One Day In The Life

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE
OF IVAN DENISOVICH




At five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded, as usual, by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the windowpanes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun. It was cold outside, and the campguard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long.
The clanging ceased, but everything outside still looked like the middle of the night when Ivan Denisovich Shukhov got upto go to the bucket. It was pitch dark except for the yellow light cast on the window by three lamps--two in the outer zone, one inside the camp itself.
And no one came to unbolt the barracks door; there was no sound of the barrack orderlies pushing a pole Into place to lift the barrel of excrement and carry it out.
Shukhov never overslept reveille. He always got up at once, for the next ninety minutes, until they assembled for work, belonged to him, not to the authorities, and any old-timer could always earn a bit--by sewing a pair of mittens for someone out of old sleeve lining; or bringing some rich loafer in the squad his dry valenki *[* Knee-length felt boots for winter wear.] -- right up to his bunk, so that he wouldn't have to stumble barefoot round the heap of boots looking for his own pair; or going the rounds of the warehouses, offering to be of service, sweeping up this or fetching that; or going to the mess hall to collect bowls from the tables and bring them stacked to the dishwashers--you're sure to be given something to eat there, though there were plenty of others at that game, more than plenty--and, what's worse, if you found a bowl with something left in it you could hardly resist licking it out. But Shukhov had never forgotten the words of his first squad leader, Kuziomin--a hard-bitten prisoner who had already been in for twelve years by 1943--who told the newcomers, just in from the front, as they sat beside a fire in a desolate cutting in the forest:
"Here, men, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. The ones that don't make it are those who lick other men's leftovers, those who count on the doctors to pull them through, and those who squeal on their buddies."
As for squealers, he was wrong there. Those people were sure to get through camp all right Only, they were saving their own skin at the expense of other people's blood.
Sbukhov always arose at reveille. But this day he didn't. He had felt strange the evening before, feverish, with pains all over his body. He hadn't been able to get warm all through the night. Even in his sleep he had felt at one moment that he was getting seriously ill, at another that he was getting better. He had wished morning would never come.
But the morning came as usual.
Anyway, where would you get warm in a place like this, with the windows iced over and the white cobwebs of frost all along the huge barracks where the walls joined the ceiling!
He didn't get up. He lay there in his bunk on the top tier, his head buried in a blanket and a coat, both feet stuffed into one tucked-under sleeve of his wadded jacket.
He couldn't see, but his ears told him everything going on in the barrack room and especially in the corner his squad occupied. He heard the heavy tread of the orderlies carrying one of the big barrels of excrement along the passage outside. A light job, that was considered, a job for the infirm, but just you try and carry out the muck without spilling any. He heard some of the 75th slamming bunches of boots onto the floor from the drying shed. Now their own men were doing it (it was their own squad's turn, too, to dry valenki). Tiurin, the squad leader, and his deputy Pavlo put on their valenki without a word but he heard their bunks creaking. Now Pavlo would be going off to the breadstorage and Tiurin to the staff quarters to see the P.P.D * [* Production Planning Department.]
Ah, but not simply to report as usual to the authorities for the daily assignment. Shukbov remembered that this morning his fate hung in the balance: they wanted to shift the 104th from the buildlng shops to a new site, the "Socialist Way of Life" settlement. It lay In open country covered with snowdrifts, and before anything else could be done there they would have to dig holes and put up posts and attach barbed wire to them. Wire themselves in, so that they wouldn't run away. Only then would they start building.
There wouldn't be a warm corner for a whole month. Not even a doghouse. And fires were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your work warm you up, that was your only salvation.
No wonder the squad leader looked so worried, that was his job--to elbow some other squad, some bunch of suckers, into the assignment instead of the 104th. Of course with empty bands you got nowhere. He'd have to take a pound of salt pork to the senior official there, if not a couple of pounds.
There's never any harm in trying, so why not have a go at the dispensary and get a few days off if you can? After all, he did feel as though every limb was out of joint.
Then Shukhov wondered which of the campguards was on duty that morning. It was "One-and-a-half" Ivan's turn, he recalled. Ivan was a thin, weedy, darkeyed sergeant. At first sight he looked like a real bastard, but when you got to know him he turned out to be the most good-natured of the guards on duty: he didn't put you in the guardhouse, he didn't haul you off before the authorities. So Shukhov decided he could lie in his bunk a little longer, at least while Barracks 9 was at the mess hall.
The whole four-bunk frame began to shake and sway. Two of its occupants were getting up at the same time: Shukhov's top-tier neighbor, Alyosha the Baptist, and Buinovsky, the ex-naval captain down below.
The orderlies, after removing both barrels of excrement, began to quarrel about which of them should go for hot water. They quarreled naggingly, like old women.
"Hey you, cackling like a couple of hens!" bellowed the electric welder in the 20th squad. "Get going." He flung a boot at them.
The boot thudded against a post. The squabbling stopped.
In the next squad the deputy squad leader growled quietly: "Vasily Fyodorovich, they've cheated us again at the supply depot, the dirty rats. They should have given us four twenty-five-ounce loaves and I've only got three. Who's going to go short?"
He kept his voice down, but of course everyone in the squad heard him and waited fearfully to learn who would be losing a slice of bread that evening.
Shukhov went on lying on his sawdust mattress, as hard as a board from long wear. If only it could be one thing or the other--let him fall into a real fever or let his aching joints ease up.
Meanwhile Alyosha was murmuring his prayers and Buinovsky had returned from the latrines, announcing to no one in particular but with a sort of malicious glee: "Well, sailors, grit your teeth. It's twenty below, for sure."
Shukhov decided to report sick.
At that very moment his blanket and jacket were imperiously jerked off him. He flung his coat away from his face and sat up. Looking up at him, his head level with the top bunk, was the lean figure of The Tartar.
So the fellow was on duty out of turn and had stolen up.
"S 854," The Tartar read from the white strip that had been stitched to the back of his black jacket. "Three days' penalty with work."
The moment they heard that peculiar choking voice of his, everyone who wasn't up yet in the whole dimly lit barracks, where two hundred men slept in bugridden bunks, stirred to life and began dressing in a hurry.
"What for, citizen *[* Prisoners were not allowed to use the word comrade.] chief?" asked Shukhov with more chagrin than he felt in his voice.
With work--that wasn't half so bad. They gave you hot food and you had no time to start thinking. Real jail was when you were kept back from work.
"Failing to get up at reveille. Follow me to the camp commandanfs office," said The Tartar lazily.
His crumpled, hairless face was imperturbable. He turned, looking around for another victim, but now everybody, in dim corners and. under the lights, in upper bunks and in lower, had thrust their legs into their black wadded trousers or, already dressed, had wrapped their coats around themselves and hurried to the door to get out of the way until The Tartar had left.
Had Shukhov been punished for something he deserved he wouldn't have felt so resentful. What hurt him was that he was always one of the first to be up. But he knew he couldn't plead with The Tartar. And, protesting merely for the sake of form, he hitched up his trousers (a bedraggled scrap of cloth had been sewn on them, just above the left knee, with a faded black number), slipped on his jacket (here the same digits appeared twice--on the chest and on the back), fished his valenki from the heap on the floor, put his hat on (with his number on a patch of cloth at the front), and followed The Tartar out of the barrack room.
The whole 104th saw him go, but no one said a word--what was the use, and anyway what could they say? The squad leader might have tried to do something, but he wasn't there. And Shukhov said nothing to anyone. He didn't want to irritate The Tartar. Anyway he could rely on the others in his squad to keep his breakfast for him.
The two men left the barracks. The cold made Sbukhov gasp.
Two powerful searchlights swept the camp from the farthest watchtowers. The border lights, as well as those inside the camp, were on. There were so many of them that they outshone the stars.
With the snow creaking under their boots, the prisoners hurried away, each on his own business, some to the parcels office, some to hand in cereals to be cooked in the "individual" kitchen. All kept their heads down, buried in their buttoned-up coats, and all were chilled to the bone, not so much from the actual cold as from the prospect of having to spend the whole day in it. But The Tartar in his old army coat with the greasy blue tabs walked at a steady pace, as though the cold meant nothing to him.
They walked past the high wooden fence around the guardhouse, the only brick building in the camp; past the barbed wire that protected the camp bakery from the prisoners; past the corner of the staff quarters where the length of frosted rail hung on thick strands of wire; past another pole with a thermometer hanging on it (in a sheltered spot, so that the registered temperature shouldn't drop too low). Shukhov looked hopefully out of the corner of an eye at the milk-white tube-- if it had shown -41° they ought not to be sent out to work. But today it was nowhere near -41°.
They walked into the staff quarters and The Tartar led him straight to the guardroom; and Shukhov realized, as he bad guessed on the way there, that he wasn't being sent to the guardhouse at all--it was simply that the guardroom floor needed scrubbing. The Tartar told him he was going to let him off, and ordered him to scrub the floor.
Scrubbing the guardroom floor had been the job of a special prisoner who wasn't sent to work outside the camp--a staff orderly. The fellow had long ago made himself athome in the staff quarters; he had access to the offices of the camp commandant, the man in charge of discipline, and the security officer (the Father Confessor, they called him). When working for them he sometimes beard things that even the guards didn't know, and after a time he got a big head and came to consider scrubbing the floor for rank-and-file campguards a bit beneath him. Having sent for him once or twice, the guards discovered what was in the wind and began to pick on other prisoners for the floorscrubbing.
In the guardroom the stove was throwing out a fierce heat. Two guards in grubby tunics were playing checkers, and a third, who had not bothered to remove his sheepskin and valenki, lay snoring on a narrow bench. In one corner of the room stood an empty pail with a rag inside.
Shukhov was delighted. He thanked The Tartar for letting him off and said: "From now on I'll never get up late again."
The rule in this place was a simple one: when you'd finished you left. And now that he'd been given work to do, Shukhov's aches and pains seemed to have gone. He picked up the pail and, bare-handed--in his hurry he'd forgotten to take his mittens from under his pillow--went to the well.
Several of the squad leaders who were on their way to the P.P.D. had gathered near the pole with the thermometer, and one of the younger ones, a former Hero of the Soviet Union, shinnied up it and wiped off the instrument.
The others shouted advice from below:
"See you don't breathe on it. It'll push up the temperature."
"Push it up? Not f*cking likely. My breath won't have any effect."
Tiurin of the 104th--Shukhov's squad--was not among them. Shukhov put down the pail, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and watched with interest.
The man up the pole shouted hoarsely: "Seventeen and a half. Not a damn bit more."
And, taking another look to be sure, slid down.
"Oh, it's cockeyed. It always lies," someone said. "Do you think they'd ever hang one up that gave the true temperature?"
The squad leaders scattered. Shukhov ran to the well. The frost was trying to nip his ears under his earfiaps, which he had lowered but not tied.
The top of the well was so thickly coated with ice that he only just managed to slip the bucket into the hole. The rope hung stiff as a ramrod.
With numb hands he carried the dripping bucket back to the guardroom and plunged his hands into the water. It felt warm.
The Tartar was no longer there. The guards--there were four now--stood in a group. They'd given up their checkers and their nap and were arguing about how much cereal they were going to get in January (food was in short supply at the settlement, and although rationing had long since come to an end, certain articles were sold to them, at a discount, which were not available to the civilian inhabitants).
"Shut that door, you scum. There's a draft," said one of the guards.
No sense in getting your boots wet in the morning. Even if Shukhov had dashed back to his barracks he wouldn't have found another pair to change into. During eight years' imprisonment he had known various systems for allocating footwear: there'd been times when he'd gone through the winter without valenki at all, or leather boots either, and had had to make shift with rope sandals or a sort of galoshes made of scraps of motor tires--"Chetezes" they called them, after the Cheiabinsk tractor works. Now the footwear situation seemed better; in October Shukhov had received (thanks to Pavlo, whom he trailed to the warehouse) a pair of ordinary, hard-wearing leather boots, big enough for a double thickness of rags inside. For a week he went about as though he'd been given a birthday present, kicking his new heels. Then in December the valenki arrived, and, oh, wasn't life wonderful?
But some devil in the bookkeeper's office had whispered in the commandant's ear that valenki should be issued only to those who surrendered their boots. It was against the rules for a prisoner to possess two pairs of footwear at the same time. So Shukhov had to choose. Either he'd have to wear leather throughout the winter, or surrender the boots and wear valenki even in the thaw. He'd taken such good care of his new boots, softening the leather with grease! Ah, nothing had been so hard to part with in all his eight years in camps as that pair of boots! They were tossed into a common heap. Not a hope of finding your own pair in the spring.
Now Shukhov knew what he had to do. He dexterously pulled his feet out of the valenki, put the valenki in a corner, stuffed his foot rags into them (his spoon tinkled on the floor--though he'd made himself ready for the guardhouse in a hurry, he hadn't forgotten his spoon), and, barefoot, sloshed the water right under the guards' valenki.
"Hey there, you slob, take it easy," one of the guards shouted, putting his feet on a chair.
"Rice?" another went on. "Rice is in a different category. You can't compare cereal with rice."
"How much water are you going to use, idiot? Who on earth washes like that?"
"I'll never get it clean otherwise, citizen chief. It's thick with mud."
"Didn't you ever watch your wife scrub the floor, pig?"
Shukhov drew himself up, the dripping rag in his hand. He smiled ingenuously, revealing the gaps in his teeth, the result of a touch of scurvy at Ust-Izhma in 1943. And what a touch it was--his exhausted stomach wouldn't hold any kind of food, and his bowels could move nothing but a bloody fluid. But now only a lisp remained from that old trouble.
"I was taken away from my wife in forty-one, citizen chief. I've forgotten what she was like."
"That's the way the scum wash. . . . They don't know how to do a f*cking thing and don't want to learn. They're not worth the bread we give them. We ought to feed them on shit."
"Anyway, what's the f*cking sense in washing it every day? Who can stand the damp? Look here, you, 854. Just wipe it over lightly to make it moist and then f*ck off?
"No, you can't compare cereal with rice."
Shukhov knew how to manage anything.
Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.
Otherwise, everybody would have croaked long ago. They all knew that.
Shukhov wiped the floorboards with a damp rag so that no dry patches remained, tossed the rag behind the stove without wringing it out, pulled on his valenki near the door, threw out the rest of the water onto the path used by the camp authorities, and, taking short cuts, made a dash past the bathhouse and the dark, cold club to the mess hall.
He still had to fit in a visit to the dispensary. He ached all over. And there was that guard outside the mess hall to be dodged--the camp commandant had issued strict orders that prisoners on their own were to be picked up and thrown into the guardhouse.
That morning--a stroke of luck--there was no crowd, no lines, outside the mess. Walk in.
The air was as thick as in a Turkish bath. An icy wave blew in through the door and met the steam rising from the stew. The squads sat at tables or crowded the aisles in between, waiting for places to be freed. Shouting to each other through the crush, two or three men from each squad carried bowls of stew and oatmeal on wooden trays and tried to find room for them on the tables. Look at that damn stiff-necked fool. He doesn't hear, he's bumped a tray. Splash, splash! You've a hand free, bit him on the back of the neck. That's the way. Don't stand there blocking the aisle, looking for something to swipe!
There at the table, before dipping his spoon in, a young man crossed himself. A West Ukrainian, that meant, and a new arrival, too.
As for the Russians, they'd forgotten which hand to cross themselves with.
They sat in the cold mess hall, most of them eating with their hats on, eating slowly, picking out putrid little fish from under leaves of boiled black cabbage and spitting the bones out on the table. When the bones formed a heap and it was the turn of another squad, someone would sweep them off and they'd be trodden into a mush on the floor. But it was considered bad maimers to spit the fishbones straight out on the floor.
Two rows of trestles ran down the middle of the hall and near one of them sat Fetiukov of the 104th. It was he who was keeping Shukhov's breakfast for him. Fetiukov had the last place in his squad, lower than Shukhov's. From the outside, everyone in the squad looked the same--their numbered black coats were identical--but within the squad there were great distinctions. Everyone had his grade. Buinovsky, for instance, was not the sort to sit keeping another zek's *[* Abbreviation of Russian for prisoner.] bowl for him. And Shukhov wouldn't take on any old job either. There were others lower than him.
Fetiukov caught sight of Shukhov and with a sigh surrendered his place.
"It's all cold. I was just going to eat your helping. Thought you were in the guardhouse."
He didn't hang around--no hope for any leftovers to scrape out of Shukhov's bowl.
Shukhov pulled his spoon out of his boot. His little baby. It had been with him his whole time in the North, he'd cast it with his own hands in sand out of aluminum wire, and it was embossed with the words "Ust-Izhma 1944."
Then he removed his hat from his clean-shaven head--however cold it might be, he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on--and stirred the cold stew, taking a quick look to see what kind of helping they'd given him. An average one. They hadn't ladled it from the top of the kettle, but they hadn't ladled it from the bottom either. Fetiukov was the sort who when he was looking after someone else's bowl took the potatoes from it.
The only good thing about stew was that it was hot, but Shukhov's portion had grown quite cold. However, he ate it with his usual slow concentration. No need to huriy, not even for a house on fire. Apart from sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five minutes over dinner, and five at supper.
The stew was the same every day. Its composition depended on the kind of vegetable provided that winter. Nothing but salted carrots last year, which meant that from September to Thne the stew was plain carrot This year it was black cabbage. The most nourishing time of the year was June; then all vegetables came to an end and were replaced by grits. The worst time was July--then they shredded nettles into the pot.
The little fish were more bone than flesh; 'the flesh had been boiled off the bone and had disintegrated, leaving a few remnants on head and tail. Without neglecting a single fish scale or particle of flesh on the brittle skeleton, Shukhov went on chomping his teeth and sucking the bones, spitting the remains on the table. He ate everything--the gills, the tail, the eyes when they were still in their sockets but not when they'd been boiled out and floated in the bowl separately--big fish-eyes. Not then. The others laughed at him for that.
This morning Shukhov economized. Since he hadn't returned to the barracks he hadn't drawn his rations, so he ate his breakfast without bread. He'd eat the bread later. Might be even better that way.
After the vegetable stew there was _magara_, that damned "Chinese" oatmeal. It had grown cold too, and had set into a solid lump. Shukhov broke it up into pieces. It wasn't only that the oatmeal was cold--it was tasteless even when hot, and left you no sense of having filled your belly. Just grass, except that it was yellow, and looked like cereal. They'd got the idea of serving it instead of cereals from the Chinese, it was said. When boiled, a bowlful of it weighed nearly a pound. Not much of an oatmeal but that was what it passed for.
Licking his spoon and tucking it back into his boot, Shukhov put on his hat and went to the dispensary.
The sky was still quite dark. The camp lights drove away the stars. The broad beams of the two searchlights were still sweeping the zone. When this camp, this "special" (forced-labor) camp, had been organized, the security forces had a lot of flares left over from the war, and whenever there was a power failure they shot up flares over the zone--white, green, and red--just like real war. Later they stopped using them. To save money, maybe.
It seemed just as dark as at reveille but the experienced eye could easily distinguish, by various small signs, that soon the order to go to work would be given. Khromoi's assistant (Khromoi, the mess orderly, had an assistant whom he fed) went off to summon Barracks 6 to breakfast This was the building occupied by the infirm, who did not leave the zone. An old, bearded artist shuffled off to the C.E.D, *[* Culture and Education Department.] for the brush and paint he needed to touch up the numbers on the prisoners' uniforms. The Tartar was there again, cutting across the parade ground with long, rapid strides in the direction of the staff quarters. In general there were fewer people about, which meant that everyone had gone off to some corner or other to get warm during those last precious minutes.
Shukhov was smart enough to hide from The Tartar around a corner of the barracks--the guard would stick to him if he caught him again. Anyway, you should never be conspicuous. The main thing was never to be seen by a campguard on your own, only in a group. Who knows whether the guy wasn't looking for someone to saddle with a job, or wouldn't jump on a man just for spite? Hadn't they been around the barracks and read them that new regulation? You bad to take ofi your hat to a guard five paces before passing him, and replace it two paces after. There were guards who slopped past as if blind, not caring a damn, but for others the new rule was a godsend. How many prisoners had been thrown in the guardhouse because of that hat business? Oh no, better to stand around the corner.
The Tartar passed by, and now Shukhov finally decided to go to the dispensary. But suddenly he remembered that the tall Lett in Barracks 7 had told him to come and buy a couple of glasses of home-grown tobacco that morning before they went out to work, something Shukhov bad clean forgotten in all the excitement. The Lett had received a parcel the previous evening, and who knew but that by tomorrow none of the tobacco would be left, and then he'd have to wait a month for another parceL The Lett's tobacco was good stuff, strong and fragrant, grayish-brown.
Shukhov stamped his feet in vexation. Should he turn back and go to the Lett? But it was such a short distance to the dispensary and he jogged on. The snow creaked audibly underfoot as he approached the door.
Inside, the corridor was, as usual, so clean that he felt quite scared to step on the floor. And the 'walls were painted with white enamel. And all the furniture was white.
The surgery doors were all shut. The doctors must still be in bed. The man on duty was a medical assistant--a young man called Kolya Vdovushkin. He was seated at a clean little table, wearing a small white cap and a snow-white smock. Writing something.
There was no one else in sight.
Shukhov took off his hat as if in the presence of one of the authorities and, letting his eyes shift, in the camp manner, where they had no business to shift, he noticed that Kolya was writing in even, neatly spaced lines and that each line, starting a little way from the edge of the page, began with a capital letter. He realized at once, of course, that Kolya was not doing official work but something on the side. But that was none of his business.
"Well, Nikolai Semyonich, it's like this. . . . I'm feeling sort of . . . rotten . . . ," said Shukhov shamefacedly, as if coveting something that didn't belong to him.
Kolya Vdovushkin raised his big placid eyes from his work. His number was covered up by his smock;
"Why've you come so late? Why didn't you report sick last night? You know very well there's no sick call in the morning. The sick list has already been sent to the planning department."
Shukhov knew all this. He knew too that it was even harder to get on the sick list in the evening.
"But after all, Kolya . . . You see, when I should have come . . . last night . . . it didn't ache."
"And now it does? And what is it?"
"Well, if you stop to think of it, nothing aches, but I feel ill all over."
Shukhov was not one of those who hung around the dispensary. Vdovushkin knew this. But in the morning he had the right to exempt from work two men only, and he'd already exempted them--their names were written down under the glass--it was greenish--on his desk, and he'd drawn a line across the page.
"Well, you ought to have considered that earlier. What are you thinking about? Reporting sick just before roll call. Come on, take this."
He pulled a thermometer out of one of the jars where they stood in holes cut in pieces of gauze, wiped it dry, and handed it to Shukhov, who put it in his armpit.
Shukhov sat on a bench near the wall, right at the very end, so that be nearly tipped it up. He sat in that uncomfortable way, involuntarily emphasizing that he was unfamifiar with the place and that he'd come there on some minor matter.