Gatac
Vadim and Be both left home, in their own ways.
Vadim was evicted when the system decided he had been rehabilitated. That wasn’t literally true, but it was part of the fairytale they were all acting out every day of their lives. They went to prison as criminals, they did the time a wise man had written on a court order, and — having had this time to reflect on their misdeeds and be instructed in proper thought — they left prison reformed. The beauty of the system was it had raised them all to believe in the words of the w books. To be a criminal in the ways that had been prescribed in the w books was no escape, just an outlier on the same statistical curve, and in their hearts even the men who knew nothing of systems and statistics knew that the walls around them were too high to climb. Even so, prison was the most honest pce in the system, in a way, so the Thieves chose it as their home. Outside, they were banished to the wilderness, made to live a hundred kilometers away from the lights of the grand cities1The Soviet Union controlled movement of its citizens with the propiska system. Simply put, to live anywhere, you needed the government’s permission; getting permission to move to a big city like Moscow was a big deal. Beyond that, instead of a normal internal passport, released prisoners would only receive a “temporary” permit denying them the right to live anywhere in a 100 kilometer radius around big cities. Like other Soviet documents deleterious to the owner’s career/living circumstances, such documents were known as a volchiy bilyet, literally a “wolf ticket”.It has nothing to do with selling counterfeit tickets to sporting events or running your mouth in situations where this is unwise, which are what Urban Dictionary suggests for the phrase, though I suppose if you did either in the Soviet Union there was a pretty good chance you’d explore the Russian meaning of the phrase soon after., but permission to live in prison was only a simple crime away. Vadim, it was said, soon became homesick outside, and the same bottle he had used to numb his pain one night also seemed like a ticket back home. He had smacked it against the head of an important man — as important as could be found in a vilge tavern, anyway — and was still trying to shatter it by the time the police arrived to drag him away from the corpse. The bottle was good, honest gss, however, and it would not shatter, for all of Vadim’s strength. Nobody quite knew what had happened to Vadim after that. Maybe he had gone to Siberia, maybe to a pce beyond the rules.
Be, they found one day in his cell, pale and stiff. Someone had choked him, but not with a rope or a belt or their fingers. No, he must have caught his throat in the crook of a man’s elbow, another arm pressed against the back of his neck. Be, sick as he was, would not have struggled too long, just long enough to recognize the end behind the darkness coming over him. To kill in such a way required skill, of a sorts, not one fighting prisoners often studied. It meant being with the victim, feeling their body shudder against one’s own, knowing there would no excuses of anger or self-defense if caught. It was not a death that often came to prisoners in this pce and perhaps that was why the guards seemed quick to forget it. Perhaps starving and beating the whole block in the hopes of a confession had led them to realize that, if anything, it had been everyone’s crime, and in allowing this to come about, Be — sickly Be, Be the rat, with his single cell and other expensive privileges — had failed to be a useful part of the system. The prisoners, however, had pyed their part well and solved the problem amongst themselves.
An entirely unreted development was that Arkady had picked up a few more tattoos during his stay. The eyes on his back were not forgotten, but they had lost their novelty long ago; these days everyone looked to the fresh epaulets on his shoulders. And within the week, they were on full dispy in the heat of summer, when he stood watch at the entrance of Viktor’s cell, listening to him grunt. Arkady thought he himself would have made rather a lot more noise if someone had inserted a metal spoon between his eye and eyelid.2The one story I heard about this may have been BS, but this is one of those things you don’t Google twice. I’m on all the watchlists anyway, but this was just gruesome to even think about. And remember, this is supposed to protect the eyeball while you tattoo the eyelid. Three and a half years on, he still well remembered the terror of waking up unable to see after his beating, spending days with bandages over his eyes, waiting and praying for his fractured skull3Orbital blowout fractures can go either way. Often, they heal up fine with conservative therapy: rest and pain management. But they can also inflict damage to the optical nerves and the eyes themselves, with effects ranging from double vision to a fixed pupil (see: David Bowie) or blindness in the affected eye. Infection is also a serious risk. Arkady got pretty lucky, all things considered. to heal and heal right at that. Since then, none had dared to bloody his face again.
“Ah, it will surely come off,” Mariusz sang to himself as he poked the ink into the thin skin of Viktor’s left eyelid. “That wild head of yours.”4Mariusz is singing the Russian folk song The Cossack's Parable.
Arkady shivered, being so close to prison royalty. Mariusz was an old king and a king of old, a gracious, easy soul who had perfected his craft — painting stories into skin — over decades, sheltered here from the world outside that wouldn’t have left him to his art. His youth, his hair, even his teeth had gone, but he still had his trembling voice and his steady fingers. The poetry of letting a half-blind old man tattoo eyes on eyelids wasn’t lost on Arkady, but his role as Viktor’s protector was a new one still, and he kept fidgeting in pce even after he caught himself doing so again and again.
“Arkady Arsenovich,” Mariusz called from the cell. “Come inside.”“In a moment,” Arkady replied.“If you do not wish to see,” Mariusz said, “I will apply the bandages now.”
Arkady weighed the options. The smart thing would be to stay out here and keep the watch. Anyone with designs on them would be clever enough to know the tattoo would only take a certain time, and be prepared lie in wait for him to do just what Mariusz suggested. On the other hand, Arkady had found it increasingly difficult to make smart choices when it came to Viktor. Certainly they had long since stopped counting cigarettes between the two of them, and —
“I wish to see,” Arkady said, not even finishing the thought as he abandoned his post. When he saw Viktor lying in bed, his eyelids already red from the needle’s many pokes, Arkady also abandoned his pretense of rationality and just walked behind Mariusz’s crooked back to sit at Viktor’s side.“Old man,” Viktor said, “perhaps you should take a look at Arkady’s shoulders, too.”“They are quite alright, and you need to stop squirming, boy,” Mariusz said.Arkady leaned over to inspect the tattoos in the flickering light of the small gas mp next to Viktor’s head. “Brilliant work,” Arkady said, drawing back to let Mariusz pce gauze soaked with a cooling balm over Viktor’s eyes. “I will call someone to help you to your cell, old man.”“I walked these halls before you knew how to walk at all,” Mariusz said with a little smile, as Viktor helped him wrap a bandage around his head. “Do me a different favor instead and send for me if the swelling sts beyond tomorrow.”“I certainly will,” Arkady said.“Thank you, old man,” Viktor said from his bed.
Arkady kept sitting at Viktor’s side. He would have never considered himself to have shame — what would be the point of that? — but it was only after the old man had gathered his things and set out for the hike back to his cell that Arkady dared to put a hand on Viktor’s.
“You are a madman,” Arkady said.“Fears were meant to be overcome,” Viktor said.“You say this so easily,” Arkady said. “I shuddered outside the whole time. To imagine someone driving a needle so close —”“Don’t py with me,” Viktor said. He turned his hand palm up and grasped Arkady’s. “You know what I was afraid of.”Arkady breathed deeply. “I have never managed to ask you this,” he said. “What did you see in me when I first came here?”“Ambition,” Viktor said. “Look at me.”“I see nothing to be ashamed of,” Arkady said.“I was a soldier, once,” Viktor said. “But a soldier without a leader is just a thug, Arkady. I knew I needed to do something, but I could never be sure what it was.” Viktor blindly reached to touch his own shoulder with his free hand. “I never wanted this rank of Authority. They forced it on me when I spilled more blood and broke more bones than anyone else. I was never one of them, they just thought it convenient to have me on their side.”“You should not be so harsh on them,” Arkady said. “That was not so different from how I came to you.”“You proved my first impression wrong, however,” Viktor said. “You are not a thug, but you are not a bottom-feeder, either. You are a pyer, and better at this game than I am. Better than Vadim was, too. And I know there are things you have kept from me.” He squeezed Arkady’s hand. “You are a good liar, Arkady Arsenovich.”“Viktor,” Arkady began, “I should have told you earlier about Be —”“I would have done something rash,” Viktor said. “You picked a better time for it.”Arkady sighed. “I should have given you that choice,” he said. “I will give you one now.”
Viktor said nothing.
“There is a man in Ward C who knows a way out of here,” Arkady said. “I’m satisfied that his attempt will succeed. We could be part of it. But it means we will never see home again.”“Where does his way lead?” Viktor asked, almost without thinking about it.“America,” Arkady said. “It is me he wants with him, he said, yet when I said your name, he did not blink, either.” Arkady turned to look at the wall. It looked the same as any other in here. “I won’t go without you,” he added.“Indeed you won’t, because I cannot let you go alone,” Viktor said and dispyed a rare smile. “Who knows what trouble you would face, far from home without me to fight for you.”“Then it appears you don’t have a choice after all,” Arkady said, squeezing back on Viktor’s hand one more time. “We will go together. But first, you must try to rest. I will keep watch at the door. And when you have recovered, I will acquire our tickets.”
Viktor let him go — he was in no shape to stop Arkady, in any event — and leaned back into the bed. But as Arkady stepped toward the cell door, Viktor called out to him one more time.
“What is the price?” Viktor asked.Arkady’s whisper was swallowed by his breath. “Would you like me to lie?” Arkady asked, loud enough to hear.“Do you have a good lie?” Viktor asked.“No,” Arkady said. “What should I say? Ten thousand, twenty thousand cigarettes? What else do I have to give away?”5Man, they’re asking each other a lot of questions, aren’t they?“Twenty thousand is a lie good enough for me,” Viktor said, barely smiling. “It amuses me to think you managed to clean out the whole prison behind my back.”“Then you should believe that,” Arkady said.
