Free The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov

more exactly to sense that this last upholder of the Code in the Ust-Vym complex was my double, that the recidivist Kuptsov (aka Shalikov, Rozhin, Alyamov) was dear and necessary to me, that he was dearer to me than the camaraderie of the soldiers which had swallowed the last pitiful crumbs of my idealism, that we were one. Because the only person you could hate that much was yourself.
    And I also felt how tired he was.
    I remember that winter, February, vertical smoke above the barracks. When a prison goes to sleep, it becomes very still. Only from time to time a wolfhound chained to a post raises its head, rattling its long tether.
    There were three of us in the Command Patrol Station. Fidel was warming his hands by the stove grating. The peak of his cap was broken and it looked like a bird’s beak. Beside him sat a woman in felt boots dark with melted snow.
    “Our name be Kuptsov,” she was saying, unknotting her scarf.
    “A meeting is not authorized.”
    “But I’ve come so far.”
    “Not authorized,” Fidel repeated.
    “Boys…”

    Fidel was silent, then he leant over to the woman and whispered something. He said something insolent and shameful to her.
    They brought in Kuptsov. He strutted, stooping and hiding his fists in his sleeves, as he would on the outside. And again I got the feeling of a storm above his head. The zek stopped in the transit corridor, looked into the cabin, recognized, and stared, stared… didn’t tire of staring. Only his fingers whitened on the steel grating.
    “Borya,” the woman whispered. “You’re all green.”
    “Like a young pickle.” He grinned.
    “This meeting isn’t authorized,” Fidel said.
    “They suggested,” the woman said, looking at her husband with anguish, “they suggested… I’m ashamed to repeat it…”
    “I’ll find you,” Kuptsov said quietly, to himself, “I’ll find you, boys… And when you get it, there’ll be no discount given.”
    “You punk!” Fidel said threateningly. “There’s no shortage of cells in the isolator.” And then, to the escort guard: “Take him away!”
    The woman cried out, wept. Kuptsov stood there, nestling his cheek against the grating.
    “Agree, Tamara,” he said suddenly, distinctly. “Agree to what the chiefs proposed.”
    The escort guard took him by the elbow.
    “Agree, Tomka,” he said.
    The guard dragged him away, practically tearing his jacket. His thin, powerful collarbones and the blue eagle on his chest could be seen.
    “Agree,” Kuptsov kept on repeating and pleading.
    I threw open the door and went out onto the road. I was blinded by the headlights of a log-carrier rumbling by. In the pitch darkness that immediately followed, I could barely see the road. I stumbled, fell in the snow, saw the sky white with stars, saw the trembling lights above the sawmill.
    Everything blurred, slipped away from me. I remembered the sea, dunes, colour-drained sand and a girl who was always right, and how we sat side by side on the bottom of an overturned
row boat, and then how I caught a little perch, threw it back into the sea, and then tried to convince the girl that the fish had shouted “ Merci! ”
    Then I stopped feeling cold and guessed I was beginning to freeze, at which point I stood up and started walking, though I knew I was going to stumble and fall again.
    In a few minutes, the smell of unseasoned birch reached me. I saw white smoke above the guard cabin.
    The window glass of the Command Patrol Station dropped trembling yellow patches of light onto the plank road, which was hard and shiny from the tractors.
    When I entered, Fidel was raking embers and frowning from the blaze. An instructor, back from his rounds, was drinking tea. The woman was no longer there.
    “That Nyurka is such a vixen,” Fidel was saying. “You walk into her place, there’s vodkaroo, meat in aspic, mambo italiano, as much as you want. You throw down a few, have a bite after, and your soul ascends to heaven. But the main