One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (18 page)

There was no wind.

He meant to buy the tobacco at the price he'd paid before--one ruble a glassful, though, outside, that amount would cost three times as much, and for some cuts even more. In forced-labor 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 rubles 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, moldy 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.

Shukhov did private jobs to get money, making slippers out of customers' rags--two rubles 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 neighbor 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 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 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 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 Whiskers *[*

Stalin.] 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.

"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 rubles, 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 be 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 hawklike 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 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, ehi 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 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 neighbor 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 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 neighbors 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.

Petiukov 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.

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 coloring, 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 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,

will."

"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."