Kolyma Tales by Varlan Shalanov Read Free Book Online Page A

doors in big towns. Inside were cots made of slender logs. On the earthen floor lay a smoky black tin can. All around the small moss-covered cabin lay other rusty yellow cans of the same sort. The hut belonged to the geological prospecting group; more than a year had passed since anyone had lived in it. We were to live here and cut a road through the forest. We had brought saws and axes with us.
    It was the first time we had received our food ration in advance. I was carrying a small cherished bag containing grain, sugar, fish, and some lard. The bag was tied in several places with bits of twine like a sausage. Savelev had a similar sack, but Ivan Ivanovich had two of them sewn with large masculine stitches. The fourth, Fedya Shapov, had poured his grain frivolously into the pockets of his jacket and used a knotted foot rag that served us instead of socks to hold his sugar. He’d ripped out the inner pocket of the pea jacket for a tobacco pouch in which he carefully stored any cigarette butts he happened to come across.
    The very thought that this tiny ten-day ration had to be divided into thirty parts was frightening. Of course, we had the choice of eating twice a day instead of three times. We’d taken bread for only two days, since the foreman would be bringing it to us. Even such a small group was unthinkable without a foreman. We were totally unconcerned with who he might be. We’d been told that we had to prepare our quarters before he arrived.
    We were all tired of barracks food. Each time they brought in the soup in large zinc tubs suspended on poles, it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick, we couldn’t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we’d been hungry for too long. All human emotions – love, friendship, envy, concern for one’s fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty – had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies during their long fasts.
    Savelev and I decided to eat separately. The preparation of food is a special joy for a convict. To prepare food with one’s own hands and then eat it was an incomparable pleasure, even if the skilled hands of a cook might have done it better. Our culinary skills were insignificant, and we didn’t know how to prepare even a simple soup or kasha. Nevertheless, Savelev and I gathered up the cans, washed them, burned them on the campfire, cooked, fussed, and learned from each other.
    Ivan Ivanovich and Fedya combined their food. Fedya emptied his pockets carefully, examining each stitch, cleaning out the individual grains with a grimy broken fingernail.
    We, the four of us, were quite prepared for a trip into the future – either into the sky or into the earth. We were all well aware of the nature of scientifically determined food rations, of how certain types of food were brought in to replace others, and how a bucket of water was considered the equivalent in calories of a quarter-pound of butter. We’d all learned meekness and had forgotten how to be surprised. We had no pride, vanity, or ambition, and jealousy and passion seemed as alien to us as Mars, and trivial in addition. It was much more important to learn to button your pants in the frost. Grown men cried if they weren’t able to do that. We understood that death was no worse than life, and we feared neither. We were overwhelmed by indifference. We knew that it was in our power to end this life the very next day and now and again we made that decision, but each time life’s trivia would interfere with our plans. Today they would promise an extra kilo of bread as a reward for good work, and it would be simply foolish to commit suicide on such a day. The following time the orderly of the next barracks would promise a smoke to pay back an old debt.
    We realized that life, even the worst life, consists of an