Free Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalanov Page B

and carrying on the bookkeeping duties of the supervisor’s office.
    ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘Look what came for Frisorger.’
    In the package was an official document with a request to show convict Frisorger (crime, sentence) his daughter’s declaration. A copy of the declaration was enclosed. In it she wrote briefly and simply that she was convinced her father was an enemy of the people and that she renounced him and requested that her relationship to him be regarded as non-existent.
    Riazanov twirled the paper in his hands. ‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘Why did she have to go and do a thing like that? Maybe she wants to become a party member?’
    I was occupied with something else. Why would anyone forward this sort of declaration to a convict father? Was it some unusual variety of sadism as when relatives were informed of non-existent deaths? Or was it the simple desire to do everything ‘according to the law’? Or perhaps something else?
    ‘Listen, Ivan,’ I said to Riazanov. ‘Did you register the mail?’
    ‘No, it just came.’
    ‘Give me the package.’ I explained the matter to Riazanov.
    ‘But how about the letter?’ he said hesitatingly. ‘She’s sure to write a letter.’
    ‘You can detain the letter as well.’
    ‘OK, take it.’
    I crumpled the declaration in my hand and tossed it into the open door of the heated stove.
    A month later the letter came – just as short as the declaration – and we burned it in the same stove.
    Not long after that I was taken away, and Frisorger stayed behind. I don’t know what happened to him. I often thought of him while I still had the strength to remember. I could hear his creaky, excited whisper: ‘Petrus, Paulus, Markus…’

Berries

    Fadeev said: ‘Wait, let me talk to him.’ He walked over to me and put his rifle butt up against my head. I lay in the snow, clutching the log that had fallen from my shoulder, for I could not pick it up again to join the column of people descending the mountain. Each man carried a log on his shoulder, some larger and some smaller, and all were in a hurry to get home. Both the guards and the prisoners wanted to eat and sleep; they were all tired of this long winter day. But I was lying in the snow.
    Fadeev always used the formal form of address in speaking to the prisoners.
    ‘Listen, old man,’ he said. ‘Anyone as big as you can carry a log like that. It’s not even a log – just a stick. You’re faking, you fascist. At a time like this, when our country is fighting the enemy, you’re jamming sticks in her spokes.’
    ‘It’s not me who’s a fascist,’ I said. ‘It’s you. You look in the papers and read how the fascists kill old men. How do you think you’re going to tell your bride about what you did in Kolyma?’
    I had reached the stage of absolute indifference. I could not tolerate rosy-cheeked, healthy, well-dressed, full people. I curled up to protect my stomach, but even this was a primordial, instinctive movement; I was not at all afraid of blows to the stomach. Fadeev’s booted foot kicked me in the back, but a sudden warm feeling came over me, and I experienced no pain at all. If I were to die, it would be all the better.
    ‘Listen,’ Fadeev said when he had turned me face upward with the tips of his boots. ‘You’re not the first one I’ve worked with, and I know your kind.’
    Seroshapka, another guard, walked up.
    ‘Let me have a look at you, so I’ll remember you. What a mean one you are…’
    The beating began. When it ended, Seroshapka said: ‘Now do you understand?’
    ‘I understand,’ I said as I got up and spat out salty, bloody saliva. I dragged the log to the accompaniment of chortles, shouting, and swearing from my fellow prisoners. The cold had gotten to them while I was being beaten.
    The next morning Seroshapka led us out to a site where the trees had been cut down the previous winter, to gather anything that could be burned in our cast-iron stoves. The stumps