Katherine Brabon - The Memory Artist

We did not know where they were, who was buried with whom. And yet we lived among them, the unfound dead. As though those lost were all in the room, just outside our range of sight.

A figure appeared on the water, waking me out of my thoughts.

Ah, here they are, our guide and our boat, said Oleg after a long moment. Vasily’s figure swayed with the water’s rhythm, his features creased, wrinkled against the wind and glare, as if he had emerged through a night of storms. The birch trees, pushed about in the breeze, danced with their peculiar rigid wave.

We stayed on the island for three weeks. Oleg said it was unheard of for visitors to stay so long on Solovetsky. But Vasily agreed to have us if we laid low. Our presence there wasn’t exactly illegal, but since we weren’t part of any organised tourist visit or religious pilgrimage, our position was a little uncertain.

I’d never been so removed from a city before. Aside from mushroom-picking trips and forest picnics near Moscow, I didn’t have a regular connection to such quiet, deserted places.

Every morning I walked alone. I loved the strangeness of the weather, how the heat could bend to sudden freezing winds, summer forever laced with winter. I loved the clarity of noise, the wind’s shuddering hands at my ears, the graze of rock scrapes on footpaths. I loved the green, salty breeze, the sun filtered by scattered-feather clouds. At night the sun would dip slightly and coat everything in amber.

We did things I’d never done before: we fished, and ate the fish fried in butter, chased with vodka. Sometimes we’d head out with Vasily in his small white truck, sitting on the back tray while he went around doing odd jobs. We picked mushrooms and berries and ate them in the evenings. We chopped and stacked wood—summer was barely a day long, so Vasily told us with his rare, enormous laugh. I swam in the sea. I walked more and more, sweated lots, felt something vital in sensing the salty beads rising from me, dampening my shirt then evaporating in the sun, dissolving back into me.

I went to the nearby islands a couple of times and walked in the heavy silence of the small churches there. The odd bird rested to watch me, but it was otherwise quiet. I carried my camera, took photos. More than anything I wanted to capture the faces of the painted frescoes before they vanished for good. And I wanted to preserve those traces of brick, wire, wood, steel. Sometimes I put my hand on something, a fence or wall, while photographing it, or aimed the camera at my shoes on the stones, as if also seeking evidence of my own presence there, to record my witnessing of those places.

Vasily would sometimes light small bonfires near the water—Just a match and a few shots! he’d yell, triumphant, throwing on vodka and wood. Every sound soared in echo. Oleg would tend the fire, throwing on some smaller kindling, chatting to Vasily. I’d stand by the water, just watching. The sea grabbed at the firelight, sending it back to the shore in burnished waves, rolling blue, amber, blue. Sometimes I had my notebook out and wrote a few impressions of the place.

Vasily was calling me. His face glowed orange from the fire or the falling sun.

Enough with the vodka poetry, Pasha boy, come and eat. We would sit around talking, drinking, long into the night. A few times, Vasily told us about his family, his life there on Solovetsky. Almost every resident there was descended from either prisoner or guard, all now living together.

You probably wonder why I stay out here, in nowhere, he said. This is real, out here. Close to nature, close to animals. We are more animal than you think. Books and smarts and cities, civilisation , they’re just clothes—he pulled roughly at his checked shirt—you can strip ’em off a man or woman in a moment. None of this human-spirit stuff—don’t give me none of that. This place knows—he swept an arm over the island—you can build over your cities and forget, but these stones, they know.

He poured us all another shot.

I think I’m talking shit, said Vasily, throwing back his drink, laughing once. Let’s go.

We left, Oleg and Vasily walking in front of me, the sun gold.

On our final night on Solovetsky, the skies remained low and cloudy. Oleg and I took a last walk, then made our way back to Vasily’s through the island’s small township. A faint night-time presence touched the light, a sudden change from the bright sun of other evenings. The wind picked up, causing drifts of mist to gather speed with a sudden, unnatural pace like grey, spectral traces flying through the air. The Solovetsky settlement, made up of large wooden buildings painted blue, seemed almost always empty. It was almost as though nobody lived there at all. Three goats nuzzled the ground, then turned their heads, their thick horns tilted upwards in the gathering breeze.

A little way ahead, a procession of cloaked figures left one of the pale blue buildings. Monks, dressed from head to foot in black garments, which made them appear uncannily tall. With bowed heads they moved with slow grace up a small hill. We paused to watch them. I heard or imagined a Gregorian chant travelling to us on the wind. After a long moment, when the monks had disappeared from view, Oleg said they were likely visiting the island to secure their return to Solovetsky and the resurrection of the monastery their forebears had established centuries before.

We went back to Vasily’s and had a simple meal there. We were both pretty exhausted. We shuffled things around in our bags for a while, folding maps and finding pages long crushed, extracting stray cigarettes. I found the lens cap for my camera and a hat I’d forgotten was there. I was glad to be going back to Moscow, to Anya. I had so many things I wanted to say and write. I felt like I needed to be near her infectious inner drive, a reminder of desire, of what I wanted to create.

Oleg sat at the end of the bed and leafed through a book. I sat down beside him.

Shalamov, said Oleg. As I was saying the other day, Shalamov was an answer to my need to know what had happened to my father. My father sat in a Kolyma camp, just as Shalamov did. When I moved to Moscow as a young man, I became fixated on the camps, on learning as much about Kolyma as possible. It was at this same time that I met others investigating the past, and when I met Marya. Friends were working to expose hidden information about those still in camps. It was an exhilarating period. I felt we were all working to break knowledge itself out of cell and chain.

I found a map of the camp archipelago, said Oleg, saw Kolyma located in the far east. I soon learnt that, in truth, the name Kolyma stood for something in the range of one hundred and sixty camps. One name for all that trembled and suffered beneath it. When one word is supposed to mean so much, there’s no real understanding of what it means.

Like Shklovsky’s philosophy, I said. He criticises lazy perception, when someone uses a word or phrase without question, and so they no longer really see what it is they are talking about. We don’t comprehend the object, merely its silhouette .

Exactly, said Oleg. It’s just as Shklovsky says. And as I’m sure you know, Pasha, dear Shklovsky had to flee the country after he let loose those heretic thoughts. Oleg smiled, his wrinkles deepened.

He became an enemy of the people, I said. Another label that doesn’t say much.

Everything and nothing, he agreed, nodding. The beauty and terror of a word. If it becomes powerful enough, we unquestioningly accept labels at the expense of being guided by deeds—which of course requires greater efforts of perception.