.

  Disease might be accident, but not poison, not sabotage.

  Poison was premeditated. Sabotage was attack. She had no need to see the hara
ssed faces of the medical staff to know of the success of a premeditated attack on the administration of the camp. She saw a boy wheeled by in his pyjamas who cried and rolled in pain. She saw a young guard taken to the wards who spewed yellow mucus down to his waist across the buttons of his greatcoat.

  Who was doing this with poison and sabotage?

  Why? To what end? To what hope of success?

  In her whole life Irina had never stamped on a spider, laid a hand on the wings of a butterfly, nor set the trap for a mouse. Her mind rocked in argument. The camp was her enemy. The servants of the camp were her enemies. A man had dared an act of premeditated sabotage. Had that man the right to her support? She scrubbed fiercely at the floor.

  She thought of the pain of that boy, she thought of the sickness of that guard. She thought of a man who dared what had never been dared before. She knew no way to silence the rage of argument.

  At the end of the morning, Morozova and the others of the hospital detail were taken back to Zone 4. The argument was not settled. One thing only blazed in her mind.

  Who dared it?

  Two more reports now fell on the desk of the senior official of the Ministry in Moscow.

  News from Barashevo, again and so soon.

  A report from the Superintendent of Public Health in Pot'ma on the first findings as to the causes of a dysentery epidemic. A report also from Major Vasily Kypov concerning the circumstances in which he had requested the reinforcement of his guard capability by two platoons from Central Garrison. The official did not immediately file away these two reports. He photostated them, and did the same with the earlier teleprinter sheet that gave details of a fire and the destruction of an office. Three reports now, and a file and a reference number of their own.

  With the slim, new folder under his arm, the official went to the office of the Procurator General. The Procurator General ruled over all the Correctional Labour Colonies stretched across the State. When the whiff of trouble seeped to Moscow, then the official would carry a new file up the steps and along the passages to the presence of the Procurator General.

  On an upper floor, in a pleasantly furnished room overlooking the inner streets of the capital, the name of Vasily Kypov was raised, bandied, his career examined.

  'But regardless of whether there have been failings in administration by Major Kypov, we have the more pressing matter,' the senior official said softly. 'We have an incidence of terrorism

  'I want a charge, I want a court, I want an execution,' the Procurator General stated. 'I will not tolerate terrorism in the camps.'

  A lone figure on the perimeter path, Michael Holly in the evening walking the boundaries of the compound.

  From the window of Hut 2. they watched him, Adimov and Feldstein and Poshekhonov and Byrkin and Chernayev.

  They stared out at the tall striding figure, lean-built in spite of the padding of the quilted tunic. The snow flurried across the compound and sometimes he was lost to them. Something animal about the aloofness of this man from the world of the hut on which they all depended. Something wild and untamed. They watched him a long time before dividing.

  Adimov returned to the card school where he would be the winner, Feldstein to his book, Poshekhonov to the bunk beside the central stove, Byrkin to the memory of a Krivak class frigate sailing under full power for Swedish waters.

  Chernayev watched him longer, then went abruptly to his bunk and took his scarf and his woollen mittens and his balaclava and his cap, and opened the hut's door and went into the night. He went partly from sympathy, partly from envy. Sympathy for the man who was alone with the temperature tumbling in the darkness. Envy for the man who could make an island of himself. And Chernayev, the old zek who had seen all the storms of the camps, felt the fear that held all the men of Camp 3, Zone 1, a fear that was based on beds filled in the Central Hospital, a fear that was seeded on retribution to come, a fear that might be assuaged in the company of a man who walked alone on the perimeter path. He was honest, Chernayev, honest with his own thoughts, and the sense of fear did not surprise him. To be afraid now was honesty. All of the compound knew of the poison that had been introduced into the mains water supply pipe to the barracks, all waited for the fall of the counter-stroke. When they caught him, or them, it would be a shooting matter. A man would be pushed to the snow cover of the yard inside the walls of the gaol at Yavas down the road. The hammer of a Makharov automatic pistol would be drawn back. One bullet. One split skull, one ripped brain. In all of the huts they were waiting for the counter-stroke to fall, wondering who they would come for.

  'Can I walk with you, Holly?'

  'Of course.'

  'Why are you outside?'

  'Because it suits.'

  'Everyone else is inside, finding what warmth they can.'

  'I am warm if I am moving.'

  'They say in the camps that a man who thinks he does not need friends is a dreamer.'

  'They cannot take the dream away from us.'

  'To dream here is to die.'

  'I've no intention of dying, I promise you that, Chernayev.'

  'Those that put shit in the pipe, they were dreamers . . .'

  'Your opinion.'

  'They dreamed of fighting back, of kicking at the bastard fences, of hitting Kypov.'

  'And that is just a dream?'

  it is impossible, it has to be a dream .. . they cannot be beaten.'

  if everybody says that they cannot be beaten, then that will be true,' Holly said softly.

  'The compound is part of the camp, the camp is part of the Dubrovlag, the Dubrovlag is part of the Ministry, the Ministry is part of the administration, the administration is part of the State. A few men in hospital does not hurt the State.'

  if you say so, Chernayev.'

  'What do you say, Holly?'

  'I say that an old man should be beside the stove in his hut.'

  'Don't piss on me, Englishman.'

  'Then don't test me, Chernayev.' Holly slapped his gloved hand on the thief's small shoulders, pulled him close, and they walked together in step. 'You didn't have to come out, I appreciate that you did.'

  it's suffocating in there . . . everyone is afraid . . .'

  'What are they afraid of?'

  They wonder who will be taken, and when - whether it will be a friend . . .'

  'Will they take the right man?' Holly asked distantly.

  They have to find somebody. Perhaps they will find the man who did it, quickly. If not . . .' Chernayev paused, shrugged under Holly's arm. 'They must find somebody. All of Internal Order were with Kypov and Rudakov this evening. They will be very thorough, Holly, that is their way.'

  'Of course.'

  'There are informers in the huts - some we know and some we don't.'

  'Of course.'

  it is said that in the morning they are bringing in more KGB, from other camps. They are going to interrogate every man in the compound.'

  'May it help them find the guilty,' Holly said lightly.

  'Be careful, H o l l y . . . ' There was a passion in Chernayev's voice, the quaver of an old man.

  'Why do you say that to me?'

  'Because... because you stand out.. . you are not in the mass of us . . . '

  'I will be careful.'

  Holly squeezed at Chernayev's shoulder.

  And Chernayev chuckled, and his slender body that was bones in a bag shook with laughter.

  'Shit in their water-pipe. I didn't know anyone was so clever. Did you see Kypov's face this morning . . . ? Shit in the pipe, and more shit landing on his pretty uniform. Think what they're saying about him in Saransk, what they're saying in Moscow. . . But I don't like what happened to the guards, they're young, they're conscripts.. . you know that they say one may d i e . . . I don't hold with that. They're only boys. What's our quarrel with them?'

  'Perhaps that was thought of.'

  'We co-exist here. Most of them, the decent ones, they loathe it. All of us, we hate it. We have found
a way of living with them.'

  'Why do you tell me that, Chernayev?'

  'You may not understand the way that the camp lives.'

  They walked underneath a corner guard-tower and they saw the barrel of the machine-gun and the darkened shadow at the opened window above it. Their voices were whis--

  pered, they would not have carried to the chilled ears of the sentry.

  'How often does anyone fight back against them?'

  it has happened.'

  'Tell me, Chernayev.'

  'There is a folklore of the camps. There are stories that are handed down. It is like the romances of the Tartars that have survived, never written on paper. We have our stories.'

  'Tell me.'

  'The stories are all about how the zeks laughed at them.

  Fighting them with violence is new. They say there are eighteen men in the Central Hospital tonight, they might as well have been machine-gunned .. .'

  'Tell me the stories.'

  'There were the skulls. Shit, we laughed at the skulls. The camps aren't new, they were built when I was a child.

  Sometimes they move the camps. The huts are shifted, a new compound goes up. Perhaps their maps aren't very good. A few years ago they laid out a Factory compound for our Zone right on top of an old bone yard. In the Thirties they died like flies in these places, epidemics and executions, they needed communal graves. You can't see it now because of the snow, but in the Factory compound we are allowed to grow flowers - not vegetables, but flowers - and when they hoed the ground they found the bones, they hadn't put them down deep. There was one man who took three skulls and set them on posts and when the morning came the skulls faced the main gate, right in the eye of the sentries. We laughed till it hurt us.'