station, picking up fragments of news and finally we heard the voice of Hitler, ranting in his own unmistakable fashion, at a youth rally in the Ruhr — I think it was Dusseldorf.
Ushakov gave me a whole packet of
It was now nearing the end of March. I worked uninterruptedly for several days in the ski shop and began regretfully to think that the Telefunken episode was over. Just about that time I came to know a remarkable man named Anastazi Kolemenos. I had seen him come in occasionally to warm himself at the big fire. He was one of the finest physical specimens I have ever seen, over six feet tall, blond-haired and blond-bearded, with curious grey-green eyes. In spite of the privations he had endured, he must have weighed fourteen stone. He was a kind and helpful giant of a man, whose job was to carry the birch logs and split them for use in the ski shop.
I was standing outside the ski shop door watching him this day. I walked across to where he had piled some logs and went to lift one to take it over to him. The end came up easily enough. I tried to get a grip round the middle to hoist it up. It defied my efforts. Then, suddenly, Kolemenos was beside me. ‘That’s all right, friend,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it.’ He bent down and swung the log on to his shoulder in one powerful movement. I did not regard myself as a weakling, but this man’s strength was phenomenal. I spoke to him, spontaneously told him who I was. Kolemenos told me his name, volunteered the information that he had been a landowner in Latvia, that he was now 27 years of age. The old escape idea came surging into my mind, but this was no place to talk of it. ‘We will have a talk some time,’ I said.
‘I shall be glad to,’ answered the giant.
Over the clatter of workshop activity they called out to me, ‘Your friend has called for you again.’ Igor stood stolidly inside the door and beckoned. I put down a ski I was testing, dusted myself down, and walked out with him.
Ushakov was there and she was there. He told me the set was not working as well as it did. I tested it and it seemed to function, although the signal strength was down a little. I said he would be advised to get spare batteries. He said he would arrange that. He put on his greatcoat, murmured something to her about having to attend an officers’ meeting and went out. There was great understanding between these two and they were completely devoted to each other.
‘I will make some tea for you,’ she smiled. ‘You can find me a station with some good music.’ She talked on for a while about the music she liked, praised Chopin but declared her favourite composer to be Tchaikovsky. She told me she played the piano and that having to leave her piano behind was one of her greatest hardships here in Siberia. I looked at her hands, which she had spread in front of her. The fingers were white, long and capable, the hands well-shaped and cared-for. ‘Those are artist’s hands,’ I ventured. ‘I sketch, too,’ she told me. ‘It is a hobby of mine.’
I found her the kind of music she wanted and she talked about herself with a symphony orchestra as the background. She talked to draw me out, to get me to tell her about myself. It was as though she were saying, ‘This is me, this is my life. You can trust me.’ I didn’t quite know why this was happening to me. I said to myself that in spite of his exalted position here, these are really exiles and outcasts. She, especially, is almost as much a prisoner as I am. She is here only because he is here, and probably the real ruler of Camp 303 is the Politruk.
We sipped hot tea and she kept her voice low. This was the story she told me. Her family had been Army officers for generations before the Revolution. Her father had been a Colonel in the Czar’s personal guard and had been shot by the Bolsheviks. Her young cadet brother died of wounds received in the defence of the Smolny Institute. Her mother had fled with her from their home near Nijni Novgorod and when, later, the mother died, she had adapted herself to the new order of life, got herself a workcard and found herself a job. She did well and earned herself a State holiday with other favoured workers at Yalta. And there she met Ushakov. I gathered that from then on he was the only man in her life.
She was very loyal to Ushakov. She did not tell me why he had suddenly been posted from Poland. He went first to Vladivostock and she had no word from him for six months. Ushakova knew some Party people with the right influence. They told her he was going to Siberia in charge of a camp and she strove unceasingly until her friends got her a travel permit to join him.
All the time I was telling myself: She talks to me because I am a prisoner and she is sorry for me and because she cannot talk these kind of things to her own people. Yet, amid lingering doubts, there was the conviction that this was an intelligent, sensitive and most compassionate woman, and this camp, which surrounded her with the evidence of cruelly wasted lives, had shocked her. It was no place for a woman. Ushakova was a Russian, she believed passionately in the great destiny of Russia. But she was also a woman and I don’t think she liked what she now had to see, day after day, month after month.
What made me talk about the Ostyaks? I do not know. I think I was embarrassed at her complete acceptance of me and I seized on another topic to steer the conversation away from ourselves. They used to put out food for the Unfortunates, I said.
Those clear blue eyes held mine. ‘Do
The quiet voice was going on. ‘You do not answer, Rawicz. You do not trust me. I thought you might want to talk about it. There is no danger in talking to me about it…’
Escape. Escape. It was as though she had looked into my mind and plucked out that one word of danger and longing and hope. Yes, I wanted to tell her about my perilous dreams. But she had shocked me into silence. The words would not come.
Then came Igor and I turned to go, disconcerted and miserable, like a man who has turned his head from the extended hand of a friend. She spoke coolly and formally. ‘You will come again if the set wants adjusting?’ My words came in a rush. ‘Yes, yes, of course I will. I shall be glad to.’
I felt a slow burn of excitement as I waited through the next few days to see if I would get another call. I met a man named Sigmund Makowski, a thirty-seven-year-old captain in the Polish frontier forces. A precise, clear-thinking fellow, fit, active and bearing the stamp of the Regular Army officer. I marked him down, as I had marked Kolemenos, but I said nothing of my plans at this stage. I do not know what I expected of Ushakova, but at least I thought she would be in a position to advise.
Call for me she did, and when I had tuned in the radio, dallying round the dial to pick up some news items for my friends, she started casually enough to talk of the approaching short Siberian summer. I took the plunge. ‘I am sorry about the last time,’ I said. ‘Of course, I do think of those things, but the distances are so great, the country so difficult and I have no equipment to face such a journey.’
‘You are only 25,’ she answered. ‘You need not have been afraid to admit that you do not look forward to the next twenty-five years in these surroundings. It was something to talk about between us. I am reasonably well looked after here. We have comfortable quarters, much better food than yours and as many cigarettes as we need. But I couldn’t spend twenty-five years here. So escape must be an idea close to your heart and it may do you good to tell me what you think.’
So we talked of it as an abstract thing, as though it were being contemplated by some third person. We posed the question: Supposing a man could get out of the camp, where could he head for? The only possibility for such a man, I thought, would be to dash due east the short six hundred miles to Kamchatka and from there find his way to Japan. The attempt would be a failure, in her opinion. The Kamchatka coast was a Number One security commitment and would be heavily guarded. Could he smuggle himself on to a westbound train, maybe find himself a job in the Ural mines and possibly make his way out of Russia later? There would be difficulties of travel and work permits and other vital papers, she said. That was all the exploring we did that day, and it was not until I lay thinking things over on my bunk that night that I realized the one escape route she appeared deliberately to have ignored — south, past Lake Baikal. Whence from there? Afghanistan was the name that popped into my mind. It sounded sufficiently neutral and obscure.
It was the Colonel himself who next sent for me. He genuinely could not work that simple radio set, a fact
