The Monastery, page 55
Artiom knew that she was looking, but he didn’t turn around.
His fingers were cramping, and he tried to clench and unclench them.
A crust of someone else’s dried blood cracked on his fingers.
“We need to bring back the shovels and… you know… ask what’s next,” said Sivtsev in the monastery’s courtyard.
Artiom didn’t care — if they had to bring them back, then they had to bring them back — he remembered for sure that he would survive today.
“… A Russian muzhik,” he thought only, “buried a body, asked, ‘What next?’ And if they told him, ‘Dig him up again!’ he would do it.”
They returned to the sauna.
Inside was the sound of pained female moans, as though it wasn’t a man who raped each of them, but a demon with charred black balls and a bull’s member — thin, as long as one and a half bayonets, slimily crawling out from the depths of the stomach somewhere, full of worms and festering foulness.
Artiom remembered how one morning, instead of “God save the Tsar,” the Spasskaia Tower suddenly rang with the “Internationale”. He had sharply sat up on his bed and looked at his parents, who were already awake.
“Look out the window,” his father had said jokingly to his mother, “maybe the sun’s come up angular too.”
Now, it wasn’t so much a dream as reverie that the tower, continually transforming into the burned-out Transfiguration Cathedral, played some new, shrieking music, like a wainwright’s wheel, and behind that music, barely keeping up, a drum hurried, pushing out its tight cheeks and slapping itself out of rhythm on its exposed Chekist stomach.
On the cart, lying in a heap, were a bunch of naked priestlings. Behind the cart ran a donkey tied to it. On its neck a bell tinkled occasionally.
Artiom slept little and came awake slowly, feeling a huge, boiling headache that was bigger than his own head.
It was a comical likeness to another awakening in the very first years of the twenties, when Artiom and his friends had gone to his dacha, had drunk far too much there and started a fire that they barely put out in their drunken stupor — the cover of the piano had a frightful hole burned into it which revealed the strings, his father’s favorite rug on the wall, which he had brought from Kazan, was scorched. The ceiling was blackened, the china was shattered and crunched under their feet — his grandmother’s inheritance, as well as a crystal vase, a milk jug and soup bowls from Muir and Merrilee’s. To prevent them from choking, someone very decisively had broken the window with a chair and it was stuck with its legs outside, its back still in the room.
Artiom thought then, overcoming his alcoholic nausea and finding, with some surprise, that he was wearing a raccoon fur coat, that if he would hang himself in the midst of their small, pleasant sitting room in his fur coat, the spectacle would be complete.
Today, also, Artiom felt a natural kind of hangover, as though he had fallen into a nine-day drunken bender, and now, on the tenth day, he was crawling out from under ice, shaking, insane, trying to hold on to its hard, crusty edge.
His eyes ached. His hands woodenly shook. His mouth was dry. His clothing was incomparably dirty and foul-smelling.
When he appeared after the inspection, Troianskii’s mother sat at her son’s feet. Osip slept. She probably thought that Artiom had crawled out of a grave, because it was cold and uncomfortable there, while it was warm and clean in the room.
Artiom lay under the covers in his clothing and shoes and pulled up his knees, as he did in childhood, up to his stomach.
The Troianskiis probably left at dawn; he was insensate and heard nothing.
It’s possible that they, having a pass in their hands, had decided to wait for the ship “Gleb Bokii’s” departure in port, to avoid going to the morning inspection.
The hours that for years were passed under the ringing of the Spasskaia Tower lined up in Artiom’s head, saying clearly that any minute now, less than a minute, the horrifying siren will scream the wakeup call.
It seemed now that they drove out everyone for the morning line-up — even those brigades who began work at eight, or even nine.
He had to somehow explain and justify the past night, so that he could find the strength to get up and the will to live and watch.
He found neither the strength nor the will, only a loud, insistent pain pressing against the inside of his skull. Artiom would have squeezed his ears with his fingers if he believed that his fingers were capable of unclenching.
Having overcome nothing inside himself, he still got up somehow and slowly sat up in his bed. In his head, yesterday’s blood water in the vat was slowly pouring back and forth. His sheet, Artiom noticed, was almost black and wet as though a cow with a sick, bloody moth had been chewing it.
“Did they shoot Afanasiev too?” Artiom asked himself. It turned out he was capable of thinking in a whisper. “They were also supposed to shoot him. I was probably walking over an earth-covered grave, and he was lying underneath.”
Artiom wasn’t able to think about all this coherently for a long time, as though a hole formed in his soul, like in that piano, and if he were to go outside, snow would fall onto the exposed strings, his very soul. If you pressed a key, a sound would come out — short, strange, gravelly, immediately cut off.
The siren sounded, long and always unexpected — it bored into one of his temples and, with a bony drill bit on the sharp end, pushed its way through the other side of his skull, still spinning.
“Get up!” Someone yelled somewhere in the building, as though someone had unexpectedly poured a full bucket of leeches onto his exposed groin.
Artiom could only restore his understanding of the world with his own voice and through his own rational speech.
Several times, he breathed in and out. Having teased at the skin on his forehead and clenched his jaw muscles, he finally opened his eyes. He clenched his fists with force, then unclenched them, taming the shakes. He stomped his shoes on the floor. He licked his lips, as though he were getting ready to sing.
“Good morning, Artiom,” he said to himself. “You’re alive. And now you will continue to live.”
His sleep-deprived eyes burned; in each of them, they had lit a candle, and the hot wax melted into his sockets. His head felt as though it were bandaged with coarse sand paper; a crazy janitor with bestial strength had wrapped it.
As much as he could, he also breathed in and slowly breathed out through his nose.
“If everything had worked out for Burtsev yesterday…” Artiom began with cutting hatred directed at himself.
He needed to overcome that hatred and take his medicine…
“If everything had worked out for him, then Galia would be lying in that hole in the ground. And if I was found in Galia’s office, I’d be there too. They would have buried me next to Galia,” said Artiom and got up.
The inspection passed as though quotidian, and the sleepy people all stood silently. Everyone, as much as possible, pretended that the empty spaces in the line-up were no reason to wonder or ask where this one or that one went.
Afanasiev wasn’t there.
Artiom, over and over again, caught quick glances inside the lines. It seemed that the prisoners, today more than any other day, wanted to quickly get to work at the farthest possible work sites.
Tkachuk walked amongst the work group, looking for someone.
“Is he really looking for me?” Artiom thought, feeling as though his heart were falling down and turning into a piece of salted beef.
Tkachuk was springy, wide-faced and wide-hipped, quick in his movements, pink and fresh, as though, while Artiom lay in place for an hour and a half in a catatonic state, he had slept for three full nights without waking up, as in a bear lair under seven layers of snow.
“What a strong race they are,” thought Artiom without any respect, only pain.
“I’ll need you again today,” Tkachuk pointed at Artiom with his large fingers. “I’ve told the work assignment clerk already. Wait in IID so I don’t have to look for you.”
Next to the building, Zahar and Avdei Sivtsev were waiting, for they knew not what. Both of them had a sickly color to their face, their lips caked up, their eyes shadowed in black.
They didn’t say hello. Either they didn’t feel like they had ever parted, or a greeting would have too obviously given meaning to their communal work of yesterday, and who needed to remember that?
Artiom sat on the ground.
Zahar and Avdei stood next to him, tortured by cold expectation and simultaneously not wanting anyone to remember their existence.
“I don’t even know what’s worse — solitary or here,” said Sivtsev, chewing his lips.
Since the morning, Black seemed beside himself. He didn’t come up to anyone and seemed to be looking for someone.
“They’re pushing our brigade for the second day straight, so that no one else would see anything. Does that mean they’re going to bury us at the end of it?” Sivtsev asked, looking at Artiom. He spoke strangely, making his words sound like jesters.
“Where’s Galia?” thought Artiom, looking at Black. “Get me out of here immediately, Galia!”
Gorshkov appeared. He looked a little worse than Tkachuk, but also not bad — washed, shaved, well-fed. Not looking at those who stood in the department of grave-digging, he jumped into the doorway, but immediately, remembering something, returned.
He walked up to Artiom, who immediately got up.
“If you tell Eichmanis that we were laughing at him here, you’ll end up in yesterday’s hole in the ground,” Gorshkov whispered in his ear.
“You weren’t laughing at him,” Artiom quietly answered, looking away.
Having blown his nose onto the stones of the yard, Gorshkov left.
On the back of his boot was a bloody blob — Artiom had washed that one badly.
Black, who had been planning something for a long time and was accordingly acting strangely, suddenly contrived to jump up and catch a gull. It screamed, calling its friends for help, but the maddened dog, helping himself with his paws, soon bit through its head and in a minute didn’t so much eat the bird as tear it into pieces.
Everything around them was covered in feathers and small bird innards.
No one decided to shoo Black away; the rest of the gulls just screamed with their full bird voices and flew sharp zigzags in the air, made miserable by the treachery of the dog and yesterday’s shooting and the sharp change in weather — three days ago it was still warm, and yesterday there was snow, and today was an indeterminate, windy haze — they needed to get out of here immediately — and here one of the oldest gull’s was torn to shreds!
The soldiers hurriedly bustled back and forth, Tkachuk looked outside and again walked back into the building, someone uttered the last name of the new head of the camp, and Artiom realized that Nogtev had arrived from Kemi.
In his leather coat, the head of the camp walked out into the yard — Black seemed to be waiting for him — tearing from his place, he hurled himself at Nogtev.
The head of the camp was quicker than the soldier accompanying him, who only managed to get his rifle off his shoulder. With the first shot of the revolver he deftly grabbed from his holster, Nogtev lifted the dog off its feet, and with his second, he finished it off somewhere in the neck.
One of the gulls, incensed by yet another volley of shots, flew over Nogtev’s head and left a white mark on his shoulder.
Nogtev shot at the gull, but this time he didn’t get it.
“Kill all the gulls,” Nogtev commanded, laughing. In spite of his miss, he was pleased with himself. “Let them forget the way back here.”
A bunch of soldiers gathered, aroused like they were before the sauna. Unimaginable gunfire began.
The gulls, screaming bone-chillingly, couldn’t believe that they were planning on exterminating them all. They flew up for some time, then again tried to fly towards the kitchen, especially since the forewarned cook kept carrying out, at first, all the leftovers, then in the heat of the moment seemed to have poured out the entire lunch of one of the brigades — probably the thirteenth.
One large gull, understanding what was going on, attacked a soldier in a terminal rage — scaring him in earnest — but they shot it down on the second loop of its switchback from three rifles.
The soldiers laughed, even the prisoners didn’t feel bad for the gulls, not really.
“No one is going to fly away from here,” thought Artiom, laughing through the pain in his entire face. He also couldn’t care less.
He looked at Black for a long time, but then the duty officer of the IID showed up, pushed Zahar, pointed at the dog and swore. Zahar understood everything, got up, and, making sure that no one was pointing a rifle at him, ran to Black, took the dog by its legs and pulled it back.
The dead Black ended up being a small, not very pretty, and not very black dog.
Under this racket of gunfire, obstreperousness of the foremen and the shrieks of the gulls, Galia came out. She was without her jacket, in uniform, tired and also not very pretty.
In the yard, it was madness and confusion, people from the administration were running out, as well as the nurses, the cooks — it was almost like a holiday — the autumn culling of the birds.
Galia stood next to Artiom and asked, looking at the back of a soldier who was aiming at a gull, “Why do you look like this?”
Artiom was quiet, and after his second attempt — he had to wait for the nearest volley to end — he answered, “I was washing the Chekists’ bloody boots. Then I buried the body of Burtsev.”
“Did they beat you?” Galia quickly asked and just as quickly examined Artiom’s face.
“No,” he said.
Galia transferred her unseeing glance to a different soldier and announced, “Thirty-six people were shot overnight. There won’t be any more. Nogtev forbade it.”
“He… didn’t know…” Artiom said.
“He knew everything,” Galia answered immediately with anger. “He left on purpose.”
A thought pierced Artiom: “Black ended up being the smartest of us all!”
He looked askance at Galia — should he share this revelation with her or not. He decided it wasn’t worth it.
Artiom imagined that Galia didn’t want to go back inside the building because she liked to stand next to him.
Except he didn’t feel even a little bit better from her presence, he only wanted the gunfire to end.
“Did they shoot Afanasiev?” asked Artiom, noticing that it was very hard for him to say the last two words, as though they were magnets repelling each other.
“Why do you say that?” Galia looked at him again. “No. I didn’t see him on the list. Why Afanasiev?”
“Idiot! What am I doing?” Artiom rebuked himself regretfully.
“No reason,” he answered, as sincerely as he could manage. “He just missed the morning inspection, and I was afraid for him.”
Galia didn’t answer. She didn’t care about Afanasiev.
“I’ll try to send you back to Fox Island today,” she said after a minute.
Artiom bit his lower lip; if only that were true, if only you could manage it, I’ll put up your photograph, Galia, and I will pray to it. He thought that Krapin had managed to photograph her in the company of the foxes that were intended to warm her shoulder during the forthcoming winter of Solovki.
They stood another half minute in silence. Artiom sometimes jumped or at least made a face from the gunfire; Galia didn’t even blink.
Sivtsev and Zahar returned. Probably judging by the bloody spots on their clothing and by the fact that Artiom moved a little bit, not completely surprised by their arrival, Galia figured out what they had been doing together.
“You haven’t eaten yet?” she asked Sivtsev.
He looked at Artiom questioningly — what should I say? Should I tell the truth?
Artiom didn’t turn his head.
“He was in the war,” thought Artiom slowly, “but I wasn’t. And he’s waiting for me to tell him what to do?”
“Well, it’s not clear where we belong now — neither solitary nor a brigade,” Sivtsev answered distractedly, looking first at Galia, then at Artiom, then, finally, at Zahar too.
“Go into the infirmary,” Galia commanded, for some reason putting up her collar as she walked into the building. “I’ll make a call and they’ll feed you and let you wash. Go wash your clothes.”
“But citizen commandant Tkachuk commanded us to wait,” Sivtsev called in her wake with a crying voice.
“I’ll tell Tkachuk too,” Galia answered, not turning around.
For lunch — or was it dinner already — they got pea gruel and millet cutlets with a sour berry sauce.
Artiom looked at the bowls for a long time, then dropped the cutlet into the sour soup and ate everything in a third of a minute.
Sometimes he raised his eyes either to Sivtsev — who ate moderately and turned inward — or at Zahar—who was trying to eat slowly but failing. Artiom felt a light itch from his desire to tell them that Galia had clapped them into solitary, though at least now she was feeding them — see how attentive she is? Not only that, but they were sitting in solitary because of his — the prisoner Goriainov, and one other — a reckless balalaika-player — sins.
In the infirmary’s staff dining room, there was no one else. Doctor Ali himself had led them there, having pretended that he didn’t remember Artiom — though perhaps he truly didn’t — who knows how many lice-ridden inmate-brothers have lain here?
“Would you like another bowl?” Doctor Ali offered with his lovely accent, having once again looked in on them, caressing his beard.
All three of them looked at each other, Artiom, in a sign of approval, lightly tapped the edge of the spoon he held in his fist against the table.
Doctor Ali laughed as though he knew no greater joy than to feed three dirty grave-diggers — he had also figured out what these three unfortunates had been doing all night and why they had been recommended by the IID.
