4. THE FAR EAST AT WAR

KOSTYA and I were faced with a complicated problem in strategy. We had learned in the evening that the voluntary employees would be sent ashore first, and that then the former prisoners were to be taken to the Dalstroy ‘allocation point’ (inside the barbed wire), where they would be checked again. Those permitted to proceed farther would be issued free tickets from Khabarovsk on, but as far as Khabarovsk they would all be transported in freight cars under heavy guard. We had strong reason to fear that instead of to Khabarovsk we would be shipped to another concentration camp.

Before dawn we carried our belongings on deck, shivering with the early morning cold and looking toward the shore, from which a cutter and a barge were approaching. It was not hard to guess that the barge was to take the passengers ashore.

When the cutter pulled alongside and an officer of some sort had come aboard and gone up to see the captain, we lost no time in dragging our bags to the gangplank and asking a sailor from the cutter to lower them into the barge.

‘I can’t do that until I get the order,’ he said.

‘Listen, old man, what do you care? You can see that we are passengers,’ Kostya said to him, ‘and we want to get into the barge early so as not to be pushed around in the crowd when everyone starts disembarking.’

His voice was soothing, almost affectionate, and I noticed that while seeming to pat the sailor on the hand he shoved a rolled-up bill into it. The sailor at once dropped his strict manner.

‘Well, all right, but quickly, so no one will see you.’

In an instant we were in the barge. We hid our things behind, some canvas lying in the stem and made ourselves as small as possible behind the wheelhouse. We couldn’t see the ship but we heard sounds up there: the whistles and shouts of the guards chasing the ‘prisoners’ into the hold.

An hour later the voluntary employees began to descend into the barge. They took places on the deck and paid no attention to us, apparently thinking us members of the crew. I kept scanning them anxiously, afraid that someone would recognize us, but luckily none of our ‘friends’ were among them.

Finally we began to move. As we slowly drew near the shore Kostya and I got up from our place of concealment.

The passengers were sitting on benches looking at the water fearfully, as there were no railings on the barge.

Suddenly there was a shout, ‘Suitcase overboard! Stop! Stop!’ We saw a small suitcase bobbing up and down in the water beside the barge, while two passengers, a man and a woman, continued to cry out. The others seemed indifferent.

Our old friend the sailor came up to them.

‘What’s the matter, citizens? Why all the shouting?’

‘Our suitcase! Can’t you see, that suitcase there, it’s ours, please get it quickly. It has all our – documents – in it!’ said the woman with a stammer.

‘All right, I’ll get it right away,’ said the sailor, taking a long boat hook down from the wheelhouse. ‘But what will you give me?’ And he stopped.

‘What? What’ll I give you? I won’t give you anything. It’s your duty to see that everything is in order; you get paid for it. I’ll tell the captain that you practise extortion,’ shouted the man.

‘Oh, so?’ said the sailor coolly. ‘Then get your suitcase yourself.’ He crossed to the other side, boat hook in hand.

‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ the woman whispered fiercely to the man. ‘That bag has . . .’ I couldn’t hear the rest. The man jumped up and yelled, ‘Oh, you stupid fool! Sailor, come here! I’ll give you 50 rubles, but for God’s sake get that suitcase!’

The sailor came over silently, looked at the departing suitcase, and said calmly, ‘It’s too far away – can’t reach it with a boat hook. You shouldn’t have haggled with me.’

‘Listen, comrade sailor, signal the cutter, make it go back. I’ll pay for everything. And you’ll get 200 rubles.’

‘So that’s the way it is?’ The sailor was mildly surprised. ‘Two hundred already . . . But I can’t signal the cutter; there’s only one man there and he’s in the engine room. He wouldn’t hear me anyway.’

Now both the man and the woman began begging the sailor to save the suitcase.

‘Well, O.K. It’s cold, but I can swim over and get it,’ he offered. ‘But that will cost you money.’

‘Yes, yes, quickly! It’s filling up and sinking. How much do you want?’

‘One thousand rubles,’ said the sailor without blinking an eye. The man almost shrieked.

‘How much? A thousand? You’re insane! Will you take 300?’

‘No.’

‘Well, 500 then?’

‘If you still want to argue, swim over and get it yourself,’ said the sailor in an irritated tone. ‘I wouldn’t get it for 3,000 now. Anyway, it’s sinking.’

‘Ai, it’s sinking!’ screamed the woman. ‘You’re an idiot!’ she shouted at her husband. ‘Sailor, quick, you’ll get 2,000!’

‘I wouldn’t go for 5,000,’ said the sailor with unruffled calm. ‘It will sink anyway.’ He stared at the suitcase, which was almost too small to see.

‘Citizens, what is he doing to us?’ The man turned to the others with tears in his voice. ‘Half the money we earned on the Kolyma is in that suitcase! Help us! Make him dive in and get it!’

The crowd was silent. Several men in N.K.V.D. uniform snickered among themselves.

‘You shouldn’t have haggled so much,’ said the sailor patronizingly, when the suitcase had disappeared under the water. ‘You’re too greedy.’ And with another look out over the water he went into the wheelhouse.

The hubbub continued. If they had not been separated husband and wife would have started fighting over whose fault it was that their money was in the suitcase. The barge was already pulling up to the dock.

Perhaps the incident of the lost suitcase, which was being discussed excitedly by everyone, including the officials who met the barge at the dock, saved us some explanations when our papers were inspected. There was only a short dialogue.

‘Hey, citizens, you’re former prisoners,’ said the official inspecting our passports. ‘How did you happen to get into this barge?’

‘By the personal order of the ship’s commissar,’ said Ivanov haughtily and unabashed. ‘You can see that there are only two of us from a thousand former prisoners.’

This strange reasoning was unexpectedly convincing.

‘That’s right, there are only two of you. All right, go ahead.’ Grabbing our things, we ran to the trucks which were standing near by.

The other passengers were already there. We climbed into the back of the last truck. Soon the Bay of Nakhodka and all the Dalstroy buildings disappeared around a bend in the road. Only a dozen or so Kolyma people were still with us. They were all voluntary employees.

As the sun rose we entered Vladivostok.

We felt violent pangs of hunger. It had been forty-eight hours since we had eaten anything, but we had forgotten that under the influence of all our worries. Now our stomachs began to contract painfully.

The trucks stopped at the railroad station. We checked our bags and went into the city, leaving our fellow travellers behind. It was early and the shops had not yet opened. While we were looking for a place to eat Kostya and I talked incessantly, experiencing our first moments of actual freedom. Everything connected with the Kolyma, with Dalstroy, and with the years we had spent in concentration camps was behind us.

We got something to eat in a small snack bar to take the edge off our hunger, and then we went for a walk.

Built on the slopes of several hills, Vladivostok is a picturesque city, with its streets running up and down. To the south we could see the port with dozens of ships. Farther out near the horizon we could make out an island, which even in the Kolyma we had heard no ordinary citizen was allowed to approach.

There were trenches along the streets in many places, and on the hillsides one could see machine-gun nests. The street lamps were painted dark blue. About half of the people who were beginning to appear in the streets were soldiers and sailors. There were almost no women or children in sight. Strangest of all, there were absolutely no Chinese, numbers of whom had always lived in Vladivostok. We found out later that all the Chinese in the city had been taken away the first week of the war. In general everyone was evacuated from the city who had no direct function in the port, the army, the navy, or the railroad.

All that morning our chief occupation was eating. We had breakfast in the famous Golden Horn, and Kostya, who was taller than I and had a prodigious appetite, ate all his own food and everything that I left. The two-day fast caused by the Japanese cruiser had caused a psychological hunger in us, and in one morning we ate more than in half the journey at sea.

In the course of our walk around town we bought ourselves two new, well-made suitcases. Contrary to our expectations, there turned out to be a fair amount of goods in the stores. We knew, of course, that Vladivostok, like other port cities which foreigners often visit, was in a special position in regard to supplies. But we had supposed the war would have caused a reduction.

The U.S.S.R. was divided into several ‘zones’ of supply. The first contained Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Novorossisk, and Vladivostok. These cities received (for Russia) many goods at low prices. One could buy sugar and even butter. Sometimes underwear and other items of clothing were available. Moreover, wages were higher than in the other zones.

The second zone contained the centres of industry, the big industrial cities, and the capitals of the union republics. Sugar and butter were harder to get there; the sale of clothes, shoes, and other goods was controlled more strictly and was handled in the main not by stores but by factories and organizations.

The third zone was a group of cities and regions contained in a special list confirmed by the government, which had a particular significance in the economy of the country. All one could get at a fixed price was bread and sometimes some sort of cereal or meat. Clothing and footwear were sold only to the best Stakhanovites of the factories and to the party aristocracy. Wages were a good deal lower than in the first two zones.

The rest of the U.S.S.R. was included in the fourth zone, and everything was proportionately worse there.

Thus in Vladivostok, in the first zone, we supplied ourselves with the essentials we had not been able to buy in Magadan. We had money. In the first place, we had received a fairly large sum as discharge pay; and in the second place, according to an old Kolyma custom, the friends of a former prisoner departing for Vladivostok take up a collection for him. About 5,000 rubles had been collected for Kostya and me, which wasn’t bad.

We went to the station with our purchases and repacked our belongings in our new suitcases. Then after another long and unpleasant document check we bought our train tickets. We asked for passage to Moscow but they would sell us tickets only as far as Novosibirsk. Our express would leave in the morning.

We dined in the Cheliuskin, a restaurant well known to all naval men who have ever been to Vladivostok. To be more accurate, Kostya had dinner there. I couldn’t. We had eaten so much that the sight of food was repulsive to me.

A drunk sat down at our table.

‘Are you from the Kolyma?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Very pleased to meet you. I’m Drozdov, a mechanic.’

We bent our heads to signify that we were pleased, too.

‘I’ve been here three weeks. I’m from the Kolyma too. But they won’t let anyone go back. So here I am, waiting. No more money; I’ve drunk it all up. Lend me 50 rubles.’

Kostya and I exchanged glances and I gave him the money. The mechanic beamed.

‘Thank you. What about you? Are you going into the army?’

‘No, right now we’re going home.’

‘That’s bad. They’ll draft you straight off. They’re taking everyone.’

‘Well, if they draft us, they draft us. You can’t escape the army,’ said Kostya. The mechanic laughed drunkenly and winked.

‘Ha, ha! That’s funny! “You can’t escape the army.” Why, only fools are going into the army. Why go into the army when the war will be over in three months? Only hoofs and horns are left of the army now.’

And the mechanic reeled back to his friends.

I looked around. The restaurant was packed. There were a lot of officers, but also many people in civilian clothes. A few women were laughing shrilly. Smoke filled the far corners like fog. On a stage at the side of the room a small orchestra was playing gypsy love songs and a gaunt woman with an emaciated face was singing. The air was heavy with the fumes of wine and vodka. At one table an argument started. Tablecloth and dishes clattered to the floor and the waiters fluttered around, trying to get control of the situation.

A young girl in a very décolleté dress approached and bending over us whispered:

‘Do you need opium? I have some – Chinese . . .’

I shook my head and she went on to the next table.

Kostya had dozed off from too much food and wine. His head was nodding.

Three men in uniform appeared in the doorway. They walked through the room a few times looking for someone. Apparently finding him, they approached one of the tables and said something. A man in civilian clothes got up and followed them. Suddenly from the crowd an army officer shouted, ‘Hey, you blueheads! What do you want here? Why aren’t you in the army?’

I couldn’t believe my ears. It had never occurred to me that one could talk like this to the N.K.V.D.

The men stopped and two of them came over to the soldier.

‘Who are you? Show your papers!’

‘Go to the devil’s mother, will you?’ the officer shouted, without getting up.

‘Show your documents, comrade major!’ ordered the N.K.V.D. man imperatively.

‘Get out of my sight, do you hear?’ The major raised his voice. At the other tables officers were beginning to rise. One of them, stepping between the major and the N.K.V:D. official, said, ‘You’d better go.’ The rest of the military were making threatening sounds. Seeing that their position was untenable, the ‘blueheads’ departed. The major’s friends began to persuade him not to make any more trouble.

It was now midnight. Noticing some of the officers putting on their coats and getting their bags out of the cloakroom, I inquired if they were going to the station. When they said they were, I asked whether they would mind our joining them, since we were not acquainted with the town. I went back to our table to jerk the deeply sleeping Kostya awake.

It was very dark outside.

‘Watch your step,’ warned one of the officers, ‘there are trenches all around here. Every morning they drag out the drunks who have fallen in during the night.’

The officers were also going west. In Spite of the protests of the railroad men, we went out to look for our train. It was on a siding in the railroad yards not scheduled to leave for several hours. Having found our car and our places with the aid of pocket flashlights, we settled ourselves as comfortably as possible and went to sleep. In my sleep I heard the train approach the platform, the kerosene lamps being lighted, and the noise of people piling into the coach. At last we began to move. Through the window I saw that it was snowing, and it occurred to me that this was the third time I was seeing the first snow this year. The first was up in the far North the beginning of September, the second in Magadan the day we sailed.

Lying on the top shelf with Kostya still asleep across the aisle, I looked out of the window of the coach. Yesterday’s snow covered the ground. There were no signs of habitation on either side of the track. Between the infrequent stations and settlements there was nothing, not the smallest village. At the stations a great many soldiers were waiting for troop trains. Only officers were on our train.

There was an inspection, not only of tickets but of documents, too. Everyone was thoroughly and minutely examined. We learned that something was not in order with the papers of one old man sitting below when the N.K.V.D. man announced, ‘Collect your things; you will get off at the next stop.’

‘Citizen commander, I have only three more stops to go. Here is my ticket; I’m a local resident. Here is my passport; please let me go on to my stop.’

‘No, you will get off. You have no permission from the military commissar for the journey. Maybe you are a deserter.’

‘Me a deserter? I’m sixty years old!’

‘Enough talk! Get your things, at the double. Forward march!’ The old man began to fuss around. Then he took his bag and went to the end of the coach. The inspector turned to me.

‘Your papers!’

I handed him the whole batch. My documents were all in order – I had made certain of that in Magadan. Still he asked, ‘When were you discharged from your camp?’

‘Before the war.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home, and then into the army.’

He moved on, apparently satisfied.

Inspections of documents continued regularly during the whole trip, once and sometimes twice a day. Almost always someone was found with something suspicious either in his papers or in his baggage, which was also occasionally inspected. Or else the N.K.V.D. man just would take a dislike to a passenger’s face. And always in such cases these people were taken off the train. What was done with them later we didn’t know.

In our coach there was a lieutenant who was on his way to the front after serving in the Far East for three years. He told us that the object was first of all to catch escaped prisoners from the camps, and army deserters, whose number had grown immensely since the start of the war; but chiefly to make people ‘feel that the Soviet regime was still powerful enough to be feared’.

He also told us that many soldiers and officers (at that time they were still called Red Army men and commanders) had been sent from the First and Second Far Eastern armies to the Moscow front, and that these transfers were continuing. It was true that our ‘express’, which travelled at an average speed of 12 miles an hour, was always being held up at stations hours at a time to let long troop trains full of soldiers through to the west. Troop trains scarcely halted at the stations, for fear of desertions.

The general picture in the Far East, all the way to Irkutsk, was encouraging. One could judge by the quantity of produce which, according to old Russian custom, the local peasants brought to the stations to sell. Since there were no diners on the train the passengers bought what they needed during the long stops. The conductors had quantities of food in their compartment. They said that further west, beyond Irkutsk, the prices of everything were much higher. Apparently they simply meant to do some speculating.

In Irkutsk we had to change trains, and Kostya and I were able to spend the whole day in the city.

We had a proper dinner. We ate the famous Baikal fish called ómul and bought a supply of vodka and liquor which we were told was almost impossible to obtain farther west.

When our train had travelled several miles from Irkutsk a document and baggage inspection of grandiose proportions was arranged for us at a small station. N.K.V.D. inspectors took food away from those who had too much; we were relieved of three bottles of vodka. The Far East ended at this station and the guard was especially strong there, oriented particularly towards travel from the west, so that refugees from European Russia could not penetrate into this region where life was still more or less normal. It was much easier to leave it, however, and the five hours lost by the train during the inspection, it was said, were a mere trifle compared to what the east-bound trains had to go through.

The Far East had ended. Siberia was beginning.