The Secret Speech - Страница 40

— More! More! More!

Sinyavksy smiled, placing a hand to his chest, seeming to interpret their response as an affirmation of his reformed character.

The mood in the camp was volatile, exactly as Leo desired. He gestured at the pages of the speech that he’d been hastily editing, condensing the document, compressing it to a series of shocking admissions. He handed the commander the next page. Sinyavksy shook his head:

— No.

Leo was taken aback:

— Why stop now?

— I want to give my own speech. I’ve been… inspired.

— What are you going to say?

Sinyavksy raised the speaker to his mouth, addressing Gulag 57:

— My name is Zhores Sinyavksy. You know me as the commander of this Gulag where I have worked for many years. Those who arrived recently will think me a good man, fair and just and generous.

Leo doubted that. However, he tried to appear convinced by these declarations. The commander was treating his speech with absolute seriousness.

— Those who have been here longer will not think upon me so kindly. You have just listened to Khrushchev admitting mistakes made by the State, admitting Stalin’s acts of cruelty. I wish to follow the example of our leader. I wish to admit my own mistakes.

Hearing the word—follow—Leo wondered if the commander was driven by guilt or by a life of unquestioning obedience. Was this redemption or imitation? If the State reverted to terror, could Sinyavksy return to brutality with the same suddenness that he’d embraced leniency?

— I have done things of which I am not proud. It is time I asked for your forgiveness.

Leo realized that the potency of his confession might be even greater than the admissions made by Khrushchev. The prisoners knew this man. They knew the prisoners that he’d killed. The chanting and stamping stopped. They were waiting for his confession.

* * *

LAZAR NOTICED that even the guards were no longer trying to break down the door, waiting for the commander’s next words. After a pause, the tinny voice of Sinyavksy sounded out across the camp:

— Arkhangelsk, my first posting: I was tasked with supervising prisoners working in the forest. They would cut down trees, readying the timber for transportation. I was new to the job. I was nervous. My orders were to collect a fixed amount of timber each month. Nothing else mattered. I had norms just like all of you. After the first week I discovered a prisoner had been cheating in order to fulfill his norm. Had I not caught him, my count would have been short and I would’ve been accused of sabotage. So you see… it was about survival, nothing else. I had no choice. I made an example of him. He was stripped naked, tied to a tree. It was summer. At sunset his body was black with mosquitoes. By the morning he was unconscious. By the third day he was dead. I ordered his body to remain in the forests as a warning. For twenty years, I didn’t think about that man. Recently, I think about him every day. I do not remember his name. I don’t know if I ever knew his name. I remember that he was the same age as me at the time. I was twenty-one years old.

Lazar noted how the commander moderated honesty with qualifications:

...

I had no choice.

With those words thousands died, not with bullets but with perverse logic and careful reasoning. When Lazar returned his attention to the speech, the commander was no longer talking about his career in the forests of Arkhangelsk. He was discussing his promotion to the salt mines of Solikamsk:

— In the salt mines, as an efficiency measure, I ordered men to sleep underground. By not moving the men up and down at the end of each shift, I saved thousands of precious work hours, benefiting our State.

The prisoners shook their heads, imagining the conditions of that underground hell:

— My purpose was to discover new ways of bringing benefit to our State! What could I say? Had I not thought of this, my junior officer might have proposed it and I would’ve been punished. Did these men need daylight more than the State needed salt? Who had the authority to make that argument? Who dared to speak up for them?

One of the guards, a man Lazar had never seen before, strode toward them, brandishing a knife. They were going to cut the wire and kill the speech. The guard was smiling, pleased with his solution:

— Out of my way.

The foremost prisoner stepped forward, standing on the wire, blocking the guard. A second prisoner joined him, and a third, a fourth, keeping the wire out of reach. Smiling threateningly, as if to say he would remember this for later, the guard moved to another exposed stretch of wire. Responding, the prisoners quickly pushed forward, filling the space, protecting the wire. The knot of prisoners reshaped until there was a dense line of prisoners standing side by side stretching from the timber pole supporting the speaker to the base of the administration barracks. The only way the guard could get to the wire was by crawling under the barracks, something his pride stopped him from doing.

— Get out of my way.

The prisoners didn’t move. The guard turned to face the two vakhta, the fortified towers overlooking the camp. He waved at the gunners, pointing toward the prisoners before hurrying away.

There was a burst of gunfire. In unison the prisoners dropped to their knees. Lazar looked around, expecting to see dead and injured. No one seemed to be hurt. The volley must have been targeted over their heads, hitting the side of the barracks, a warning shot. Slowly everyone stood up. Voices from the back cried out:

— We need help!

— Bring the feldsher!

Out of sight, Lazar couldn’t see what was going on. The calls for medical assistance continued. But no one came. The guards did nothing. Soon the cries stopped — there were no more calls for help. Explanations rippled through the crowd. A prisoner had died.

Sensing the mood darken, the guard put away his knife and drew his gun. He fired at the speaker, missing several times, until finally it sparked and crackled, falling silent. The other four speakers in the prisoner zone were still working, but they were some distance away: the commander’s voice reduced to an inaudible background sound. Keeping his gun drawn, the guard announced:

— Back to the barracks! And no one else will die!

The threat was misjudged.

Picking up the wire from the ground, a prisoner darted forward, wrapping it around the guard’s neck, throttling him. The prisoners surrounded the fight. Other guards ran to intervene. A prisoner grabbed the officer’s gun, firing at the approaching guards. One man fell, wounded. The others drew their weapons, firing at will.

The prisoners scattered. An understanding flashed through them instantaneously. If the guards regained control, the reprisals would be savage, no matter what speeches were being given in Moscow. At this point, both towers opened fire.

* * *

THE COMMANDER WAS STILL TALKING, recounting bloody confession after bloody confession, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire. His mind had snapped: under Stalin his character had been pulled with such extreme force in one direction. Now he was being pulled in the exact opposite direction. He had no resistance, no idea who he really was, neither a good man nor a bad man but a weak one.

Allowing the commander to carry on, Leo opened the shutter, cautiously looking out. Rioting prisoners were running in every direction. There were bodies on the snow. Calculating the forces on both sides, Leo guessed a ratio of one guard for every forty inmates, a high ratio, in part explaining why the camps were so expensive to run — the forced labor failing to earn back the cost of keeping the convicts fed, housed, transported, and enslaved. A central expense was the guards, paid a premium for working in such remote conditions. This was the reason they were killing to cling on to authority. They had no lives to go back to, no families or neighborhoods that wanted them. No factory floor community would accept them. Their prosperity depended upon the prisoners. The fight would be equally desperate on both sides.

There was a flash of gunfire from the towers — the window shattered. Leo dropped, glass falling around him, bullets hitting the floor-boards. Safe behind the thick log walls, he slowly reached up, trying to close the shutters. The wood broke apart in a shower of splinters. The room was exposed. On the desk the PA equipment, kicked around by the bullets, was lifted up, spinning in the air before clattering to the floor. Sinyavksy fell back, curling into a ball. Over the noise Leo cried out:

— Do you have a gun?

Sinyavksy’s eyes flicked to the side. Leo followed them to a wood crate tucked in the corner, padlocked. He stood up, running toward it, only to find the commander running to block him, putting his hands up:

— No!

Leo knocked the commander aside, picking up the steel desk lamp and bringing the heavy base crashing down against the lock. With a second blow the lock smashed off and he pulled it free. The commander once again leapt forward, throwing himself over the crate:

— I beg you…

Leo pulled him off, opening the lid.

Inside there was nothing more than a collection of odds and ends. There were framed photos. They showed the commander standing proudly beside a canal: emaciated prisoners toiled in the background. Leo guessed they were the photos that had originally hung on the office wall. He tossed them aside, rooting through files, certificates, awards, and letters congratulating Sinyavksy on meeting a quota — the detritus of his great career. There was a hunting rifle at the bottom. On the handle were notches, twenty-three kills. Certain that these notches didn’t refer to wolves or bears, Leo loaded the rifle with the fat, finger-length bullets, moving back to the window.