Siberian Education Read online

  Once Hedgehog had been surrounded by the police, with five other criminals. There was no way out – all the members of his gang were of the old Siberian faith, and so would never let themselves be taken alive. They would fight on till victory or death. Feeling sorry for him, since he was so young, his companions had suggested that he slip away, offering him a certain escape route, but he, out of respect for them, had refused. They were sure they were all going to be killed – the police siege was unrelenting – but then Hedgehog had done something crafty. He had hidden his submachine gun behind his back, and with cries of fear had run out towards the police, begging them to help him, as if he were just a victim who had nothing to do with the confrontation between the criminals and the police. The cops had let him pass round behind their backs, and as soon as he got there he had pulled out his gun and mown them down. Thanks to his quick thinking the old men had been saved, and Hedgehog had become a regular member of their gang, with all the rights of an adult criminal. To us kids he was an inspiration: a teenager who is accepted as an equal among adults is a very rare phenomenon.

  Later, when he was about thirty, Hedgehog had been sent to prison after attempting to murder a policeman. There had been no proof or witnesses, but he had been convicted on the lesser charge of ‘participation in a criminal group’; all that was needed to secure a conviction in this case was a couple of guns confiscated from his home and a few previous offences. By agreement with the police, the judge could hand down a sentence of as much as twenty-five years, with additional punitive conditions. Justice in the USSR was far from blind; in fact, at times it seemed to be examining us all through a microscope.

  My uncle was a friend of Hedgehog’s; in prison they had been members of the same ‘family’: since my uncle had been released earlier than him, one day he had gone to the home of old Tayga, who by now was close to death, bearing the good wishes of his adopted grandson. Before he died Tayga had blessed my uncle and told him that the first male child to be born in our family must bear the name of my great-grandfather, Nikolay, who had been his friend in his youth, and then had been shot by the police at the age of twenty-seven. The first male child to be born, five years later, was me.

  Uncle Vitaly and I went on foot; it wasn’t far – only half an hour’s walk. Hedgehog had no home of his own; he was staying with an old criminal called ‘Stew’, who lived on the outskirts of our district, near the fields where the river made a wide bend and disappeared into the woods.

  The gate was open. It was summer, and very hot; Stew and Hedgehog were sitting in the front yard, under a pergola of vines which provided pleasant shade. They were drinking kvas, a thirst-quenching drink made from black bread and yeast. The odour of kvas was very strong; you could smell it at once, on the still, warm air.

  As soon as we entered, Hedgehog got up from his chair and hurried to meet my uncle: they embraced and kissed each other three times on the cheeks, as is the custom in our country.

  ‘Well, you old wolf, can you still bite? Haven’t the screws broken all your teeth?’ Hedgehog asked, as if it were my uncle who had just been released from jail, not him.

  But I knew why he had said it. My uncle had had a very nasty experience during his last year in prison. He had attacked a guard over a question of honour, to defend an old criminal who had been beaten up by a cop, and the guards had taken their revenge with some cruel tortures: they had given him a long, severe beating, then drenched him with water and left him out in the open all night in the middle of winter. He had fallen ill. Fortunately he had survived, but his health had been permanently damaged – he had chronic asthma and one of his lungs was rotting away. My grandfather always used to joke that he had only retrieved half of his son from prison: the other half had stayed inside to rot forever.

  ‘You’re not so young yourself! What an ugly old sod you’ve turned out to be! Whatever happened to the best years of your life?’ my uncle had replied, looking at him affectionately. It was clear the two men were good friends.

  ‘Who’s this young rascal? He’s not Yuri’s son, is he?’ Hedgehog stared at me with a crooked smile.

  ‘Yes, this is my nephew. We called him Nikolay, according to the wishes of old Tayga, may the earth lie as light as a feather upon him…’

  Hedgehog bent over me, his face in front of mine. He looked closely into my eyes, and I looked at him. His eyes were very pale, almost white, with a faint trace of blue; they didn’t seem human. They fascinated me, and I kept staring at them as if they might change colour at any moment.

  Then Hedgehog put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair, and I smiled at him as if he were a member of my family.

  ‘He’s going to be a killer, this one. He’s a true member of our race, may the Lord help him.’

  ‘He’s a clever lad…’ said my uncle, with a strong note of pride in his voice. ‘Kolima, boy, recite the poem about the drowned man to Uncle Hedgehog and Uncle Stew!’

  It was Uncle Vitaly’s favourite poem. Whenever he got drunk and wanted to go out and kill some cops, my grandparents, in order to stop him, would send me to recite that poem to him, as a kind of therapy. I would start to recite, and he would at once calm down, saying:

  ‘All right, never mind, I’ll kill those bastards tomorrow. Let’s hear it again…’ So I would recite the poem over and over again, till he fell asleep. Only then did my grandparents come into the room and take away his gun.

  It was a poem by the legendary Pushkin. It’s about a poor fisherman who finds the body of a drowned man caught in his nets. For fear of the consequences he throws the body back into the water, but the ghost of the drowned man starts visiting him every night. Until his body is buried in the ground below a cross, his spirit will never be able to rest in peace.

  It was a wonderful story, but also a terrifying one. I don’t know why my uncle liked it so much.

  I wasn’t shy about reciting poems in front of others, in fact I enjoyed it; it made me feel important, the centre of attention. So I filled my lungs and began to speak, trying to sound as impressive as possible, varying my tone and emphasizing my words with gestures:

  ‘The children came into the house, and hurriedly called their father: “Father, Father! Our nets have caught a dead man!” “What are you talking about, you little devils?” replied the father. “Oh, these children! I’ll give you “dead man”… Wife, give me my coat, I’m going to see. Well, where is this dead man?” “There he is, Father!” And sure enough, there on the river bank, where the net had been laid out to dry, there was a corpse on the sand: a horrible, disfigured body, bluish and bloated…’

  When I had finished, they applauded me. My uncle was the most delighted of all; he stroked my head, saying:

  ‘What did I tell you? He’s a genius.’

  Old Stew asked us to sit down at the table under the pergola and went to fetch two glasses for us.

  Hedgehog asked me:

  ‘Tell me, Kolima, have you got a pike?’

  At the word ‘pike’ my eyes started shining and I became as attentive as a tiger out hunting – I had never owned a pike, nor had any of my friends. Boys usually get one later, when they’re ten or twelve years old.

  The pike, as the traditional weapon of the Siberian criminals is called, is a flick-knife with a long, thin blade, and is connected with many old customs and ceremonies of our community.

  A pike cannot be bought. It has to be earned.

  Any young criminal can be given a pike by an adult criminal, as long as he is not a relative. Once it has been given, the pike becomes a kind of personal cult symbol, like the cross in the Christian community.

  The pike also has magic powers, lots of them.

  When someone is ill, and especially when he is suffering extreme pain, they put an open pike under his mattress, with the blade sticking out, so that, according to the beliefs, the blade cuts the pain and absorbs it like a sponge. What’s more, when an enemy is struck by that blade, the pain collected inside it flows out into the wou
nd, making him suffer even more.

  The umbilical cord of newborn babies is cut with a pike, which must first have been left open overnight in a place where cats sleep.

  To seal important pacts between two people – truces, friendships or brotherhoods – both criminals cut their hands with the same pike, which is then kept by a third person, who is a kind of witness to their pact: if either of them betrays the agreement he will be killed with that knife.

  When a criminal dies, his pike is broken by one of his friends. One part, the blade, is put in his grave, usually under the dead man’s head, while the haft is preserved by his closest relatives. When it is necessary to communicate with the dead man, to ask for advice or a miracle, the relatives take out the haft and put it in the red corner, below the icons. In this way the dead man becomes a kind of bridge between the living and God.

  A pike keeps its powers only if it is in the hands of a Siberian criminal who uses it respecting the rules of the criminal community. If an unworthy person takes possession of a knife that does not belong to him, it will bring him bad luck – hence our idiom, ‘to ruin something as a pike ruins a bad master’.

  When a criminal is in danger, his pike can warn him in many ways: the blade may suddenly open of its own accord, or become hot, or vibrate. Some think it can even emit a whistle.

  If a pike is broken, it means that somewhere there is a dead person who cannot find peace, so offerings are made to the icon, or dead relatives and friends are remembered in prayers, visits are made to graveyards, and the dead are remembered by talking about them in the family and telling stories about them, especially to children.

  For all these reasons, at the word ‘pike’ my eyes lit up. To possess one is to be rewarded by adults, to have something that will bind you to their world forever.

  The question Hedgehog had asked me was a clear sign that something incredible was about to happen to me – to me, a six-year-old boy. A legendary criminal was going to give me a pike, my first pike. I had never hoped, never even imagined anything like this, and yet suddenly, there before me was the chance to possess that sacred symbol, which for people who have received the Siberian criminal education is a part of the soul.

  I tried to hide my excitement and look indifferent, but I don’t think I was very successful, because all three of them were looking at me with smiles on their faces. No doubt they were thinking of their own first pike.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I said in a very hard voice.

  ‘Well, wait a minute and I’ll be right back…’ With these words Hedgehog went into the house. I was exploding with happiness; inside me a band was playing, fireworks were going off and billions of voices were shouting with joy.

  Hedgehog came back straight away. He came over to me, took my hand and placed in it a pike. The pike.

  ‘This is yours. May the Lord help you and your hand grow strong and sure…’

  From the way he looked at me, it was clear that he was happy too.

  I looked at my pike and couldn’t believe it was real. It was heavier and bigger than I had imagined.

  I released the safety catch by lowering a little lever, and then pressed the button. The sound of the knife opening was music to my ears; it was as if the metal had given voice. The blade flicked out sharply, in a split second, with immense force, and at once remained firm and straight, steady and fixed. It was shocking: this strange object, which when closed had seemed like some sort of writing implement from the turn of the century, was now a beautiful, graceful weapon, with a certain nobility and allure.

  The haft was made of black bone – that’s what we call the antlers of the red deer, which are dark brown, almost black – with an inlay of white bone, in the form of an Orthodox cross, in the middle. And it was so long I had to hold it with both hands, like the sword of the medieval knights. The blade, too, was very long, sharp on one side and polished till it gleamed. It was a fantastic weapon and I felt as if I were in heaven.

  From that day on, my authority among my friends shot up. For a week I received visits from swarms of little boys who came from all over the district to see my pike; my house had become a kind of sacred shrine, and they were the pilgrims. My grandfather would let them into the yard and offer everyone cold drinks. My grandmother would hardly have time to make some kvas before it was all gone, so I spread the word that anyone who wanted to come and see the first six-year-old boy to be the proud owner of a real pike had to bring something to drink with him.

  I was very flattered and proud of myself, but after a while a strange form of depression came over me; I was tired of telling the same story a hundred times a day and showing the pike to everyone. So I went to see Grandfather Kuzya, as I did whenever I had a problem or felt depressed.

  Grandfather Kuzya was an elderly criminal who lived in our district in a small house by the river. He was a very strong old man; he still had a full head of black hair and was covered all over with tattoos, even on his face. Usually he took me into the garden to show me the river, and told me fairy tales and various stories about the criminal community. He had a powerful voice, but spoke in a quiet, languid way, so that his voice seemed to be coming from far away, not from inside him. Down the left side of his wrinkled face ran a long scar, a souvenir of his criminal youth. But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were blue, but a dirty, muddy blue, with a hint of green; they seemed not to belong to his body, not to be part of it. They were deep, and when he turned them on you, calmly and without agitation, it was as if they were X-raying you – there was something really hypnotic about his gaze.

  Well, I went to see him and told him the whole story, making it clear that I was pleased to have the pike, but that my friends treated me differently from before. Even my good friend Mel, who was ‘hewn with the same axe’ as me, as we say, behaved as if I were some kind of religious icon.

  Grandfather Kuzya laughed, but not unkindly, and told me I clearly wasn’t cut out to be a celebrity. Then he gave me one of his long lectures. He advised me to do whatever came naturally. He told me that the fact of having a pike didn’t make me different from the others, that I had simply been lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and that if Our Lord had so willed it I must be ready for the responsibility he had given me. After his talk, as always, I felt better.

  Grandfather Kuzya taught me the old rules of criminal behaviour, which in recent times he had seen change before his very eyes. He was worried, because, he said, these things always began with small details which seemed to be trivial, but the end result was a total loss of identity. To help me understand this he often told me a Siberian fairy tale, a kind of metaphor, designed to show how men who lead the wrong kind of life because they are led astray end up losing their dignity.

  The tale was about a pack of wolves who were in trouble because they had had nothing to eat for ages. The old wolf who was the leader of the pack tried to reassure his companions – he asked them to be patient and to wait, because sooner or later herds of wild boar or deer would come along, and then they would be able to hunt to their hearts’ content and would at last fill their stomachs. One young wolf, however, was not prepared to wait, and started looking for a quick solution to the problem. He decided to leave the woods and go to ask men for food. The old wolf tried to stop him. He said that if he accepted food from men he would change and would no longer be a wolf. But the young wolf wouldn’t listen. He replied bluntly that if you needed to fill your stomach it was pointless to follow strict rules – the important thing was to fill it. And off he went towards the village.

  The men fed him on their leftovers whenever he asked. But every time the young wolf filled his stomach and thought of going back to the woods to join the others he would get drowsy. So he put off his return until eventually he completely forgot the life of the pack, the pleasure of the hunt and the excitement of sharing the prey with his companions.

  He began to go hunting with the men, to help them, instead of the wolves with whom he had
been born and raised. One day, during the hunt, a man shot an old wolf, which fell to the ground, wounded. The young wolf ran towards him to take him back to his master, and while he was trying to get hold of him with his teeth he realized that it was his old pack leader. He felt ashamed, and didn’t know what to say. It was the old wolf who filled the silence with his last words:

  ‘I have lived my life like a worthy wolf, I have hunted a lot and shared many prey with my brothers, so now I die happy. But you will live your life in shame, and alone, in a world to which you do not belong, for you have rejected the dignity of a free wolf to have a full stomach. You have become unworthy. Wherever you go, you will be treated with contempt; you belong neither to the world of wolves nor to that of men… This will teach you that hunger comes and goes, but dignity, once lost, never returns.’

  That concluding speech was my favourite part of the story, because the old wolf’s words were a true distillation of our criminal philosophy, and as Grandfather Kuzya spoke those words he reflected in them his own experience, his way of seeing and understanding the world.

  The words returned to my mind a few years later, when a train was taking me to a juvenile prison. A guard decided to hand round some pieces of salami. We were hungry, and many threw themselves greedily on that salami to devour it. I refused it; a boy asked me why and I told him the story of the unworthy wolf. He didn’t understand me, but when we reached our destination the guard who had distributed the salami announced in the main yard, in front of everyone, that before giving it to us he had dipped it in the toilet.

  As a result, according to the criminal rule, all those who had eaten it had been ‘tainted’ and had therefore fallen to the lowest caste of the criminal community, and would automatically be despised by all, even before they got into the prison. This was one of the tricks the cops often played, to use the criminal rules as a weapon against the criminals themselves. These tricks were most successful with youngsters, who often didn’t know that an honest criminal is not allowed to accept anything from a cop. As my late lamented uncle used to say: