Siberian Education (10 page)

‘Wait, let her get up a bit higher . . .'

To wait was to risk losing her – if they fly too high, many female pigeons drop down dead. They're used to being in a pair, together with the male: without the male to help them descend they can't return to the ground; they have to be guided. So it's essential to launch the male at the right moment: he rises, and the female, hearing him beat his wings and turn somersaults in the air, starts flying down towards him. But our female was already a long way off.

‘Now, Kolima, let him go!' said Grandfather Kuzya, and at once, with a vigorous sweep of my arms I launched the pigeon.

‘Well done! Good boy! May Jesus Christ bless you!' Grandfather Kuzya was pleased; he watched the pigeons approach one another in the air. Together we witnessed that spectacular union: the male did more than twenty somersaults, and the female flew in ever tighter circles around him, almost touching him with her wings. They were a beautiful couple.

Eventually the two joined together in the air, and one beside the other they began to descend lower and lower, in wide circles. Grandfather Kuzya looked at my face, pointing at my bruise.

‘Come on, let's make some chifir . . .' We got down from the roof and went into the kitchen. Grandfather Kuzya put the water for the chifir on the fire.

Chifir is a very strong tea which is made and drunk according to an ancient ritual. It has a powerful stimulant effect: drinking one cup is like drinking half a litre of coffee all in one go. It is prepared in a small saucepan, the
chifirbak
, which is not used for any other purpose and is never washed with detergent, only rinsed in cold water. If the
chifirbak
is black – dirty with the residue of tea – it is more highly prized, because the chifir will come out better. When the water boils, you extinguish the fire and add black tea, which must be of whole leaves, not crumbled, and must only come from Irkutsk, in Siberia: there they grow a particular tea, the strongest and tastiest of them all, and beloved of criminals all over the country. Very different from the famous tea of Krasnodar, which is highly popular with housewives: a weak tea, widespread especially in Moscow and in southern Russia, and good for breakfast. For a proper chifir you use up to half a kilo of tea leaves. The leaves have to be left to brew for no more than ten minutes, otherwise the chifir becomes acidic and unpleasant. You put a lid on the saucepan so that the steam doesn't escape; it's advisable to wrap the whole thing in a towel, to keep the temperature. The chifir is ready when there are no more leaves floating on the surface: hence we say the chifir has ‘fallen' to indicate that it's ready. It is filtered through a strainer: the tea leaves are not thrown away, they are put on a dish and left there to dry; they will be used later for making ordinary tea, which can be drunk with sugar and lemon, while eating cake.

Chifir must be drunk in a large mug made of iron or silver, which can hold more than a litre of tea. You drink it in a group, passing round this mug, called
bodyaga
, which in the old Siberian criminal language means ‘flask'. You pass it to your companion in a clockwise direction, never anticlockwise; each time you must drink three sips, no more, no less. While drinking you must not speak, smoke, eat or do anything else. It is forbidden to blow into the mug: that is considered bad manners. The first person to drink is the one who has made the chifir, then the mug passes to the others, and the one who finishes it must get up, wash it and put it back in its place. Once that has been done you can talk, smoke, or eat something sweet.

These rules are not the same in all communities: for example, in central Russia they don't take three sips but only two, and blowing into the mug is considered an act of kindness to the others, because you are cooling the boiling drink for them. In any case, offering a chifir to someone is a sign of respect, of friendship.

The best chifir is that made over a burning wood fire. Consequently in many criminals' houses the fireplaces have a special structure for making chifir; otherwise we use a stove, but never one heated by gas.

In Siberia, once it has been made, the chifir must be drunk straight away: if it gets cold it is not warmed up again, but thrown away. In other places, especially in prison, the chifir can be warmed up, but not more than once. And warmed-up chifir is no longer called chifir, but chifirok – a diminutive, in all senses.

We drank the chifir in silence, as the tradition requires, and only when we had finished did Grandfather Kuzya start talking:

‘Well, how are you, young rascal?'

‘I'm fine, Grandfather Kuzya, except that a few days ago we got into some trouble, in Tiraspol, and we were roughed up a bit by the cops . . .' I wanted to be honest, but at the same time I didn't want to exaggerate. With someone like Grandfather Kuzya there was no need to boast or to moan about what happened in your life, because he had certainly been through worse.

‘I know all about it, Kolima . . . But you're alive, they didn't kill you. So why are you in such a bad mood?'

‘They took my pike, the one Uncle Hedgehog gave me . . .' When I uttered these words I felt as if I were attending my own funeral. What had happened became even more terrible, and broke my heart, as I described it.

When I think about what I must have looked like at that moment I feel like laughing, which is exactly what Grandfather Kuzya did:

‘All this gloom just because the cops took your pike! You know that everything that happens is in the hands of God and forms part of His great plan. Think about it: our pikes are powerful because they contain the force that Our Lord puts in them. And when someone takes our pike and uses it without honesty, the pike will lead him to ruin, because the force of the Lord will destroy the enemy. So what have you got to cry about? A good thing has happened: your pike will bring many misfortunes to a cop, and eventually kill him. Then another will take it, and another, and your pike will kill them all . . .'

Grandfather Kuzya's explanation gave me some relief, but although I was pleased that my pike would harm the police, I still missed it.

I didn't want to disappoint him and whine in front of him, so I put a lilt in my voice, making it sound as cheerful as possible:

‘Okay, I'm happy, then . . .'

Grandfather Kuzya smiled.

‘Good boy! That's the way: always hold your chest like a wheel and your pecker like a pistol . . .'

A week later I went round to Grandfather Kuzya's again to take him a jar of caviare pâté and butter. He called me into the living room and stood me in front of the red corner of the icons. There, on the shelf, was a beautiful open pike, with a very thin blade and a bone handle. I gazed at it spellbound.

‘I had it sent all the way from Siberia, our brothers brought it for a young friend of mine . . .' He picked it up and put it in my hand. ‘Take it, Kolima, and remember: the things that matter are the ones inside you.'

I was again the happy owner of a pike and I felt as if I'd been given a second life.

In the evening I wrote in big letters on a sheet of paper the words Grandfather Kuzya had said to me, and hung the paper in my bedroom, near the icons. My uncle, when he saw it, looked at me with a question-mark in his eyes. I made a gesture with my hands, as if to say: ‘That's how it is.' He smiled at me and said:

‘Hey, we've got a philosopher in the family!'

1
. Lena and Amur are the names of two great Siberian rivers. Traditionally, criminal fortune is linked to these rivers: they are worshipped as deities, to whom you make offerings and whom you can ask for help in the course of your criminal activities. They are mentioned in many sayings, fairy tales, songs and poems. Of a fortunate criminal it is said that ‘his destiny is borne on the current of Lena'.

1
. ‘Authority' refers to a leading criminal figure in the community. The nearest equivalent in American criminal vocabulary is a ‘made man'.

1
. A knife modelled on the military bayonet, used in attacking ships on the rivers.

2
. Literally ‘polished ones':
kromachy
was our word for boots.

3
. A sailor's vest, with blue and white stripes and long sleeves.

WHEN THE SKIN
SPEAKS

When I was small I loved drawing. I carried a little exercise book around with me and drew everything I saw. I liked to see how the subjects transferred onto paper, and I loved the process of drawing. It was like being inside a bubble, enclosed in a world of my own, and God only knows what happened in my head during those moments.

We children all wanted to be like the grown-ups, so we imitated them in everything we did: our speech, the way we dressed, and also our tattoos. The adult criminals – our fathers, grandfathers, uncles and neighbours – were covered in tattoos.

In the Russian criminal communities there is a strong culture of tattoos, and each tattoo has a meaning. The tattoo is a kind of identity card which places you within the criminal society – displaying your particular criminal ‘trade', and other kinds of information about your personal life and prison experiences.

Each community has its own tradition of tattooing, symbology and different patterns, according to which the signs are positioned on the body and eventually read and translated. The oldest tattooing culture is that of Siberia; it had been the forebears of the Siberian criminals who had created the tradition of tattooing symbols in a codified, secret manner. Later this culture was copied by other communities and spread throughout prisons all over Russia, transforming the principal meanings of the tattoos and the ways in which they were executed and translated.

The tattoos of the most powerful criminal caste in Russia, which is called Black Seed, are all copied from the Urka tradition, but have different meanings. The images may be the same, but only a person who is able to read a body can analyse their hidden meaning and explain why they are different.

Unlike the other communities, Siberians tattoo only by hand, using various kinds of small needle. Tattoos done with electrical tattoo machines or similar devices are not considered worthy.

In the tradition of the Siberian Urkas the process of tattooing continues throughout the life of a criminal. The first few signs are tattooed when he is twelve years old. Then, over the years, other details are added, gradually building up a narrative. Each experience he has in his life is encoded and concealed within this single large tattoo, which becomes increasingly complete as time goes on. It has the structure of a spiral, starting from the extremities – the hands and feet – and ending at the centre of the body. The last parts of the body to be tattooed are the back and chest; this is done when the criminal is about forty or fifty years old. You will never see young people with large, complete tattoos in the Siberian criminal community, as you do in other communities.

To be able to read bodies decorated with such complex tattoos you need a lot of experience and to know the tattooing tradition perfectly. As a result the figure of the tattooist has a special place within the Siberian criminal community: he is like a priest, trusted by everyone to act on their behalf.

As a child I was intrigued by this tradition, but I didn't know much about it – only what my grandfather, my father and my uncle had told me. I was interested in the idea of being able to read everything that was written on their bodies.

So I spent a long time copying the tattoos which I saw around me, and the more I copied them the more I despaired, because I couldn't find one tattoo that was the same as another. The main subjects recurred, but the details changed. After a while I understood that the secret must lie in the details, so I began to analyse them: but it was like trying to learn a foreign language without having anyone to teach you. I had noticed that certain images were placed on some parts of the body but not on others. I tried to make connections between the images, venturing hypotheses, but the details felt elusive, like sand that slipped through my fingers.

When I was about ten I began to do fake tattoos on my friends' arms, recreating with a biro the images I had seen on grown-up criminals. Later, neighbours started asking me to do specific drawings for them, which they would then go and have tattooed on their bodies. They would explain to me how they wanted it to look and I would reproduce it on paper. Many paid me – not much, ten roubles a time, but to me the mere fact that they paid me at all was amazing.

In this way, without intending to, I became quite well known in the district, and the old tattooist who did all the tattoos based on the drawings that I prepared – Grandfather Lyosha – sent me his regards and his compliments now and then, through different people. I was pleased: it made me feel important.

On my twelfth birthday, my father had a serious talk with me: he told me I was old enough and must think about what I wanted to do with my life, so that I could break away from my parents and become independent. Many of my friends had already done a bit of smuggling under the guidance of the adults, and I too had made a number of trips with my Uncle Sergey, crossing the border repeatedly with gold in my rucksack.