He shook his forefinger at me. “Now here’s the trick. We have to increase the percentage of alcohol in the water four or five times from what it originally was. How do you imagine we do that by boiling it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know, that’s why you’re buying it instead of making it. But it’s really very simple, and clever. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water. What we do is heat the liquid enough so more alcohol is turned into steam than water, so when the steam is condensed back to a liquid, there is a higher alcohol percentage than there was before.” He slapped the side of his leg. “Is that not clever and simple?”
He was right. Before visiting the bootlegging still, I assumed that making vodka was a complicated process involving huge machinery. To see it being made in a farm field with wood fires and crudely made vats was an eye opener.
“We’ll be here for a couple hours,” Sergi told me. “We have to wait for the farm boss to come. In the meantime, I will decide which cans I will take.”
“How do you do it? Taste it?”
“Taste this swill? Do you think I’m crazy? I smell it. The bad stuff usually smells like cooked cabbage, sometimes like meat. I’ve seen it smell like warm piss, which it probably was. I’ll call you when I need you to load.”
He had already told me the routine—we’d pour vodka from five-liter milk cans into the petrol cans. Back at the garage, he’d add some essence of lemon, lime, cherry, or whatever he could get his hands on, before we bottled much of it. The flavoring would hide some of the smell and rough flavor that came with the bootlegged “potato water.”
I wandered around, watching the farmers making their brew. I spotted bow and arrows sitting in a corner and I went over and picked up the bow and tested the string.
“Ever use a bow and arrow?” my vodka guide asked.
“We made them at the orphanage, but not this good.”
“Go ahead, take it and bring back some rabbit for supper. I’m damn tired of eating potatoes three times a day.”
I grabbed the bow and arrow and headed out to slay a dragon. One with bunny ears.
Born and raised surrounded by asphalt and concrete in a big city, I hadn’t been into the countryside since I hopped off the back of a truck one frozen day and headed back into the city to find my mother.
I thought about the good times as I trudged across the fields, about my mother and my father, about being on a rowboat on Lake Lagoda and laughing and shouting as my dad rocked the boat until it tipped over.
I stopped at a creek and knelt down and took a drink of water, then continued walking, following the creek. As a city boy, I’d hardly recognize a rabbit if I saw it, much less know how to hunt one. I let loose an arrow at a big black bird, but the arrow went far wide and the bird squawked curses at me as it flew off.
Further down the creek I heard the sounds of laughing and water splashing. They were female voices and I crept up slowly, low to the ground. Tall reeds were between me and the pond and I carefully sneaked through them, making no more noise than a stampeding elephant.
When I got to the edge of the water, I hung back in the reeds. A woman was in the water across the small pond. Her bare back was to me. She turned a little toward me, not directly at me but enough so I could see her naked breast. My heartbeat took off on a wild rhythm. It was the first time I’d actually seen a woman’s bare breast.
She didn’t seem to notice me but continued to splash water on her breasts as if she was cooling them off.
I heard a noise behind me. As I swung around, a pair of strong hands gave me a shove that sent me flying into the pond. I went in and down and got back onto my feet, coughing and gasping from the water I took in. The person who shoved me dove in and glided by me. It was a woman. She came up next to the other woman and they both laughed at me.
Looking closer, I realized they were really girls, probably in their late teens, four or five years older than me. Both were husky farm girls, used to the hard labor of a farm. They looked like sisters—long blond hair in ponytails, freckles across their noses, light blue eyes, facial skin already showing tiny wrinkles from long hours in hot sun and icy winds.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
They stayed in the water up to their necks.
“Because you’re a pervert. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, sneaking up on women?”
“I was rabbit hunting.”
“I think he was beaver hunting,” one girl said to the other. I took her to be the older of the two, maybe no more than a year or two.
They both laughed and I blushed at the accusation.
“What are you doing on the farm? We don’t know you.”
“I’m with the gang that sells your vodka in Leningrad,” I boasted.
“You don’t look old enough to be in a gang. You’re barely out of diapers.”
“I am too old enough. I’m seventeen.”
“You think he’s old enough to have gone through puberty?” the older one asked.
Her sister shook her head. “I don’t know. Why don’t you show us, boy.”
“Show you what?”
“The hair around your cock. So we can tell if you’re old enough.”
They howled with laughter. I tried to look unruffled but I could feel my face blushing.
“Oh, let’s not pick on him. The poor boy’s obviously a virgin.”
“I am not!” I lied.
“What do you think, sister?” the older one asked. “Do you think we should give him lessons?”
“Well, let’s see.” She straightened up, rising enough so both her breasts were out of the water.
I stared at them. It was my first good frontal view of naked breasts.
Her sister lifted one of the breasts up a little. “Do you know what you’re supposed to do with a woman’s breast?”
They took my silence as ignorance.
“You can caress them with your fingers,” she said, massaging the girl’s breast and nipple. “And you can lick them with your tongue.”
She leaned over and put her mouth on the girl’s breast and sucked.
I was completely frozen in place, not sure what to say or do. I was mortified and excited at the same time. My cock was pumping frantically, coming erect.
The younger girl stopped sucking and stood straight again. Her sister got behind her and cupped both her breasts in her hands.
“You can use your hands”—she squeezed the breasts—“or you can use your lips.” She ran her lips off the side of the girl’s neck. Then they kissed each other on the lips.
“And finally,” the younger girl said, cradled back in the other’s arms, “you can kiss her cunt.”
With her sister holding her from behind, the younger girl raised her legs out of the water and spread them. I gaped at the sight of the pink between her legs when she kicked and sent a wave into my face. I stumbled back and before I knew it, the two girls had grabbed me and held me under. I fought back, breaking their hold, and came up gasping for air.
They had already climbed out of the pond and disappeared into the reeds when I came out of the water and retrieved my bow and arrow.
I couldn’t get the two girls out of my mind as I made my way back to the still. Finally, I went into bushes and relieved myself.
15
Two days later, I went to the garage to make a delivery for Sergi. And to figure out a way to steal a bottle. T-34 had given me a look that told me I better not come back empty-handed.
Sergi was seated at a grease smudged work stand counting dirty ruble notes when I walked in.
I started to say something and he said, “Stop your whining. Something has come up.” He indicated four bottles sitting on the table. “Put these in your school bag. Deliver them and you’ll get the bottle for the woman.”
Two things set off alarm bells in my head. His tone of voice was too kind—Sergi liked to crack orders—and his offer was too generous. The last time I spoke to him, he�
�d told me I’d have to make deliveries for a month to earn a bottle.
“How do I earn a bottle by making one delivery?”
“Fuck your mother! I give this little piece of shit an opportunity and he asks questions. Get out of here, go to the tire factory. In ten years you’ll have black lungs from the smoke in the place and look like you are eighty years old.”
I started loading the bottles into my school bag.
* * *
The address for the delivery was in the heart of the city near the theatre district, on a street that crossed the canal. I rode the trolley and got off three blocks away from the location. It was after seven and dark by the time I stepped off the trolley. I knew the area. I’d made deliveries in the area for Sergi before, to the apartments of performers and backstage people at the ballet and other theatres.
As I walked, I noticed a black car come slowly down the street behind me and pull to the curb, parking under the dim glow of the street lamp. The sight of the car made my knees weak. I paused by a store window and looked at the car’s reflection. No one got out of it. The car just stayed at the curb, probably with its motor running.
It reminded me of the night my father had been taken away as I stood by the bed and stared out the window. I had seen two men push him into the backseat of a black car.
Everyone in the city knew that the NKVD drove that kind of car.
It could have been on the street for any reason, but it scared the hell out of me. I tried to shake it off and kept walking.
Another black car was coming up the street, this one a couple blocks away but coming toward me. It pulled to the curb when it was a block from me and parked under the street lamp.
I paused near another store window, my heart beating in my throat. I didn’t know what was coming down, but there was one thing I did understand—Soviet police, the ones on the streets and the secret ones that ride around in black cars, are not subtle. They call the Soviet Union a police state because the police are everywhere, and if not actually present, their presence is felt by a system of spies and informers that permeated every level of society. They had no problem making their presence known wherever they went.
The four bottles in my kit suddenly felt like heavy bricks.
What would they do to me if they caught me? I was only a teenager. Would they send me to a hard labor, convict camp? Shoot me?
I realized that Sergi had set me up. He had been much too generous, offering me a bottle of vodka for making one delivery.
But that didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t a big enough catch to warrant the secret police. The local police, the militia, were the ones who dealt with low-level crooks like Sergi. The secret police deal with crimes important to the Party, especially political ones.
Sergi was a rat and I had no doubt he would throw me to the police to save his own skin. It may even have been that he had to satisfy a quota system with the police, give them an economic criminal once in a while so they could meet the quota for convictions set in their plan year. That would be very Soviet. But there were others involved; most of his delivery people were adults. It seemed to make more sense to give the police one of them, an adult who they could make more of a show of convicting and sentencing.
No, it just didn’t seem right. And I kept seeing my father’s face, gripped by fear and courage, as he turned and told my mother to take me into the bedroom. I couldn’t remember if it really happened, but in my own mind I saw him turn and look up at the window where I stood before they took him.
I broke into a cold sweat and started shaking at the memory. And I kept walking. The address was on the canal side of the street and I crossed over. The two cars flanking me stayed a block away, still parked at the curb.
I thought about the fact that the men in the two cars seemed to know exactly what my destination was. That was the only way they would have known where to park in order to flank me.
It struck me as I reached the canal sidewalk.
They weren’t there just to arrest me. They could already have done that by now. There was someone else they wanted and Sergi was giving them the evidence they needed. They were going to arrest the person I made the delivery to.
I can’t say that I cared about the person to be arrested. But I did care about the person’s family, about how they would take the person out of the house in front of spouse and children. And I did care that I was going to be the tool used and that I would be castigated along with that person. Sergi was a bastard. Life was not fair. I was fucked. I had to go through with the delivery. I was too scared not to.
All those thoughts ran through my head as I paused on a canal bridge. The address I was going to was just across the short span.
I kept seeing the look on my father’s face.
Fuck it!
I slipped my school pack off my shoulder and tossed it into the canal.
I went in after it.
I quickly learned that heavy, steel capped boots were wonderful for kicking people’s faces but were hell to swim with.
I went down and hit bottom and kicked my way back up.
I heard cursing from men and saw the shine of a flashlight as the current swept me along.
They might be waiting for me when I got back to the barracks, but it was more likely they would go get Sergi and beat the crap out of him.
Maybe even throw his ass in jail.
As I trudged toward the orphanage, wet and cold and miserable, my only thoughts centered on what T-34 was going to do with my balls when she found out I couldn’t get her a bottle of vodka.
16
Leningrad Detention Center, 1949
I was eighteen years old when I was finally arrested and looked forward to a long sentence.
“Five years in a labor colony in Siberia,” Ivan Denisovich said, with great authority. “But they will hold you for eight more for lack of good behavior, no matter what your behavior. And you will age twenty more years from bad food, freezing weather and hard work. Hard work, did I say? Work that will make your back and feet ache. Laboring work, picking at the frozen tundra with picks and shovels to build a road that will not last the winter. Neither will your toes. They call you Four-Fingers? They will call you No-Toes after a few years stomping on the permafrost.”
We sat on the cold, damp concrete floor of the holding cell connected to the City Court building, smoking cigarettes hand-rolled in toilet paper and waiting our turn. There were twelve of us, all waiting to enter the courtroom to be bound over for trial or be pulled out for interrogation prior to trial.
Ivan Denisovich was able to speak with authority on the sentences received by criminals because he had served so many of them.
“It’s so damn cold there,” Ivan said, “if you rest your butt on the ground for a moment during a work break, your ass and balls freeze. A couple horny dolts snuck off into the woods to corn-hole each other. One got his cock stuck in the other’s hole, frozen tight, cock-to-ass as soon as he whipped it out and stuck it in. They had to whack off his cock on the spot.”
Ivan could speak on authority about prison sentences, but that didn’t make him a Soviet rocket scientist.
“Give me a cigarette,” a prisoner said. He had a Gypsy look to him, dark hair, eyes and skin, with greasy long hair and clothes that looked like they were soiled long before he was arrested.
“Fuck your mother,” I said. I got off my rear and squatted on my heels, ready to spring at him if he made a move on me. The street insult I gave him was a profane exclamation between friends—but fighting words between strangers. When he told me to give him a cigarette, it wasn’t just a request, it was a challenge. If I gave it to him, next he’d want my bed and my ass. I wasn’t the biggest guy in the cell, but I wasn’t a pushover, either.
He squatted down facing us and grinned. “Can you spare a cigarette, comrade?”
I handed him one of the toilet-paper cigarettes.
“What are you in for?” he asked.
“I’m falsely accused of
participating in a gang involved in criminal theft and speculation. Naturally, the accusations are completely false, a miscarriage of Soviet justice. I’m innocent.”
Everyone within hearing scoffed at my proclamation of innocence, but it was better to lie than say anything that could come back and bite you. In a society where you may be married to a police spy, or have birthed one, there are as many spies and informers in jails as anywhere else. Probably more.
“First offense?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I had been arrested before, but had always squeezed out of it. This time I hadn’t been able to sell my innocent-teenager act to the investigator. Someone had told him I was the head of the gang. As usual, my weak link had been a woman—a jealous woman. I had had a nice racket going. I had a woman who worked at the factory that made Red Star perfume sneak out essence. Flowers were boiled at the plant. The essential oils containing the fragrance evaporated with the steam that rose from the boiling. When the steam condensed back into water, the oil floated on top.
It wasn’t unlike the way I saw vodka made four years earlier. Irina worked in the processing area where the concentrated oil was collected. She sneaked out essence in her lunchpail tea bottle. We diluted and bottled the fragrances and sold them at the Haymarket in Red Star bottles that another confederate obtained. At half the price and no standing for hours in line to buy a bottle, the counterfeit was very popular with women.
I bounced around from one scheme to another, avoiding honest work the past few years and had learned well from Sergi before he was sent off to the Gulag shortly after I leaped into a canal.
The counterfeit perfume operation worked fine until Irina caught me in bed with her sister. I tried to explain that it was a case of mistaken identity, they were twins, but she tried to slice me up with a knife before the two sisters began screaming and fighting. The police were called, accusations made, and I found myself in jail. The worse thing was that we hadn’t passed the petting stage before we were caught.
The Betrayers Page 8
