Siberian Education (35 page)

Cyclops hung his head.

‘It is true,' went on Grandfather Filat, ‘that a great misfortune and injustice has befallen us; we have failed to protect the angel of Our Lord, and now He will make us pay for it. Perhaps you yourself will be given a long prison sentence tomorrow, someone will be killed by the cops, someone else will lose his faith in the Mother Church . . . Retribution awaits us all, for we all share in the sin. I too, old as I am, will be punished in some way. But now is not the time to lose our heads; we must show the Lord that we are attentive to His signals, we must help Him to accomplish his justice . . .' The rest of Winter's speech I missed, because I had dashed off towards Ksyusha's house.

All the doors and windows were wide open.

Aunt Anfisa was wandering around the house like a ghost: her face was white, her eyes swollen from weeping, her hands shaking so much they transmitted their tremor to the whole of the rest of her body. She didn't scream or say anything; she just kept emitting a long-drawn-out whine, like that of a dog in pain.

To see her standing in front of me in that state scared me. I was paralysed for a moment, then she came towards me and with her trembling hands clutched my face. She looked at me, weeping, and whispering something whose meaning I couldn't understand. At the same time, I couldn't hear anything; in my ears there was a growing noise like a whistle, like when you swim underwater, going further and further down. I had a violent headache; I closed my eyes, squeezing my temples as hard as I could, and at that moment I understood the question Aunt Anfisa kept whispering to me:

‘Why?'

Simply a short, sharp ‘Why?'

I felt sick; I had lost all sensation in my feet. I lost all my strength; it must have been obvious I wasn't well, because as I tried to walk to Ksyusha's room I noticed two of my friends holding me up with their arms round my waist, gripping my elbows. Step by step I realized I was swaying, as if drunk; a new pain had appeared in my chest, I felt a weight in my heart and lungs, and couldn't breathe. Everything was whirling around me; I tried to focus my gaze, but the carousel I had in my head was going faster, ever faster . . . suddenly, though, I managed to catch the image of Ksyusha. It was blurred, but shocking in its very imprecision: she was lying on the bed like a newborn baby, with her knees tucked right up to her face and her arms wrapped around them. Closed, completely closed. I wanted to see her face, I wanted to stop my head spinning, but I couldn't control myself; I saw a bright light and lost consciousness, falling into the arms of my friends.

I woke up outside in the yard, with my friends standing around me. One gave me some water to drink; I got to my feet and at once felt well, strong, like after a long rest.

Meanwhile the people had filled the yard; there was a long queue leading back to the gate and out into the street. Everyone kept asking Aunt Anfisa's forgiveness; the women kept weeping and screaming curses at the rapist.

I was obsessed by a single thought: that of finding out who could have done such a thing.

Our friend, ‘Squinty' – who owed his nickname to the fact that he'd been cross-eyed as a child, though his sight had later corrected itself – came over to us boys and told us Grandfather Kuzya was expecting us all at his house for a
chyodnyak
, which is a kind of big meeting between criminals of all levels, attendance at which is compulsory, even for children.

We asked him if he knew who had raped Ksyusha, and how it had happened.

‘All I know,' he said, ‘is that two women from our area found her in the Centre district. Near the market. Lying among the rubbish bins, unconscious.'

As a sign of respect, these meetings are always held in the houses of old criminals who have tied the knot: thanks to their experience they are able to give valuable advice, but since they have retired and no longer have any responsibilities they are in a sense not involved. The holding of meetings in houses that are not their own enables all criminals who hold a certain responsibility to say what they think without being bound by the law of hospitality, whereby the master of the house must avoid contradicting his guests. In this way they can debate freely without having to be absurdly evasive and indirect.

When we reached Grandfather Kuzya's house, the door was wide open, as usual. We went in without asking for permission. This too is a rule of good behaviour: you must never ask an old Authority for permission to enter his house, because according to his philosophy he has nothing of his own – nothing belongs to him in this life, only the power of the word. Not even the house he lives in is his: he will always tell you he is a guest. Grandfather Kuzya, as a matter of fact, really was a guest, because he lived in the house of his younger sister, a nice old lady, Grandmother Lyusya.

There were many criminals of Low River in the house, including my Uncle Sergey, my father's younger brother. We greeted those present, shaking hands with them and kissing them three times on the cheeks, as is the custom in Siberia. Grandmother Lyusya invited us to sit down and brought us a large jar of kvas. We waited until everyone had arrived, then our Guardian, Plank, gave the sign that we could begin.

The aim of these meetings is to solve difficult situations in the area in such a way that everyone agrees with the solution and everyone contributes in whatever way they can.

As I have already mentioned, each area has a Guardian. He is responsible to the highest Authorities, who never participate in meetings like this, for the application of the criminal laws. The Guardian's job is a very difficult one, because you always have to keep abreast of the situation in your area, and if anything serious happens the Authorities ‘ask' you, as the phrase runs in criminal slang – that is, they punish you. Nobody ever says ‘punish'; they say ‘ask' for something. Asking can be of three kinds: mild, which is called ‘asking as if one were asking a brother'; more severe, which is called ‘putting a frame round someone'; and definitive and very severe, which changes the criminal's life decidedly for the worse, if it does not actually eliminate it at the root, and is called ‘asking as if one were asking the Gad'.
¹

The old Authorities don't usually resolve individual problems themselves; that is the purpose of the Guardian, who is chosen by them and in a sense represents them, at least as long as he behaves properly. But if the situation is difficult and beyond his abilities, the Guardian may appeal to an elder and, in the presence of witnesses chosen from among the ordinary criminals, present the case without mentioning the names of the people involved. This is done to guarantee impartiality of judgement; if the Guardian dares to name someone, or in some way makes it clear who the person is, the elder can punish him, withdraw from the case himself and pass it on to another, usually a person distant from him, with whom he has few connections. The purpose of this is to ensure that the process of criminal justice is as impartial as possible: it focuses solely on the facts of the case.

Clearly, when something happens the Guardian has a strong incentive to clear it up quickly and effectively, so as not to allow the case to become too complicated and not to involve the Authorities.

Plank was an old robber who had been brought up in the old way. To open the meeting he gave a Siberian greeting, as is customary among our people, which consisted in thanking God for making it possible for everyone to attend.

He spoke slowly in a very deep voice, and we listened to him. Every now and then someone would heave a sad sigh, to emphasize the gravity of the situation we were faced with.

The gist of Plank's speech was simple – something very serious had happened. Any act of violence against a woman is inadmissible for the Siberian criminal community, but an act of violence against a God-willed woman is an act of violence against the entire Siberian tradition.

‘You have one week,' he concluded, looking at us boys. ‘You must find the culprit – or culprits, if there were many – and kill them.'

The task was our responsibility. Since Ksyusha was below the age of majority, the rules of our district decreed that other juveniles must make the inquiries and carry out the final execution.

They wouldn't just leave us to ourselves – on the contrary, they would give us a lot of help – but we alone must appear before the other communities, to show how our law worked.

It's the Siberian rule: adults never do something which concerns juveniles – they can help, advise and support them, but it is up to the youngsters to act. Even in our fights no adults get involved, whereas the boys of the other districts can call adults in as reinforcements. In Siberia an adult will never dare to raise his hand against a juvenile, otherwise he loses his criminal dignity, and at the same time the juvenile must keep to his place and not bother the adults.

In short, to demonstrate to others that our law is strong, we Siberian boys must show that we can look after ourselves.

‘First of all, you will go from district to district in search of information,' Plank told us. ‘And this will be useful to you,' he concluded, handing us a parcel of money. It was ten thousand dollars, a very large sum.

The meeting was over, and with the blessing of our pack we could now leave for the town.

But before I left the house, Grandfather Kuzya beckoned me over, as he always did when he had something to tell me ‘eye in eye', as we say in our language.

‘Hey, Kolima, come here a minute.'

I followed him up onto the roof, to the shed where he kept the pigeons. I entered after him. He turned round abruptly and eyed me, as if sizing me up:

‘Go into town and check that everything is all right. Let the others do the talking; you just listen. And watch out, especially with the Jews and the Ukrainians . . .' He removed a layer of hay which covered the floor and pointed to a small gap between the wooden boards. ‘Lift up the loose plank and take what you find. Never part with it, and if someone gets among you, use it. I've loaded it.' Then he went out, leaving me alone facing the little trap door. I lifted the plank and found a Nagant, the legendary revolver loved and used by our old criminals.

What Grandfather Kuzya had said to me had a precise meaning in the criminal language: receiving a loaded pistol from an Authority is like having permission to use it in any situation. You're protected; you don't need to worry about the consequences. In many cases, if the situation becomes critical, you only have to say ‘I have a pistol loaded by . . .' and everything will be resolved in your favour, because at that point to act against you would be equivalent to acting against the person who loaded your gun.

Outside Grandfather Kuzya's house two adult drivers were waiting for us – two young criminals from our area who had been given orders to take us wherever we wanted but not to intervene unless it was a matter of life or death.

Before getting into the cars we talked for a while, to make a rough strategic plan. We decided that Gagarin, the oldest of us, would look after the money, and that he would also have the responsibility of talking to people. The rest of us would split up into two groups: the first would cover Gagarin's back, and the second, while he was talking, would go round sticking their noses into other people's business, looking for clues.