Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers Read online

  He had been quite looking forward to escaping from the confines of the prison for the day. Dmitri was not one for the open air, but was beginning to feel oppressed by the closedness of the prison. He seemed to have spent the whole of his time lately behind walls. Something of the same feeling of confinement persisted, however, in the forest. The trees were thick and dark and the sky seemed to have disappeared. There was only the track leading through the wood, a great, broad thoroughfare torn up by hooves and wheels and so pounded by the many feet that had passed that it had dropped a foot or two below the level of the surrounding woodland. At least you couldn’t miss it.

  By the time they reached the post station, Dmitri felt much pounded too. He was hardly able to descend to the ground.

  ‘A bowl of soup for the Barin?’ suggested the station keeper.

  It was brought by a sturdy girl who seemed disposed to chat.

  ‘What’s this, Your Honour?’ she said. ‘Coming back this way this afternoon? You won’t have time to get anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not going far.’

  ‘Where are you going, then? There’s nothing between here and Derevitsa.’

  ‘I just want to look at a place a couple of miles further on.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Something happened there a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We saw the carts.’

  ‘Varya!’ called the station keeper.

  The girl took no notice.

  ‘There was blood all over the carts,’ she said. ‘It was dripping down.’

  ‘Did you hear anything? Earlier?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard something.’

  The station keeper appeared.

  ‘Varya,’ he said, ‘you’d best come when I call. Otherwise there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘I’m coming, aren’t I?’

  The girl flounced out.

  ‘The Barin’s horses are ready,’ said the station keeper. He stood waiting for Dmitri. Dmitri rose from the table and went out into the yard. The driver was already in his place. Dmitri looked up at him.

  ‘It’s a cold day,’ he said to the station keeper. ‘Have a jug of vodka waiting for us when we get back.’

  He climbed into the carriage. It didn’t take them long to cover the couple of miles. Dmitri had been told what to look for and when they got there he ordered the driver to stop.

  The track widened out at that point into a small clearing. Here and there were the ashes of past fires. It was an occasional stopping place for the convoy.

  Dmitri climbed down and began to circle the clearing. Near one edge of it he found what he wanted. Lying half-buried in the mud were a number of spent cartridge cases. He counted over sixty of them.

  There were a few torn pieces of cloth, so muddy that he could not see if they were stained. However, he picked them up and put them in his pocket, along with some of the cartridge cases. He found some twigs and stones and tried to see if any of them were discoloured, but it was very hard to tell among the mud and the gravel weathering. There were no stones on the ground. The universal mud had covered everything.

  He stood for a moment sketching the spot. Then he turned and climbed back into the tarantas.

  Back at the post station fresh horses, and a jug of vodka, were waiting. He gave the vodka to the driver and ordered tea for himself. The girl brought it.

  He took out one of the cartridge cases and laid it on the table.

  ‘It’s not just hunters who have guns,’ said the girl.

  Dmitri, unusually, felt the need to take legal advice. He had never found himself in that position at Kursk, reasoning, probably correctly, that he knew more about the law than any of the other lawyers there. Peter Ivanovich knew more about procedural tripwires, but of larger issues he knew nothing. Indeed, it was to that that he owed his advancement. At university, certainly in his first term, Dmitri had been prepared to accept that the Professor of Law knew more than he did, but that point soon passed. Ever since then he had felt able to rely on his own judgement. Now, suddenly, he found himself in need of advice.

  He could have done with a few professors here. If he had been at Kursk he might even have gone up to St Petersburg to have a word with the Faculty; but Tiumen was even further from civilization than Kursk and there was no Faculty of Law within a million miles.

  All there was was – well, there was Grigori. Grigori was the exact opposite of Peter Ivanovich. Of procedural tripwires he knew nothing, which was probably why he was going to Siberia. On larger issues, though … But what about the issues in between? It was there that Dmitri felt he needed help. On larger issues, Dmitri felt he could speculate with the best. It was where the larger issues became real that he felt he could do with some help.

  He feared that Grigori was not likely to be of much use there. Nevertheless, he was at hand and Dmitri, strangely, was inclined to trust his judgement. He went down to the yard.

  He found Grigori sitting on the ground reading and sat down beside him.

  ‘What exactly’, he said, ‘are the powers of an Examining Magistrate in Siberia?’

  ‘What they are in Kursk, so far as ordinary people are concerned, that is.’

  ‘What about politicals?’

  ‘Well, of course, there is no specific reference to political exiles as such in the Code of Surveillance.’

  ‘No reference?’

  ‘The relevant sentence is: “Persons prejudicial to public tranquillity …”’

  ‘You, for instance?’

  Grigori beamed.

  ‘Me, for instance “… may be assigned by administrative process to definite places of residence”.’

  ‘Prison, for example?’

  ‘Exactly. The relevant phrase, though, is “administrative process”. It means that if a prisoner wishes to initiate any form of legal action – an appeal, for instance – he or she cannot have recourse to the courts. The only authority is the administrative one. That, I am afraid, applies to you, too. You can exercise your powers only with the consent of the appropriate administrative authority, that is, the Ministry of the Interior.’

  ‘So that if I wished to gain access to particular prisoners or a particular part of the prison, the Governor would be within his rights to deny it me?’

  ‘You could go over his head. But it would have to be to the Ministry.’

  ‘And what if there is a possible question of illegal action by the Governor himself? Or by the Administration?’

  ‘You would have to be sure that it was illegal. If it arises in the course of his or its duties then the only question would be whether reasonable process had been followed.’

  ‘It would be an internal matter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is there any way in which I could make it an external matter?’

  ‘You could call for a Public Inquiry.’

  ‘But only call for it? I couldn’t somehow … bring it about?’

  ‘Not by any legal means, no.’

  Grigori was not the only person that Dmitri wanted to see. Konstantin, the doctor, was another. He, too, was in the yard, talking to some other prisoners.

  ‘Found your girlfriend yet?’ he said to Dmitri with a smile.

  ‘Not yet.’

  After a while he was able to take the doctor aside.

  ‘Actually, I have found her. She’s over there in the infirmary. In a special ward.’

  ‘Special ward? There is one, is there? I thought there was.’

  ‘You didn’t get a chance to look inside it?’

  ‘No. They kept us to the main wards.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what the patients there were treated for?’

  ‘No, not at all, I’m afraid. You’re worried that it might be infectious? That your girlfriend could – ’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that. I think the patients in that ward might all be suffering from gunshot wounds.’

  ‘Gunshot wounds!’

  ‘I
’d like to find out. Is there any way that you could help me?’

  Konstantin thought.

  ‘Evidence of treatment, you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘As I said, they kept us pretty separate. It was only the one time that I saw that girl. She’d come in for something. I’m trying to think what it was. Something fairly ordinary. Bandages?’

  ‘There were other nursing orderlies, presumably – the normal ones, I mean. Do they ever come over here?’

  ‘To the main prison? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about food, supplies, equipment? Does that get taken straight there or does someone come over here to get it?’

  ‘It gets taken over. I’m pretty sure the nursing orderlies stay over there.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we could probably get a message in. Is there someone over there who might know? Whom you could ask?’

  Konstantin tried to think.

  ‘There’s the senior orderly, Pavel Gregorovich. He might know.’

  ‘Would he be prepared to say? If you asked him?’

  ‘He might.’

  Dmitri noted the name.

  ‘But, listen,’ said Konstantin worriedly, ‘if it’s gunshot wounds … There ought to be doctors there.’

  ‘There are. The Prison Service ones.’

  He looked at Konstantin.

  ‘Only the Prison Service ones.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I need independent evidence.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything I can do. But if there is …’ He brightened. ‘Perhaps they’ll send for me again. If they do, I promise you I’ll find a way of getting a look at that ward. I might even’, he said, elated, ‘have a word with that girlfriend of yours! What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Shumin,’ said Dmitri. ‘But that’s not – ’

  ‘Shumin?’ said a harsh, familiar voice, with sudden interest. ‘Shumin?’

  It was Dmitri’s unpleasant adversary of the party, Gasparov, who had been with the group that Konstantin had been talking to and who had overheard the last remark.

  ‘Shumin?’ he said. ‘Who is this Shumin?’

  ‘Dmitri’s girlfriend. He’s been looking for her.’

  ‘Ah, so?’

  Gasparov gave Dmitri a puzzled look.

  ‘But why were you not with her on the convoy?’

  ‘Dmitri came later,’ said Konstantin.

  ‘Ah, a later detachment?’

  ‘Dmitri’s been trying to track her down. She’s not in the ordinary prison, you see. Nor in the cells.’

  ‘No,’ said Gasparov. ‘That is correct.’

  ‘He thinks she’s in the infirmary.’

  ‘Of course! That is where she would be! She has been – hurt?’

  At the time, Dmitri did not notice it. He didn’t want to talk about Anna Semeonova with anyone like Gasparov. In fact, he didn’t want to talk to Gasparov at all.

  ‘Just helping,’ he said. ‘With the nursing.’

  ‘Ah! But – ’

  However Dmitri definitely didn’t want to talk to Gasparov and moved determinedly away.

  Upstairs in his room, lying on the bed, Dmitri had much to think about. Anna Semeonova, for a start. He had at last found her. But Anna Semeonova dwindled into insignificance when compared with what else he had found out; or thought he had found out. There had been some sort of incident on the convoy’s way out. An ugly incident. Even if no one had been killed – and, surely, someone must have been – people, many people, had been wounded. The cries, the carts, the blood, sixty spent cartridge cases – sixty! That was no hunting party. No, massacre was what the Scarfaces had called it, and massacre was what it was.

  And yet it had all been hushed up! Or would have been if … Still could be, he told himself. Abstract him from the scene and what would remain? Prisoners distributed through all the camps in Siberia. Who in Vladivostok would bother to ask how they had acquired their wounds? Compromised prison guards in whose interest it was to say nothing. Doctors who had learned to treat patients without inquiring too closely into the nature of their ailments. An Administration which answered only to those who preferred not to know about the messy detail of what went on in the remote tundra, a messiness which anyway they would probably regard as necessary.

  Out here, people could disappear without leaving a gap. There wouldn’t even be a gap in the records. They could disappear as suddenly and completely as – as, well, Anna Semeonova might have done.

  If it had not been for the accident of his pursuing Anna Semeonova, none of this would have come out. But now it was going to come out. Oh, yes, it definitely was.

  But …

  Legal recourse, so far as he could see, there was none. The Prison Administration was a law unto itself, the Ministry of the Interior even more so. Public Inquiry it would have to be. Grigori was right.

  On the say-so of a junior Examining Magistrate? Dmitri thought he was important, but not that important. The public would have to be moved. That would not be easy with the strict censorship of the press, and with the Ministry of the Interior doing the censoring. They would excise any reference to an incident such as this. He would have to gain the ear of someone important in St Petersburg. That would not be easy, either. Dmitri was not so naive as not to know that anyone like that would be a lot more likely to listen to the Ministry of the Interior than they were to him.

  Evidence; he would need evidence. Well, evidence of a sort there was: the cartridge cases, for instance. But they carried weight only in relation to his own testimony, as to the circumstance in which he had found them, for example; and how much weight would the voice of a junior Examining Magistrate carry?

  He would need more: the voices of other people beside himself.

  Yet here, too, there were difficulties. Whose voices? Prisoners’ voices? They would be discounted. The girl at the post station in the forest? Her father or her boss would probably beat her into saying nothing anyway, but even if she did, how much weight would an ordinary peasant girl carry? Konstantin? A doctor, after all. Suppose he could be got in some way to examine the patients in the special ward? But Konstantin was a prisoner, too. His was another of the discounted voices.

  He needed someone who could not be discounted, whose voice would have to be heard. And then suddenly he had it. Anna Semeonova! Anna Semeonova, whose voice would have to be heard because she was the daughter of a well-to-do family in the provinces, because her disappearance was a cause célèbre at Kursk; and because it was the Administration’s bungling that had sent her into Siberia! Anna Semeonova, who had travelled on the bloody carts, who had nursed the wounded in the infirmary at Tiumen, and who might well have been taken to the scene of the massacre immediately afterwards!

  Anna Semeonova it would have to be; but would she do it?

  11

  ‘I need to see Anna Semeonova again,’ he said to Methodosius. ‘Can you speak to the Artel?’

  ‘Anna Semeonova?’

  ‘Shumin. Tell them it’s connected with the other business. It’s very important.’

  The next day Methodosius came up to him in the yard.

  ‘They say they have no one of that name over there.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous! I spoke to her. The Artel arranged it.’

  ‘Well that’s what the women say. And without them, the Artel can’t do anything.’

  Then Dmitri remembered.

  ‘She’s calling herself something else. Try Marya Serafimovna.’

  ‘But – ’ said Timofei.

  Methodosius went away. Some time later he returned.

  ‘It’s all right now,’ he said. ‘They’ve fixed it for tomorrow night.’

  ‘What are they playing at?’ said Dmitri.

  Methodosius shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All I know is, if you want to see Shumin, you can’t. If you want to see Serafimovna, you can.’

  ‘But – ’ said Timofei.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘You d
on’t want to see Marya. You want to see – well, this other girl.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s calling herself Serafimovna.’

  ‘But she can’t! Serafimovna is someone else. I know her!’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘She comes from our village. Of course I know her! She’s been a neighbour of mine for fifteen years. What’s this girl doing calling herself by her name?’

  ‘Well I don’t know. But that’s what she told me. “I’m not Anna Semeonova any more,” she said. “Nor Shumin either. I’m Marya Serafimovna now.”’

  ‘But that can’t be right!’

  Dmitri looked at Methodosius.

  ‘That may be,’ said Methodosius. ‘You may be right, old fellow. But if you’re right, then all the women over there are wrong. For they’re going along with her!’

  ‘But – ’ said Timofei, then collapsed into bewilderment.

  Dmitri was bewildered too; more than bewildered, irritated. What was the girl playing at? She seemed to change names as easily as other people changed clothes. She was just mucking about. But this was no time for messing around, there were serious things to be done. He really must speak to her.

  But in order to speak to her, he would have to play along with her, humour her. Well, if that’s what she insisted on, that’s what he would have to do. Still, he really couldn’t see the point –

  There must be some point.

  ‘This Marya Serafimovna,’ he said to Timofei; ‘she comes from your village?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s a Milk-Drinker, then?’

  ‘We’re all Milk-Drinkers in our village.’

  ‘Was she with you on the convoy?’

  ‘Yes. She was taken with us. It was all wrong. She had just had a child. She wasn’t strong enough yet. I tried to get her a place on the carts.’

  ‘But she had to walk with you? Was she one of the Milk-Drinkers they called away to work on the hospital carts?’

  ‘Yes. And I said: “You go, Marya. Get yourself a ride. You’ll never make it, otherwise.” So off she went.’

  Then she had been on the hospital carts. And presumably she’d gone to the infirmary with the others. But why had they exchanged names, Dmitri wondered? In fact, though, they hadn’t exchanged names. Anna Semeonova had simply taken hers. But what had happened to the Milk-Drinker?