Siberian Education (5 page)

The tale was about a pack of wolves who were in trouble because they had had nothing to eat for ages. The old wolf who was the leader of the pack tried to reassure his companions – he asked them to be patient and to wait, because sooner or later herds of wild boar or deer would come along, and then they would be able to hunt to their hearts' content and would at last fill their stomachs. One young wolf, however, was not prepared to wait, and started looking for a quick solution to the problem. He decided to leave the woods and go to ask men for food. The old wolf tried to stop him. He said that if he accepted food from men he would change and would no longer be a wolf. But the young wolf wouldn't listen. He replied bluntly that if you needed to fill your stomach it was pointless to follow strict rules – the important thing was to fill it. And off he went towards the village.

The men fed him on their leftovers whenever he asked. But every time the young wolf filled his stomach and thought of going back to the woods to join the others he would get drowsy. So he put off his return until eventually he completely forgot the life of the pack, the pleasure of the hunt and the excitement of sharing the prey with his companions.

He began to go hunting with the men, to help them, instead of the wolves with whom he had been born and raised. One day, during the hunt, a man shot an old wolf, which fell to the ground, wounded. The young wolf ran towards him to take him back to his master, and while he was trying to get hold of him with his teeth he realized that it was his old pack leader. He felt ashamed, and didn't know what to say. It was the old wolf who filled the silence with his last words:

‘I have lived my life like a worthy wolf, I have hunted a lot and shared many prey with my brothers, so now I die happy. But you will live your life in shame, and alone, in a world to which you do not belong, for you have rejected the dignity of a free wolf to have a full stomach. You have become unworthy. Wherever you go, you will be treated with contempt; you belong neither to the world of wolves nor to that of men . . . This will teach you that hunger comes and goes, but dignity, once lost, never returns.'

That concluding speech was my favourite part of the story, because the old wolf's words were a true distillation of our criminal philosophy, and as Grandfather Kuzya spoke those words he reflected in them his own experience, his way of seeing and understanding the world.

The words returned to my mind a few years later, when a train was taking me to a juvenile prison. A guard decided to hand round some pieces of salami. We were hungry, and many threw themselves greedily on that salami to devour it. I refused it; a boy asked me why and I told him the story of the unworthy wolf. He didn't understand me, but when we reached our destination the guard who had distributed the salami announced in the main yard, in front of everyone, that before giving it to us he had dipped it in the toilet.

As a result, according to the criminal rule, all those who had eaten it had been ‘tainted' and had therefore fallen to the lowest caste of the criminal community, and would automatically be despised by all, even before they got into the prison. This was one of the tricks the cops often played, to use the criminal rules as a weapon against the criminals themselves. These tricks were most successful with youngsters, who often didn't know that an honest criminal is not allowed to accept anything from a cop. As my late lamented uncle used to say:

‘The only thing a worthy criminal takes from the cops is a beating, and even that he gives back, when the right moment comes.'

So, thanks to the sudden increase in my authority among my friends, I had begun to do a bit of advertising for the upbringing and education I'd received from Grandfather Kuzya. He was delighted, because this enabled him to influence all of us. And now we boys of the Low River district became known as ‘Siberian Education' – a name that had been given to the Siberians in exile because of their loyalty to the criminal traditions and their extremely conservative spirit.

In our town every criminal community, especially if it was made up of young people, distinguished itself from the others by its clothes or how its members wore them. They also used symbols, which immediately identified you as belonging to a specific gang, district or national group. Many communities used to mark out their territory with drawings or slogans, but our elders had always forbidden us to write or draw anything on the walls, because they said it was shameful and ill-mannered. Grandfather Kuzya had once explained to me that our criminal community had no need to affirm its presence in any way: it simply existed, and people knew that, not because they saw graffiti on the walls of their homes, but because they felt our presence, and were sure they could always count on the help and understanding of us criminals. The same went for an individual criminal: even if he were a legendary character, he should behave as the humblest of all.

In other districts it was completely different. The members of the gangs of Centre wore gold pendants of their own design. For example, members of the gang led by a young criminal nicknamed ‘Pirate', who had built up a kind of personality cult around himself, distinguished themselves by wearing a pendant bearing the skull and crossbones of a pirates' flag. Another gang, from the Railway district, made all its members wear black, to emphasize their loyalty to the Black Seed caste. The Ukrainians of the Balka district, on the other hand, dressed in the American style, or more often like African-Americans. They sang songs which seemed meaningless, and they drew strange things all over the place with spray-cans. One of them had once drawn something in the Bank district on the wall of an elder, a former prisoner, and in revenge a young criminal, who was a neighbour of the old man, had shot him.

I remember commenting on this to Grandfather Kuzya. I said that in my opinion killing was unjust. You could demand compensation for the insult and the nuisance, and then you could always beat the guy up – a good thrashing will usually get a bit of sense into a guy's head. But Grandfather didn't agree with me and said I was too humane – too humane and too young. He explained to me that when boys went down a wrong road and wouldn't listen to their elders, in most cases they harmed themselves and those around them. The Ukrainian boys were putting at risk many youngsters of other districts, who would imitate them, because being ill-mannered was always easier and more attractive than following the road of good manners. Therefore it was necessary to treat them with cruelty and absolute severity, to make everyone understand where the path of disobedience to the traditions could lead. He added:

‘Anyway, why do they pretend to be American blacks and not, say, North Koreans or Palestinians? I'll tell you why: this is filth that comes from the devil, through the television, the cinema, the newspapers and all the trash that a worthy and honest person never touches . . . America is a cursed, godforsaken country, and everything that emanates from it must be ignored. If these fools play at being Americans, soon they'll be whooping like monkeys instead of talking . . .'

Grandfather Kuzya hated everything American because, like all Siberian criminals, he opposed what represented power in the world. If he heard anyone talk about people who had fled to America, of many Jews who had made a mass exodus from the USSR in the 1980s, he would say in amazement:

‘Why on earth does everyone go to America, saying they seek freedom? Our ancestors took refuge in the woods, in Siberia, they didn't go to America. And besides, why flee from the Soviet regime, only to end up in the American one? It would be like a bird that had escaped from its cage going voluntarily to live in another cage . . .'

For these reasons, in Low River it was forbidden to use anything American. The American cars which circulated freely all over town couldn't enter our district, and items of clothing, domestic appliances and all other objects that were ‘made in the USA' were banned. For me personally this rule was rather painful, since I was very keen on jeans but I couldn't wear them. I secretly listened to American music – I liked blues, rock and heavy metal, but I was taking a big risk in keeping the records and cassettes in the house. And when my father carried out an inspection of my hiding places and finally found them, all hell would break loose. He would beat me and make me break all the records with my own hands in front of him and my grandfather, and then every evening for a week I would be made to play Russian tunes on the accordion for an hour and sing Russian folk or criminal songs.

I wasn't attracted by American politics, only by the music and by the books of some writers. Once, choosing the right moment, I tried to explain this to Grandfather Kuzya. I hoped that he would be able to intercede and give me permission to listen to the music and read American books without having to hide from my family. He looked at me as if I had betrayed him and said:

‘Son, do you know why when there's an outbreak of the plague people burn everything that belonged to the victims?'

I shook my head. But I already imagined where this was leading.

He gave a sad sigh and concluded:

‘The contagion, Nikolay, the contagion.'

And so, since everything American was forbidden, just as it was forbidden to flaunt wealth and power through material things, the people of our district dressed very humbly. We boys were in a terrible state as far as clothing was concerned, but we were proud of it. We wore like trophies our fathers' or elder brothers' old shoes, and their unfashionable clothes, which were meant to emphasize Siberian humility and simplicity.

We could have enjoyed life to the full. We were an ancient and very wealthy community, the houses in our area were huge, the people could have lived ‘in grand style', as the phrase is in our country and in yours, but instead money was used in a strange way: no clothes, jewels, expensive cars, gambling. There were only two things the Siberians were happy to spend their money on: weapons and Orthodox icons. We all had an enormous quantity of weapons, and also of icons, which were very costly.

In all other respects we were humble – humble and in uniform. In winter we all wore quilted trousers – black or dark blue, very warm and comfortable. The jackets were of two kinds: either the classic quilted
fufayka,
which half the population wore in the days of the USSR, because it was the jacket that was given to workers, or the
tulup
, which had an enormous fur collar that you could pull right up to your eyes to protect yourself against the harshest cold. I wore the
fufayka
, because it was lighter and allowed me to move fairly freely. The shoes were heavy, and fur-lined, and there were also long woollen socks to ward off frostbite. On your head you'd wear a fur hat: I had a lovely one, made of white ermine – very warm, light and comfortable.

In summer we wore ordinary flannel trousers, always with a belt, in accordance with the Siberian rule. The belt is connected with the tradition of the hunters, for whom it was much more than a lucky charm: it was a request for help. If a hunter got lost in the woods, or had an accident, he would tie his belt round the neck of his dog and send it home. When the others saw the dog return, they would know he was in trouble. With the trousers we wore a shirt – usually white or grey, with a straight collar and with the buttons on the right – called
kosovorotka
, ‘crooked collar'. Over the shirt we wore light jackets, grey or black, and very coarse, of military issue. The last item of our summer outfit was the legendary hat of the Siberian criminals, a kind of national symbol, known as ‘eight triangles'. It consists of eight triangular segments of cloth sewn together to form a domed cap with a button on top; it also has a short peak. The colour must always be pale, or even white. In Russia this kind of hat is called a
kepka
, and there are many varieties. ‘Eight triangles' is only the Siberian version. The real eight triangles of a bold and cunning criminal must have the peak bent well back, and rounded, not broken, so as to form a ridge in the middle. As a sign of contempt you break your enemy's peak, bending it till it goes out of shape.

My eight triangles had been a present from my uncle; it was an old hat and I liked it for that very reason.

The eight triangles was such an important hat that it generated stories and idioms. In criminal slang the phrase ‘to wear eight triangles' means to commit a crime or to participate in the organizing of criminal activities. The phrase ‘to keep eight triangles up' means to be on the alert, to be worried about some danger. ‘To put eight triangles on the back of your head' means to behave aggressively, to prepare for an attack. ‘To wear eight triangles askew' means to show calm, relaxed behaviour. ‘To tip eight triangles over your eyes' means to announce the need to disappear, to hide. ‘To fill eight triangles' means to take something in abundance.

Often I really did fill my hat, for example when we boys went to see Aunt Marta, a woman who lived alone on the river bank and was famous for her jams. We used to take her the apples we had stolen from the collective farms on the other side of the river, and help her peel them, so she could make the jam. She would bake the
pirozhki
, little biscuits she filled with jam. We would all sit in a circle on little stools in the yard in front of her house, with the kitchen door wide open, through which we could always see something boiling on the fire; we would fish the apples out of the bags, peel them with our knives and then throw them into a big pot with water in it. When it was full, we would carry it into the house, using two long planks of wood which we hooked onto the pot like handles. Aunt Marta was very fond of us. She gave us plenty to eat – we would always go home with full stomachs and with
pirozhki
in our hands. I used to put mine in my hat and eat them as I walked.

The eight-gored hat is the subject of many proverbs, poems and songs of the criminal tradition. Since I used to spend a lot of time with the old criminals, listening to them sing or recite poems, I knew many of them by heart. One song, my favourite, went like this: