Kolia Read online

  The bartering had already begun throughout the car. Food was being exchanged for papirosa cigarettes or fabric, and anything else that one party had but the other didn’t. People were reading books — the one book that some library attendant had deigned to lend them — and getting ready for bed. The provodnik served tea for a small fee. No one had started singing yet.

  An old man sat down beside Kolia, placing his bag between his feet. Then he put his head in his hands, with his elbows on his knees, and fell asleep. Saliva dripped down between the old man’s cupped hands and formed a dark stain on his green trousers. He got off at the second stop. The crowded train was made up of people of all kinds, but no one looked particularly dangerous.

  At the fifth stop, Kolia got off and bought some cold soup from an old woman who was wearing a religious icon over her breast. He had seen similar icons in a book, but never with his own eyes. The face pictured on the icon was too elongated for his taste. “Maria,” said the old woman, whose opaque right eye had left her half blind.

  The train did not run like clockwork. Kolia decided not to stray too far from the station. His legs felt heavy, his lower back was hurting, and his hip was killing him. He walked along the platform and studied one of the green railroad cars that had been built right on the tracks by convict labour, and had cost enough lives to populate an entire city. The hubs of the wheels were painted blood red.

  Thanks to certain privileges she enjoyed, Tanya was able to obtain a visa for Kolia which would permit him to stay in Moscow for a few days. He would have to renew it for a longer period after he arrived. In exchange, he would agree to clean toilets and do other menial jobs that his compatriots generally turned down. He would also have to sleep in a hostel rather than a room of his own as he’d done in Khabarovsk. That was the price of admission to Moscow. He would have to play his cards right if he wanted to end up on the sunny side of the street.

  The train resumed its journey. This time a young woman was seated to his left. She had her brown hair in braids that were coiled into a bun high on her head, and a striking profile, thanks to her nose. She kept her bag at her feet. Kolia stared at her breasts. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to slap her with the back of his hand or fondle her. He shifted his gaze as soon as he realized he was getting an erection. In an attempt to control himself, he slid down and jammed his knees into the back of the seat in front of him. The girl got up and changed seats. He drank a little water and watched the passengers who remained on the platform recede along with the street vendors. The window was filthy. He spat on it and tried to wipe it clean with the sleeve of his peacoat. The bulk of the dirt was on the outside.

  He could have slept for hours in the rocking and humming of the train, but the noise and smells around him — a blend of cigarette smoke, body odour, disinfectant, and the stink from food of all kinds — kept him awake well into the night. But somehow Kolia didn’t object to them.

  At night the sky was pitch black, leaving passengers almost blind. The stars were the only points of reference. At the onset of morning, which kept changing as the train entered a new time zone and the clock was set back an hour, Kolia, completely exhausted, would finally fall asleep — kneeling on the floor, his head resting on the seat and enclosed in his arms, with his suitcase and bag placed between his legs to protect them from being stolen.

  During the day, the scenery that scrolled slowly past the windows was stunning. The sheer immensity of the landscape and the sight of rivers flowing northward to the Arctic Ocean was enough to make people think that anything was possible. As the train made its way around Lake Baikal, hugging the southern shore for kilometres on end, they witnessed wildlife that was found nowhere else. It was a country that instilled belief. The huge billboards with likenesses of the great figures of socialism, which were planted here and there along the route and erected in train stations, attempted to add a little inspiration of their own. Stalin’s face still stared out from placards and posters and Ilyich was everywhere.

  Kolia regularly repeated what Iosif had told him to buoy up his spirits in the camp. Appear to be weaker than your aggressor. Breathe slower than your enemy. Eat only two meals a day to train your body to withstand hunger. Sleep less. Think more. Read everything you can and anything you want to. But above all, constantly question what others tell you, even books, even Victor Hugo. Even me.

  High winds began to fill the car with dust that was inhaled and expelled into handkerchiefs as black threads of soot.

  At Irkoutsk, a small gang of thugs took control of the car when the provodnik went for his break, threatening the other passengers, who were in fact just as bad off as they were.

  “Show me what you’ve got in your bag.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Shut your trap, okay? You say nothing, you open your bag, and you dump it out. And then we see if you’ve got anything we like.”

  “I wouldn’t advise you to do that.”

  One of them, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, decided to play the big gangster and grabbed Kolia by the throat, repeating through his teeth: “Show me what you’ve got in your bag.”

  “I said I wouldn’t advise you to do that.”

  The boy held a paring knife right under his nose, the blade still carried traces of the fruit it had recently cut into. In an instant, he grabbed the boy’s wrist and forced him to drop the weapon.

  “You misjudged your victim, little man.”

  Kolia drove his knee into the boy’s groin and then landed a punch to the solar plexus of the tall, skinny guy with a broken nose, who was standing behind him. He lifted his sleeve and revealed his gulag tattoo.

  The ringleader spat on the floor and swore in a dialect that Kolia didn’t understand. Then he made his retreat with the rest of his gang of halfwits in tow. Kolia lowered his sleeve.

  When daylight broke, the gang of petty thieves was nowhere to be seen. On the bench beside Kolia, there was some dried blood and the pocket watch that he had managed to lift from the skinny guy with the boxer’s nose. Stealing from a thief didn’t count.

  At Pervouralsk, the train crossed continents. There is a natural border between Asia and Europe where the landscape flattens into an expanse of plains that are much too great for one man. It would take him a thousand years to know them well.

  After the episode with the would-be thieves, Kolia slept like a baby, numbed by the monotonous rhythm of the train and his own exhaustion. Every now and then, a small settlement of isbas would appear in the middle of nowhere; the log houses displayed a very rudimentary construction, but appeared to be inhabited. A young boy wouldn’t stop crying. He kept pissing in a corner and licking his runny nose, and every few minutes, the car’s resident drunk would bellow a drawling reprimand at the boy, as though he were the child’s father. The mother seemed completely worn out. She stared through the window at a moving point on the horizon, and completely ignored her son.

  The only time Kolia left his seat by the window was to get something to eat or go to the toilet. As the train progressed, more and more passengers got on board, heralding the imminence of their arrival in Moscow. There was no more tea. The passengers all wanted something hot to drink, even though the compartment was stifling. But the provodnik merely repeated, “We’ll be arriving shortly.”

  The train pulled into Yaroslavl Station — the nine-thousand-kilometre journey’s final destination — on Thursday, August 5,1954. It had crossed two continents and seven time zones. Kolia waited until the car was empty before getting up. The provodnik made it clear by pointing to the exit that he had to get off like everyone else, and now. Kolia threw his knapsack over his shoulder and said goodbye. He stepped down from the train, petrified with nerves. His legs, on the other hand, felt like they belonged to a rag doll. He completely missed the last metal step and landed hard on the platform, taking three rapid steps forward until he collapsed at the feet of a man wh
o was evidently waiting for someone. It looked ridiculous, but the fall had been executed perfectly.

  MOSCOW

  TANYA AND HER COMPANION found him sitting in Komsomolskaya Square in front of the train station. He was still dazed. The man who had helped him to his feet excused himself as soon as they arrived. As planned, Kolia wore a purple armband, which he had created out of a scarf. He recognized Tanya immediately and reached out to shake her hand. Then he greeted her friend with a nod, as he had seen other men do when they met.

  He spent his first night in Moscow with the couple in their two-room flat, three rooms if the kitchen counted. The man had Party business to attend to with another comrade, and he left them to their tête-à-tête at the kitchen table. Tanya prepared a thick soup. She resembled the photograph taken three years earlier; she was petite but not quite as pretty as she appeared in the picture. In fact, the kitchen light wasn’t flattering at all to the contours of her face. While the potatoes, beets, cabbage, and morsels of meat simmered on the stove, Kolia got the feeling that she was waiting for him to say something. He began to talk about Iosif.

  “I don’t know. He might have hung on for a few more months. I just don’t know. I never knew why he was there. He never said a word about that.”

  His voice didn’t sound natural. He had hardly spoken to anyone in the last two weeks.

  “I received a letter saying he was dead. They didn’t use the word ‘disappeared,’” Tanya said, lowering the gas flame.

  “I was told he had disappeared . . . by a guy who knew him, I think.”

  “How was he the day before?”

  “He was fine. Just like every day.”

  The radio that Tanya placed on the kitchen table right in front of him crackled out something indecipherable. They spoke to each other in Russian. Any other language would have woken up the walls.

  “Did they send his money to you here in Moscow?”

  “Yes. Almost nothing. Before he was arrested, he spent virtually everything.”

  Kolia pulled a package out of his knapsack.

  “His notebooks. Some sketches, a few doodles here and there, notes he scribbled down, and some of his writing.”

  As he began to leaf through Iosif’s notebooks and documents, he hesitated at the pages where there was a reference to the civil servant who had protected her brother.

  “You’re lucky, you know,” said Tanya.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The city is closed to ex-prisoners. I’m not going to be able to help very often.”

  He sorted through the documents and sketches, and placed them in chronological order; Iosif had meticulously dated everything. But Kolia decided to keep one thing for himself; he slipped Iosif’s diary into his pants pocket.

  The conversation was going nowhere. Tanya seemed distant, almost colourless in comparison to the letter she had written in Russian, and not particularly interested in her brother’s paraphernalia. She changed the subject. She started describing the vegetables in the soup, and how she had bought the meat that morning, just by chance, for almost nothing. Kolia couldn’t understand her indifference. It was clear that Tanya had loved her brother very much, but from a distance. She didn’t want any problems now. Kolia was an honorary member of the family and they would help him, but only to a point. They would do what her high-ranking boyfriend had promised.

  The next day, they took him to the workers’ hostel where he was to live from then on. It was situated just outside one of the boulevards of the Garden Ring, which circumscribes the historic beauty of Old Moscow. He was shown to a dormitory which could accommodate up to twenty men. The only private space allotted to each man was his bed. It came with a yellow bedspread and a thin flat pillow that could be raised by placing a folded sweater under it. Kolia was informed that he would share the outhouses with the other men, and would spend his spare time in their company. The workweek would consist of forty-eight hours, including Saturday. Therefore Jews were not permitted to observe their religious beliefs. The objective of the man-machine was to walk towards communism and freedom through education and labour. He could expect a sudden and difficult fraternity — thefts were documented — but for the most part, friendships formed as a matter of course, just like they do in all communities, and the men often helped each other and exchanged favours.

  Kolia started work right away in the sewers beneath the foundations of a hotel that was under construction. Travelling to his worksite for the first time, he saw a group of huge cranes flying low against the sky. He marvelled at all the taxis criss-crossing the city and the streetcars gliding beneath their wires. He would come to prefer these to the subway. Moscow was truly charged with electricity.

  His job was to hand tools to the other workers and cart out rocks and mud, which were then driven away by truck and dumped in an outlying suburb of the city. The men rarely spoke to each other, concentrating instead on the task at hand; the daily quotas had to be reached and the implicit competition between them had to be respected from the outset. It was in the hostel that friendships were made — during the day the men were far too busy emptying the bowels of Moscow.

  In Gorky Park, Kolia was finally able to take in the full measure of the city. He had walked across the nearest footbridge which overlooked the Moskva River and found himself in the Frunzenskaya district, which was home to artists of all kinds, from writers and editors to dancers with the Bolshoi, and circus performers. He too would live here one day. He watched as children, and men and women of all ages, played chess and checkers on low wooden tables. There were people lying under trees reading books. Small boys in their work smocks took their breaks in the shade. Women in baggy pants threw balls back and forth. Staying in shape was important for maintaining stamina at work. Other women in stylish dresses shielded themselves from the sun with oriental parasols, which were evidently in fashion. The gymnastic equipment for exercising after a day’s work or on the weekend was almost never used. From time to time, a voice would soar up out of large loud speakers with official announcements and directives for Moscow’s citizens, who were to educate themselves, enjoy themselves, and comport themselves in a manner that was not offensive to public order.

  After several minutes of hesitation, he followed a crowd of pedestrians into the subway, allowing the mechanical stairs to carry him underground. It was overwhelming. Kolia struggled to grasp the concept of the subway station and studied the other passengers for guidance. But it was impressive; he hadn’t anticipated that the station would be such an extraordinary work of art, and each time his eyes fell upon pink marble or a mosaic or a grand chandelier, he was deeply affected. And every time he stopped to look at something, he was bumped into, shoved, and accused of being thoughtless and inconsiderate by people whose Russian might have been more polished than his, but it was still Russian.

  Kolia came to detest this mode of transportation. Working in the sewers in the summer gave him enough time underground. But from time to time, he would take the escalator and descend into the subterranean museum where he had found so much beauty. The enormity of such an undertaking, which displaced tons of shitty soil and replaced it with a permanent art exhibit, simply amazed him. All the same, he preferred to get around Moscow above ground, and adopted the streetcar as his vehicle of choice.

  One evening at the hostel, Kolia was preparing soup with two men he worked with in the sewers — Volodya and Misha. He had supplied the bread and the cream, and the other two had picked up the rest of the meal’s ingredients after work. Their grocer was an enterprising retired labourer who made the rounds of the city’s grocery stores buying only the best products, and reselling them at one and a half times the price fixed by the state.

  They settled into a corner of the cafeteria with their mess tins in order to avoid the noise of the group who had taken possession of the six benches. One of them had been keeping an eye on Kolia since he’d arrived. He
was a thickset young man named Alexei, who always wore a spotless and impeccably ironed white shirt, but whose most striking feature was his plump lips. Behind his back, the others called him Fat Lips. Misha had mentioned to Kolia that he was someone you wanted to have in your pocket.

  When he had finished his bowl of soup, Kolia got up, grabbed the bottle of vodka that Tanya had given him, and unscrewed it in plain view of Alexei, who was sitting at the head of one of the tables. Kolia walked over, poured a glass for Alexei and then for himself, and placed the bottle down right in front of Alexei’s china plate. They clinked glasses. It was this gesture, which he repeated on a regular basis during his stay at the hostel, which undoubtedly saved Kolia from certain discomforts at the hands of the authorities.

  Alexei was a spineless but clever individual, a member of the Komsomol Brigade, and the committee’s mole at the hostel.

  The week following his arrival in Moscow, Kolia stumbled into the path of a smartly dressed man as he was getting off the streetcar. The man was flanked by an attractive woman and two other men who appeared to be plainclothes policemen. He was pointing a camera at him. Kolia did a sudden about-face, slamming into the woman behind him in a frantic attempt to dodge the weapon, which clearly had him in its sights.

  “Please tell him it’s okay!” said the man behind the camera to one of the others.

  The photographer spoke French. The other man, who was evidently his interpreter, reassured Kolia in Russian. The woman, who was either his wife or his sister, addressed him as Henri. Kolia realized his error. As he walked away, he held back from saying something to the man in French, despite an overwhelming desire to do so.

  The encounter with the photographer and his camera had left him deeply disoriented. He was holding a book in his hand, but he had no idea where he was going or whether someone was waiting for him. He turned down the first street he came to, completely lost and mistakenly convinced that he had just run into someone from Switzerland.