5. Prison Lessons
I was put into a cell in the first block, number 53. Before entering the cell, I was handed a mattress. No blanket, no sheet. And the mattress was such that, as they say in prison, a hundred men had died on it. It was a semblance of a mattress, a dirty sack stuffed with either cotton wool or rags. To lie down on such a mattress, you had to evenly spread out that cotton wool, or those rags. “Maybe my grandfather once slept on this mattress?” I thought.
And so, when I stepped over the threshold of cell number 53, there was no one inside. The cell was for four people, a standard one. Along the sides stood two bunk beds. To the right of the door was the so-called parasha, the makeshift toilet. It was a pedestal about forty centimeters high. It was the same in length and width. In the middle of this pedestal was a hole. Its diameter was roughly five to seven centimeters. A pipe with a tap led to this hole. Everything was open, not screened off. In full view of everyone, inmates would step onto this pedestal to relieve themselves, first opening the tap on the pipe.
While I stood in the doorway of the cell, another prisoner was brought in. As it turned out, he was brought in from the exercise yard. He entered, and the door slammed shut behind him.
“Hey there,” he said to me, “where from: off the transport or local?”
“Off the transport.”
“Where from?”
“Nakhodka.”
He extended his hand.
“My name’s Boris.”
“Oh, me too, Boris,” I said, shaking his hand.
My new acquaintance was short and thin. His complexion was sallow. “Doesn’t get much fresh air,” I thought.
“What are you in for?”
“Article 190 and 70,” I named the articles, but they meant nothing to him. He didn’t know them.
“First time in?”
“First time.”
“I’m on my second. Haven’t really heard of those articles.” I briefly told him about myself.
“Well, you’re spinning it thick. You should’ve thought of something simpler.”
“What do you mean, ‘spinning it thick’?”
“Well, making up legends for yourself. What you’re saying is impossible these days. And believers nowadays are just grannies and grandpas, I’ve never met any young ones. So it’s your first time here, you say? Then I’ll give you a tour of the khata, else an intellectual like you will end up in a general khata, with about fifty men, knowing nothing, unable to stand up for yourself. The lads will spot that right away, they’ll try to catch you on something right off, or at worst, make you into a chushka.”
“What do you mean, ‘make you into a chushka’?”
“Well, how… a chushka sleeps under the bunks, washes everyone’s socks in the cell, and then stands by the throne all day with a mop, congratulating everyone with relief, and dispelling the unpleasant air with the mop. Sings songs for the lads. So this,” he continued, leading me to the toilet, “is the ‘throne.’ To use it, you’ve got to know the rules. The first thing you must do if you want to go to the throne is to make sure no one is eating, and there are no food products on the bedside table. Once you’re sure of that, warn everyone that you’re going to the throne, so no one gets any food out. Second rule: when you go to the throne, make a paper torch, approach the throne, turn on the water, light the torch. And don’t even think about missing the hole. True, it takes some skill, but try your best. The torch serves as an air freshener and helps. You wash your hands after the toilet here,” he pointed to a sink opposite the toilet.
“In prison, you’ve got to clip with your ears and eyes, or you’ll be lost. You’ve got to hear what the dubaks on the corridor are talking about. You’ve got to hear all the knocks that will sound to the left or right, from below or above, from everywhere. You must feel the life in the prison. ‘Horses’ walk through the prison. Without ‘horses’ here, it’s death. If you hear a knock on the ceiling, receive the ‘horse.’ If you hear three knocks, it means the horse isn’t yours, give it right of way.”
I understood nothing: what “horses,” what “right of way”? He shook his head.
“You don’t know such simple stuff.”
He went to the window, rummaged with his hand on the windowsill, and pulled something out. He held out a nail with thread wound around it in his palm.
“This is the ‘horse.’”
“And how do you use it?”
“I’ll show you. Such ‘horses’ travel all around the prison. If a ‘horse’ comes to your khata, and we’re sitting in fifty-three, and you need to send it to another block, let’s say, the three-hundredth, the first thing you must do is roll up a dubak and a Durov.”
“Which ‘Durov,’ and how do you ‘roll up’?”
“What, you don’t know Durov, the animal tamer? We’re the animals, and the Durovs feed us. Durovs are the ones who bring around the balanda. They walk all the floors. And ‘rolling up’ means being on good terms with them, or making them dependent on you.”
“How can they be dependent in prison?”
“First thing to know is that in prison, everyone is a criminal, both those arrested, and those guarding us. Everything is for sale here. It’s a big bazaar. Look, for example,” he reached under the sink for the water drain, pulled a plastic bag out from there, “look, tea isn’t allowed in prison, but I have tea. You can get fifteen days in the hole for tea here, and who do you think brought it to me? A dubak brought it. If he has a lot of tea, he gives it to the ‘Durov,’ and he sells it.”
“But how to buy if you have no money? They take all the money at the duty office.”
“Eh, friend, turns out you know nothing. If you have relatives or friends who want to help you, you write them a letter and send it illegally through a dubak. The dubak gives you an address where your people should send you the money. Your folks send, let’s say, 500 rubles, the dubak takes half for himself, and brings the rest to you. And then he’ll sell to you, or you can buy from someone else. Suppose a pack of tea costs 70 kopecks, or one ruble, he sells it to you for 10 rubles. Or, suppose a bottle of vodka costs 5 rubles, he sells it for 50.”
“What, they even sell vodka?”
“They sell worse things here.”
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one out.
“You know what this is?”
“I don’t smoke, I don’t know.”
“It’s a narcotic, hashish, for smoking. And such a cigarette costs 5 rubles. So you see, that’s how the ‘Durov’ depends on you. You – on them, they – on you. But don’t trust every dubak, and he doesn’t trust everyone. Everyone sells each other out here. The same dubak will sell tea, hash, vodka in one khata, and in another khata he’ll conduct a shakedown, confiscate everything. The khata he sold to, he won’t confiscate from there. That is the iron law.”
“And there’s another way of dealing. As soon as you arrive at the prison duty office, the dubaks are already appraising all the clothes on you, what you have on. Sometimes a person is dressed very well. Say they picked him up while visiting, or at the cinema, especially in winter. You look, and he’s wearing two or three thousand: a little sheepskin coat, an expensive sable or mink hat, imported boots and suit, or an expensive sweater. Someone with gold teeth, such a person is immediately assigned from the duty office to a lokhmachi cell.”
“Who are they?”
“Lokhmachi, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“There are different cells here. There are cells for lokhmachi. They’re criminals who want to live easy in here. That’s the cell they send those who are dressed too well.”
“And what, do they strip them there?”
“Well, why strip them, stripping is uncultured. Lokhmachi strip you technically. It’s done very simply. The lokhmachi play checkers, dominoes, cards among themselves, anything, as long as it’s a game. They play and play, and he won’t be able to resist, he’ll sit down to play a game with them. The lokhmachi lose to him on purpose, and when they lose, they say they play for stakes. They purposely lose a cigarette to him, then matches. He gets into the gambling spirit, is already happy, and forgets he’s in prison. That’s when they start showing their skill. One plays, and everyone watches, and they all show signs to their man. It’s useless to win against them, and their cards are marked. That’s when they start stripping him.”
“He loses all his clothes, has nothing left to play with, but he wants to win it all back. They start playing for squat-jumps. Lost once, do 50 squat-jumps. You can play on credit, then do the squats later or win them back. He loses several thousand squat-jumps, they tell him: ‘Do these first, then we’ll play more.’”
“He starts bargaining with them, over how much time he’ll have to do them. They tell him a day, though they know no athlete can do that many squats, especially without training. He squats until he can’t get up anymore. And they push him: ‘Come on, come on!’ He’s no longer able not just to squat, but to stand on his feet. Then he starts begging himself: ‘Maybe I can pay with something else?’ Then they offer him, if he has gold crowns, they might knock off a hundred squats per crown, and his debt is still around a thousand squats. Then they immediately force him to write a letter to relatives, to send money to an address they’ll give. Every ten squats, one ruble, and sometimes one squat, one ruble, depending on how you bargain. And he’ll sit in the khata until the money arrives. They won’t transfer him anywhere, the prison administration is mixed up in this.”
“And if the money doesn’t come on time, they start beating him, making him write to other relatives. And when they remove him from the khata, the dubaks take his clothes, and for that they bring tea, vodka, hash.”
“So, never play with anyone for stakes, at anything,” my new acquaintance lectured me, “I’ve only told you superficially. Watch everything yourself, clip everything on the fly, otherwise you won’t get out of here, especially since, as you say, you’re tagged as KGB.”
“And one more thing, never call the cell a cell. In our language, it’s called a khata. You know, like in the song: ‘Real lads we are, prison is our native home.’ And you’re calling the number wrong. Our khata isn’t 53, it’s five-three, and get used to that. If you go, say, to 255, it’ll be two-five-five. That’s so the khatas don’t get mixed up. You’ll have to talk a lot on the telephone here.” I perked up.
“Where’s the telephone here?” He smirked.
“There are several ‘telephones’ here. The first one is that.” He pointed to the hole in the throne.
“If you need to pass something not too important, shout into this pipe. Call out like this, well for example: ‘Eight-five, eight-five,’ – that’s above us, on the third floor, – ’they’ll hear. Look: ‘Eight-five, eight-five, come in,’ he yelled into the hole, then turned to me and said: ‘Now I’ll find out about you.’ After a few seconds, a muffled voice sounded:
“Eight-five listening.”
“Do you have anyone there from Nakhodka?”
“We don’t,” sounded in the pipe, “but we’ll find out now.” We stood and waited. About five minutes later we heard:
“Five-three, five-three.”
“Five-three listening.”
“In nine-one, half the khata is from Nakhodka.”
“Find out, do they know the last name Perchatkin?” About another ten minutes later, it sounded again:
“We’ve heard of such a guy, he was written about in the papers, he’s either a Baptist or a politician, who knows.”
Boris looked at me, laughed: “You see, you can’t fool anyone here, and generally, I noticed right away, you don’t look like a criminal.” He paced around the cell, then took an aluminum mug and said: “And this is another ‘telephone.’ Supper will be soon, we’ll rustle up some sugar.”
He took a pillow, hit the wall with it twice: “Such a knock isn’t heard on the corridor, and we can barely hear it here, but they hear it there.”
An answering knock was heard. My new acquaintance pressed the bottom of the mug to the wall, and began to shout into it, like a megaphone. His voice broke through to us, muffled, as if from underwater. “Five-two, five-two,” he shouted, “there’s two of us here, we’re completely on bare bones. If you have any grev, send something over, at least some sugar.”
Then he turned the mug backside to the wall, pressed his ear to the bottom of the mug, turned the mug again. “I’ve got a ‘Durov’ here rolled up, I’ll send him over, if you have any firewood, send some, I’m out of firewood.” While he was talking on the “telephone,” bowls clattered in the corridor, the feeding hatches in the cells banged open and shut, they were distributing balanda.
“Oh, and another thing,” said Boris, looking at my mattress, which I had thrown onto the top bunk, “if there are spots on the bottom bunk, never throw your mattress on the top one.” He pulled my mattress down and threw it onto the other bunks, on the bottom bunk.
“All sorts of riff-raff sleep on the top bunk, not chushkas, of course, their place is only under the bunks, but, generally, all sorts of riff-raff. You’ve got to sort them out by their mugs.”
The feeding hatch in our door opened too, and a sort of pipe made of galvanized tin appeared in it. Boris grabbed a kettle from the bedside table, ran to the hatch, and held it under the pipe. Cooled down boiling water poured out from it. While the kettle was filling with boiling water, Boris was quietly whispering something into the hatch. The pipe disappeared, the hatch slammed shut, and a few minutes later it opened again. Bread appeared on its shelf. Boris ran up, took the bread, handed it to me to put on the bedside table, and he himself began receiving the balanda and again conducted some sort of negotiations.
A few minutes later we were already eating the balanda. This time the balanda consisted of boiled, stinking, and very sour cabbage and a few small pieces of potato. I fished out the potato, ate it, and said:
“I can’t eat such balanda.”
“That’s because you’re fresh from the outside. A little time will pass, you’ll get skinny, then you’ll eat it. True, when I get a grev from my mother, I don’t eat this balanda either.” I guessed that grev was a package from the outside.
The hatch opened again. A magazine and a small packet fell to the floor. The packet turned out to be sugar. There was half a mug of it. The magazine – “firewood,” I thought, but said nothing.
“We’ll brew tea now. Help me prepare the firewood.” He took the magazine, tore out about ten pages and said:
“Now I’ll teach you how to make firewood. Tea isn’t allowed in prison, let alone burning anything. Only when you go to the throne, do the dubaks permit you to burn a torch, so when you boil tea, there must be no smoke.”
“There are several ways to boil tea without smoke or smell,” he continued, “this one that I’ll show you now is the most economical. Hold the thread taut vertically,” he said, brought the sheet behind the thread, and with deft movements began cutting the paper. He cut each sheet lengthwise into three equal strips. He folded each strip lengthwise, then once more, only across. A triangle was formed. We quickly turned all the paper strips into such triangles.
Boris took his mug. I noticed that the mug handle was wrapped with thick woolen thread. I understood this was insulation, so as not to burn your hand when boiling tea.
The triangles disappeared one after another. When there were three or four left, the water in the mug began to boil. Boris threw a tablespoon of tea into it. There really was no smoke, and almost no smell.
“It happened once, I’m brewing tea, and a dubak opens the hatch and asks something, you answer him, and all the while you keep brewing your tea. You must always be smarter than the dubak, or you won’t survive.”
While we were drinking tea, Boris said:
“Your situation is such that everywhere you find yourself, in any khata, they’ll definitely plant a stoolie on you, so watch closely. The stoolies will change constantly, and there might be more than one in the khata, in case someone sympathizes with you and won’t give them the needed information. Don’t show your mood to anyone. They usually start working you over when you’re in a bad mood. And remember, never, to anyone, admit to anything, even if they catch you red-handed. Let them, the investigators, prove your guilt, and you don’t help them in this. Look them in the eyes and deny everything. Their whole calculation is on the weak-nerved.”
“But how do you identify a stoolie?”
“You don’t identify, you smoke him out – that’s how it’s called in our language. It’s done very simply. They’ll never palm off on you a stoolie who’s in for the first time. Look for her among those who are not on their first walk, like me. Don’t tell anyone what you’re in for, stole a sack of oats, and that’s it, and if someone starts prying, you’ll determine right away from his questions that he knows something about you. Straight in the mug with him, and out of the khata on your boot. The lads will always support you in that.”
“There’s another way to smoke out those who watch you, who pry. A person, when he’s on his first walk, his wife or fiancée, or mother brings him grev, but those like me here, nobody needs them, they have no wife, no fiancée, friends only need them while they’re on the outside. Well, maybe mother will bring something once, if she’s alive, and even then grev is allowed once a month while under investigation. But look, here sits such a demon, not on his first walk, and he has tea, and smokes, and everything, and he’s constantly being called somewhere, to the infirmary, to the lawyer, to the investigator, and from there he always brings something. Usually such guys say that the lawyer or the doctor is a childhood friend, he met him by chance, and he’s the one who warms him up. In reality he visits the kum and writes snitch reports on you. Throw such a one’s mug into the parasha, and out of the khata on your boot.”
We drank the tea. Boris took the remains of the magazine, lay down on his bunk. Thoughts, like wolves, attacked me.
I had been completely cut off from all events since the morning of August 18th. If they took me, who else was taken, or could be taken? Names and faces of those who could be arrested raced through my head. And then it was as if I was scalded with boiling water: “They could arrest Zina too, or maybe she is already somewhere in this prison? Surely they don’t do kaberne to women?” I thought, and did not notice how I got up from the bunk and started walking around the cell.
“Do they do kaberne to women?” I asked Boris.
“Of course they do,” he said without looking up from the magazine, “not to everyone, but they do.”
“And if they arrest a woman, and she has a nursing infant, what happens in that case?”
“Nothing, the child stays with her in the khata up to a year, and after a year it’s sent to a special home for children whose parents are in prison. They can give the child to relatives.”
“Are they kept in a separate cell?”
“No, in a general one, together with everyone else. The child sleeps on the bunks with the mother too.”
“How can that be? They smoke in the cell, and that’s harmful for a child.”
“So what? People smoke in the khata, and there are lice, and cockroaches, and bedbugs.”
“And the floors in the cell are concrete, the child might not withstand it.”
“Well, you’re a strange person, of course, it might not withstand, here every second prisoner who’s on his second walk has tuberculosis, and you’re talking about a child not withstanding.”
I was in shock from such an answer. Before my eyes stood Zina with our newborn daughter, in the same kind of cell as mine. I glanced at my mattress. “Is it possible that she too sleeps on the same bunks, on the same kind of mattress, eats the same balanda? And what about the other children? Where are they?” I thought, “Were they given to my mother, or taken to a children’s home?” I rushed around the cell like an animal in a cage – three steps forward, about-face, another three steps, another about-face. I vividly imagined the terrible picture of what could happen to my family, and even more clearly understood that I was powerless to help.
“Only God can help,” I thought. I did not notice how my feelings shifted into a prayerful state. I continued to rush around the cell, but didn’t notice it. I was praying, praying for Zina, for each of the children, for all who could have been arrested.
“What, did you decide to blast off into space? Worked up such momentum. Why are you running around the khata?”
Boris smirked.
“You know, my wife helped me, and more than once she was put on the KGB’s radar. She was arrested more than once too, like me, but then they let her go. Now I think that if they arrested me, she’s somewhere here too. And we have six children, the youngest daughter was born a week before my arrest.”
At this, Boris also jumped up and started pacing the cell.
“Well now, well now. Of course, your situation is darkness itself, but whether you think about it or not, you won’t change anything. Don’t think about the bad, or you’ll crack up. Think about the good. Everything is fine with your wife and children. You have a mother, some relatives, and you believers, I’ve heard, all help each other. And anyway, arresting a mother of six children, and with a nursing infant… even Hitler probably wouldn’t have dared, so just throw it all out of your head. You conjured up these thoughts yourself. I saw how you were gaining speed through the khata.” A thought flashed through my mind that God Himself had sent me this man. Boris and I walked around the cell, and he kept calming me down.
At that time, another arrested man was brought into the cell.
“Where from, off the transport?” Boris asked him.
“No, transferred from the second block.”
“Why so late? Lights out will be soon.”
“I was at the investigation all day, our khata was broken up, I came back from the investigation, and my mattress was in the corridor. They call me Shurik,” he said and threw his mattress onto the top bunk. He climbed onto the bunks and no longer paid any attention to us. We also immediately forgot about him.
In the morning during the inspection, Shurik asked the dubak for a needle and thread.
“Maybe we’ll have some tea, eh?” suggested Boris, “Help me prepare the firewood.”
“I’m going to sew,” Shurik answered from the bunk.
I started helping Boris. Soon the tea was ready.
“Shurik, climb down, let’s have some tea. Come on,” – here Boris suddenly fell silent, his eyes widened, he nearly dropped the mug of tea, – “Look,” he says, “Shurik’s roof has slid off.”
I looked at Shurik and could not believe my eyes. His mouth was sewn shut with thick, bloody threads. Boris put the mug under the bunks, jumped to the door, and began kicking it.
A minute later the hatch opened. A dubak came running at the noise.
“What are you banging for?” he yelled.
“Call the doctor, a man’s roof has slid off in here.”
“Whose roof has slid off? Yours maybe?”
Just then he was searching with his eyes around the cell. His gaze stopped on Shurik’s lips. He started cursing, whirled around, and ran down the corridor, even forgetting to close the hatch.
But Shurik sat imperturbably on the bunks, his legs tucked under him. He was calm, and only his eyes stared at one point, at the bridge of his own nose. Soon the doctor and the block chief arrived.
“Hey, you idiot, get down from the bunks,” the doctor yelled. Shurik did not react.
“Cut the threads for him,” the block chief advised.
“Am I stupid? He’ll kick me in the mug. Hey you,” he addressed us, “drag him over here.”
We started persuading Shurik to get down from the bunks. Shurik obeyed, got down.
“Idiot, come here,” the doctor yelled again.
“Why ‘come’? You come yourself and cut the threads, or else he’ll tear his own mouth, and he has to answer the investigator, but how will he speak with lips like that? They’ll hold me responsible.”
The doctor came closer and began cutting the threads on Shurik. Shurik did not resist. He was calm. Having carefully cut the threads, the doctor asked:
“What did you do, sew your mouth shut?”
“But Petka told me to.”
“Which Petka?”
“My brother.”
“And where is he, how did he tell you?”
“He came to me on a six-hoofed mare.”
“Where did he come to you from?”
“From the logging camp. He was killed there two years ago by a cable.”
“Everything’s clear,” said the doctor, addressing the block chief, “take him to the madhouse for examination.” Shurik was taken away from us.
“Yesterday he was at the investigation all day,” said Boris, “they probably beat him there and forced him to take on someone else’s crime. Seems some big boss’s son committed the crime, and such people are rarely arrested. They pin their crime on someone else, on someone like Shurik. So he sewed his mouth shut, so he wouldn’t have to answer the investigator. In my opinion, he’s not faking it, his nerves gave out, so he cracked up.”
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