One Day In The Life

"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, f*ck 'em.
The barracks commander rushed from the porch to the rear of the column, swearing and hitting out.
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 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.
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. 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: "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 rubles 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 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.
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 bieak 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.