He always remembered Eichmanis as “Fiodor Ivanovich”; you could hear in his tone that he had grudging respect for the man. I sometimes try to imagine how they killed that handsome and intelligent man — the founder of concentration camps in Soviet Russia.
To me, personally, great-grandfather never said anything about life on Solovki, although sometimes, speaking only to the grown men, especially my father, he would say something in passing. Every time it was like he was finishing a story that he had started just before — for example, a year ago, ten years ago or even forty years ago.
I remember how mother, bragging in front of the old men, checked how my sister was getting on in French. Suddenly, great-grandfather reminded father — who, it seemed, had heard the story before — how he had accidentally been given the assignment to pick berries and how he had unexpectedly met Fiodor Ivanovich, who had started speaking French with one of the inmates.
In two or three phrases of his raspy and loud voice, great-grandfather quickly sketched some scenes from the past, which turned out vivid and clear. Plus, his look, his wrinkles, his beard, the down on his head, his chuckle — it reminded me of a metal spoon scraping a frying pan — all of this added even more significance to the words themselves.
I had heard the stories of the logs in October’s frozen water, the huge and hilarious “sauna switches of Solovki”, the massacred seagulls and the dog nicknamed “Black”.
I named my own dark-colored mutt “Black”.
My puppy, in play, accidentally smothered a chick. Then it spread out the feathers of a second one on the porch, then a third… basically, one time, great-grandfather grabbed the puppy, who was hopping about, chasing the last chick by the tail. He swung the puppy around and smacked him against the corner of our stone house. After the first strike the puppy shrieked horribly, but after the second he was quiet.
My great-grandfather’s hands remained, even at ninety, if not strong, then at least tenacious. The conditioning of the Lubianka and Solovki kept him healthy for the whole century. I don’t remember his face, only his beard and crooked mouth, always chewing something. As for his hands, I only have to close my eyes to see them. Bluish-black fingers covered in dirty, curly hairs. He was sent away, after all, for savagely beating an authorized agent of the government. Another time, only a miracle prevented him from being sent away a second time when he single-handedly slaughtered all of the cattle that belonged to him and that had been scheduled to be communized.
When I look at my hands, especially when I’m drunk, I note with some distress that the crooked fingers of my great-grandfather, with their hoary, brass-like nails, are pushing their way out into mine more and more every year.
Great-grandfather used to call pants “skerries”, a razor blade was a “washer” and cards were “church calendars”. If he caught me lying about reading a book, he used to say, “O look, it’s a dead body lying there.” But he said it without malice, as a joke, as though he approved of it.
No one talked like him, nobody in the family or in the whole village.
Some of the stories my grandfather told in his own way, while my father told them in a different style and my uncle in a third way. Grandmother always talked about camp life from her pitying, womanly point of view, as though contradicting the male point of view.
However, with time, the general picture began to become clearer in my mind.
Father told me about Galia and Artiom when I was fifteen, which coincided with the beginning of the age of revelations and repentant idiocy. Father told this story for the record and in few words, but it impressed me, even then.
Grandmother also knew this story.
For a long time, I couldn’t comprehend how and when great-grandfather told all of this to my father. He didn’t speak much, but somehow he did tell him.
Later, when I put together all the stories into a single picture and compared it to what actually happened, at least according to archival evidence, personal notes from the camp and official reports, I noticed that, for great-grandfather, a series of unconnected events merged into a single tale, happening chronologically; while, in actual fact they were sometimes separated by one or even three years.
Then again, what is truer than that which is remembered?
Truth is what you remember.
Great-grandfather died when I was in the Caucasus — free, cheerful and camouflaged.
Soon afterwards, nearly all of our huge family went into the ground. Only the grandkids and the great-grandkids remained. Alone, without the adults.
Now we have to pretend that we’re the adults, even though I still haven’t found any significant differences between my fourteen-year-old self and my adult self.
Except that I now have a fourteen-year-old son.
It so happened that while all of my old people were dying, I was always somewhere far away. I didn’t make it to a single funeral.
Sometimes, I still think that my relatives are alive; otherwise, where have they all gotten themselves to?
A few times I’ve dreamt that I’ve returned to my village, where I try to find great-grandfather’s overcoat. I climb through some kind of shrubs, cutting my hands. Restless and without a purpose, I roam along the river, near the cold and dirty water, then suddenly I’m in the shed — old rakes, old scythes, rusted metal — all of this accidentally falls on me and it hurts. Later, for some reason, I climb into the hayloft; I dig around there, choking from the dust and I cough: “Chiort! Chiort! Chiort!”
But I don’t find anything.
Book I
“Il fait froid aujourd’hui.”
“Froid et humide.”
“Quel sale temps, une veritable fievre.”
“Une veritable peste…”1
“You’ll recall that the monks here said, ‘In labors are we saved!’” said Vasilii Petrovich, for a moment shifting his contented, often-blinking eyes from Fiodor Ivanovich Eichmanis to Artiom. Artiom nodded for some reason, although he had no idea what they were talking about.
“C’est dans l’effort que se trouve notre salut?”2 asked Eichmanis again.
“C’est bien cela!”3 answered Vasilii Petrovich with pleasure, and so vehemently nodded his head that several berries fell to the ground from the basket he held in his hands.
“Well, I guess we’re right, then,” said Eichmanis, smiling and looking first at Vasilii Petrovich, then at Artiom, then at his companion. For that matter, she didn’t return his gaze. “I don’t know anything about salvation, but the monks knew about work.”
Artiom and Vasilii Petrovich stood on the wet grass in their dampened and dirty clothing, with black knees, sometimes shifting from one foot to the other, wiping from their faces the forest spider webs and mosquitos with hands that had ploughed the earth. Eichmanis and his woman were on horseback. He sat on a restive sorrel stallion, she was on an old piebald that seemed half-deaf.
The rain began again, murky and prickly for July. An unexpectedly cold wind, even for these parts, blew in.
Eichmanis nodded to Artiom and Vasilii Petrovich. The woman silently pulled her reins to the left, seemingly irritated by something.
“Her seat is no worse than Eichmanis’s,” Artiom remarked, watching them leave.