Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov Read Free Book Online Page B

old debt.
    We realized that life, even the worst life, consists of an alternation of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, and there was no need to fear the failures more than the successes.
    We were disciplined and obedient to our superiors. We understood that truth and falsehood were sisters and that there were thousands of truths in the world … We considered ourselves virtual saints, since we had redeemed all our sins by our years in camp. We had learned to understand people, to foresee their actions and fathom them. We had learned – and this was the most important thing – that our knowledge of people did not provide us with anything useful in life. What did it matter if I understood, felt, foresaw the actions of another person? I was powerless to change my own attitude toward him, and I couldn’t denounce a fellow convict, no matter what he did. I refused to seek the job of foreman, which provided a chance to remain alive, for the worst thing in a camp was the forcing of one’s own or anyone else’s will on another person who was a convict just like oneself. I refused to seek ‘useful’ acquaintanceships, to give bribes. And what good did it do to know that Ivanov was a scoundrel, that Petrov was a spy, or that Zaslavsky had given false testimony?
    Our inability to use certain types of ‘weapons’ weakened us in comparison with certain of our neighbors who shared berths with us. We learned to be satisfied with little things and rejoice at small successes.
    We learned one other amazing thing: in the eyes of the state and its representatives a physically strong person was better – yes, better – more moral, more valuable than a weak person who couldn’t shovel twenty cubic meters of dirt out of a trench in a day. The former was more moral than the latter. He fulfilled his ‘quota’, that is, carried out his chief duty to the state and society and was therefore respected by all. His advice was asked and his desires were taken into consideration, he was invited to meetings whose topics were far removed from shovelling heavy slippery dirt from wet and slimy ditches.
    Thanks to his physical advantages, such a person was transformed into a moral force in the resolution of the numerous everyday questions of camp life. Of course, he remained a moral force only as long as he remained a physical force.
    When Ivan Ivanovich was first brought to camp he was an excellent ‘worker’. Now that he had become weak from hunger, he was unable to understand why everyone beat him in passing. He wasn’t beaten severely, but he was beaten: by the orderly, the barber, the contractor, the group leader, the work-gang leader, the guard. Aside from these camp officials, he was also beaten by the camp criminals. Ivan Ivanovich was happy that he had been included in our group.
    Fedya Shapov, a teenager from the Altai region, became physically exhausted before the others did because his half-grown body was still not very strong. He was the only son of a widow, and he was convicted of illegal livestock slaughter. He had slaughtered a sheep – an act punishable by a ten-year sentence. Accustomed as he was to farm work, he found the frantic labor of the camp particularly difficult. Fedya admired the free life of the criminal element in camp, but there was something in his nature that kept him from becoming close to the thieves. His healthy peasant upbringing and love – rather than revulsion – for work helped him a little. The youngest among us, he immediately became attached to our oldest and most decent member – Ivan Ivanovich.
    Savelev had been a student in the Moscow Telegraph Institute and later was my fellow inmate in Butyr Prison. As a loyal member of the Young Communist League, he was shaken by all he had seen and he had written a letter to the party ‘leader’, since he was convinced that someone must be keeping such information from the leader. His own case was so trivial (writing letters to his fiancée) that the