The Monastery, page 31
Eichmanis nodded in his way.
Artiom thought that this nod could mean anything — it could mean, for example, that the head of the camp appreciated the wit of the old man, or that he was offering him to keep talking until they led him under the retail store, where he belonged.
Eichmanis looked at Artiom, and for a moment he regretted that he didn’t leave; however, now it was too late to move.
The head of the camp looked at him as though he had only now discerned him amid the surrounding nature.
“Father Feofan,” said Eichmanis, not taking his eyes from Artiom. “Why don’t you bring us a pair of mugs?”
Artiom didn’t look away and looked right back at him calmly, barely smiling.
“How strange it is to hear ‘Father Feofan’ from his mouth,” thought Artiom slowly, without moving. Something was going to happen right now.
“Go get it,” said Eichmanis to the soldier.
He untied the bag that he had brought with him and got a bottle of vodka out.
“Anything to eat with it?” he asked quietly.
Eichmanis barely noticeably and with slight impatience shook his head, which was interpreted thus: no, get it over here quickly.
Father Feofan brought out two mugs, having hung them by the handles on his wonderfully long and seemingly burnt trigger finger, which, to top it off, was crowned with a bony and twisted nail.
He didn’t take them off his finger, just stuck them under the bottle of vodka. Only when each was filled to the brim did he careful pull of the outer one and give it to Eichmanis.
“Artiom, come here,” the head of the camp called. “You’re not allowed, soldiers,” he added, looking at the soldiers, though they hadn’t even hoped to be included in such company.
Artiom accepted the invitation with external calmness, but inside everything was rejoicing.
“Feofan here doesn’t drink,” added Eichmanis, raising his squinting gaze at the old man. “Or have you started?”
The old man didn’t smile, nor did he answer, only curtly and indeterminately rocked his head.
“I know you monks,” said Eichmanis. “You always prepared your home brew out of the berries. Sinners!”
“It happened,” Father Feofan answered calmly.
Eichmanis downed his mug without clinking Artiom’s. Then, not looking at him, he extended his hand. Artiom quickly figured out what the gesture meant and gave him the bunch of rowan berries. Eichmanis, contentedly nodding, pulled off one berry and ate it.
Artiom also drank without closing his eyes — he couldn’t miss a thing.
Eichmanis lifted his empty mug and Father Feofan also figured out what to do and offered him his long finger. The head of the camp once again put the mugs on his finger.
“Twenty-five years on Solovki.” Eichmanis nodded at Feofan, though he was speaking to Artiom. “It’s your twenty-fifth, right?” Father Feofan blinked his heavy eyelids in assent. “Four years he was in the monastery, then he came out here… to Letter Muksol’ma… He built himself a hut and began to… combine his labors of prayer…” here Eichmanis pulled off another berry from Artiom’s bunch of berries and threw it in his mouth. “… with fishing and hunting sea beasts… and when the Bolsheviks appeared, he didn’t leave this place. All he started to do was smoke baccy. For him, as a specialist,” Eichmanis smiled, not so much at either Feofan or Artiom, but rather at the pleasant alcoholic warmth in his chest and head, “we’ve assigned eighteen silver rubles as a salary… He continues to do what he did before — he fishes, hunts, gives the kitchens of Solovki its fish and the farms their seal meat. Our pigs eat it. That’s why I call him ‘the old man of the seals’. And he answers. Do you still go to the chapel to this day, old man of the seals?”
“Why should it stand empty?” answered Father Feofan simply.
“Does Gorshkov pray with you at least?” Eichmanis asked.
“He hasn’t been noticed,” answered Father Feofan, provoking the head of the camp to laugh from the bottom of his heart.
The camp leader’s laugh was not very pleasant, but Artiom also laughed — a little quieter than Eichmanis, but a little louder than the soldiers who stood nearby.
“Go, Artiom, get your assignment,” said Eichmanis.
In Feofan’s hut, all the vessels were handmade. In the icon corner, there was an entire iconostasis — the “Burning bush”, the “Mother of God of the Firs”, the “Mother of God that Comforts my Sorrows”, and several “Kazan Mothers of God”. Seal skins were drying on the walls. The smell was heavy, muggy, but it didn’t smell of man and that was good. The icons in all this indestructible and heavy fish-smell had a strange effect. Artiom thought that if he were to carry the smallest “Kazan” icon from here to another house, then the entire house would smell of fish in a single hour. From the farthest chest to its very foundation. You would pull out your lace cuffs and you would jump in surprise, as though a fish had put them on for its fishy holidays.
… They didn’t let them rest — what was the point of resting anyway, when they hadn’t started working yet.
Until the evening, the inmates dug holes wherever Eichmanis indicated.
At first, they would unearth one place, then move a half a kilometer, then do the same thing.
Kurez-shah and Kabir-shah’s job became clear very soon — it turned out that they were both draftsmen. They were given a meter-stick, a pair of binoculars, an old map and they were sent without guards to study the local area. Judging by everything, they were going to make a new and very detailed map.
Artiom worked deftly, quickly, even with pleasure; he didn’t show any tiredness. Eichmanis noticed this, Artiom was sure of it and for that reason he started working even harder.
Mitya Schelkachov, on the other hand, was constantly getting tired. He was a Petrograd lad, booking and not used to physical labor.
The third inmate, though very young, was also remarkable for his peasant way of working and his quiet constancy in work. His name was Zahar.
What they were all doing Artiom only guessed when the sun was already setting and his back, wet from sweat, began to get cold.
They were looking for old monastic treasure.
… He guessed, but he told no one.
“This place had always been a slaughterhouse, that’s why the monks didn’t leave. They’re used to it!” Eichmanis laughed, following Father Feofan with his gaze.
Father Feofan didn’t have lunch with everyone else. He thanked them and said that he had to go check the tackle.
Eichmanis didn’t argue with him.
It seemed that Eichmanis was drunk, though it was an unusual drunkenness that did not remind Artiom of his father’s dark alcoholism.
At first glance, there were no signs that the head of the camp was drunk, except maybe that his skin was a little paler and his eyes heavier. His speech was still well-formed. The only thing that surprised him was that he spoke a lot more.
Now they were sitting on the shore and eating: Artiom, the two soldiers, the inmates… Artiom sat closest to Eichmanis.
The soldiers wisely held themselves at a distance and from time to time looked at Artiom with displeasure: he had settled himself in definitively. Whenever he’d notice any disorder on the tablecloth, Artiom would slice either some more sausage or some more greens. The soldiers didn’t like his high-handedness, nor did they like that he was holding a knife in his hand. But it was inappropriate to put a prisoner in his place when he was invited to eat by the head of the camp.
Eichmanis, from time to time, nodded at the empty glasses, then Artiom would pour vodka for himself and Fiodor Ivanovich. The rest either immediately refused or it wasn’t even offered to them.
Kurez-shah and Kabir-shah didn’t even dare sit at the self-styled table in the presence of the head of the camp — as it was, they awkwardly crouched and kept getting up at Eichmanis’s slightest movement.
Even when he started to talk, they got up, as though they could not even imagine that you could listen to such a big leader while seated.
Eichmanis saw this with the corner of his eyes and it seemed he was enjoying it, but he didn’t let it show.
Schelkachov and the other young inmate also tried to sit in a way that wouldn’t block Eichmanis’s view of the water or irritate the soldier with their closeness to the authorities.
From time to time, Artiom, by what right no one knew, took from the tablecloth either a piece of sausage or a cucumber, or a piece of bread and passed some of it off to Mitya.
Mitya shared it with his comrade and they chewed very slowly and silently.
Artiom had a high tolerance for alcohol. If anything made him drunk, it was the ecstatic madness of this situation.
He terribly wanted everyone to see this. And mentally Artiom counted off the list of everyone: Afanasiev… Burtsev… Sivtsev… the Cossack Lazhechnikov… the Chechens and the gangsters… Grakov, of course. Curly and Krapin… Doctor Ali! And that bitch Galina too…
For some reason he didn’t want Osip or Boris Lukianovich to witness the proceedings, but Artiom didn’t start contemplating that topic and just mentally deleted them from the list of names called to witness the feast.
Vasilii Petrovich was still up in the air, and Artiom, in his blessed contemplations, either sat him across from himself or got rid of him entirely.
This was perhaps the first time during his time at Solovki that Artiom was truly happy. Then there was that sun, right in his eyes. All that smell of smoked sausage — he didn’t hurry to give too much of it to Mitya, though he tried not to think about that, instead eating as much of it as possible himself, thrilled with its natural delight.
The soldiers, in addition to everything else, also, evidently, wanted some sausage, but you can’t just walk back and forth in front of Eichmanis to grab stuff from the tablecloth. They took an egg each and some fish — and he, content with that, comrade soldiers!
Eichmanis himself ate little, following each shot either with some dill or parsley. Squinting at the sun, he said, “The monastery: over a kilometer in circumference, walls a height of nine meters, six meters thick. Eight towers. A fortress! A monk-stonemason had made niches in the wall and inside the towers; at first, they wanted to use them to store powder and ammunition, but then they changed their mind and did something else. They used those niches for prisoners! Each niche was two steps by three steps. A stone bench and that’s it. You slept half-bent! The window was three timber frames and two bars. Eternal half-darkness. And a chain on the wall, to boot… No royal pardons were every given to Solovetsian prisoners. No amnesty…! They couldn’t correspond with their families! Their terms were thus — ‘for all time’, ‘until correction’, or ‘until the end of his life nowhere and interminably’. Eh? Nowhere and interminably!”
Eichmanis chewed some parsley together with the stem and sucked his teeth.
“And they had underground prisons!” He said quietly and clearly, turning to Artiom, though Artiom felt that Mitya Schelkachov, sitting behind him, was listening with all his strength. “Do you know how they looked? The roof was the floor of a threshold. In that roof, there was a crack — to pass down food. The defrocked priest Ivan Buianovskii was imprisoned in 1722 — Peter imprisoned him — and in 1751 he was still in prison! Thirty years! The rats ate off his ear! One of the guards felt sorry for him and gave Buianovskii a stick to beat off the rats — well, they beat that guard with whips…! The underground prison, a huge one, as they wrote then, ‘horribly frightening, completely soundless’ — was found in the north-west corner of the Korozhansk tower. Under the exit threshold of the Dormition Church was Saltykov’s prison. There was one more hole in the ground in Golovlenkov’s Tower at the Archangels’ Gates. The Cellar Prison was under the kitchen cellar. The Transfiguration Prison was under the Cathedral of the Transfiguration… How did they feed them? Water, bread, rarely some cabbage soup and kvass. They insisted that no fish should ever be given to them to eat!”
Artiom looked at the tablecloth and took a fish tail just in case, then sucked on it, deferentially looking at Eichmanis.
“Do you know what happened later?” said Eichmanis. “The Synod forbade underground prisons — too cruel! But the monks of Solovki didn’t fill them up! Why? It was convenient! You never had to carry out the latrines! I tell you, it was always a slaughterhouse here! Our Father Feofan had nowhere to go! You won’t scare Solovki with a prison.”
Artiom really wanted to ask: if it was a slaughterhouse before, then, does that mean that Fiodor Ivanovich considers it to still be a slaughterhouse?
But he didn’t ask that. He wasn’t an idiot.
Gorshkov arrived on a horse, heavily dismounting to the ground.
You could tell by his look that he had spent no less than half the night with Eichmanis at the same table.
“Sit down, Gorshkov,” said Eichmanis.
He sat down, looking at Artiom with surprise, who this time poured the vodka without being asked.
Gorshkov was, as most other Chekists were, a fat-faced, large fellow. Their breed, Artiom had long noticed, had amazing cheeks — such a cheek you definitely could not pinch. The meat on those cheeks was tight, hardened in constant work, as though these mugs only did one thing — sucked the marrow out of the toughest bones.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Eichmanis to Artiom, once again drinking without clinking classes and paying absolutely no attention to Gorshkov. “You’re thinking, in what way does our version differ from the previous? Do you know the answer or should I tell you?”
“I know it,” said Artiom.
“Is that so? Tell me,” commanded Eichmanis.
Gorshkov — he also led with his cheek in Artiom’s direction.
“If I say it wrong, he’ll bite my neck,” Artiom understood. “Then they’ll fry me up and eat me.”
“It’s not a prison here,” Artiom answered firmly. “Here, they create a factory for people. Back then, people were put in underground holes and held, like worms, in the earth until they died. Here, a choice is given — either you become a person, or…”
“Aha, or we’ll grind you to powder,” added Eichmanis. “Do you truly think that?”
Artiom became sober. In his ears was a slight ringing. The day around them was also ringing — all the trees, movements of air, voices of birds.
One of the soldiers broke a branch nearby. He was preparing the bonfire.
“I think you have a government within a government here,” said Artiom. “Your own dominion, your own kremlin. Your own palace, your own monks. Your own army, your own money. Your own newspaper, your own magazine. Your own means of production. Your own hairdressers and courtesans. Your own executioners.” Here Gorshkov twitched his cheek and looked at Eichmanis, but he didn’t react. Artiom continued, “Your own theaters, your own servants, and, finally, your own inmates… As I was entering, I heard that they yelled to us, ‘Here it’s not the Soviet government, but the government of Solovki.’ That’s true. The religion here is common — a Soviet one, but the religious offerings are personal. And on all this, you create a new man. It’s civilization!”
Artiom fell silent and sat looking at the tablecloth, not daring to lift his gaze at Eichmanis. But unexpectedly, Eichmanis laughed.
“And our own language too, yes? Little by little, we’re developing our own tongue here.” It wasn’t clear whether or not Eichmanis was joking, and Artiom nodded, just in case. “A mix of the criminal and the aristocratic, Bolshevik newspeak and the lexicon of the White Army officer, the languages of actors and prostitutes. ‘Everything is confused: the nobleman’s coat, the peasant’s kaftan, and the blouse!’ Maybe Kurez-shah and Kabir-shah will add something of their own. What do you say, you innocent victims of the Bolshevik dictatorship?”
Kurez-shah and Kabir-shah nodded.
Eichmanis watched this unquestioning agreement for a few seconds with obvious pleasure, then became suddenly serious, and, turning to Artiom, continued crisply, “We have our own class system, our own class hatred, and even our own social structure — something, I think, similar to militant communism. There’s a pyramid — we, the Chekists, are on top. Then the counter-revs, then the former clerics, priests and monks. On the bottom is the criminal element — the backbone of our workforce. Our proletariat. True, it’s been de-classed and demoralized, but we are obligated to reeducate it and raise it up again.”
“Why are the counter-revs placed so high, Comrade Eichmanis?” Gorshkov unexpectedly spoke.
“Who’s in charge of the scientific research?” Eichmanis answered quickly. “The bourgeois intelligentsia and the former counter-revolutionaries. Who acts in the theater? The same. Who organizes all the activities in the club, who organizes the educational work in classes, who gives the lectures…?”
Eichmanis turned away from Gorshkov and finished his thought, looking Artiom in the eyes: “This is not a camp. It’s a laboratory!”
Artiom woke up at night with that wonderful feeling when you don’t know where you are sleeping, but you remember that nothing frightening, you think, is going to happen — quite the opposite, in fact.
It was half-dark in the hut, but in a minute, Artiom could discern the eyes of the Kazan Mother of God, who watched the white night without blinking.
Having stepped over Mitya and Zahar, he went into the yard.
Having heard a noise, Kabir-shah immediately awoke and sat up — you could see the frightened whites of his eyes in the half-murk.
“They’re shining just like the icon, you heathen,” Artiom thought sarcastically, but aloud said, “It’s just me. Go to sleep. It’s still night.”
Gorshkov’s window was alight again; it seemed half-open — the voices came through very clearly. Who or what was talking wasn’t immediately obvious, but you could discern a frequent laughter that was Eichmanis, barking fiercely, as though mocking.
Forgetting where the outhouse was, Artiom sprinkled the corner of the house.
“Like a dog,” he thought, yawning.
His head was especially clear — whatever he drank didn’t stay in the body. He had dug hard, sweated, drunk a lot of water and in the evening, he had even bathed, though the water was autumnally cold.
