Kolia Read Free

Kolia had seen the face of the man pictured in the frame in what passed for the camp newspaper. He asked Iosif who it was.
    â€œStalin,” Iosif replied.
    An exercise book and two pencils on a small table, the whistling of the wind, the muted thud of a shovel, the short muffled sounds of someone shouting in the distance. He was alone with his teacher. In theory, a guard should have been standing outside the door, but one rarely showed up. They could speak more or less freely. A respite.
    Kolia had long been ordered to speak only when he was given permission to do so; he wouldn’t pick up a pencil unless he was told. Before sitting down, he waited for someone’s authorization. He had learned to obey. When he did sit down, his back was curved and he stared at the floor. Sitting at attention was unknown to him. Iosif had noticed how the muscles at the back of Kolia’s neck tightened and popped up whenever he was tense. He had also noticed the intelligence in his eyes.
    As their classes evolved over the following year, Kolia would invariably come up with the right answer. And one morning Iosif decided that in addition to Russian, he would teach him French and the rudiments of calculus, as well as how to survive in the shithouses of the USSR.
    â€œIt’s called ‘The Code of the Zek,’ and you are going to learn it by heart.”
    He then began teaching Kolia the rules that he had lived by since arriving in Siberia, rules the boy would adopt as the tenets of his own art of war:
Eat less than your daily ration to accustom your body to hunger. Do not eat all of your bread in the morning. Keep what you don’t eat in your pocket.
Never give the extra bread to a thug or a bullyboy, but rather use it for trading. Make sure it’s you that has the advantage.
Remain inconspicuous. Only allow yourself to be noticed when you are stronger than your opponent and he is incapable of defeating you.
As soon as you are able, start reading. Read anything, even the obscenities written on a wall. If you cannot read, recite something you have heard, something that comes from outside of you. Recite the meaningless snippets of conversation you overhear.
Practise your French when you are cold or hungry. Conjugate a verb in French and repeat its declension in Russian. Always be ready to respond in either language.
Imagine Moscow or Paris or Leningrad. Create these cities from what I have told you. Smell them, touch them. Don’t forget this.
Your mind is free. Think of anything you want to.
Above all, question everything that is said to you. Practise doubt as a discipline.
    Iosif did his best to describe the world he had known extra muros . They would sit beside the coal stove when the temperature dropped and the guards were obligated to light it. They talked and wrote. Iosif recited entire poems he had committed to memory, in both Russian and French, even clumsily acting out a few passages from King Lear as best he could. He also described his own country and the French provinces with which he had some familiarity.
    Kolia learned to read and write Russian amidst the sounds of machine-gun fire, pickaxes, and the anonymous howls and shrieks coming from the other side of the wall. But even the hot-blooded language rising from his own belly was not enough to keep his fingers from turning numb in the cold. During the winter, he could tolerate his writing exercises for no more than five minutes at a time and then would place his hands over the stove to warm them. Looking out the only window, which he could barely get his head through, Kolia could see dead bodies, sometimes the bodies of men he knew. Over time, he no longer felt anything when confronted with the sight of the dead and the dying. The cold can paralyze limbs, but the death of others numbs all the senses. Kolia found himself missing his mother or at least the memory of some maternal figure, but the reality of the camp kept bringing him back to the present, to