Russian Amerika: Chapter Four

4 - Akku

    They beat him in his cell. Hours later they revived him by dumping cold water on his naked body and told him to dress; he had been deloused. The thin cotton prison uniform crawled with vermin but he pulled it on as quickly as he could.

    Nothing of his former life remained, not even his boots. He pulled on shoes made of felt and the guards threw him into the back of a truck. Ten minutes later he was shackled to a long chain, the last in a coffle of twenty prisoners.

    Different guards herded them up a ramp and into the cold, steel bowels of a transport ship. Grisha felt grateful for the straw on which they were allowed to sleep. After what must have been thirty hours, long past the fouling of the straw by all present, they were herded back into open air.

    One glance of the Chilkat Range told Grisha they were on their way to Klukwan and the Czar's prison camp. They were all beaten upon arrival. Grisha thought he really might die, and the lassitude of surrender enveloped him once again.

    When he woke the next morning, his hands were free of iron and one of the guards kicked his foot again.

    "Get up, or you'll miss breakfast."

    Grisha's stomach groaned loudly. He hadn't eaten since his last day on Pravda. His ribs looked like those of a corpse.

    He staggered behind them, willing himself to take each step and not fall, knowing if he did he would never rise again. The aroma of hot, cooked food enveloped him and he dropped onto a bench where a steaming wooden bowl of gruel waited. Between burning his fingers, face and lips, and the already raw condition of same, it took him almost ten minutes to empty the bowl.

    He still felt ravenous.

    He looked up at the guard.

    "We'll feed you again in four hours. If you eat more now you'll just spew it all over the floor and have to clean it up."

    For the first time since his trial he had the strength to look at the other prisoners. Men and women both were dressed in the same flimsy uniform. No attempt was made to segregate the sexes.

    He pulled away from the women in gender hatred. First Kazina and then Valari had violated his trust. After supervising his anguished metamorphosis from cashiered officer to charter captain, his wife made him a cuckold.

    Valari used him as a scapegoat for murder and exacerbated her infamy by claiming rape. Everything he attempted in his life had started with great promise, then ended in the most humiliating manner possible. And except for being cashiered, there had been a woman involved.

    He noticed there were at least two men older than him, and with the women there was no way of telling. Nobody talked except for one twitchy fellow who constantly murmured in conversation with something over his right shoulder.

    The midday meal had flesh mixed in with potatoes and carrots. Grisha ate all they gave him. For a week they were fed and allowed to regain their strength. Toward the end of July Grisha and nineteen others were chained together in two coffles and herded into two army lorries.

    The trucks growled north and east until they hit the Russia-Canada Highway and turned northwest.

    The Russia-Canada enjoyed the term highway only by consent. Broken rock in fist-sized chunks formed the surface as well as the roadbed. In many places the top sank into the muskeg deep enough for narrow streams to traverse the roadway.

    Leaving Klukwan and regular meals made all of them apprehensive.

    "I don't think they are going to kill us," the oldest man said. "Else they wouldn't have wasted food on us."

    "I agree," Grisha said, scratching at his beard. "I was sentenced to thirty years hard labor on the RustyCan, I think that's where they are taking us."

    "Thirty years!" the old man exclaimed. "What was your crime?"

    "They convicted me of killing a cossack. But I am innocent."

    The other nine all laughed until they gasped.

    "What's so fucking funny about that?"

    The old man grinned at him. "Thank you, I haven't laughed since they sentenced me to ten years. We don't laugh at you, we laugh at ourselves. I doubt there are even two guilty persons in this truck."

    "Why are you here?"

    "My politics didn't hew closely enough to proscribed lines. I was the lucky one, they hanged three of my friends for treason."

    "I thought they were commuting all capital offenses for a month. They did that to me."

    "Which only points to your true innocence. What is your name, young man?"

    "Grigoriy Grigorievich," he said with a laugh.

    "Any you laugh why?"

    "I haven't been called 'young man' for a very long time."

    "I am Andreivich, and I have sixty years. You are younger than I am."

    "By a third of your years, sir."

    "You both talk too much," a burly, wild-haired man growled in a deep voice. "You should be trying to sleep."

    "What is your name, woodsman?" Grisha asked.

    "My mother called me Basil, after the saint. She may as well named me Satan, now that I am in hell."

    Grisha nodded in agreement.

    "Thank your saint you are not a woman," a large woman with a gap between her front teeth said with disdain.

    Grisha noticed the women had pulled as far away from the men as the chains would allow.

    "We won't hurt you," Andreivich said. "Nor can we help you."

    The woman pulled her haunted stare away from them, and looked out the back of the open truck at the cloud of dust billowing over the second truck. Equally great clouds of mosquitoes descended on them whenever the trucks stopped.

    They arrived at Tetlin Redoubt and were pushed into the vast holding pen. The next morning they were fed and herded back into the trucks. Grisha found himself wondering where they would end their journey.

    He was surprised that he cared.

    A Zukhov K-28 tank followed the three trucks, one for army personnel and two for convicts, and Grisha wondered at the military decision behind its presence. Wherever they were going, a potential enemy lurked. Grisha smiled, it couldn't be all bad.

    After traveling half the day the truck jolted to a stop and the engine died. Grisha stirred from his semi-conscious nap.

    "Get out here, you scum!" a deep voice shouted. "Quickly, or you'll miss dinner."

    They all heaved to their feet and followed the woman at the head of the chain.

    "She's mine, first," the deep voice roared.

    "No matter what else comes out that truck?" a second harsh voice asked.

    "Yes!"

    Unseen men also claimed the next three women.

    Then Grisha jumped down to the ground and turned to help Andreivich. A stunning blow knocked him into the dust.

    "You don't ever turn your back on me, slave, unless I tell you to!"

    Holding his head so it wouldn't split, Grisha staggered to his feet and stared at the burly, bearded man in front of him.

    The cossack sergeant grabbed him by the shoulder and thrust him away from the truck. "Keep moving, you dung eater."

    In moments Grisha took in his surroundings. They were in deep woods but the glint of moving water could be seen through the far trees. Pravda flashed through his mind but he wouldn't hold on to the memory.

    Two rough cabins sat at the edge of a large clearing where most of the trees still lay after harvest. A coffle of nine emaciated prisoners sat in the dust at roadside. Grisha decided they were being taken back to Tetlin to be strengthened.

    "How many were you in the beginning?" Grisha whispered to the closest one.

    "Thirty," the man whispered back without moving his head. "The rest are dead."

    "Move out!" the cossack sergeant bellowed.

    The women shuffled toward the cabins.

    Another cossack screamed, "Not that way! That's where we live."

    They were halted at a wide trench floored with packed wood rounds. A ladder was the only way down or up. Two of the cossacks opened the heavy locks on each prisoner's shackles.

    The men were ordered into the trench and the women were led away by the crowing cossacks. The soldiers who had traveled in the lead truck threw them some food. They could hear the cries and moans of the women all night.