8. A HARD WINTER

THE washing season was over, but . . . washing continued. It was still summer when the digging of a drift – a horizontal mine – was begun in one of the sectors of the field, in the high flank of the mine, where the gold-bearing stratum went deep under the surface of the earth. This was done in order to avoid too much excavation work in uncovering the auriferous sand.

At the beginning of September, hurried construction was started on a ‘heater’, a large wooden barrack, at the entrance to the mine. In the barrack a primitive washing apparatus was set up. While there was still enough water in the upper ditch and the large washing apparatuses were operating in the field, the sands mined in the pit, very rich in gold content, were wheeled outside, heaped up, and sent to be washed as they thawed out, although the washing site was almost half a mile away.

A short time before the water froze completely solid, I received instructions from the section boss to flood the drifts somewhat above the mine. We rapidly constructed a series of successive dams which made it impossible for the water to escape, and destroyed the flank of the upper ditch in order that the water which was not yet frozen should drain off into the dam. Thus, during the last week, we succeeded in creating something like a skating rink of completely frozen brownish-yellow water, more than five feet deep and extending over approximately five acres. This was our water reservoir for winter washing, a thing hitherto unheard of in the Kolyma.

Technically, the work proceeded as follows: in the mine drifts the workers bored and blasted the sands, which were then raked away and heaped into a single pile. The ends of steamhoses connected to boilers standing outside the barrack were then driven into the pile. The steam was released and the sands were thawed out somewhat. Then they were carried in wheelbarrows to the panning unit. Carloads of ice were also thawed out by steamhoses, and the sands were washed with the water thus obtained. After the washing, the water flowed off into a deep pool where it was allowed to settle and later used again.

From the technical point of view, winter panning under such conditions bordered on insanity, since, in the first place, the sands were never thawed out properly, and, second, the apparatus was extremely inadequate. Geological analysis established that close to three-fourths of the gold was carried off instead of being retained in the apparatus. However, the plan for gold production fixed for Dalstroy remained unfulfilled, and Moscow demanded gold. According to computations by economists, each gram of gold obtained during winter washing cost approximately four times the number of working hours it required in summer. Despite these facts, panning continued.

When we finished the outside work, my brigade was dissolved. Together with a small group of workers, I was transferred to work in the mine, digging small ditches down which the water would drain off from the piles of thawing sand. The rest were sent to the woods to cut lumber. My men were useless in the pits – the least wind threw them over. The other miners took up the usual winter tasks in the gold field.

Things became somewhat calmer. There were scarcely any shootings now, but the mortality rate did not diminish since the physical resistance of the prisoners, undermined by the difficult spring and summer, now disappeared entirely under the hard winter conditions. It must also be added that the diet of the workers deteriorated dreadfully with the end of the large-scale washing. ‘There is no gold, so they give us no food,’ I was told by an acquaintance, an employee of the local Supply Section.

Work in the mine held one vast advantage – it was relatively warm. There was no snow, no icy piercing wind, and it was possible to work only in the quilted jackets, without coats or sheepskins. The steam which thawed out the sand also lent some warmth to the air. The water in the draining ditches froze only at the very exit of the mine.

But there were also disadvantages. The felt boots that we were given in place of the summer army shoes were always wet, never quite drying out – rheumatism was guaranteed. Then, the air in the pit, where there was no ventilation whatsoever, was filled twice daily with the poisonous fumes of blasted ammonal. Only thirty minutes were allowed for the clearing of the fumes through the entrance of the mine, after which the workers were driven back into the pits to continue their work. Many of them succumbed to the poisoned atmosphere and coughed violently, spitting blood and often particles of lung. After a short time, these were usually sent either to the weak squads for lumbering, or to their graves. Mortality was especially high among the men who carted the wet sand from the barrack after the washing. From the steamy, damp atmosphere of the heater the perspiring wheelbarrow-pushers slipped through the opening, which was covered by an old blanket, rolling out their wheelbarrows into the piercing 50° below zero frost. The time limit in this work was, at the most, one month, after which either pneumonia or meningitis dispatched the worker into the next world.

Apart from the foundation of the rolling-out drifts, there were almost no reinforcements in the mine. The permanently frozen ceilings held quite solidly, and only now and then, thawed out by the steam, a lump of frozen rock split off and crashed down. If, luckily, the crumbling part of the ceiling was noticeable beforehand, the men had time to run quickly across the dangerous spot, after looking to gauge the imminence of the fall. But there were also unexpected falls, breaking bones and smashing skulls.

The mine was lit by portable electric lights which were carried outside before every blast. On the whole, it was fairly satisfactory.

I appreciated my relatively easy job in a warm place, and my water works were soon in ideal order: the water ran off without a hitch from all the drifts of the mine to the exit. One day the section boss, Kuznetzov, entered our mine and praised my work:

‘Good fellow, Petrov! So you say the water is running, eh?’

‘It is running, Citizen Chief!’ I replied as cheerfully as possible.

‘And how many men do you have working at the ditches?’

‘With me? Eight.’

‘Oh-h,’ the boss wondered. ‘There are too many of you here. I’ll tell you what: leave four men on the job, and yourself, with the rest, get down to some other work. You will drill.’

It was impossible to protest. On the following day, with a last look of regret at the ditches which saved me from certain death, I went away to one of the drifts, with an assortment of steel drills and a six-pound hammer. As a workmate, I was assigned a Polish priest, Studzinsky, who fortunately was conscientious and did not try to ride me.

The drift turned out to be a bad one – very low. One had to lie on his back, holding the drill horizontally and turning it after each blow by his partner, who worked on his knees in an extremely uncomfortable position. Every now and then we changed places. When the opening was deep enough, a longer drill was substituted, until the opening was three feet deep. At the end of the shift, before charging, the foreman came and me sured all openings, and woe to those who bored less than ten yards per pair of workers – the following day they would receive one pound of bread instead of two. And ten yards of drilling is not a joking matter, especially when the drift passes through solid, frozen rock, and when the layer of gold-bearing sand is thin.

My new job did not please me at all, since I saw clearly that one could not last long at a work which demanded such excessive physical effort. Although we now rested every Sunday and those who worked in the mines were not sent to any other job on rest days, the eleven hours per day in the poisoned atmosphere was a sufficiently exhausting affair.

A week after I had begun, I was given another partner: the first was killed by a large piece of rock that fell from the ceiling. The new one was much worse and I had to work most of the day with the hammer since he would gasp for breath after the first ten or twenty blows. Moreover, he often missed his mark and, instead of hitting the drill, hit my hands which turned it. The ten-yard norm cost enormous effort . . .

During the rare, lucky days when we struck relatively soft ground and finished our drilling an hour or two before the end of the shift, we crawled away into some out of the way corner of the mine, spread our coats on the frozen earth and were immediately asleep, until the departing shift woke us before the arrival of the blasting squads.

This perpetual sleepiness nearly cost me my life. One day, having completed the required ten yards, I climbed into a dark corner and at once fell asleep. I was awakened by a deafening crash. In the absolute darkness I was surrounded by flashing bursts of blue flame and thunderous, shattering explosions. The stifling ammonal gas filled the air.

I instantly realized that the other workers had forgotten to wake me before leaving and that the detonation squads had lighted the fuses throughout the mine and also run out. Jumping up and quickly orienting myself in the flickering light of the exploding drifts, I rushed to the mine entrance. In one place I ran under an explosion and was showered with a hail of fragments. I could not breathe, my legs seemed to fail and finally I stumbled against a ladder and fell. Fortunately, I carried my coat on which I had slept and which I remembered to pick up despite my hurried escape. As I fell, I tried to wrap it around my head, and almost immediately lost consciousness.

I came to an hour later, lying on the snow near the mine. The workers of the new shift found me near the entrance and pulled me out into the fresh frosty air, hoping that I was not yet altogether dead. Luckily for me, when I stumbled in the darkness of the mine, I fell into a narrow ditch which ran along the wall of the passage and was thus lying near water. And the ammonal gas, being lighter than air, was more concentrated under the ceiling than at the ground; furthermore, the gas is water-soluble. It was only through this combination of circumstances and thanks to the coat which I had wrapped around my head that I remained alive.

Regaining consciousness in the cold air, I rose from the snowdrift and staggered back to the camp. When my comrades saw me, they gasped. Kachanov came over.

‘Where did you get so battered?’ he asked.

‘In the mine. Why, is it very noticeable?’ I replied.

‘Take a look at yourself in the mirror! Let’s have a mirror, whoever has one!’ he cried. A mirror was brought. I glanced into it and was horrified – my whole face was bloody.

I washed myself with water from a tin can and, taking another look in the mirror, found several small wounds on the right side of my neck, which were still bleeding a little. I had to go to the dispensary.

After a long wait I was received by the male-nurse. He was irritable. ‘What nonsense will you trouble me with now? The devil, taking up my time,’ he grumbled as he examined the cuts. ‘A few fragments stuck in the neck, a great matter!’

‘I’m afraid of infection,’ I explained humbly.

‘And what if there is an infection? A terrible calamity! All right, I’ll operate. Sit still!’ Taking a dirty and dull lancet he poked at the small splinters of rock embedded in my neck. When he was finished, he painted the wounded area generously with iodine and, tearing off a sleeve from a night shirt lying in the corner, he ordered me to bandage my own wound.

Returning to the tent, with the help of some friends I managed to bandage my neck. My only regret was that I was not hurt more seriously and had no grounds for asking the medical assistant to free me from work for a couple of days. But it was better not to enlarge too much about my accident, for that might make it necessary to explain how I remained in the pit after the end of the shift: sleep during working hours was illegal and could have landed me in the punishment cell.

My wound ached dully and a few days later I discovered that an infection had set in. After a week my neck and cheek swelled enormously and I could no longer sleep. I was again obliged to go to the dispensary.

‘You again!’ the male-nurse greeted me, swearing furiously. ‘What now?’

I unwrapped the rags and showed him what had become of the initial wounds. He rapidly glanced at the swollen cheek, felt it in a few places, making me cringe with pain, then took his lancet again and without a word made several incisions in the swelling. Pus flowed out. I felt a little relieved, and wrapping the wound again with the rags I left the dispensary, vowing that I would never return there.

I nursed my swollen cheek for over six months. The pus broke through several times, after which the wound festered again. I became the laughing-stock of the camp officials, with my bandages over the swollen cheek. The whole affair so disturbed me that my capacity for work soon ceased to satisfy the mine director and he chased me out to surface work.

The winter was still in full force when I left the warm pit. I was assigned to a brigade of miners composed of novices, and one of the weakest at the gold field. Kachanov refused pointblank to take me into his brigade, and I did not insist, realizing the groundlessness of any attempt on my part to join a strong brigade in my physical condition.

My new brigade worked on the mechanical dumper: in the pit the workers loaded the blasted rock in large wooden cases on sleighs; these sleighs were then raised to the cable which ran the length of the drift attached to it by special hooks, and dragged out to the dumping ground.

At the time I was pretty depressed, since I saw I was inevitably slipping into the ranks of dokhodyágas, into the weak brigades from which there was no return. My strength ebbed catastrophically. My new brigadier, an ex-Trotskyite – with the end of the washing, the bandit brigadiers returned to their easier tasks in camp such as the kitchen, the bread-cutting room, etc. – seeing my patent uselessness for work in the mine, sent me to the dumping ground only a week after my transfer. Four or five of us were on this job. It was our task to receive the cases of rock carried up from the mine, detach them from the cable, roll them to the edge of the dumping ground, turn them over and send them back empty, attaching them to the returning cable. We were also required to take care of the snow path along which moved the sleighs with the cases, keeping it always slippery and covered with snow.

A high derrick was driven into the highest ledge over the dumping ground. It had two pulleys over which passed the cable connected below to the electromotored windlass. This derrick was moved from place to place as the dumping heap grew.

The new work was easier, especially toward the end of the working day, when the foremen’s shouts urging us on to greater effort no longer sounded as frequently in the pit and fewer cases rose to the surface. We also had a fire going constantly near the dump and were able to warm our hands from time to time.

But the work had a serious drawback as well: above ground it was much colder than below in the closed pit. The wind, not very strong but piercingly cold, numbed the whole body, and no clothes afforded enough protection.

In the usual confusion of the bathing procedure I lost my own good clothes and received the oldest and worst ones instead. Now I wore old torn felt boots and a dirty quilted coat from which the cotton hung out on every side, and whose hem was so torn that I looked as if I had just been attacked by a pack of dogs. In this outfit every day in the total darkness of the Kolyma mornings I climbed to the hill over the dumping ground, lit by a small searchlight. We quickly started a fire with pieces of wood especially brought for the purpose, parts of broken cases and sleighs, spread fresh snow over the path along which the cases loaded with rock moved up, and prepared to meet them as soon as the cable began to move. A prickling, burning wind pierced us to the marrow. It was almost continually necessary to rub the face to prevent frostbite, and from time to time we had to pull off our felt boots and warm our feet, wrapped in rags, at the fire.

During the busiest hours we were somewhat warmed by movement, but the rest of the time the fire was the only lifesaver.

At the beginning of the winter a new order from Pavlov was read to us. Before this order, according to the rule established by Berzin, all work ceased in the mines in winter whenever the temperature dropped to 50° below zero. The new order changed the figure to 60 °. But even this could not be verified, since the only person at the gold field who had a thermometer was the director, and the instructions to stop work came by telephone from the administration in Khattynakh. As a result, only three days during the winter of 1938-9 were declared nonworking days because of low temperatures, as against fifteen days during the winter of 1937-8. But even on these days all the workers were sent to the mountains to cut lumber.

My work at the mine ended most unexpectedly. One especially cold day, when the simplest sudden motion of a hand in the air caused a noticeable swishing sound, we had to work particularly hard. One after the other the cases of rock rose from the mine which was shrouded in milky-white fog. On that day our mine was being visited by the administration chief Mendzyrzhetsky, with a whole retinue, and the foremen were bursting out of their skins to stir up the workers.

The four of us above were obviously not enough to cope with the job. More and more full cases piled up at the ridge of the hill and we could not work fast enough to unload them, barely managing to detach the arriving ones and roll them aside.

It was my task to meet each case, allow it to come as closely as possible to the derrick over which the cable passed – in order to reduce the distance that would be necessary to drag the cases by hand – and detach the heavy, clumsy hook made in the district forge. Detaching one case, I ran to receive the next. This required great agility and quick thinking, because the undetached hook inevitably crawled to the derrick and broke it, halting the activity of the entire mine for at least a half hour.

Having just detached several cases, I stood clapping my mittens at the entrance to the dumping ground. Suddenly I saw – visibility was limited to fifty yards or so – six or seven cases emerging from the white fog, attached to the cable at intervals of not more than two yards. Calling to the others to clear a space for them, I jumped up on the first case, preparing to undo the hook. When it was about three yards from the derrick, I hit the latch of the hook with my hand, but it did not open: the hook was poorly made and the latch caught. With all my strength I desperately hit the hook again and again, unable to detach it. Before I noticed it, the hook came up hard against the pulley. My left hand was caught between the cable and the pulley, then the hook struck the derrick, which was nearly nine feet high, and I saw that the derrick was bending. At the same moment I heard the sound of snapping wood.

My workmates on the ridge raised a cry and waved their hands to tell the mechanic at the windlass below to stop the machine. But it was too late. The derrick broke. Holding with both hands to the cable and still feeling no pain in my left hand, I was already hanging sixty feet up in the air. The case on which I stood slid off the sleigh and tumbled down, followed by the next one . . . The cable still moved.

I looked down and saw a group of men coming to the hill from the windlass. They were shouting something.

Finally my hands unlocked and I dropped. . . . Only one thought flashed through my mind: ‘Am I alive or not?’ Almost at once I felt my whole body strike with a dull thud the stones, lightly covered with snow, at the base of the dumping ground and heard the crashing of heavy rocks and cases flying down the slope one after the other.

Then I lost consciousness. I came to from a hard blow on the side and violent cursing. 1 did not stir, recognizing the voice of our camp commander. He continued to kick me with his felt boot, but my body seemed to have lost some of its capacity to feel. Besides, my right arm and shoulder were pressed down by a heavy rock that had fallen from above, and I could not move my feet.

The blows ceased. I heard approaching voices, and a group of people stopped near me. I stubbornly kept my eyes shut: it was to my advantage to be considered dead, or at least seriously injured, if only for the first few minutes after the accident, for accidents usually ended unpleasantly for the culprits who allowed the derrick to break.

Suddenly among the voices of the people who stood above me discussing the question of stopping the windlass, I distinguished that of Sukhanov. He came nearer to look at me and apparently recognized me at once:

‘Why, it’s Petrov!’ he said with astonishment.

‘Who is Petrov?’ another voice asked.

‘He worked in my section last year,’ Sukhanov answered.

‘Hey there, why don’t you take the man away?’ the other voice asked, in a tone of authority.

‘At once, Comrade Chief!’ the camp commander hastened to reply obsequiously. ‘Hey there! You, at the dump! Come here!’ he shouted.

A minute later I heard more orders:

‘Take him to the windlass shack, then we’ll see!’ the commander told the men. And I felt myself being freed from under the rocks and lifted up. Five minutes later I was carried somewhere. Half-opening my eyes, I saw that I was in the room where the windlass was set up.

Putting me down on the floor, the carriers left. The windlass clattered again.

After a while, when I was certain that no one was there except the machinist, I opened my eyes and sat up. Then I crawled to the brightly burning stove.

‘Oh? So the corpse has come alive! Hurrah!’ cried the machinist, my old friend Vanka, a jolly,, cunning ex-bandit. I nodded to him. Coming over to me, he helped me to get up and sit down on a wide stool covered with a sheepskin coat. Only then did I feel how badly I had been mauled in the fall. With an effort I pulled off the mitten from my left hand; the mitten was filled with caked blood, and the skin on my hand was badly grazed, but the bones apparently were uninjured.

‘Say, but you’ve had a drubbing!’ Vanka said admiringly. ‘Did the chief send you here? There is a whole crew of them here, bosses from Khattynakh. They came in to warm up . . .’

‘Yes, the chief . . .’ I answered shortly.

‘All right, sit there, get warm. I guess you are not up to talking much now,’ said the machinist, returning to the windlass.

Although my arm and whole body ached sharply, I enjoyed the warmth and rest. Before my closed eyes I still saw the approaching cases, one after the other . . .

Suddenly Vanka jumped over to me, having seen something in the window through which he looked out at the dumping ground.

‘Lie down, quick! Put on your mitten and close your eyes. The camp elder is coming!’ he whispered, helping me to the floor. I understood and stretched out. The door banged.

‘Well, how is that scoundrel? Alive or dead?’ asked the elder.

‘Alive, it seems, but pretty bad. I am afraid he’ll give up the ghost any minute,’ Vanka answered.

‘The devil take him altogether! He would drop down out of the sky just when the bosses were coming over,’ and the elder let out a string of unprintable oaths. ‘It turns out he worked in the administration once, one of the fellows with Mendzyrzhetsky recognized him and now I am told to take him to the infirmary arid free him from the mine if he stays alive.’

‘But how can he get to the infirmary?’ Vanka asked with well-feigned doubt. ‘It is an hour’s walk.’

‘The camp commander sent for a sleigh,’ the elder answered.

My spirits rose. To make sure of things, I groaned to confirm my condition.

‘Lucky fellow,’ Vanka said. ‘Now he’ll have a rest . . .’

‘The devil take him, instead of rest!’ the elder swore again. ‘As soon as he comes to, I’ll chase him back into the pit!’

‘You’d better think twice before you do it. If he really has a “hand” in the administration, you may wind up in the pit yourself,’ Vanka observed quite reasonably.

‘Oh, well, they don’t coddle contras so much nowadays . . .’ the elder grumbled.

‘That’s just why I’m saying it,’ my counsel went on. ‘If they don’t coddle contras nowadays, and yet they stood up for this one, his “hand” must be a pretty strong one. See that you don’t break your own neck.’

‘We’ll see about that when the time comes,’ the elder remarked vaguely and left. When his steps died out, I sat up.

‘Congratulations!’ said Vanka, coming over and putting an already rolled cigarette into my mouth. ‘It seems you’ll get out of the pit. Those bastards,’ he nodded in the direction of the door, ‘put on a show of nerve, but they are shaking for their own skins, along with the camp commander. Don’t be afraid.’

‘I am not afraid. I lost all the fear I had last summer,’ I replied.

‘The main thing, fake sickness as long as you can. There is no sense in playing fair with them. Look them in the eye without blinking and lie that you cannot walk.’

‘Oh, I can look them in the eye, all right – this is my third winter in Kolyma and my own eyes were frozen out long ago . . .’ I repeated the current local saying, inhaling the makhorka with pleasure.

‘They’re here!’ Vanka cried a few moments later from the window where he kept close watch. ‘Throw away the cigarette!’

When the door opened, I was lying motionless, with closed eyes, on the floor. I was picked up, and this time I cried out with real pain. Carrying me out of the windlass shack, the men threw me into the sleigh without ceremony or care, and we drove off.

When we arrived at the camp I was dragged directly from the sleigh to the dispensary. The elder followed me. The men woke the drunken male-nurse who was generally never seen sober. Pulling on a dirty, once white smock and swearing, he began to examine me. The elder whispered something into his ear. The medic glanced at him with astonishment, shrugged his shoulders and said:

‘It is all the same to me. For my part, you can leave all the malingerers in the camp.’ Sitting down at the table, he wrote a note freeing me from work for three days and certifying that, in view of my physical condition, I was unfit for work in the mine. Handing me the note, he asked:

‘Well, are you satisfied? Must I look after you, or will you get well on your own?’

Restraining my joy for form’s sake, and at the same time wincing with unfeigned pain, I replied:

‘I think I’ll manage myself. I won’t trouble you any more . . .’

‘All right, get out! There’s enough work here without you. I amputated more than ten frozen fingers today already . . .’

I reached the tent in a state verging on complete ecstasy: three days of rest, and goodbye to the mine! My hopes of surviving the winter too, to remain alive and not follow my many friends, were revived once more.

For three days I was blissfully happy.

On the evening of the third day I went to the camp office to find out where I was to report for work on the following day. The elder conferred with the foreman and told me I would work in the woods, at lumbering. I expected that and asked what the output norm was. When I heard that it was 2 cubic metres per man, I requested not to be assigned to any brigade, but to be given one team-mate with whom I might work as a separate team. I did this because I knew that lumbering was done by the weakest brigades whose output was very low and whose members therefore received only one pound of bread a day and the vilest of food at the mess hall. Joining such a brigade, I would have been reduced to its general ration category no matter how hard I worked, since the output was determined by the whole brigade.

Telling me to wait, the elder went in to see the camp commander. Five minutes later he returned:

‘The devil with you! The commander says that it’s all right. You can take Alexeev, from the fifth tent, as your team-mate. I’ll tell the foreman, and you’ll get the tools at the warehouse tonight,’ he said, writing a note to the warehouse.

I emerged from the office triumphant. Working outside of the brigades was the ideal of all who had not yet lost the desire to fight for existence. Working alone, I was responsible for myself only and earned as much as I produced. I knew that the norm of 2 cubic metres was not too difficult for a normal person, although the dokhodyàgas in our camp produced on the average not more than half a cubic metre per person and were never taken off the punitive ration.

After I received the tools – a saw and two axes-I found Alexeev, who turned out to be a morose young fellow of about twenty-five. He took the news that we would work together quite indifferently. In preparation for the next day we thoroughly sharpened our saw and axes, knowing that sharp tools made the work much easier.

In the morning, when the roll call was almost over, the camp elder called out:

‘Petrov’s team! On your way!’

‘Here! Two men! Both present!’ and we briskly walked out of the gate, catching up with the brigade of lumberjacks.

We caught up with them very quickly as these dokhodyàgas moved with the speed of tortoises, although three well-fed, warmly clad guards in the rear did their best to prod them on. As they walked they talked about the same inevitable subjects: food, makhorka, and work, finishing up each other’s thin cigarette stubs as they went along – as soon as one man lighted up, tens of voices were already asking him not to forget to give them the stub for a drag or two. They walked calmly, without hurrying, philosophically ignoring the prodding of the guards.

The sleigh road along the snow led uphill. After an hour’s walk, we were overtaken by the lumbering foreman, a stocky fellow from among the criminals, and we speeded up a little, since he swore energetically and generously administered blows 0n the back of the neck to laggards.

At the end of the second hour we reached the lumbering site. During the year of the mine’s existence, all forest directly adjoining it was cut down and the work sites moved farther and farther away.

The foreman knew that Alexeev and I were to work separately and, vaguely pointing out the place where we were to operate, he left us alone. While dokhodyágas stamped about stubbornly reluctant to begin before a fire was started and they could warm up after the walk, Alexeev and I went deeper into the woods and chose our starting place.

The snow was very deep, piled more than three feet high, and we had to stamp about for a long time to pack it down around each tree so that we might cut as low as possible. After toppling about ten trees, we made a small fire to warm our chilled hands.

After a half-day we sat down by the fire and replenished our strength somewhat with the bread and herring we had saved from the previous night’s supper – washing down our simple breakfast with hot water from a tin can which Alexeev had providently brought.

From all sides we heard the sounds of work, clear and sharp in the still frosty air. At times they were reinforced by the familiar swearing of the foreman and guards. We did not join the rest and were not curious to know how their work was proceeding. Gamp life generally breeds in people an almost morbid desire for solitude, a wish to avoid as much as possible any association with others. The longer a man lives in a camp tent, in unavoidable contact with hundreds of people, deprived of the opportunity to choose his own society, the more he tries, at least for a time, to withdraw from the rest. As a rule this is impossible, and therefore Alexeev and I were only too happy to remain alone. He was a taciturn man. We were silent for the most part, only exchanging occasional brief remarks.

It was not yet dark when we completed a pile – exactly 4 cubic metres. We added some wood to the fire, which formed a deepening well as the snow around it melted, made ourselves snow armchairs, and sank into them as comfortably as we could, thinking our own thoughts . . .

We were roused by the foreman’s voice:

‘Taking your rest early, you devils! Where is your stack?’

I took him to it. Grumbling to himself, he measured it from every side, but it was difficult to find any pretext for scolding, and, brightening up somewhat, he returned to the fire, to roll himself a cigarette.

‘If everybody worked like that, there would be less trouble. But all the bastards think of is to stick to the fire – you cannot tear them away. The damned wick [wick was a synonym for dokhodyága] may be on fire already, but still he is pushing right into the flames. And how does he chop trees? The son of a bitch couldn’t chop off a chicken’s head with blows like that.’ He concluded his tirade with a string of oaths.

Finishing his cigarette, he rose.

‘Time to go. It’s dark already.’

I got up, and so did Alexeev, who had not spoken a word. We walked toward the bright fires burning in the distance. Approaching the others, I stopped for a moment, struck by the picture: tongues of flame rose from the huge bonfire around which were huddled several score of black figures, sharply outlined against the bluish-white snow; under the black monk-like cowls, the faces lit by the bright flames were incredibly dirty, with dark stains – traces of frostbite on cheeks and noses. All this combined to give the impression of a strangely wild, not quite human assembly. The sitting men muttered quietly among themselves, and their talk was drowned out by the loud, resonant voice of the guard swinging his rifle as he walked among them in a warm coat, mittens reaching to his elbows, felt boots and a large fur hat with earpieces.

‘Scum and bastards, every one of you. For your crime the Soviet government brought you here, leaving you your heads and hands to give you a chance to earn a right to life by honest labour,’ he bellowed. ‘And all you think of, you scoundrels and saboteurs, is to continue your counter-revolutionary sabotage in the camp, sitting on your punitive rations and dying out like flies. Serves you right. The fewer parasites like you, the sooner the socialist revolution will triumph throughout the world. How many cubic metres did you do today? Hey, you, brigadier, I’m addressing you!’

‘Eighteen,’ someone answered reluctantly from the sitting circle.

‘How much is that per man?’ the guard continued his interrogation.

‘.45 cubic metres,’ was the reply.

‘There you see! Aren’t you scoundrels, aren’t you saboteurs? You ought to be sent into the pits, all of you!’

‘We have all been there already. That’s why we are here now . . .’ someone said. ‘You ought to get a taste of the pits yourself,’ muttered someone else. The guard heard him and flew into a rage.

‘Get up, you sons of bitches! Hurry up now!’ He rushed at the crowd, swinging the butt of his rifle. The ‘sons of bitches’ dropped on the snow, trying to cover their heads and faces against the blows of the rifle and the new, hard boots. The guard quenched the fire, wildly kicking the snow into it. The foreman joined him.

Firing a shot into the air, the guard signalled to the two others who watched another group some distance away, and soon we were walking in the direction of the camp. It was totally dark, and only the stars and the northern lights illuminated our way. An hour later we were in camp. The return trip was shorter, both because we walked from instead of to work, and because the road campward was downhill.

Several days passed. On the whole, I was pleased with my new occupation and felt fairly well – the pain of the fall had disappeared, and even the famous swelling on my cheek and neck had begun to go down a little. The only trouble was that those wretched wicks were kept at work too long – twelve hours per day, not counting the trips to and from the work site. Very little time was left for rest and sleep.

However, matters soon improved. After waiting a week and making sure that the foreman was honestly showing in his daily reports that Alexeev and I fulfilled our norm, I went to the camp office one evening after work, and, taking advantage of the elder’s absence, stepped directly into the office of the camp commander.

‘What the devil do you want?’ he asked me.

‘Citizen Commander, I should like to request that Alexeev and I be permitted to work independently, without being tied up with the nearest brigade.’

‘What else?’

‘Allow us to go and to return by ourselves, without waiting for the rest. The norm will always be fulfilled. Otherwise we must waste too much time with those dokhodyágas. If we rested better . . .’

‘And what do you think you were sent to Kolyma for – to rest?’

‘I know that we were sent to work. And you know, Citizen Commander, that we work conscientiously,’ I tried to persuade him. He considered it for a while.

‘Very well. Only instead of 4 cubic metres, you’ll have to produce five. And you’ll each get two pounds of bread. Tell the supervisor I allowed it.’

In a happier mood I left the office and told the supervisor about my conversation with the commander. He refused to believe me and went in to verify it, but returned at once and nodded.

‘All right, you can go now. The guards and the foreman will be notified.’

From the following day on, Alexeev and I, leaving later after roll call than the others, quickly overtook the crowd of dokhodyágas and, by the time they came and began work, we already had almost one whole cubic metre in our stack. Completing our norm by six o’clock, we called the foreman who measured the pile and dismissed us with a note that we were permitted to return to the camp. Without such a note the guards at the gate allowed no one to enter before eight, while normally the lumber workers did not return from work before ten. Roll call began at 6 a.m.

My calculations proved correct. The work in the forest was not as exhausting as mining and it could be fulfilled without too much difficulty by a man who had not yet altogether lost his strength. And the additional pound of bread, even of such half-baked and vile tasting bread as we were receiving at the time, mixed with bran, was of considerable help. Moreover, we were paid, for the first month, 40 rubles each, and could now buy makhorka and sweets at the camp commissary, even if in microscopic quantities. Alexeev somewhere procured several kilograms of herring and we had supplementary breakfasts for a whole month, making it unnecessary to save some gruel or salt fish at dinnertime for the next day. At 7 p.m. we were already in the camp, had time to dine before the others, and were able to sleep from 10 p.m. to five in the morning.

About that time we began to cart wood from the forest to the mine. The horses were all being used in the pits, and the inventive administration decided to use men as draft horses, preferably selecting the weaker men. From four to six men were harnessed to a sleigh loaded with lumber. The load itself was not too great, especially since the road was almost entirely downhill, but the human horses had to exert tremendous effort to move the sleighs. They would constantly fall on the downgrades, or be knocked off their feet by a sleigh that would slide down the slippery places.

Shortly before Christmas heavy snowfalls began, cutting off our mine completely from the rest of the Kolyma. There was so much snow that some mine workers were transferred to the work of clearing a road. In the meantime, the last food reserves for the prisoners were exhausted.

First of all, as usual, the salt disappeared, and in all the dishes we were served in the dining-hall it was replaced by herring. Soup with herring, gruel with herring. Then the cereal gave out, and there was no more gruel. There remained only soup with bread, the soup consisting of nothing but water with a small mixture of flour. Then, for three days, all workers received only a half-pound of bread per person, and on the morning of the fourth day everyone received a double portion of the same soup instead of bread. On the following day again there was no bread.

Real famine set in at the mine. Five thousand men did not have a piece of bread. But everyone worked as usual – twelve hours a day. The prudent administration put all guards on duty, fearing a hunger rebellion. These fears were groundless – the browbeaten and worn-out men were incapable of any energetic action.

Exhausted by long years of half-starved existence and inhuman labour, people spent their last remnants of strength in working. And died. During those days the nameless graves under the hill swallowed fifteen or twenty men every day.

In the evening of the fifth day, barely dragging our feet, my teammate and I went directly to the dining-hall on returning from work. Alexeev’s eyes were burning feverishly. We had just come into the mess hall when our nostrils were struck by the smell of meat. From the kitchen window we were given a plate of soup each, and what soup! Large chunks of meat floated in it. Alexeev began to gulp it down at once, but I was seized by a sudden suspicion, knowing that the roads had not yet been cleared. Since there were few people in the dining-hall, I went to the window and called the cook, whom I knew, to ask what kind of meat it was. The cook laughed, immediately guessing my thought. His fat face shone. ‘So, you are afraid it is human meat? No, not yet. Calm down and eat it. Today they slaughtered three horses at the stable. They say that one died himself, but what’s the difference?’

I agreed that it made no difference and returned to the table to eat my portion with great relish. After supper we went to our tent to sleep.

On the following morning we had the same thing for breakfast: halfsoup, half-stew of horse meat. And as usual, at six in the morning, in total darkness, we were sent off. After we had walked a few hundred steps, my team-mate suddenly said:

‘Do you know that today is Christmasr’

I did not know, for I had long ceased to keep count of the days – it was easier that way.

‘Listen, let’s not hurry, work is not a bear – it will not run off to the woods. Let us go and sit down awhile, warm up . . .’

‘Where?’ I asked Alexeev.

‘Along the road. I have a friend, a machinist at the windlass, on the mechanical path. He has a warm shack and we can sit there till sunrise.’

Forty minutes later we turned off the trodden snow path leading to the forest, and soon were approaching the windlass shack. I immediately recognized the place. Amd my old friend, the machinist, welcomed us warmly.

‘Come in, dear guests, sit down by the stove!’

I sat down at once near the brightly burning stove, and my companion walked away to the side, turned from us and stood motionless.

I glanced at him questioningly. The machinist caught my glance and also looked at Alexeev. I suddenly caught a new expression in the eyes of this confident and cheerful bandit – a curious mixture of respect and – fear.

‘Have you known him long?’ I asked the machinist quietly.

He nodded:

‘Yes. About two years.’

At that moment a shout was heard from the distance – ‘Start the windlass!’ – and the machinist began work. The windlass clattered.

Looking at Alexeev, I saw him kneeling, with his head on the dirty floor. His pose left no doubt – he was praying. Something long forgotten stirred in my breast. The machinist also glanced at my comrade, silently, although jeers at the least expression of religious feeling, often verging on vicious insults, were common not only on the part of the administration, but generally among the criminal elements.

I do not know how much time passed. Alexeev rose, and with a brief ‘Come on’ walked out of the shack without looking at us. I followed.

It was beginning to dawn. We walked silently. With an enormous effort I tried to drive from myself the pictures of the distant past, pictures of early childhood that had been awakened by my comrade’s action. Christmas! The happy winter holiday, happy especially for children. Decorating the tree, all the festive preparations, friends, guests, merriment, laughter . . . For a second the thought flashed upon me: ‘When did I laugh last?’ And I answered myself: ‘More than a year ago.’ Yes, Christmas! My fourth Christmas in a prison or a concentration camp. Before me there were two more. Would I live to see them?

In camp that evening we learned that the first tractors with food had come along the cleared road that evening. But we still had the same supper – horse meat stew. The next morning we had it again for breakfast. The menu was not improved because the administration did not want to create a holiday impression, no one was to feel that the food had been brought for Christmas.

In the morning we came to the forest even hungrier than before. We had barely felled several trees when the foreman appeared, calling out to me:

‘Stop making a fool of yourself! Nobody is working at the field, and you are still at it. Make a fire and sit around till dark. And then – back to camp. Here is your note to the guards,’ he said, tearing out the prepared slip from his notebook. We obeyed. That day we cut only enough wood to keep the fire going. But our empty stomachs made themselves felt. It was not yet dark when I rose from my place.

‘I’ll take a walk to the free settlement to see if I can find something to eat,’ I said. Alexeev nodded silently and I went.

I had a slight opportunity at times to procure some food for myself; several free employees at the mine knew me from better days, and occasionally they fortified me with bread or some other edible. I now went to their houses, impelled by the pangs of hunger.

But luck was against me. The territory of the free settlement swarmed with guards – the state of alarm was still maintained at the mine. Knowing that prisoners caught on settlement grounds were immediately sent to the punishment cell, I was very careful. Finally, stealing along the shadows of houses and barracks, I reached the house where lived my acquaintance, the mine economist. I looked through the lighted window – the room was full of people, a party with singing and laughter was in progress. It was impossible to call out the man I needed. And my other acquaintance, the book-keeper who had given me a large loaf of bread two weeks earlier, was not at home.

Returning to the camp, I was consoled by the fact that we were each given half a pound of bread with the now thinning horse soup. After supper I went to sleep.

On the following day the usual food norms were restored: again we received gruel and salt fish, and, most important of all, I was again given two pounds of bread daily. Life resumed its course.

By the end of winter, despite the chronic lack of sufficient food, I grew stronger working in the forest in the fresh mountain air, and was able to sleep seven hours every night. My team-mate was still Alexeev, although he had become completely silent. There were days when we did not exchange words, working silently, and silently sitting by the fire after work.

The snow still lay thick everywhere and the frosts reached 20-25° below zero, especially toward morning. Then an unpleasant incident occurred to me – I was sent to the punishment cell.

One morning, when roll call had already begun, I was in the dining-hall, finishing a muddy liquid that was called tea. Suddenly I received such a hard blow on the back of the neck that I bit my tongue. Since childhood, any physical violence always provoked me to an automatic, purely reflex reaction. I immediately jumped up and, without glancing back to see who the assailant was, I swung the cup and hit backwards, over my shoulder, with all my might. The blow hit the target: someone howled with pain. I finally looked back and stood petrified: before me was the guard who had come to the mess hall to drive out all laggards. Jumping back, he aimed his rifle at me and ordered me with an oath to go to roll call. I understood his indignation, for the cup had hit him in the nose and it was bleeding. My fighting spirit departed instantly. I knew that I would not fare well – I had committed one of the gravest crimes according to camp standards.

The injured guard brought me to the square before the gate and forced me to lie down on the snow near the fence. I obeyed without protest, knowing that a man of his type would not hesitate to fire at me, and I did not think it would be the height of wisdom to let myself perish so stupidly after four years of imprisonment. I was still lying on the snow, watching the end of roll call, seeing Alexeev looking in all directions in search of me then finally leave. It was cold and unpleasant, as it always is when one is conscious of having committed an irreparable blunder.

My guard called one of his colleagues and told him in a lowered voice about the incident in the dining-hall. The latter went to speak to the camp commandant, then returned and ordered me to get up and walk. I did not ask where, unerringly guessing my destination. Along the narrow, well-trodden snow path we passed the camp, walked uphill about a mile in the direction of the mound, and came to a small building. Even before we reached it, we were stopped by a shout: ‘Halt. Who is it?’ My guard replied, ‘It’s all right,’ and another soldier, trailing his rifle, emerged from a booth near the building. Exchanging a few words with the sentry, my guard turned back toward the camp, and the remaining one ordered me to the punishment shack. Unlocking the door, he let me in and closed it again.

At first I could not see anything: after the dazzling white snow this windowless room seemed absolutely dark. Standing at the door, I only heard the voices of several men and the usual swearing. Only after several minutes, when my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I realized that I was in the small and only room of the punishment shack, weakly lit by the daylight seeping through the cracks in the log walls and the feeble flame from the open doors of the stove. Someone from the upper bunk called to me:

‘Hey there, pal, climb up here and tell us what brought you here!’

I climbed up and found four men, all unknown to me and dressed only in their underwear – obviously criminals. Briefly telling my sympathetic listeners about the unlucky incident, I asked why there were so few men in the punishment cell.

‘Here we have only clever men. All the idiots went to work.’

‘Is not everyone required to go to work from the punishment cell?’ I asked.

‘No, we have full freedom, as under the Czar. The only difference is in the bread ration: those who work receive one pound, those who don’t, a half-pound a day. We decided it wasn’t worth knocking ourselves out for twelve hours for an extra half-pound of bread. It’s true, the bastards took away all our clothes, but that’s not so bad – while the shack stands we won’t freeze. Kolka! Get some firewood!’ ordered the terribly emaciated, bearded man who spoke to me, and who apparently commanded a position of authority.

The young fellow jumped off the bunk and began to rock the rods of which the lower bunk, already half-dismantled, was made. Pulling out a few sticks, he pushed them into the stove and clambered up again.

‘Good boy, Kolka!’ the bearded man praised him. ‘This is my wife!’ He introduced the boy. I nodded. Homosexuality among criminals was no secret to me. I had even heard about cases where male prisoners, including politicals, had been raped by thieves and bandits.

The criminals continued their card game, and I stretched out on the bunk and soon dozed off. I woke up feeling that someone was rifling my pockets. One of the company of players sat bending over me. Apparently while I slept they decided to see whether I had anything of value with me.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘Let us see what you have,’ he ordered.

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place, instead of shoving your hands into my pockets?’ I said, trying to keep up my courage, and, sitting up, I began to turn out my pockets. But I had nothing of interest to the thieves besides half a package of makhora and the scarf around my neck – the last relic from Kattynakh. They took both things and left me alone.

‘Will you go to work tomorrow?’ asked one of the players.

‘I’ll go. I cannot refuse, or they’ll make me a saboteur before I know it.’

‘Just think of that, a great matter!’ commented the bearded man. ‘We’ve all become saboteurs here, except Kolka. Last summer they told us our terms would be lengthened by three years and that our article of the law was now 58-14. But we . . .’ and he swore again.

‘So you have been here since summer?’ I asked.

‘Yes, almost without a break. We’ll go out to work for a few days now and then, get some provisions from our friends in camp – and back to bed. That’s how we live.’

I was surprised, but not too much. I knew the astonishing endurance of criminals generally. Neither hunger nor cold nor beatings could break them down. They were a hardened element. From childhood they had been accustomed to living in the street, to spending winter nights in cold railway stations, in parks or in doorways, to stay hungry for weeks, almost without a piece of bread, and always dirty, ragged, and very often suffering from venereal disease. These people could adapt themselves to any condition, and it was very difficult to break them down. They were really capable of enduring half a year in the punishment shack, in those inhuman conditions. A tough element . . .

It was late at night when the others returned from work. Some dark figures stirred below, near the stove. Two guards entered with lanterns.

‘Off with your hats, mittens and boots, make it quick!’ one of them ordered. Everyone began to undress hurriedly. I also had to follow the general example. Then, one the guard’s instruction, two men collected all the felt boots and the rest of the rags and carried them outside. The door remained open and it became very cold. When the men returned, the command was given: ‘Four men are to go for firewood!’

Rapidly deciding who was to go, four men left the shack ana went barefoot across the snow, disappearing somewhere into the darkness in the company of the guards. Ten minutes later they returned with armfuls of wood. The door closed. Soon the stove was burning brightly and the reflection of the flames on the walls lent some light to the room. A little old man whom everyone addressed as ‘daddy’ settled down near me. For a long time he fussed about, trying to wrap his feet in a rag which he pulled off from his neck. Finally, he quieted down and lay back, sighing.

‘What kind of order do you have here, daddy?’ I asked him.

‘As you see, they torment good people, the infidels,’ the old man replied. ‘Every evening they take away our hats and boots. And what for? They don’t know themselves. “So that no one runs away,” they say. And who will run? And where? First, they take your boots, then they make you walk a hundred steps in the snow for firewood. And who brings the firewood if not we ourselves, from the woods? You’d think they’d let us carry it right in. But no! First, they make us throw it down in the yard, and then run for it barefoot. It’s lucky, too, if they send out four men, as tonight, so we’ll have almost enough wood to last till morning. But if somehow we anger the guards, they’ll send out one man only – and what can one man bring? Oh, what a life!’

The old man fell silent. And indeed, after such a life even the camp seemed like a paradise. Everything in the world is relative. Only now was I able to appreciate the advantages of obedience in camp . . .

‘Have you been in the punishment shack long, daddy?’ I asked.

‘Since Christmas, sonny,’ the old man replied. ‘They put me in because I prayed aloud to the Lord in the woods – seeing it was a holiday – both for myself and for others . . .’

‘Are you of the clergy, daddy?’

‘Yes, son. I was vouchsafed the honour of holy orders. But now it is nearly ten years since they wrecked our little church and sent me to camp. At first I was in Solovki, then on the ‘B.B.K.’ – Baltic-White Sea Canal – and now I’ve come to Kolyma. Everywhere it is God’s land, but in this spot of His earth they torture people too much. And there is not enough bread for such work . . .’ The old man sighed,

In the morning, having received our hats and boots, we walked uphill with old and dull axes in our hands. There were not many of us, about fifteen men and four guards. The punishment shack inmates worked at lumbering, but this work was a pure formality, since even I could be regarded as a Hercules in comparison to the others.

For the whole day we cut about two cubic metres of lumber, not counting what was used to keep up the fires – ours and the separate one for the guards. Against expectation, the treatment of the prisoners by the guards was not worse than that prevalent throughout the camp. They swore as usual, but more from a sense of duty than for pleasure. They did not beat the prisoners, and did not drive them.

About midday another soldier came and brought a sack of bread, cut into one-pound portions. Then two prisoners from the camp, accompanied by a guard, brought a pail of cold, freezing gruel and five or six bowls for all of us. This was our combined breakfast and lunch. We dipped the bowls directly into the pail for the gruel, and ate it with the aid of the bread and our fingers, since spoons were not given to punishment-cell prisoners. Several lucky men received their portion of gruel last and were therefore able to warm it over the fire before eating. Those who did not work, remaining in the shack all day, received only bread in the evening, a half-pound each, which, together with melted snow, constituted their entire daily ration. I cannot say that this method of dining and the quantity of food received pleased either my appetite or my esthetic sensibility.

Work ended approximately two hours after lunch, when everyone settled around the fire for the rest of the day. All these men, each a political, had already reached the degree of exhaustion which leaves only one way open – to the grave . . .

My neighbour of the previous night turned out to be a little old man of about sixty, dressed even worse than the rest, although it would be difficult to imagine that any clothes could be worse than those worn by the group. He was in camp, but he knew neither the article of the Criminal Code under which he had been sentenced, nor the term of his imprisonment. When I wondered at it, he replied:

‘No one told me, and I did not ask. And why should I know, sonny? How much longer can I live here anyway? Perhaps two or three months. It is time to die. And I am not frightened of dying. I’ve lived out my lifetime in the world, now it is time to take my rest. But for those like you, it is much harder. You’re young, you have not seen enough of life and trouble. But don’t you fear, sonny, you’ll live,’ he concluded with unexpected certainty. ‘And you’ll be happy yet.’

The old man enjoyed everyone’s affection, and even the guards were indulgent to him. Once, when a soldier uttered an especially long and obscene oath, the old man came over to him and said:

‘There, now, why do you swear like that, son? What’s the good of it? You’ll get used to swearing, and what will it bring you to? You’re still young, soon you will marry, have children, and you will have the habit and continue swearing so that all good folks will shun you!’

‘Go along, daddy,’ the guard replied. ‘Don’t forget to whom you’re talking! Where do you think you are?’

‘In Kolyma, they say, sonny. Why?’

‘Not in Kolyma, but in a concentration camp, and you are a counterrevolutionary and an enemy of the Soviet government.’

‘God be with you, darling, I am nobody’s enemy. As for the camp, what difference does it make, the camp or any other place? The sun shines everywhere, and everywhere there are people.’

‘All right, there’s no sense wasting my time in talking to you. Get to the fire, daddy.’ The guard ended the conversation, and turned to the others with embarrassment.

In the evening, gathering firewood, we descended to the shack, threw the wood down in the yard, and repeated the same procedure of undressing and going barefoot across the snow to bring it in. I was one of those elected for the run.

Thus one day followed another. This was now almost the lowest ebb of camp life. I felt that I was beginning to sink into apathy, into indifference to everything – the surest symptom of giving way. Even the purely animal sense of hunger somehow lost its potency. I ceased washing myself – although in fact all I could do was to rub myself down with a bit with snow on arriving in the forest. I no longer noticed the revolting atmosphere of the punishment shack, its filth, smell, or cold. The strongest human instinct – that of self-preservation – became somehow atrophied for the time being. And yet I would not admit the logic of the four criminals who remained in the shack to preserve their strength, since being out in the fresh and clean air of the woods seemed to me the only possible condition of aliveness. I became noticeably weaker, but it did not worry me too much. Several days after my coming to the punishment shack one man died, then two others. On the days following their deaths – they usually died at night – the old priest always remained in the shack to pray over the corpses until the arrival of the sanitary workers who took them away. He was regarded as a somewhat abnormal eccentric, and on those days the guards gave him the usual portion of those who worked – one whole pound of bread.

Then he also died – though not in the shack but in the woods. He sat silently at the fire, his head bowed over his hands. When we all rose to return to our cell, he remained seated. Someone touched him, and he fell over. The guard came and looked at him.

‘Daddy is done for. Leave him here. Tomorrow they’ll take him away.’ And we went down, not knowing just when the old man had died. We were even more depressed and heavy of heart than usual – everyone was used to the old man and fond of him.

In the morning, when we returned to the forest, the corpse was lying as we left it, covered with the thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight. It was only at dinnertime that men from the camp came to carry the body away.

One day we were not taken out to work. Instead, we were given hats and felt boots and lined up in the square before the punishment shack. The camp commandant and two other officials came from the camp and critically examined everyone. I and two others were ordered to step aside. The rest were driven off into the woods, but we were told:

‘Soon the washing season starts – there’s no sense in your loafing here. Go to the camp. Tomorrow is rest day, and the day after tomorrow you’ll go to work at ditch-digging.’

This news neither grieved nor gladdened me. I was indifferent to everything. Descending to the camp, we met a group of three men who were being shoved and angrily cursed at by a guard as he led them to the punishment shack.