Kolia Read Free Page B

MAN
    IOSIF DISAPPEARED A FEW months before Stalin’s death. In the camp, death was always the logical conclusion. But Kolia, who was in the habit of keeping his thoughts to himself, could not accept the terse official version. It had already been presented to him to explain the disappearance of his mother.
    He approached a man he had seen several times in the company of Iosif. The next day, the man handed Kolia a large envelope and asked him to hide it — if he didn’t, they could both end up with problems.
    â€œWhat kind of problems?”
    The man didn’t answer. He shut his eyes tightly and a frown line formed between his eyebrows. When he opened them again, Kolia understood. He asked where Iosif was, but the man told him to hold his tongue, which was exactly what Kolia did most of the time. He patted Kolia on the shoulder and then walked back towards the administration building.
    Stalin died in March 1953. Kruschev would be named First Secretary of the Communist Party in September. Amnesties were granted and Kolia found himself among one of the first groups of liberated prisoners. The new men that Stalin had wished to create emerged haggard and haunted. Kolia left the K Mountains at the beginning of autumn. He took with him his threadbare blanket, his louse-infested underwear, a pair of woollen pants that left red blotches on his calves and thighs, one shirt, a padded jacket full of holes, a hat, gloves, and the envelope containing Iosif’s papers along with his own. He also took a few rubles he had earned working. He was dropped off in Magadan — it could have been the middle of the jungle.
    The coastal town of Magadan had been built almost entirely by convict labour. On the road that stretched between the camp and the town — a road whose innards concealed the bones of prisoners crushed to a fine powder — another man who had received a pardon began to wish aloud about taking the train back to Moscow, his native city.
    â€œMy son is twenty-five now; my wife, forty-five. She was beautiful. And she’s still beautiful, I’m sure of it — her mother was beautiful at that age.”
    Kolia had stuck closely to this man for the entire journey, from the K Mountains to Magadan.
    â€œIf I could, I would follow you all the way to Moscow, Alyosha.”
    â€œWell, come with me!” said the man. “Ask for a visa here. My wife makes the best soup. My God, the taste of that soup!”
    â€œBut are you sure you have everything you need to return home?”
    â€œYes, yes, of course,” said the old man brandishing his papers, “I have everything, everything’s in order. As soon as I step foot inside my bedroom, I’m going to close the door, barricade it with a chair, and stuff my head between my wife’s breasts! Her name is Anna.”
    He flashed a toothless smile at Kolia. He did in fact have one tooth left: a dubious grey molar that the tip of his thick tongue kept seeking out and whose shocking singularity aged him by a good twenty years; according to his documents, he was fifty. Everyone who left the camps returned much older.
    After presenting himself to the authorities, Kolia decided to make the journey across Siberia as Alyosha had suggested — by train. This raised some eyebrows and provoked a few belly laughs before he was told that it was impossible. He was given authorization to take up residence in Khabarovsk, where the Amour and Oussouri rivers converge, less than fifty kilometres away from the border with China.
    He arrived in Khabarovsk after a voyage that navigated the coasts of both the Okhotsk and Japan seas. When he stepped off the train, he was immediately struck by the symmetry of the architecture, the grey apartment buildings, the contour of the three hills on which the town had been built. One of the banks of the Amour River boasted sandy beaches, but Kolia couldn’t imagine baring his body in public to go swimming. The