The twelfth working brigade of the Solovki camp took up the entirety of the refectory of the former cathedral church, named after the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God.
They walked through the wooden tambour, having greeted the orderlies — a Chechen whose name and crime he could never remember (nor did he particularly want to) and Afanasiev, whose anti-Soviet agitation, as he himself boasted, was that of a Leningrad poet. He cheerfully inquired: “How are the berries in the forest, Tioma?” The correct answer was, “The berries are located in Moscow, Mr. Deputy Head of the State Political Directorate. It’s we who are in the woods.”
Afanasiev quietly snickered, while the Chechen, it seemed to Artiom, understood nothing, but you could hardly tell from looking at him. Afanasiev sat, lounging as much as he could on the backless stool. The Chechen either walked here and there, or squatted in place.
The clock on the wall showed six forty-five.
Artiom patiently waited for Vasilii Petrovich, who, having gathered water from the barrel at the entrance, drank it, huffing and puffing. Artiom would have easily drunk the whole mug in two gulps… anyway, all totaled, he drank three whole mugs and dumped a fourth on his head.
“We have to carry that water!” grumbled the Chechen, drawing every Russian word from his mouth with some difficulty.
Artiom took a few crushed berries from his pocket and said, “Here.”
The Chechen took them, not understanding what he was being given. When he realized what it was, he rolled them down the table in disgust. Afanasiev caught each of them in turn and threw them into his mouth.
As soon as they entered the refectory, the smell that they had forgotten about after a day in the forest struck them — unwashed human filth; dirty, stale meat; no cattle smells as foul as man and the insects that live on him; but Artiom knew for a fact that in seven minutes he would get used to it, forget it and mingle with the smell, with this noise and foul language, with this life.
The bunks were built from rounded, constantly damp poles and un-sanded boards.
Artiom slept on the second level. Vasilii Petrovich slept directly under him. He had already taught Artiom that in the summer it’s better to sleep on the bottom — it’s colder there — while in the winter it’s better on the top, “because warm air rises where…?”
Afanasiev lived on the third level. Not only was it extremely hot for him, he was constantly dripped on from the ceiling — evaporating sweat and breathing produced a rotten kind of precipitation.
“It seems you’re not a believer, Artiom?” Vasilii Petrovich went on, trying to continue the conversation they had begun outside, all the while trying to take off his deteriorating footwear. “A child of the age, yes? You’ve read all sorts of garbage in childhood, probably? Dyr bur shchyl in your pants, and your brain is enthralled. God died a natural death, something like that, yes?”
Artiom didn’t answer, trying to hear whether or not they’d brought dinner yet, though they rarely brought the grub before its proper time.
He had taken bread with him to the berry-picking — bilberries were always better with bread, but it still didn’t appease the ever-present hunger.
Vasilii Petrovich put his shoes on the ground with that quiet carefulness that’s usually seen in un-pampered women who are putting aside their jewelry for the night. Then he took a long time shaking out his things before finally concluding bitterly:
“Artiom, they’ve stolen my spoon again, can you imagine?”
Artiom immediately checked for his own — yes, it was in its place, as was his bowl. He squashed a louse while he rummaged through his things. They had already stolen his bowl once. Then he had taken a loan of twenty-two pennies of the local prison currency from Vasilii Petrovich and bought a bowl in the prison commissary, after which he had scratched out “A” on the bottom, so that, if they did steal it, he could find it. At the same time, he understood full well that there was no point in the etching — the bowl would go into a different brigade, and they’d hardly let him see where it was or find who had stolen it.
He squashed another louse.
“Can you imagine, Artiom?” repeated Vasilii Petrovich, not expecting an answer and once against digging through his bed roll.
Artiom mumbled something incoherent.
“What?” asked Vasilii Petrovich.
“I’ve imagined it,” answered Artiom, and added, to console his friend, “Buy one in the commissary. For now, we’ll share mine.”
Artiom really didn’t need to sniff out dinner. It was always preceded by the singing of Moisei Solomonovich. He had an amazing nose for food and always began to wail a few minutes before the prisoners on kitchen duty brought in the vat with kasha or soup.
He sang everything with equal gusto — romances, operettas, Jewish and Ukrainian songs, even trying out the little French he knew (he didn’t know much, judging by Vasilii Petrovich’s exaggerated grimaces).
“All hail freedom, the Soviet government, the will of the workers and farmers!” sang Moisei Solomonovich quietly, but distinctly and without, it would seem, any sarcasm. He had an elongated skull; black, curly hair; bulging, surprised eyes; a big mouth with an obvious tongue. As he sang, he helped himself with his hands, as though catching the words of the song as they floated by him on the air and building a little tower out of them.
Afanasiev and the Chechen, scurrying with their feet, brought in the zinc vat on sticks, then a second one.
The prisoners came up to dinner in groups; it always took no less than an hour. Artiom and Vasilii Petrovich’s group was run by another inmate, a former policeman named Krapin. He was a quiet, severe man with attached earlobes. The skin on his face was forever flushed, as though boiled, and his prominent forehead was sharp, somehow impressive to look at, immediately reminding one of long-ago viewed pages from either a textbook on zoology or a medical guide.
In their group, in addition to Moisei Solomonovich and Afanasiev, there were various felons and career criminals, such as a Cossack from Terek named Lazhechnikov, three Chechens, an old Polack, a young Chinese man, a thug from Ukraine who had managed to fight for ten different Cossack hetmans during the Civil War and for the Reds in the interim, an officer of Kolchak’s army, a general’s batman nicknamed “Samovar”, a dozen muzhiks from Chernozem and a satirist from Leningrad named Grakov, who for some reason avoided his fellow countryman Afanasiev.
Under the bunks, amid the utter darkness of the garbage there, the heaps of rags and rubbish, a homeless kid had settled himself there two days ago. Either he had run away from solitary confinement or from the eighth brigade, which is where most of his kind lived. Artiom had fed him cabbage once, but no more; still, the kid slept closer to their group.
“How can he know, Artiom, that we won’t turn him in?” asked Vasilii Petrovich rhetorically, with the lightest self-deprecation. “Do we really have such a good-for-nothing look? I once heard that a grown man incapable of villainy, or at least murder, looks boring. What do you think?”
Artiom remained silent so he didn’t have to answer and demean his manly worth.
He came to the camp two and a half months ago, having received the first designation of four possible workers’ designations, which meant that he would get heavy work everywhere he was sent, no matter what the weather. Until June, he had remained in the thirteenth brigade — the quarantine — having worked for a month unloading at the docks. Artiom had tried out working as a stevedore in Moscow from the age fourteen and was adept at this kind of work, something that the foremen and the work-assignment clerks had immediately noted. If only they had fed him a little more and given him just a little more sleep, it would have been OK.