Chapter 35 2

To stand out from the crowd by what we wear - this so common human desire is to actually reveal ourselves, especially to the keen eyes of the labor camps.We feel.So we are putting on clothes, but we are actually stripping ourselves naked, showing our true value to others.I didn't understand at the time that my military uniform was the same as Matronina's red kerchief.All this was seen clearly by the watcher, who was hidden behind the scenes.So one day a person on duty was sent to find me.The lieutenant wants to see you, please come here, please enter this separate room. The young lieutenant spoke politely.It's just him and me in this cozy and tidy room.The red sun was shining before the west, and the breeze was blowing the curtains.He sat me down.I don't know why, but he suggested that I write an autobiography--as if he couldn't come up with a more pleasant suggestion.After my investigative notes, which were purely spat in my own face, after the insults of the "crow wagon" and the deportation station, after the convoys and prison guards, after those who refused to see me as a member of our glorious Red Army After the ex-captain's thieves and handymen, I sat at my writing desk, unpunished by anyone, under the benevolent gaze of a likable lieutenant, with finely shaded inks not found in labor camps It was written on the smooth paper: I was a captain, I commanded an artillery company, and I got some medals.From writing this text itself, I regain my individuality, my "I". (Yes, my "I" as the subject of epistemology! But you must know that I came out of college after all, from ordinary people, and it was only accidental in the army. Please imagine that in a professional soldier, How ingrained is the habit of wanting to think differently of oneself!) After reading the autobiography, the Lieutenant was satisfied: "So you're a Soviet, aren't you?" Well, yes.Well, of course, why not?What a joy it is to rise up again from the muck and ashes and to be a Soviet again! --This is half freedom!

The lieutenant asked me to come to his office in five days' time.However, within five days I had to say goodbye to my military uniform, because digging in it was very unpleasant.I tucked my civilian uniform and breeches into a suitcase, and got a set of patched and faded tatters in the camp storage room, which seemed to have been laundered after a year in the dumpster.It was a big step, though I hadn't yet realized its significance: I wasn't a prisoner inside, but I was a prisoner outside.Shaved, starved, crushed by the enemy, I too will soon acquire that prisoner's eye—dishonest, suspicious, prying.

Five days later, I went to the Special Operations Commissioner in this state, and I still didn't understand what his intentions were.But the commissioner is not there.He doesn't come to work at all. (He already knew it, and we didn't: in a week we were going to be separated, and the Germans were going to be shipped to New Jerusalem to replace us.) That's how I avoided a meeting with the lieutenant. Gamerov and I discussed with Ingall what the purpose of writing my autobiography was. We innocent children didn’t realize that this was the claw of the first beast that came into our nest.In fact, the situation was quite clear: among the new batch of prisoners came three young men, and they were constantly talking and arguing with each other.Among them was a young man with a dark complexion, a round face, a bright expression, and a mustache. He was the one who found a job in the accounting office. He stayed up all night and kept writing something on the board. , and hide it after writing.Of course someone could be sent to take what he had hidden.But in order not to startle them, it would be easier to learn everything from the breeches among them.He obviously came out of the army, was a Soviet, and would certainly help with mental surveillance.

Ruola Ingall, who is not burdened by daytime work, really made a rule for herself not to sleep in the first half of the night, in order to maintain the freedom of her creative spirit.He was sitting on the bed of a "small car" without a mattress, pillow or quilt, wearing a cotton vest (it was not warm in the room, it was an autumn night) and shoes, with his legs stretched out on the bed, his back against the wall, With a pencil in his mouth, his eyes are sternly fixed on a piece of paper in front of him. (Couldn't think of a worse behavior for a labor camp! But neither he nor we understand how conspicuous it is, how closely watched it is.)

What he wrote at night and hid during the day was a novel about Campesino.This man was a soldier of the Spanish Republic who had been imprisoned with him.Megar highly appreciated the simplicity of his peasants.Campesino's fate was simple: after being defeated in the war with Franco, he came to the Soviet Union, where he was arrested some time later. Ingall was not a warm person.Others would not open their hearts to him on the first impulse. (After writing this sentence, I stopped and thought about it: Was I warm at the time?).But his steadfastness is a well-deserved example.Writing in a labor camp!As long as I don't die, one day I will rise to this level.But right now I am tormented by my own busy running, and I am overwhelmed by the life of digging in the first few days.On a fine September evening, Boris and I found only time to sit on a pile of cinders on the edge of the camp.

In the direction of Moscow, 60 kilometers away, the sky is shining with colorful fireworks-this is the "Victory over Japan Celebration Day".But the street lamps in our labor camp cast a dim light.The windows of the brickyard shone with a red, hostile light.The street lamps on the poles in the vast factory area are lined up in mysterious long strings, like the months and years of our prison term, gradually going away. The thin, coughing Gamerov put his hands on his knees and chanted repeatedly: love for the motherland I conceived for thirty years for your generosity I don't expect...

Nor is it required. "Come on fascists! Come on fascists!" Such shouts can be heard not only in New Jerusalem.This was the case on all the islands of the archipelago in the late summer and autumn of 1945.The arrival of us fascists opens up apolitical crimes.The road to freedom.They knew about their amnesty as early as July 7th.Since then, photos have been taken, release certificates have been prepared, and accounts in the accountant's office have been settled—but a month has passed, and the pardoned prisoners are still gloomily behind the disgusting barbed wire.In some places, after two or three months, they still cannot leave.Because there is no one to replace them.

There is no one to replace them!And those of us who are born blind have spent a whole spring and a summer waiting for amnesty in a cell with the walls blocked.Stalin has all pity on us! ...he will "consider the situation after victory"! ...the first July amnesty missed us, and he will issue a second amnesty for political prisoners in the future... (even the details are rumored: this amnesty has been written and placed on Stalin's desk , only the signature is left, but he is currently on leave. The unreformable people are waiting for the real amnesty, the unreformable people once believed!...) But if we are pardoned, who will go to the mines?Who carried the saw blade into the forest?Who will burn bricks and build walls?Stalin successfully created such a system, as long as it shows a little kindness or leniency, then plague, famine, desolation, and ruin will immediately cover the whole country.

"Bring on the fascists!" The apolitical criminals who had always hated us or despised us now looked at us almost lovingly because we had come to replace them.Those captured during their German captivity had discovered that there was no nation in the world more despised, abandoned, regarded as alien and useless than the Russian nation.Now, when they jumped out of the red cattle wagons, out of the trucks and into the land of Russia, they realized that they were the most miserable and suffering among this excluded people. That's what the great Stalin amnesty "unseen in the world" turned out to be.Where has the world really seen an amnesty that doesn't involve political prisoners? !

It stipulates the "Fifty-eight Articles" for the release of sentences of less than three years, but almost no one has been sentenced to such a short sentence; in the scope of its application, such people may not account for zero percent Fives.But even in that 0.5 percent, the spirit of the amnesty's intolerance trumped its words of tolerance.I know a young man whose name seems to be Majiushin (he worked as a painter in a small labor camp near the Kaluga checkpoint).At a very early time, almost before the end of 1941, he was sentenced in accordance with Article 58-11 for being captured. How many years.They sentenced Ma Jiushen to a total of only three years - this is a unique case!Naturally, he did not let him out after the expiration of the term, but postponed and said that he would wait for special instructions.But now suddenly came an amnesty!Ma Jiushen began to plead (how dare he say "demand") for his release.For almost five months--until December 1945--the terrified registration and distribution office officials ignored it.At last he was sent back to his native place in Kursk province.It is said (otherwise I would not believe that the ending would be like this!) Soon he was dragged in again and increased to "ten yuan coupons".He must not be allowed to profit from the negligence of the first trial!

All burglary, street robbery, rape of young girls, corruption of young children, deception of customers, hooliganism, disfigurement of the defenseless, indiscriminate hunting, polygamy, extortion, defrauding of property, accepting bribes, slander, false accusations (but this One group of people who have not actually been in jail - this is for the future!), drug trafficking, fornication, forced prostitution of women, death due to ignorance or carelessness, etc. criminals are all released. (The above is just a list of code provisions that fall within the scope of the amnesty, not eloquent rhetoric.) After this, what morality can we ask of the people? Those who lost half their sentences were: embezzlers, forgers and rationers, speculators and thieves (Stalin was a little angry at guys who dared to dig into the pocket of the state, after all). But what revolted the former front-line soldiers and the prisoners most was the general forgiveness of deserters in wartime!All those deserted from the army due to cowardice, deserted, did not report to the conscription station, hid for many years in the cellar in the mother's vegetable garden, in the basement, behind the stove (always hid with mother! Deserters generally treat their wives unbelievable!), who have not spoken a word for years, and who have become hunchbacked, long-haired beasts - whether caught or surrendered before Amnesty Day, are now declared to have equal rights An unblemished and clean citizen of the USSR! (The perspicacity of an old adage is now attested: "Running is ugly, but it's good for your health!") And those who did not tremble, those who did not act cowardly, those who suffered the blows for their country and paid the price of captivity—that is unforgivable.This is the view of the Supreme Commander. Was there something in the deserter that touched a string in Stalin's heart?Did he recall his distaste for being a private, his own poor recruit career in the winter of 1917?Perhaps he concluded that cowards were no danger to his reign, only the brave?After all, one feels that, even from Stalin's point of view, an amnesty for deserters would be utterly unwise: he was showing his people that in future wars it would be safer and easier to just run for their lives. I introduced the story of Dr. Zuboff and his wife in another book: the old lady hid a deserter who walked in the door by herself.That person later disclosed their secrets, and the Zuboffs got ten years each according to the fifty-eight clauses.The court found that their crime was not so much that they hid deserters, but rather that this kind of concealment lacked self-interested purposes. The deserters were not their relatives, which meant that they had anti-Soviet intentions!The deserter was released under Stalin's amnesty, and he did not even serve his three-year sentence.He had already put this little episode in his life behind him.But what happened to the Zubovs was different!They served a full ten years in labor camps (four of them in special camps) and were exiled for four years without any sentence; they were released only because the exile camp itself was abolished.However, sixteen years later, or even nineteen years later, the original sentence against them has not been revoked.This sentence prevented them from returning to their hometown in Moscow and prevented them from spending their old age peacefully. In 1958, the Soviet Military Prosecutor's Office replied to them: "Your evidence of the crime is solid, and there is no reason for a review." In 1962, twenty years after the incident, their fifty-eight The original cases of 1.10 (anti-Soviet intention) and 58.11 (the "organization" of the couple) were announced to be withdrawn.In addition, according to Article 193117-7 (joint crime of desertion), the sentence is five years and the Stalin amnesty is applicable (! Twenty years later!).In 1962, these two elderly people in their dying years finally received the following written notice: "You two are considered to have been released on July 7, 1945, and the original sentence was also annulled on the same day." This is what the grudge-loving, vengeful, unreasonable law fears and what it does not fear! After the amnesty, they began to smear everywhere with the paintbrush of the education department, and decorated the arches and walls inside the labor camp with some slogans that make the living happy: "Repay the most extensive policy implemented by the dear party and government with double labor productivity. amnesty!" Those who are pardoned are ordinary criminals and ordinary criminals, and they are gone, while political prisoners should be rewarded with double production performance... When in history did our authorities show such a glorious sense of humor? From the moment our group of "fascists" arrived, daily releases began immediately in New Jerusalem.Yesterday you saw these women in the ghetto, disheveled, ragged, swearing - but look!They suddenly changed their appearance, washed their faces, combed their hair, put on dresses with polka dots and stripes that they got from nowhere, with short jackets on their arms, and walked towards the train station in a regular manner. go.Can you guess in the train that these women are capable of cursing and cursing flowers? At this time, a group of thieves and "hybrids" (imitators of thieves) are walking out of the gate.These fellows didn't leave their bang-bang pomp inside the gate: they grimaced, danced, waved and yelled at those who stayed behind.Their accomplices also shouted at them from the window.The guards don't interfere with them - pickpockets can do whatever they want.A pickpocket ingeniously placed the box vertically on the ground and stood up lightly.He put his hat on one side, pulled back the hem of his suit jacket, which he picked up at some deportation station or won from playing cards, and played a farewell to the labor camp with his mandolin. Nonsense ditty.Laugh wildly. The barbed wire couldn't block our view, and we had long glimpses of released groups walking the paths outside the camps and across the fields in the distance.These thieves are prowling the boulevards of Moscow today, and maybe they will make a leap in the first week, stripping your wife, sister, or daughter in the streets in the middle of the night. As for you fascists (Matronina is also a fascist) - please double the productivity of labor first! Due to the amnesty, there are shouts of insufficient manpower everywhere, and manpower is being readjusted.For a brief period I was transferred from the borrow pit to the workshop.Here, I appreciate Matronina's mechanization.Everyone has enough here, but the most astonishing thing is the work of a little girl.She is really a labor hero, although she is not suitable for newspapers.Neither her position in the workshop nor her position has a title, so it could probably be called "Shanggong Blank Worker".The wet-cut bricks (made of freshly blended clay and heavy) come out of the brick press on a conveyor belt, and two girls stand at the end of the conveyor belt.One is "offering workers", and the other is "delivering workers".These two people don't have to bend down, they only need to turn their bodies, and the angle is not too big.But the "upper billet worker" standing on the high platform like the queen of the workshop needs to do the following actions without stopping: bow; pick up the wet billet placed by the billet worker from under his feet; The height of the waist or even the shoulders cannot be damaged; the posture of the legs remains unchanged, and the body is turned 90 degrees (sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, depending on which side the adobe is loaded); On the five-story wooden frame of the car, each floor is twelve yuan.Her movements never stop, stop, change, and are always performed with the rapid rhythm of gymnastics.Just finish the eight-hour shift in a row, if the brick press does not fail halfway.People keep passing on to her, passing on, and half of the output of the whole factory has to go through her hands.The two girls below switched sex with each other, but no one changed her for a full eight hours.Five minutes of this kind of work must feel dizzying because of the constant ups and downs of the head and the constant twisting of the body.And that girl was still smiling during the first half of the shift (people couldn't talk amidst the rumble of the brick press), maybe she was happy to be put on the pedestal like a beauty queen, and let people watch her lift up Her naked, muscular thighs and ballerina's supple waist beneath her skirt. Because of this type of work, she was given the highest ration in the labor camp: 300 grams of bread (a total of 850 grams a day), and in addition to the common black cabbage soup for dinner, she was given three servings of Stakhanov Rations: Three meager servings of couscous gruel boiled in plain water.There was so little porridge that it could cover the bottom of the earthen bowl. "We work for the money, you work for the mouth, there's no secret," a scruffy freelance mechanic repairing brick presses told me. When the wagon was full, I pushed it away with the one-armed Altai man Pnin.The wagon had the appearance of a little rickety tower, for its center of gravity was raised high by ten planks of twelve blanks each.This trembling little cart, like a small bookshelf that is too full, needs to be pulled forward along a straight track by its iron handle, pushed onto a platform cart that serves as a base, and fixed. On top, pull the platform truck along another straight line to the doors of a row of drying chambers.Stop in front of the appropriate drying chamber, remove the billet cart from the dolly, and push it into the drying chamber in the other direction.Each drying room is a long corridor with ten rows of grooves and ten rows of brackets on the walls on both sides.It is necessary to push the adobe cart inside quickly and unbiasedly, loosen the lever, place the ten pallets with adobes on the ten shelves, remove the ten pairs of iron claws, and immediately push out the emptied bricks. Billet car.This set of technology seems to be an invention of a certain German in the last century (the billet car has a German name), but according to the German design, not only should there be rails to support the billet car, there should also be land on the pit. They are very supportive of the workers pushing the carts.But there are only some rotten and broken boards under our feet. I often step on the air and fall down.Presumably the original design also stipulated that ventilation equipment should be installed in the drying room, but in fact it was not.Whenever I'm in a hurry there because it's not easy to mount (I often push the car sideways, the pallet gets stuck, it can't be placed on the bracket, and the wet billet hits the head), and I have to suck a lot of coal The smoke makes the trachea itchy unbearably. So I wasn't too sad about leaving the workshop when it drove me back to the fetch yard.Borrow yards are also short-staffed—prisoners are being released there, too.Boris Gamerov was also sent to dig the earth, and we began to work together.The quota has been clear for a long time: one person digs and loads, and then pushes to the winch, and a shift needs to do six vehicles (six directions).Two people dry twelve cars.The weather was dry and the two of us managed to complete five cars in one day.But there was an autumn drizzle.One day, two days, three days, the wind didn't blow, and the rain didn't get too heavy, it just gradually dripped down.It wasn't pouring rain, so no one would dare take responsibility for stopping outdoor work. "It never rains on the canal site!"--this was originally a famous slogan of the Gulag.But in the New Jerusalem, I don’t know why they don’t even issue cotton vests.Under the annoying drizzle, we had no choice but to crawl and roll in the maroon borrow pit in our old army overcoats, stained with red mud.By the end of the third day, our coats had each absorbed at least a pailful of water.The labor camp did not distribute shoes, so we had to soak our last pair of leather boots brought back in the muddy soup. The first day we both joked; "Boris, don't you think that Baron Tuzenbach would be very envious of us now? He always dreamed of working in a brick kiln. Remember? He hoped that he would fall asleep when he got home sweaty. He probably thought he would." There is an oven for drying clothes, a quilt cover, and two hot dishes for one meal." But after pushing two loads of dirt, I angrily knocked on the shovel on the side of the empty truck (clay always sticks to the shovel), and said, my voice was full of anger: "You said, those three sisters" why the hell can't stay at home?They were not forced to go pick up scrap metal with the youth on Sundays.They were not asked for Bible study notes on Monday.No one forced her to teach voluntarily.No one drove them to go from house to house to engage in universal education. " Pushed another cart: "They babble all day long: work! work! work! go to work, go to hell, who is stopping you? What a happy life it will be! how happy! what a happy life! Happiness! What kind of happiness? Police dogs should be used to bring you into this happy life. You will know then!  …" Boris is weaker than me in physique, and he can barely move the shovel, which is getting heavier and heavier, and can barely throw the dirt onto the sidecar.But until the next day he still tried to keep our mental state at the level of Vladimir Solovyov.He's way ahead of me here too.He has read many of Solovyov's works, but I, who have been immersed in Bessel functions all day long, have not read even a single line. He dictated to me what he remembered, and I tried my best to memorize it, but it was easier said than done. At this time, I no longer have that brain!No, how can a person keep his life and still seek the truth?Why do you have to fall to the bottom of the labor camps in order to understand your own poverty? He said: "Vladimir Solovyov taught that we should face death with joy. There can be no worse place than here." Yes…… We can pack as much as we can.Punishment rations are punishment rations, fuck it!After a day of mixing, go to the camp.But there was nothing good waiting for us there either: three times a day black soup made from nettle leaves without salt, and so on;The bread has already been cut, 450 grams, and it is distributed all at once in the morning, and no bread crust is given at noon and evening.Then we were asked to stand in line in the rain to count the number of people.I had to sleep on the bare boards in wet clothes covered with clay, shivering because there was no fire in the shed. On the second day, the drizzle still continued.The borrow pit was soaked.We were completely stuck in it and couldn't move our feet.No matter how much you shovel with a shovel, no matter how much you beat on the side of the car, the clay will not go down anyway.Every time I have to reach out to dig the clay from the shovel into the bucket.At this time, we realized that our work was for nothing, so we simply put aside the shovel, and simply gathered the creaking mud under our feet with both hands, and carried it into the car. Boris is coughing.He still had a piece of shrapnel from a German tank shell in his lung.He was yellow and thin, and his nose, ears, and features had become as sharp as death.I watched him carefully, and I couldn't tell if he could spend the winter in the labor camp this year. We still try to divert our attention and overcome our situation with our thoughts.But we can no longer talk about topics such as philosophy and literature.Both arms were as heavy as shovels, and they drooped and could not be lifted.Boris suggested; "Forget it, talking is too much work. Let's keep silent and think about something useful. Like poetry. Do it in your mind." I trembled.Can he still write poetry?The shadow of death hung over his withered brow, but what an indomitable genius hung there too! So we were silent, holding the clay in our hands.It was still raining... But instead of taking us back from the borrow-ground, Matronina drove there herself.With bright eyes (a black cloak is draped over her "red" head), she stands on a steep slope and points out every corner to the homework monitor.We understand: this homework class can't get off work at two o'clock this afternoon.When will the quota be fulfilled, and when will it be returned.Let's have lunch and dinner together. Construction work in Moscow is stopping because there are no bricks... Matronina is gone.The rain is getting heavier.The clay layer is full of reddish water pools.We also had water in the body of the truck.The boot shafts had turned red, and the army overcoat was covered with red patches.His hands were frozen from the cold clay, and he couldn't pick up anything and throw it into the bucket with his hands.At this moment we gave up this futile work, climbed to the high grass and sat down, bowed our heads, and turned up the collar of our coats to cover the back of our heads. Seen from the side, it looks like two reddish stones in the field. Young people of our age are studying at the Sorbonne (Paris University School of Arts and Sciences) or Oxford, playing tennis in ample breaks, and arguing about world issues in student cafes.They have published books and exhibited pictures.They rack their brains to find novel ways to warp the less than novel world around them.They're mad at the old masters for running out of plots and themes.They are angry with their own governments and their own reactionaries because they are unwilling to understand and accept the advanced Soviet experience.They babbled into the microphones of radio reporters, explaining to themselves, coquettishly, what they wanted to say in their latest or first book.They judge with confidence all things in the world, especially as regards the prosperity and the highest justice of our country.Only in old age, when they compile encyclopedias, will they be surprised to find that in our prefixes, in all our prefixes, no valuable Russian names are to be found... The rain beat on the back of the head like drums; the cold climbed up the wet back. We look around.I saw half-filled and overturned bucket trucks.Everyone left.The entire borrowing ground was empty, and there was no one in the fields outside the quarantine area.In the gray rain loomed the little village I was going to, where even the roosters hid in the dry places. We also carried our shovel, for fear of being stolen—it was in our name—and dragged behind us like a heavily loaded cart.We walked around Matronina's factory and walked under the roof of the empty corridor around the Hoffmann oven.It's drafty, cold, but dry.We plunged into the dust under the brick archway and sat down. There is a large coal pile not far from us.The two prisoners were rummaging inside, eagerly looking for something.Find one, try it with your teeth, and put it in a pocket.Then they sat down, each chewing a piece of the gray-black thing. "Hey buddy, what do you eat?" "It's called sea clay. The doctor doesn't prohibit it. There is no benefit or harm to eating it. Adding one kilogram of this thing to the daily ration is the same as really full. You should also find some, there is a lot of coal in this pile yes……" ...The borrowing site has not yet fulfilled its quota by the end of the day.Matronina ordered us to be kept here all night.However, there was a general power outage and there was no lighting in the production area, so we had to be summoned to the gate of the factory, and we were ordered to join hands, and led by a strengthened escort team, we returned to the living area amidst dogs barking and scolding.Total darkness.Walking on the road, you can't see where is a puddle and where is hard ground, and if you don't take a step well, you will drag the people around you to this side. The living area is also dark, save for the dark red glow of the hearth in the "personal kitchen".In the cafeteria, there are only two kerosene lamps at the food distribution outlet. You can’t see the slogan on the wall, and you can’t see the double serving of nettle leaf vegetable soup in the bowl. It will be like this tomorrow, and it will be like this every day in the future: six years of red clay, three spoons of black cabbage soup.We seemed to grow weaker every day in prison, but we weakened faster here.Something was already buzzing in my head.A comfortable state of weakness is gradually coming. In this state, it is easy to give in but difficult to resist. It was also dark in the shed.We lay on the bare board in wet suits.It seems that there are hot compresses on the body, and it will be warmer if you don't take off one piece. Open eyes stared at the black roof, the black sky. Lord, Lord!Under the shells, under the bombs I begged you to keep me alive.And now I beg you - send me death...