Free The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov Page A

thing is spiritual, on the order of ‘Vanya, don’t you want some pickle brine?’”
    “So can’t it be arranged,” the instructor asked gloomily, “that she wash my foot cloths?”
    And spring came around again. The last black snow took away with it the special winter warmth. The days dragged on slowly along the sopping plank road.
    Kuptsov spent that whole month in the isolator. He just barely made it. His collarbones stuck out under his quilted jacket. The zek behaved very quietly, but one time he threw himself on Fidel, and we dragged them apart with difficulty.
    I wasn’t surprised. A wolf hates dogs and people, but he hates dogs more.
    Three times I released him back into the zone. Three times the zek foreman received a short note: “Refusal”.
    The head of the convoy, in his green raincoat, shone his flashlight onto his list. “Logging brigade, move out!” he ordered.
    We took over a brigade by the gates of the prisoner barracks zone. Pakhapil, restraining Harun, walked in front. I, maintaining a distance, took the rear.

    The settlement of Chebyu met us with the barking of dogs, the smell of wet logs, the sullen indifference of its inhabitants.
    We headed in the direction of the hospital, past yards filled with trash, then made a turn towards the river, which was free of ice and unexpectedly clean and brilliant. We walked over the little crudely made bridges, crossed the railroad line with its colourless grass between the ties, made our way past huge cisterns, a water tower and the pompous structure of the station latrine. Only then did we come out onto the muddy plank road.
    “When I was a kid, I loved to tramp in the mud,” Fidel said to me. “Did you too? The number of galoshes I left in the muck – it’s terrible to think of!”
    Near the logging sector, we met a group of sentries with dogs. The men were in short jackets, and they carried telephone receivers and cartridge pouches of ammunition in their arms.
    Pakhapil made the zeks halt, touched his cap, and started to make a report.
    “As you were!” Shumeyko, the shift commander, interrupted him.
    Enormous and pockmarked, he looked sleepy even when he was starting off for beer. Sergeant Shumeyko’s variegated personality came to life only in the course of extreme situations, and apart from extreme situations, he had long since lost interest in everything else.
    Shumeyko took a head count of the prisoners. Shuffling their identification cards, he directed one file of men after another into the pre-entry yard. Then he waved a go-ahead sign to the sentries.
    We went into the checkpoint cabin. Fidel threw his gun onto the pile of rifles and lay down on the trestle bed. I checked the alarms and began to heat up the stove.
    Pakhapil took the shortwave radio out of the strong box, pulled out the pliant metal antenna, and began to fill the heavenly spheres with his incantations: “Come in, Rose! Come in, Rose! This is Peony! This is Peony! Alarms in order. Restricted
area open. Cons at work. Do you read me? Do you read me? Do you read me?…”
    I stopped by the agricultural sector, headed for the machine shop. There, by a barrel of gasoline, stood a long, dejected line of men. Someone lit a cigarette but immediately threw it away. Chaly the pickpocket spotted me and started singing in a deliberately loud voice:
    “At the station, at the station,
Ech, at my little station,
I’ll grab a little suitcase
And say thanks to the dark night…”
    Some people spoke to me, I answered. Then, bending over, I walked through the forest towards a clearing. A man was squatting there beside a campfire.
    “Not working, you brute?”
    “Abstaining. Greetings, Chief.”
    “This means you’re refusing?”
    “Same as ever.”
    “Will you work?”
    “The Code does not allow it.”
    “Two weeks in the isolator!”
    “Chief…”
    “Will you work?”
    “Chief…”
    “As a roper, a truck driver, branch-cutter…”
    I walked up and kicked out the