Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

FOUR DAYS LATER, the Expert began his first experiment. Two men — Volkov and Jansons — were reassigned from another team: they spent a late afternoon assembling two tracks of rails, tying them together, embedding sturdy rope handles. I came back to the camp that night and looked over their handiwork; I was tired, hungry, crumbling. I gazed at this mess of dirty pine and brown cord and understood that it could be another sentence. There would be consequences if my experiment disappointed.

In the morning we learned that Volkov had died during the night, of starvation.

I do not believe in omens.

We went out into the day. Bigfoot was named as Volkov’s replacement. I wondered whether I had saved him or doomed him. Bigfoot and Jansons grasped the rope handles and hiked forward into the snow. The wind swept ice crystals over our faces. Unsure, skeptical, we pushed our wheelbarrows onto the planks. There was a trick to keeping them on the track, but it wasn’t a difficult trick. Before long we were moving quickly. Jansons would wait for us to leave his track and then scamper ahead of Bigfoot; then Bigfoot would wait for us to leave his track and stride ahead of Jansons. They were the only ones who talked: “All right,” they would say, when their boards were level in the snow.

We arrived at the quarry, filled our barrows with stone. The stone was as heavy as ever.

Now, with filled barrows, came the delicate moment. Nikola took a few steps and his wagon almost immediately skidded off the plank, spilling grit. We all stopped, ran over, pulled stones from the snow. Our eyes met, Nikola’s and mine. I tried to smile. I was not sure if I should be smiling.

We righted his wheelbarrow and the group moved on. We pushed our wheelbarrows at a steady pace, and Jansons and Bigfoot dashed ahead with their trailing boards, like tails. Nikola’s wheelbarrow tipped again, and the Boxer’s once, but we pressed on. We arrived at the worksite. We dumped our loads. “What time is it?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Vanya said. His mouth was covered with a scarf, as if he were a bandit. “Keep moving.”

We raised our wheelbarrows and returned to the quarry. We had almost arrived when the sun broke through the cloud and I realized where it was, how low in the sky, that this plan was working. “What time is it?” I yelled to Vanya.

“Keep moving,” he replied, sternly.

We did: to the quarry, and back; to the quarry, and back; to the quarry, and back.

It was noon. We had made four trips. We did not usually complete four trips in an entire day. Everyone was smiling. Even Nikola was smiling, squatting beside Sergey. They laughed and tossed hunks of snow. Vanya pulled his scarf from over his mouth and he was smiling. Bigfoot was standing with me and smiling and he said, “It works.”

“We’ll see. We’ll see,” I said. “It’s only been half a day.” But Jansons called over from where he was talking to two other men. “We’ve almost reached quota?!” he shouted. “They say we’ve almost reached our daily quota!” He looked around, incredulous.

“Let’s go,” Vanya said.

“Let’s go where ?”

“Lunch.”

There was a moose standing right there, off the road, on the other side of the ditch. He held his crowned head high. His expression was steady and abiding. We walked right past him, our roads crew, away from this great breathing animal and into the camp, where they gave us each a portion of broth.

AT KOLYMA, THE EXPERT lived a better life than Termen had. For eight weeks, we surpassed our daily quota. Even as the major revised and increased our production targets, we pushed across our wooden rails, exceeding expectations. Because we surpassed these quotas, each of us was classed as a Stakhanovite. We were the first to receive our rations. We received the largest portions. Eventually, other teams adopted the Expert’s runners system. I was rewarded with new clothes and an extra allotment of bread. So was Nikola, who the major accepted as co-originator of the scheme.

Junior Lieutenant Vanya Bragin received a promotion, although he remained our patrol guard.

By sharing credit with Nikola, I had won the protection of the urki. The thief knew that there had been no need to include him when I went to see the major. He interpreted my move as a gesture of respect, of deference. Like an offering. I let Bigfoot believe that it had been more desperate. Really the decision was a calculation, nothing more. An arithmetic of risk and reward, made from my hard plywood bed. Finally, in the gulag, I had learned pragmatism. Perhaps it was a gift, perhaps a taking-away.

Because of Nikola I won friends among the urki. Because of Vanya I won friends among the guards. Because so many other workers were improved by my scheme, I won friends in almost every barrack. I had friends everywhere, so many friends. “Expert!” they exclaimed, a good-natured joke, one of the rare good-natured jokes, because in Kolyma the good-natured jokes do not seem safe from the wind.

I had so many friends and these friends could not keep me warm as I pushed my wheelbarrow through the frost. They could not make me younger or stronger. I was happier for a short time but popularity was a hollow solace. You pass a man and exchange a smile, and it is worthless the moment you have stepped away, along the ice-packed path, into the next mud-smudged footprint. I lay in my bunk and watched the bugs squirming in the spruce. My friends had not banished my nightmares. “Expert!” they exclaimed, a greeting said and heard, and then their voices fell away. When you are quickly dying — which we still were, despite the extra herring — it is not thin friends, shambling, night-blind, that give you a reason to live.

Across miles of taiga, so much green and golden country, an ocean, I wondered if you were raising your arms in the air.

THE MAJOR SUMMONED ME one morning, after the prisoners had been counted. His emissary, a Cossack, sent another man to take my place. I resisted: “No, this is my brigade — this is my brigade!” So quickly I became hysterical. I did not want to be sent to the mines. I did not want to be sent to the woods. I did not want to lose my place on this lucky work crew, blessed by technology. “This is my team!” Finally, Vanya exchanged looks with the Cossack, and the Cossack nudged my replacement, and he warned him, “This is only temporary.”

I went to see the major in the office with the radio, the piece of sausage, the photograph of a little boy and his older sister.

He told me to sit down. He congratulated me on my scheme. I did not thank him but I said I was proud to have contributed to the Soviet effort in Kolyma.

At first it seemed that the major simply wanted to fine-tune the use of runners. Was an eight-man team, with two rail haulers, the best configuration? Would ten be more efficient? Twelve? Would twelve men require three sets of rails?

He asked me to review some calculations. His maths were all right. “Ten men,” I agreed, “and two haulers.”

The major stretched back in his chair. “You studied at Petrograd University?”

“That’s right.”

“Mathematics?”

“Physics. And also music theory, at the conservatory.”

He nodded. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“Did you attend university?” I asked.

“Horticulture,” the major said.

“Plants?”

“Gardens.”

“This is not much of a garden,” I said. He observed me, unmoving.