The second tower was trying to protect itself from a similar fate: shooting at the prisoners carrying materials to build a fire. But there were too many convicts, coming from too many sides. Once they were underneath, there was nothing the guards in the tower could do except wait. A new fire was started. Both towers had been defeated. The balance of power had shifted. The prisoners now had control of the camp.
An axe cracked into the commander’s door, a second blow, a third, the steel end jutting through the timber. Before they had a chance to break through Leo put the rifle down and unlocked the door, stepping back, arms up, indicating surrender. A small force of prisoners stormed the room, brandishing knives and guns and steel bars. The man in charge regarded his captives:
—Bring them outside.
The prisoners grabbed Leo by his arms, hurrying him down the steps, herding him together with the guards that had been captured— their roles reversed. Battered and bloody, they sat on the snow watching the vakhta burn. Columns of smoke rose up, blocking out a wide streak of sky, announcing their revolution to the entire region.
SAME DAY
SCRUNCHING HIS FACE IN CONCENTRATION, Malysh studied the handwritten list. He’d been told it was composed of the names of the men and women Fraera planned to murder. Since he was unable to read, the list appeared to his eye as nothing more than a collection of unintelligible symbols. Up until recently it had never troubled him that he couldn’t read or write, able only to recognize the letters of his klikukha, making him little more literate than a dog recognizing the call of its name. For this reason, during his initiation he’d been savvy enough to insist that none of his tattoos contain words for fear that his fellow vory might exploit his ignorance and print something insulting. Though it was forbidden under penalty of death to create a false tattoo, an outright lie, that rule might not prevent them making a joke at his expense, calling him Little Prick, instead of Little One.
He was smart and he didn’t need a certificate or a diploma to prove it. He didn’t need to read or write. What good were those skills to him? He didn’t expect a teacher to pick a lock or throw a knife. Why should anyone expect a thief to read? While that reasoning still made sense to him, something had changed. Embarrassment was inside him and it had begun to grow since the moment Zoya had taken hold of his hand.
She couldn’t know that he was illiterate. Maybe she presumed the worst, seeing him as little more than a chiffir-addicted thug. He didn’t care. She should be more worried about whether he was going to slit her throat rather than pass judgment on him. He was winding himself up. Breathing deeply, he returned his attention to the names in front of him—the retired Chekists. He knew from listening to Fraera that the list contained names, addresses, and a description of each individual’s crimes—whether they were an investigator, an interrogator, or an informer. Running a dirty thumbnail over each line, he could identify which column contained their names: that was the column with the fewest words. The column with numbers in it: that was their address. And by deduction the final column, which contained the most words, must be the description of their crimes. Who was he trying to fool? This wasn’t reading. This wasn’t even close. He threw the list down, pacing the sewer tunnel. It was her fault—that girl, she was the reason that he felt like this. He wished he’d never seen her.
Unsure what he was going to do, he ran along the tunnel, entering their stinking lair. Fraera claimed they were living in the remains of an ancient library, the lost library of Ivan the Terrible which once held a priceless collection of Byzantine and Hebrew scrolls. Illiterate and hiding in a library—the irony had never occurred to him before, not until Zoya arrived. Ancient library or not, he considered their base little more than a network of ugly, damp stone chambers. Avoiding the others, who were drinking as always, he made his way silently toward Zoya’s cell.
He retrieved the footstool and stood on it, looking through the bars. Zoya was asleep in the corner, curled up on her mattress. There was a lantern hanging from the ceiling—out of reach, always lit so that she was under constant scrutiny. Immediately Malysh’s anger changed. His eyes drifted over her body, watching her sleep, the slow rhythm of her chest rising and falling. Though he was a vory he was also a virgin. He’d murdered but he’d never had sex, a source of great amusement to the others. They teased him, saying if he didn’t use his prick soon it would get infected and fall off and he’d be nothing more than a girl. After his initiation they’d taken him to a prostitute, pushing him into the room and closing the door, ordering him to grow up. The woman had been sitting on the bed, bored, naked, goosebumps on her arms and legs. She’d been smoking a cigarette—a long stub of ash arching off the end—and all Malysh could think about was whether the hot ash was going to fall on her breasts. She’d tapped it onto the floor and asked what he was waiting for, nodding at his crotch. He’d fumbled at his belt, taking it off and then putting it back on again, telling her he didn’t want to have sex, she could keep the money just so long as she said nothing to the others. She’d shrugged, told him to sit down, they’d wait five minutes and then he could go, no one would believe he could last longer than that anyway. They’d waited five minutes. He’d sat on the bed and then he’d left. As he’d walked down the corridor, preparing his lie, she’d called out to the others that they’d been right. He’d chickened out. The vory had cackled like witches. Even Fraera had seemed disappointed in him.
Hearing someone behind him, Malysh spun around, drawing his knife. His hand was caught, fingers gripped, the knife taken from him. Closing the blade and handing him the knife back, Fraera leaned over his shoulder, looking into the cell:
—Beautiful, isn’t she?
Malysh didn’t reply. Fraera looked down at him:
—It’s rare that anyone is able to sneak up on you, Malysh.
—I was checking on the prisoner.
—Checking?
He blushed. Fraera put her arm around him, adding:
—I want her to accompany you on your next job.
Malysh looked up at Fraera:
—The prisoner?
—Use her name.
—Zoya.
—She has more reason than most to hate Chekists. They murdered her parents.
—She can’t fight. She’d be useless. She’s just a girl.
—I was just a girl, once.
—You’re different.
—So is she.
—She might try and run away. She’d shout for help.
—Why don’t you ask her? She’s listening.
There was a silence. Fraera called into the cell:
—I know you’re awake.
Zoya sat up, turning to face them. She spoke out:
—I didn’t claim that I wasn’t.
—You are brave. I have a proposition for a brave young girl. Do you want to accompany Malysh on his next assignment?
Zoya stared at him:
—To do what?
Fraera answered:
—To murder a Chekist.
KOLYMA
GULAG 57
SAME DAY
THE TWO VAKHTA HAD COLLAPSED into smoldering heaps, the bulk of the timber burnt through, reduced to red embers and occasional flickering flames. Wisps of smoke trailed the night sky, carrying up the ashes of at least eight guards: their final act on earth to block out a streak of stars before being scattered across the plateau. Fallen Gulag guards, those killed outside the firetrap of the vakhta, lay where they’d died, dotted across the camp. One body hung out of a window. The ferocity with which he’d been killed suggested that he’d been particularly vicious in his duties—chased by angry prisoners, eventually caught, beaten and stabbed as he’d desperately tried to clamber out. His body had been left, draped over the windowsill, the flag of their newly formed empire.
The surviving guards and Gulag personnel, some fifty in total, had been gathered in the center of the administration zone. Most were injured. Without blankets or medical care, huddled on the snow, their discomf
ort was met with indifference, a lesson well learned by the prisoners. In evaluation of Leo’s ambiguous status he’d been classified as a guard rather than a prisoner, forced to sit, shaking with cold, observing the old power structures collapse and new ones form.
As far as he could ascertain there were three unelected leaders, men whose authority had been established within the microcosm of their barracks. Each man had his own band of followers, distinctly defined. Lazar was one leader. Those who followed him were older prisoners, the arrested intellectuals, craftsmen—the chess players. The second leader was a younger man, athletic, handsome, perhaps a former factory worker—the perfect Soviet, and yet imprisoned all the same. His followers were younger, men of action. The third leader was a vory. He was perhaps forty, with thin eyes and jagged teeth, a shark’s smile. He’d taken possession of the commander’s coat. Too long for him, it dragged across the snow. His followers were the other vory: thieves and murderers. Three groups, each represented by their leader, each with competing points of view. The clashes of opinion were immediate. Lazar, voiced by red-haired Georgi, counseled caution and order:
—We must establish lookouts. We must take up arms along the perimeter.
After many years of practice Georgi was able to speak at the same time as listening to Lazar:
—Furthermore, we must protect and ration our food supplies. We cannot run amok.
The square-jawed worker, clipped from a reel of a propaganda movie, disagreed:
—We are entitled to as much food as we can get our hands on and any drink we can find as compensation for lost wages, as a reward for winning our freedom!
The reindeer-coat vory made only one demand:
—After a lifetime of rules, disobedience must be tolerated.
There was a fourth group of prisoners, or rather a nongroup, individuals who followed no leader, intoxicated on liberty, some running like wild horses, bolting from barrack to barrack, exploring, whooping at unidentifiable pleasures, either turned mad by the violence or mad all along and able to express it at last. Some were asleep in the guards’ comfortable beds: freedom being the ability to close their eyes when they were tired. Others were doped up on morphine, or drunk on their former captors’ vodka. Laughing, these men cut strips out of the wire fences, turning the hated barbed wire into ornamental trinkets with which they decorated the guards who once commanded them, pressing barbed-wire crowns onto their heads, mockingly referring to them as the sons of God and calling out:
—Crucify the fuckers!
Witnessing the anarchy orbiting them, Lazar pressed his argument, whispering to Georgi, who repeated:
—We must protect supplies as a matter of urgency. A starving man will eat himself to death. We must stop cutting the wire. It is protection from the forces that will inevitably arrive. We cannot counsel absolute freedom. We will not survive.
Judging from the reindeer-coat vory’s muted reaction, much of the looting had already been done. The most precious resources were already in his group’s hands.
The square-jawed worker, whose name Leo didn’t know, agreed to take some of the steps proposed, practical measures, as long as they dealt with the pressing matter of punishments for the captured guards:
—My men must have justice! They have waited years! They have suffered! They cannot wait a moment longer!
He spoke in slogans, every sentence ending in an exclamation mark. Though Lazar was reluctant to postpone the practical measures, he compromised in order to win support. The guards were to be placed on trial. Leo was to be placed on trial.
ONE OF LAZAR’S FOLLOWERS had once been a lawyer, in his former life, as he referred to it, and took a prominent role in setting up the tribunal by which Leo and the others were to be judged. He devised his system with relish. After years of submissive groveling, the lawyer delighted in returning to a tone of authority and expertise, a tone that he considered naturally his:
—We agree that only the guards will be tried. The medical staff and the former prisoners who now work for the Gulag administration are exempt.
This proposal was agreed. The lawyer continued:
—The steps to the commander’s office will serve as the court’s stage. The guard will be led to the bottom step. We, the free men, will call out examples of their brutality. If an incident is considered valid the guard will take a step up. If the guard reaches the top they will be executed. If they do not, even if they reach the penultimate step and no more crimes can be found against them, the guard will be allowed to descend the stairs and sit down.
Leo counted the steps. There were thirteen in total. Since they started on the bottom step, that meant twelve crimes to reach the top: twelve to die, eleven or less to live.
Dropping his voice, striking a note of deliberate gravitas, the lawyer called out:
—Commander Zhores Sinyavksy.
Led to the first step, Sinyavksy faced his court. His shoulder had been crudely bandaged, the bleeding stopped in order to keep him alive long enough that he might face justice. His arm hung uselessly. Despite this, he was smiling like a child in a school play, searching for a friendly face among the gathered prisoners. There was no single representative for defense or the prosecution: both sides were to be debated by the assembled prisoners. Judgment was collective.
Almost immediately a chorus of voices called out. There were insults, examples of his crimes, overlapping, unintelligible. The lawyer raised his arms, calling for silence:
—One at a time! You raise your hand, I will point, and then you will speak. Everyone will have a say.
He pointed at a prisoner, an older man. The prisoner’s hand remained raised. The lawyer remarked:
—You can lower your hand. You’re free to speak.
—My hand is the proof of his crime.
Two fingers were cut off at the knuckles, blackened stumps.
—Frostbite. No gloves. Minus fifty degrees: so cold that when you spit, the spit turns to ice before it hits the ground. He still sent us out, in conditions not suitable for spit! He sent us out! Day after day after day! Two fingers, two steps!
Everyone cheered in agreement. The lawyer straightened his gray prison-issue cotton coat, as if it were a formal frock:
—It is not about the number of fingers you lost. You cite inhumane work conditions. The crime has been agreed. But that is one example and therefore one step.
A voice from the crowd:
—I lost a toe! Why doesn’t my toe count for a step?
There were more than enough deformed and blackened fingers and toes to force the commander to the top. The lawyer was losing control, unable to scramble enough rules into place to sedate the animated crowd.
Cutting across the debate, the commander called out:
—You are right! Your injury is a crime. Each of the injuries you have suffered is a crime.
The commander took another step up. The interjections faded, the arguments silenced as they listened:
—The truth is that I have committed more crimes than there are steps. Were there steps up to the mountaintop, I would have to climb them all.
Aggrieved that his system had been bypassed by this confession, the lawyer responded:
—You accept that you deserve to die?
The commander answered indirectly:
—If you can take a step up, can you not also take a step down? If you can do wrong can you not also do good? Can I not try and put right the wrongs that I have done?
He pointed at the prisoner who lost his toe:
—You lost your toe to frostbite and for that I have taken a step up. But last year, you wanted to send your wages to your family. When I told you that, because our system has not been fair, you hadn’t earned as much as they needed, didn’t I take from my own salary to make up the difference? Didn’t I personally ensure your wife received the money in time?
The prisoner glanced around, saying nothing. The lawyer asked:
—Is it true?
The prisoner reluctan
tly nodded:
—It is true.
The commander took a step down:
—For that act, can I not take a step down? I accept that I have not yet done enough good to offset my wrongs. So why not allow me to live? Allow me to spend the rest of my life trying to make amends? Is that not better than dying?
—What about the people you killed?
—What about the people I saved? Since Stalin’s death, the mortality rate in this camp is the lowest in Kolyma. That is the result of my changes. I increased food rations. I have given you longer rest periods and shorter working days. I have improved medical care. The sick no longer die! The sick recover. You know this to be true! The reason you were able to overpower the guards is because you are better fed, better rested, and stronger than you have ever been before! I am the reason this uprising is even possible!
The lawyer stepped up to the commander, flustered that his system was in disarray:
—We said nothing about being able to take a step down.
The lawyer turned to the triptych of convict leaders:
—Do we wish to change the system?
The square-jawed leader turned to his comrades:
—The commander asks for a second chance. Do we grant it?
It began as a murmur, the answer growing louder and louder as more joined in.
—No second chance! No second chance! No second chance!
The commander’s face dropped. He genuinely believed he’d done enough to be spared. The lawyer turned to the condemned man. Clearly they hadn’t thought the process through. No one had been designated the role of executioner. The commander took from his pocket one of the small, dried purple flowers, clutching it in his fist. He climbed to the top of the stairs, staring up at the night sky. The lawyer spoke, his voice quivering under the pressure: