One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Literary Analysis of Solzhenitsyn's Masterpiece, Lecture notes of Voice

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ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF

IVAN DENISOVICH

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ( 1962 ) At five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded, as usual, by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the windowpanes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun. It was cold outside, and the camp- guard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long. The clanging ceased, but everything outside still looked like the middle of the night when Ivan Denisovich Shukhov got up to go to the bucket. It was pitch dark except for the yellow light cast on the window by three lamps - two in the outer zone, one inside the camp itself. And no one came to unbolt the barracks door; there was no sound of the barrack orderlies pushing a pole. Into place to lift the barrel of excrement and carry it out. Shukhov never over slept reveille. He always got up at once, for the next ninety minutes, until they assembled for work, belonged to him, not to the

Shukhov always arose at reveille. But this day he didn't. He had felt strange the evening before, feverish, with pains all over his body. He hadn't been able to get warm all through the night. Even in his sleep he had felt at one moment that he was getting seriously ill, at another that he was getting better. He had wished morning would never come. But the morning came as usual. Anyway, where would you get warm in a place like this, with the windows iced over and the white cobwebs of frost all along the huge barracks where the walls joined the ceiling! He didn't get up. He lay there in his bunk on the top tier, his head buried in a blanket and a coat, both feet stuffed into one tucked-under sleeve of his wadded jacket. He couldn't see, but his ears told him everything going on in the barrack room and especially in the corner his squad occupied. He heard the heavy tread of the orderlies carrying one of the big barrels of excrement along the passage outside. A light job, that was considered, a job for the infirm, but just you try and carry out the muck without spilling any. He heard some of the 75th slamming bunches of boots onto the floor from the drying shed. Now their own men were doing it (it was their own squad's turn, too, to dry valenki). Tiurin, the squad leader, and his deputy Pavlo put on their valenki without a word but he heard their bunks creaking. Now Pavlo would be going off to the

breadstorage and Tiurin to the staff quarters to see the P.P.D 2 Ah, but not simply to report as usual to the authorities for the daily assignment. Shukbov remembered that this morning his fate hung in the balance: they wanted to shift the 104th from the building shops to a new site, the "Socialist Way of Life" settlement. It lay In open country covered with snowdrifts, and before anything else could be done there they would have to dig holes and put up posts and attach barbed wire to them. Wire themselves in, so that they wouldn't run away. Only then would they start building. There wouldn't be a warm corner for a whole month. Not even a doghouse. And fires were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your work warm you up, that was your only salvation. No wonder the squad leader looked so worried, that was his job--to elbow some other squad, some bunch of suckers, into the assignment instead of the 104th. Of course with empty bands you got nowhere. He'd have to take a pound of salt pork to the senior official there, if not a couple of pounds. There's never any harm in trying, so why not have a go at the dispensary and get a few days off if you can? After all, he did feel as though every limb was out of joint. (^2) Production Planning Department.

He kept his voice down, but of course everyone in the squad heard him and waited fearfully to learn who would be losing a slice of bread that evening. Shukhov went on lying on his sawdust mattress, as hard as a board from long wear. If only it could be one thing or the other--let him fall into a real fever or let his aching joints ease up. Meanwhile Alyosha was murmuring his prayers and Buinovsky had returned from the latrines, announcing to no one in particular but with a sort of malicious glee: "Well, sailors, grit your teeth. It's twenty below, for sure." Shukhov decided to report sick. At that very moment his blanket and jacket were imperiously jerked off him. He flung his coat away from his face and sat up. Looking up at him, his head level with the top bunk, was the lean figure of The Tartar. So the fellow was on duty out of turn and had stolen up. "S 854," The Tartar read from the white strip that had been stitched to the back of his black jacket. "Three days' penalty with work." The moment they heard that peculiar choking voice of his, everyone who wasn't up yet in the whole dimly lit barracks, where two hundred men slept in bugridden bunks, stirred to life and began dressing in a hurry. "What for, citizen 3 chief?" asked Shukhov with more chagrin than he felt in his voice. (^3) Prisoners were not allowed to use the word comrade.

With work--that wasn't half so bad. They gave you hot food and you had no time to start thinking. Real jail was when you were kept back from work. "Failing to get up at reveille. Follow me to the camp commandanfs office," said The Tartar lazily. His crumpled, hairless face was imperturbable. He turned, looking around for another victim, but now everybody, in dim corners and. under the lights, in upper bunks and in lower, had thrust their legs into their black wadded trousers or, already dressed, had wrapped their coats around themselves and hurried to the door to get out of the way until The Tartar had left. Had Shukhov been punished for something he deserved he wouldn't have felt so resentful. What hurt him was that he was always one of the first to be up. But he knew he couldn't plead with The Tartar. And, protesting merely for the sake of form, he hitched up his trousers (a bedraggled scrap of cloth had been sewn on them, just above the left knee, with a faded black number), slipped on his jacket (here the same digits appeared twice--on the chest and on the back), fished his valenki from the heap on the floor, put his hat on (with his number on a patch of cloth at the front), and followed The Tartar out of the barrack room. The whole 104th saw him go, but no one said a word--what was the use, and anyway what could they say? The squad leader might have tried to do something, but he wasn't there. And Shukhov said nothing to anyone. He didn't want to irritate The Tartar. Anyway

They walked into the staff quarters and The Tartar led him straight to the guardroom; and Shukhov realized, as he bad guessed on the way there, that he wasn't being sent to the guardhouse at all--it was simply that the guardroom floor needed scrubbing. The Tartar told him he was going to let him off, and ordered him to scrub the floor. Scrubbing the guardroom floor had been the job of a special prisoner who wasn't sent to work outside the camp--a staff orderly. The fellow had long ago made himself athome in the staff quarters; he had access to the offices of the camp commandant, the man in charge of discipline, and the security officer (the Father Confessor, they called him). When working for them he sometimes beard things that even the guards didn't know, and after a time he got a big head and came to consider scrubbing the floor for rank-and-file camp- guards a bit beneath him. Having sent for him once or twice, the guards discovered what was in the wind and began to pick on other prisoners for the floor-scrubbing. In the guardroom the stove was throwing out a fierce heat. Two guards in grubby tunics were playing checkers, and a third, who had not bothered to remove his sheepskin and valenki, lay snoring on a narrow bench. In one corner of the room stood an empty pail with a rag inside. Shukhov was delighted. He thanked The Tartar for letting him off and said: "From now on I'll never get up late again."

The rule in this place was a simple one: when you'd finished you left. And now that he'd been given work to do, Shukhov's aches and pains seemed to have gone. He picked up the pail and, bare-handed--in his hurry he'd forgotten to take his mittens from under his pillow-- went to the well. Several of the squad leaders who were on their way to the P.P.D. had gathered near the pole with the thermometer, and one of the younger ones, a former Hero of the Soviet Union, shinnied up it and wiped off the instrument. The others shouted advice from below: "See you don't breathe on it. It'll push up the temperature." "Push it up? Not fucking likely. My breath won't have any effect." Tiurin of the 104th--Shukhov's squad--was not among them. Shukhov put down the pail, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and watched with interest. The man up the pole shouted hoarsely: "Twenty-seven and a half. Not a damn bit more." And, taking another look to be sure, slid down. "Oh, it's cockeyed. It always lies," someone said. "Do you think they'd ever hang one up that gave the true temperature?" The squad leaders scattered. Shukhov ran to the well. The frost was trying to nip his ears under his earflaps, which he had lowered but not tied.

double thickness of rags inside. For a week he went about as though he'd been given a birthday present, kicking his new heels. Then in December the valenki arrived, and, oh, wasn't life wonderful? But some devil in the bookkeeper's office had whispered in the commandant's ear that valenki should be issued only to those who surrendered their boots. It was against the rules for a prisoner to possess two pairs of footwear at the same time. So Shukhov had to choose. Either he'd have to wear leather throughout the winter, or surrender the boots and wear valenki even in the thaw. He'd taken such good care of his new boots, softening the leather with grease! Ah, nothing had been so hard to part with in all his eight years in camps as that pair of boots! They were tossed into a common heap. Not a hope of finding your own pair in the spring. Now Shukhov knew what he had to do. He dexterously pulled his feet out of the valenki, put the valenki in a corner, stuffed his foot rags into them (his spoon tinkled on the floor--though he'd made himself ready for the guardhouse in a hurry, he hadn't forgotten his spoon), and, barefoot, sloshed the water right under the guards' valenki. "Hey there, you slob, take it easy," one of the guards shouted, putting his feet on a chair. "Rice?" another went on. "Rice is in a different category. You can't compare cereal with rice." "How much water are you going to use, idiot? Who on earth washes like that?"

"I'll never get it clean otherwise, citizen chief. It's thick with mud." "Didn't you ever watch your wife scrub the floor, pig?" Shukhov drew himself up, the dripping rag in his hand. He smiled ingenuously, revealing the gaps in his teeth, the result of a touch of scurvy at Ust-Izhma in

1943. And what a touch it was--his exhausted stomach wouldn't hold any kind of food, and his bowels could move nothing but a bloody fluid. But now only a lisp remained from that old trouble. "I was taken away from my wife in forty-one, citizen chief. I've forgotten what she was like." "That's the way the scum wash.... They don't know how to do a fucking thing and don't want to learn. They're not worth the bread we give them. We ought to feed them on shit." "Anyway, what's the fucking sense in washing it every day? Who can stand the damp? Look here, you,
1944. Just wipe it over lightly to make it moist and then fuck off? "No, you can't compare cereal with rice." Shukhov knew how to manage anything. Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash. Otherwise, everybody would have croaked long ago. They all knew that.

As for the Russians, they'd forgotten which hand to cross themselves with. They sat in the cold mess hall, most of them eating with their hats on, eating slowly, picking out putrid little fish from under leaves of boiled black cabbage and spitting the bones out on the table. When the bones formed a heap and it was the turn of another squad, someone would sweep them off and they'd be trodden into a mush on the floor. But it was considered bad maimers to spit the fishbones straight out on the floor. Two rows of trestles ran down the middle of the hall and near one of them sat Fetiukov of the 104th. It was he who was keeping Shukhov's breakfast for him. Fetiukov had the last place in his squad, lower than Shukhov's. From the outside, everyone in the squad looked the same--their numbered black coats were identical--but within the squad there were great distinctions. Everyone had his grade. Buinovsky, for instance, was not the sort to sit keeping another zek's 4 bowl for him. And Shukhov wouldn't take on any old job either. There were others lower than him. Fetiukov caught sight of Shukhov and with a sigh surrendered his place. "It's all cold. I was just going to eat your helping. Thought you were in the guardhouse." He didn't hang around--no hope for any leftovers to scrape out of Shukhov's bowl. (^4) Abbreviation of Russian for prisoner

Shukhov pulled his spoon out of his boot. His little baby. It had been with him his whole time in the North, he'd cast it with his own hands in sand out of aluminum wire, and it was embossed with the words "Ust-Izhma 1944." Then he removed his hat from his clean-shaven head-

• however cold it might be, he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on--and stirred the cold stew, taking a quick look to see what kind of helping they'd given him. An average one. They hadn't ladled it from the top of the kettle, but they hadn't ladled it from the bottom either. Fetiukov was the sort who when he was looking after someone else's bowl took the potatoes from it. The only good thing about stew was that it was hot, but Shukhov's portion had grown quite cold. However, he ate it with his usual slow concentration. No need to huriy, not even for a house on fire. Apart from sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five minutes over dinner, and five at supper. The stew was the same every day. Its composition depended on the kind of vegetable provided that winter. Nothing but salted carrots last year, which meant that from September to June the stew was plain carrot This year it was black cabbage. The most nourishing time of the year was June; then all vegetables came to an end and were replaced by grits. The worst time was July-- then they shredded nettles into the pot.

"special" (forced-labor) camp, had been organized, the security forces had a lot of flares left over from the war, and whenever there was a power failure they shot up flares over the zone--white, green, and red--just like real war. Later they stopped using them. To save money, maybe. It seemed just as dark as at reveille but the experienced eye could easily distinguish, by various small signs, that soon the order to go to work would be given. Khromoi's assistant (Khromoi, the mess orderly, had an assistant whom he fed) went off to summon Barracks 6 to breakfast This was the building occupied by the infirm, who did not leave the zone. An old, bearded artist shuffled off to the C.E.D 5 , for the brush and paint he needed to touch up the numbers on the prisoners' uniforms. The Tartar was there again, cutting across the parade ground with long, rapid strides in the direction of the staff quarters. In general there were fewer people about, which meant that everyone had gone off to some corner or other to get warm during those last precious minutes. Shukhov was smart enough to hide from The Tartar around a corner of the barracks--the guard would stick to him if he caught him again. Anyway, you should never be conspicuous. The main thing was never to be seen by a campguard on your own, only in a group. Who knows whether the guy wasn't looking for someone to saddle with a job, or wouldn't jump on a (^5) Culture and Education Department.

man just for spite? Hadn't they been around the barracks and read them that new regulation? You bad to take ofi your hat to a guard five paces before passing him, and replace it two paces after. There were guards who slopped past as if blind, not caring a damn, but for others the new rule was a godsend. How many prisoners had been thrown in the guardhouse because of that hat business? Oh no, better to stand around the corner. The Tartar passed by, and now Shukhov finally decided to go to the dispensary. But suddenly he remembered that the tall Lett in Barracks 7 had told him to come and buy a couple of glasses of home-grown tobacco that morning before they went out to work, something Shukhov bad clean forgotten in all the excitement. The Lett had received a parcel the previous evening, and who knew but that by tomorrow none of the tobacco would be left, and then he'd have to wait a month for another parcel. The Lett's tobacco was good stuff, strong and fragrant, greyish-brown. Shukhov stamped his feet in vexation. Should he turn back and go to the Lett? But it was such a short distance to the dispensary and he jogged on. The snow creaked audibly underfoot as he approached the door. Inside, the corridor was, as usual, so clean that he felt quite scared to step on the floor. And the 'walls were painted with white enamel. And all the furniture was white. The surgery doors were all shut. The doctors must still be in bed. The man on duty was a medical assistant-