The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 2 An Experiment in Literary Investigation - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Trusties I 275
But it seemed as if she were invisibly whipping him across the
cheeks, becttuse spots, spots of red, flamed on his lusterless womanlike
skin, and his ears blushed crimson and his lips twitched.
He ruffled up but sajd nary another word and did not attempt
to raise his hand in self-defense. That same day he complained
to me: "What can I do with the incorrigible directness of my
personality! It is my misfortune that even here I can't get away
from discipline. I am compelled to utter reprimands; it disciplines
those nearby."
He .was always nervous at the moining line-up-h~ ,wanted
to rush to work as quickly as possible. And hardly' had_ the
trusty brigade been let into the work compound than he very
demonstratively overtook all those who were not hurrying, whose
pace was leisurely, and almost ran into the office. Did' he want
the chiefs to observe him? Not very important. Was it so the zeks
would see how intensely busy he was at his work? In part, yes.
But the most important, thing, the most sincere part, was to
separate himself from the crowd as swiftly as possible, to get out
of the camp compound, to hide himself in the quiet little planning
section and once there . . . once there, certainly not to do the
kind of work Vasily Vlasov did, trying to figure out how to rescue
the working brigades, but instead, for whole hours at a time, to
loaf, to smoke, to dream about one more amnesty, and to imagine
another desk for himself, another office, with a buzzer to summon
people, with several telephones, with servile secretaries, with
visitors stifiIy at attention.
Little we knew about him! He didn't like to speak of his MVD
past-nor about his rank, his positions, or ~e nature of his work
-the customary "reticence" of the former MVD men. But his
greatcoat was, as it happens, that same sort of dark bluish-gray
that is"described by the authors of the book about the White
Sea-Baltic Canal. And not even in camp did it occur to him to
rip the sky-blue edgings off his tunic and his britches. During
his two yearS' imprisonment he had evidently not had to encounter
the real gaping maw of camp, to sniff th~ abyss of the
Archipelago. Our camp had of course been assigned him by his
choice: his apartment was just a few trolleybus stops from the
camp, somewhere on Kaluga Square. And, not realizing the
depths to which he had fallen, or just how hostile he was being to
his present company, he sometimes let something drop in the
room: One day he disclosed a close acquaintanceship with Krug-
276 I THB GULAG ARCHIPBLAGO
lOY (whO at that time was not yet Ministei" of Intenial Affairs),
another with Frenkel, or with Zavenyagin, all big shots in Gulag. .
Once he recalled that during the war he had been in charge of'
construction on a large section of the Syzran-Saratov Railroad,
and this meant he ):lad been in Frenkel's GVLZhDS. What did
he mean-in charge? He was no engineer. Had he been chief
of camp administration? Another darling Kleinmikhel?* And
then, from those heights, he had painfully fallen almost to the
level of an ordinary prisoner. He had been sentenced under Article
109, and in the MVD that meant that he. had ,taken more
than his rank permitted. They gav~ him seven years-as one of
their own. That meant that he had grabbed off enough for a whole
twenty. Under Stalin's amnesty they had already knocked off
'half of what remained, and he was therefore left with two years
and a fraction. But he suffered-just as much as if he'd had the
whole tenner.
The one and only window in our room looked out on the
Neskuchny Park. Quite close to the window and just a bit below
us the treetops rustled. Everythi)lg kept changing there: snowstorms,
thaws, the fitst fOliage. When Pavel Nikolayevich was not
being irritated by anything inside and was only moderately sad,
he would stand at the window, looking out at the park, and
croon softly and pleasantly: .
Sleep deep, my heart!. _
Don't awaken, don't arouse what used to be.
And there he was-a most agreeable person in a drawing
room! But how many mass graves had he left along his section of
the trackl . ,
The comer of the Neskuchny Park facing our compound was
set off, by hillocks from people strolling in the park ~nd was secluded,
or would have been, if you ~d not count our shaven
heads peering out of windows. On May 1 some lieutenant brought
to. this hiding .place bis girl, who was wearing a bright-colored
dress. Here they were concealed from the rest of the park, but
they paid no more heed to us than to the stare of a dog or a cat.
Theo,fficer laid his girl right there on the grass; and she was not
shy either.
Do riot call back what has' dashed off afar,
Do not loY«: what you used to love.