The Monastery, page 53
To tell Afanasiev that they dare not kill Galia?
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Artiom answered himself out loud, for some reason remembering Shlabukovskii.
To kill Burtsev? To call him into this room and choke him?
Madness, madness, madness, what madness.
Someone knocked on the door and it immediately opened. Troianskii’s mother stood in the doorway.
“Forgive me, of course it’s none of my business, but your mother has come to visit you,” she said. “They won’t let her into the monastery here, only Fiodor Ivanovich gave me a pass. You can get a pass in the IID to leave the monastery to see her. Everyone who comes for a visit is put in a barracks not far from the monastery. You can even get permission to spend the night with your family. They have special rooms for inmates.”
Artiom nodded several times: yes, yes, yes. I understand, understand, understand. Good-good-good.
The door closed.
“And then there’s mother, mother, mother,” thought Artiom, clenching his head with all his strength.
When they announced the evening inspection, he wanted to hide and not go, but an unfamiliar duty officer appeared, swore at him horribly, even tried to hit him. Artiom looked at him with slight confusion: what? Have you gone insane?
“I’ll break him into pieces right now and put him into the crate for dry rations,” he imagined tiredly, lazily avoiding the swinging hand of the duty officer.
Artiom hadn’t come up with anything concerning Galia — how would he talk to her anyway? Go to IID and order them: “Get me Galina!” They would definitely let him have it in the teeth.
He didn’t go to his mother either; basically, he knew immediately that there would be no meeting.
The inspection was a general one for all brigades.
The inmates languished. It was a little warmer and yesterday’s snow was forgotten, as though it was an inappropriate dream.
Over their head, young gulls flew. The rare older gulls who were supposed to take the young ones any day now to the south, far away from the nature on Solovki that had gone insane this year, walked around the yard and didn’t waste their energy.
Artiom didn’t know anyone in the brigade in which he stood, taking a place in the second row.
He saw many new faces even in the other brigades — they probably got sent here while he was on Fox Island.
He tried to find Vasilii Petrovich in the twelfth, but instead immediately saw Passport, who saw him too and bared his teeth…
Artiom turned away.
“Why did Galia bring me out here? What can I do here?” He asked himself again, but very weakly, as though his thoughts had gone hoarse. He knew in advance that there would be no answer.
Someone was trying to talk and immediately the guards and the brigade commanders descended on him with their bludgeons bared — they beat him with pleasure, angrily, taking pains.
“Things have gotten stricter,” Artiom understood. He saw everything as though from the side and couldn’t believe that he was the same as all the other inmates. No, he was here by accident and his place was on a small island, where Fura was on the roof, with Krapin and the fox-cook from the gambling den… “Well, I never…” Artiom remembered. “They incarcerated Krapin for shooting up an entire gambling den, and now look… he’s living with the same sort of hustler side by side.”
Artiom shivered, once again remembering where he was, and looked towards the St. Nicholas gates — they were so close! Just a minute’s walk. And then he’d be off to his hut, if only he could find a boat.
One time, Burtsev walked along the line, full of himself and looking at no one.
Galina wasn’t there.
They had been standing an hour already. Many tried to sleep on their feet, leaning with their shoulders against their neighbor. But those looking after general order didn’t like that, and once again someone got it with the bludgeon, someone screamed from the unexpectedness, and the scream was so pitiful that people in the lineup laughed — it was funny, after all, when it was so unexpectedly painful for someone.
Another hour and a half later, Nogtev appeared. Artiom couldn’t make him out at all — it was noticeably darker already.
The head of the camp loudly greeted the inmates of Solovki.
“Good!” they all yelled not together.
Artiom didn’t yell.
Nogtev, evidently, remained unsatisfied with the greeting. He waved at some Chekist, who greeted the inmates one more time instead of him. “Good!” they all yelled again, a little better. Two, “Good!” Three, “Good!” all the gulls flew up as the guards ran along the lines searching for those who were not yelling with enough enthusiasm, and Artiom started to open his mouth and whisper out “Good…” just in case, or perhaps there was a snitch nearby…? Who cares, he still wouldn’t stay here… but the tenth time, Artiom decided to scream and on the twentieth time, it all turned out really well, but to make it stick, they yelled another twelve times and thus the greeting was concluded.
They were so tired that they were ready to lie down and fall asleep in the courtyard.
The third hour of the inspection began.
Nogtev walked along the line in a sprawling gait, from time to time pointing at someone with his revolver; then that inmate would be pulled out by the scruff and immediately taken away. Evidently, some people got immediate solitary for infractions known only to the head of the camp.
“Put your beard higher, priest, you’ll see your God soon,” Nogtev bid Father Zinovii farewell on his way to the common labors.
Zinovii blinked often and kept whispering something.
It was the second brigade’s turn.
Artiom decided not to look at Nogtev. He looked at the back of the neck of the inmate standing in front of him.
“Who here is going to the guard-less research trip?” Nogtev asked in a bass voice.
Troianskii was pushed out of line. Then they pushed him painfully in the back, and he, finally, said, “Me.”
“Oh dear, Osip’s here too,” Artiom only then recognized him, but he didn’t look at his former neighbor. He froze in place and didn’t breathe, so no one would notice, distinguish, remember him.
“If you’re not back by November 7, I’ll shoot every tenth person in your brigade,” Nogtev said to Troianskii directly into his face. “Got it?”
Troianskii was again poked in the back, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember with what letter the proper answer began, and they all poured out of him mixed up, confused, and very fast, “You.. bz… Yes!”
Nogtev walked on, from brigade to brigade, with humorous catchphrases and swear words coming out all the while, but at the same time boringly and drearily holding court — it all smelled of sorrow and emotional debauchery.
The submissive and oppressed look of the inmates loudly proclaimed that such inspections and personnel shake-ups had happened already more than once.
“… Such a person would easily shoot from his revolver at the newly-arrived work groups,” Artiom suddenly remembered.
During the fourth hour, an uneasy pilot joined the rump of Nogtev’s posse, and at the first available glance of the head of the camp, he shyly pointed at his watch.
He commanded them all to disperse.
For some time, everyone still stood: was it a joke? They’re not going to push up back to our sleeping quarters with bludgeons?
Finally, not recognizing their own feet, the inmates, confused and bunching up, went each to his sleeping quarters.
Artiom also, trying to be inconspicuous and hurrying, moved in the direction of his room; to see both Passport and Shaferbekov, he had neither the strength nor the desire, but he didn’t know how he would deal with Troianskii — would they come back for their last night or not?
As he was entering the abbot’s wing, the duty officer caught him by the sleeve.
“Goriainov? You’re ordered to go to IID,” he called it “eye-eye-deez,” tripping on the “z” with uneasiness, as though he guessed that letter wasn’t necessary, but not knowing how to end on a vowel.
“What’s going on now?” Artiom was slightly uneasy. “Not Burtsev, I hope…? I didn’t do anything, did I…?”
“No, of course not,” he answered himself habitually. “You’ve only deserved to sit the rest of your time on Sekirka…”
In IID, unexpectedly, several windows were illumined — either Burtsev’s meticulousness had forced his new colleagues to work longer hours, or the new head of the camp required it of them; maybe it was both.
He announced himself to the duty officer; he felt a bit sick from worry.
A soldier came out to lead the inmate upstairs.
Second floor. Third. Galia’s office.
He opened the door, asked, “Can we come in?” And pushed in Artiom.
Galia sat at her desk.
Looking at her now, he once again forgot to even think about the fact that this was the woman who…
In the room, it was dark. The white nights and white evenings had finished, and the single weak lamp didn’t give the room enough illumination.
Artiom had never been here this late.
“Bastard, why won’t you go visit your mother?” the question came immediately. Galia spoke through her teeth, as though she were letting out the words with difficulty. “Jackal! Do you have a conscience?”
“Why can’t you open your mouth?” thought Artiom, making a face. “I know how it opens for you…”
He stood at the door still.
“Sit on the stool,” said Galia and got up.
He walked to her desk and saw that under the glass there was now neither one nor the other portrait — only some papers with writing. Her hand was elegant and easy to read.
“Too bad I can’t read upside down,” Artiom was almost seriously upset. “What if this is written there: ‘Assign a date for Goriainov’s execution’ with three question marks?”
Galia drank some water — she was trying to calm down.
“You’re not at all ashamed, Tiom?” she asked in a completely different voice. “Before your own mother?”
He didn’t want to talk about it so much that he actually felt sick from it. He didn’t even want to remember it; he hadn’t remembered it once during his entire time at Solovki.
And his mother’s arrival was unnecessary also, because it was simultaneously a remembrance and an echo — and why? And why?
But he couldn’t avoid answering Galia’s question, especially in her office, where in one of the cabinets, his own file lay, and, probably, all the accusations from snitches. He had enough of those to cut off a single, huge life with a single, small death.
“No, I’m not ashamed,” he said, feeling no saliva in his mouth, making his words dry and cracking.
“How? How did this happen?”
Artiom swallowed his saliva — oh, can’t she understand the inappropriateness of such questions and all this emotional conversation in prison, in her office, where people sometimes break backbones and crush internal organs…
“My mother, my brother… and I… came home… from our dacha. My brother got sick, and we came back to the city in the middle of August, unexpectedly.” He started talking as though it was a duty that needed to be done quickly. “I walked in first. My father was with a woman. He was naked… We started screaming at each other… screaming, helter-skelter… my father was drunk and he grabbed a knife, my brother was shrieking, my mother reached to choke the woman, the woman also attacked my mother, I attacked my father, my father attacked the women… and in that confusion…” Here Artiom grew silent, because he had said everything.
“You killed your father because of the insult to your mother?” Galia asked one more time, her brows knitted.
Artiom once again made a pained face, as though there wasn’t too little light, but too much, more than the human eye could bear.
“That woman… It wasn’t so much that I was upset that he was with her… It was horrible that he was naked… I killed my father for his nakedness.”
Artiom suddenly spread his knees and let a long, sticky string of saliva fall on the floor. He didn’t wipe it off.
Galia looked at all this, but said nothing.
She truly needed to understand Artiom.
“There is nothing in your file about any woman,” she said quietly.
“I said nothing during my interrogation about the woman,” said Artiom.
Galia yelped from her chair: “What do you mean? Why not?”
“My mother said nothing either — she was ashamed… before people. She’s stupid.”
“What about you? Do you have a brain?” Galia asked, her eyes wide. Artiom naturally understood what she was on about. If she and his mother had said that there was a woman involved that could have changed the verdict. The only thing was, he didn’t want to tell Galia that not only was his mother ashamed. He was ashamed too, only not before other people. But before whom, Artiom didn’t know. Maybe before the father he killed…?
There was no answer to her question, and who needed it anyway? Artiom definitely didn’t.
“Yes,” he said to Galia to conclude the conversation.
He kept thinking about whether or not it was a good time to talk about all the insane stories of Afanasiev.
During the evening inspection, seeing Nogtev, it suddenly seemed completely impossible to Artiom — everything that the red-head had been saying on Fox Island. What seizing of artillery? What flight? There were armed soldiers all around. What? Was Burtsev going to pull out his revolver and take them all prisoner? Insanity!
Tomorrow morning the ship would leave and, by the way, take Troianskii with it, and there would be nothing for the conspirators to seize and everything that so sickened and tortured Artiom would end up a fantasy of the red-headed fantasist, whose brain had been blown away by the winds of Solovki.
But at least he should say something about Burtsev — that he knows everything about them.
And also not to forget to speak about Avdei Sivtsev and Zahar, so that she would do something and let them both go.
What should he start with?
“Galia, you need to know,” Artiom began and immediately, dumbfounded by the sound of firing somewhere either very close or on the next floor down, he jumped up, dropping his stool…
“Sit down!” yelled Galia, more in habit, as she screamed at many who ended up in her office.
“It’s begun!” the thought rattled in Artiom’s head. “They’ve decided to do it!”
“Galia, stop!” he called, running up to the doors. “It’s a conspiracy! They’re trying to escape!”
“Shut up!” looking back at him with a twisted face, she almost shrieked, like a peck across his forehead, and went into the corridor.
In the corridor, the Chekists were yelling in different voices, like they would in a fire.
“He’s here! Here! Ready!”
“Dead?”
“Dead?”
“Is he dead?”
“Wounded! He almost got Tkachuk, the bastard!”
Artiom walked around the room several times — what should he do? Where should he go? Whose side was he on?”
In a minute, a pale, but calm Galia returned, with a darkened look. She put her revolver back in its drawer.
“They’ve arrested Burtsev in his office. He shot at them. Now they’ve gone to the sleeping quarters. They’re going to arrest some more people. I know nothing about all this. Go back and spend the night in your room; tomorrow I’m sending you back to Fox Island. I’ll get a soldier right now.”
The soldier accompanied him only to the exit of the IID building.
It smelled of weapons, powder, nervousness, insanity, fear, whitewash pierced with bullets.
Every Chekist that ran past Artiom looked him in the face, as though they were suspecting him of being a detailed conspirator.
“We need to get all the files from his office,” two of them were saying to each other as they rose up the stairs. Artiom guessed that they were speaking about Burtsev, about all the material he had gathered on them.
Afanasiev had been right, right, right.
There were unexpectedly many Chekists in the building, as though they had all come out of their cabinets, underneath tables, from behind couches, where they were all hiding.
“Who is that?” yet more devils in leather jackets asked the soldier.
Artiom started. The Chekists were looking for people to kill.
“He’s coming from an interrogation, they told me to let him go,” answered the soldier.
They kicked Artiom outside.
The Transfiguration church was filled with screams, as though monkeys had gotten in and were being beaten with whips all along the sleeping bunks and walls.
Black, leaning on his front paws, was fiercely barking in the direction of the church.
Sometimes soldiers ran along the courtyard.
Artiom hurried in the direction of the abbot’s wing, but from there, walking towards him, they were pulling out a priest by his hair, while inside the building someone was screaming as though his most painful members were being crushed in a door… it’s possible that’s exactly what was happening.
The Chekist who was pulling the priest was drunk. Without releasing the hair from his fist, he vomited on the stones of the courtyard and then pulled his prisoner through that foul puddle. The long beard of the priest was unnaturally twisted and visibly heavy, as though it were made, not of hairs, but some boneless part of the body.
Artiom realized that the beard was soaked in blood like a soapy mop. Blood flowed from his mouth, his nose, his forehead, his ears.
Taking a step back, Artiom looked around in painful and sluggish indecision — where should he go? He couldn’t go into the abbot’s wing — they’d kill him there without asking who he was and whose neck he breathed on last night.
Why did he not go to his mother? He’d be on her knees right now.
“The wood stores!” someone suggested to him, and he trusted him.
Along the wall, avoiding the light of the lanterns, Artiom ran to the wood piles, his breathing ragged, breathing like he was crying.
