14 Solzhenitsyn-OneDayintheLifeofIvanDenisovitch. pp.113-193

Slo-o-owly.

Der was as scared to stay as to leave. He took shelter behind Kilgas and stood there.

Kilgas went on laying blocks, the way they count out pills at a drugstore–like a doctor, measuring everything so carefully–his back to Der, as if he didn’t even know he was there.

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Der stole up to Tiurin. Where was all his arrogance?

“But what shall I tell the superintendent, Tiurin?”.

Tiurin went on working. He said, without turning his head:

“You will tell him it was like that when we arrived.

We came and that’s how it was.”

Der waited a little longer. They weren’t going to bump him off now, he saw. He took a few steps and put his hands in his pockets.

“Hey, S 854,” he muttered. “Why are you using such a thin layer of mortar?”

He had to get back at someone. He couldn’t find fault with Shukhov for his joints or for the straightness of his line, so he decided he was laying the mortar too thin.

“Permit me to point out,” Shukhov lisped derisively,

“that if the mortar is laid on thick in weather like this, the place will be like a sieve in the spring.”

“You’re a mason. Listen to what a foreman has to tell you,” Der said with a frown, puffing out his cheeks.

Well, here and there it might be a bit on the thin side. He could have used a little more–but only, after all, if he’d been laying the blocks in decent conditions, not in winter. The man ought to have a heart. You’ve got to show some results. But what was the good of trying to explain? He didn’t want to understand.

Der went quietly down the ramp.

“You get me that lift repaired,” Tiurin sang out after him.

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“What do you think we are–pack horses? Carrying blocks up to the second story by hand.”

“They’ll pay you for taking them up,” Der called back from the ramp, quite humbly.

“At the wheelbarrow rate? Child’s play, pushing up a wheelbarrow. We’ve got to be paid for carrying them up by hand.”

“Don’t think I’m against it. But the bookkeepers won’t agree to the higher rate.”

“The book-keepers! I’ve got a whole squad sweating to keep those four masons at work. How much do you think we’ll earn?” Tiurm shouted, pressing on without a break.

“Mort-ar,” be called down.

“Mort-ar,” echoed Shukhov. They’d leveled off the whole of the third row. On the fourth they’d really get going. Time to stretch the string for the next row, but he could manage this way too.

Der went off across the open ground, looking haggard. To warm up in the office. Something must have been eating him. But he should have thought a bit before taking on a wolf like Tiurin. He should keep pleasant with squad leaders like that; then he’d have nothing to worry about. The camp authorities didn’t insist on his doing any real hard work, he received top-level rations, he lived in a separate cabin–what else did he want? Giving himself airs, trying to be smart.

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The men coming up with the mortar said the mechanic and superintendent had left. The motor was past repair.

Very well, haul ’em up by hand.

For as long as Shukhov had worked with machinery the machines had either broken down or been smashed by the zeks. He’d seen them wreck a log conveyer by shoving a beam under the chain and leaning hard on it, to give themselves a breather; they were stacking log by log with never a moment to stretch their backs.

“Damn the whole fucking lot of you!” shouted Tiurin, warming up.

“Pavlo’s asking how you’re fixed for mortar,”

someone called from below.

“Mix some more.”

“We’ve got half a box mixed.”

“Mix another.”

What a pace they set! They were driving along the fifth row now. They’d had to bend over double when they were working on the first row, but now the wall had risen shoulder-high. And why shouldn’t they race on? There were no windows or doors to allow for–just a couple of adjoining blank walls and plenty of blocks.

Shukhov should have stretched a string higher but there was no time for it.

“The eighty-second have gone off to hand in their tools,” Gopchik reported.

Tiurin looked at him witheringly.

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“Mind your own business, squirt. Bring some blocks.”

Shukhov looked about. Yes, the sun was beginning to set. It had a greyish appearance as it sank in a red haze.

And they’d got into the swing—couldn’t be better.

They’d started on the fifth row now. Ought to finish it today. Level it off.

The mortar carriers were snorting like winded horses. Buinovsky. was quite gray in the face. He might not be forty but he wasn’t far off it.

The cold was growing keener. Busy as were Shukhov’s hands, the frost nipped his fingers through the shabby mittens. And it was piercing his left boot too. He stamped his foot. Thud, thud.

By now he needn’t stoop to the wall, but he still had to bend his aching back for each block and each scoop of mortar.

“Hey, boys!” he pestered the men handling the blocks. “You’d better put them on the wall for me.

Heave ’em up here.”

The captain would gladly have obliged but lacked the strength. He wasn’t used to the work. But Alyosha said:

“All right, Ivan Denisovich. Show me where to put them.”

You could count on Alyosha. Did whatever was asked of him. If everybody in the world was like that, Shukhov would have done likewise. If a man asks for help why not help him? Those Baptists had something there.

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The rail changed. The signal went dinning all over the site and reached the power station. They’d been caught with some unused mortar. Ugh, just when they’d got into the swing of it!

“Mortar! Mortar!” Tiurin shouted.

A new boxful had only just been mixed. They had to go on laying; there was no other way. If they left anything in the box, next morning they could throw the whole lot of it to hell–the mortar would have petrified; it wouldn’t yield to a pickaxe.

“Don’t let me down, brothers,” Shukhov shouted.

Kilgas was fuming. He didn’t like speed-ups. But he pressed on all the same. What else could he do?

Pavlo ran up with a barrow, a trowel in his belt, and began laying himself. Five trowels on the job now.

Now look out for where the rows meet. Shukhov visualized what shape of block was needed there, and shoving a hammer into Alyosha’s hand egged him on:

“Knock a bit off this one.”

Haste makes waste. Now that all of them were racing one another Shukhov bided his time, keeping an eye on the wall. He pushed Senka to the left and took over the laying himself toward the main corner on the right it would be a disaster if the walls overlapped or if the corner wasn’t level. Cost him half a day’s work tomorrow.

“Stop!” He shoved Pavlo away from a block and levelled it himself. And from his place in the corner he 118 | P a g e

noticed that Senka’s section was sagging. He hurried over to Senka and levelled it out with two blocks.

The captain brought up a load of mortar, enough for a good horse. “Another two barrowfuls,” he said.

The captain was tottering. But he went on sweating away. Shukhov had had a horse like that once. He’d thought a lot of that horse but then they’d driven it to death. They’d worked the hide off -it.

The top rim of the sun dipped below the horizon.

Now, without Gopchik having to tell them they saw that the squads had not only turned in their tools but were pouring up to the gates. No one came out into the open immediately after the signal–only a fool would go and freeze out there. They sat in the warmth. But the moment came, by agreement between the squad leaders, when all the squads poured out together.

Without this agreement, the zeks, a stubborn lot, would have sat each other out in the warmth till midnight.

Tiurin himself realized that he’d cut things too fine.

The man in charge of the tool store must be cursing him out.

“Hey,” he shouted, “use enough of that shit!

Carriers! Go and scrape the big box. Throw what’s left into that hole there and scatter some snow on it to keep it hidden. You, Pavlo, take a couple of men, collect the tools, and hand them in. I’ll send Gopchik after you with the three trowels. We’ll use up the last two loads of mortar before we knock off.”

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Everyone dashed to his job. They took Shukhov’s hammer from him and wound up his string. The mortar carriers and the- block lifters hurried down into the machine room. They’d nothing more to do up there.

Three masons remained on top–Kilgas, Senka, and Shukhov. Tiurin walked around to see how much wall they’d built. He was pleased. “Not bad, eh? In half a day.

Without any fucking lift.”

Shukhov noticed there was a little mortar left in Kilgas’s hod. He didn’t want to waste it, but was worried that the squad leader might be reprimanded if the trowels were handed in late.

“Listen, men,” he said, “give your trowels to Gopchik. Mine’s not on the list. So I won’t have to hand it in. I’ll keep going.”

Tiurin said with a laugh:

“How can we ever let you out? We just can’t do without you.”

Shukhov laughed too, and went on working.

Kilgas took the trowels. Senka went on handing blocks to Shukhov. They poured Kilgas’s mortar into Shukhov’s hod.

Gopchik ran across to the tool store, to overtake Pavlo. The rest were just as anxious to be in time, and hurried over to the gates, without Tiurin. A squad leader is a power, but the escort is a greater power still.

They list latecomers, and that means the guardhouse for you.

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There was a terrible crowd near the gates now.

Everyone had collected there. It looked as if the escort had come out and started counting.

(They counted the prisoners twice on the way out: once before they unbolted the gates, to make sure they were safe in opening them, and again when the gates had been opened and the prisoners were passing through.

And if they thought they’d miscounted, they recounted outside the gates.)

“To hell with the mortar,” said Tiurin, with a gesture of impatience. “Sling it over the wall.”

“Don’t wait, leader. Go ahead, you’re needed there.

(Shukhov usually addressed Tiurin, more respectfully, as Andrei Prokoflevich, but now, after working like that, he felt equal to the squad leader. He didn’t put it to himself, “Look, I’m your equal,” he just knew it.) And as Tiurin strode down the ramp he called after him, jokingly: “Why do these bastards make the work day so short? We were just getting into our stride when they call it off.”

Shukhov was left alone now with Senka. You couldn’t say much to him. Besides, you didn’t have to tell him things: he was the wisest of them all; he understood without need of words.

Slap on the mortar. Down with the block. Press it home. See it’s straight Mortar. Block. Mortar. Block….

Wasn’t it enough that Tiurin had told them himself not to bother about the mortar? Just throw it over the wall and fuck off. But Shukhov wasn’t made that way–

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eight years in a camp couldn’t change his nature. He worried about anything he could make use of, about every scrap of work he could do–nothing must be wasted without good reason.

Mortar. Block. Mortar. Block. . . .

“Finish, fuck you,” shouted Senka. “Let’s get out of here.”

He picked up a barrow and ran down the ramp.

But Shukhov – and if the guards had put the dogs on him it would have made no difference – ran to the back and looked about. Not bad. Then he ran and gave the wall a good look over, to the left, to the right His eye was as accurate as a carpenter’s level. Straight and even.

His hands were as young as ever. He dashed down the ramp.

Senka was already out of the machine shop and running down the slope.

“Come on, come on,” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Run ahead. I’ll catch up,” Shukhov gestured.

But he went into the machine shop. He couldn’t simply throw his trowel down. He might not be there the next day. They might send the squad off to the Socialist Way of Life settlement. It could be six months before he returned to the power station. But did that mean he was to throw down his trowel? If he’d swiped it he had to hang on to it.

Both the stoves had been doused. It was dark, frightening. Frightening not because it was dark but because everyone had left, because he alone might be 122 | P a g e

missing at the count by the gates, and the guards would beat him.

Yet his eyes darted here, darted there, and, spotting a big stone in the corner, he pulled it aside, slipped his trowel under it, and hid it. So that’s that.

Now to catch up with Senka. Senka had stopped after running a hundred paces or so. Senka would never leave anyone in a jam. Pay for it? Then together.

They ran neck and neck, the tall and the short. Senka was a head taller than Shukhov, and a big head it was too.

There are loafers who race one another of their own free will around a stadium. Those devils should be running after a full day’s work, with aching back and wet mittens and worn-out valenki–and in the cold too.

They panted like mad dogs. All you could hear was their hoarse breathing.

Well, Tiurin was at the gates. He’d explain.

They were running straight into the crowd. It scared you.

Hundreds of throats booing you at once, and cursing you up and down. Wouldn’t _you_ be scared if you had five hundred men blowing their tops at you?

But what about the guards? That was the chief thing.

No. No trouble with them. Tiurin was there, in the last row. He must have explained. Taken the blame on his own shoulders.

But the men yelled, the men swore. And what swearing! Even Senka couldn’t help hearing and, 123 | P a g e

drawing a deep breath, gave back as good as he got He’d kept quiet all his life–but now, how he bellowed!

Raised his fists too, ready to pick a fight right away. The men fell silent. Someone laughed.

“Hey, one hundred and fourth,” came a shout. “Your deaf guy’s a fake. We just tested him.”

Everyone laughed. The guards too.

“Form fives.”

They didn’t open the gates. They didn’t trust themselves. They pushed the crowd back from the gates (everyone stuck to the gates like idiots–as if they’d get out quicker that way!).

“Form fives. First. Second. Third . . .”

Each five, as it was called, took a few paces forward.

While Shukhov was recovering his breath he looked up. The moon had risen and was frowning, crimson-faced. Yesterday at this hour it had stood much higher.

Pleased that everything had gone so smoothly, Shukboy nudged the captain in the ribs and said:

“Listen, captain, where does this science of yours say the old moon goes afterward?”

“Where does it go? What do you mean? What stupidity! It’s simply not visible.”

Shukhov shook his head and laughed.

“Well, if it’s not visible, how d’you know it’s there?”

“So, according to you,” said the captain, unable to believe his ears, “it’s another moon every month.”

“What’s strange about that? People are born every day. Why not a moon every four weeks?”

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“Phew!” said the captain and spat. “I’ve never met a sailor as stupid as you in my life. So where do you think the old moon goes?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Where does it go?”

Shukhov showed his teeth in a smile.

“Well, tell me. Where does it go?”

Shukhov sighed and said with a slight lisp:

“In our village, folk say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.”

“What savages!” The captain laughed. “I’ve never heard that one. Then you believe in God, Shukhov?”

“Why not?” asked Shukhov, surprised. “Hear Him thunder and try not to believe in Him.”

“But why does God do it?”

‘Do what?”

“Crumble the moon into stars. Why?”

“Well, can’t you understand?” said Shukhov. “The stars fall down now and then. The gaps have to be filled.”

“Turn around, you slob,” a guard shouted. “Get in line.”

The count had almost reached them. The twelfth five of the fifth hundred had moved ahead, leaving only Buinovsky and Shukhov at the back.

The escort was worried. There was a discussion over the counting boards. Somebody missing. Again somebody missing. Why the hell can’t they learn to count?

They’d counted 462. Ought to be 463.

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Once more they pushed everybody back from the gates (the zeks had crowded forward again).

“Form fives. First. Second. . . .”

What made this recounting so infuriating was that the time wasted on it was the zeks’ own, not the authorities’. They would still have to cross the steppe, get to the camp, and line up there to be searched. The columns would come in from all sides on the double, trying to be first at the frisking and into the camp. The column that was back first was top dog in the camp that evening–the mess hall was theirs, they were first in line to get their packages, first at the private kitchen, first at the C.E.D. to pick up letters or hand in their own to be censored, first at the dispensary, the barber’s, the baths-

-first everywhere.

And the escort too is in a hurry to get the zeks in and be off for the night. A soldier’s life isn’t much fun either-

-a lot of work, little time.

And now the count had come out wrong.

As the last few fives were called forward Shukhov began to hope that there were going to be three in the last row after all. No, damn it, two again.

The tellers went to the head guard with their tally boards. There was a consultation. The head guard shouted:

“Squad leader of the hundred and fourth.”

Tiurin took half a pace forward.

“Here.”

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“Did you leave anyone behind in the power station?

Think.”

“No.”

“Think again. I’ll knock your head off. . . .”

“No, I’m quite sure.”

But he stole a glance at Pavlo. Could anyone have dropped off to sleep in the machine shop?

“Form squads,” the head guard shouted.

They had formed the groups of five just as they happened to be standing. Now they began to shift about.

Voices boomed out: “Seventy-fifth over here,” “This way, thirteenth,” “Thirty-second here.”

The 104th, being all in the rear, formed there too.

They were empty-handed to a man, Shukhov noticed; like idiots, they’d worked on so late they’d collected no firewood. Only two of them were carrying small bundles.

This game was played every evening: before the job was over the workers would gather chips, sticks, and broken laths, and tie them together with bits of string or ragged tapes to carry back with them. The first raid on their bundles would take place near the gates to the work site. If either the superintendent or one of the foremen was standing there, he’d order the prisoners to throw down their firewood (millions of rubles had gone up in smoke, yet there they were thinking they’d make up the losses with kindling). But a zek calculated his own way: if everyone brought even a few sticks back with him the barracks would be warmer. Barrack 127 | P a g e

orderlies were issued ten pounds of coaldust a stove and little heat could be squeezed out of that. So the men would break up sticks or saw them short and slip them under their coats.

The escort never made the zeks drop their firewood at the gates to the work site. For one thing, it would have been an offense to the uniform; and secondly they had their hands on machine guns, ready to shoot. But just before entering the zone several ranks in the column were ordered to throw their stuff down. The escort, however, robbed mercifully–they had to leave something for the guards, and for the zeks themselves, who otherwise wouldn’t bring any with them.

So every zek brought some firewood along with him every evening. You never knew when you might get it through or when they’d grab it.

While Shukhov was scouring the ground in search of a few chips, Tiurin had finished counting the squad.

“One hundred and fourth all present,” he reported to the head guard.

Just then Tsezar rejoined his own squad from the group of office workers. His pipe was glowing as he puffed away at it; his dark mustache was tipped with frost.

“Well, captain, how’d it go?” he asked. A man who’s warm can’t understand a man who’s freezing. “How’d it go?” What a damn fool question!

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“If you really want to know,” said the captain, his shoulders sagging, “worked so hard I can hardly straighten my back.”

You might give me something to smoke was what he meant.

Tsezar gave him something to smoke. The captain was the only man in the squad he stuck to. He could unburden his heart to him–to no one else. “There’s a man missing from the thirty-second. From the thirty-second,” everybody began to mutter.

The deputy squad leader of the 32nd scurried off with another young fellow to search the repair shops.

And in the crowd people kept asking: Who? How?

Where? Soon it reached Shukhov’s ears that it was the dark little Moldavian who was missing. The Moldavian?

Not the one who, it was said, had been a Rumanian spy, a real spy?

You could find up to five spies in each squad. But they were fakes, prison-made spies. They passed as spies in their dossiers, but really they were simply ex-POW’s.

Shukhov himself was one of these “spies.”

But the Moldavian was genuine.

The head of the escort ran his eye down the list and grew black in the face. After all, if the spy were to escape what would happen to the head of the escort?

In the crowd everybody, including Shukhov, flew into a rage. Were they going through all this for that shit, that slimy little snake, that stinking worm? The sky was already quite dark; what light there was came from 129 | P a g e

the moon. You could see the stars–this meant the frost was gathering strength for the night–and that runty bastard was missing. What, haven’t you had your bellyful of work, you miserable idiot? Isn’t the official spell of eleven hours, dawn to dusk, long enough for you? Just you wait, the prosecutor will add something.

Odd that anyone could work so hard as to ignore the signal to knock off.

He completely forgot that he’d been working like that himself only an hour ago–that he’d been annoyed with the others for assembling at the gate too early.

Now he was chilled to the bone and his fury mounted with everyone else’s; were they to be kept waiting another half hour by that Moldavian? If the guards banded him over to the zeks they’d tear him apart, like wolves with a lamb.

Yes, the cold was coming into its own now. No one stood quiet. They either stamped their feet where they stood or walked two or three paces back and forth.

People were discussing whether the Moldavian could have escaped. Well, if he’d fled during the day that was one thing, but if he’d hidden and was simply waiting for the sentries to go off the watchtowers he hadn’t a chance. Unless he’d left a trail through the wire the sentries wouldn’t be allowed back in camp for at least three days. They’d have to go on manning the towers for a week, if necessary. That was in the regulations, as the old-timers knew. In short, if someone escaped, the guards had had it; they were hounded, without sleep or 130 | P a g e

food. Sometimes they were roused to such fury that the runaway wouldn’t get back alive.

Tsezar was arguing with the captain:

“For instance, when be hung his pince-nez on the ship’s rigging. D’you remember?”

“Hm, yes,” the captain said as he smoked.

“Or the baby carriage on the steps. Bumping down and down.”

“Yes. . . . But the scenes on board are somewhat artificial.”

“Well, you see, we’ve been spoiled by modern camera technique.”

“And the maggots in the meat, they crawl about like angleworms. Surely they weren’t that size?”

“What do you expect of the movies? You can’t show them smaller.”

“Well, if they’d bring that meat here to camp instead of the fish they feed us and dumped it straight into the kettle, we’d be only too….”

The prisoners howled.

Three small figures were bursting out of the repair shop. So they’d found the Moldavian.

“Boooo!” went the crowd at the gates.

And they yelled, as the group drew nearer:

“Bastard! Shit? Idiot! Cow’s twat! Lousy son-of-a-bitch!”

And Shukhov joined in:

“Rat!”

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It’s no joke to rob five hundred men of over half an hour.

Ducking his head, the Moldavian ran like a mouse.

“Halt!” a guard shouted. And, noting down “K 460,”

said: “Where were you?”

He strode over to the man and turned the butt of his rifle at him. In the crowd people were still hurling curses: “Ass! Louse! Pig!”

But others, seeing the guard make ready to swing his rifle, held their tongues.

The Moldavian could hardly keep on his feet. He backed away from the guard.

The deputy squad leader of the 32nd advanced.

“The damn fool crawled up to do some plastering.

Trying to hide from me! Warmed up there and fell asleep.”

And he hit the man hard in the face and on the neck, pushing him farther from the guard.

The Moldavian reeled back, and as he did so a Hungarian, one of his own squad, leaped up at him and kicked him hard from behind.

That wasn’t like spying. Any fool can spy. A spy has a clean, exciting life. But try and spend ten years in a hard-labour camp!

The guard lowered his rifle.

The head of the escort shouted:

“Back from the gates. Form fives.”

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boo. All their anger switched from the Moldavian to the escort. They booed and didn’t move.

“W-wha-a-at?” shouted the head of the escort.

“Want to sit down on the snow? All right, I’ll have you down in a minute I’ll keep you here till dawn.”

He was quite capable of doing it, too. He’d had them on the snow many a time. “Down on your faces!” And, to the escort: “Release safety-catches!” The zeks knew all about that. They drew back from the gates.

“Back, back!” yelled the escort.

“What’s the sense of shoving up to the gates anyhow, you crappers?” men barked from the rear at the men in front as they were shoved back.

“Form fives. First. Second. Third . . .”

Now the moon was shining full. It cast its light all around and the crimson tint had gone. It had climbed a quarter of the way up the sky. The evening was lost.

That damned Moldavian. Those damned guards. This damned life.

As the prisoners in front were counted they turned and stood on tiptoe to see whether there were two men or three in the back row. It was a matter of life or death to them now.

Shukhov had the feeling that there were going to be four. He was numb with fear. One extra. Another recount. But it turned out that Fetiukov, after cadging a butt from the captain, had been wandering around and had failed to get into his five in time. So now he’d turned up in the back row as if he were an extra.

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A guard struck Fetiukov angrily on the back of the neck.

Serve him right.

So they counted three in the back row. The count had come out right, thank God.

“Back from the gates,” shouted a guard at the top of his voice. But this time the zeks didn’t mutter – they’d noticed soldiers coming out of the gatehouse and forming a cordon on the other side of the gates.

So they were going to be let out.

None of the foremen was in sight, nor the superintendent, so the prisoners kept their firewood.

The gates swung open. And now the head of the escort, accompanied by a checker, came and stood on the other side, near some wooden railings.

“First. Second. Third . . .”

If the numbers tallied again the sentries would be removed from the watch-towers.

But what a distance they had to tramp along the edge of the site to reach the towers at the far end of it! Only when the last prisoner had been led off the site and the numbers had been found to agree would they telephone all the towers and relieve the sentries. If the head of the escort had his wits about him he’d put the column on the move right away, for he knew the zeks had nowhere to run to and the sentries would overtake the column. But some of the guards were so foolish, they feared they didn’t have enough troops to handle the zeks; so they waited.

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They had one of those idiots this evening.

A whole day in that freezing cold! The zeks were already chilled to the marrow and now to stand around another shivering hour, when work was over! Yet it wasn’t so much the cold and the fact that they’d lost an evening that infuriated them; the point was, there’d be no time now to do anything of their own in the camp.

“How is it you happen to know like in the British Navy so well?” Shukhov heard someone in the next five asking.

“Well, you see, I spent nearly a month on board a British cruiser. Had my own cabin. I was attached to a convoy as liaison officer. And imagine–after the war the British admiral–only the devil could have put the idea into his head–sent me a gift, a souvenir as ‘a token of gratitude,’ damn him! I was absolutely hor rifled. And now here we are, all lumped together. It’s pretty hard to take, being imprisoned here with Bendera’s men. . . .”

Strange! Yes, a strange sight indeed: the naked steppe, the empty building site, the snow gleaming in the moonlight. And the escort guards: they’d gone to their posts, ten paces apart, guns at the ready. And the black herd of prisoners; and among them, in a black coat like all the rest, a man, S 311, who’d never imagined life without gold shoulder straps, who had hobnobbed with a British admiral and now sweated at a barrow with Fetiukov.

You can push a man this way, and you can push a man that way.

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Now the escort was ready. This time without any

“prayer” the head guard barked at them:

“Double time! Get a move on!”

To hell with your “Get a move on!” All the other columns were ahead of them. What sense was there in hurrying? The prisoners didn’t have to be in league with one another to figure the score: You kept us back; now it’s our turn. The escort too, after all, was dying for a warm corner.

“Step lively!” shouted the guard. “Step lively, you in front.”

To hell with your “Step lively.” The zeks marched with measured tread, hanging their heads as at a funeral.

Now we’ve nothing to lose–we’d be the last back anyhow. He wouldn’t treat us like human beings; now let him burst himself shouting.

On he went, “Step lively! Step lively!” But he realized it was futile. He couldn’t order his men to shoot either. The prisoners were marching in fives, keeping in line, all correct. He had no power to hound them faster.

(When they marched out to work in the morning the zeks walked slowly, to spare themselves. A man who’s in a hurry won’t live to see the end of his stretch–he’ll tire and be done for.)

So on with regular, deliberate steps. The snow crunched under their boots. Some of them talked in low voices; others walked in silence. Shukhov asked himself whether there was anything he’d left undone in the camp 136 | P a g e

that morning. Ah, the dispensary. Funny, he’d forgotten all about the dispensary while he’d been working.

This must be around the consulting hour. He’d manage it if he skipped his supper. But now somehow his back wasn’t aching. And his temperature wouldn’t be high enough. A waste of time. He’d pull through without benefit of the doctor. The only cure those docs know is to put you in your grave.

It wasn’t the dispensary that appealed to him now; it was the prospect of adding something to his supper. His hopes were all pinned on that long-overdue parcel of Tsezar’s.

A sudden change came over the column. It began to sway, to break out of its regular stride. The prisoners heaved forward with a buzz of excitement. And now the last five, which included Shukhov, were no longer treading on the heels of the five in front; they had to run to keep up. A few more paces, and again they were running.

When the rear of the column spilled over a rise Shukhov saw to the right, far away across the steppe, another dark column on the move, marching diagonally across their course. They, too, seemed to be forcing their pace.

It must be from the machine works, that column: there were about three hundred men in it. Mother bunch with bad luck! Must have been held up–Shukhov wondered why. To finish assembling some piece of machinery? They could be kept after work hours for 137 | P a g e

that. But what did it matter to them? They worked all day in the warmth.

Who’d get in first? The men ran, just ran. Even the escort broke into a jog trot: only the head guard remembered to shout, “Don’t fall back. Keep up there, you in the rear. Keep up.”

Oh, shut your trap. . . . What are you yapping about? As if we wouldn’t keep up!

They forgot to talk; they forgot to think; everyone in the column was obsessed by one idea: to get back first.

Things were so lumped together, the sweet and the sour, that the prisoners saw the escort itself, now, as friend rather than foe. Now the enemy was the other column.

Their spirits rose, their anger passed.

“Get a move on, get a move on!” the rear shouted to the front.

Now our column bad reached the street, while the other had passed out of sight behind the blocks of houses. They’d been racing blindly.

It was easier for us now, we were running down the middle of the street. And our escort had less to stumble over at the sides. This was where we ought to gain ground.

There was another reason why we simply had to reach the camp gates first: the guards there were unusually slow in searching the column from the machine works. Ever since zeks had begun cutting one another’s throats. In the camp the authorities had arrived 138 | P a g e

at one conclusion: that knives were being made at the machine works and smuggled in. So the zeks who worked there were gone over with special thoroughness on return to the camp. In late autumn, when the earth was already cold, the guards would shout at them:

“Off with your boots, machine-works squad! Hold your boots in your hands.”

And would frisk them barefoot.

Or, despite the frost, they’d pick men out at random, shouting:

“You there, take off your right boot. And you, take off your left!”

A zek would pull off his boot and, hopping on one foot, turn it upside down and shake out the footcloth.

No knife, damn you!

Shukhov had heard – he didn’t know whether it was true or not – that back in the summer the zeks from the machine works had brought back two poles for a volleyball net and that there the knives were, there inside them. Ten long knives in each pole. And now knives would turn up occasionally, here and there.

So it was at a jog trot that they passed the new club and the residential block and the wood-processing plant, and reached the turning that led straight on to the gates.

“Hoooooo-ooo,” shouted the whole column, in unison.

That was the turning we’d aimed at reaching before the others. The rival column was a hundred and fifty paces behind, on our right.

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Now we could take things easy. Everyone was elated. As elated as a rabbit when it finds it can still terrify a frog. There lay the camp, just as we’d left it in the morning: lights were on in the zone over the thick fence, specially powerful ones in front of the gatehouse.

The entire area was flooded with light; it was as bright as day. They had to have it like that when they frisked us.

But we hadn’t reached the gates yet. “Halt!” shouted a guard and, handing his machine gun to a soldier, ran up close to the column (they weren’t allowed to do that with their guns). “All those on the right carrying firewood dump it to their right.”

He didn’t have to guess about the firewood–the zeks were carrying it quite openly. A bundle fell, a second, a third. Some would have liked to conceal a stick or two inside the column, but their neighbors objected:

“Throw it down as you’re told! Do you want others to lose theirs because of you?”

Who’s the zek’s main enemy? Another zek. If only they weren’t at odds with one another–ah, what a difference that’d make!

“Double time,” shouted the head guard.

They advanced toward the gates.

Here five roads converged. An hour earlier all the other columns had met here. If they were paved, these roads, this would be just the place for the main square of a future city; and then processions would meet here, 140 | P a g e

just as columns of zeks did now as they poured in from every direction, with sentries and guards all about.

The guards were already warming themselves indoors. They came out and formed a cordon across the road.

“Unbutton your coats. Unbutton your jackets.”

They pulled the zeks’ arms apart, the better to hug them and slap their sides. Same as in the morning, more or less.

It isn’t so terrible to unbutton your coat now. We’re going home.

That’s what everyone used to say: “Going home.”

We never had time to think of any other home.

While the head of the column was being frisked, Shukhov went over to Tsezar:

“Tsezar Markovich, I’ll run straight to the parcels office and keep a place in line for you.”

Tsezar turned. The fringe of his dark mustache was tipped with frost.

“Why should you do that, Ivan Denisovich? Perhaps there won’t be a parcel.”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter if there isn’t. I’ll wait ten minutes, anyway. If you don’t turn up I’ll go to the barracks.”

(Shukhov reckoned like this: if Tsezar didn’t come, maybe someone else would, then he could sell him his place in line.)

Obviously Tsezar was longing for his parcel.

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“All right, Ivan Denisovich, run ahead and keep a place for me. Wait ten minutes, no longer.”

And now Shukhov was on the point of being frisked.

Today he had nothing to conceal. He would step forward fearlessly. He slowly unbuttoned his coat and undid the rope belt around his wadded jacket, and although he couldn’t remember having anything forbidden, eight years in camp had given him the habit of caution: he thrust a hand into his pants pocket to make sure it was empty.

And there lay a small piece of broken hacksaw blade, the tiny length of steel that he’d picked up in his thriftiness at the building site without any intention of bringing it to camp. He hadn’t meant to bring it, but now, what a pity to throw it away! Why, he could make a little knife out of it, very handy for shoe repairing or tailoring!

If he’d intended to bring it with him he’d have thought hard of where to conceal it. But now the guards were only two rows ahead and the first of these rows was already stepping forward to be searched.

His choice had to be swift as the wind. Should he take cover behind the row in front of him and toss the bit of metal in the snow (it’d be noticed but they wouldn’t know who the culprit was) or keep it on him?

For that strip of hacksaw he could get ten days in the cells, if they classed it as a knife.

But a cobbler’s knife was money, it was bread.

A pity to throw it away.

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He slipped it into his left mitten.

At that moment the next row was ordered to step forward and be searched.

Now the last three men stood in full view–Senka, Shukhov, and the man from the 32nd squad who had gone to look for the Moldavian.

Because they were three and the guards facing them were five, Shukhov could try a ruse. He could choose which of the two guards on the right to present himself to. He decided against a young pink-faced one and plumped for an older man with a gray mustache. The older one, of course, was experienced and could find the blade easily if he wanted to, but because of his age he would be fed up with the job. It must stink in his nose now like burning sulphur.

Meanwhile Shukhov had removed both mittens, the empty one and the one with the hacksaw, and held them in one hand (the empty one in front) together with the untied rope belt. He fully unbuttoned his jacket, lifted high the edges of his coat and jacket (never had he been so servile at the search but now he wanted to show he was innocent – Come on, frisk me!), and at the word of command stepped forward.

The guard slapped Shukhov’s sides and back, and the outside of his pants pocket. Nothing there. He kneaded the edges of coat and jacket. Nothing there either. He was about to pass him through when, for safety’s sake, he crushed the mitten that Shukhov held out to him – the empty one. The guard crushed it in his band, and Shukhov felt as though pincers of iron were crushing 143 | P a g e

everything inside him. One such squeeze on the other mitten and he’d be sunk – the cells on nine ounces of bread a day and hot stew one day in three. He imagined how weak he’d grow, how difficult he’d find it to get back to his present condition, neither fed nor starving.

And an urgent prayer rose in his heart:

“Oh Lord, save me! Don’t let them send me to the cells.”

And while all this raced through his mind, the guard, after finishing with the right-hand mitten, stretched a hand out to deal with the other (he would have squeezed them at the same moment if Shukhov had held them in separate hands). Just then the guard heard his chief, who was in a hurry to get on, shout to the escort:

“Come on, bring up the machine-works column.”

And instead of examining the other mitten the old guard waved Shukhov on. He was through.

He ran off to catch up with the others. They had already formed fives in a sort of corridor between long beams, like horse stalls in a market, a sort of paddock for prisoners. He ran lightly; hardly feeling the ground.

He didn’t say a prayer of thanksgiving because he hadn’t time, and anyway it would have been out of place.

The escort now drew aside. They were only waiting for their chief. They had gathered for their own use all the firewood the 104th had dumped before being frisked; what the guards had removed during the frisking itself was heaped near the gatehouse.

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The moon had risen still higher; the cold grew keener in the pale bright night.

The head guard walked to the sentry house – he had to get a receipt for the four hundred and sixty-three prisoners. He spoke briefly to Priakhov, Volkovoi’s deputy.

“K 460,” shouted Priakhov.

The Moldavian, who had buried himself deep in the column, drew in his breath and went over to the right of the corridor. He was still hanging his head and his shoulders were hunched.

“Come here,” Priakhov ordered, gesturing for him to walk around the column.

The Moldavian did so. He was ordered to stand there, his arms behind his back.

That meant they were going to charge him with attempting to escape. They’d put him in the cells.

Just in front of the gates, right and left of the

“paddock,” stood two guards. The gates, three times the height of a man, opened slowly. The command rang out:

“Form fives!” (No need here to order the zeks back from the gates; all the gates opened inwards, into the zone. Let the zeks mass as they wished and push against the gates from within, they wouldn’t be able to break out.) “First. Second. Third . . .”

It was at the evening recount on their return through the gates that the prisoners, freezing and famished, found the icy wind hardest to bear. A bowl of thin 145 | P a g e

cabbage soup, half burned, was as welcome to them as rain to parched earth. They’d swallowed it in one gulp.

That bowl of soup–it was dearer than freedom, dearer than life itself, past, present, and future.

They passed through the gates, those zeks, like soldiers back from a campaign, brisk, taut, eager – clear the road for ’em.

For a trusty with a soft job at staff quarters, those prisoners on the march must have been something to think about.

After the recount a prisoner became a free man again–for the first time in the day since the guards had given them the morning signal for roll call. They passed through the big gates (of the zone), through the small gates (of the intermediate zone), through two more gates (on the parade ground) – and then they could scatter where they liked.

But not the squad leaders. They were caught by the officer who assigned them their work: “All squad leaders to the planning office.”

Shukhov rushed past the prison, between the barracks, to the parcels office. Tsezar, meanwhile, went at a dignified, even pace in the opposite direction, to where people were swarming around a pole with a board nailed to it. On it was the name of anyone for whom a parcel was waiting, written in indelible pencil.

Most writing in the camp was done on plywood, not on paper. It was surer, somehow, more reliable. The guards and turnkeys used wood, too, for keeping tally of 146 | P a g e

the zeks. You can scrape it clean for next day, and use it again. Economical.

Zeks who stay in camp all day can, among other odd jobs, read the names on the board, meet people who’ve got a parcel as they come in from work, and give them the number. Not much of a job, but it can earn you a cigarette.

Shukhov ran to the parcels office–a little annex to a barracks, to which in turn a small porch had been added.

The porch had no door and was open to the weather. All the same, it was cosier that way; it had a roof, after all.

A line had formed along the walls of the porch.

Shukhov joined it. There were some fifteen ahead of him. That meant over an hour’s wait, to just before locking-up time. And there were others who’d be behind him in the line – the zeks of the powerhouse column who’d gone to look for their names on the board, and the machine-works column too. Looked as though they would have to come again. Tomorrow morning.

People stood in the line with little bags and sacks.

On the other side of the door (Shukhov himself hadn’t ever received a parcel at this camp but he knew from gossip) guards opened the parcels, which came packed in wooden boxes, with hatchets. They took everything out and examined the contents. They cut, they broke, they fingered. They tipped things out from one container into another. If there was anything liquid, in glass jars or tins, they opened them and poured it out, though you 147 | P a g e

had nothing but your hands or a cloth bag to hold it in.

They didn’t give you the jars; they were scared of something. If there was anything homebaked, or some tasty sweetmeats or sausage or smoked fish, the guard would take a bite at it himself. (And just you try to get high and mighty and complain, and they’ll immediately say that this and that are forbidden and won’t issue them to you at all.) Every zek who got a parcel had to give and give, starling with the guard who opened it. And when they’d finished their search they didn’t give you the stuff in the box it had come in; they just swept everything into your bag, even into the skirt of your coat and. . . off you go. Sometimes they’d whisk you out so fast you’d be sure to leave something behind. No good going back for it. It wouldn’t be there.

When he was in Ust-Izhma Shukhov had got parcels a couple of times. But he wrote to his wife that it was a waste–don’t send them. Don’t take the food out of the kids’ mouths.

Although when he had been at liberty Shukhov bad found it easier to feed his whole family than it ever was to feed himself now, he knew what those parcels cost He knew too that his family wouldn’t be able to keep it up for ten years. Better do without them.

But though he’d decided that way, every time someone in the squad, or close by in the barracks, received a parcel (which was almost every day) his heart ached because there wasn’t one for him. And though he’d strictly forbidden his wife to send him anything 148 | P a g e

even for Easter, and though he never thought of reading the list except for some rich squad member, every now and then he felt himself longing for someone to run up and say:

“Shukhov! Why don’t you go for your parcel?

There’s one for you.”

But no one ran up.

He had less and less cause to remember Temgenovo and his home there. Life in camp wore him out from reveille to bedtime, with not a second for idle reflections.

Now as he stood among men who were buoying themselves up with the hope of soon digging their teeth into bits of salt pork, or spreading butter on their bread, or sweetening their mugs of tea with lumps of sugar, Shukhov had one wish only – to reach the mess hall in time and to eat his stew hot. It was only half as good when it was cold.

He figured that if Tsezar’s name hadn’t turned up on the list he would have gone back to the barracks long ago to wash. But if he’d found it there he would now be collecting bags, plastic mugs, and a basin. That would take him ten minutes. And Shukhov had promised to wait.

There in line Shukhov learned some news. Again there wasn’t going to be a Sunday this week; again they were going to steal one of their Sundays. He, like everyone else, had expected it, for if there happened to be five Sundays in a month, they gave them three and 149 | P a g e

made them work the other two. Shukhov had expected it, but when he heard it a spasm of pain caught his heart: who wouldn’t begrudge the loss of that sweet day?

Though what they were saying in the line was right: they knew how to keep them jumping even on Sundays.

They’d invent something–fixing up the baths, or building a wall somewhere, or cleaning up the yard.

There were mattresses to be changed and shaken, bedbugs in the bunk frames to be exterminated. Or they’d have the idea of checking you with your photo.

Or of carrying out an inventory – turning you with all your things into the yard and keeping you there half the day.

Nothing seems to make the authorities madder than zeks napping quietly after breakfast.

The line was moving, though slowly. – People were coming in and shoving into the head of the line without even a pardon-me, just elbowing through to the front – a camp barber, a bookkeeper, a man who worked in the C.E.D. But they weren’t rank-and-file, they were respectable trusties, pigs of the first order with soft jobs in the camp. The zeks who worked outside thought them lower than shit (a rating the trusties returned). But it was futile to protest–the trusties were a gang all their own, and were also in solid with the guards.

Now there were only ten ahead of Shukhov. Another seven had hurried in to line up behind him, when Tsezar, stooping, appearing in the doorway, wearing the new fur hat that had been sent him from outside.

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Now take that hat. Tsezar must have tickled someone’s palm to get permission for wearing a town hat so clean and new. They even robbed others of their bedraggled service hats. Here, wear the camp pig-fur model!

A strange-looking fellow with glasses was standing in line, his head buried in a newspaper. Tsezar at once made for him.

“Aha, Pyotr Mikhailych.”

They bloomed like a couple of poppies. The strange-looking fellow said:

“Look what I’ve got! A fresh Vechorka.12 They sent it by airmail.”

“Really,” said Tsezar, sticking his nose into the newspaper. How on earth could they make out such tiny print in the glimmer of that miserable lamp?

“There’s a most fascinating review of a Zavadsky premiere.”

Those Muscovites can smell one another at a distance, like dogs: they sniff and sniff when they meet in a way of their own. They talk so fast too, each trying to outtalk the other. When they’re jabbering away like that you hear practically no Russian; they might be talking Latvian or Rumanian.

However, Tsezar had all his bags with him–

everything in order.

“So I can . . . er . . . Tsezar Markovich,” lisped Shukhov, “I’ll take off now.”

12 Vecheruyaya Moskva–an evening newspaper.

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“Of course, of course,” said Tsezar, raising his dark mustache above the top of the newspaper. “Tell me though, who’s in front of me? And who’s behind me?”

Shukhov told him his place in the line and then, with a gentle hint, asked:

“Do you want me to bring you your supper?”

(That meant from the mess hall to the barracks, in a mess tin. This was strictly against the rules – there’d been many made about it. When they caught you they poured your food out of the mess tin onto the ground and put you in the guardhouse. All the same, food was carried and would go on being carried, because if a zek has anything to do he’ll never find time to go to the mess hall with his squad.)

Shukhov asked: “Do you want me to bring you your supper?’ but murmured to himself: “Surely he won’t be stingy. Won’t he give me his supper? After all, there’s no kasha for supper, only thin stew.”

“No, no,” said Tsezar with a smile. “Eat it yourself, Ivan Denisovich.”

That was just what Shukhov was expecting. And now, like a bird on the wing, he darted from the porch and ran from one zone to the other.

The prisoners were scurrying in all directions. There was a time when the camp commandant had issued yet another order: on no account were prisoners to walk about the camp on their own. Wherever possible, a squad was to go intact. But when there could be no business for a whole squad to do at once–at the 152 | P a g e

dispensary, say, or at the latrines–then groups of four or five were to be formed and a senior appointed to head them and take them there and back in a body.

The camp commandant took a very firm stand on that order. No one dared contradict him. The guards picked up solitary prisoners, took down their numbers, yanked them off to the cells–yet the order was a flop. It flopped quietly, like many much-touted orders.

Someone, say, is sent for by the security boys–must you take another four or five with you? Or you have to get yout food from the warehouse. Why the hell should I go with you? Someone has the strange idea of going to the C.E.D. to read newspapers. Who wants to go with him?

And this fellow goes to have his boots mended, another to the drying shed, a third merely from one barracks to another (that’s forbidden more strictly than anything else)–how can you hold them all back?

With that rule of his the commandant would have robbed them of their last shred of freedom, but it didn’t work out, much as he tried, the fat pig.

Hurrying along the path, meeting a guard on the way and, to be on the safe side, taking off his hat to him, Shukhov ran into the barracks. The place was in an uproar: someone’s bread ration had been swiped during the day and the poor fellow was shouting at the orderlies and the orderlies were shouting back. But the 104th’s corner was empty.

Shukhov was always thankful if, on returning to camp, he found that his mattress hadn’t been turned 153 | P a g e

over and that the guards hadn’t been snooping around.

So that’s all right.

He hurried to his bunk, taking off his coat as he ran.

Up with the coat, up with the mittens and the nice bit of blade. He probed the depths of his mattress – the bread was there. Good that he’d sewn it in.

And out he ran. To the mess hall.

He reached it without meeting a guard – only a couple of zeks arguing over their bread ration.

Outside the moon shone brighter than ever. The lamps seemed to be paler now. The barracks cast deep shadows. The door to the mess hall lay beyond a broad porch with four steps. Now the porch too lay in shadow. But above it a small lamp was swaying, and creaking dismally in the cold. The light it cast was rainbow-hued, from the frost maybe, or the dirt on the glass.

The camp commandant had issued yet another strict order: the squads were to enter the mess hall in double file. To this he added: on reaching the steps they were to stay, there and not climb onto the porch; they were to form up in fives and remain standing until the mess orderly gave them the go-ahead.

The post of mess orderly was firmly held by “the Limper.” Because of his lameness he’d managed to get classed as disabled, but he was a hefty son-of-a-bitch.

He’d got himself a birch club, and standing on the porch would hit anyone who came up the steps without his say-so. No, not anyone. He was smart, and could tell, 154 | P a g e

even in the dark, when it was better to let a man alone –

anyone who might give him as good as he got. He hit the down-and-outs. Once he hit Shukhov.

He was called an orderly. But, looking closer into it, he was a real prince–he palled around with the cooks.

Today all the squads may have turned up together or there may have been delay in getting things in order, but there was quite a crowd on the porch. Among them was the Limper, with his assistant.

The mess chief himself was there too. They were handling the crowd without guards–the bruisers. The mess chief was a fat pig with a head like a pumpkin and a broad pair of shoulders. He was bursting with energy and when he walked he seemed nothing but a lot of jerks, with springs for arms and legs. He wore a white lambskin hat without a number on it, finer than any civilian’s. And his waistcoat was lambskin to match, with a number on it, true, but hardly bigger than a postage stamp – thanks to Volkovoi. He bore no number at all on his back. He respected no one and all the zeks were afraid of him. He held the lives of thousands in his hands. Once they’d tried to beat him up but all the cooks–a prize bunch of thugs they were–had leaped to his defence.

Shukhov would be in hot water if the 104th had already gone in. The Limper knew everyone by sight and, with his chief present, wouldn’t think of letting a man in with the wrong squad; he’d make a point of putting the finger on him.

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Prisoners had been known to slip in behind the Limper’s back by climbing over the porch railings.

Shukhov had done it too. But tonight, under the chief’s very nose, that was out of the question – he’d bust you so bad that you’d only just manage to drag yourself off to the doctor.

Get along to the porch and see whether, among all those identical black coats, the 104th was still there.

He got there just as the men began shoving (what could they do? it would soon be time to turn in) as though they were storming a stronghold–the first step, the second, the third, the fourth. Got there! They poured onto the porch.

“Stop, you fuckers,” the Limper shouted and raised his stick at the men in front “Get back or I’ll bash your heads in.”

“What can we do about it?” they yelled back at him.

“The men at the back are pushing us.”

That was true, but those up in front were offering little resistance. They hoped to dash through into the mess hall.

The Limper put his club across his chest–it might have been a barricade in a street battle–and rushed headlong at the men in front. His assistant, the trusty, shared the stick with him, and so did the mess chief –

who had apparently decided to soil his hands with it.

They pushed hard – they had plenty of strength, with all that meat in them. The zeks reeled back. The men in 156 | P a g e

front toppled down onto the men behind them, bowled them over like wheat stalks.

“You fucking Limper, we’ll fix you,” cried a man in the crowd, hiding behind the others. As for the rest, they fell without a word, they got up without a word –

as quick as they could, before being stepped on.

The steps were clear. The mess chief went back to the porch but the Limper stayed on the top.

“Form fives, blockheads,” he shouted. “How many times have I told you I’ll let you in when I’m ready?”

Shukhov imagined that he saw Senka’s head right in front of the porch. He felt wildly elated, and using his elbows made an effort to push through to him. But, looking at those backs, he knew that it was beyond his strength. He wouldn’t get through.

“Twenty-seventh,” the Limper called, “go ahead.”

The 27th bounded up and made a dash for the door, and the rest surged after them. Shukhov, among them, was shoving with all his might. The porch quivered, and the lamp overhead protested shrilly.

“What again, you shits?” the Limper shouted in rage.

Down came his stick, on a shoulder, on a back, pushing the men off, toppling one after another.

Again he cleared the steps.

From below Shukhov saw Pavlo at the Limper’s side.

It was he who led the squad to the mess hall – Tiurin wouldn’t lower himself by joining in the hullabaloo.

“Form fives, hundred and fourth,” Pavlo called from the porch. “Make way for them, friends.”

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Friends – just see them making way, fuck ’em.

“Let me through, you in front. That’s my squad,”

Shukhov grunted, shoving against a back.

The man would gladly have done so but others were squeezing him from every side.

The crowd heaved, pushing away so that no one could breathe. To get its stew. Its lawful stew.

Shukhov tried something else. He grasped the porch rail on his left, got his arms around a pillar, and heaved himself up. He kicked someone’s knee and caught a blow in the ribs; a few curses, but he was through. He planted a foot on the edge of the porch floor, close to the top step, and waited. Some of his pals who were already there gave him a hand.

The mess chief walked to the door and looked back.

“Come on, Limper, send in two more squads.”

“One hundred and fourth,” shouted the Limper.

“Where d’you think you’re crawling, shit?”

He slammed a man from another squad on the back of the neck with his stick.

“One hundred and fourth,” shouted Pavlo, leading in his men.

“Phew!” gasped Shukhov in the mess hall. And, without waiting for Pavlo’s instructions, he started looking for free trays.

The mess hall seemed as usual, with clouds of steam curling in through the door and the men sitting shoulder to shoulder–like seeds in a sunflower. Others pushed their way through the tables, and others were carrying 158 | P a g e

loaded trays. Shukhov had grown used to it all over the years and his sharp eyes had noticed that S 208 had only five bowls on the tray he was carrying. This meant that it was the last tray-load for his squad. Otherwise the tray would have been full.

He went up to the man and whispered in his ear:

“After you with that tray.”

“Someone’s waiting for it at the counter. I promised.

. . .”

“Let him wait, the lazy bastard.”

They came to an understanding.

S 280 carried his tray to the table and unloaded the bowls. Shukhov immediately grabbed it. At that moment the man it had been promised to ran up and tried to grab it. But he was punier than Shukhov.

Shukhov shoved him off with the tray–what the hell are you pulling for?–and threw him against a post Then putting the tray under his arm, he trotted off to the serving window.

Pavlo was standing in the line there, worried because there was no empty tray. He was delighted to see Shukhov. He pushed the man ahead of him out of the way: “Why are you standing here? Can’t you see I’ve got a tray?”

Look, there was Gopchik – with another tray.

“They were arguing,” he said with a laugh, “and I grabbed it.”

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Gopchik will do well. Give him another three years –

he has still to grow up–and he’ll become nothing less than a bread cutter. He’s fated for it.

Pavlo told him to hand over the second of the trays to Yermolayev, a hefty Siberian who was serving a ten-year stretch, like Shukhov, for being caught by the Germans; then sent him to keep an eye on any table where the men might be finishing Shukhov put his tray down and waited.

“One hundred and fourth,” announced Pavlo at the counter.

In all there were five of these counters: three for serving regular food, one for zeks on special diets (ulcer victims, and bookkeeping personnel, as a favour), and one for the return of dirty dishes (that’s where the dish-lickers gathered, sparring with one another). The counters were low–about waist level. The cooks themselves were out of sight; only their hands, and the ladles, could be seen.

The cook’s hands were white and well cared for, but huge and hairy: a boxer’s hands, not a cook’s. He took a pencil and made a note on the wall–he kept his list there.

“One hundred and fourth – twenty-four portions.”

Pantaleyev slopped into the mess hall. Nothing wrong with him, the son-of-a-bitch.

The cook took an enormous ladle and stirred, stirred, stirred. The soup kettle had just been refilled, almost up to the brim, and steam poured from it.

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Replacing the huge ladle with a smaller one he began serving the stew in twenty-ounce portions. He didn’t go deep.

“One, two, three, four . . . .”

Some of the bowls had been filled while the stuff from the bottom of the kettle hadn’t yet settled after the stirring, and some were duds–nothing but soup.

Shukhov made a mental note of which was which. He put ten bowls on his tray and carried them off. Gopchik waved from the second row of posts.

“Over here, Ivan Denisovich, over here.”

No horsing around with bowls ‘of stew. Shukhov was careful not to stumble. Ho kept his throat busy too.

“Hey you, H 920. Gently, uncle. Out of the way, my boy.”

It was hard enough, in a crowd like this, to carry a single bowl without slopping it. He was carrying ten.

Just the same, he put the tray down safely, on the end of the table that Gopchik had cleared. No splashes. He managed, too, to manoeuvre the tray so that the two bowls with the thickest stew were just opposite the place he was about to sit down in.

Yermolayev brought another ten bowls. Gopchlk ran off and came back with Pavlo, the last four in their hands.

Kilgas brought the bread tray. Tonight they were being fed in accordance with the work they had done.

Some got six ounces, some nine, and Shukhov twelve.

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He took a piece with a crust for himself, and six ounces from the middle of the loaf for Tsezar.

Now from all over the mess hall Shukhov’s squad began streaming up, to collect their supper and eat it where they could. As he handed out the bowls, there were two things he had to take care of: he had to remember whom he’d served, and he had to watch out for the tray–and’ for his own corner of it. (He put his spoon into a bowl–one of the “thick” ones. Reserved, that meant.) Fetiukov was among the first to arrive. But he soon walked off, figuring there was nothing to be scrounged that particular evening; better to wander around the mess,, hunting for leftovers (if someone doesn’t finish his stew and pushes his bowl back, there are always people hustling to pounce on it, like vultures).

Shukhov counted the portions with Pavlo. Correct, apparently. He pushed across a bowl for Tiurin, one of the “thick” ones; and Pavlo poured his stew into a narrow German mess-tin, with a lid – you could carry it under your coat, close to your chest.

The empty trays were handed in. Pavlo sat there with his double helping, Shukhov with his two bowls.

And now they had nothing more to say to one another —

the sacred moments had come.

Shukhov took off his hat and laid it on his knees. He tasted one bowl, he tasted the other. Not bad – there was some fish in it. Generally, the evening stew was much thinner than at breakfast: if they’re to work, 162 | P a g e

prisoners must be fed in the morning; in the evening they’ll go to sleep anyway.

He dug in. First he only drank the broth, drank and drank. As it went down, filling his whole body with warmth, all his guts began to flutter inside him at their meeting with that stew. Goo-ood! There it comes, that brief moment for which a zek lives.

And now Shukhov complained about nothing: neither about the length of his stretch, nor about the length of the day, nor about their swiping another Sunday. This was all he thought about now: we’ll survive. We’ll stick it out, God willing, till it’s over.

He drained the hot soup from both bowls, and then tipped what was left in the second into the first, scraping it clean with his spoon. That set his mind at ease. Now he didn’t have to think about the second and keep an eye or a hand on it.

Now that he could look freely he glanced at his neighbours’ bowls. The one on his left was little more than water. The dirty snakes. The tricks they play! And on their fellow zeks.

He began to eat the cabbage with what was left of the soup. A potato had found its way into one of the bowls–

Tsezar’s. A medium-sized spud, frost-bitten, hard and sweetish. There wasn’t much fish, just a few stray bits of bare backbone. But you must chew every bone, every fin, to suck the juice out of them, for the juice is healthy. It takes time, of course, but he was in no hurry to go anywhere. Today was a red-letter day for him: 163 | P a g e

two helpings for dinner, two helpings for supper.

Everything else could wait.

Except, maybe, that visit to the Left for tobacco.

None might be left in the morning. He ate his supper without bread. A double-helping and bread – that was going too far. The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a demon. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday; it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.

He ate up his stew without taking much interest in what was happening around him. No need for that: he wasn’t on the lookout for extras, he was eating his own lawful portions. All the same, he noticed that ‘when the fellow opposite got up a tall old man–U 81–sat down in his place. Shukhov knew he was in the 64th and had heard, while waiting in the parcels line, that the 64th had been sent to the Socialist Way of Life settlement that day instead of the 104th, and had spent the whole time without a chance of getting warm–putting up barbed wire, building their own zone.

He’d been told that this old man had spent years without number in camps and prisons, and that he hadn’t benefited from a single amnesty. Whenever one ten-year stretch had run out they shoved another onto him right away.

Now Shukhov looked closely at the man. He held himself straight – the other zeks sat all hunched up– and looked as if he’d put something extra on the bench to sit on. There was nothing left to crop on his head: his hair had dropped out long since–the result of high living, no 164 | P a g e

doubt. His eyes didn’t dart after everything going on in the mess hall. He kept them fixed in an unseeing gaze at some spot over Shukhov’s head. His worn wooden spoon dipped rhythmically into the thin stew, but instead of lowering his head to the bowl like everybody else, he raised the spoon high to his lips. He’d lost all his teeth and chewed his bread with iron gums. All life had drained out of his face but it had been left, not sickly or feeble, but hard and dark like carved stone. And by his hands, big and cracked and blackened, you could see that he’d had little opportunity of doing soft jobs. But he wasn’t going to give in, oh no! He wasn’t going to put his nine ounces on the dirty, bespattered table – be put it on a well-washed bit of rag.

However, he couldn’t go on watching the old man –

he had other things to do. He finished his supper, licked his spoon clean, and put it In his boot. He pulled his bat over his eyes, got up, picked up his bread and Tsezar’s, and went out. Another porch led from the mess ball.

Two more orderlies stood there: they had nothing to do except unhook the door, let people through, and slip the hook on again.

Shukhov came out with a full belly. He felt pleased with himself and decided that, although it was close to curfew, he’d run over to the Left all the same. Instead of taking the bread to his barracks, he strode to Barracks 7.

The moon was high–clean and white, as if chiselled out of the sky. It was clear up there and there were some stars out – the brightest of them. But he had even 165 | P a g e

less time for stargazing than for watching people in the mess hall. One thing he realized – the frost was no milder. One of the civilians had said, and this had been passed on, that it was likely to drop to -25˚ in the night, and as low as -40˚ toward morning.

From far away in the settlement he heard the drone of a tractor. From the direction of the main thoroughfare an excavator squealed shrilly. And creak, creak, went every pair of boots in which people walked or ran about the camp.

There was no wind.

He meant to buy the tobacco at the price he’d paid before – one rouble a glassful, though, outside, that amount would cost three times as much, and for some cuts even more. In forced-labour camps all prices were local; it was quite different from anywhere else, because you couldn’t save money and few had any at all, for it was very hard to come by. No one was paid a kopeck for his work (at Ust-Izhma he’d received at least thirty roubles a month). If anyone’s relatives sent money by mail he didn’t get it in cash anyway; it was credited to his personal account. You could draw on a personal account once a month at the, commissary to buy soap, mouldy biscuits, and “Prima” cigarettes. Whether you liked the wares or not, you had to spend the amount the chief had given you a slip for. If you didn’t, the money was lost–simply written off.

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Shukhov did private jobs to get money, making slippers out of customers’ rags – two roubles a pair–or patching torn jackets, price by agreement.

Barracks 7, unlike Barracks 9, wasn’t in two big halves. It had a long passage, with ten doors opening off it. Each room housed a squad, packed into seven tiers of bunks. In addition, there was a little cubbyhole for the bucket and another for the senior orderly. The artists had a cubbyhole to themselves, too.

Shukhov headed for the Lett’s room. He found him lying on a lower bunk, his feet propped on a ledge. He was talking to his neighbour in Latvian.

Shukhov sat down beside him. “Evening.”

“Evening,” replied the Lett, without lowering his feet.

The room was small, everyone was listening. Who was he? What did he want?

Both Shukhov and the Lett realized that people were curious, so Shukhov let the conversation drag on. Well, how are you doing? Oh, not so bad. Cold today. Yes.

Shukhov waited until everyone had started talking again. (They were arguing about the Korean war–now that the Chinese had joined in, would that mean a world war or not?) He leaned closer to the Lett.

“Any t’bacca?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see it.”

The Lett dropped his feet off the ledge, put them on the floor, sat up. He was a mean fellow, that Lett – filled 167 | P a g e

a glass with tobacco as if he was afraid of putting in a single pinch too many.

He showed Shukhov his tobacco pouch and slid open the fastener.

Shukhov took a pinch and laid the leaf on his palm.

He examined it. Same as last time, brownish, same rough cut. He held it to his nose and sniffed. That was the stuff. But to the Lett he said:

“Not the same, somehow.”

“The same, the same,” the Lett said testily. “I never have any other kind. Always the same.”

“All right,” said Shukhov. “Stuff some into a glass for me. I’ll have a smoke and perhaps take a second glassful.”

He said “stuff” on purpose, because the Lett had the habit of dropping the tobacco in loosely.

The Lett brought out another pouch from under his pillow, fuller than the first. He took his glass out of a locker. It was really a plastic container, but Shukhov figured it held the same as an ordinary glass.

The Lett began to fray out the tobacco into the glass.

“Push it down, push it down,” said Shukhov, laying his own thumb on it.

“I know how to do it,” the Lett said sharply, jerking away the glass and pressing the tobacco, though lightly.

He dropped in a little more.

Meanwhile, Shukhov had unbuttoned his jacket and was groping inside the cotton lining for a piece of paper that only he knew where to find. Using both hands he 168 | P a g e

squeezed it along under the lining and forced it into a little hole in the cloth somewhere quite different, a small tear that he’d tacked with a couple of loose stitches. When the paper reached the hole he snapped the thread with a fingernail, folded the paper lengthwise (it had already been folded in a longish rectangle), and pulled it through the hole. Two rubles. Worn notes that didn’t rustle.

In the room a prisoner shouted:

“D’you mean to say you think Old Whiskers13 will take pity on you? Why, he wouldn’t trust his own brother. You haven’t a chance, you ass.”

One good thing about these “special” camps–you were free to let off steam. At Ust-Izhma you need only whisper that there was a shortage of matches outside, and they’d put you in the guardhouse and add another ten years to your stretch. But here you could bawl anything you liked from the top row of bunks – the squealers didn’t pass it on, the security boys had stopped caring.

The trouble was, you didn’t have much time to talk in.

“Ugh, you’re making it lie too loose,” Shukhov complained.

“Oh well, there you are,” said the Left, adding a pinch on top.

Shukhov took his pouch out of an inside pocket and poured in the tobacco from the glass.

13 Stalin.

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“All right,” he said, deciding not to waste the first precious cigarette by smoking it hurriedly. “Stuff it full again.”

Wrangling a bit more, he poured the second glassful into his pouch, handed over the two roubles, and left with a nod.

As soon as he was outside again he doubled back to Barracks 9. He didn’t want to miss Tsezar when he came back with that package.

But Tsezar was already there, sitting on his bunk and gloating over the parcel. Its contents were laid out on his bunk and on’top of the locker, but as there was no direct light there – Shukhov’s bunk was in the way– it wasn’t very easy to see.

Shukhov stooped, passed between Tsezar’s bunk and the captain’s, and handed Tsezar his bread ration.

“Your bread, Tsezar Markovich.”

He didn’t say, “Well, did you get it?” That would have been to hint, “I kept that place in the line and now have a right to my share.” The right was his, that he knew, but even eight years as a convict hadn’t turned him into a jackal – and the longer he spent at the camp the stronger he made himself.

But his eyes were another matter. Those eyes, the hawk-like eyes of a zek, darted to one side and slid swiftly over what was laid out there; and although the food hadn’t been unpacked and some of the bags were still unopened, that quick look and the evidence of his nose told him that Tsezar had got sausage, condensed 170 | P a g e

milk, a plump smoked fish, salt pork, crackers, biscuits, four pounds of lump sugar and what looked like butter, as well as cigarettes and pipe tobacco–and that wasn’t all.

He learned all this during the brief moment it took him to say: “Your bread, Tsezar Markovich.”

Tsezar, all excited and looking a bit tipsy (and who wouldn’t, after getting a parcel like that!) waved the bread away:

“Keep it, Ivan Denisovich.”

His bowl of stew, and now this six ounces of bread–

that was a full supper, and of course Shukhov’s fair share of the parcel.

And he put out of his mind any idea of getting something tasty from what Tsezar had laid out. There’s nothing worse than working your belly to no purpose.

Well, he had his twelve ounces and now this extra six, besides the piece in his mattress, at least another six ounces. Not bad. He’d eat six now and some more later, and still have next day’s ration for work. Living high, eh!

As for the hunk in the mattress, let it stay there! A good thing he’d found time to sew it in! Someone in the 75th had had a hunk pinched from his locker. That was a dead loss; nothing could be done about it.

People imagine that the package a man gets is a sort of nice, tight sack he has only to slit open and be happy.

But if you work it out it’s a matter of easy come, easy go. Shukhov had known cases when before his parcel arrived a fellow would be doing odd jobs to earn a bit of 171 | P a g e

extra kasha, or cadging cigarette butts–just like anybody else. He has to share with the guard and the squad leader–and how can he help giving a little something to the trusty in the parcels office? Why, next time the fellow may mislay your parcel and a week may go by before your name appears again on the list! And that other fellow at the place where you hand in your food to be kept for you, safe from friskers and pilferers – Tsezar will be there before the morning roll call, with everything in a sack – he must have his cut too, and a good one, if you don’t want him little by little swiping more than you gave him. Sitting there all day, the rat, shut up with other people’s food – try to keep an eye on him! And there must be something for services like Shukhov’s. And something to the bath attendant for issuing you decent underwear – not much but something. And for the barber who shaves you “with paper” (for wiping the razor on – he usually does it on your knee). Not much to him either but, still, three or four butts. And at the C.ED., for your letters to be kept separate and not get lost. And if you want to goof off a day or two and lie in bed, Instead of going to work, you have to slip the doctor something. And what about the neighbour you share a locker with (the captain, in Tsezar’s case)? He must have his cut. After all, he sees every blessed ounce you take. Who’d be nervy enough not to give him his share?

So leave envy to those who always think the radish in the other fellow’s hand is bigger than yours. Shukhov 172 | P a g e

knows life and never opens his belly to what doesn’t belong to him.

Meanwhile he pulled off his boats, climbed up to his bunk, took the strip of hacksaw out of his mitten, and decided that tomorrow he’d look around for a good pebble and start whetting down the blade to make a cobbler’s knife. Four days’ work, he figured, if he sat over it mornings and evenings, and he’d have a fine little knife with a sharp, curved blade.

But now he had to conceal that find of his, if only till morning. He’d slip it into the edge of the partition under the crossbeam. And as the captain hadn’t returned yet to his bunk down below and the sawdust wouldn’t fall on his face, Shukhov turned back the head of his mattress and set about hiding the thing.

His top-bunk neighbours could see what he was doing: Alyosha the Baptist and–across the aisle, in the next tier–the two Estonians. But he didn’t worry about them.

Fetiukov walked through the barracks. He was sobbing, all hunched up, his mouth smeared with blood.

So he’d been beaten up again–over the bowls! With no attempt to hide his tears, and looking at no one, he passed the whole squad, crawled into his bunk, and buried his face in his mattress.

When you thought about it, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He wouldn’t live to see the end of his stretch. His attitude was all wrong.

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Just then the captain turned up. He looked cheerful as he carried a pot of tea, special tea, you can bet! Two tea barrels stood in the barracks, but what sort of tea could you call it? Sewage: warm water with a touch of colouring, dishwater smelling of the barrel – of steamed wood and rot. That was tea for the workers. But the captain must have taken a pinch of real tea from Tsezar, put it in his pot, and hurried to the hot-water faucet.

And now, well satisfied, he settled down beside his locker.

“Nearly scalded my fingers at the faucet,” he boasted. Down there Tsezar spread a sheet of paper, and began laying this and that on it. Shukhov turned the head of his mattress back. He didn’t want to see what was going on; he didn’t want to upset himself. But even now they couldn’t get along without him; Tsezar rose to his full height, his eyes level with Shukhov’s, and winked.

“Ivan Denisovich! Er . . . . . lend me your ‘ten days.'”

That meant a small penknife. Yes, Shukhov had one–

he kept it concealed in the partition. A bit shorter than half a finger but it cut salt pork five fingers thick. He’d made the blade himself, mounted it and whetted it sharp.

He crawled to the beam. He fished the knife out. He handed it over. Tsezar nodded and ducked below.

That knife’s a breadwinner too. After all, you can be put in the cells for keeping it, and only a man without a 174 | P a g e

conscience would say: lend us your knife, we’re going to slice some sausage, and you can go fuck off.

Now Tsezar was again in his debt.

Having settled the bread and knife business, Shukhov opened his tobacco pouch. First he took a pinch of tobacco out of it, equal to what he’d borrowed, and stretched a hand across the aisle to Eino the Estonian.

Thanks.

The Estonian’s lips stretched in a sort of smile. He muttered something to his “brother,” and together they rolled the pinch of tobacco into a cigarette. Let’s try Shukhov’s tobacco.

No worse than yours. Try it, if you please. He’d like to try it himself, but some timekeeper in his brain told him that the evening count would very soon be starting.

This was just the time the guards poked around the barracks. If he was going to smoke now he’d have to go Into the corridor, but up there in his bunk he somehow felt warmer. The barracks was, as a matter of fact, far from warm–that film of frost was still on the ceiling.

He’d shiver In the night, but now it was bearable.

Shukhov stayed in his bunk and began crumbling little bits off his bread. He listened unwillingly to Tsezar and Buinovsky, talking below over their tea.

“Help yourself, captain. Help yourself, don’t hold back. Take some of this smoked fish. Have a slice of sausage.”

“Thanks, I will.”

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“Spread some butter on that bread. It’s real Moscow bread.”

“D’you know, I simply can’t believe they’re still baking pure white bread anywhere. Such luxury reminds me of a time when I happened to be in Archangel. . . .”

The two hundred voices in Shukhov’s half of the barracks were making a terrific din, but he fancied he heard the rail being struck. No one else seemed to have heard it. He also noticed that “Snubnose,” the guard, had come into the barracks. He was no more than a boy, small and rosy-cheeked. He was holding a sheet of paper, and it was clear from this and his manner that he’d come, not to turn them all out for the evening count or catch smokers, but to get someone.

“Snubnose” checked something on his list and said:

“Where’s the hundred and fourth?”

“Here,” they answered. The Estonians hid their cigarettes and waved away the smoke.

“Where’s the squad leader?”

“Well?” said Tiurin from his bunk, lowering his feet reluctantly.

“Your people signed those forms – about the extra stuff they were wearing?”

“They’ll sign them,” said Tiurin with assurance.

“They’re overdue.”

“My men haven’t had much education. It’s not an easy job. (This about Tsezar and the captain! What a squad leader! Never at a loss for an answer.) No pens.

No ink.”

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“Ought to have them.”

“They take them, away from us.”

“Well, look out, squad leader. If you go on talking like that I’ll put you in the guardhouse with the rest,”

“Snubnose” promised Tiurin, but mildly. “Now about those forms–see they’re handed in to the guardroom before roll call tomorrow morning. And give orders that all prohibited garments are to be surrendered to personal property. Get that?”

“I get it.”

(The captain was in luck, thought Shukhov. He hadn’t heard a word, he was having such a fine time with his sausage.)

“Let’s see now,” said the guard. “S 311. He one of yours?”

“Have to look at my list,” said Tiurin vaguely.

“Expect me to keep all those damned numbers in my head?”

(He was playing for time. He wanted to save Buinovsky one night at least, by dragging things out till the count.)

“Buinovsky. He here?”

“Eh? Here I am,” called the captain from his haven under Shukhov’s bunk.

There you are; the quickest louse is always the first to be caught in the comb.

“You? Yes, that’s right. S 311. Get ready.”

“Where am I to go?”

“You know where.”

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The captain sighed. He grunted. Nothing more. It must have been easier for him to take out a squadron of destroyers into the dark, stormy night than to tear himself away from this friendly chat and set out for the icy cells.

“How many days?” he asked, his voice falling.

“Ten. Come on, come on. Get going.”

At that moment the barracks orderlies shouted:

“Evening count. All out for evening count.”

This meant that the guard who was to count them had already entered the barracks.

The captain looked around. Should he take his coat?

Anyway, they’d strip it off him when be got there, leaving him only his jacket. Better go as he was. He’d hoped that Volkovoi would forget (but Volkovoi never forgot anyone) and he had made no preparations, hadn’t even hidden a pinch of tobacco in his jacket. And to carry it in his hands – that would be useless; they’d take it from him the minute they frisked him.

All the same . . . Tsezar slipped him a couple of cigarettes as he put on his hat.

“Well, brothers, good-by,” said the captain with an embarrassed nod to his fellow prisoners, and followed the guard out.

A few voices shouted: Keep your chin up. But what could you really say to him? They knew the cells, the 104th did; they’d built them. Brick walls, cement floor, no windows, a stove they lit only to melt the ice on the walls and make pools on the floor. You slept on bare 178 | P a g e

boards, and if you’d any teeth left to eat with after all the chattering they’d be doing, they gave you nine ounces of bread day after day and hot stew only on the third, sixth, and ninth.

Ten days. Ten days “hard” in the cells – if you sat them out to the end, your health would be ruined for the rest of your life. T.B. and nothing but hospital for you till you kicked the bucket.

As for those who got fifteen days “hard” and sat them out – they went straight into a hole in the cold earth.

As long as you’re in the barracks – praise the Lord and sit tight.

“Come on now, out you get, before I count three,”

shouted the barracks commander. “Anyone who isn’t out will have his number taken. I’ll give it to the guard.”

The barracks commander was one of the biggest bastards. After all, just think, he’s locked in with us all night, but the way he acts, not afraid of anyone! On the contrary, everyone’s afraid of him. Some of us he betrays to the guards, others he wallops himself. He lost a thumb in a scrap and is classed as an invalid, but his face is the face of a thug. Actually he is a thug with a criminal record, but among the charges against him was one under Article 58, 14, and that’s how he landed in with us.

He wouldn’t think twice about taking your number and passing it to the guard – and that means two days in the guardhouse, with work. So instead of just trailing to the door one by one they all rushed out in a crowd, 179 | P a g e

tumbling down from the bunks as if they were bears and pressing to the narrow exit.

Shukhov, the cigarette in his palm–he’d craved it so long and had already rolled it–sprang nimbly down, and slipped his feet into the valenki. He was on the point of leaving when he felt a twinge of pity for Tsezar. It wasn’t that he wanted to make anything more out of the man; he felt genuinely sorry for him. For all his high opinion of himself, Tsezar didn’t know a thing about life–after collecting his parcel he shouldn’t have gloated over it; he should have taken it to the storeroom right away before the evening count. Eating’s something that can wait. But now what was Tsezar going to do with all that stuff? He couldn’t carry his sack with him to the count. What a horselaugh that would bring! Four hundred zeks roaring their heads off. But to leave it in the barracks no matter how briefly meant that the first to run back from the count would swipe it. (At Ust-Izhma it was even crueler: there, when we came back from work, the crooks got in first and cleaned out all our lockers.)

Shukhov saw that Tsezar realized the danger. He was bustling here and there, but too late. He was stuffing the sausage and salt pork under his jacket. That at least he could save by taking it to the count.

Pityingly, Shukhov gave him some advice:

“Sit here till the last moment, Tsezazr Markovich.

Hide here in the shadow and stay till everyone has left.

And when the guard comes by the bunks with the 180 | P a g e

orderlies and pokes into everything, come out and say you’re feeling bad. I’ll go out first and I’ll be back first.

That’s the way…”

And he ran off.

At first he elbowed his way through the crowd mercilessly (protecting his cigarette in his fist, however). In the corridor, which served both halves of the barracks, and near the door, the men in front were hanging back, the cagy beasts, clinging in two rows to the walls on each side, leaving just enough room for any fool who liked the cold to squeeze through. They were going to stay here; they’ve been out all day. Why should they freeze needlessly for another ten minutes? No fools here! You croak today but I mean to live till tomorrow.

At any other time Shukhov too would have clung to the wall. But now he strode to the door and even grinned.

“What are you scared of, you idiots? Never seen Siberian frost before? Come outside and warm yourselves by the wolf’s sun. Give us a light, uncle.”

He lit his cigarette at the door and moved out onto the porch. “Wolf’s sun,” that’s what they’d called the moon in Shukhov’s village.

The moon rode high now. As high again, and it would be at its zenith. The sky was greenish-white; the rare stars shone brilliantly. The snow gleamed white, the barracks walls gleamed white. The lamps had little effect.

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There was a dense black crowd outside one of the barracks. The zeks had come out for the count. They were coming out over there too. But it wasn’t the sound of voices you heard from the barracks – it was the creaking of boots on the snow.

Some prisoners were coming down the steps and lining up, opposite the barracks. Five in front, then three behind. Shukhov joined the three. After an extra bit of bread, and with a cigarette between your lips, it wasn’t so bad standing there. Good tobacco – the Lett hadn’t gypped him. Strong, and smelled good.

Gradually, other prisoners trailed through the door.

Two or three more lines of five were forming behind him. They came out angry now. Why were those rats jostling in the corridor? Why weren’t they coming out?

Why should we have to freeze for them?

No zek ever saw a clock or a watch. What use were they to him anyway? All he needs to know is: will reveille sound soon? How long to roll call? How long to dinner? To the last clanging of the rail?

The evening count, everyone said, was at nine. But it never finished at nine – they would sometimes recount two or even three times. You never got away before ten. And at five o’clock next morning they hounded you out of your bunk with the first clanging of the rail. No wonder that Moldavian had dozed off down at the shop before work was over today. Wherever a zek gets a bit of warmth into him he falls asleep on the spot. You lose so much sleep during the week that on a Sunday –

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provided they don’t send you to work–whole barrackfuls of zeks sleep the day through.

Now they’re streaming forward. At last! The barracks commander and the guard were dragging them out, kicking them in the ass. Serve ’em right, the tricky bastards.

“What?” the zeks in front shouted at the late corners.

“Pretty smart, huh? Want to lick the cream off the shit, you rats? If you’d come out earlier we’d be through now.”

The whole barracks had been emptied. Four hundred men–eighty ranks of five. They lined up in a column, the ones in front strictly in fives, the others any old way.

“Get into line there, you at the back,” the barracks commander shouted from the steps.

They didn’t move, fuck ’em.

Tsezar came out shivering, pretending he was sick.

At his heels were four orderlies, two from each half of the barracks, and a prisoner who limped. They stood in front so that Shukhov was now a row farther back.

Tsezar was sent to the rear of the column.

The guard came out too.

“Form fives!” he shouted to the rear of the column, furiously.

“Form fives!” shouted the barracks commander even more furiously.

The men didn’t budge, fuck ’em.

The barracks commander rushed from the porch to the rear of the column, swearing and hitting out.

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But he was careful whom he hit. Only the meek ones.

The ranks formed. He came back. He shouted:

“First. Second. Third . . .”

As soon as they’d been counted the men broke away and rushed into the barracks.

All square for today with the authorities. All square, unless there’s a recount. Those parasites were such morons, they counted worse than any herdsman. For all that he may be unable to read or write, a herdsman knows if there’s a calf missing when he’s driving the herd. And these parasites had been trained – whatever good it’d done them.

The previous winter there’d been no drying sheds at all for the boots, and the zeks had had to leave their valenki in the barracks night after night. So if the count was repeated, everyone had to be driven outside again, a second, a third, a fourth time–already undressed, just as they were, wrapped in blankets. Since then a drying shed had been built; it wasn’t big enough for all the boots at one time, but at least each of the squads could get the benefit of it once every two or three days. So now any recount was held inside. They merely shifted the zeks from one half of the barracks to the other, counting them as they filed through.

Shukhov wasn’t the first to be back, but he kept an eye on anyone ahead of him. He ran up to Tsezar’s bunk and sat on it. He took off his boots, and climbed onto the top of a tier of bunks close by the stove. He put his 184 | P a g e

boots on the stove–first-corner’s prerogative– then back to Tsezar’s bunk. He sat there cross-legged, one eye on guard for Tsezar (they might swipe his packages from under the head of his bunk), the other for himself (they might push his boots off the stove).

“Hey,” he shouted, “hey you, Red. Want to get that boot in your teeth? Put your own up but don’t touch other peoples’.”

The prisoners poured in like a stream.

The men in the 20th shouted:

“Give us your boots.”

As soon as they’d left the barracks with the boots the door was locked after them. When they ran back they shouted:

“Citizen chief. Let us in.”

And the guards gathe’red in their quarters with their boards and did the bookkeeping: had anyone escaped, or was everything in order?

Well, Shukhov needn’t think about such things that evening. Here came Tsezar, diving between the tiers of bunks on his way back.

“Thank you, Ivan Denisovich.”

Shukhov nodded, and shot up to his bunk like a squirrel. Now he could finish his bread, smoke a second cigarette, go to sleep.

But he’d had such a good day, he felt in such good spirits, that somehow he wasn’t in the mood for sleep yet.

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He must make his bed now – there wasn’t much to it.

Strip his mattress of the grubby blanket and lie on it (it must have been ’41 when he last slept in sheets– that was at home; it even seemed odd for women to bother about sheets, all that extra laundering). Head on the pillow, stuffed with shavings of wood; feet in jacket sleeve; coat on top of blanket and – Glory be to Thee, O

Lord. Another day over. Thank You I’m not spending tonight in the cells. Here it’s still bearable.

He lay with his head near the window, but Alyosba, who slept next to him on the same level, across a low wooden railing, lay the opposite way, to catch the light He was reading his Bible again.

The electric light was quite near. You could read and even sew by it.

Alyosha heard Shukhov’s whispered prayer, and, turning to him:

“There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don’t you give it its freedom?”

Shukhov stole a look at him. Alyosha’s eyes glowed like two candles.

“Well, Alyosha,” he said with a sigh, “it’s this way.

Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don’t get through or they’re returned with ‘rejected’ scrawled across ’em.”

Outside the staff quarters were four sealed boxes –

they were cleared by a security officer once a month.

Many were the appeals that were dropped into them.

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The writers waited, counting the weeks: there’ll be a reply in two months, in one month.

But the reply doesn’t come. Or if it does it’s only

“rejected.”

“But, Ivan Denisovich, it’s because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That’s why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move. . . .”

Shukhov grinned and rolled another cigarette. He took a light from the Estonian.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Alyosba. I’ve never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never seen a mountain at all. But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist society of yours–did you make a single mountain move?”

They were an unlucky group too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every damn one of them had been given twenty-five years. Nowadays they cut all cloth to the same measure–twentyfive years.

“Oh, we didn’t pray for that, Ivan Denisovich,”

Alyosha said earnestly. Bible in hand, he drew nearer to Shukhov till they lay face to face. “Of all earthly and mortal things Our Lord commanded us to pray only for our daily bread. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.'”

“Our ration, you mean?” asked Shukhov.

But Alyosha didn’t give up. Arguing more with his eyes than his tongue, he plucked at Shukhov’s sleeve, stroked his arm, and said:

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“Ivan Denisovich, you shouldn’t pray to get parcels or for extra stew, not for that. Things that man puts a high price on are vile in the eyes of Our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit–that the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from our hearts. . . .”

“Listen to me. At our church in Polomnya we had a priest . . .”

“Don’t talk to me about your priest,” Alyosha said imploringly, his brow furrowed with distress.

“No, listen.” Shukhov propped himself up on an elbow. “In Polomnya, our parish, there isn’t a man richer than the priest. Take roofing, for instance. We charge thirty-five roubles a day to ordinary people for mending a roof, but the priest a hundred. And he forks up without a whimper. He pays alimony to three women in three different towns, and he’s living with a fourth. And he keeps that bishop of his on a hook, I can tell you. Oh yes, he gives his fat hand to the bishop, all right. And he’s thrown out every other priest they’ve sent there. Wouldn’t share a thing with ’em.”

“Why are you talking to me about priests? The Orthodox Church has departed from Scripture. It’s because their faith is unstable that they’re not in prison.”

Shukhov went on calmly smoking and watching his excited companion.

“Alyosha,” he said, withdrawing his arm and blowing smoke into his face. “I’m not against God, understand that. I do believe in God. But I don’t believe in paradise 188 | P a g e

or in hell. Why do you take us for fools and stuff us with your paradise and hell stories? That’s what I don’t like.”

He lay back, dropping his cigarette ash with care between the bunk frame and the window, so as to singe nothing of the captain’s below. He sank into his own thoughts. He didn’t hear Alyosha’s mumbling.

“Well,” he said conclusively, “however much you pray it doesn’t shorten your stretch. You’ll sit it out from beg inning to end anyhow.”

“Oh, you mustn’t pray for that either,” said Alyosha, horrified. “Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the Apostle Paul wrote: ‘Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.'”

Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn’t know either whether he wanted freedom or not.

At first he’d longed for it. Every night he’d counted the days of his stretch–how many had passed, how many were coming. And then he’d grown bored with counting. And then it became clear that men like him wouldn’t ever be allowed to return home, that they’d be exiled. And whether his life would be any better there than here – who could tell?

Freedom meant one thing to him – home.

But they wouldn’t let him go home.

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Alyosha was speaking the truth. His voice and his eyes left no doubt that he was happy in prison.

“You see, Alyosha,” Shukhov explained to him,

“somehow it works out all right for you: Jesus Christ wanted you to sit in prison and so you are -sitting there for His sake. But for whose sake am I here? Because we weren’t ready for war in forty-one? For that? But was that my fault?”

“Seems like there’s not going to be a recount,” Kilgas murmured from his bunk.

“Yeah,” said Shukhov. “We ought to write it up in coal inside the chimney. No second count.” He yawned.

“Might as well get to sleep.”

And at that very moment the door-bolt rattled to break the calm that now reigned in the barracks. From the corridor ran two of the prisoners who’d taken boots to the drying shed.

“Second count,” they shouted.

On their heels came a guard.

“All out to the other half.”

Some were already asleep. They began to grumble and move about, they put their boots on (no one ever took his wadded trousers off at night – you’d grow numb with cold unless you wore them under your blanket).

“Damn them,” said Shukhov. Mildly, because he hadn’t gone to sleep yet.

Tsezar raised a hand and gave him two biscuits, two lumps of sugar, and a slice of sausage.

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“Thank you, Tsezar Markovich,” said Shukhov, leaning over the edge of his bunk. “Come on now, hand up that sack of yours. I’ll put it under my mattress.” (It’s not so easy to swipe things from the top bunks as you go by. Anyway, who’d look for anything in Shukhov’s bunk?)

Tsezar handed up his sack and Shukhov hid it under the mattress. Then be waited a little till more men had been sent out–he wouldn’t have to stand barefoot so long in the corridor. But the guard scowled at him and shouted:

“Come on, you there in the corner.”

Shukhov sprang lightly to the floor (his boots and footrags were so well placed on the stove it would be a pity to move them). Though he’d made so many slippers for others he hadn’t a pair of his own. But he was used to this–and the count didn’t take long.

They confiscate slippers too if they find them in daytime.

As for the squads who’d sent their boots to be dried, it wasn’t so bad for them, now the recount was held indoors. Some wore slippers, some just their footrags, some went barefoot.

“Come on, come on,” growled the guard.

“Do you want to be carried out, you shits?” the barracks commander shouted.

They shoved them all into the other half of the barracks, and loiterers into the corridor. Shukhov stood 191 | P a g e

against the wall near the bucket. The floor was moist underfoot. An icy draft crept in from the porch.

They had them all out now and once again the guard and the orderly did their round, looking for any who might be dozing in dark corners. There’d be trouble if they counted short. It would mean still another recount.

Round they went, round they went, and came back to the door.

“One, two, three, four. . . .” Now they released you faster, for they were counting one by one. Shukhov managed to squeeze in eighteenth. He ran back to his bunk, put his foot on the support – a heave, and he was up.

All right. Feet back into the sleeve of his jacket.

Blanket on top. Then the coat. And to sleep. Now they’d be letting everybody from the other half of the barracks into our half. But that’s not our worry.

Tsezar returned. Shukhov lowered his sack to him.

Alyosha returned. Impractical, that’s his trouble.

Makes himself nice to everyone but doesn’t know how to do favors that get paid back.

“Here you are, Alyosha,” said Shukhov, and handed him a biscuit.

Alyosha smiled.

“Thank you. But you’ve got nothing yourself.”

“Eat it.”

(We’ve nothing but we always find a way to make something extra.)

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Now for that slice of sausage. Into the mouth.

Getting your teeth into it. Your teeth. The meaty taste.

And the meaty juice, the real stuff. Down it goes, into your belly.

Gone.

The rest, Shukhov decided, for the morning. Before the roll call.

And he buried his head in the thin, unwashed blanket, deaf now to the crowd of zeks from the other half as they jostled between the bunk frames, waiting to be counted.

Shukhov went to sleep fully content. He’d had many strokes of luck that day: they hadn’t put him in the cells; they hadn’t sent his squad to the settlement; he’d swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’d built a wall and enjoyed doing it; he’d smuggled that bit of hacksaw blade through; he’d earned a favour from Tsezar that evening; he’d bought that tobacco. And he hadn’t fallen ill. He’d got over it.

A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.

There were three thousand six hundred and fiftythree days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.

The three extra days were for leap years.

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