Life And Fate

remember? Well, so much the better.'

He had learned a little from wives of friends who had travelled to camps in order to visit their husbands… But all this had been gossip, mere tittle-tattle. Nothing like this had ever happened to Krymov…

And now it had. He was in prison. It was absurd, crazy, unbelievable – but it was true.

When Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, officers in the White Guard, priests and kulak agitators had been arrested, he had never, for one moment, wondered what it must be like to be awaiting sentence. Nor had he thought about the families of these men.

Of course he had felt less indifferent when the shells had begun to fall closer, when people like himself- true Soviet citizens and members of the Party – had been arrested. And he had been very shaken when several close friends, people of his own generation whom he looked on as true Leninists, had been arrested. He had been unable to sleep; he had questioned Stalin's right to deprive people of freedom, to torment them and shoot them. He had thought deeply about the sufferings of these men and their families. After all, they weren't just kulaks or White officers; they were Old Bolsheviks.

But he had managed to reassure himself. It wasn't as though he had been imprisoned or exiled. He hadn't signed anything; he hadn't pleaded guilty to false charges.

But now it had happened. He, an Old Bolshevik, was in prison. And he had no explanation for it, no interpretation, no way of reassuring himself.

He was learning already. The principal focus of a search was a naked man's teeth, ears, nostrils and groin. A pitiful, ridiculous figure, he would have to hold up his now buttonless trousers and underpants as he walked down the corridor. If he wore spectacles, they would be taken away from him; he would be anxiously screwing up his eyes and rubbing them. He then entered a cell where he was transformed into a laboratory rat. New reflexes were conditioned into him. He spoke only in a whisper. He got up from his bunk, lay down on his bunk, relieved himself, slept and dreamed under incessant observation. It was all monstrously cruel. It was absurd and inhuman. Now he realized what terrible things were done in the Lubyanka. They were tormenting an Old Bolshevik, a Leninist. They were tormenting Comrade Krymov.

6

The days passed. Krymov still hadn't been called for interrogation.

He already knew what they were fed and when, what time they had their walk, what days they were taken to the bath-house. He knew the times of inspections, the smell of prison tobacco and the titles of the books in the library. He would wait anxiously for his cell-mates to return from interrogations. It was Katsenelenbogen who was called most often. And Bogoleev was always summoned in the afternoon.

Life without freedom! It was an illness. Losing one's freedom was like losing one's health. There was still light, water still flowed from the tap, you still got a bowl of soup – but all these things were different, they were merely something allocated to you. Sometimes, in the interests of the investigation, it was necessary to deprive a prisoner of light, food and sleep. And if you were allowed them, that was also in the interests of the investigation.

Once, as he returned from an interrogation, the bony old man announced haughtily:

'After three hours of silence, the investigator finally accepted that my surname was Dreling.'

Bogoleev was very friendly and gentle. He always spoke respectfully to his cell-mates, asking how they were feeling and whether they had slept well. Once he began reading some poems to Krymov, but then broke off and said: 'I'm sorry. You're probably not in the least interested.'

Krymov grinned. 'To be quite honest, I couldn't understand a word of it. But I read all of Hegel once – and I could understand that.'

Bogoleev was very frightened of interrogations. He got quite flustered when the guard came in and asked: 'Anyone whose name begins with B?' When he came back, he looked smaller, thinner and older.

His accounts of his interrogations were always very confused. It was impossible to make out whether he was being charged with an attempt on Stalin's life or a dislike of socialist-realist literature.

Once the giant Chekist advised him:

'You should help the man formulate the charge. How about this? 'Feeling a wild hatred for everything new, I groundlessly criticized works of art that had been awarded a Stalin Prize.' You'll get ten years for that. And don't denounce too many people you know – that doesn't help at all. On the contrary – you'll be charged with conspiracy and sent to a strict-regime camp.'

'What do you mean?' asked Bogoleev. 'They know everything. How can I help?'

He often extemporized in whispers on his favourite theme: that they were all of them characters in a fairy- tale… 'Whoever we are – fierce divisional commanders, parachutists, admirers of Matisse and Pissarro, Party members, pilots, designers of vast factories, creators of five-year plans – and however self-assured, however arrogant we may seem, we only have to cross the threshold of an enchanted house, to be touched by a magic wand – and we're transformed into piglets and squirrels, into little dicky-birds… We should be fed on midges and ants' eggs.'

Bogoleev's mind was unusual, clearly capable of profound thoughts, but he was obsessed with petty, everyday matters. He was always worrying that he'd been given less to eat than other people, that what he had been given wasn't as good, that his walk had been cut short, that someone had eaten his rusks while he was out…

Their life in the cell seemed to be full of events and at the same time an empty sham. They were living in a dried-up river-bed. The investigator studied the pebbles, the clefts, the unevenness of the bank. But the water that had once shaped the bed was no longer there.

Dreling rarely spoke. If he did, it was usually to Bogoleev -obviously because he wasn't a member of the Party. But he often got irritated even with him.

'You're an odd one,' he said once. 'First of all, you're friendly and respectful towards people you despise. Secondly, you ask after my health every day – though it's a matter of complete indifference to you whether I live or die.'

Bogoleev looked up at the ceiling and gave a helpless shrug of the shoulders. He then recited in a sing-song voice:

' 'What's your shell made out of, mister tortoise?' I said and looked him in the eye. 'Just from the lessons fear has taught us.' Were the words of his reply.'

'Did you make up that doggerel yourself?' asked Dreling.

Bogoleev just gave another shrug of the shoulders.

'The man's afraid. He's learnt his lessons well,' said Katsene-lenbogen.

After breakfast Dreling showed Bogoleev the cover of a book.

'Do you like it?'

'To be quite honest- no.'

'I'm no admirer of the work myself,' said Dreling with a nod of the head. 'Georgiy Valentinovich Plekhanov once said: 'The image of mother created by Gorky is an ikon. The working class doesn't need ikons.''

'What's all this about ikons?' said Krymov. 'Generation after generation reads Mother.'

Sounding like a schoolmistress, Dreling replied:

'You only need ikons if you wish to enslave the working class. In your Communist ikon-case you have ikons of Lenin and ikons of the revered Stalin. Nekrasov didn't need ikons.'

Not only his forehead, but his whole skull, his nose, his hands looked as if they had been carved from white bone. Even his words had a bony ring to them.

Bogoleev suddenly flared up – Krymov had never seen this meek, gentle, depressed man in such a state – and said:

'You've still only got as far as Nekrasov in your understanding of poetry. Since then we've had Blok. We've had Mandelstam. We've had Khlebnikov.'

'I've never read Mandelstam,' said Dreling. 'But as for Khlebnikov – that's just decadence!'

'To hell with you!' said Bogoleev, raising his voice for the first time. 'I've had enough of you and your maxims