One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

Pavlo and Shukhov, with Gopchik bringing up the rear, walked into the canteen.

The men stood there so close to one another that you couldn't see either tables or benches.

Some ate sitting down but most stood. The men of the 82nd, who'd been digging those holes half a day without a chance of getting warm, had been the first to get in after the whistle; now even after they'd finished eating they didn't leave. Where else could they warm up? The swearing fell off them like water off a duck's back--it was so much more comfortable here than inthe cold. Pavlo and Shukhov elbowed their way in. They'd arrived at a good moment: one squad was being served, another was awaiting its turn, and there was only one deputy squad leader near the window. So, they were well ahead of the rest.

"Bowls, bowls," the cook shouted through the window and people huthedly handed them over. Shukhov was collecting another lot and turning them in, not to get extra oatmeal but to get what was coming to him quicker.

Behind the partition some "helpers" were already washing bowls--for extra oatmeal.

The cook began to serve the deputy squad leaders who stood ahead of Pavlo in the line.

"Gopchik," Pavlo shouted, over the heads of the men behind him.

"Here I am," came Gopchik's thin goatlike bleat from the door.

"Call

the

squad."

Off he went.

The main thing today was that the oatmeal was good--real oatmeal, the best sort.

It wasn't often they had it. More often they got _magara_ twice a day. But real oatmeal is filling, it's good.

How often had Shukhov in his youth fed oats to horses! Never had it occurred to him that there'd come a time when his whole soul would yearn for a handful of them.

"Bowls, bowls," shouted the cook.

Now the 104th was in line. That squad leader's deputy, up ahead, got his double helping and bounced away from the window.

This extra helping, too, was at the zeks' expense--but no one objected. The cook gave double helpings to afl the squad leaders, and they either ate the extra helping themselves or gave it to their deputies. Tiurin gave his to Pavlo.

Shukhov's job now was to wedge himself in behind a table, oust two loafers, politely ask another prisoner to move, and clear a little space in front of him--for twelve bowls (to stand close together), with a second row of six, and two more on top. Next he had to take the bowls from Pavlo, repeating the number as he did so and keeping his eyes peeled--in case some outsider should grab a bowl from the table. And he had to see he wasn't bumped by someone's elbow so as to upset a bowl--right beside him people were leaving the table, stepping over the benches or squeezing in to eat. Yes, you had to keep your eyes peeled--was that fellow eating out of his own bowl? Or had he wormed his way up to one of the 104th's?

"Two, four, six," the cook counted at the window. He handed out the bowls two at a time--it was easier for him that way; otherwise he might count wrong.

"Two, four, six," Pavlo repeated quietly to himself, there at the window, in Ukrainian, and at once gave the bowls, in pairs, to Shukhov, who put them on the table.

Shukhov didn't repeat the numbers aloud--but he counted more sharply than anyone.

"Eight,

ten."

Why wasn't Gopchik bringing in the squad?

"Twelve, fourteen," the counting continued.

The kitchen ran out of bowls. Shukhov had a clear view through the window past Pavlo's head and shoulders. The cook put two bowls down on the counter and, keeping his hands on them, paused as though thinking. Must be bawling out the dishwashers. But just then another bunch of dirty bowls was pushed onto the counter. The cook let go of the two clean ones he'd filled and pushed back the pile of dirty ones.

Shukhov left the fourteen bowls he'd already stacked on the table, straddled a bench, took the two filled ones from the counter, and said quietly to Pavlo rather than to the cook: "Fourteen."

"Stop! Where are you taking those bowls?" shouted the cook.

"He's from our squad," Pavlo confirmed.

"'Our squad,' but he's mixed up the count."

"Fourteen," Pavlo said with a shrug. Himself, he wouldn't have swiped the extra bowls, for as deputy squad leader he had to maintain his dignity; but now he was simply repeating what Shukhov had said--he could always blame him for the mistake.

"I've already counted fourteen," the cook expostulated.

"So you did, but you didn't pass them out. You kept your hands on them,"

Shukhov shouted. "Come and count for yourself if you don't believe us. Look, they're all here on the table."

As he spoke he'd noticed the two Estonians pushing through to him, and he shoved the two bowls into their hands as they passed. And he'd managed to get back to the table to see that all the bowls were in place--the next table hadn't swiped any, though they'd had plenty of opportunity to do so.

The cook's red face loomed large in the window.

"Where are those bowls?" he asked sternly.

"Here they are, at your service," yelled Shukhov. "Move along. scum, you're spoiling his view," he said to someone, giving him a shove. "Here they are, the pair of them." He picked up two bowls from the second row. "Here we have three rows of four, all nice and neat. Count them."

"Hasn't your squad come?" the cook asked, looking suspiciously around the small segment of the canteen he could see through the window--it had been kept narrow to prevent anyone looking into the kitchen and seeing how much was left in the kettle.

"No, none of 'em are here yet," said Pavlo, shaking his head.

"Then why the hell are you taking bowls when the squad's not here?"

"Here they come," yelled Shukhov.

And everyone heard the peremptory shouts of the captain at the door: "Why are you hanging around here? he yelled, in his best quarter-deck voice. "If you've eaten, beat it and let others in."

The cook muttered something through the serving window. Then he drew himself up, and his hands could again be seen giving out the bowls: "Sixteen, eighteen."

Then he ladled the last portion, a double helping: "Twenty-three. That's all. Next squad."

The men of the 104th pushed through. Pavlo handed them bowls, passing them over the heads of the prisoners sitting at the second table.

In summer five could have sat on a bench, but now, as everyone was wearing thick clothes, four could barely fit in, and even they found it awkward to move their spoons.

Figuring that of the two bowls of oatmeal that had been swiped one at least would be his, Shukhov lost no time in applying himself to his first bowl. He drew his right knee up to his stomach, pulled his spoon ("Ust-Izhma, 1944") from under his boot top, removed his hat, put it in his left armpit, and ran his spoon under the edge of the kasha.

This is a moment that demands complete concentration, as you remove some of the scanty kasha from the bottom of the bowl, put it carefully into your mouth, and swirl it around there with your tongue. But Shukhov had to hurry, to show Pavlo he'd already finished and was waiting to be offered a second bowl And there was Fethzkov to be dealt with. He had come into the canteen with the two Estonians and had witnessed the whole affair of the two extra bowls. Now he stood there, straight in front of Pavlo, eying the four undistributed helpings as if to say that he ought to be given at least half a helping too.

Young swarthy Pavlo, however, went calmly on with his double portion, and there was no way of telling whether he noticed anyone standing there, or even reniembered those extra bowls at all.

Shukhov finished his kasha. He had promised his belly two helpings, so one wasn't enough now to give him the full feeling he normally got from real oatmeal kasha.

He groped in his inside pocket for the scrap of clean rag, found the unfrozen crescent of crust, and meticulously used it to wipe off the last remnant of mush from the bottom of the bowl and any that still clung to the brim. Then he licked the crust clean; then repeated the whole process. The bowl looked now as if it had been washed, with a dull film, nothing more, on the inside surface. He handed it over his shoulder to one of the dish-collectors and sat on, without replacing his hat.

Though it was Shukhov who had swindled the extra bowls, it was for Pavlo to distribute them.

Pavlo prolonged the agony a little longer while emptying his own bowl. He didn't lick it clean; he merely gave a lick to his spoon, tucked it away, and crossed himself. And then, very lightly, he touched--there wasn't room to move--two of the remaining four bowls. It meant he was giving them to Shukhov.

"Ivan Denisovich, take one for yourself and give the other to Tsezar."

Shukhov knew one of the bowls bad to be taken to the office of Tsezar, who would never lower himself by going to the canteen or, for that matter, to the mess hall in camp. He knew it, but, all the same, when Pavlo touched the bowls his heart contracted.

Could Pavlo be giving him both? And now, as Pavlo spoke, his heartbeat went back to normal.

Without losing any time be leaned over his lawful spoil and began to eat with deliberation, Insensitive to the thumps on his back that the zeks in the next squad were dealing him. The only thing that vexed him was that the second bowl might still go to Fetiukov. Fetiukov was a past master at cadging, but he lacked the courage to swipe anything.

Nearby sat Captain Buinovsky. He had long finished his kasha. He didn't know the squad had two extra portions to dispose of. He didn't look around to see how much Pavlo still had left to hand out. He was simply relaxing, warming up. He was not strong enough to rise to his feet and go out into the cold or into that icy warming-up spot. He, like the very people he had Just bounded out of the canteen with his rasping voice, was occupying a place he had no right to and getting in the way of the next squad. He was a newcomer. He was unused to the hard life of the zeks. Though he didn't know it, moments like this were particularly important to him, for they were transforming him from an eager, confident naval officer with a ringing voice into an inert, though wary, zek. And only in that inertness lay the chance of surviving the twenty-five years of imprisonment he'd been sentenced to.

People were already shouting at him and nudging him in the back to make him give up his place.

"Captain!" said Pavlo. "Hey, captain."

Buinovsky shuddered as though he was being jerked out of a dream. He looked around.

Pavlo handed him a bowl of kasha. He didn't ask him whether he wanted it.

The captain's eyebrows shot up. He looked at the bowl as at something miraculous.

"Take it, take it," said Pavlo reassuringly, and picking up the last bowl--for the squad leader--went out.

An apologetic smile flitted over the captain's chapped lips. And this man, who had sailed around Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a ladleful of thin oatmeal kasha, cooked entirely without fat--just oats and water.

Fetiukov cast angry looks at Shukhov and the captain and left the canteen.

But Shukhov thought Pavlo had been right. In time the captain would learn the ropes. Meanwhile, he didn't know how to live.

Shukhov still nursed a faint hope that Tsezar would give him his bowl of kasha.

But it seemed unlikely, for more than two weeks had passed since Tsezar had received his last package.

After scraping the bottom and rim of the second bowl In the same way as the first, then licking the crust, Shukhov finally ate the crust itself. Then he picked up Tsezar's bowl of cold kasha and went out.

"It's for the office," he said, as he pushed past the man at the door who tried to stop him taking the bowl out.

The office was in a log cabin near the sentry house. As in the morning, smoke was curling out of the chimney. The stove was kept going by an orderly who worked as an errand boy too, picking up a few kopecks here and there. They didn't begrudge him shavings or even logs for the office stove.

The outer door creaked as Shukhov opened it. Then came another door, calked with oakum. Bringing with him a cloud of frosty vapor, he went in and quickly pulled the door shut (so that they wouldn't yell at him: "Hey, you bastard, shut the door").

The office was as hot as a Turkish bath, it seemed to Shukhov. The sun, coming in through the icy windowpanes, played gaily in the room, not angrily as it did at the power station; and, spreading across the broad sunbeam, the smoke of Tsezar's pipe looked like Incense in church. The stove glowed red right through. How they piled it on, the devils! Even the stovepipe was red-hot.

In an oven like that you only have to sit down a minute and you're fast asleep.

The office had two rooms. The door into the second one, occupied by the superintendent, was not quite closed, and through it the superintendenfs voice was thundering:

"There's an overdraft on the expenses for labor and building materials. Right under your noses prisoners are chopping up valuable lumber, not to mention prefabricated panels, and using them for firewood at their warming-up spots. The other day the prisoners unloaded cement near the warehouse in a high wind. What's more, they carried it up to ten yards on barrows. As a result the whole area around the warehouse is ankle-deep in cement and the men are smothered in it. Just figure the waste!"

Obviously a conference was going on in there. With the foremen.

In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko--B 219. That fathead--staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us _that_ time, you snoop!

The bookkeepers, also zeks, were toasting bread at the stove. To prevent it from burning they'd fixed up a grill out of wire.

Tsezar was sprawling over his desk, smoking a pipe. His back was to Shukhov and he didn't notice him come in.

Opposite him sat X 123, a stringy old man who was serving a twenty-year sentence. He was eating kasha.

"No, my friend," Tsezar was saying in a gentle, casual way. "If one is to be objective one must acknowledge that Eisenstein is a genius. _Ivan the Terrible_, isn't that a work of genius? The dance of Ivan's guards, the masked _oprichniki!_ The scene in the cathedral!"

"Ham," said X 123 angrily stopping his spoon in front of his lips. "It's all so arty there's no art left in it. Spice and poppyseed instead of everyday bread and butter! And then, the vicious political idea--the justification of personal tyranny. A mockery of the memory of three generations of Russian intelligentsia."

He ate as if his lips were made of wood. The kasha would do him no good.

"But what other interpretation could he have gotten away with?"

"Gotten away with? Ugh! Then don't call him a genius! Call him an ass-kisser, obeying a vicious dog's order. Geniuses don't adjust their interpretations to suit the taste of tyrants!"

"Hm, hm!" Shukhov cleared his throat. He hadn't the nerve to interrupt such a learned conversation. But there wasn't any sense in standing there, either.

Tsezar swung around and held out his hand for the bowl, not even looking at Shukhov, as though the kasha had materialized out of thin air.

"But listen," he resumed. "Art isn't a matter of _what_ but of _how_."

X 123 struck the table angrily with the edge of his hand.

"To hell with your 'how' if it doesn't arouse any worthwhile feeling in me."

Shukhov stood there just as long as was decent for a man who had brought a bowl of kasha. After all, Tsezar might offer him a smoke. But Tsezar had quite forgotten his presence.

So Shukhov turned on his heel and went quietly out. The cold was bearable, he decided. The block-laying wouldn't go too badly.

As he walked along the path he caught sight in the snow of a short length of steel-

-a bit of a hacksaw blade.

He could conceive of no immediate use for it, but then you can never tell what you might need in the future. So he picked it up and slipped it into his pants pocket. He'd hide it at the power station. Waste not, want not.

The first thing he did on reaching the power station was to take his trowel out of its hiding place and slip it under the length of rope he wore around his waist. Then he took off for the machine shop.

After the sunlight the shop seemed quite dark and no warmer than outside. Sort of clammy.

All the men had crowded near the round iron stove that Shukhov had fixed, or near the one where the sand was steaming as it dried. Those who could find no room around the stoves sat on the edge of the mortar trough. Tiurin was seated against the stove, finishing the kasha that Pavlo had warmed up for him on it. The men were whispering to one another. They were in high spirits. One of them passed the news on to Shukhov: the squad leader had been successful in fixing the work report. He'd come back in a good mood.

What sort of work he'd found and how it had been rated was Tiurin's own business. What in fact had the squad done that first half of the day? Not a thing. They weren't paid for fixing the stoves, they weren't paid for arranging a place to warm up in-they bad done that for themselves, not for the building site. But something had to be written in the report. Perhaps Tsezar was helping the squad leader to fix it up properly. It wasn't for nothing that Tiurin looked up to him. A cleverly fixed work report meant good rations for five days. Well, say four. Out of the five the authorities would wangle one for themselves by putting the whole camp onto the guaranteed minimum--the same for all, the best and the worst. Seems to be fair enough: equal rations for all. But it's an economy at the expense of our bellies. Well, a zek's belly can stand anything. Scrape through today somehow and hope for tomorrow.

This was the hope they all went to sleep with on the days they got only the guaranteed minimum.

But when you thought about it, it was five days' work for four days' food.

The shop was quiet. Zeks who had tobacco were smoking. The light was dim, and the men sat gazing into the fire. Like a big family. It was a family, the squad. They were listening to Tiurin as he talked to two or three of the men by the stove. Tiurin never wasted his words, and if he permitted himself to talk, then he was in a good humor.

He too hadn't learned to eat with his hat on, and when his head was bared he looked old. He was closecropped like all of them, but in the light of the flames you could see how many white hairs he had.

"I'd be shaking in my boots before a battalion commander and here was the regimental commander himself. 'Red Army man Tiurin at your service,' I reported. The commander looked at me hard from under his beetle brows as he asked me my full name.

I told him. Year of birth. I told him. It was in the thirties and I was, let's see, just twenty-two then, just a kid. Well, Tiunn, who are you serving? 'I serve the working people,' I replied, with a salute. He blew up and banged both fists on the desk, bang! 'Yoifre serving the working people, you bastard, but what are you yourself? I froze Inside but I kept a grip on myself. 'Machine-gunner, first-class. Excellent marks in military training and polit. . . .' 'First-class! What are you talking about, you shit? Your father's a kulak.

Look, this document has come from Kamen. Your father's a kulak and you've been hiding. They've been looking for you for two years.' I turned pale and kept my mouth shut. I hadn't written a line home for a year, to keep them from tracing me. I had no idea how they were living at home, and they knew nothing about me. Where's your conscience?' he shouted at me, all four bars on his collar shaking. 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself for deceiving the Soviet Power?' I thought he was going to bit me. But he didn't.

He wrote out an order. To have me thrown out of the army at six o'clock that very day. It was November. They stripped me of my winter uniform and issued me a summer one, a third-hand one it must've been, and a short, tight jacket. I didn't know at the time that I didn't have to give up my winter uniform, just send it to them.. . . So they packed me off with a slip of paper: 'Discharged from the ranks.. . as a kulak's son.' A fine reference for a job! I had a four-day train journey ahead of me to get home. They didn't give me a free pass, they didn't provide me with even one day's rations. Just gave me dinner for the last time and threw me off the post.

"Incidentally, In thirty-eight, at the Kotlas deportation point, I met my former squadron commander. He'd been given ten years too. I learned from him that the regimental commander and the commissar were both shot in thirty-seven, no matter whether they were of proletarian or kulak stock, whether they had a conscience or not. So I crossed myself and said: 'So, after all, Creator, You do exist up there in heaven. Your patience is long-suffering but You strike hard.'"

After two bowls of kasha Shukhov so longed to smoke he felt he'd die if he didn't.

And, reckoning he could buy those two glassfuls of home-grown tobacco from the Left in Barracks 7, he said in a low voice to the Estonian fisherman: "Listen, Eino, lend me some for a cigarette till tomorrow. You know I won't let you down."

Eino gave him a hard look and then slowly turned his eyes to his "brother." They shared everything--one of them wouldn't spend even a pinch of tobacco without consulting the other. They muttered something together and Eino reached for his pink-embroidered pouch. Out of it he extracted a pinch of tobacco, factory-cut, placed it in Shukhov's palm, measured it with his eye, and added a few more strands. Just enough for one cigarette, no more.

Shukhov had a piece of newspaper ready. He tore off a scrap, rolled the cigarette, picked up a glowing coal from where it lay at Tiurin's feet--and drew and drew. A sweet dizziness went all through his body, to his head, to his feet, as if he had downed a glass of vodka.

The moment he began to smoke he felt, blazing at him from across the length of the shop, a pair of green eyes--Fetiukov's. He might have relented and given him a drag, the jackal, but he'd seen him pulling one of his fast ones already that day. No--better leave something for Senka instead. Senka hadn't heard the squad leader's tale and sat in front of the fire, poor guy, his head on one aide.

Tiurin's pockmarked face was lit up by the flames. He spoke calmly, as if he were telling someone else's story:

"What rags I had, I sold for a quarter of their value. I bought a couple of loaves from under the counter--they'd already started bread rationing. Fd thought of hopping onto a freight train, but they'd just introduced some stiff penalties for that. And, if you remember, you couldn't buy tickets even if you had the money, you had to produce special little books or show travel documents. There was no getting onto the platform either--militiamen at the barrier, and guards wandering up and down the lines at both ends of the station. It was a cold sunset and the puddles were freezing over. Where was I going to spend the night? Istraddied a brick wall, jumped over with my two loaves, and slipped into the public toilet I waited in there for a while. No one was after me. I came out as though I were a soldier-passenger. The Vladivostok-Moscow was standing in the station. There was a crowd around the hot-water faucet, people banging each other's heads with their teakettles. On the edge of the crowd I noticed a girl in a blue jersey--her kettle was a big one. She was scared of pushing through to the faucet. Didn't want her little feet stepped on or scalded. 'Look,' I said to her, 'hang onto these loaves and I'll get your kettle filled fast.' While I was doing so, off went the train. She was holding the loaves. She burst into tears. What was she going to do with them? She didn't mind losing the kettle. 'Run,' I called to her. 'I'll follow you.' Off she went, with me at her heels. I caught up with her and hoisted her onto the train with one arm. The train was going quite fast. I had a foot on it too. The conductor didn't slash at my fingers or shove me in the chest--there were other soldiers in the carriage and he took me for one of them."

Shukhov nudged Senka in the ribs--come on, finish this, you poor slob. He handed him the cigarette in his wooden holder. Let him take a drag, he's all right. Senka, the chump, accepted it like an actor, pressed one hand to his heart, and bowed his head.

But, after all, he was deaf.

Tiurin

went

on:

"There were six, all girls, in a compartment to themselves--Leningrad students traveling back from technical courses. A lovely spread on their little table; raincoats swinging from coat hangers; expensive suitcases. They were going through life happily.

All clear ahead for them. We talked and joked and drank tea together.

"They asked me what coach I was in. I sighed and told them the truth. 'I'm in a special coach, girls, heading straight for death.'"

There was silence in the shop. All you could hear was the stove roaring.

"Well, they gasped and moaned and put their heads together. And the result was they covered me with their raincoats on the top berth. They hid me all the way to Novosibirsk. By the way, I was able to show my gratitude to one of them later--she was swept up by the Kirov wave in thirty-five. She had just about had it, working in a hard-labor team, and I got her fixed up in the tailoring shop,"

"Shall we mix the mortar?" Pavlo asked Tiurin in a whisper.

Tiurin didn't hear him.

"I came up to our house at night, through the back garden. I left the same night. I took my little brother with me, took him to warmer parts, to Frunze. I'd nothing to give him to eat, and nothing for myself either. In Frunze some ráad workers were boiling asphalt in a pot, with all kinds of bums and stray kids sitting around. I sat down among them and said: 'Hey, you guys, take on my little brother as a learner. Teach him how to live.' They took him. Fm only sorry I didn't join the crooks myself."

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

Tiurin yawned. "Never again."

He yawned once more. "Well, don't let it get you down, men," he said. "We'll live through it, even in this power station. Get going, mortar mixers. Don't wait for the whistle."

That's what a squad is. A guard can't get people to budge even in working hours, but a squad leader can tell his men to get on with the job even during the break, and they'll do it. Because he's the one who feeds them. And he'd never make them work for nothing.

If they were going to start mixing the mortar only when the whistle blew, then the masons would have to hang around waiting for it.

Shukhov drew a deep breath and got to his feet.

"I'll go up and chip the ice off."

He took with him a small hatchet and a brush and, for the laying, a mason's hammer, a leveling rod, a plumb, and a length of string.

Kilgas looked at him, a wry expression on his ruddycheeked face. Why should _he_ jump up before his squad leader told him to? But after all, thought Shukhov, Kilgas didn't have to worry about feeding the squad. It was all the same to him if he got a couple of ounces less--he'd manage on his parcels.

Even so, Kilgas stirred himself--you can't keep the squad waiting, he understood, just because of _you_.

"Wait a minute, Vanya, I'm coming too," he said.

"There you go, fathead. If you'd been working for yourself you'd have been on your feet in a hurry."

(There was another reason why Shukhov hurried-- he wanted to lay his bands on that plumb before Kilgas. They'd drawn only one from the tool store.)

"Sure three are enough for the block-laying?" Pavlo asked Tiurin. "Shouldn't we send another man up? Or won't there be enough mortar?"

Tiurin knitted his brows and thought.

"I'll be the fourth man myself, Pavio. You work here on the mortar. It's a big box, we'll put six on the job. Work like this--take the mortar out from one end when it's ready and use the other for mixing some more. And see there's a steady supply. Not a moment's break."

"Ugh!" Pavlo sprang to his feet. He was young, his blood was fresh, camp life hadn't as yet worn him out. His face had been fattened on Ukrainian dumplings. "If _you're_ going to lay blocks, I'll make the mortar for you myself. We'll see who's working hardest. Hey, where's the longest spade?"

That's what a squad leader is too. Pavlo had been a forest sniper, he'd even been on night raids. Try and make _him_ break his back in a camp! But to work for the squad leader--that was different.