Page 3 of The Half Life of Valery K

She took him up the steps, one hand clamped on to his arm. A couple of people with children glanced in their direction, but otherwise the crowds flowed by undisturbed. It was a local airport, small. Most people were dressed for the deep countryside cold in shawls and hats that had probably once belonged to their grandparents; some looked more like officials, walking faster, in neat suits. Here and there, officers in the light grey coat of the KGB stood watching for Valery didn’t know what. Their yellow belts were the brightest colour anywhere.

There was a shower room inside. It smelled blessedly of chlorine. He breathed in through his nose, even though it stung, because since his bomb incident, the camp used salt to clean, not chemicals. The salt made everything smell like the seashore on a hot day. The tiles above the sinks here were so clean that the grouting was still white. There were real mirrors.

He saw himself without understanding that the mirrors were mirrors, had a brief uncanny certainty that someone else was here, then shut his teeth when he realised it was only him.

He still looked like himself. That was a surprise. His hair was still red. The scar down his jaw had faded a lot. He looked away before he could see in any detail, full of a sense that it was indecent to know.

The KGB lady sat with a new newspaper, told him to get washed and changed, and that she would shoot him in the knee if he tried anything stupid.

The shower water was hot. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had hot water. Not just tepid, from the summer, but hot. The shower was the kind where you had to keep pushing the knob to keep the water on, and he ended up staring, entranced, at the way the shiny steel clouded over with new condensation only a few seconds after he’d last pushed it, and at the shapes the steam made as it coiled up for the cold air from the gap above the cubicle door. He felt luminous with joy. Or not joy: the pain-joy that came from trying to memorise it exactly because he would never see anything like it again.

They were going to another camp, they had to be. If he let himself enjoy this too much, he would break when they got there, when it was back to cracking the ice on the frozen barrel with the edge of an axe.

Remember you like doing that, remember how satisfying it is when the ice breaks?

God, but that determinedly happy voice sounded hollow.

‘Hurry up,’ the KGB lady said.

This would seem like a dream when he got to wherever he was going. Just to have some evidence, he tore the Valentina Tereshkova stamp off the brown paper package.

The clothes fitted. It took him a long time to button the shirt. His fingers were definitely fractured from that pathetic knock this morning and that didn’t help, but what slowed him down was the feeling of the cotton. It was so soft. He had to hesitate again with the tie, because he’d nearly forgotten how to tie it.

He wondered why she’d given him normal clothes. Probably because people wouldn’t like it if they realised unchained prisoners were being transported on the same plane. But then, why an airport, and not one of the red prison trains? Zeks were always transferred by train. A plane implied urgency. He knew a few things, but he couldn’t think that any of it would be relevant enough to merit being taken anywhere within hours. He was six years out of date.

He pushed the stamp into his pocket. He had that, whatever was going on. He felt nervous when he wrapped the brown paper over his old clothes, worried that the KGB lady would check and find the stamp was missing, but she only gave him an odd look and slung the whole lot in the bin. He almost dived after it. That coat, with the labels on the back and on the breast pocket that said K 745, had kept him alive for years. He’d looked after it religiously. And he’d need it if they were going to another camp. He was in too much turmoil to think of a clever way to make her listen to him and let him have it.

The KGB lady took him straight to the departure gates, where they boarded a small plane bound for a place called Sverdlovsk. Valery had never heard of it.

2

City 40

Sverdlovsk was an ugly industrial city. Outside the airport, it was so warm that there was a misty rain glinting on the steps and the lamp posts and the bonnets of the taxis. There was no need for a coat, even. He was staring at the film of water moving under someone’s windscreen wipers when the KGB lady hailed a taxi and put him in it.

Immediately Valery was enfolded in the glorious smell of hot leather and vodka, and what must have been a dab of furniture polish inside the heater. He moved along the back seat to leave room, but she didn’t get in; she was going to Moscow. Valery twisted round, taken completely by surprise. Wherever he was going, it wasn’t standard practice for the KGB to just leave a prisoner alone with a random cab driver.

Again, he wanted to ask what was going on; but if she slammed his fingers in the door, his bones would turn to powder.

She shut the door and thumped on the roof. The driver set off.

Maybe the driver wasn’t just a cab driver. But none of the doors were locked. Valery could just hop out at the traffic lights. There was a set at red outside the airport. He could get out, and walk off. Perhaps the driver would be able to shoot him, but perhaps not. He touched the door handle, his fingertips aching with potential. Get out and go where, with no money and no other clothes? It was warmer here than Siberia, but that still wasn’t warm. Sleeping outside would be dangerous. But maybe that would be better than wherever he was going now. He couldn’t think properly. It was a shock. He’d wondered this morning – Jesus Christ, only this morning – how much of his mind had dissolved lately, but he hadn’t known it was this bad. He felt paralysed.

The lights changed. The driver sped away. He was one of those people who plainly felt that the accelerator should be untouched or floored. Then they were going at forty kilometres an hour, and jumping out would have broken every bone in Valery’s body.

Valery scraped up some courage. There was no sign of a gun. It was possible the man wasn’t KGB. ‘Where are we going?’ he tried.

‘Can’t tell you yet,’ said the driver, not in an unfriendly way. ‘Settle in, it’ll be an hour or so.’

Valery nodded slowly. There were no more traffic lights.

The steel giants that were the Sverdlovsk factories glided by, and soon the car passed the city limits. After that, it was only miles of arrow-straight road, punctuated every so often by more factory towns whose white tower blocks and grid streets looked like they’d all come from identical prefabricated kits. The thrum of the taxi engine was lulling, and he fell half-asleep, his head resting against the window. There was a vodka bottle on the front passenger seat, already three-quarters empty. It made a talkative sloshing sound whenever they went over a bump in the road.

He woke up because the taxi had accelerated. It pressed him back into the seat, and then slung him forward as the driver changed gear. Confused, he looked behind them, then jumped when the driver snapped his fingers at him. The man didn’t speak, but he pointed to a sign coming up fast now.

attention: do not stop for the following 30km. proceed at the fastest possible speed for your vehicle.

They shot past it at eighty kilometres an hour.