Читать книгу December - James Steel, James Steel - Страница 9

The authoritarian side of the soul of Russia was making itself felt to Roman Raskolnikov that same evening.

He lay on his bunk in Barrack 9 and looked at the ceiling. He was at the top of the stack of four beds, shoved right under the planks. He slept there so that no one could get at him during the night—it was not unheard of for prisoners to be found with their throats slit in the morning. Two politicals who supported him and Big Danni slept in the three bunks below him to act as protection.

It was the half-hour after dinner when the men were allowed a few dingy electric lights so that they could get ready for bed and do their chores: darning socks and bartering for cigarettes with favours of one kind and another. He could hear the hundred other men in the hut moving around, muttering and cursing. They were only allowed a bath once a week and the place had the reek of old sweat.

He knew he should be using his time wisely—repairing boots and clothes, chatting to find out useful information, filing down a small knife to use or sell—but he was just too exhausted after his day dragging logs in the forest. The sinews in his shoulders and forearms felt like they had been pulled out of him.

His sawdust mattress was thin and conformed to his hipbone so that it rested on the hard wooden bed boards. He lay still, staring at the cobwebs of hoar frost in the corner of the roof. It was below freezing in the hut and he slept fully clothed with his feet stuffed into the arms of his jacket and his head under an old blanket.

That had been his 868th day in the camp and he was still alive, so he had something to be grateful for. The slack-mouthed rapist, Getmanov, had watched him closely during the day but hadn’t gone anywhere near him and none of the guards had beaten him up as they sometimes did when the mood took them. So, overall, it had been a good day.

There were only 4,607 more to go.