Siberian Education (36 page)

‘This is the first time we've had to work as cops,' said Gagarin.

We had a bit of a laugh about this, then set off for our tour of Bender. In reality there was nothing to laugh about: it was like descending into hell.

In the car Mel told me he was a bit worried and handed me a gun, saying:

‘Here – I know you'll only have come with a knife, as usual. But this is a serious business; take it, even if you don't like the idea. Do it for me.'

I told him I already had one, and he relaxed, giving me a wink:

‘Been round to your uncle's, then, have you?'

I felt too important to give away the secret of the gun I was carrying, so I just smiled and sang softly:

‘Mother Siberia, save my life . . .'

We arrived in Centre, at a bar run by an old criminal, Pavel, the Guardian of the district. Pavel was not Siberian and didn't live according to our rules, so with him we had to be diplomatic, though not excessively so: after all, we came from the oldest and most important district in the criminal world, Low River, and we deserved respect for the mere fact of being Siberian.

Pavel was in the bar with a group of friends, people from southern Russia who followed no precise rules except those of the god Money – people who flaunted their wealth, wore fashionable clothes and plenty of gold chains, bracelets and rings. We didn't like this custom: according to the Siberian tradition a worthy criminal has nothing on him but his tattoos; the rest is humble, as the Lord teaches.

We greeted those present and entered. A man got up from the table where the owner was playing cards with his friends. He was a thin man of about thirty, adorned with gold and wearing a red jacket which was as sweetly scented as a rose in springtime or, as my Uncle Sergey would say, ‘as a whore between the legs'. He addressed us very aggressively: his opening remarks alone, according to our laws, would have been enough to earn him a knifing.

He was a troublemaker; men of his kind are like dogs that bark to frighten passers-by. That's the only function they have. A well-bred, experienced criminal knows that and ignores them; he doesn't even glance at them, so that it's immediately clear he's not a
fraer
, a clown.

We walked on and headed for the table, leaving the idiot shouting and cursing.

Old Pavel looked at us closely and asked us in a very coarse manner what we wanted.

Gagarin had done three spells in juvenile prison and a year earlier had killed two cops. In his seventeen years of life he had already garnered enough experience to know how to speak to people like that, so he gave him a brief outline of the situation.

He told him about the money, and about the need to find the culprits.

Instantly everything changed. Pavel got up and ripped open his shirt aggressively, displaying his chest, which was covered with tattoos and gold chains. At the same time he shouted:

‘There can be no forgiveness for someone who's committed such a crime! I swear to God if I find him I'll kill him with my own hands!'

Gagarin, as cool and calm as a dead man on the day of his funeral, said there was no need to kill him – we would do that; but if he could spread the word around and help us find him it would be very useful. Then he repeated that we would give a big reward to anyone who could help us.

Pavel assured us that he would do all he could to find out who the bastard was. Then he offered us a drink, but we asked permission to leave, since we still had a lot of calls to make.

As we left we noticed that cars and scooters were already beginning to arrive outside the bar: clearly old Pavel had called the people of his district together to explain the matter to them.

Our second port of call was the district of Railway. The criminals of Railway specialized mainly in burglaries from apartments. Theirs was a multiethnic community, with criminal rules which also applied in most of the prisons in the Soviet Union. It was all based on collectivism; the highest Authorities, the Thieves in Law, handled everyone's money.

Railway, as I have already mentioned, was an area dominated by Black Seed, the caste that officially governed the Russian criminal world because of the large number of its members, and above all of its supporters.

Between Black Seed and us there had always been a kind of tension; they described themselves as the leaders of the criminal world, and their presence was very evident both inside prison and outside, but the foundations of their criminal tradition, most of their rules, and even their tattoos, were copied from us Urkas.

Their caste emerged at the beginning of the century, exploiting a moment of great social weakness in the country, which was full of desperate people – vagabonds and small-time criminals who were happy to go to prison for the sake of the free meals and the certainty of having a roof over their heads at night. Gradually they became a powerful community, but one with a lot of flaws, as many Authorities of Black Seed themselves acknowledged.

In Railway everything was organized more or less as it was among us. There was a Guardian responsible for what happened in his area, who was answerable to the Thieves in Law; and there were checks on those who entered and left the district.

And sure enough, at the border of Railway our car was stopped by a roadblock of young criminals.

To show that we were relaxed, we waited in the car until one of them came over and started talking to Gagarin. The others leaned against their cars, smoking, and now and then threw an abstracted glance at us, but casually, as if by chance.

I knew one of them; I had stabbed him in the fight in Centre. Afterwards, however, everything had been sorted out, and according to the rules, once settled, the matter must never be mentioned again. He looked at me; I waved to him from inside the car and he grimaced as if he were still in pain from where I had wounded him. Then he laughed and made a sign to me with his index finger which meant ‘watch out' – a playful gesture, as if to say that he wasn't angry with me.

I answered him with a grin, then I showed him my hands: I showed them empty, with the palms upwards, a positive gesture, which is made to emphasize your humility and straightforwardness and indifference to what is happening.

While I was exchanging gestures of goodwill with this guy, Gagarin was explaining to one of them the reason for our visit. They called someone on a mobile phone, and a few minutes later a boy arrived on a scooter. He was our guide; he had to take us to the Guardian of the area, ‘Barbos', who was so nicknamed because he was a dwarf, and
barbos
is a joking name for small, weak dogs.

Barbos was a remarkable person – very well-educated, intelligent, shrewd, and with a rare sense of humour which enabled him to laugh about everything, even his stature. But there was also a less positive side to his character: he was very quick-tempered, and in forty-six years of life had accumulated no fewer than four convictions for murder.

A lot of crazy stories were told about him. For example, that his mother was a witch and had made him immortal by feeding him on the ashes of diamonds. Or that he had devoured his twin brother in his mother's womb, and because of this she had cursed him, stunting his growth.

My uncle, who had known him all his life, said that when he was a boy Barbos used to go to the butcher's to practise hitting people on the head with an iron bar: he used to bash the skinned beasts hanging on the hooks, and thus perfected his technique with the iron bar until he became a skilled assassin.

It was very strange that in the community of Black Seed, where murder was almost despised as a crime, at least by the highest Authorities, a man like him had succeeded in reaching such an important position in the hierarchy: I suspect he had been given the role of Guardian to keep everyone quiet during a delicate period for Black Seed, which in recent times had been getting a bit out of control and seemed to be in need of a firm hand.

Following the guy on his scooter we entered the side streets behind the railway tracks. Suddenly the boy stopped and pointed at an open door. We got out of the cars and at the same moment Barbos emerged, with three young criminals.

He came over to us and we exchanged greetings. Following the Siberian rules, as our host he first inquired after the health of some elders of Low River. Each time, after our replies, he crossed himself and thanked the Lord for showing His goodness to our elders. After the formalities he asked us the reason for our visit.

Gagarin briefly explained the whole story to him, and when he mentioned the money offered as a reward for accurate information about the rapist the dwarf's face changed, becoming like a sharpened blade, taut with anger.

He called one of his assistants, whispered something in his ear, and then hurriedly apologized to us, assuring us that he would soon explain everything. After a few minutes his man returned with a small holdall, which he handed to Barbos. Barbos gave it to Gagarin, who opened it and showed it to all of us: it was packed with wads of dollar bills and two guns.

‘There are ten thousand here; I take the liberty of adding them to your reward for the head of that bastard . . . As for the guns,' the dwarf gave an evil smile, ‘they're for you too: when you find him, pump lead into him on behalf of all the honest thieves of our area, since we wouldn't presume to do it ourselves. This justice is yours.'

We couldn't refuse – it would have been rude – so we thanked him.

We left the district feeling pleased at the welcome Barbos had given us and at his generosity, but I was miserable. I felt even worse than before: the thought of Ksyusha continued to haunt me. Something told me the wound had been too deep; I realized I was thinking of her almost as if she were dead.

The next call we had to make was at a district called ‘Bam', an acronym of
Baykal-Amur Magistral
, the railway line connecting the famous Lake Baikal with the great Siberian river.

A motorway had been built alongside the railway, and in the 1960s many new industrial towns had been erected where large numbers of people had come to live, their purpose being to work in order to guarantee the progress of the socialist country. All these towns were identical: they consisted of five or six areas known as ‘microdistricts', and on the whole presented an awfully dreary landscape. The houses were all built to the same model: nine-storey apartment blocks in rows of three with small front gardens where the grass never grew and the trees never lasted more than one season for lack of sunlight. On those little plots of land there was also a playground for children, with monstrous toys made of remnants of iron and cement, full of sharp edges and painted in the communist style – in a single colour, regardless of what they were supposed to represent, just like the ideal of communist society, where everyone is obliged to be the same as everyone else. Although Mother Nature had made the crocodile green and the lion tawny, both animals were painted red, so that they seemed like the creations of some maniac painter. All these toy animals, which were supposed to be for the children's entertainment, were cemented into the asphalt, and after the first few showers of rain became covered with rust. The risk of getting tetanus by cutting yourself was extremely high.

This brilliant playground initiative in the new towns was immediately dubbed ‘goodbye kids', because of the many injuries to children that occurred every day. So after a few years, the first thing anyone who came to live there did was to dismantle those playgrounds, to guarantee their offspring a healthy and happy childhood.

In our town, Bam was the area of nine-storey houses inhabited by poor people, down-and-outs: most of them were hooligans, or the kind of people who in Siberia are described as ‘off limits' – delinquents who because of their ignorance are not able to follow the laws of an honest, worthy criminal life.

Addiction had almost become a social convention in Bam. Drugs were always circulating, day and night. Kids started using them at twelve years old and were lucky if they reached adulthood; the few who did already seemed old by the age of eighteen – they were toothless and had skin that looked like marble. They committed minor crimes such as burglary and pickpocketing, but also a lot of murders.

Some of the stories that were told about Bam were chilling – terrible illustrations of the depths of ignorance and despair to which man can be driven: newborn babies thrown out of windows by their mothers, sons who brutally murdered their parents, brothers who killed their brothers, teenage girls forced into prostitution by their brothers or fathers or uncles.

It was a fairly multiethnic area – there were a lot of Moldovans, gipsies, Ukrainians, people from southern Russia, and a few families from the Caucasus. They had only one thing in common: their total inability to live in a civilized manner.

There was no law in Bam, and no person who could take responsibility before honest criminals for all the terrible things that went on there.

Consequently, the people who lived there were described as
zakontachenye
, ‘contaminated'. According to the criminal laws you cannot associate with them as with normal people. It is forbidden to have any physical contact with them; you are not allowed to greet them, either vocally or with a handshake. You cannot use any object that has previously been used by them. You cannot eat with them, drink with them or share their table or their house. In jail – as I've already mentioned – tainted prisoners live in a corner of their own; often they are made to sleep under the bunks and to eat with plates and spoons that have been marked with a hole in the middle. They are forced to wear dirty, torn clothes, and are not allowed to have pockets, which are removed or unstitched. Every time they use the latrine they have to burn some paper inside it, because according to the criminal beliefs only fire can cleanse a thing that has come into contact with a tainted person.

People who have once been classified as tainted can never rid themselves of that stigma; they carry it with them for the rest of their lives; so outside prison they are forced to live with others like them, because nobody else wants them anywhere near them.