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

"They've Brought the Fascists!" I 179
meddler as a District Party instructor during crop sowing. It
made Barinov angry that they had installed a stuffed shirt over
him, and more than once he mocked me cleverly in front of the
brigade. In the case of anything I considered necessary to do
he immediately proved to me that it was impossible. On the other
hand, loudly shouting, "Foreman! Foreman!" he would on occasion
summon me to various corners of the clay pit and ask me
for instructions: how to take up the old trolley tracks and lay new
ones again; how a wheel that had jumped off the axle should be
put back again; or what to do about the allegedly nonfunctioning
windlass; or where the shovels should be taken to be sharpened.
Already weakening from day to day in my impulse to command,
in the face of his ridicule, I was by then quite happy if he simply
ordered the fellows. to dig that morning (he didn't always do it)
and did not annoy me with his vexatious questions.
Thereupon I quietly kept out of the way and hid from my
subordinates and my chiefs behind the hign piles of earth that
had been carted away, set myself down on the ground and sat
stock-still with sinking heart. My spirit was numb from my
first few days in camp. Oh, this was not prison! Prison has wings!
Prison is a treasure house of thought. It was gay and. easy to
starve and argue in prison. And just try that here-ten years of
starvation, work, and silence. Just try it! The iron caterpillar
track was already dragging me to the grinder. I was helpless. I
didn't know how, but I wanted to slip off to one side. To catch
my breath. To come to myself. To lift my head and to see.
Over there, beyond the barbed wire, across a vale, was a knoll.
On it was a little village-ten houses. The rising sun illuminated
it with its peaceful rays. So close to us-and the very opposite
of a camp! (For that matter, it, too, was a camp, but one for~
gets that.) For a long time there was no motion at all there, but
then a woman walked by with a pail, and a tiny child ran across
the weeds in the street. A cock crowed and a cow. mooed. And
there in the clay pit we could hear everything perfectly. And a
mongrel barked-what a lovely voice that was too! It was not a
cQnvoy dog!2
2. When there are discussions about universal disarmament, I am always
quite concerned; after all, no one has inchlded guard dogs in the lists of forbidden
weapons. And yet they make life more insufferable for human beings
than do rockets.
180 I THE GULAG AR.CHIPELAGO
And from every sound there and from the very immobility it~
self a holy peace flooded into my soul. And I know for certain
that if they should say to me at that very moment: That's your
freedom! Just live in that village until your death! Renounce
cities and the vanities of this world, your passing fancies, your
convictions, the truth-renounce it all. and live in that village
(but not as a collective farmer!), look at the sun every morning
and harken to the roosters! Are you willing? ... Oh, not only
willing, but, g~ Lord, please send me a life like that! I felt that
I would be unable to last out in camp.-
On the other side of the brickyard, invisible to me at the
- moment, a passenger train roared by on the Rzhev Line. In the
clay pit they shouted: "The' Trusties' Train!" Every train was
familiar. They kept time by them. "The Trusties' Train" passed
• by at a quarter to nine, and at nine o'clock, separately, not
at shift·changing time, they would conduct ihe trusties from the
camp to the brickyard~the.ofice employees and those in positions
of responsibility. The favorite train was at half-past one,
the "Provider," after which we soon went to line-up and to lunch.
My zek supervisor, Olga Petrovna Matronina, was brought
to work along with the trusties, ~d sometimes, if her heart was
anxious about the work, even earlier, by special.convoy. I sighed,
came out of my hiding place, and went along the clay pit trolley
track to the wet pressing factory-to report.
The entire brickyard consisted of two plants-for wet. pressing
and.dry pressing. Our clay pit worked.only for the wet-pfeSsing
plant and the chief of the .wet pressing was Matronina. an
engineer-specialist in silicates. What kind of flU engineer she was
. I do. not know, but she .was fussy and stubborn. She was one of
those unshakable loyalists-an orthodox Communist--of whOm
I had already encountered a fe~ in the cells (there were not many
of them in general), on whose mountain peak, howev~r, I myself
could not cling. On the basis of the "letter" section, ChS, as a
member of the family of one shot, she had received eight years
from an OSO, and right now she was serving out her last months.
True, they had not released any politicals throughout the war,
and she, too, would be held until the notorious Special Decree.
But even that did not cast any shadow on her state. of mind; she
served the Party, and it was unimportant whether in freedom
or in camp. She was from a reserve for r~ animals. In camp she
tied a red scarf around her head and only a red scarf, even