The Zone

by Sergei Dovlatov

  The reading room was quiet and empty. Bookcases shimmered against the wall. Several old-fashioned pictures gave the room a solemn air. I walked up to the wooden counter. A woman of about thirty, wearing glasses, with a thin face and pale lips, came towards me. She had delicate skin and a rather long nose. When she looked at me, taking off her glasses and touching the bridge of her nose, I felt her looking at me with an unexpectedly sure, impertinent, boyish stare. I asked for a book of Bunin’s stories which I had loved when I was still in school, and after signing it out on a square bluish form, I sat down by the window. I switched on a goose-necked lamp, put my elbows on the cold table, and got absorbed in reading.

  The woman got up several times and walked out of the room, and sometimes she looked at me, and suddenly I realized that she wasn’t afraid of anything happening but just liked being silent. Then she started to move chairs, and I stood up to help, and I noticed that she had on an old-fashioned dress of very stiff, dark, cool material and fur-lined Chukchi slippers.* Then I accidentally touched her hand, and for an instant my heart stopped, and I thought with fear of how unaccustomed I had grown to the things which made life worth living, of how much I had lost, of what had been taken from me, of how much happiness had swept by me on those nights full of hatred and fear, when the floorboards crack from the frost and dogs bay in the kennel and you sit in the isolator and listen to Anagi-Zadye clinking his manacles behind the wall and the miserable, frozen, unchanging days drag on outside the window, delaying the mail.

  I went back to the table and slammed the book shut, and without looking back I went down the stairs, struggled to light a cigarette, and walked the kilometre and a half back to the military settlement.

  Now I remembered all this and I said to Fidel, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Now what!” Fidel said.

  “Finish the wine and let’s go.”

  The girls asked, “What’s wrong with you guys? Brides waiting for you or something?” And they burst out laughing as we left.

  We walked under the stars, everything silent, and made our way along the fence to the hollow which ended in the dark and bulky silhouette of HQ. Suddenly shadows fell on the path and the men from the sawmill appeared in front of us, but Fidel immediately swung the sub-machine gun to his chest like an SS man and said simply, “In the forest I shoot without warning!”

  They cursed and disappeared among the trees in the darkness.

  I walked in front, orienting myself by the silhouette of the exercise frame with its hanging ropes, which was set up in front of headquarters. Dark against the background of the sky, it looked like gallows. Fidel walked behind me.

  The path was narrow, no wider than a ski track, and I kept stumbling.

  When we rounded the last house of the settlement, I saw a light in the window of the library. I stopped and thought of the woman who sat at the lighted table behind bastions of bookcases in a quiet and warm space with an invisible stove, and then it seemed as though I was walking up the wooden stairs and along the corridor, leaving wet footprints behind me: I throw open the door, the woman stands up, her old-fashioned earrings swing gently and the silence is so complete that I can hear their melodic sound. The woman takes off her glasses and touches the bridge of her nose with an expression of barely noticeable annoyance, and I feel her unwomanlike, bold gaze on me.

  “Let’s go,” Fidel said. “My feet are freezing.”

  I said to him, “I’ve got to stop in at the library.”

  “Come on, what next!”

  “I want to talk to a woman there.”

  “Stop it,” Fidel said. “We’ve taken a whole day to get to headquarters already.”

  I stood still. There was no one around. Off to one side shone the yellowish lights of the settlement, and the dark wall of the forest rose up to our right.

  I said, “Fidel, have a heart – let me do it. There’s a woman I know – I’ve got to…”

  He looked away and said distinctly, “I can’t.”

  “Are you my friend,” I yelled, “or Citizen Chief? So this is what happens to a man when you give him a sub-machine gun and written orders to lead another man under escort!”

  “Come on, walk and don’t haggle!” Fidel said.

  “That explains that,” I said. “Give the orders, Commander!” But I didn’t move from the spot. Fidel stood behind me.

  “I have to go to the library,” I said.

  “Start walking!”

  “I have to—”

  “Now!”

  I looked up at the square window, which glowed like a quivering beacon, and I started towards it through the deep snow, leaving behind me, dark on the horizon, the fence of the military camp and the black figure of my escort.

  Then Fidel shouted, “Halt!”

  I turned around and said, “Do you want to kill me?”

  He said, barely audibly, “Back.”

  Then I cursed him with the filthiest words that I had heard by the bonfire in the logging sector and in the isolator and at the gambling table before a fight and in transit camps during a search.

  “Back!” Fidel said.

  I walked on without turning around, I became huge, I overshadowed the horizon, I heard the bolt click in the empty and frozen silence, then the spring of the firing pin yield, squeaking, and then the bullet slide into its chamber with a tap.

  And suddenly I felt such rage – as if it were me, actually me, taking aim at a man wandering through the snow, and this man without a belt was the one to blame for all the reversals of my fate, only I couldn’t make out his face.

  I stopped, looked at Fidel, winced, seeing his face (he held his fur mitten in his teeth), shouted something, and headed towards him.

  Fidel threw down the sub-machine gun and started to cry, and for some reason pulled off his sheepskin jacket and tore open his fatigue shirt, all the buttons flying off.

  I walked up and stood beside him. “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”

  June 21, 1982. New York

  Dear Igor! (Your patronymic has got lost somewhere back there going over the potholes of our journey together.)

  It’s finished. The brakes of the last ellipses will squeak through ten paragraphs.

  I’m experiencing a sensation of lightness and emptiness. After all, I’ve been preparing this manuscript for publication for seventeen years. It’s “the end of something”, as Mr Hemingway would put it.

  You know that I’m not a religious person. More than that – I’m a non-believer. And I’m not even superstitious. I am not afraid of funeral processions, black cats or broken mirrors, I spill salt constantly, and I married Lena (who sends you regards) on the 13th(!) of December.

  I have dreams very rarely, and if I do, they’re astoundingly primitive. For example: I run out of money in a restaurant. Sigmund Freud would have absolutely nothing to do here.

  I don’t have unhappy, or even happy premonitions. I don’t feel people’s stares on the back of my neck (unless the stare is accompanied by a whack). In short, nature has very obviously cheated me of my share of transcendental gifts. It turns out I’m not even susceptible to commonplace hypnosis.

  Yet even I have been brushed by the light wing of the other world. My entire biography is a chain of well-planned chance happenings. At every step I can distinguish, in retrospect, the handwriting on the wall. And anyhow, who am I not to believe in fate? They’re entirely too obvious, the engraved inscriptions in which my unlucky life has been written. The delicate, bluish lines come through every page of my original drafts.

  Nabokov said, “Chance is the logic of Fortune.” And actually, what could be more logical than senseless, beautiful, absolutely implausible chance?

  A man named Schlaffmann, the father of an acquaintance of mine, was digging a big hole for a blackberry bush at his summer cottage when he had an attack of angina. It turned out that Schlaffmann was digging his own grave. Chance is the logic of Fortune. Then too, Schlaffmann had been an unswerving Stalini
st throughout his life, and this isn’t random either, but somehow allows me to tell the story without feeling too bad about it.

  I was born with the instincts of a professional boxer. In order to make me into a young man capable of reflection, inhuman efforts – literally! – were required. A chain of implausible – and therefore convincing and logical – chance events had to be linked up. One of these was prison. Obviously, someone very much wanted to make a writer out of me.

  It was not I who chose this effete, raucous, torturous, burdensome profession. It chose me itself, and now there is no way to get away from it.

  You are reading the last page, I am opening a new notebook…

  Notes

  p. 5, Igor Markovich: Igor Markovich Yefimov (b.1937), publisher of the Russian-language edition of The Zone, issued by his US-based publishing house Hermitage Press in 1982.

  p. 6, setting off on a wet job: A slang expression for a murder or assassination.

  p. 15, a zek: Zek was an abbreviation meaning “prisoner”, especially in reference to Soviet labour camps.

  p. 17, Samoyed: A now outdated name for the indigenous peoples of northern Siberia, the Samoyed comprised several ethnic groups living a traditionally nomadic lifestyle.

  p. 17, kumzha: Brown trout.

  p. 20, To each according to his abilities: A slight corruption of Karl Marx’s famous dictum, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (in the ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’).

  p. 29, kolkhoz: An abbreviation for kollektivnoye khozyaystvo, meaning “collective farm”.

  p. 36, Borya Alikhanov, Pioneer: Pioneers were members of a Communist youth group similar to the Scouts but with stronger political leanings.

  p. 40, Vail and Genis: Pyotr Vail (1949 – 2009), Russian-American journalist, writer and editor-in-chief of the Russian-language radio broadcast Radio Liberty. Alexandr Genis (b.1953), Russian-American critic, writer and radio broadcaster, who together with Vail worked on the émigré paper Novy Amerikanets. Dovlatov was the chief editor of Novy Amerikanets and also contributed to Radio Liberty.

  p. 41, the Knowledge Society: Founded in 1947 as the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge, which focused on delivering lectures and popular writing on science.

  p. 41, Once Yakir was a hero… an enemy of the people: Probably a reference to Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir (1896 – 1937), a Bolshevik commander during the Civil War of 1917 – 23 who was awarded the Order of the Red Banner – at that time the highest military honour – for his services. He was later shot at the height of Stalin’s repression in 1937 on a number of trumped-up charges.

  p. 42, Morgulis: Mikhail Morgulis (b.1941), writer and evangelist who emigrated from the USSR in 1977 and went on to live in New York, where he became involved in the Russian émigré movement. Morgulis lived near Dovlatov and the two were acquainted.

  p. 44, Suurepäraselt: “Excellent!” (Estonian).

  p. 44, Kurat: “The Devil take it!” (Estonian).

  p. 47, I read a book called Azef: Referring to Yevno Azef (1869 – 1918), agent provocateur and double agent, working for both the Tsarist state security forces and the Socialist Revolutionaries.

  p. 47, Gershuni and Savinkov… Rachkovsky and Lopukhin: Grigory Gershuni (1870 – 1908) and Boris Savinkov (1879 – 1925) were both prominent Social Revolutionaries and connected with anti-Tsarist terrorism. Pyotr Rachkovsky (1853 – 1910) and Alexei Lopukhin (1864 – 1928) were, respectively, the head of the secret service and the chief of police under the Tsarist regime.

  p. 48, The House of the Dead… The Gulag Archipelago… Chekhov, Shalamov, Sinyavsky: The House of the Dead (1862), by Fyodor Dostoevsky, deals with prison life in Siberia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is a detailed account of the Soviet prison system and Stalinist repression based on first-hand accounts, published illicitly. The word “Gulag” is a Russian contraction for the network of forced-labour camps throughout the USSR. Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904), the great Russian short-story writer and playwright, wrote a lengthy work of non-fiction, Sakhalin Island, on the Tsarist prison exile camps based on personal experience. Varlam Shalamov (1907 – 82) was most famous for his Kolyma Tales, short stories based on his own experience of the appalling conditions of life in the arctic camps of the Gulag, in which Shalamov spent a total of seventeen years under Stalin’s rule. Andrei Sinyavsky (1925 – 97) wrote a number of works dealing with life in the Gulag, after spending time in labour camps from 1966 – 71 for publishing satirical literature abroad under a pseudonym.

  p. 48, Simenon: Georges Simenon (1903 – 89), prolific Belgian author, best-known for his stories about Inspector Maigret.

  p. 48, in the footsteps of Herbert Marcuse: Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) was a leading neo-Marxist thinker.

  p. 53, Nicht verstehen: “Not understand” (clumsy German).

  p. 53, Turgenev’s Gerasim: In Ivan Turgenev’s short story ‘Mumu’ (1854), Gerasim is a deaf-mute peasant.

  p. 56, a chifir tub: Chifir was a very strong tea drink used as a mild narcotic.

  p. 58, Code man: A “Code man”, or “thief in the law”, is someone who lives by the “Thieves’ Code”, a strict set of rules characterizing a unique criminal structure which first appeared in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Traditionally, a “Code man” must have prior convictions, sufficient authority in the criminal world and have been “crowned” (a process not unlike “being made” in the Italian mafia).

  p. 58, smoking a Herzegovina Flor: A cheap brand of cigarettes. Stalin famously used the tobacco from these for his pipe.

  p. 71, Yevtushenko: Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933 – ) is a very popular Russian poet.

  p. 72, Ernst Neizvestny… Harrison Salisbury: Ernst Neizvestny (b.1925) is a prominent Russian sculptor. Harrison Salisbury (1908 – 93) was the Russian correspondent for the New York Times after the Second World War.

  p. 74, Lost a leg in the Yezhov times: See note to p. 79.

  p. 74, but a lieutenant in the OGPU: The OGPU was one of the many names of the state security services in the USSR, operative from 1923 – 34. Under Soviet Communism, the full list was as follows: The Cheka (1917 – 22), the GPU (1922 – 23), the OGPU (1923 – 34), the NKVD (1934 – 46), the MGB / MVD (1946 – 54) and finally, the KGB (1954 – 91).

  p. 76, Sergei Yesenin: Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895 – 1925), one of Russia’s best-known lyrical poets. He committed suicide at the age of thirty.

  p. 79, Dzerzhinsky? Yezhov? Abakumov and Yagoda: Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877 – 1926), known as “Iron Felix”, was the architect of the first incarnation of the USSR’s state security services, the Cheka. The Cheka (and its agents, known as Chekists) were infamous for their use of torture and summary executions. Nikolai Yezhov (1895 – 1940) was the head of the NKVD at the height of Stalin’s purges of 1937 – 38, in which millions were tortured, executed or sent to the Gulags. In this role, he was preceded by Genrikh Yagoda (1891 – 1938), who played a significant role in the show trials of 1936, which Stalin used to eliminate former Communist Party officials. Yagoda himself was killed in a show trial shortly after. Viktor Abakumov (1908 – 54) was the head of counter-intelligence during and after the Second World War, and was notorious for his frequent use of torture.

  p. 81, Tsvetaeva’s prose: Marina Tsvetaeva (1892 – 1941) was a lyrical poet and writer of critical and autobiographical prose. She spent much of her life in Paris before returning to Russia in 1939. She hanged herself two years later.

  p. 82, Do you like Heine?… And Schiller: Heinrich Heine (1797 – 1856) and Johann von Schiller (1759 – 1805), leading German poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  p. 87, The Brighton Beach NEP is working full blast: Here, NEP (short for New Economic Policy) refers to the period in the 1920s in which certain private businesses were permitted under Soviet rule. “NEPmen” were private traders.

  p. 87, Professor Eikhenbaum: Boris Eikhenbaum (1886 –
1959), famous Russian literary scholar.

  p. 88, the tradition of Mr Dos Passos: John Dos Passos (1896 – 1970), American writer and artist whose USA trilogy employed, amongst numerous other literary techniques, a montage effect. He was said to have been inspired by several of the experimental Russian film-makers of the 1920s such as Vertov and Eisenstein.

  p. 89, Abdul Rahman Jami: Jami (1414 – 92) was a Persian mystic poet and scholar.

  p. 89, Marshal Voroshilov: Kliment Voroshilov (1881 – 1969), one of the highest-ranking Soviet military leaders and statesmen both during and after Stalin’s reign.

  p. 93, Varlam Tikhonovich slightly through Gena Aygi: For Shalamov, see first note to p. 48. Gennady Aygi (1934 – 2006) was a Chuvash poet and translator.

  p. 93, euphonic orchestration of the Remizov school: Aleksi Remizov (1877 – 1957), along with other Russian writers of the early twentieth century such as Zamyatin and Bely, were noted for their extensive use of sound play in prose.

  p. 94, Babel, Platonov, Zoshchenko: Isaak Babel (1894 – 1940), Andrei Platonov (1899 – 1951) and Mikhail Zoshchenko (1895 – 1958) were all major twentieth-century Russian writers.

  p. 95, in the style of Krylov or La Fontaine: Ivan Krylov (1769 – 1844) and Jean de La Fontaine (1621 – 95) – both well-known fabulists.

  p. 105, Do you like Lollobrigida: Gina Lollobrigida (1927 – ), an Italian actress and sex symbol, very popular in Europe in the 1950s and ’60s.

  p. 125, a Stakhanovite feat of labour: Alexei Stakhanov (1906 – 77), became a Stalinist model worker after mining an enormous amount of coal in one shift, and gave rise to the Stakhanovite movement, encouraging workers to produce significantly over their quotas.

  p. 126, a valiant Chekist… colonel in the GPU or the NKVD, condemned by Khrushchev as an associate of Beria and Yagoda: For the Cheka, GPU, NKVD and Yagoda, see second note to p. 74 and note to p. 79. Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971) was Stalin’s eventual successor. He initiated the de-Stalinization of the USSR in 1956 in his “secret speech” denouncing Stalin’s methods to the Twentieth Party Congress. Lavrenty Beria (1899 – 1953) was the brutal leader of the NKVD during the Second World War, responsible for the operation of the Gulag and enormous numbers of summary executions. He was executed on Khrushchev’s orders.