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

Changing One's Fate! I 401
The kind of escape L--------s undertook required a peasant's
dexterity, grasp, and energy. But what about a city dweller, yes,
an old man at that, sentenced to five ye~ for repeating an anecdote,
was he capable of escaping? It turns out that he was when
a more certain death was the i,lnly outcome of staying in his own
camp, a small 'camp, between Moscow and Gorky, for nonpolitical
offenders on their last legs, which had been manufactUring
shells since 1941. Well, five years was a "child's term," you might
say, but the unfortunate anecdote teller would not have lasted
out even five months if he was driven out to work without being
fed. This escape was a gesture of despair, a brief impulse, for
which there would have been neither the judgment nor the
strength half a minute later. A routine train had been shunted
into the camp and loaded with shells. And a, convoy sergeant
came marching along it, followed by a railroadman who had fallen
several cars behind; the sergeant opened the door of each red
cattle caT and theckedto be sure no one was in there, then shut
the door, and the railroadman put a seal on it. And our ill-starred
famished last-Iegger of an anecdote teller,' behind the b8:ck of the
sergeant, who had gone on past and in front of the railroadman,
scrambled into a car. It was not easy for him to clamber up, ,an~
it was not easy,to push the door back noiselessly, and it was all
very impractical~ it was a sure failure, and he closeii the door behind
him, with his heart skipping a beat, he was already sorry he
had started. The sergeant would return and would kick him with
~ boots and any moment now the railroadman would shout.
Already someone was touching the door-it was the railroadman
putting ~n the seal! (And I myself think: maybe the good railroadman
saw him-and pretended not to?) The train moved off,
out of the compound. The train moved off to the front. This fugitive
was unprepared. He didn't even have a piece of bread. In the
course of three days he would almost certainly die in this moving
voluntary-punishment cell. He wouldn't get to the front, and it
wasn't the front he needed. What was he to do? How could he
save himself now? He saw that the shell boxes were packed with,
a steel band around them.. With his naked defenseless hands he
tore that steel ribbon, and with it sawed through the floor of the
S. All this bappeiled iD euc:tly this . way. but his Dame bas DOt been preserved.
402 I THB GULAG ARCHIPBLAGO
railroad car in a place where there weren't any boxes. This was
impossible for an old man? But was it possible t6 die? And if
they opened it and caught him-was that possible? F~ermore,
the boxes had wire loops attached to them, to carry them by. He
cut off the loops, and out of them he made similar but much
larger loops and tied them so that they hung down through the
crawl hole he had cut. How exhausted he was! How hard it was
to get his tom hands to do what he wantCd them to! !low dearly
that repeated anecdote was costing him! He didn't wait for a station,
but carefully let himself down through the hole while the
train was in illotion, and lay 'with both feet in one loop nel :r
the re.ar of the train, and his shoulders' in another. The tr n
moved on, and the fugitive' hung suspended there, rocking bl :k
and forth. The speed slackened, and at that moment he decided :0
let go; he dropped his feet, and his feet dragged along and dragg :d
the rest of him down. This was a sure death act, a circus act-bl.t,
after all, they might send a telegram after the train and search the
cars. After all, they would have .missed him in the camp CODlpound
by now. He could not straighten out. He could not raise
his head. He clung to the ties. He closed his eyes, ready for death.
The accelerated clicking of the last cars-then lovely silence. The
fugitive opened his eyes and rolled over: all he could see was the
red light of the departing train! Freedom!
. But that was not yet salvation. Freedom was freedom, but he
had neither documents nor money, he was dressed in camp rags,
and he was doomed. Swollen and tom, somehow he managed to
get to a station, and there mingled with a recently arrived Lenin~
grad train; evacuated semicorpses were being led by the hand and
fed hot food at the station. But that would not have saved him
either--except that in the train he found a dying friend and took
his documents, and he knew all about his past too. They were all
sent to a place near Saratov, and for several years, until the war
was over, he lived there on a poultry farm. And then he was
seized with a longing' to see his daughter and went off to find
her.
He looked for her in Nalchik, in Armavir, and he found her in
Uzhgorod. During this time she Jiid ~aried a border guard. She'
had believed her father happily dead and buried, and now she
listened to his story with horror and revulsion. Although she was
quite. devout in her civic conscientiousness. she nevertheless re-