Pig: A Thriller (4 page)

“Science should be the investigation of the unexplained rather than the explanation of the uninvestigated,” she’d complained to
one of
her doctoral supervisor
s
one day. “Look what happens to us in the system. We start kindergarten with a book bag and sixty four colours of crayons with a sharpener on the back. Eighteen years later we come out with uni-colour ball point pen. Somewhere along the line we’ve lost sixty three colours
and the ability to keep sharpening ourselves
.”

In Kolyma, she began her real education.
One of the Asian inmates had
introduce
d
her to it
. Forced to stand in the snow
as a disciplinary measure holding buckets of water in outstretched arms until the water got cold enough to freeze solid,
Magda
came to learn that stillness was peace, serenity,
was
strength. Only in the stillness could decisions be properly made. Think of a mountain or a tree, how still they are. Only when you became as still as a mountain or rock would you be able to think. The Japanese even had a proverb for it:
Ishi
no
ue
ni
mo
san
nen
-- to spend three years waiting on the same stone. 

With her background in Physics and math,
Magda
was often called upon to work on the camp finances. She also trained herself in cosmetology, calling herself a Mathabeautician, and doing makeup for
the other prisoners and guards, hours spent keeping her mouth shut and her mind
and ears
open. By the time she was let out
of Kolyma
, she spoke seven languages, but paradoxically began to talk less,
sure
enough in herself that she didn’t mind if someone might not like her.
Even after she was released, s
he carried the camps around in her thinking like others carried their passport or a small Bible. She either had no ego, or one so large it was impregnable.

If you always knew where Pig was, clanking and blustering along, Magda  could stand absolutely still, like one of those submarines with the engines off, on sonar silence, waiting to hear the
clues that resided in the deep
. What was the American running shoe company’s slogan? Just do it?
Running, skating, never thinking, just doing?
It seemed to suit the age perfectly. Magda preferred meditation. 
Movement brought only chaos.

If she was telling the truth, she could tell you exactly how many trees we
re in any given square kilometre
of Siberia.

"Fight the bastard,” the Doctor brayed,
because he knew that’s what he was supposed to say,
a vat of
slivovitz
hanging over his belt,
his accent
the colour of a winter suicide
and
a tattered Inter Milan football jersey loosely untucked to hide his belly
.
If he’d washed since yesterday, you couldn’t tell.
Completely bald
from the ears forward
,
he compensated for his lack of hair
with
a
Stalin
esq
u
e
moustache
and a surfeit of unsubstantiated opinions
, from Putin’s
triumphs
to the perfidy of the Jews, the price of vodka in the shops and who was Lady Di’s
real
assassin
. I
t was as i
f he couldn’t have hair, he could have opinions.

The Doctor had once misdiagnosed colon cancer in a very prominent Palestinian politician, which explained how he came to be here in Siberia. It was the only place that would accept his qualifications and provide him with paid work.  As the politician was
later
heard to
blackly joke
, “He had his head so far up his own ass he couldn’t see up mine.”

“I wond
er if she’ll put out for me?” the
Doctor mused
, watching Magda grieve over Snow’s
comatose
body.
Magda noted that both the
D
oc
tor
’s
grin and the
teeth
inside it seemed false, like the colour of creamer mixed into
chicory
broth instead of fresh farm milk in an elixir of brewed Colombian beans.

Bandar, his mother and father had christened him and that was the name he
insisted everyone
in camp call him;
not
Bandy, not Band, but Bandar, emphasis on the first syllable
only
, never the second
.
Call him anything else and he would refuse to answer, stomping off in a snit and running to complain. As a result, inventing variations of his name and watching him go into contortions over it had become the main camp sport, beating out even shooting empty
vodka bottles with Kalashnikov
s.

Doctor
Ba
n
dar ha
d answered Magda’s numerous questions
about Snow
-- treatment options, possible complications, etc. -- with the surliness of a government food store
clerk,
a faceless type who made you wonder if he invented the rubber stamp or it invented him.
A homeless Palestinian
with a Jordanian passport, he was welcome to use the papers just so long as he didn’t actually return to Jordan.
Paper will stand whatever you write on it.
As a result,
he would do whatever Pig told him to. It was
either
that or
go
back to being homeless.

“
Nado
zhits,
” he’d de
claim anytime someone challenged one of his many questionable
actions
. “You have to live.” 
Then he’d comb over a few straggly hairs that seemed to grow out of his ears over the top of his bald head, creating the first human bar code.

Magda Perskanski had gone into the
gulag
as a Communist
in a Communist country.
She had
come out
as a realist in a chaotic one.
In the interim, the Bolshevik Party had fallen, the country was no longer the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin was distinguishing himself by visiting foreign countries only long enough to get out of the plane and piss on the end of the runway then
go back in
the plane to
sleep off
his
hangover while his advisors pillaged the nation.

The rest of the Union was in even worse shape than Boris’
liver
.
Released
from the gulag
,
the penniless
Magda had been put on a train for Moscow and told to resume her life as she wanted. Sh
e
got
only
as far as
Noyabrsk
,
whe
re
the train broke down
and no one could say when it would be fixed or another one sent to replace it.
With no money in her pocket, no job, and no idea when – or if – the train would be functional again, she did what she had to survive.