28. Irkutsk Prison
Four days later, and again for some reason at night, we find ourselves in the Irkutsk prison. Through underground passageways they led us into a large underground hall. Along the walls stood about fifteen soldiers with submachine guns. Some had dogs. We were lined up. Everyone was horribly exhausted. On the left edge of the front row several women were placed. One of them held a nursing baby. We stood surrounded by soldiers and dogs for over an hour. Finally, a major appeared, wearing the armband of the prison duty assistant. Over his shoulder hung a big rubber truncheon. The major was clearly drunk.
“You’ve landed in the Irkutsk prison! This isn’t just anywhere! Our prison is famous for its history. Here, in Cell 117, General Kolchak sat. Here he was shot,” the drunken major informed us. “And I warn you further,” he continued, “for violating the detention regime, for disobedience to the administration, first: you get this.” He lifted his truncheon, lunged forward, and brought a blow down on someone in the front row. The prisoner fell silently onto the concrete floor. “Second: this.” He pulled out a gas canister and started shaking it before the faces of the prisoners in the front row. “And third,” he pointed at two enormous dogs held by guards at the exit.
“Well, we’ve made our acquaintance, and now—to business. Now I’ll check your documents, and then—to the bathhouse and into your cells. Any questions?”
The woman with the child asked permission to speak.
“Permission granted,” said the major. “Ask.”
“I have a nursing baby, but on the transport they give me only bread and fish, and ten grams of sugar a day. I have nothing to feed the baby. Give me milk. I know nursing mothers are supposed to get milk. One more transport like this and I’ll lose the child.”
“Hey, woman, nobody invited you here. Don’t commit crimes if you’re thinking of having a baby. Or did you think you’d give birth and they wouldn’t lock you up? No, you can’t scare us with that. We Communists are tough people.”
And the baby kept whimpering in its dirty, long-unwashed diapers. The woman pressed that precious little bundle to her face and wept.
“What criminal is she, really? She was caught for petty trade. She was traveling to her mother’s to give birth, and they arrested her. Give her milk. What does the baby have to do with it?” said one of the women.
“Tough luck, it’s her own fault she was trading. The prisoners began to murmur. From the back rows insults against Communists were shouted, and some even threatened the major with retribution after their release. The major gave an order to the soldiers. The soldiers aimed the barrels of their submachine guns at the crowd of prisoners. The muzzles were taken off the dogs. And opposite the woman with the child, a young soldier stood wiping his tears. His submachine gun dangled awkwardly from his shoulder, and he himself looked out of place, as if not of this world in these circles of hell. The major vanished at once. In his place appeared the guards with truncheons, and silently, without any emotion, like a shepherd driving a flock, they drove us with truncheons into the bathhouse. The bathhouse was also underground.
“This used to be the execution hall,” one of the prisoners told me.
The bathhouse wasn’t bad. The hall was big, with many shower heads, and the water was fairly hot. I stood under the shower and couldn’t stop thinking about the mother and child. Before my eyes stood Zina with her tiny little daughter. About ten minutes later I felt dizzy and nauseated. I slowly started sitting down on the floor. A kind of fog appeared before my eyes, then everything dimmed to a half-light, but my consciousness kept working.
“Why did they turn off the light?” I whispered.
“Someone’s sick!” someone nearby shouted. “Turn on the cold water.”
I came to under streams of cold water. A terribly thin man was leaning over me. He looked like prisoners in the Nazi death camps I had seen in documentary films, but this was a prisoner of Communist prisons in late 1981. Though I myself was terribly thin, compared to him I looked like an athlete.
“What’s up, brother, you did a lot of time in the cells and now they’re driving you along the transports? In a state like that don’t wash with hot water and don’t stand under the shower long. Rinse off a little, sit, rest. Can you stand up now?”
I was already able to get up. He invited me to sit on a concrete block.
“I’ve been wandering through prisons and transports for five years now, and still no trial.”
“What for?” I wondered.
“I’m a geologist. I found a large diamond in Yakutia. I thought, why should the Communists get it? I decided to sell it. It was very large. It’s impossible to find a buyer for something like that here in the Union. I cut it into four pieces. I hid three parts in different places and began selling one part. I ran into an expert. He realized the diamond had been cut. He started blackmailing me, wanting me to sell him the whole diamond, but he offered a very small price. I refused. He turned me in right away. And now they’ve been dragging me around for five years, forcing me to say where the other parts of the diamond are and where I found it. I got angry, you know, and the longer I sit here, the more I waste away, the stronger I get in my resolve to say nothing to them. And they, the fools, don’t understand this. They shuttle me from Yakutia to Moscow and back. Let them rot me, but I’ll tell them nothing.”
After the bath they began issuing mattresses. For some reason, some got them and others didn’t. I got no mattress, but my new acquaintance got one.
“They won’t keep you here long, since you weren’t given a mattress,” he told me, and picked up his mattress. It was obvious he could barely hold it. “Brother, maybe you can help me drag the mattress? I have no strength to carry it.” I had heard before, but hardly believed it, that in prisons people are reduced to such a state that they can’t carry their own mattress, that they barely have the strength to move their own bodies. Now I saw it with my own eyes. I helped. I ended up in Cell 35. The cell had a very high ceiling but was as narrow as a corridor. From one end to the other, across the cell, were continuous two-tiered plank beds. Under the ceiling there was a small barred window, closed as usual with shutters. The window was so high that even standing on the second tier of the beds you could barely reach it. A strange construction. Morning came. A murderous exhaustion knocked me off my feet. On the first tier there wasn’t a single mattress. I wanted to lie down there.
“Lie on the second tier,” someone warned me, “there’s light there, and the bedbugs don’t bite as much.” That’s what I did. A few minutes later I was already asleep. They woke me for lunch. I was surprised: the gruel was edible. To a free person it might have been a disgusting brew, but I had almost forgotten the taste of real soup. “To eat such gruel all at once,” I reasoned, “is simply a crime,” so I ate it in small sips, in no hurry to swallow. After lunch I became acquainted with the prisoners. I noticed one prisoner who didn’t talk to anyone. There was something unusual about him. His facial expression was always the same, without any emotion. His right hand was missing four fingers; he had only one, and even that one was twisted somehow. He looked about thirty. I watched him. He squatted, openly brewing tea. With some instinct he sensed I was observing him and turned toward me.
“Want to talk? Come over here.”
His gaze and voice had a quality that drew you in, compelled attention. I came over and crouched beside him.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked.
“Vladivostok prison.”
“What’s your name?”
“Boris.”
“Perchatkin, right?”
“Yes. How do you know?”
“I’m from Vladivostok prison too. Rumours about you are going through all the cells there, and by your appearance I can tell, and an inner voice suggests who you are. Tell me a little about your faith.”
I briefly told him about Christianity, about the works of the Holy Spirit. As I was telling him, I realised something was wrong with this man. When he looked at me after my account, his eyes had turned from grey to hazel, then to black. A Satanic glitter wandered in them.
“I want to tell you my story,” he said to me. “Maybe you can help somehow.”
Suddenly he spun around sharply. A prisoner of Asian origin was standing behind us. He looked him in the eye. The Asian man was as if struck by an electric shock. He turned around and jumped onto the second tier of the beds, though no one had said a word to him.
“So,” he addressed me again, “I’m a Satanist.”
“I already met one Satanist during the investigation,” I said.
“I know you met one.”
“So how did you end up here?” I asked. “The system is Satanic, and you serve it.”
“That’s another matter. I want to talk with you about it. This is how it happened: about six years ago I was using explosives to blast fish. You know, you throw a stick of dynamite into the water, it explodes there, and from the hydraulic shock all the fish float belly-up. But that time I must have messed up something. The charge exploded in my hands. You see, my fingers were torn off, but the main charge went into my stomach. I came to in the hospital, in the ward for hopeless cases. As soon as I regained consciousness, I knew my situation was bad. I started praying. My mother was an Adventist. In childhood she read us the Bible; my father used to beat her terribly for that. I pray, I lose consciousness, I come to, I pray again.
…I get worse and worse. God doesn’t come to help me, and I don’t want to die. I despaired and started praying to Satan: ‘If you exist, at least you help me.’ The moment I said that, it was like I got an injection of morphine, the pain receded, and I fell asleep. I wake up, look out the window—night. After some time the door opened. A doctor came in. He was short, thin. His face was lean, ascetic. His hair was short, buzz-cut. ‘But why without a white coat?’ flashed through my mind. He came up to me. His eyes were dark, brazen.
‘You called me, so I came,’ he told me.
I couldn’t understand anything: who had I called, who had come? He read my thoughts.
‘The one you called, that’s who came. I came to help you.’ ‘Can it really be Satan?’—the thought pierced me, and I broke out in sweat all over my body. ‘And where are the horns, where’s the tail?’—I thought, imagining him. He read my thoughts again.
‘Oh, that was earlier; now it isn’t needed. If we come to an agreement now, I’ll help you. God won’t help you anyway. He’s always too busy, but I always have time.’
I was shivering.
‘And what do you need in return?’ I asked.
‘Very little. Sometimes you’ll carry out a few errands for me. Your life will be merry, interesting. Don’t think about anything. You’ll live your life, and then, come to me. It’s not as terrible as your mother instilled in you as a child.’
Inside me everything resisted, and I refused to make an agreement with him.
‘Well, as you wish,’ he said. ‘If anything, I’m always ready to help. Remember that.’
And he left. And I got bad again. And again I prayed, and no help came. By morning I felt I was completely fading away. I couldn’t stand it, I called Satan again, thinking, at least I’ll feel easier. And everything repeated just like the first time. At night he appeared again. I decided to deceive him, I started bargaining with him. I bargained to keep my soul, to preserve it. He agreed and said:
‘All right, your left arm is whole; it will be mine.’ That’s what we agreed on.
‘When necessary, I’ll find you,’ he told me as he left. I began recovering quickly. After that, some time later, I didn’t even notice how I got acquainted with drug traffickers. A voice started whispering to me:
‘This is the business I need, and your life will be easy.’
I started selling drugs. You know, life was—a sea of money, everything accessible, luck all around, but sometimes my soul was uneasy. I remembered my mother and decided to find believers.
I came to an Adventist meeting. I’d barely begun to pray when it was as if someone started choking me. I bolted out of the house of prayer. Everything passed right away. I caught my breath. Well, I thought, I’ll go in one more time. The same thing happened again. I didn’t go back anymore.
And that night he appeared to me. Some kind of fiery ball flew in through the window, came closer to me, growing larger and larger. In that ball his face appeared. I was frightened. And he says to me:
‘Don’t be afraid; over many things we have power and might. Now you’ll have another job. You’ve been assigned to the category of rock, so I’m sending you to administer fate.’ After that there was a flash, the ball seemed to explode. And he vanished. And now here I am, here. I know I’ve been sent here for some task, I myself still don’t know what, but inside me something is still resisting. What do you say to that? Why didn’t God come to help me? What should I do now? My life has spun like a whirlwind.”
“Of course, I don’t know your life,” I said. “Perhaps you laughed at your mother, blasphemed the Bible, cursed God together with your father; that’s why you were closer to Satan than to God. You had long been drawing near to him. And when you started praying to him, you turned to God only when you needed support, from anyone at all. You should have first repented of everything, and then asked God for help.”
“Actually, it was exactly as you say.”
“Now,” I continued, “he’s driven you here to isolate you from believers, so you wouldn’t go to the house of prayer any more. Here he’ll push you into some crime, and then either the prisoners will kill you, or they’ll shoot you. You have one way out now—to cut off all contact with him, repent before God, and ask God for support. It will be very hard. Satan won’t leave you alone just like that, but I’m certain God will hear you and help.”
In the evening the food slot opened.
“Perchatkin, with your belongings!”
I was taken away to a transit cell. I spent the whole night there. There were many people in the transit cell. All night people were being led out, brought in, and all night everyone smoked cheap tobacco without stopping, and all night everyone stood, because there was no place to sit. Not for nothing do they call transit cells holding pens. Everyone stands, few talk. Each is occupied with himself, with his own problems, and all know that fate will scatter them to different prisons and camps. In the morning I was taken from the transit cell and locked in a solitary cell. This cell had no plank beds, not even a bench. After the night spent standing I had no strength; I lay down right on the concrete floor and instantly fell asleep. How long I slept… it’s hard to say. The cell had no window, and I didn’t know whether it was day or evening. I thought, maybe they’ll bring the gruel, but no one came. I sat like that for a long time. Finally, the door opened.
“What are you doing here? How did you get in here?” the guard was astonished.
“That’s what I should ask: why was I brought here and not fed? I didn’t come here by myself.”
“Out,” said the guard and led me to another cell. An ordinary cell—filth, stench, lice, bedbugs.
One night we all woke to a crash in the corridor.
“Run! Run!” shouted a guard. The pounding of many feet followed. All of this was accompanied by the sounds of blows from truncheons against human bodies. The pounding receded and faded. Then came a kind of wheezing and an old voice: “Look at him, all covered in blood, and still he doesn’t run. Give him some more.” And again came blows. Someone stubbornly neither ran nor screamed, driving the guard into hysterics. Then everything fell silent. About ten minutes later, the pounding of running feet and the blows of truncheons were heard again. And again the offended voice of the old man, the overseer: “Look at that beast, he won’t run, look how proud he is. We’ve seen the likes of you in the cemetery.”
“This happens often here, especially at night. The guards burst in, drive the sleepy prisoners out into the corridor. Down the corridor, along the walls, stand guards with truncheons. They force the prisoners to run between these guards, while the guards beat them with their truncheons. The faster you run, the fewer blows you get. That’s how the guards entertain themselves, beating without any reason. And drunkenness among the guards is a normal thing,” the prisoners told me. I spent eight days in this cell. On the ninth day, at night, transport again. This time the escort was all Muslims—illiterate, downtrodden, barely understanding any Russian. They had apparently been gathered from remote villages. Here they had the opportunity to feel their superiority over Russians, even if only over prisoners.
I run through the gauntlet of Muslim escorts. My running is accompanied by kicks and blows from submachine guns. They shout commands in their own language. I don’t understand what they want from me. Everything blurs together: the blinding searchlight, the barking of dogs, the blows from the escorts, incomprehensible commands, swearing in Russian. Out of confusion I paused. Maybe I’m running the wrong way? Immediately I got a kick in the stomach with a boot. I lost my balance and fell. As I was falling, I barely dodged the dogs’ fangs. I get up instantly. A few steps, and I bump into a wagon. I grab the handrails and with difficulty climb into the wagon. Other escorts await me there, and without a word they start beating me. The blows are practised, honed—blows to the kidneys, to the liver, under the heart. A weakened prisoner can’t dodge them. To strike again, they grab me by the clothes to hold me, and beat me again. Finally, I end up in the compartment.
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