Part One – There (Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SIX – THE TERM
Dad had deferred his return eight more years. Over these time, I carried out the coffins of all relatives of older generation. I considered it was my duty in the absence of my father. I think it didn’t matter to anyone, but it did for me. With these people, I was burying some family ties, mentally forgave and bid farewell.
Dad’s term was distributed as follows: six months before the trial in the pre-trial detention center (means time spent in isolation during investigation), then a couple of months during the trial in the city prison, then five years in the camp and a couple of years in the settlement, means in the village, with the right to visit the city on leave (once a month).
There happened such a case in the pre-trial detention center. Many of the guards made money by delivering letters. One letter cost fifty rubles. It was not bad extra, considering that the amount was a third or a quarter of a guard’s monthly salary. But the business was dangerous, it might brought a punishment. And exactly this happened with a guard of Wulf’s. They searched him and found a note for Dad. Both Dad and the guard immediately confessed. However, to create a case, it was also necessary the confession of the sender. Otherwise it would not be a crime, but a pure provocation!
Aunt Lea was called in for questioning. She dismissed everything from the beginning. “I don’t know anything! I see the guard for the first time in my life! He claims he knows me? – A provocateur! The handwriting in the letter is similar to mine? – So what it’s similar! Not mine! Maybe even faked! – What about testimony of my brother? – You forced him! Tortured him! Nazis!”
The investigator was amazed at the stamina and fortitude of this small woman. “If everyone in FISHUNT behaved like you, the case would burst!” he could not refrain from commenting.
I took the food box to the prison. The allowed food consisted of products limited almost by the norms of war communism: one loaf of bread, a kilogram of half-smoked sausage, one pound of feta cheese, ten packs of cigarettes without filter, a pack of third-grade tea and a kilogram of cheap caramel candies. A pack of butter was allowed in case of pregnancy (this did not threaten Dad); sugar was completely excluded even for pregnant women.
Of course, all the people who were allowed to bring the food box to their relatives tried by all means to circumvent the rules and slip something tasty, forbidden or valuable (money). The guards, accordingly, by all means tried to stop the violation of the law, that is, to discover and appropriate everything tasty, forbidden or valuable (money). The most popular “smuggling” was granulated sugar. Dunes of it, mixed with mud, creaked under heels and soles on the floor of the prison waiting room. The Ensign from the guard periodically shouted:
“No violations! Any sugar in your food box?”
Then he rummaged through a small wooden box where the your food should have been packed, poured sugar on the floor, and the parcel was carried away by prisoners on duty in black caps and black satin pajamas with numbers on their chests.
Standing in a lively line of customers, excited by the humiliating inevitable confiscation of illegal sugar, I practiced incessantly, repeating to myself:
“Is there any sugar? – No! Is there any sugar? – No!”
Finally, I found myself in front of the reception window. The Ensign frowned at me, as if hypnotizing with his prickly gaze.
“What are you hiding?” he barked
“Sugar!” I responded immediately.
“Stupid joker! Want me to kick your ass?!” the jailer shook his finger at me, “On-duty, bring the box inside!”
To visit your family member in the camp, located far outside the city, further than the fertilizer plant, it was necessary to go by two buses with a transfer. Mom was very shy to run into some acquaintances in the crowd of visitors. She didn’t afraid that they figure out where her husband was, because they also had relatives in the same place, but she did afraid that this news will reach her work and spread over the enterprise. I happily met several of our students and my elderly English teacher from the university, who was visiting her serving the term drug addict son.
Of course, Mom has been exposed. Somebody knew her. But her “communistic fears” were outdated. Nobody considered breach of state business lows as a crime, so everything turned out for the better. At work, the head of the department approached her and apologized, “We didn’t know about your circumstances,” he said, “There are some private projects, Dina. Do you want to earn extra money?”
Mom looked at him with eyes wide open. The fact is, that even at school I encouraged my mother to find additional income at work. She laughed at me,
“Nick, what a nonsense! How can a geologist make a profit? To sell stones?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” I replied. “It’s not my specialty, it’s yours. I only understand the structure of socialism: it creates illegal work, and our task is to find it.”
In this case, it turned out the other way around. The work itself found my mother. The qualified private geological exploration was in a demand for private (means illegal) constructions. As a rule, field work (exploration) was performed by men, and office work (maps drafting) was done by women.
The meeting itself took place once every six months in a “hotel” for prisoners and their families. The hotel was made in the shape of a cloister. It was a one-story brick building out of twenty rooms along the perimeter of an asphalt courtyard. In the center of the yard were toilets, two showers, and a huge wood-burning stove under a canopy. Day and night (both in rain and snow) several women cooked on it at the same time. There was always a line of people to the rest rooms. From one or another room of the hotel came the rhythmic creaking of the bed, the thud of the headboard against the wall, and sometimes quite frank groans. At the same time, children ran and played around; shaven-headed guys with tattoos smoked, grinning; and security officers periodically visited prisoners to knock over a glass of alcohol, illegally brought in a rubber heating pad, and feast on tasty homemade food.
The usual visit lasted three days. When moving in, it was necessary to clean the room; make the beds with the linen brought with us; hang curtains on the windows (and doors, optional) overlooking the courtyard; to cover the table and… kill the flies. The last one was my biggest challenge. In warm weather, sixty or eighty flies circled in a small room. And the fewer of them remained alive, the more sophisticated they hid. Well, in this matter, I understood them.
After restoring order, you could pretend that you were at home. But, there were few common topics for conversation. And that was the main problem.
Dad was not interested in my friends, or our affairs with them, or my mother’s work, and even more so, Maika’s girlfriends. And vice versa, we were all of little interest in who got term for what and how much he stole. Although some colorful stories had interesting plots.
About the transvestite man, called Marina, who, dressed as a beauty, got into expensive cars, allowed a driver to bring him into a deserted corner and permitted to climb into her (actually, his) panties and, taking advantage of the seducer’s shock from unexpected finding, robbed him.
About the party organizer of the medical school, who believed the words of the investigator and showed where in the mountain village he buried millions of rubles, which he received for getting applicants into the medical school. But, instead of the promised release, he got twelve years in the camps and went crazy.
About the director of the winery who celebrated his glorious jubilee in the camp, where heavy trailers delivered containers with food and tanks of wine.
About the warden of the penitentiary camp, whom my dad helped to write his dissertation on the rehabilitation of prisoners.
Yes, it was my Dad, but he still lived in a parallel world.
I always remembered Eli’s words, and hoped that my dad and I would still live the same life as before. We’ll walk or drive somewhere together as in childhood: on vacation, to the opera or theater (already not to the circus), to the famous city sulfur bathhouse and after it, steamed up, will have a bite and drink in the coolness of one of a city taverns.
But the years of living without a family alienated my father from all of us. Alas, my mother foresaw the sad end of the story. When Rima’s husband, my father’s friend, a military surgeon, suddenly died, my mother and I went to a memorial service.
I remembered how he came sometimes to our old apartment when little Nick had a stomachache and, worrying that the child having a bowel obstruction, said, “Niki, make me just one little fart, and I’ll leave right away.”
It was him who once put a cast on my left arm that had been broken in childhood.
It was him who usually said funny things to his wife in public:
(Whispering) “Shut up,” (and loudly) “my joy!”
Or
(Loudly) “Dear Rima,” (and whispering) “Idiot!”
And now… here he is…
Mom said to me unexpectedly, “Wulf will not return home after it. He will come out and go to Rima.”
“Well, what are you talking about, Mom!” I objected.
“You’ll see for yourself. Goods should not be wasted… and also… they are school friends…”
It all happened exactly this way.
When dad was already on the settlement for the last couple of years, he visited sometimes the city. On the May holidays, my mother fell ill and warned my father that she would not go out, and he replied that this time they were not giving him a permission. But as it often happens in nature, the unexpected breakdown has occurred. Maya saw Dad walking with Rima in the city and told Mom about it. Mom got very offended and told dad that she was not going to captivate him, and there was no need to lie for this.
I don’t know what dad said, but Rima and Leah, his sister, began to spread gossip around the city, that mom did not let Wulf in his home. Yea, she just waited 16 years alone and decided to stay alone! I was worried that I had occupied the apartment with my pupils (the source of our bread and butter) that there was no place for dad in it. And dad was worried that he did not have a lot of money, to pay off the restitution and emigrate (Note: in sixteen years, all convicted together paid off only three thousand out of fifty-six).
But this is already a separate chapter.
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