The Monastery

Book I-1

Book I

“Il fait froid aujourd’hui.”

“Froid et humide.”

“Quel sale temps, une veritable fievre.”

“Une veritable peste…”1

“You’ll recall that the monks here said, ‘In labors are we saved!’” said Vasilii Petrovich, for a moment shifting his contented, often-blinking eyes from Fiodor Ivanovich Eichmanis to Artiom. Artiom nodded for some reason, although he had no idea what they were talking about.

“C’est dans l’effort que se trouve notre salut?”2 asked Eichmanis again.

“C’est bien cela!”3 answered Vasilii Petrovich with pleasure, and so vehemently nodded his head that several berries fell to the ground from the basket he held in his hands.

“Well, I guess we’re right, then,” said Eichmanis, smiling and looking first at Vasilii Petrovich, then at Artiom, then at his companion. For that matter, she didn’t return his gaze. “I don’t know anything about salvation, but the monks knew about work.”

Artiom and Vasilii Petrovich stood on the wet grass in their dampened and dirty clothing, with black knees, sometimes shifting from one foot to the other, wiping from their faces the forest spider webs and mosquitos with hands that had ploughed the earth. Eichmanis and his woman were on horseback. He sat on a restive sorrel stallion, she was on an old piebald that seemed half-deaf.

The rain began again, murky and prickly for July. An unexpectedly cold wind, even for these parts, blew in.

Eichmanis nodded to Artiom and Vasilii Petrovich. The woman silently pulled her reins to the left, seemingly irritated by something.

“Her seat is no worse than Eichmanis’s,” Artiom remarked, watching them leave.

“Yes, yes…” Vasilii Petrovich answered in a way that made it clear that he didn’t hear Artiom’s words. He put his basket on the ground and silently gathered the berries that he had dropped.

“You’re tottering from hunger,” said Artiom, looking from above at Vasilii’s cap. It wasn’t clear whether or not he was joking. “The sixth hour has chimed already. A lavish meal awaits us. What do you think? Potatoes or buckwheat today?”

A few more members of the berry brigade pulled themselves towards the road from the forest.

Without waiting for the infernal drizzle to end, Vasilii Petrovich and Artiom walked towards the monastery. Artiom limped a little. While he was gathering berries he had twisted his ankle.

He was no less tired than Vasilii Petrovich. To add insult to injury, Artiom obviously had come short, once again, of his quota.

“I won’t do this work anymore,” said Artiom quietly, oppressed by the silence. “To hell with these berries. I’ve eaten enough for a whole week, but I get no joy from it at all.”

“Yes, yes…” repeated Vasilii Petrovich once again, but he finally managed to grab a hold of himself and answered unexpectedly, “At least it was without the guards. A whole day not seeing those black hat-bands, nor those stool pigeons, nor the ‘leopards’ Artiom.”

“Plus my ration is gonna be halved, I won’t have a second portion at lunch,” parried Artiom. “Alas for my boiled cod!”

“I could always give you some of mine,” offered Vasilii Petrovich.

“Then we both won’t have met our quota.” Artiom laughed quietly. “That will hardly make me happy.”

“You know how hard it was for me to get today’s job… at least it’s not uprooting trees, Artiom.” Vasilii Petrovich grew a little more animated. “By the way, have you noticed what else isn’t in the forest?”

Artiom had noticed something for sure, but he couldn’t for the life of him understand what it was.

“Those thrice-damned seagulls don’t scream there!” Vasilii Petrovich actually stopped and, after considering, ate a single berry from his basket.

In the monastery and in the port, you could hardly walk through the clouds of seagulls, but it was the icebox for anyone who killed a seagull. The director of the camp, Eichmanis, for some reason treasured the shrieking and obnoxious breed of the Solovki gull. It didn’t make any sense.

“Bilberries have iron, chromium and copper,” Vasilii Petrovich shared his knowledge, having eaten another berry.

“For some reason I feel like I’m the bronze horseman,” said Artiom gloomily. “And the chromium horseman.”

“Besides, bilberries improve your eyesight,” said Vasilii Petrovich. “You see that star on the church?”

Artiom looked.

“So?”

“How many points does it have?” asked Vasilii Petrovich, completely seriously.

Artiom stared for a moment, then understood everything; Vasilii Petrovich saw that he understood and they both giggled.

“It’s good that you only nodded significantly but didn’t talk to Eichmanis. Your whole mouth is black with bilberries,” said Vasilii Petrovich through his laughter, then they laughed twice as hard.

While they looked at the star and laughed at what it meant, the berry brigade overtook them, and everyone considered it necessary to peek into the baskets of those already standing on the road.

Vasilii Petrovich and Artiom remained a little apart from the rest. Their laughter quickly died, with Vasilii Petrovich suddenly turning severe.

“You know, it’s a shameful, abominable trait,” he said heavily and with distaste. “It’s not enough that he just decided to have a chat with me, he even spoke to me in French! I’m immediately ready to forgive him for everything. Even to love him! I will now come and swallow that foul brew, then I will climb to my bunk to feed the lice. But he will eat meat, then they’ll bring him the berries that we gathered. And he will wash down the berries with milk! I really should, forgive me most graciously, spit in these berries. But instead I’m carrying them with gratitude for the fact that this person can speak French and condescend to my level! But my father spoke French too! And German, and English! And what cheek I gave him! How I humiliated my father! Why didn’t I give him cheek, me and my old bones? How I hate myself, Artiom! Devil take me!”

“Enough, enough, Vasilii Petrovich, stop it.” Artiom’s laugh was different now. He had managed to come to love these monologues over the past month.

“No, it’s not enough, Artiom,” said Vasilii Petrovich strictly. “Here’s what I’ve come to know. The aristocracy, it’s not the blue blood, not at all. It’s just that people ate well from generation to generation. The serf girls gathered berries for them, made their beds and washed them in the banya, then brushed their hair out with а comb. They washed off and brushed up so much that they became the aristocracy. Now we’ve been dumped in the mud, but they’ve taken the high places. They’re well fed; they’re washed; and they… well, perhaps not they, but their children… also, will become the aristocracy.”

“No,” answered Artiom and walked on, rubbing off the raindrops from his face in a frenzy.

“You don’t think so?” asked Vasilii Petrovich, catching up with him. His voice rang with an evident hope that Artiom was right. “In that case, I think I’ll eat another berry. You eat one too, Artiom. My treat. Here, even take two.”

“Forget it.” Artiom waved him off. “You don’t have any pig lard, do you?”

The closer they got to the monastery, the louder the gulls became.

The monastery was angular, with extravagant angles, untidy in its horrible ruined state.

Its body had been burned out, all that was left was moving wind and mossy boulders for walls.

It rose so heavy and huge, as though it were built not by weak mortals, but all at once, its stone body falling from the heavens whole and catching those who ended up here in a trap.

Artiom didn’t like to look at the monastery. He wanted to quickly pass through the gates and be inside.

“Already two years I’ve been scraping by here, and still, every time I enter the Kremlin, my hand itches to make the sign of the cross,” shared Vasilii Petrovich, furtively.

“Then cross yourself,” answered Artiom in a full voice.

“Towards the star?” asked Vasilii Petrovich.

“The church,” Artiom cut him off. “What difference does it make? Star, no star… The church is still standing.”

“But what if they break off my fingers? Better not anger the idiots,” said Vasilii Petrovich after a pause; he even hid his hands deeper in the sleeves of his jacket. Under his jacket he wore a shabby flannel shirt.

“… meanwhile, there’s a crowd in the church, five minutes from sainthood, filling up the three-story bunks…” Artiom said, finishing his thought. “Or even more, if you count under the bunks.”

Vasilii Petrovich always crossed the courtyard quickly with downcast eyes, as though he were trying not to accidentally attract anyone’s attention.

Old birches and lindens grew in the courtyard, even though above all of them stood poplars. Artiom especially liked the rowan tree. The inmates tore off generous bunches of berries to eat, steeped in hot water or to just chew something sour, but it turned out to be unbearably bitter. Now, only a few bunches remained on the top of the tree, and for some reason this reminded Artiom of his mother’s hairstyle.

The twelfth working brigade of the Solovki camp took up the entirety of the refectory of the former cathedral church, named after the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God.

They walked through the wooden tambour, having greeted the orderlies — a Chechen whose name and crime he could never remember (nor did he particularly want to) and Afanasiev, whose anti-Soviet agitation, as he himself boasted, was that of a Leningrad poet. He cheerfully inquired: “How are the berries in the forest, Tioma?” The correct answer was, “The berries are located in Moscow, Mr. Deputy Head of the State Political Directorate. It’s we who are in the woods.”

Afanasiev quietly snickered, while the Chechen, it seemed to Artiom, understood nothing, but you could hardly tell from looking at him. Afanasiev sat, lounging as much as he could on the backless stool. The Chechen either walked here and there, or squatted in place.

The clock on the wall showed six forty-five.

Artiom patiently waited for Vasilii Petrovich, who, having gathered water from the barrel at the entrance, drank it, huffing and puffing. Artiom would have easily drunk the whole mug in two gulps… anyway, all totaled, he drank three whole mugs and dumped a fourth on his head.

“We have to carry that water!” grumbled the Chechen, drawing every Russian word from his mouth with some difficulty.

Artiom took a few crushed berries from his pocket and said, “Here.”

The Chechen took them, not understanding what he was being given. When he realized what it was, he rolled them down the table in disgust. Afanasiev caught each of them in turn and threw them into his mouth.

As soon as they entered the refectory, the smell that they had forgotten about after a day in the forest struck them — unwashed human filth; dirty, stale meat; no cattle smells as foul as man and the insects that live on him; but Artiom knew for a fact that in seven minutes he would get used to it, forget it and mingle with the smell, with this noise and foul language, with this life.

The bunks were built from rounded, constantly damp poles and un-sanded boards.

Artiom slept on the second level. Vasilii Petrovich slept directly under him. He had already taught Artiom that in the summer it’s better to sleep on the bottom — it’s colder there — while in the winter it’s better on the top, “because warm air rises where…?”

Afanasiev lived on the third level. Not only was it extremely hot for him, he was constantly dripped on from the ceiling — evaporating sweat and breathing produced a rotten kind of precipitation.

“It seems you’re not a believer, Artiom?” Vasilii Petrovich went on, trying to continue the conversation they had begun outside, all the while trying to take off his deteriorating footwear. “A child of the age, yes? You’ve read all sorts of garbage in childhood, probably? Dyr bur shchyl in your pants, and your brain is enthralled. God died a natural death, something like that, yes?”

Artiom didn’t answer, trying to hear whether or not they’d brought dinner yet, though they rarely brought the grub before its proper time.

He had taken bread with him to the berry-picking — bilberries were always better with bread, but it still didn’t appease the ever-present hunger.

Vasilii Petrovich put his shoes on the ground with that quiet carefulness that’s usually seen in un-pampered women who are putting aside their jewelry for the night. Then he took a long time shaking out his things before finally concluding bitterly: