One Day In The Life

Well, it's said that nationality doesn't mean anything and that every nation has its bad eggs. But among all the Estonians Shukhov had known he'd never met a bad one.
The prisoners sat around, some on the slabs, some on forms, some straight on the ground. A tongue doesn't wag in the morning; everyone sat silent, locked in thought. Fetiukov, the jackal, had been collecting cigarette butts (he even fished them out of the spitoons, he wasn't fussy), and now he was breaking them up and filtering the unsmoked tobacco onto a piece of paper. Fetiukov had three children at home but when he was sentenced they'd disclaimed him and his wife had married again. So he got no help from anywhere.
Buinovsky, who kept stealing glances at him, finally barked: "Hey, you, what do you think you're doing? Picking up all kinds of diseases? You'll get a syphilitic lip that way. Stop it."
The captain was used to giving orders. He spoke to everyone as if in command.
But Fetiukov didn't give a damn for him--the captain got no parcels either. And with a malicious grin on his drooling lips he replied: "You wait, captain. When you've been in for eight years you'll be picking them up yourself. We've seen bigger men than you in the camp. . . ."
Fetiukov was judging by his own standards. Perhaps the captain would stand up to camp life.
"What? What?" asked Senka Klevshin, missing the point. Senka was deaf and thought they were talking about Buinovsky's bad luck during the frisking. "You shouldn't have shown your pride so much," he said, shaking his head in commiseration. "It could all have blown over."
Senka was a quiet, luckless fellow. One of his eardrums bad been smashed in '41. Then he was captured; he escaped, was recaptured, and was sent to Buchenwald. There he evaded death by a miracle and now he was serving his time here quietly. If you show your pride too much, he said, you're lost.
There was truth in that. Better to growl and submit. If you were stubborn they broke you.
Alyosha sat silent, his face buried in his hands. Praying.
Shukhov ate his bread down to his very fingers, keeping only a little bit of bare crust, the half-moon-shaped top of the loaf--because no spoon is as good for scraping a bowl of cereal clean as a bread crust. He wrapped the crust In his cloth again and slipped it into his inside pocket for dinner, buttoned himself up against the cold, and prepared for work. Let them send him out now! Though, of course, it would be better if they'd wait a bit longer.
The 38th stood up and scattered--some to the concrete mixer, some to fetch water, some to the mesh reinforcements.
But neither Pavlo nor Tiurin came back to their squad. And although the 104th had been sitting there barely twenty minutes and the working day--curtailed because it was winter--didn't end till six, everyone felt already they'd had a rare stroke of luck--now evening didn't seem so far off.
"Damn it, it's a long time since we had a snow storm," said Kilgas, a plump, red-faced Lett, gesturing. "Not one snowstorm all winter. What sort of winter do you call this?"
"Yes . . . .. a snowstorm . . . . . a snowstorm," the squad sighed in response.
When there was a snowstorm in those parts no one was taken out to work--they were afraid of letting the prisoners leave the barracks. They could get lost between the barrack room and the mess hall if you didn't put up a guide rope. No one would care if a prisoner froze to death, but what if he tried to escape? There had been instances. During the storms the snow was as fine as dust but the drifts were as firm as ice. Prisoners had escaped over them when they topped the barbed wire. True, they hadn't got far.
Come to think of it, a snowstorm was no use to anyone. The prisoners sat locked in; the coal was delivered late and all the warmth was blown out of the barracks. Flour didn't reach the camp, so there was no bread; and more often than not there was no hot food either. And as long as the storm lasted--three days, four days, even a week--those days were counted as holidays and had to be made up for by work on Sunday.
All the same, the prisoners loved snowstorms and prayed for them. Whenever the wind rose a little, every face was turned up to the sky. Let the stuff come! The more the merrier.
Snow, they meant. With only a ground wind, it never really got going.
Someone edged up to the stove of the 38th, only to be ousted.
Just then Tiurin walked in. He looked gloomy. His squad understood that there was something to be done, and quickly.
"H'm," said Tiurin, looking around. "All present, hundred and fourth?"
He didn't verify or count them because none of Tiurin's men could have gone anywhere. Without wasting time he gave his men their assignments. The two Estonians, Senka, and Gopchik were sent to pick up a big wooden box for mixing mortar nearby and carry it to the power station. They all immediately knew that they were being transferred to the half-completed building where work had been halted in late autumn. The other men were sent with Pavlo to get tools. Four were ordered to shovel snow near the power station and the entrance to the machine room, and inside and on the ramps; A couple of men were sent to light the stove in the machine room, using coal and such lumber as they could swipe and chop up. Another was to drag cement there on a sled. Two were sent to fetch water, two for sand, and yet another to sweep the snow off the sand and break it up with a crowbar.
The only two left without assignments were Shukhov and Kilgas, the leading workers of the squad. Calling them over, Tiurin said:
"Well, look here, boys--" he was no older than they were but he had the habit of addressing them like that--"after dinner you'll be laying cement blocks on the second-story walls, over there where the sixth stopped work last autumn. Now we have to figure how to make the machine room warmer. It has three big windows and the first thing to do is to board them up somehow. I'll give you people to help, but you must figure out what to board them up with. We're going to use the machine room for mixing the mortar, and for warming ourselves too. Unless we keep warm we'll freeze like dogs, understand?"
He'd have said more, maybe, but up came Gopchik, a Ukrainian lad, pink as a suckling pig, to complain that the other squad wouldn't give them the box. There was a scrap going on over it. So off went Tiurin.
Difficult as it was to start working in such cold, the important thing was to get going.
Shukhov and Kilgas exchanged looks. They'd worked as a team more than once as carpenter and mason, and had come to respect one another.
It was no easy matter to find something to board up those windows with in the bare expanse of snow. But Kilgas said: "Vanya, I know a little place over there where those prefabs are going up, with a fine roil of roofing felt. I put it aside with my own hands. Let's go and scrounge it."
Kilgas was a Lett but he spoke Russian like a native. There'd been a settlement of Old Believers near his village and he'd learned Russian from childhood. He'd been in the camp only two years but already he understood everything: if you don't use your teeth you get nothing. His name was Johann and Shukhov called him Vanya..
They decided to go for the roll, but first Shukhov ran over to where a new wing of the repair shops was under construction. He had to get his trowel. For a mason a trowel is a serious matter--if it's light and easy to handle. But there was a rule that wherever you worked you had to turn in every evening the tools you'd been issued that morning; and which tool you got the next day was a matter of chance. One evening, though, Shukhov had fooled the man in the tool store and pocketed the best trowel; and now he kept it hidden in a different place every evening, and every morning, if he was put to laying blocks, he recovered it. If the 104th had been sent to the Socialist Way of Life settlement that morning, Shukhov would of course have been without a trowel again. But now he had only to push aside a brick, dig his fingers into the chink--and presto! there it was.
Shukhov and Kilgas left the repair shops and walked over toward the prefabs. Their breath formed thick clouds of vapor. The sun was now some way above the horizon but it cast no rays, as in a fog. On each side of it rose pifiars of light.
"Like poles, eh?" Shukhov said with a nod.
"It's not poles we have to worry about," said Kilgas casually, "so long as they don't put any barbed wire between them."
He never spoke without making a joke, that Kilgas, and was popular with the whole squad for it. And what a reputation he had already won for himself among the Letts in the camp! Of course, it was true he ate properly--he received two food parcels a month--and looked as ruddy as if he wasn't in camp at all. You'd make jokes if you were in his shoes!
This construction site covered an immense area. It took quite a long time to cross it. On their way they ran into men from the 82nd. Again they'd been given the job of chopping out holes in the ground. The holes were small enough--one-and-a-half feet by one-and-a-half feet and about the same in depth--but the ground, stone-hard even in summer, was now in the grip of frost. Just try and gnaw it! They went for it with picks--the picks slipped, scattering showers of sparks, but not a bit of earth was dislodged. The men stood there, one to a hole, and looked about them--nowhere to warm up, they were forbidden to budge a step--so back to the pick. The only way to keep warm.
Shukhov recognized one of them, a fellow from Viatka.
"Listen," he advised him. "You'd do better to light a fire over each hole. The ground would thaw out then."
"It's forbidden," said the man. "They don't give us any firewood."
"Scrounge some then."
Kilgas merely spat.
"How do you figure it, Vanya! If the authorities had any guts do you think they'd have men pounding away at the ground with pickaxes in a frost like this?"
He muttered a few indistinguishable oaths and fell silent. You don't talk much in such cold. They walked on and on till they reached the spot where the panels of the pref abs lay buried under snow.
Shukhov liked to work with Kilgas. The only bad thing about him was that he didn't smoke and there was never any tobacco in his parcels.
Kilgas was right: together they lifted a couple of planks and there lay the roll of roofing felt.
They lugged it out. Now, how were they going to carry it? They'd be spotted from the watchtowers, but that didn't matter: the "parrot's" only concern was that the prisoners shouldn't escape. Inside, you could chop up all those panels into firewood for all they cared. Nor would it matter if they happened to meet one of the guards. He'd be looking about like the others to see what he could scrounge. As for the prisoners, they didn't give a damn for those prefabs, and neither did the squad leaders. The only people who kept an eye on them were the superintendent, who was a civilian, that bastard Der, and the lanky Shkuropatenko, a mere goose egg, a trusty who'd been given the temporary job of guarding the pref abs from any stealing by the prisoners. Yes, it was Shkuropatenko who was most likely to spot them on the open ground.
"Look here, Vanya," said Shukhov, "'we mustn't carry it lengthwise. Let's take it up on end with our arms around it. It'll be easy to carry and our bodies will hide it. They won't spot it from a distance."
It was a good idea. To carry the roll lengthwise would have been awkward, so they held it upright In between them and set off. From a distance it would look as if there were three of them, rather close to one another.
"But when Der notices the felt on the windows he'll guess where it came from," said Shukhov.
"What's it got to do with us?" asked Kilgas, in surprise. "We'll say it was there before. Were we to pull it down or what?"
That was true.
Shukhov's fingers were numb with cold under his worn mittens. He'd lost all sense of touch. But his left boot was holding--that was the main thing. The nwnbness would go out of his fingers when he started to work.
They crossed the stretch of virgin snow and reached a sled trail running from the tool store to the power station. Their men must have brought the cement along there.
The power station stood on a rise at the edge of the site. No one had been near the place for weeks and the approaches to it lay under a smooth blanket of snow; the sled tracks, and the fresh trails that had been left by the deep footsteps of the 104th, stood out boldly. The men were already clearing away the snow from around the building with wooden shovels and making a road for the trucks to drive up on.
It would have been good if the mechanical lift in the power station had been In order. But the motor had burned out, and no one had bothered to repair it. This meant that everything would have to be carried by hand to the second story--the mortar and the blocks.
For two months the unfinished structure had stood in the snow like a gray skeleton, just as it had been left. And now the 104th had arrived. What was it that kept their spirits up? Empty bellies, fastened tight with belts of rope! A splitting frost! Not a warm corner, not a spark of fire! But the 104th had arrived--and life had come back to the building.
Right at the entrance to the machine room the trough for mixing mortar fell apart. It was a makeshift affair, and Shukhov hadn't expected it to last the journey in one piece. Tiurin swore at his men just for form's sake, for he saw that no one was to blame. At that moment Kilgas and Shukhov turned up with their roll of roofing felt. Tiurin was delighted, and at once worked out a new arrangement: Shukhov was put to fixing the stovepipe, so that a fire could be quickly kindled; Kilgas was to repair the mixing trough, with the two Estonians to help him; and Senka was given an ax to chop long laths with--felt could then be tacked to them, two widths. for each window. Where were the laths to come from? Tiurin looked around. Everybody looked around. There was only one solution: to remove a couple of planks that served as a sort of handrail on the ramp leading up to the second story. You'd have to keep your eyes peeled going up and down; otherwise you'd be over the edge. But where else were the laths to come from?
Why, you might wonder, should prisoners wear themselves out, working hard, ten years on end, in the camps? You'd think they'd say: No thank you, and that's that. We'll drag ourselves through the day till evening, and then the night is ours
But that didn't work. To outsmart you they thought up work squads--but not squads like the ones outside the camps, where every man is paid his separate wage. Everything was so arranged in the camp that the prisoners egged one another on. It was like this: either you all got a bit extra or you all croaked. You're loafing, you bastard--do you think I'm willing to go hungry just because of you? Put your guts into it, slob.
And if a situation like this one turned up there was all the more reason for resisting any temptation to slack. Regardless, you put your back into the work. For unless you could manage to provide yourself with the means of warming up, you and everyone else would give out on the spot.
Pavlo brought the tools. Now use them. A few lengths of stovepipe, too. True, there were no tinsmith's tools, but there was a little hammer and a light ax. One could manage.
Shukhov clapped his mittens together, joined up the lengths, and hammered the ends into the joints. He clapped his hands together again and repeated his hammering. (He'd hidden his trowel in a nearby crack in the wall. Although he was among his own men, one of them might swap it for his own. That applied to Kilgas too.)
And then every thought was swept out of his head. All his memories and worries faded. He had only one idea--to fix the bend in the stovepipe and hang it up to prevent it smoking, He sent Gopchik for a length of wire--hang up the pipe near the window with it; that would be best.
In the corner there was another stove, a squat one with a brick chimney. It had an iron plate on top that grew red-hot, and sand was to be thawed and dried on it. This stove had already been lit, and the captain and Fetiukov were bringing up barrows of sand. You don't have to be very bright to carry a handbarrow. So the squad leader gave such work to people who'd been in positions of authority. Fetiukov had been a bigshot in some office, with a car at his disposal.
At first Fetiukov had spat on the captain, bawled at him. But one punch on the jaw was enough. They got on all right after that
The men bringing in the sand were edging over to the stove to warm up, but Tiurin drove them off.
"Look out, one of you is going to catch it in a hurry. Wait till we've got the place fixed up."
You've only to show a whip to a beaten dog. The frost was severe, but not as severe as the squad leader. The men scattered and went back to their jobs.
And Shukhov heard Tiurin say to Pavlo: "Stay here and keep them at it. I'm going to hand in the work report."
More depended on the work report than on the work itself. A clever squad leader was one who concentrated on the work report. That was what kept the men fed. He had to prove that work which hadn't been done had been done, to turn jobs that were rated low into ones that were rated high. For this a squad leader had to have his head screwed on, and to be on the right side of the inspectors. Their palms had to be greased, too. But who benefited, then, from all those work reports? Let's be clear about it. The camp. The camp got thousands of extra rubles from the building organization and so could give higher bonuses to its guard-lieutenants, such as to Volkovoi for using his whip. And you? You got an extra six ounces of bread for your supper. A couple of ounces ruled your life.
Two buckets of water were carried In, but they had frozen on the way. Palvo decided that there was no sense in doing it like this. Quicker to melt snow. They stood the buckets on the stove.
Gopchik brought along some new aluminum wire, used for electric leads.
"Ivan Denisovich," he said, as be turned it over to Shukhov, "It's good for making spoons. Teach me how to cast them."
Shukhov was fond of the kid. His own son had died young, and the two daughters he had left at home were grown up. Gopchik had been arrested for taking milk to the forest for Bendera's men, *[* General in the Soviet Army who betrayed his country in World War II.] and had been given an adult's term of imprisonment. He was like a puppy and he fawned on everyone. But he'd already learned cunning: he ate the contents of his food packages alone, sometimes during the night.
After all, you couldn't feed everyone.
They broke off a length of wire for the spoons and hid it in a corner. Shukhov knocked together a couple of planks into a stepladder and sent Gopchik up to hang the stovepipe. The boy, as nimble as a squirrel, climbed up into the beams, pounded in a nail or two, slipped the wire around them, and passed it under the pipe. Shukhov didn't begrudge him his energy; he made another bend in the pipe close to the end. Though there was little wind that day, there might be plenty tomorrow, and this bend would prevent the pipe from smoking. They mustn't forget that it was for themselves that they were fixing the stove.
Meanwhile, Senka had finished making the laths, and Gopchik was again given the job of nailing them up. The little devil crawled about up there, shouting down to the men.
The sun had risen higher, dispersing the haze. The two bright columns had gone. It was reddish inside the room. And now someone had got the stove going with the stolen wood. Made you feel a bit more cheerfuL
"In January the sun warmed the flanks of the cow," Shukhov chanted.
Kilgas finished nailing the mortar trough together and, giving it an extra smash with his ax, shouted: "Listen, Pavlo, I won't take less than a hundred rubles from Tiurin for this job."
"You get three ounces," said Pavlo with a laugh.
"The prosecutor will make up the difference," shouted Gopchik from above.
"Stop that," Shukhov shouted, "stop." That wasn't the way to cut the roofing felt.
He showed them how to do it.
The men crept up to the stove, only to be chased away by Pavlo. He gave Kilgas some wood to make hods, for carrying the mortar up to the second story. He put on a couple more men to bring up the sand, others to sweep the snow off the scaffolding where the blocks were to be put, and another to take the hot sand off the top of the stove and throw it into the mortar trough.
A truck engine snorted outside. They were beginning to deliver the blocks. The first truck had got through. Pavlo hurried out and waved on the driver to where the blocks were to be dumped.
They put up one thickness of roofing felt, then a second. What protection could you expect from it? It was paper, just paper. All the same, it looked like a kind of solid wall. The room became darker, and this brightened the stove up.
Alyosha brought in some coal. Some of them shouted to tip it onto the stove, others not to. They wanted to warm up with the flames. Alyosha hesitated, not knowing whom to obey.
Fetiukov had found himself a cozy corner near the stove and, the fool, was holding his boots right up to the flames. The captain took him by the scruff of the neck and lugged him off to the barrow.
"You haul sand, you bastard."
The captain might still have been on board ship--if you were told to do something you did it. He had grown haggard during the past month, but he kept his bearing.
In the end, all three windows were covered. Now the only light came through the door. And with it came the cold. So Pavlo had the upper half of the doorway boarded up but the lower left free, so that the men, by stooping, could get through it.
Meanwhile three trucks had driven up and dumped their loads of blocks. Now the problem was how to get the blocks up without the mechanical lift.
"Masons, let's go and look around," Pavlo called.
It was a job to be respected. Shukhov and Kilgas went up with Pavlo. The ramp was narrow enough anyhow, but now that Senka had robbed it of its rails you had to make sure you pressed close to the wall if you weren't going to fall off it. And still worse--the snow had frozen to the treads and rounded them; they offered no grip to your feet. How would they bring up the mortar?
They looked all around to find where the blocks should be laid. The men Pavlo had sent up were shoveling the snow from the top of the wails. Here was the place. You had to take an ax to the ice on the old workings, and then sweep them clean.
They figured out how best to bring up the blocks. They looked down. They decided that, rather than carry them up the ramp, four men would be posted down below to heave the blocks up to that platform over there, that another couple would move them on, and that two more would hand them up to the second story. That would be quicker than carrying them up the ramp.
The wind wasn't strong but you felt it. It would pierce them all right when they started laying. They'd have to keep behind the bit of wall that the old crew had begun on; it would give them some shelter. Not too bad--it'd be warmer that way.
Shukhov looked up at the sky and gasped--the sun had climbed almost to the dinner hour. Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he'd often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp--they were over before you could say "knife." But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second.
When they went down, they found that everyone had settled around the stove except the captain and Fetiukov, who were still hauling sand. Pavlo flew into a rage and sent eight men out at once to move blocks, two to pour cement into the box and mix it with sand, another for water, another for coal. But Kilgas gave his own orders:
"Well, men, we must finish with the barrows."
"Shall I give 'em a hand?" Shukhov volunteered.
"Yes, help them out," said Pavlo with a nod.
Just then they brought in a tank for melting snow. Someone had told the men that it was already noon.
Shukhov confirmed this.
"The sun's already reached its peak," he announced. "If it's reached its peak," said the captain reflectively, "it's one o'clock, not noon."
"What do you mean?" Shukhov demurred. "Every old-timer knows that the sun stands highest at dinnertime."
"Old-timers, maybe," snapped the captain. "But since their day a new decree has been passed, and now the sun stands highest at one."
"Who passed that decree?"
"Soviet power."
The captain went out with a barrow. Anyway, Shukhov wouldn't have argued with him. Mean to say that the sun up in the sky must bow down to decrees, too?
The sound of hammering continued as the men knocked together four hods.
"All right, sit down awhile and warm yourselves," said Pavlo to the two masons. "And you too, Senka. You can join them up there after dinner. Sit down."
So now they had a right to sit by the stove. Anyway they couldn't start laying the blocks before dinner and there was no point in carrying the mortar up there--it would freeze.
The coals were gradually glowing red-hot and throwing out a steady heat. But you felt it only when you were near them--everywhere else the shop was as cold as ever.
They took off their mittens. All four men held their hands up to the stove.
But you never put your feet near the flame if you're wearing boots. You have to remember that If they're leather boots the leather cracks, and if they're valenki the felt becomes sodden and begins to steam and you don't feel any warmer. And if you hold them still nearer the flame then they scorch, and you'll have to drag along till the spring with a hole in your boot--getting another pair can't be counted on.
"What does Shukhov care?" Kilgas said. "Shukhov has one foot almost home."
"The bare one," said someone. They laughed (Shukhov had taken his mended boot off and was warming his footrags).
"Shukhov's term's nearly up."
They'd given Kilgas twenty-five years. Earlier there'd been a spell when people were lucky: everyone to a man got ten years. But from '49 onward the sthndard sentence was twenty-five, Irrespective. A man can survive ten years--but twenty-five, who can get through alive?
Shukhov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term's nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been "retained pending special instructions" and had been released only in '46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five. The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, "Here's another ten for you." Or exile you.
Yet there were times when you thought about it and you almost choked with excitement. Yes, your term really _is_ coming to an end; the spool is unwinding. . . . Good God! To step out to freedom, just walk out on your own two feet.
But it wasn't right for an old-timer to talk about it aloud, and Shukhov said to Kilgas: "Don't you worry about those twenty-five years of yours. It's not a fact you'll be in all that time. But that I've been in eight full years--now that is a fact."
Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.
According to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that--a mission.
Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed.
But what really happened was this. In February 1942 their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses--the horn could be soaked In water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone. So the Germans rounded them up in the forest, a few at a time. Shukhov was In one of these groups, and remained in German captivity for a day or two. Then five of them managed to escape. They stole through the forest and marshes again, and, by a miracle, reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot, a third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser they'd have said they'd been wandering in the forest, and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth: they said they were escaped POW's. POW's, you f*ckers! If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally and they might have been believed. But with two it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story, they were told.
Deaf though he was, Senka caught on that they were talking about escaping from the Germans, and said in a loud voice: "Three times I escaped, and three times they caught me."
Senka, who had suffered so much, was usually silent: he didn't hear what people said and didn't mix in their conversation. Little was known about him--only that he'd been in Buchenwald, where he'd worked with the underground and smuggled in arms for the mutiny; and how the Germans had punished him by tying his wrists behind his back, hanging him up by them, and whipping him.
"You've been In for eight years, Vanya," Kilgas argued. "But what camps? Not 'specials.' You bad breads to sleep with. You didn't wear numbers. But try and spend eight years in a 'special'--doing hard labor. No one's come out of a 'special' alive."
"Broads! Boards you mean, not broads."
Shukhov stared at the coals in the stove and remeinbered his seven years in the North. And how he worked for three years hauling logs--for packing cases and railroad ties.
The flames in the campfires had danced up there, too--at timber-felling during the night. Their chief made it a rule that any squad that had failed to meet its quota had to stay In the forest after dark.
They'd dragged themselves back to the camp in the early hours but had to be in the forest again next morning.
"N-no, brothers, . . . I think we have a quieter life here," he said with his lisp. "Here, when the shift's over, we go back to the camp whether our job's done or not. That's a law. And bread--three ounces more, at least, than up there. Here a man can live. All right, it's a 'special' camp. So what? Does it bother you to wear a number? They don't weigh anything, those numbers."
"A quieter life, do you call it?" Fetiukov hissed (the dinner break was getting near and everyone was huddling around the stove). "Men having their throats cut, in their bunks! And you call it quieter!"
"Not men--squealers." Pavlo raised a threatening finger at Fetiukov.
True enough, something new had started up. Two men, known to be squealers, had been found in their bunks one morning with their throats cut; and, a few days later, the same thing had happened to an innocent zek--someone must have gone to the wrong bunk. And one squealer had run off on his own to the head of the guardhouse and they'd put him inside for safety. Amazing. . . . Nothing like that had happened in the ordinary camps. Nor here, either, up till then.
Suddenly the whistle blew. It never began at full blast. It started hoarsely, as though clearing its throat.
Midday. Lay down tools. The dinner break.
Damn it, they'd waited too long. They should have gone off to the canteen long ago and taken their places in the line. There were eleven squads at work at the power station and there was room in the canteen for only two at a time.
Tiurin was still missing. Pavlo cast a rapid glance around the shop and said: "Shukhov and Gopchik, you come with me. Kilgas, as soon as I send Gopchik to you, bring the whole squad along."
Others took their places at the stove the moment any were vacated. The men surrounded it as though it was a pretty broad. They all crept up to embrace it.
"Come on, don't spend all night with her!" others shouted. "Let's smoke."
They looked at one another to see who was going to light up. No one did. Either they had no tobacco or they were holding onto it, unwilling to let it be seen.
Shukhov went out with Pavlo. Gopchik loped behind like a hare.
"It's gotten warmer," Shukhov said at once. "Zero, no lower. Fine for laying the blocks."
They stole a glance at those blocks. The men had already thrown a lot of them up to the platform and quite a number had been shifted to the floor above.
Screwing up his eyes at the sun, Shukhov checked its position. He was thinking of the captain's "decree."
Out in the open the wind was still having its way and the cold was still fierce. Don't forget, it was telling them, this is January.
The zeks' canteen was no more than a shanty made of boards nailed together around a stove, with some rusty metal strips over the cracks. Inside, it was partitioned into a kitchen and an eating room. In neither was there a wood floor; it was pitted with the lumps and hollows that the men's feet had trodden into it. All that the kitchen consisted of was a square stove with a soup kettle stuck on top.
The kitchen was run by two men--a cook and a sanitation inspector. Every morning as he left the camp the cook drew an issue of grits from the main kitchen: about one-and-a-half ounces a head, probably. That made two pounds a squad, a little less than a pood  *[* Thirty-six pounds.] for the whole column. The cook didn't much like carrying the sack of grits the two miles himself, so he got a "helper" to carry it for him--better to give the "helper" an extra portion at the zeks' expense than burden his own back. There was water to be carried, too, and firewood for the stove, and these were jobs the cook didn't much like either; so he found zeks to do them instead, for extra helpings at others' expense. What did it matter to him?
Then there was a rule that food must be eaten in the canteen; but the bowls couldn't be left there overnight, they'd have been swiped by civilians, so about fifty, not more, had to be brought in, and quickly washed after use and turned over to the next diners (an extra helping for the man who carried the bowls). To make sure that no one took bowls from the canteen, a man had to be posted at the door; but however careful he might be people took them just the same, either by distracting his attention or talking him into it. So someone else had to go over the whole site to collect the dirty bowls and bring them back to the kitchen. And he got an extra helping. And many others got one too.
All the cook himself did was this: he poured the grits Into the pot, adding salt; he divided the fat between the pot and himself (good fat didn't reach the zeks, and the rancid all went into the soup kettle, so when there was an issue of rancid fat from the warehouse, the zeks welcomed it as an extra). Another thing he did: he stirred the kasha *[* Oatmeal.] when it was boiling.
The sanitation inspector had even less to do--he sat and watched: but when the oatmeal was ready he got his helping, as much as his belly would hold. And the cook too. Then the duty-squad leader arrived--the squad was changed every day--to have a taste and decide whether the stuff was good enough for the workers. He received a double portion.
The whistle sounded again. The squad leaders at once lined up, and the cook handed them bowls through the serving window. In the bottom of the bowls lay some oatmeal, how much you didn't ask, or try to judge by the weight. All you got if you opened your mouth was a bunch of swearwords.
The steppe was barren and windswept, with a dry wind in the summer and a freezing one in winter. Nothing could ever grow in that steppe, less than nothing behind four bathers of barbed wire. Bread comes only from the bread cutter; oats are threshed only in the warehouse. And however much blood you sweat at work, however much you grovel on your belly, you'll force no food out of that earth; you'll get no more than the damned authorities give you. And you don't even get that--because of the cook and the "help" and all the other trusties in soft jobs. They rob you here, they rob you In camp, they rob you even earlier--in the warehouse. And those who do the robbing don't swing picks. But you--you swing a pick and take what they give you. And get away from the serving window!
Pavlo and Shukhov, with Gopchik bringing up the rear, walked into the canteen. The men stood there so close to one another that you couldn't see either tables or benches. Some ate sitting down but most stood. The men of the 82nd, who'd been digging those holes half a day without a chance of getting warm, had been the first to get in after the whistle; now even after they'd finished eating they didn't leave. Where else could they warm up? The swearing fell off them like water off a duck's back--it was so much more comfortable here than inthe cold. Pavlo and Shukhov elbowed their way in. They'd arrived at a good moment: one squad was being served, another was awaiting its turn, and there was only one deputy squad leader near the window. So, they were well ahead of the rest.
"Bowls, bowls," the cook shouted through the window and people huthedly handed them over. Shukhov was collecting another lot and turning them in, not to get extra oatmeal but to get what was coming to him quicker.
Behind the partition some "helpers" were already washing bowls--for extra oatmeal.
The cook began to serve the deputy squad leaders who stood ahead of Pavlo in the line.
"Gopchik," Pavlo shouted, over the heads of the men behind him.
"Here I am," came Gopchik's thin goatlike bleat from the door.
"Call the squad."
Off he went.
The main thing today was that the oatmeal was good--real oatmeal, the best sort. It wasn't often they had it. More often they got _magara_ twice a day. But real oatmeal is filling, it's good.
How often had Shukhov in his youth fed oats to horses! Never had it occurred to him that there'd come a time when his whole soul would yearn for a handful of them.
"Bowls, bowls," shouted the cook.
Now the 104th was in line. That squad leader's deputy, up ahead, got his double helping and bounced away from the window.
This extra helping, too, was at the zeks' expense--but no one objected. The cook gave double helpings to afl the squad leaders, and they either ate the extra helping themselves or gave it to their deputies. Tiurin gave his to Pavlo.
Shukhov's job now was to wedge himself in behind a table, oust two loafers, politely ask another prisoner to move, and clear a little space in front of him--for twelve bowls (to stand close together), with a second row of six, and two more on top. Next he had to take the bowls from Pavlo, repeating the number as he did so and keeping his eyes peeled--in case some outsider should grab a bowl from the table. And he had to see he wasn't bumped by someone's elbow so as to upset a bowl--right beside him people were leaving the table, stepping over the benches or squeezing in to eat. Yes, you had to keep your eyes peeled--was that fellow eating out of his own bowl? Or had he wormed his way up to one of the 104th's?
"Two, four, six," the cook counted at the window. He handed out the bowls two at a time--it was easier for him that way; otherwise he might count wrong.
"Two, four, six," Pavlo repeated quietly to himself, there at the window, in Ukrainian, and at once gave the bowls, in pairs, to Shukhov, who put them on the table. Shukhov didn't repeat the numbers aloud--but he counted more sharply than anyone.
"Eight, ten."
Why wasn't Gopchik bringing in the squad?
"Twelve, fourteen," the counting continued.
The kitchen ran out of bowls. Shukhov had a clear view through the window past Pavlo's head and shoulders. The cook put two bowls down on the counter and, keeping his hands on them, paused as though thinking. Must be bawling out the dishwashers. But just then another bunch of dirty bowls was pushed onto the counter. The cook let go of the two clean ones he'd filled and pushed back the pile of dirty ones.
Shukhov left the fourteen bowls he'd already stacked on the table, straddled a bench, took the two filled ones from the counter, and said quietly to Pavlo rather than to the cook: "Fourteen."
"Stop! Where are you taking those bowls?" shouted the cook.
"He's from our squad," Pavlo confirmed.
"'Our squad,' but he's mixed up the count."
"Fourteen," Pavlo said with a shrug. Himself, he wouldn't have swiped the extra bowls, for as deputy squad leader he had to maintain his dignity; but now he was simply repeating what Shukhov had said--he could always blame him for the mistake.
"I've already counted fourteen," the cook expostulated.
"So you did, but you didn't pass them out. You kept your hands on them," Shukhov shouted. "Come and count for yourself if you don't believe us. Look, they're all here on the table."
As he spoke he'd noticed the two Estonians pushing through to him, and he shoved the two bowls into their hands as they passed. And he'd managed to get back to the table to see that all the bowls were in place--the next table hadn't swiped any, though they'd had plenty of opportunity to do so.
The cook's red face loomed large in the window.
"Where are those bowls?" he asked sternly.
"Here they are, at your service," yelled Shukhov. "Move along. scum, you're spoiling his view," he said to someone, giving him a shove. "Here they are, the pair of them." He picked up two bowls from the second row. "Here we have three rows of four, all nice and neat. Count them."
"Hasn't your squad come?" the cook asked, looking suspiciously around the small segment of the canteen he could see through the window--it had been kept narrow to prevent anyone looking into the kitchen and seeing how much was left in the kettle.
"No, none of 'em are here yet," said Pavlo, shaking his head.
"Then why the hell are you taking bowls when the squad's not here?"
"Here they come," yelled Shukhov.
And everyone heard the peremptory shouts of the captain at the door: "Why are you hanging around here? he yelled, in his best quarter-deck voice. "If you've eaten, beat it and let others in."
The cook muttered something through the serving window. Then he drew himself up, and his hands could again be seen giving out the bowls: "Sixteen, eighteen."
Then he ladled the last portion, a double helping: "Twenty-three. That's all. Next squad."
The men of the 104th pushed through. Pavlo handed them bowls, passing them over the heads of the prisoners sitting at the second table.
In summer five could have sat on a bench, but now, as everyone was wearing thick clothes, four could barely fit in, and even they found it awkward to move their spoons.
Figuring that of the two bowls of oatmeal that had been swiped one at least would be his, Shukhov lost no time in applying himself to his first bowl. He drew his right knee up to his stomach, pulled his spoon ("Ust-Izhma, 1944") from under his boot top, removed his hat, put it in his left armpit, and ran his spoon under the edge of the kasha.
This is a moment that demands complete concentration, as you remove some of the scanty kasha from the bottom of the bowl, put it carefully into your mouth, and swirl it around there with your tongue. But Shukhov had to hurry, to show Pavlo he'd already finished and was waiting to be offered a second bowl And there was Fethzkov to be dealt with. He had come into the canteen with the two Estonians and had witnessed the whole affair of the two extra bowls. Now he stood there, straight in front of Pavlo, eying the four undistributed helpings as if to say that he ought to be given at least half a helping too.
Young swarthy Pavlo, however, went calmly on with his double portion, and there was no way of telling whether he noticed anyone standing there, or even reniembered those extra bowls at all.
Shukhov finished his kasha. He had promised his belly two helpings, so one wasn't enough now to give him the full feeling he normally got from real oatmeal kasha.
He groped in his inside pocket for the scrap of clean rag, found the unfrozen crescent of crust, and meticulously used it to wipe off the last remnant of mush from the bottom of the bowl and any that still clung to the brim. Then he licked the crust clean; then repeated the whole process. The bowl looked now as if it had been washed, with a dull film, nothing more, on the inside surface. He handed it over his shoulder to one of the dish-collectors and sat on, without replacing his hat.
Though it was Shukhov who had swindled the extra bowls, it was for Pavlo to distribute them.
Pavlo prolonged the agony a little longer while emptying his own bowl. He didn't lick it clean; he merely gave a lick to his spoon, tucked it away, and crossed himself. And then, very lightly, he touched--there wasn't room to move--two of the remaining four bowls. It meant he was giving them to Shukhov.
"Ivan Denisovich, take one for yourself and give the other to Tsezar."
Shukhov knew one of the bowls bad to be taken to the office of Tsezar, who would never lower himself by going to the canteen or, for that matter, to the mess hall in camp. He knew it, but, all the same, when Pavlo touched the bowls his heart contracted. Could Pavlo be giving him both? And now, as Pavlo spoke, his heartbeat went back to normal.
Without losing any time be leaned over his lawful spoil and began to eat with deliberation, Insensitive to the thumps on his back that the zeks in the next squad were dealing him. The only thing that vexed him was that the second bowl might still go to Fetiukov. Fetiukov was a past master at cadging, but he lacked the courage to swipe anything.
Nearby sat Captain Buinovsky. He had long finished his kasha. He didn't know the squad had two extra portions to dispose of. He didn't look around to see how much Pavlo still had left to hand out. He was simply relaxing, warming up. He was not strong enough to rise to his feet and go out into the cold or into that icy warming-up spot. He, like the very people he had Just bounded out of the canteen with his rasping voice, was occupying a place he had no right to and getting in the way of the next squad. He was a newcomer. He was unused to the hard life of the zeks. Though he didn't know it, moments like this were particularly important to him, for they were transforming him from an eager, confident naval officer with a ringing voice into an inert, though wary, zek. And only in that inertness lay the chance of surviving the twenty-five years of imprisonment he'd been sentenced to.
People were already shouting at him and nudging him in the back to make him give up his place.
"Captain!" said Pavlo. "Hey, captain."
Buinovsky shuddered as though he was being jerked out of a dream. He looked around.
Pavlo handed him a bowl of kasha. He didn't ask him whether he wanted it.
The captain's eyebrows shot up. He looked at the bowl as at something miraculous.
"Take it, take it," said Pavlo reassuringly, and picking up the last bowl--for the squad leader--went out.
An apologetic smile flitted over the captain's chapped lips. And this man, who had sailed around Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a ladleful of thin oatmeal kasha, cooked entirely without fat--just oats and water.
Fetiukov cast angry looks at Shukhov and the captain and left the canteen.
But Shukhov thought Pavlo had been right. In time the captain would learn the ropes. Meanwhile, he didn't know how to live.
Shukhov still nursed a faint hope that Tsezar would give him his bowl of kasha. But it seemed unlikely, for more than two weeks had passed since Tsezar had received his last package.
After scraping the bottom and rim of the second bowl In the same way as the first, then licking the crust, Shukhov finally ate the crust itself. Then he picked up Tsezar's bowl of cold kasha and went out.
"It's for the office," he said, as he pushed past the man at the door who tried to stop him taking the bowl out.
The office was in a log cabin near the sentry house. As in the morning, smoke was curling out of the chimney. The stove was kept going by an orderly who worked as an errand boy too, picking up a few kopecks here and there. They didn't begrudge him shavings or even logs for the office stove.
The outer door creaked as Shukhov opened it. Then came another door, calked with oakum. Bringing with him a cloud of frosty vapor, he went in and quickly pulled the door shut (so that they wouldn't yell at him: "Hey, you bastard, shut the door").