Siberian Red

sharpening of knives, Savushkin hooked his fish at last.
    ‘Do you want to hear the joke that got me fifteen years in prison?’ asked Savushkin.
    ‘A joke?’ Pekkala was startled at the sound of his own voice after so many days of silence. ‘You were sent here because of a joke?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Savushkin.
    ‘Well,’ said Pekkala, ‘it seems to me you’ve earned the right to tell it twice.’
    The others were listening, too. It grew quiet in the wagon as they strained to hear Savushkin’s voice.
    ‘Stalin is meeting with a delegation of workers from the Ukraine,’ he continued. ‘After they leave, the Boss notices that his fake moustache is missing.’
    ‘Are you saying that Stalin has a fake moustache?’ asked a man standing beside him.
    ‘Now that you mention it,’ another voice chimed in.
    Savushkin ignored this.
    ‘You can’t tell jokes about Stalin!’ someone called from the far end of the wagon. ‘Not in here!’
    ‘Are you kidding?’ shouted Savushkin. ‘This is the only place where I can tell a joke about him!’ He paused and cleared his throat before continuing. ‘Stalin calls in his chief of security. “Go and find the delegation!” says the Boss. “One of the workers has stolen my moustache.” The chief of security rushes out to do as he is told. A while later, Stalin realises he has been sitting on his fake moustache, so he calls back his chief of security and tells him,  “Never mind. I found my moustache.” “It’s too late, Comrade Stalin,” says the chief. “Half the workers have already signed confessions that they stole it and the other half committed suicide during interrogation.”’
    For a moment after Savushkin had finished telling the joke, there was silence in the wagon.
    Savushkin looked around, amazed. ‘Oh, come on. That’s a good joke! If it was a bad one, they would only have given me ten years!’
    At that‚ the men began to laugh. The sound multiplied, echoing off the wooden boards as if the ghosts of those who had been dumped beside the tracks were laughing now as well.
    Turning to look through the barbed-wire opening, Pekkala caught sight of a farmer sitting on a stone wall at the edge of a field only a few paces from the tracks. The old man was wearing a sheepskin vest and knee-length felt boots called valenki . A horse and cart had been tied to a tree beside the wall, and the back of the cart was filled with turnips scabbed with clumps of frozen earth. The farmer had laid out a red handkerchief on the snow-topped wall and was sitting on it. This gesture, in spite of its uselessness in fending off the damp and cold, struck Pekkala as strangely dignified. In one hand, the man held a small jack-knife and in the other hand he held a piece of cheese. He was chewing away contentedly, eyes narrowed in the rush of wind as railcars clattered past, filling the air with a glittering veil of ice crystals.
    Hearing the laughter of the convicts‚ the farmer’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. In that moment he had suddenly realised that the cargo rattling past him was human and not livestock as was painted on the cars, just as the prisoner transport vehicles in Moscow were disguised as delivery vans, complete with advertisements for non-existent brands of beer.
    The farmer jumped down from the wall and grabbed an armful of turnips from his cart. He began to jog along the side of the tracks, holding out the turnips.
    One of the convicts reached out his hand through the barbed-wire-laced opening and seized one.
    More arms appeared, wrists and knuckles traced with blood where the rusty barbs had cut them.
    Another hand snatched a turnip from the man’s outstretched hand.
    The convicts began to shout, even those who could not see what was happening. The noise took on a life of its own as it spread from wagon to wagon until the roar of their voices drowned out even the sword-clash of the wheels over the tracks. Slowly, the engine pulled ahead.
    The old farmer could not keep up.
    The turnips spilled from his arms.
    The last Pekkala saw of the man, he was standing beside the tracks, hands on his knees, red-faced and puffing milky clouds of breath into the sky.
    When the commotion had finally died down, Savushkin made another stab at conversation. ‘What class of criminal are you?’ he asked Pekkala.
    ‘Fifty-nine,’ replied Pekkala, remembering the designation he’d been given as part of his cover.
    ‘Fifty-nine! That means you are a