19. The Death of a Friend
To my surprise, I wasn’t put in the glass box. They led me into a cell. Anatoly and Fedoska weren’t in the cell. They were at interrogation. Boris was lying on the bunk. The engineer sat beside him. It was cold in the cell—November already. Boris lay there in his jacket and hat. He was shivering. He was breathing heavily.
Forgive me, brothers. I think my tuberculosis has flared up. I had suspicions before, but I didn’t get treatment in time on the outside, and now I can tell it’s bad. And my liver is giving me grief too, and Harlequin confiscated my pills. He lay there, gaunt and yellow. He was cold, yet sweat stood out on his face. I went to the door and began pounding, calling for the guard on duty.
Don’t bother, Boris said. I already asked for a doctor. They brought me some pills, but the pills here are the same for every illness. To get my own pills back, a doctor needs to examine me, and the doctor won’t come until next week.
Maybe we could check around the prison, see if anyone has any pills, I suggested.
The engineer sent a runner around the prison. Now all we could do was wait. Twenty minutes later, we got aspirin, and an hour later, one pill of no-shpa. Boris took the no-shpa, took the aspirin. Then he turned to me:
Boris, I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time: how should one pray? The engineer said:
That question interests me too.
God, our Father, our Friend, I answered. Prayer isn’t some ritual; it’s communion with God. The way you would address your father or your best friend who is able to help you—that’s how you should address God. No learned words are needed here.
I offered to pray with them, and for the first time, the three of us prayed together. The others stood up, but they didn’t pray; they weren’t ready for that yet.
Boris felt some relief. In the evening, they brought in Anatoly and Fedoska. Anatoly announced joyfully:
Congratulate me on a successful troop landing. I asked the investigator for a drink. The goat turned away, and I shook the lice out onto his back.
But Fedoska was sullen. No one knew what he was in for; he kept silent. They only knew he was a former warrant officer, and everyone was already noticing that he needed treatment, not imprisonment. Fedoska kept trying to prove to all the screws that he wasn’t guilty, that he was sitting there for nothing. He believed any screw could just let him go home and begged: “Citizen screw, please, let me go home. They locked me up for nothing. They beat my wife, they beat me, and then they locked me up too.” Fedoska didn’t even realize that the word “screw” was an insult to the guards. He’d heard the prisoners calling them that among themselves, so he said it too. A few days later, Fedoska knocked on the food slot and shouted:
Citizen screw, give me a weapon. War has started, everyone’s been issued weapons, but they won’t give me one. He stood crying by the food slot. Why don’t they trust me with a weapon? The Chinese have attacked, and they won’t give me a weapon! The screw watched him through the slot with interest. Then he opened the cell door, took a broom, and held it out to Fedoska.
Here’s a weapon for you. Take it, go fight.
Fedoska took the broom, stood at attention, saluted the screw, and shouted:
I serve the Soviet Union! — and began marching around the cell.
We tried to take the broom away and get Fedoska onto a bunk, but he wouldn’t listen to anyone.
Charge! Forward! he yelled, and rushed with the broom into the corridor.
The screw repelled his “attack” with a kick:
Fight in here!
Fedoska began crawling on the concrete floor, crawled under the bunks, stuck the broom out from under them, and started imitating machine-gun fire.
The screw called the block warden. They watched Fedoska and nearly doubled over laughing. We began to protest and demand that Fedoska be shown to a doctor, but the screw said:
It’s fine, he’s quiet, just plays war. But that night, Fedoska screamed:
Landing party, prepare your parachutes! — and jumped headfirst from the second tier. Fedoska, unconscious, with a smashed head, was carried out of the cell. We never saw Fedoska again and heard nothing more about him. Boris grew worse and worse. He no longer went on walks, just lay there more and more. He ate very little, drank more and more. We collected our sugar and gave it to him. He refused, but we convinced him that he needed to sustain his body somehow. A week later, a doctor came to the cell. He began examining Boris, took his temperature, felt his pulse, listened to his heart and lungs.
What’s this, kid, you decided to land in jail with health like this?
Look how yellow you are. Your health is shot. We’ll get you admitted to the prison hospital. I’ll send the orderlies now. Then he turned to us: Help him gather his things. Boris protested:
That’s a bad omen. I’ll do everything myself; I’ll pack myself, I’ll walk out myself. When they carry you out of here, you never come back, and I just need to make it till summer, then the sun will warm me, fresh air. In summer, I’ll recover from this illness.
Slowly, with thin, weak hands, he packed his belongings.
Well, I think that’s everything, he said, then, breathing heavily, sat down and asked me to write down my address for him. The orderlies came in. Boris stood up, walked over to me, and smiled.
I’ll find you, Boris, if I survive. Forgive me for not saying goodbye. By prison law, you mustn’t say goodbye.
Get well, I said. We’ll meet again. I spoke, yet felt that we would not meet again.
Boris turned, pushed aside the orderlies who tried to help him, and slowly walked out of the cell. My feeling did not deceive me. I never saw Boris again, but I heard about him almost a year later. A prisoner came to our cell from the prison hospital. I had continued preaching in the evenings. He listened to me and said:
We had a Baptist in our hospital too; his name was also Boris. He kept preaching to us until he died.
I questioned him thoroughly and learned that Boris didn’t make it to summer and died in April.
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