Read Online One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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hadn't got far.
Come to think of it, a snowstorm was no use to anyone. The prisoners sat locked in; the coal was delivered late and all the warmth was blown out of the barracks. Flour didn't reach the camp, so there was no bread; and more often than not there was no hot food either. And as long as the storm lasted--three days, four days, even a week--those days were counted as holidays and had to be made up for by work on Sunday.
All the same, the prisoners loved snowstorms and prayed for them. Whenever the wind rose a little, every face was turned up to the sky. Let the stuff come! The more the merrier.
Snow, they meant. With only a ground wind, it never really got going.
Someone edged up to the stove of the 38th, only to be ousted.
Just then Tiurin walked in. He looked gloomy. His squad understood that there was something to be done, and quickly.
"H'm," said Tiurin, looking around. "All present, hundred and fourth?"
He didn't verify or count them because none of Tiurin's men could have gone anywhere. Without wasting time he gave his men their assignments. The two Estonians, Senka, and Gopchik were sent to pick up a big wooden box for mixing mortar nearby and carry it to the power station. They all immediately knew that they were being transferred to the half-completed building where work had been halted in late autumn. The other men were sent with Pavlo to get tools. Four were ordered to shovel snow near the power station and the entrance to the machine room, and inside and on the ramps; A couple of men were sent to light the stove in the machine room, using coal and such lumber as they could swipe and chop up. Another was to drag cement there on a sled. Two were sent to fetch water, two for sand, and yet another to sweep the snow off the sand and break it up with a crowbar.
The only two left without assignments were Shukhov and Kilgas, the leading workers of the squad. Calling them over, Tiurin said:
"Well, look here, boys--" he was no older than they were but he had the habit of addressing them like that--"after dinner you'll be laying cement blocks on the second-story walls, over there where the sixth stopped work last autumn. Now we have to figure how to make the machine room warmer. It has three big windows and the first thing to do is to board them up somehow. I'll give you people to help, but you must figure out what to board them up with. We're going to use the machine room for mixing the mortar, and for warming ourselves too. Unless we keep warm we'll freeze like dogs, understand?"
He'd have said more, maybe, but up came Gopchik, a Ukrainian lad, pink as a suckling pig, to complain that the other squad wouldn't give them the box. There was a scrap going on over it. So off went Tiurin.
Difficult as it was to start working in such cold, the important thing was to get going.
Shukhov and Kilgas exchanged looks. They'd worked as a team more than once as carpenter and mason, and had come to respect one another.
It was no easy matter to find something to board up those windows with in the bare expanse of snow. But Kilgas said: "Vanya, I know a little place over there where those prefabs are going up, with a fine roil of roofing felt. I put it aside with my own hands. Let's go and scrounge it."
Kilgas was a Lett but he spoke Russian like a native. There'd been a settlement of Old Believers near his village and he'd learned Russian from childhood. He'd been in the camp only two years but already he understood everything: if you don't use your teeth you get nothing. His name was Johann and Shukhov called him Vanya..
They decided to go for the roll, but first Shukhov ran over to where a new wing of the repair shops was under construction. He had to get his trowel. For a mason a trowel is a serious matter--if it's light and easy to handle. But there was a rule that wherever you worked you had to turn in every evening the tools you'd been issued that morning; and which tool you got the next day was
Come to think of it, a snowstorm was no use to anyone. The prisoners sat locked in; the coal was delivered late and all the warmth was blown out of the barracks. Flour didn't reach the camp, so there was no bread; and more often than not there was no hot food either. And as long as the storm lasted--three days, four days, even a week--those days were counted as holidays and had to be made up for by work on Sunday.
All the same, the prisoners loved snowstorms and prayed for them. Whenever the wind rose a little, every face was turned up to the sky. Let the stuff come! The more the merrier.
Snow, they meant. With only a ground wind, it never really got going.
Someone edged up to the stove of the 38th, only to be ousted.
Just then Tiurin walked in. He looked gloomy. His squad understood that there was something to be done, and quickly.
"H'm," said Tiurin, looking around. "All present, hundred and fourth?"
He didn't verify or count them because none of Tiurin's men could have gone anywhere. Without wasting time he gave his men their assignments. The two Estonians, Senka, and Gopchik were sent to pick up a big wooden box for mixing mortar nearby and carry it to the power station. They all immediately knew that they were being transferred to the half-completed building where work had been halted in late autumn. The other men were sent with Pavlo to get tools. Four were ordered to shovel snow near the power station and the entrance to the machine room, and inside and on the ramps; A couple of men were sent to light the stove in the machine room, using coal and such lumber as they could swipe and chop up. Another was to drag cement there on a sled. Two were sent to fetch water, two for sand, and yet another to sweep the snow off the sand and break it up with a crowbar.
The only two left without assignments were Shukhov and Kilgas, the leading workers of the squad. Calling them over, Tiurin said:
"Well, look here, boys--" he was no older than they were but he had the habit of addressing them like that--"after dinner you'll be laying cement blocks on the second-story walls, over there where the sixth stopped work last autumn. Now we have to figure how to make the machine room warmer. It has three big windows and the first thing to do is to board them up somehow. I'll give you people to help, but you must figure out what to board them up with. We're going to use the machine room for mixing the mortar, and for warming ourselves too. Unless we keep warm we'll freeze like dogs, understand?"
He'd have said more, maybe, but up came Gopchik, a Ukrainian lad, pink as a suckling pig, to complain that the other squad wouldn't give them the box. There was a scrap going on over it. So off went Tiurin.
Difficult as it was to start working in such cold, the important thing was to get going.
Shukhov and Kilgas exchanged looks. They'd worked as a team more than once as carpenter and mason, and had come to respect one another.
It was no easy matter to find something to board up those windows with in the bare expanse of snow. But Kilgas said: "Vanya, I know a little place over there where those prefabs are going up, with a fine roil of roofing felt. I put it aside with my own hands. Let's go and scrounge it."
Kilgas was a Lett but he spoke Russian like a native. There'd been a settlement of Old Believers near his village and he'd learned Russian from childhood. He'd been in the camp only two years but already he understood everything: if you don't use your teeth you get nothing. His name was Johann and Shukhov called him Vanya..
They decided to go for the roll, but first Shukhov ran over to where a new wing of the repair shops was under construction. He had to get his trowel. For a mason a trowel is a serious matter--if it's light and easy to handle. But there was a rule that wherever you worked you had to turn in every evening the tools you'd been issued that morning; and which tool you got the next day was
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