The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of prison and camp life prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, they are similar to each other tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, assistant or murderer, the arbitrariness of bosses and thieves rule. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention.
FUTURE WORD

The author remembers his camp comrades by name. Evoking the mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.
LIFE OF ENGINEER KIPREV

Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively defending his existence: a person can only consider himself human and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental ones. Engineer-physicist Kipreev, arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, like all prisoners. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt-out light bulbs and repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.
TO THE REPRESENTATION

Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is lost to the nines and asks you to play for the “representation”, that is, in debt. At some point, excited by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give him a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater still goes to the thug.
AT NIGHT

Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their dead comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the dead man’s underwear to sell or exchange for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disgust at taking off their clothes gives way to the pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.
SINGLE METERING

Camp labor, which Shalamov clearly defines as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. The poor prisoner is not able to give the percentage, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand a sixteen-hour working day. He drives, picks, pours, carries again and picks again, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures what Dugaev has done with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems very high to Dugaev, his calves ache, his arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably, he even lost the feeling of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: first name, last name, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the whirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he only regrets that he suffered the last day in vain.
RAIN

A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He takes a long time to die. Sometimes some thought comes - for example, that the bread he put under his head was stolen, and it’s so scary that he’s ready to swear, fight, search... But he no longer has the strength for this, and neither does the thought of bread weakens. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to tear it and gnaw it with scurvy, loose teeth. When he dies, two more people do not write him off, and inventive neighbors manage to distribute bread for the dead man as if for a living one: they make him raise his hand like a puppet.
SHOCK THERAPY

Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself in general labor and feels that he is gradually giving up. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by his guards, and they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed and the rib has healed, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for examination. He has a chance to be activated, that is, released due to illness. Remembering the mine, the pinching cold, the empty bowl of soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught in deception and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a former prisoner, was not a mistake. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing malingerers. This pleases his pride: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a malingerer, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him Rausch anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov’s body can be straightened, and after another week the procedure of so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After this, the prisoner himself asks to be discharged.
TYPHUS QUARANTINE

Prisoner Andreev, having fallen ill with typhus, is quarantined. Compared with general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here as long as possible, in the transit train, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next sending to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and Andreev’s turn finally reaches. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is saturated and if there are any dispatches, it will be only for short-term, local business trips. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms passes the line separating short-term missions from long-distance ones, he realizes with an internal shudder that fate has cruelly laughed at him.
AORTIC ANEURYSM

Illness (and the emaciated state of the “gone” prisoners is quite equivalent to a serious illness, although it was not officially considered such) and the hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot in Shalamov’s stories. Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya is admitted to the hospital. A beauty, she immediately attracted the attention of the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is on close terms with his acquaintance, the prisoner Podshivalov, the head of an amateur art group (“the serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him in turn try your luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Glowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male interest quickly gives way to purely medical concern. He finds that Glowacka has an aortic aneurysm - a disease in which any careless movement can cause fatal outcome. The authorities, who have made it an unwritten rule to separate lovers, have already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine. And now, after the doctor’s report about the prisoner’s dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshivalov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but as soon as she is loaded into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.
MAJOR PUGACHEV'S LAST BATTLE

In the evening, while winding up the tape measure, the caretaker said that Dugaev would receive a single measurement the next day. The foreman, who was standing nearby and asked the caretaker to lend him “a dozen cubes until the day after tomorrow,” suddenly fell silent and began to look at the evening star flickering behind the crest of the hill. Baranov, Dugaev’s partner, who was helping the caretaker measure the work done, took a shovel and began to clean up the face that had been cleaned long ago.

Dugaev was twenty-three years old, and everything he saw and heard here surprised him more than frightened him.

The brigade gathered for roll call, handed over their tools and returned to the barracks in uneven prison formation. The difficult day was over. In the dining room, Dugaev, without sitting down, drank a portion of thin, cold cereal soup over the side of a bowl. The bread was given in the morning for the whole day and was eaten long ago. I wanted to smoke. He looked around, wondering who he could ask for a cigarette butt. On the windowsill, Baranov collected shag grains from an inside out pouch into a piece of paper. Having collected them carefully, Baranov rolled up a thin cigarette and handed it to Dugaev.

“You can smoke it for me,” he suggested.

Dugaev was surprised - he and Baranov were not friends. However, with hunger, cold and insomnia, no friendship can be formed, and Dugaev, despite his youth, understood the falsity of the saying about friendship being tested by misfortune and misfortune. In order for friendship to be friendship, it is necessary that its strong foundation be laid when conditions and everyday life have not yet reached the final limit, beyond which there is nothing human in a person, but only mistrust, anger and lies. Dugaev remembered well the northern proverb, the three prison commandments: do not believe, do not be afraid and do not ask...

Dugaev greedily sucked in the sweet tobacco smoke, and his head began to spin.

“I’m getting weaker,” he said. Baranov remained silent.

Dugaev returned to the barracks, lay down and closed his eyes. Lately he slept poorly, hunger did not allow him to sleep well. The dreams were especially painful - loaves of bread, steaming fatty soups... Oblivion did not come soon, but still, half an hour before getting up, Dugaev had already opened his eyes.

The crew came to work. Everyone went to their own slaughterhouses.

“Wait,” the foreman said to Dugaev. - The caretaker will put you in charge.

Dugaev sat down on the ground. He had already become so tired that he was completely indifferent to any change in his fate.

The first wheelbarrows rattled on the ramp, shovels scraped against the stone.

“Come here,” the caretaker told Dugaev. - Here's your place. “He measured the cubic capacity of the face and put a mark - a piece of quartz. “This way,” he said. - The ladder operator will carry the board for you to the main ladder. Take it where everyone else goes. Here's a shovel, a pick, a crowbar, a wheelbarrow - take it.

Dugaev obediently began work.

“Even better,” he thought. None of his comrades will grumble that he is working poorly. Former grain farmers are not required to understand and know that Dugaev is a newcomer, that immediately after school he began studying at the university, and exchanged his university bench for this slaughter. Every man for himself. They are not obliged, should not understand that he is exhausted and hungry for a long time, that he does not know how to steal: the ability to steal is the main northern virtue in all its forms, starting from the bread of a comrade and ending with issuing thousands of bonuses to the authorities for non-existent, non-existent achievements. Nobody cares that Dugaev cannot stand a sixteen-hour working day.

Dugaev drove, picked, poured, drove again and again picked and poured.

After the lunch break, the caretaker came, looked at what Dugaev had done and silently left... Dugaev again kicked and poured. The quartz mark was still very far away.

In the evening the caretaker appeared again and unwound the tape measure. – He measured what Dugaev did.

“Twenty-five percent,” he said and looked at Dugaev. - Twenty-five percent. Can you hear?

“I hear,” said Dugaev. He was surprised by this figure. The work was so hard, so little stone could be picked up with a shovel, it was so difficult to pick. The figure - twenty-five percent of the norm - seemed very large to Dugaev. My calves ached, my arms, shoulders, and head ached unbearably from leaning on the wheelbarrow. The feeling of hunger had long since left him.

Dugaev ate because he saw others eating, something told him: he had to eat. But he didn't want to eat.

“Well, well,” said the caretaker, leaving. - I wish you good health.

In the evening, Dugaev was summoned to the investigator. He answered four questions: first name, last name, article, term. Four questions that are asked to a prisoner thirty times a day. Then Dugaev went to bed. The next day he again worked with the brigade, with Baranov, and on the night of the day after tomorrow the soldiers took him behind the conbase and led him along a forest path to the place where, almost blocking a small gorge, stood high fence with barbed wire strung across the top, and from where the distant whirring of tractors could be heard at night. And, realizing what was the matter, Dugaev regretted that he had worked in vain, that he had suffered this last day in vain.

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov

« Kolyma stories»

The plot of V. Shalamov’s stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, an assistant or a murderer, the tyranny of bosses and thieves rule. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention.

Funeral word

Life of engineer Kipreev

Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively defending his existence: a person can only consider himself human and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental strength. Engineer-physicist Kipreev, arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, like all prisoners. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt-out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.

To the show

Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in the most different forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is lost to the nines and asks you to play for the “representation”, that is, in debt. At some point, excited by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give him a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater still goes to the thieves.

At night

Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the dead man’s underwear to sell or exchange for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disgust at taking off their clothes gives way to the pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.

Single metering

Camp labor, which Shalamov clearly defines as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. The poor prisoner is not able to give the percentage, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand a sixteen-hour working day. He drives, picks, pours, carries again and picks again, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures what Dugaev has done with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems very high to Dugaev, his calves ache, his arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably, he even lost the feeling of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the whirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he only regrets that he suffered the last day in vain.

Rain

Sherry Brandy

A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He takes a long time to die. Sometimes some thought comes - for example, that the bread he put under his head was stolen, and it is so scary that he is ready to swear, fight, search... But he no longer has the strength for this, and neither does the thought of bread weakens. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to tear it and gnaw it with his scurvy, loose teeth. When he dies, he is not written off for another two days, and inventive neighbors manage to distribute bread for the dead man as if for a living one: they make him raise his hand like a puppet doll.

Shock therapy

Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself in general labor and feels that he is gradually giving up. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by his guards, and they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed and the rib has healed, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for examination. He has a chance to be activated, that is, released due to illness. Remembering the mine, the pinching cold, the empty bowl of soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught in deception and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a former prisoner, was not a mistake. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing malingerers. This pleases his pride: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a malingerer, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him Rausch anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov’s body can be straightened, and a week later he undergoes the so-called shock therapy procedure, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After this, the prisoner himself asks to be released.

Typhoid quarantine

Prisoner Andreev, having fallen ill with typhus, is quarantined. Compared to general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here as long as possible, in the transit train, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next sending to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and Andreev’s turn finally reaches. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is saturated and if there are any dispatches, it will be only for short-term, local business trips. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners, who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms, passes the line separating short-term missions from distant ones, he realizes with an internal shudder that fate has cruelly laughed at him.

Aortic aneurysm

Illness (and the emaciated state of the “gone” prisoners is quite equivalent to serious illness, although it was not officially considered as such) and the hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot in Shalamov’s stories. Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya is admitted to the hospital. A beauty, she immediately attracted the attention of the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is on close terms with his acquaintance, prisoner Podshivalov, the head of an amateur art group (“serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him in turn try your luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Glowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male interest quickly gives way to purely medical concern. He finds that Glowacka has an aortic aneurysm, a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who have made it an unwritten rule to separate lovers, have already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine. And now, after the doctor’s report about the prisoner’s dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshivalov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but as soon as she is loaded into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.

The last battle of Major Pugachev

Among the heroes of Shalamov’s prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941−1945. Prisoners who fought and were captured by Germans began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temperament, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and intelligence officers...” But most importantly, they had an instinct for freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing strength and will. Their “fault” was that they were surrounded or captured. And it is clear to Major Pugachev, one of these not yet broken people: “they were brought to death - to replace these living dead” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major gathers equally determined and strong prisoners to match himself, ready to either die or become free. Their group included pilots, a reconnaissance officer, a paramedic, and a tankman. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. They've been preparing their escape all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who avoid general work could survive the winter and then escape. And the participants in the conspiracy, one after another, are promoted to servants: someone becomes a cook, someone a cult leader, someone who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But then spring comes, and with it the planned day.

At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the camp cook-prisoner, who has come, as usual, to get the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the guard on duty finds himself strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens to the other duty officer who returned a little later. Then everything goes according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, take possession of the weapon. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniform and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. At night - the first night of freedom after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, remembers his escape from a German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, being accused of espionage and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He also remembers the visits of General Vlasov’s emissaries to the German camp, who recruited Russian soldiers, convincing them that for Soviet power All of them, captured, are traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks lovingly at his sleeping comrades who believed in him and stretched out their hands to freedom; he knows that they are “the best, the most worthy of all.” And a little later a battle breaks out, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and the soldiers surrounding them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in the bear’s den, that they will find him anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself.

Shock therapy

One of the prisoners named Merzlyakov, while at general work, felt that he was getting worse and worse. When he fell while carrying a log one day, he refused to get up. For this, he was beaten first by his own people, then by the guards. He arrived at the camp with a broken rib and lower back pain. The rib healed and the pain went away, but Merzlyakov did not show this, trying to stay longer in the infirmary. Realizing that doctors cannot cure the prisoner, he is taken to a local hospital to be examined by specialists. There is a chance for him to be activated for health reasons, because with such illnesses he will not be sent again to the machinations, where it was damp, cold, and fed with an incomprehensible soup, where there was only water, which could easily be drunk without the help of a spoon. Now he concentrated entirely on his behavior, so as not to be carried away in a lie and not earn himself further fines.

But Merzlyakov had no luck with the doctor. He was treated by Pyotr Ivanovich, a doctor who specialized in exposing malingerers. And although he himself had one year of imprisonment, he was guided by truly medical principles. Realizing that Merzlyakov is a malingerer, he first sends the patient to raush anesthesia, which allows him to sort of straighten out the patient, and then to shock therapy, after which the patient himself asked to be discharged.

Typhoid quarantine

After contracting typhus, prisoner Andreev is placed under quarantine. At the mines themselves, compared to general work, health plays a role big role. Andreev awakens to the long-hushed hope of not returning to where dampness, hunger and death reigned. He hopes to stay longer in transit, and then maybe he’ll be lucky that he won’t be returned to the mines. Andreev did not respond to the line-up of prisoners before departure, since he was considered not yet recovered. He was in the transit until it was empty and the line came to him. It seemed to Andreev that he had conquered death, that the path to the mines in the taiga was already closed to him, that now he would only be sent on local business trips. But when a truck with prisoners who were given winter clothes suddenly crosses the dividing line between near and far business trips, Andreev realizes that the essence has simply mocked him, and that everything starts all over again.

Aortic aneurysm

Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya ends up in the hospital where the emaciated, emaciated prisoners were kept. She was pretty, which immediately attracted Zaitsev, the doctor on duty at the hospital. He is aware that Katya and his prisoner friend Podshivalov, who was the leader of an amateur art group, had a relationship. But this did not stop him, and Zaitsev decides to try his own luck.

He began, as befits a doctor, with a medical examination of the patient-prisoner. But that male and interest in beautiful woman quickly changes to medical concern when he finds out that Katya suffers from an aortic aneurysm - a disease that, at the slightest wrong movement, can lead to death. The authorities thought that this was Podshivalov’s trick, so that his beloved would stay nearby longer, and gave the command to Zaitsev to discharge the patient.

The next day, when the prisoners were loaded into the car, what the doctor warned about happened - Ekaterina was dying.

Essays

Shalamov - Kolyma stories

Varlam Shalamov

Dinner is over. Glebov leisurely licked the bowl, carefully raking bread crumbs from the table into left palm and, bringing it to his mouth, carefully licked the crumbs from his palm. Without swallowing, he felt the saliva in his mouth thickly and greedily enveloping the tiny lump of bread. Glebov could not say whether it was tasty. Taste is something else, too poor compared to this passionate, selfless sensation that food gave. Glebov was in no hurry to swallow: the bread itself melted in his mouth, and melted quickly.

Collapsed, sparkling eyes Bagretsova kept their eyes fixed on Glebov’s mouth—no one had such a powerful will that would help him take his eyes off the food disappearing in another person’s mouth. Glebov swallowed his saliva, and immediately Bagretsov turned his eyes to the horizon - to the large orange moon crawling into the sky.

“It’s time,” said Bagretsov.

They silently walked along the path to the rock and climbed onto a small ledge that went around the hill; even though the sun had recently set, the stones, which during the day had burned the soles through the rubber galoshes worn on bare feet, were now cold. Glebov buttoned up his padded jacket. Walking did not warm him.

- How far is it still? – he asked in a whisper.

“Far,” Bagretsov answered quietly.

They sat down to rest. There was nothing to talk about, and there was nothing to think about - everything was clear and simple. On the platform, at the end of the ledge, there were heaps of torn stones and torn and dried moss.

“I could do it alone,” Bagretsov grinned, “but it’s more fun with two.” And for an old friend... They were brought on the same ship last year. Bagretsov stopped.

“We have to lie down, they’ll see.”

They lay down and began to throw stones aside. Big stones There were none here that couldn’t be lifted or moved by two people, because the people who threw them here in the morning were no stronger than Glebov.

Bagretsov cursed quietly. He scratched his finger and was bleeding. He sprinkled sand on the wound, tore out a piece of cotton wool from his padded jacket, pressed it - the bleeding did not stop.

“Poor clotting,” Glebov said indifferently.

– Are you a doctor, or what? – Bagretsov asked, sucking the blood.

Glebov was silent. The time when he was a doctor seemed very far away. And was there ever such a time? Too often that world beyond the mountains, beyond the seas seemed to him like some kind of dream, an invention. The minute, the hour, the day from getting up to going out was real - he didn’t think further and couldn’t find the strength to guess. Like all.

He did not know the past of those people who surrounded him, and was not interested in it. However, if tomorrow Bagretsov declared himself a doctor of philosophy or an air marshal, Glebov would believe him without hesitation. Was he ever a doctor himself? Not only the automaticity of judgments was lost, but also the automaticity of observations. Glebov saw Bagretsov sucking blood from a dirty finger, but said nothing. It only slipped into his consciousness, but he could not find the will to answer in himself and did not look for it. That consciousness that he still had and which... perhaps it was no longer human consciousness, had too few facets and was now aimed at only one thing - to quickly remove the stones.

- Deep, perhaps? – Glebov asked when they settled down to rest.

– How can it be deep? - said Bagretsov. And Glebov realized that he had asked nonsense and that the hole really couldn’t be deep.

“Yes,” said Bagretsov.

He touched a human finger. Thumb his feet peeked out from the stones - he was clearly visible in the moonlight. The finger was not like the fingers of Glebov or Bagretsov, but not in that it was lifeless and numb - in this there was little difference. The nails on this dead finger were cut, it itself was fuller and softer than Gleb’s. They quickly threw away the stones that covered the body.

“Very young,” said Bagretsov.

Together they hardly pulled the corpse out by the legs.

“How healthy,” said Glebov, out of breath.

“If he weren’t so healthy,” said Bagretsov, “he would have been buried the way we are buried, and we wouldn’t have to come here today.”

They unbent the dead man's arms and pulled off his shirt.

“And the underpants are completely new,” Bagretsov said with satisfaction.

They also stole my underpants. Glebov hid a wad of laundry under his padded jacket.

“You better put it on yourself,” said Bagretsov.

“No, I don’t want to,” Glebov muttered.

They put the dead man back into the grave and threw stones at it.

The blue light of the rising moon fell on the stones, on the sparse taiga forest, showing every ledge, every tree in a special, not daytime form. Everything seemed real in its own way, but not like during the day. It was like a second, nocturnal, appearance of the world.

The dead man's underwear warmed up in Glebov's bosom and no longer seemed alien.

“I’d like to light a cigarette,” Glebov said dreamily.

- Tomorrow you will smoke.

Bagretsov smiled. Tomorrow they will sell their linen, exchange it for bread, maybe even get some tobacco...

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Varlam Shalamov
Single metering

* * *

Dugaev was twenty-three years old, and everything he saw and heard here surprised him more than frightened him.

The brigade gathered for roll call, handed over their tools and returned to the barracks in uneven prison formation. The difficult day was over. Without sitting down, Dugaev drank a portion of liquid cold cereal soup over the side of the bowl. The bread was given in the morning for the whole day and was eaten long ago. I wanted to smoke. He looked around, wondering who he could ask for a cigarette butt. On the windowsill, Baranov collected shag grains from an inside out pouch into a piece of paper. Having collected them carefully, Baranov rolled up a thin cigarette and handed it to Dugaev.

“You can smoke it for me,” he suggested. Dugaev was surprised - he and Baranov were not friends. However, with hunger, cold and insomnia, no friendship can be formed, and Dugaev, despite his youth, understood the falsity of the saying about friendship being tested by misfortune and misfortune. In order for friendship to be friendship, it is necessary that its strong foundation be laid when conditions and everyday life have not yet reached the final limit, beyond which there is nothing human in a person, but only mistrust, anger and lies. Dugaev remembered well the northern proverb, the three prison commandments: do not believe, do not be afraid and do not ask...

Dugaev greedily sucked in the sweet tobacco smoke, and his head began to spin.

“I’m getting weaker,” he said.

Baranov remained silent.

Dugaev returned to the barracks, lay down and closed his eyes. Lately he had been sleeping poorly; hunger did not allow him to sleep well. The dreams were especially painful - loaves of bread, steaming fatty soups... Oblivion did not come soon, but still, half an hour before getting up, Dugaev had already opened his eyes.

The crew came to work. Everyone went to their own slaughterhouses.

“Wait,” the foreman said to Dugaev. - The caretaker will put you in charge.

Dugaev sat down on the ground. He had already become so tired that he was completely indifferent to any change in his fate.

The first wheelbarrows rattled on the ramp, shovels scraped against the stone.

Dugaev obediently began work.

Dugaev drove, picked, poured, drove again and again picked and poured.

After the lunch break, the caretaker came, looked at what Dugaev had done and silently left... Dugaev again kicked and poured. The quartz mark was still very far away.

In the evening the caretaker appeared again and unwound the tape measure. He measured what Dugaev did.

“Twenty-five percent,” he said and looked at Dugaev. - Twenty-five percent. Can you hear?

Dugaev ate because he saw others eating, something told him: he had to eat. But he didn't want to eat.

“Well, well,” said the caretaker, leaving. - I wish you good health.

In the evening, Dugaev was summoned to the investigator. He answered four questions: first name, last name, article, term. Four questions that are asked to a prisoner thirty times a day. Then Dugaev went to bed. The next day he again worked with the brigade, with Baranov, and on the night of the day after tomorrow the soldiers took him behind the conbase and led him along a forest path to a place where, almost blocking a small gorge, there stood a high fence with barbed wire stretched across the top, and from there at night the distant whirring of tractors could be heard. And, realizing what was the matter, Dugaev regretted that he had worked in vain, that he had suffered this last day in vain.