One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Read online

  “And you never saw your brother again?” the captain asked.

  Tyurin yawned. “No, I never did.” He yawned again and said, “Come on, boys, don’t let it get you down! It’s only a Power Station, but we’ll make it a home away from home. Mortar mixers—get on with it. Don’t wait for the whistle.”

  That’s the beauty of a work gang. The big bosses can’t make a zek hurry even in working hours, but if the foreman says work during the break, work it is. Because it’s the foreman who feeds you. And besides, he won’t make you do it unless it’s necessary.

  If the mixers waited for the whistle, the bricklayers would be at a standstill.

  Shukhov sighed and stood up. “The ice has got to be cleared.”

  He took a hatchet and a brush for the ice, his gavel, his pole, his cord, and a plumb line.

  Red-faced Kildigs gave Shukhov a sour look—why jump up before the foreman? It was all right for Kildigs—he didn’t have to worry where the gang’s next meal was coming from: two hundred grams of bread more or less didn’t matter to the bald-headed so-and-so—he’d get by with his parcels.

  He stood up all the same. He wasn’t stupid. Knew he mustn’t keep the whole gang waiting.

  “Hold on, Vanya!” he called. “I’m with you.”

  You are now, chubby-cheeks. If you’d been working for yourself, you’d have been on your feet sooner.

  (Shukhov had another reason for hurrying. They’d drawn only one plumb line from the tool store and he wanted to get hold of it before Kildigs.)

  “Just the three of them laying?” Pavlo asked the foreman. “Or shall we put another man on? There might not be enough mortar, though.”

  The foreman frowned and thought for a bit.

  “I’ll be the fourth man, Pavlo! You see to the mortar. It’s a big trough, so put six men on it, some can be taking mortar out of one half, and the rest mixing some fresh in the other. I don’t want any holdups, not so much as a minute!”

  “Right, then!” Pavlo sprang up. A young man, with fresh blood in his veins. The camps hadn’t knocked the stuffing out of him yet. He’d gotten that fat face eating Ukrainian dumplings. “If you’re going to lay yourself, I’ll make mortar. Let’s see who gets most done. Where’s the longest shovel?”

  That was the beauty of a work gang. You wouldn’t expect a man like Pavlo, who’d sniped at people from the forest and raided Soviet towns at night, to break his back working in this place. But if it was for the foreman, that made all the difference.

  Shukhov and Kildigs reached the top. They could hear Senka creaking up the ramp behind them. Deaf as he was, he’d gotten the message.

  The second-floor walls hadn’t got very far: they were three cinder blocks high all around, a bit higher in places. This was when the laying went best—from knee height up to your chest, without scaffolding.

  There had been scaffold planks and trestles around earlier, but zeks had made off with the lot. Some they’d taken to other buildings, some they’d burned, anything as long as other gangs didn’t get hold of them. If they planned it right, they’d have to knock some trestles together tomorrow or they’d be stuck.

  You could see a long way from the top of the Power Station. The whole compound, covered with snow and deserted (the zeks were hiding in the warm till the whistle went). The dark towers. The sharp-pointed fence posts. The wire itself you could only see if you looked away from the sun, not into it. The sun was so bright it made you keep your eyes shut.

  A little farther off, you could see the power-supply train. Look at all the smoke! Blackening the sky. The train started breathing hard. It always made that hoarse noise, like a man with a bad chest, before it whistled. There it was now. They hadn’t got in much overtime.

  Kildigs was hurrying him up.

  “Hey you, Stakhanovite!* Hurry up with that plumb line.”

  Shukhov jeered back at him.

  “Look at all the ice on your wall! Think you’ll get it chipped off before dark? Needn’t have bothered bringing your trowel.”

  They were in position at the walls they’d settled on before dinner, but the foreman called out to them.

  “Look, lads! We’ll work in twos so the mortar won’t freeze in the troughs. Shukhov, you have Klevshin on your wall and I’ll work with Kildigs. And Gopchik can start by clearing Kildigs’s wall for me.”

  Shukhov and Kildigs looked at each other. Good idea. Quicker that way.

  They grabbed their hatchets.

  And Shukhov no longer had eyes for the distant view, the glare of the sun on snow, the laborers struggling back from their warm hiding places to finish digging holes started that morning, or to strengthen the wire mesh for concrete, or put up trusses in the workshops. Shukhov saw only the wall in front of him, from the left-hand corner, where the brickwork rose in steps waist-high, to the right corner, where Kildigs’s wall began. He showed Senka where to clear away the ice, and hacked away zealously himself, using blade and shaft by turns, so that ice splinters flew in all directions, sometimes hitting him in the face. He worked fast and skillfully, but without thinking about it. His mind and his eyes were studying the wall, the façade of the Power Station, two cinder blocks thick, as it showed from under the ice. Whoever had been laying there before was either a bungler or a slacker. Shukhov would get to know every inch of that wall as if he owned it. That dent there—it would take three courses to make the wall flush, with a thicker layer of mortar every time. That bulge couldn’t be straightened out in less than two courses. He ran an invisible ruler over the wall, deciding how far he would lay from the stepped brickwork in the corner, and where Senka would start working toward Kildigs on his right. Kildigs wouldn’t hold back at the corner, he decided, but would lay a few blocks for Senka to help him out. While they were tinkering in the corner, Shukhov would rush more than half the wall up, so he and Senka wouldn’t be left behind. He sized up how many blocks he should have ready, and where. As soon as the laborers got up top with the blocks, he latched on to Alyoshka.

  “Bring me mine! Put some here! And some over there!”

  While Senka chipped away at the ice, Shukhov took his wire brush in both hands and scoured the wall all over, working specially hard on the grooves, leaving the upper course not quite clear, but with only a light film of frosted snow.

  Shukhov was still scrabbling when the foreman climbed up and fixed his rod in the corner. Shukhov and Kildigs had put theirs up long ago.

  Pavlo shouted from below: “Still alive up there? Mortar coming up!”

  Shukhov broke out in a sweat: he hadn’t put his string up yet. He decided to fix it for three courses at once, with a bit over. And to make it easier for Senka, he’d take in more of the outer course and leave him a bit more inside.

  While he was tightening the string over the top edge, he explained to Senka with words and signs where he had to lay. The deaf man understood. Biting his lip and rolling his eyes, he nodded at the foreman’s corner as much as to say, Let’s give them hell! Let’s beat them to it! He laughed.

  The mortar was on its way up the ramp. Four pairs would be carrying it. The foreman decided not to set up troughs near the layers—the mortar would only freeze while it was being tipped into the troughs—but to put the handbarrows down by the men so they could help themselves. The carriers needn’t hang around up top freezing, they could be shifting cinder blocks closer to the layers, instead. When the first two handbarrows were empty, a second lot would pass them on their way down, so there’d be no holdups. The first two pairs of carriers could make for the stove, defrost the lumps of mortar stuck to the handbarrows, and thaw themselves out if they had time.

  The first two barrows arrived together, one for Kildigs’s wall, one for Shukhov’s. The mortar was barely warm, but it steamed in the frosty air. Slap it on and be quick about it or it’ll freeze stiff and you’ll have to break it up with your hammer, a trowel won’t budge it. And if you lay a block the least bit out of line, it will freeze on, lopsided. All you can do then is k
nock it out with the head of your hatchet and chip the mortar away.

  Shukhov didn’t make mistakes, though. The blocks weren’t all the same. If one of them had a corner knocked off or a kinky edge or a blister, Shukhov spotted it right away and knew which way around it needed to be laid and which spot in the wall was just waiting for it.

  He scooped up a trowel full of steaming mortar, slapped it on the very spot, making a note where the blocks in the row below met so that the middle of the block above would be dead-center over the groove. He slapped on just enough mortar for one block at a time. Then he grabbed a block from the pile—he was a bit careful, though, he didn’t want a hole in his mittens, and those blocks were horribly scratchy. Then he smoothed the mortar down with his trowel and plopped the block on it. Then, quick as quick, he squared it up, tapping it into place with the side of his trowel if it wasn’t sitting right, making sure it was flush with the outside of the wall and dead-level widthwise and lengthwise. Because it would freeze on and stick fast right away.

  Next, if any mortar had been squeezed out from under the block, you had to chip it off quick and flick it away with your trowel. (In summer you could use it for the next block, but this time of year—forget it.) Then another look at the bonding in the row below—there might be a damaged block, where a bit had crumbled away, and if there was, you slapped on more mortar, thicker under the left end, and didn’t just lay the block but slid it on from right to left so it squeezed out the extra mortar between itself and the block to the left. Make sure it’s flush. Make sure it’s flat. Block set fast. Next, please!

  Off to a good start. Get two courses laid and tidy up the old rough bits and it’s all plain sailing. Keep your eyes skinned, now!

  Shukhov was rushing the outer course to join up with Senka. And Senka, in the corner with the foreman, was letting it rip on his way toward Shukhov.

  Shukhov signaled to the carriers—mortar, quick, over here where I can reach it! Haven’t even got time to wipe my nose!

  Shukhov and Senka met up, started dipping into the same barrow, and scraped bottom.

  “Mortar!” Shukhov roared over the wall.

  “Coming!” Pavlo yelled back.

  Fresh mortar was brought. They scooped up all the moist stuff, but the carriers would have to scrape off what had stuck to the sides. If they let a thick crust grow, they were the ones who’d be lugging all that extra weight up and down. Right, you can push off! Next, please!

  Shukhov and the other layers had stopped feeling the cold. Once they got their stride, that first glow passed over them—the glow that makes you wet under jacket, jerkin, overshirt, and undershirt. But they didn’t let up for a single moment, they went on laying faster and faster, and an hour later the second glow hit them, the one that dries the sweat. The frost wasn’t getting at their feet, that was the main thing, nothing else, not even that thin, nagging wind could take their minds off their work. Klevshin, though, kept knocking one foot against the other. He took size 11, poor devil, and the boots they’d given him weren’t a pair but were both too tight.

  Every now and then the foreman yelled “Mortar,” and Shukhov echoed him. Set a brisk pace and you become a sort of foreman yourself. Shukhov wasn’t going to fall behind the other two: to hurry the mortar up that ramp, he’d have run the legs off his own brother.

  After the dinner break Buynovsky had begun by working with Fetyukov. The ramp was steep and treacherous and he didn’t make a very good job of it to begin with. Once or twice Shukhov gave him a gentle touch of the whip.

  “Hurry it up a bit, Captain! Captain, let’s have some blocks here!”

  But while the captain moved more briskly with every load, Fetyukov got lazier: the dirtbag would walk along, deliberately tilting the handbarrow and splashing mortar out to make it lighter.

  Once Shukhov punched him in the back.

  “Filthy rat! I bet you kept the men hard at it when you were the manager!”

  “Foreman!” the captain shouted. “Put me with a human being! I refuse to work with this prick!”

  The foreman made the switch. Fetyukov could heave blocks onto the scaffolding from below, where they could count separately how many he shifted, and Alyoshka the Baptist would work with the captain. Anybody who felt like it could order Alyoshka about, he was so meek and mild.

  The captain kept egging him on. “Heave-ho, me hearties! Look how fast they’re laying those blocks!”

  Alyoshka smiled humbly. “We can go faster if you like. Whatever you say.”

  They trudged down the ramp.

  A meek fellow like that is a treasure to his gang.

  The foreman shouted down to somebody. Another truck carrying cinder blocks had just pulled up. Not a sign of one for six months, then they come in droves. Work all out while they’re bringing them. There’ll be holdups later and you’ll never get back into the swing of it.

  The foreman was at it again, cursing somebody down below. Something to do with the hoist. Shukhov was curious but too busy straightening out the wall. The mortar carriers came over and told him: a mechanic had arrived to repair the engine on the hoist, and the man in charge of electrical work, a free employee, was with him. The mechanic was tinkering and the free man was watching him.

  Normal, that: one working, one watching.

  If they hurry up and fix the hoist, we can lift the mortar and the cinder blocks with it.

  Shukhov was well on with the third row (and Kildigs had just started his third) when yet another watchdog, another boss man, started up the ramp—Der, the overseer of building works. A Muscovite. Supposed to have worked in a ministry.

  Shukhov, close to Kildigs by now, pointed at Der.

  “So what?” Kildigs said. “I never have anything to do with the bosses. Call me, though, if he falls off the ramp.”

  Now he’d be standing behind the layers, watching. If there was one thing Shukhov couldn’t endure, it was these spectators. Trying to wangle himself an engineer’s job, the pig-faced bastard. Started showing me how to lay blocks once. Laughed myself sick. Till you’ve built one house with your own hands, you’re no engineer. That’s how I see it.

  They didn’t have brick buildings in Temgenyovo, the cottages were all built of wood. Even the school was a log cabin—they’d brought ten-meter tree trunks from the state forest. But when the camp suddenly needed a bricklayer—Shukhov thought he might as well be one. If you can do two things with your hands, you’ll soon pick up another ten.

  Pity, Der tripped once but didn’t fall off. Reached the top almost at a run.

  “Tyu-u-rin!” he yelled, with his eyes popping out. “Tyurin!”

  Pavlo came running up the plank behind him, still gripping his shovel.

  Der’s jacket was camp-issue, but a nice, clean, newish one. He was wearing a splendid leather cap. But it had a number on it, like everybody else’s. B-731.

  “What do you want?” Tyurin went to meet him, trowel in hand. His cap had slipped down over one eye.

  Must be something special. Shukhov didn’t want to miss it, but the mortar was getting cold in the trough. He went on laying while he listened.

  “What the hell do you mean by it?” Der was yelling, spittle flying. “You’re asking for more than a spell in the hole! This is a criminal offense, Tyurin! You’ll get a third term!”

  Shukhov suddenly caught on. He shot a glance at Kildigs. Kildigs had realized it, too. The tar paper! Der had spotted the tarred paper over the window spaces.

  Shukhov wasn’t afraid for himself. The foreman wouldn’t give him away. It was the foreman he was afraid for. Like a father to us, the foreman is. Just a pawn to them. For this sort of thing they’d just as soon fix him up with another stretch in the Arctic as not.

  Shukhov had never seen the foreman look so ugly. He threw his trowel down with a clatter. Took a step toward Der. Der looked behind him—there was Pavlo, shovel in the air.

  Of course! He’d brought it up on purpose.

  And Senka, deaf as he was, h
ad realized what was going on, and moved in with his hands on his hips. A tough old devil he was, too.

  Der blinked and looked around nervously for a bolt-hole.

  The foreman put his face close to Der’s. He was speaking quietly, but his voice carried up top there.

  “The time’s gone when filth like you could hand out sentences. Say a single word, you bloodsucker, and your last day’s come. Just you remember!”

  The foreman was trembling all over. Couldn’t stop trembling.

  And the look on Pavlo’s sharp features would cut a man in two.

  Der turned pale and moved away from the ramp.

  “Steady on, boys! Take it easy!” he said.

  The foreman said no more, but straightened his cap, picked up his curved trowel, and went back to his wall.

  Pavlo walked slowly down the plank with his shovel.

  Real slow.

  Oh, yes. Slitting a few throats had made a difference. Just three of them—and you wouldn’t know it was the same camp.

  Der was afraid to stay, and afraid to go down. He stood still, hiding behind Kildigs’s back.

  Kildigs went on laying, like somebody weighing out medicine at the chemist’s. He looked like a doctor, and he always took his time. He kept his back to Der, pretending he hadn’t seen him.

  Der crept over to the foreman. No bossiness about him now.

  “What can I tell the site manager, Tyurin?”

  The foreman went on laying and didn’t look around.