Caroline Walton - Smashed in the USSR

“‘Sure,’ I said, ‘how?’

“‘Take a suitcase to Frunze. We’ll give you your ticket and the key to a locker in the station. There’ll be 1,000 roubles inside.’

“Of course I had a pretty good idea what was in the case but I asked no questions. I hoped that the money would help me clean up and go back home to my wife. The man bought me a new suit of clothes and took me to the barbers. I reached Frunze without being stopped by the police. When I opened the locker I found only 200 roubles and a kilo of opium. I thought I could at least try to sell the opium, so I left the suitcase in the locker and walked out of the station. The police were waiting for me around the corner and I got eight years. The mafia have to throw them a fish now and again.

“It would’ve been worse for me if I’d held on to the suitcase. I didn’t know then that the courier is always tailed, like in a spy story. There’s a lot of money at stake. If a courier runs off he’s followed onto a train and when he goes out to the open platform for a smoke he’s pushed off. The blind Chechen in hut number four had his eyes gouged out. He tried to double-cross the mafia. After they’d finished with him they handed him over to the police.”

Listening to Lazarev I realise I could easily have been tricked in the same way. In Baku I agreed to carry walnuts onto the ship without looking inside the cases. I took tomatoes from Margilan to Tashkent for the price of a ticket. I’ll be less naive in future.

Inside the camp the unfortunate Lazarev became addicted to opium. He needs two balls each day, but he can never earn enough on the sewing-machines to buy them. In his spare time he makes syringes from small glass tubes taken from light-bulbs. The plunger is a wooden stick and the stopper made of rubber cut from the soles of his boots. He buys needles from craftsmen who make them from tin cans in the metal workshop. Syringes are scarce in the camp and Lazarev is in demand. Several times a day an addict comes up to him to prepare a fix. First they put a ball of opium in an empty penicillin container, fill it with water and boil the mixture over a burning wick. When the opium dissolves the needle is inserted and the solution sucked up into the syringe. As the drug is mixed with coffee, clay and all sorts of impurities it is filtered through a piece of cotton wool. Lazarev collects the cotton-wool filters, boils them up and injects himself, weeping in frustration as he stabs the needle into his ruined veins.

Conditions in the camp are so filthy that drug users drop like flies. Addicts share needles with syphilitics and TB sufferers. A night never passes without some deaths. In one night eighteen prisoners die from injecting adulterated drugs. The supplier is never discovered but we all know that the tragedy occurred because the dealer was in debt. Addicts know the risks they run but almost no one comes off the needle.

The most powerful zeks always find out in advance when the son of a Party family is coming in. They wait eagerly for the young innocent, ready to envelop him with care and attention. When he arrives they ply him with tobacco and tea and allow him to win at cards. They stage situations where he is threatened by thugs so that they can step in and save him. They fill him with drugs until he’s convinced of his invulnerability. Then everything comes crashing down around his ears. He loses heavily at cards and his comrades insist he pays up. He writes home pleading for money to be sent in. As long as he can pay he survives. When they have wrung all they can from their victim the criminals leave him without drugs or protection, and he’s lucky if they don’t rape him into the bargain.

The Ashkhabad Godfather needs neither the SVP nor stool-pigeons. When he wants information he puts two or three of the more powerful addicts in the isolator and keeps strict watch to make sure no drugs get in. In two days he knows everything. As long as the Godfather knows who’s dealing no one is touched. The authorities get their bribes and everything is under control. As soon as anyone steps out of line they are punished. This happens, for example, when someone tries to do a bit of dealing on the quiet and doesn’t give a percentage to the guards.

“I want nothing more to do with drug addicts,” I tell Death Number Two. “I’ve seen enough of them in here.”

The addicts act as though they’ve discovered some divine secret beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, as though drugs have opened their eyes and shown everything in its true light. Yet in fact they are even more degraded than us alcoholics. They are capable of any treachery to get hold of their ball of opium.

I am not trying to justify alcoholism. I know men who have drunk away their families, their homes and their jobs. I see one of them in the mirror every time I shave. But a drug addict would sell his mother and introduce his sister to the needle so that she has to prostitute herself to buy drugs. The difference between us is that an alkie who sells his last shirt for a bottle wouldn’t hesitate to give a glass to a friend; a drug addict would never do the same. Alkies can leave a bottle in someone’s care for a while, knowing it won’t be touched. No addict would let even his best friend look after his drugs. They hide their stuff away and begrudge their friends even a tiny piece. In the camp they grow their nails long, hoping to get an extra scraping themselves, all the while eyeing their friends’ nails with suspicion. No, there can be no comradeship among addicts, whereas an alcoholic will always find someone at the beer-stall to tie his belt to his glass for him, to steady his hand, or tip the glass to his trembling lips.

If I’m honest I have to admit my first prison sentence was due to my pill habit, but I don’t consider myself a drug addict. My passion for alcohol is enough. I would have to take up crime to be able to afford drugs and I’m not capable of that. Vodka, on the other hand, is always around, it’s cheap, and if the worst comes to the worst I can go without it.

Many alcoholic zeks drink ‘chimirgess’ which is distilled in the joinery shop from enamel paint. They mix it with water and then strain it to obtain a clear liquid. Anyone who drinks it goes completely off his head but if he’s taken to hospital and breathalysed there’ll be no reaction at all. In fact there’s not a drop of alcohol in chimirgess, and so I’m not attracted to it.

There’s a Gypsy in our work brigade called Pashka Ogli. He’s so skinny we call him ‘Death Number One.’ Pashka is not like the other Gypsies who are proud and keep to themselves. Everyone laughs at Pashka for his strange ways. Hearing that once upon a time aristocrats used to drink champagne from ladies’ slippers, he fills one of his stinking boots with chimirgess and drinks it down. “As pure as tears,” he sighs and collapses in a corner.

Pashka stands by my machine, turning gloves inside out so I can sew them more quickly. He never meets his own quota but I pay him for helping me.

“Vanya,” he remarks one day. “You know they watch us all the time in here. They even check the books we borrow from the library.”

“Don’t be stupid. Maybe in some political prisons but not in ours. They’re not interested.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He shows me volume 18 of Lenin’s Collected Works , which he has tucked into his waistband. When an officer comes into view Pashka opens his Lenin. Taking a pencil from behind his ear he starts to underline and make exclamation marks in the margins. He buttonholes the officer and plies him with idiotic questions on Marxist-Leninism. Soon even the camp’s political instructor is giving Death Number One a wide berth. Everyone thinks Pashka an idiot, but I am not so sure.