Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

He remembered that morning back in Kolyma, recuperating in Kapto’s clinic when his bed had shaken abruptly. He’d opened his eyes to find a man with a heavily tattooed face and head – a green bullseye encircling his skull and making his cranium look like some sort of instrument – standing over him. ‘Get up,’ said the man, clearly a Criminal. ‘The Boss is waiting for his first lesson.’

The blizzard, perhaps the last of winter, ripped into the Camp with such blasting force that Benya, wrapped up in a felt hood, padded coat and felt boots, and trying to follow the Criminal along the walkways, had to hold on to the ropes to find his way. The Criminal, shrouded in furs, walked stiffly with his legs and arms straight like a mechanized Golem. The wind drove the snow at such a slant that it tore into his hood and almost blinded him and the temperature was something extreme, minus thirty or more.

Benya just thanked God and Dr Kapto that he was not working that day: he knew his brigade, which would have been up at the mine since 4 a.m., would lose men today. His guide disappeared inside the barracks next to the dining block, and Benya followed him.

Once inside, he was amazed by the light and the warmth. This barracks was quite unlike any of the others. The men who slept in these wooden bunks were lucky: this was the best-kept dormitory in the Camp. It still stank of sweat and bodies and disinfectant but also something resinous and heavenly. Perhaps it was the smoke of a woodburner mixed with stale, overcooked vegetables – what luxury! Most of the bunks were empty as the brigades were working but as he followed the Criminal up the central aisle, he saw the brazier up ahead and it got warmer as he approached.

‘Here he is! That’s him. The storyteller,’ said Smiley, looking at him with his red eyes beneath his slightly pointed brow. Benya had guessed that ‘the Boss’ would be Smiley but he was wrong.

‘Benya Golden? Is it really you?’ said a much older man, who was sitting in reindeer fur boots, military britches and no shirt, in a half-gutted leather chair, right next to the brazier. The accent was Georgian, more particularly Svanetian, the remotest and most ungovernable province of Georgia. He was holding a dumb-bell and doing curls with one bicep while a girl, a young nurse from the clinic, was rolling a bandage around his shoulder. ‘I strained it,’ he said. ‘It happens at my age.’

He handed the dumb-bell to Smiley who bore it away into the shadows as if he was solemnly carrying the scrolls of the Torah through synagogue. The girl finished her bandaging.

‘All right, Bunny, go,’ the older man said. The nurse, Nyushka, had a soft, bruised Russian beauty, and Benya noticed her feathery auburn hair, tied loosely back, and her peachy skin. But such beauty was a curse in here, and he realized she must need a strong protector in order to survive.

The muscular older man turned his attention to Benya. ‘I’ve read everything you ever wrote. I have a proposal for you.’

Benya was so surprised that he didn’t reply.

‘Hey, Deathless, give him a pew,’ said the older man to the thug who had escorted Benya to the barracks. Deathless, who moved as if wrapped in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, pulled up a chair and Benya sat down. A pot of soup bubbled behind them.

‘Cigarette?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Smiley, roll him a makhorka , will you? He still looks frail. Mamekta, give him some soup.’ Smiley lit his cigarette; a tiny ratty boy with oversized lips, was stirring the soup. He ladled out a bowlful and gave it to Benya, who gulped it from the bowl without a moment’s hesitation, licking it clean.

‘Better?’ said the Boss. ‘Now… do you know who I am?’

Benya spluttered at the pungent tobacco but the cigarette, expertly wrapped in Pravda newspaper, warmed him as did a tot of vodka. He had an idea who this was but he was not foolish enough to risk a guess.

‘I am Jaba,’ said the Georgian, leaning forward to examine Benya closely. He was perhaps the only prisoner in the entire Camp who had hair, grey, thick and spiky, and it was clear that even here, somehow, he was clean and groomed. His Roman good looks were only spoiled by the tattoo that lapped up his neck like a sinister tide. His bare shoulders were inked with eagles’ wings, his nipples eyes within stars, shoulder blades bleeding crucifixes on which a nude woman was nailed, a voluptuous female Jesus complete with stigmata. On Jaba’s stomach, which was muscled and creased like that of a retired boxer, a tumescent penis thrust towards his sternum emblazoned with the words RUSSIAN GIRLS WORSHIP MY GEORGIAN COCK.

‘You have heard of me,’ Jaba stated as if checking an unimpeachable truth.

‘Yes I have, of course.’ Benya knew that Jaba Leonadze was one of the leading Criminals of the Kolyma Zone, a Mafia boss, a Brigand-in-Power who was entrusted by the Commandant to make the mines achieve their quotas.

Jaba beamed at this. ‘Most people have. As for you, Smiley told me how you entertained him with your stories all the way across the Sea of Okhotsk and I’ve read your Spanish Stories . Am I a surprise for an old bandit?’

Benya admitted he was indeed a surprising bandit.

‘You see, Golden, life is like a plate of lobio beans. I missed school but now I want to write. You will teach me to write like Shakespeare, Pushkin, Balzac. Every day for an hour. And then there’s something else. Prishchepa!’

A young man, blue-eyed and baby-faced and startlingly pretty, appeared from the back of the barracks, where he had apparently been manning a kettle, bearing a pile of papers which he handed to Jaba.

‘Can you guess what this is, Benya? It’s my play, based on my life. Entitled Bank Robbery ’37 .’ Benya knew that Jaba’s most outrageous exploit had been his Kharkov bank robbery in 1937. As Stalin purged the Communist Party, this bank robber had dared to defy him and steal his money. That was courage! He pulled off three or four of these heists, stealing the entire payroll of bureaucrats in Tashkent, Odessa, Baku. For years, he’d lived in luxury, bribing the militsia to turn a blind eye – until a shootout at the State Bank in Kharkov when he’d been captured. ‘Ah, Benya, I put my heart into this work.’

Benya took the manuscript, noting that the script was typed. One of the Commandant’s typists in the office must have typed it up, he thought. Jaba’s influence was usually defined in violence and the availability of food but this typed play was a rare demonstration of pure power.

‘You are to read it and criticize it.’ Jaba took a shirt from Mametka and pulled it on, doing up the buttons as he gave Benya his orders. ‘Didn’t Gorky read your stories? Well, you’re going to be my Gorky. In return, you get to work in the clinic and when we get out of this hell and back to Magadan, you’ll come with me. Now, don’t be afraid to tell me the truth; I can take criticism. You see, professor, it’s a masterpiece and no one but me could have written it. Now, do we have a deal?’

‘Horseman approaching!’ Spider Garanzha called out quietly. They grabbed their guns while Zhurko looked through his fieldglasses. ‘At ease. That’s the Cat. Koshka’s back.’

‘I thought he—’ started Little Mametka.

‘Perhaps the Germans didn’t want him,’ said Benya. The Cossacks snickered at this.

‘The Germans always say: Can we swap our Romanians for your Uzbeks?’ Little Mametka agreed.

‘Shall we question him?’ asked Garanzha.

Zhurko raised a hand. ‘Gently does it. We are now only seven, eight with Koshka. We don’t have the luxury to launch a witch-hunt. No, we welcome him and watch him.’