Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

But many thousands would disappear for ever after their spell in the Lubyanka. The Public Prosecutor’s office would inform their relatives that they had been sentenced to ‘ten years without right of correspondence’. But no one in the camps ever met anyone who had received this sentence. What it meant was: ‘shot’.

When a man wrote to his relatives from a camp, he would say that he was feeling well, that it was nice and warm, and could they, if possible, send him some garlic and onions. His relatives would understand that this was in order to prevent scurvy. Never did anyone write so much as a word about his time in the Lubyanka.

It had been especially terrible to walk down Komsomolskiy Alley and Lubyanka Street during the summer nights of 1937 . . .

The dark, stifling streets were deserted. For all the thousands of people inside, the buildings seemed quite dead; they were dark and the windows were wide open. The silence was anything but peaceful. A few windows were lit up; you could glimpse faint shadows through the white curtains. From the main entrance came the glare of headlights and the sound of car-doors being slammed. The whole city seemed to be pinned down, fascinated by the glassy stare of the Lubyanka. Krymov had thought about various people he knew. Their distance from him was something that couldn’t even be measured in space – they existed in another dimension. No power on earth or in heaven could bridge this abyss, an abyss as profound as death itself. But these people weren’t yet lying under a nailed-down coffin-lid – they were here beside him, alive and breathing, thinking, weeping.

The cars continued to bring in more prisoners. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of prisoners disappeared into the Inner Prisons, behind the doors of the Lubyanka, the Butyrka and the Lefortovo.

New people came forward to replace those who had been arrested – in raykoms, Peoples’ Commissariats, War Departments, the office of the Public Prosecutor, industrial enterprises, surgeries, trade-union committees, land departments, bacteriological laboratories, theatre managements, aircraft-design offices, institutes designing vast chemical and metallurgical factories.

Sometimes the people who had replaced the arrested terrorists, saboteurs and enemies of the people were arrested as enemies of the people themselves. Sometimes the third wave of appointments was arrested in its turn.

A Party member from Leningrad had told Krymov in a whisper how he had once shared a cell with three ex-secretaries of the same Leningrad raykom; each had unmasked his predecessor as a terrorist and enemy of the people. They had lain side by side, apparently without the least ill-feeling.

Dmitry Shaposhnikov, Yevgenia Nikolaevna’s brother, had once entered this building. He had carried under his arm a small white bundle put together for him by his wife: a towel, some soap, two changes of underwear, a toothbrush, socks and three handkerchiefs. He had walked through these doors, remembering the five-figure number of his Party card, his writing-desk at the trade delegation in Paris and the first-class coach bound for the Crimea where he had had things out with his wife, drunk a bottle of mineral water and yawned as he flipped through the pages of The Golden Ass.

Mitya certainly hadn’t been guilty of anything. Still, it wasn’t as though Krymov had been put in prison himself.

Abarchuk, Lyudmila Nikolaevna’s first husband, had once walked down the brightly-lit corridor leading from freedom to confinement. He had gone to be interrogated, anxious to clear up an absurd misunderstanding . . . Five months had passed, seven months, eight months – and then he had written: ‘The idea of assassinating comrade Stalin was first suggested to me by a member of the German Military Intelligence Service, a man I was first put in touch with by one of the underground leaders . . . The conversation took place after the May Day demonstration, on Yauzsky Boulevard. I promised to give a final answer within five days and we agreed on a further meeting . . .’

The work carried out behind these windows was truly fantastic. During the Civil War, Abarchuk hadn’t so much as flinched when one of Kolchak’s officers had fired at him.

Of course Abarchuk had been coerced into making a false confession. Of course he was a true Communist, a Communist whose strength had been tested under Lenin. Of course he hadn’t been guilty of anything. But still, he had been arrested and he had confessed . . . And Krymov had not been arrested and had not confessed . . .

Krymov had heard one or two things about how these cases were fabricated. He had learned a few things from people who had told him in a whisper: ‘But remember! If you pass this on to anyone – even your wife or your mother – then I’m done for.’

He had learned a little from people who had had too much to drink. Infuriated by someone’s glib stupidity, they had let slip a few careless words and suddenly fallen silent. The following day they had yawned and said in the most casual of tones: ‘By the way, I seem to remember coming out with all kinds of nonsense yesterday. You don’t remember? Well, so much the better.’

He had learned a little from wives of friends who had travelled to camps in order to visit their husbands . . . But all this had been gossip, mere tittle-tattle. Nothing like this had ever happened to Krymov . . .

And now it had. He was in prison. It was absurd, crazy, unbelievable – but it was true.

When Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, officers in the White Guard, priests and kulak agitators had been arrested, he had never, for one moment, wondered what it must be like to be awaiting sentence. Nor had he thought about the families of these men.

Of course he had felt less indifferent when the shells had begun to fall closer, when people like himself – true Soviet citizens and members of the Party – had been arrested. And he had been very shaken when several close friends, people of his own generation whom he looked on as true Leninists, had been arrested. He had been unable to sleep; he had questioned Stalin’s right to deprive people of freedom, to torment them and shoot them. He had thought deeply about the sufferings of these men and their families. After all, they weren’t just kulaks or White officers; they were Old Bolsheviks.

But he had managed to reassure himself. It wasn’t as though he had been imprisoned or exiled. He hadn’t signed anything; he hadn’t pleaded guilty to false charges.

But now it had happened. He, an Old Bolshevik, was in prison. And he had no explanation for it, no interpretation, no way of reassuring himself.

He was learning already. The principal focus of a search was a naked man’s teeth, ears, nostrils and groin. A pitiful, ridiculous figure, he would have to hold up his now buttonless trousers and underpants as he walked down the corridor. If he wore spectacles, they would be taken away from him; he would be anxiously screwing up his eyes and rubbing them. He then entered a cell where he was transformed into a laboratory rat. New reflexes were conditioned into him. He spoke only in a whisper. He got up from his bunk, lay down on his bunk, relieved himself, slept and dreamed under incessant observation. It was all monstrously cruel. It was absurd and inhuman. Now he realized what terrible things were done in the Lubyanka. They were tormenting an Old Bolshevik, a Leninist. They were tormenting Comrade Krymov.