Gatac
Arkady Arsenovich Ignatyev was having a bad day. That came as not much of a surprise, because it followed on the heels of a bad night in what was turning out to be a very bad week, which in turn heralded the next five, extremely bad years. When he had told his friends he was about to go to prison, he had received a rather mixed assortment of advice. Some said he would have to py it humble and not fall afoul of the hardened antisocial elements within, others had told him a show of strength at the beginning would keep the vultures from circling above him1For a much more realistic look at prison life (in a modern US prison, mind you), I highly recommend the Ear Hustle podcast. They’d tell you to keep it low-key, try your best to get along with your cellie and to make use of the prison’s education and therapy programs as best you can. Sadly, this ethos doesn’t exactly fit the milieu of our story, so prison movie clichés it is.. His natural pride had steered him down the tter path and his mouth had steered a knee right into his kidney when the hardened antisocial elements jumped him as soon as the guards dumped him into the jungle. Bedsheets, underwear, even his prison jacket were gone before he ever knew what hit him, but maybe walking into that beating that had made the right impression after all. All he knew was someone helped him to the infirmary, where the doctors patched him up and kept him for his first night. He'd pissed red the first time at 3 in the morning, but by sunrise the blood was gone and he could stand on his own two feet. Three hours of paperwork where he was not permitted to say anything while the doctor filled out forms upon forms signaled the end of Arkady's first encounter with prison medicine. When he walked — well, shambled — into the mess hall for lunch, he was alone.
He had to fix that.
Arkady wouldn't have gone to prison if he didn't also have the other sort of friends, whose advice for him had been rather short on sympathy but also decidedly more practical: make friends with Viktor. No st name was given, and when Arkady first id eyes on the mess hall, it quickly became clear to him why no st name was necessary.
Viktor had his own table. His own dining hall table, all to himself. That was everything Arkady had to know about Viktor to make his choice.
He limped toward the table, jittery hands holding onto the pstic food tray a surly fellow prisoner had pushed toward him at the end of the food line. That had actually hurt, though not as much as waiting ten minutes in said line, having to stand all the while. Every step, every breath hurt, and it wasn't hurting less when Viktor looked up at him. The goush and bread that were Viktor's stood yet untouched on his pstic tray, next to the day's issue of Pravda, while Viktor regarded the trainwreck trying to stand before him with a smile that might have been called wry, had it not belonged to Ward A's most notorious long-term resident.
“Excuse me,” Arkady said, which was difficult with his cheek still swollen from the split mor the prison dentist had pulled out of his mouth the night before. “I would like to speak with you. May I sit down?”Viktor said nothing. But he was a nice guy, so he nodded, and watched the minute-long process of Arkady sitting down. Arkady said nothing, either. Once he sat, he grasped his bowl of goush, lifted it from his tray and put it down on Viktor's tray. Which was a lot less straightforward of a process than it might sound, because Arkady's hand shook, spshing drops of hot goush onto his arm and the table. Viktor regarded him with even more silence. Arkady dropped his head and waited for it to be torn off.“You are here to speak, so speak,” Viktor said.“I need protection,” Arkady said.“You don't waste time, that is good,” Viktor said. “I don't know you, that is bad,” he added. “I will let you sit here today, but my protection is not so easily bought.”“Name your price,” Arkady said.“Make me an offer,” Viktor replied.“I only have myself,” Arkady said. “I was…I was told this might be enough.”“Really,” Viktor said. He leaned forward. “Are you calling me a rooster, new meat?” he whispered.“I was told —“ Arkady began.
Viktor was such a nice guy he didn't grab Arkady's head to sm it into the table or gouge out his eyes. He kicked Arkady's bruised shin and grabbed his wrist, forcing his hand ft onto the tray while Viktor's other hand showed a glint of metal in it. No doubt a tool barely sharp enough to get the job done, and within the blink of eye close enough to Arkady's captured wrist to make an honest attempt of it.
“Somebody told you about me,” Viktor said.“A friend,” Arkady squeezed out between clenched teeth.“I don’t believe you,” Viktor said, pressing the sharp metal against the thin skin of Arkady's wrist. “You don't seem the type to have friends. I wonder if maybe you did not know them very well after all.”“No,” Arkady coughed. He opened his eyes and met Viktor's eyes and at that point he figured if this was going to get him killed, he might as well commit to it and make it quick.“Give me a name, new meat,” Viktor said. “If I like your answer, I'll let you go.”“No,” Arkady repeated. The bde began sawing into his skin, and only the thought of what Viktor would do if he tried to jerk his hand away kept him from screaming.“I could break you,” Viktor said. He eased the bde off Arkady’s wrist and let his hand go. Arkady drew it back in a snap, pressing it against his shirt in a bid to stop the slight bleeding. Which did nothing for the pain, but Arkady was getting used to that far too quickly. “However, you might be worth something,” Viktor continued. “I take care of the things I own. You say you wish to become one of those.”“It seems like the best option,” Arkady said, immediately knowing he shouldn't have said it.“You have an eye for quality, citizen,”2In the Soviet Union, if you had nothing else to your name, you were at least a comrade — until you weren’t. Criminals clearly were not good comrades and thus had to live with being addressed as ‘citizen’. Viktor chuckled. “Rest assured, I know how to please dies of all genders. But the important part is that you please me.”“I'll do whatever you say,” Arkady said. “I only need your protection in exchange.”“You must have a racket outside,” Viktor said.
Arkady briefly weighed the benefits and drawbacks of telling Viktor anything about himself, but the conclusion was never in doubt.
“Automobiles,” Arkady said. “I find…certain parts.”“You found the wrong parts,” Viktor said.“That is one way of looking at it,” Arkady said. “Another way of looking at it is I trusted the wrong people. They talked to the garbage, and —““You'll fit right in here at Ward A,” Viktor said. “Master criminals one and all, betrayed on the cusp of achieving their ambitions. What a shame it is the Party has done nothing to save us from the terrible epidemic of snitching that cimed us all.”“I'm telling the truth,” Arkady insisted.“You're telling a story,” Viktor said. “What use is it to me if it's true or not, I cannot check it. What matters is if I believe you.” He snorted. “I don't. Not yet. But you'll have your chance to convince me, tonight.”“I'll be there,” Arkady said. “Whatever you need me to do —““Be there,” Viktor said. He tapped the bowl of cooling goush Arkady had lifted onto his tray. “This tastes like shit. You'll need to come up with some better bribes if you want to get anyone to help you in here. If you want to pay me, at least have the decency to do it with cigarettes.” That said, he took his spoon, dipped it in the bowl and shoveled a bite of goush meat into his mouth, swallowing it without even pretending to chew. “But no matter how shit it tastes, it's mine now. And I do not appreciate people who help themselves to what is mine — this is why you are here, after all. If you touch this bowl, there will be no deal. In fact, I'll be first in line for your next beating. You understand this.”Arkady nodded.“I'm leaving you to look after it,” Viktor said, rising to get up and tucking his folded Pravda issue under his left arm. “If anybody comes here and tries to take it, you keep him away from it, no matter what, until you hear the whistles. That is when the game stops and you get down on the ground and take your blows. Take them until they pull you to your feet and drag you to your cell.”“…why?” Arkady managed to say.“So you'll always be grateful when you wake up,” Viktor replied.
One more nod and he walked away.
Nobody came for the bowl. It didn't stop Arkady's imagination from eating it a dozen times.
The first few times, he actually enjoyed it. His nostrils fred with every imaginary bite, his stomach rumbled with contentment for every meaty morsel. Surely this was the tastiest, most nourishing goush in the nd, and it was Arkady's to eat over and over again, as long as he just imagined it. He imagined himself in Viktor's pce, a man among criminals, a king among citizens. But the pain in his limbs and his head and his chest had gone nowhere all day, and every minute it stayed the fear grew within Arkady that it would not end. His imagination needed to summon more potent imagery. In his mind he wolfed down the goush. The bowl was bottomless, just like his stomach, and the only obstacle in this arrangement between endless fountain and infinite hole were the size of his mouth and the speed of his hands. He dled spoonfuls of goush into his wide open mouth and gulped it down like greedy duck. He plunged his bare hands into the hot stew and shoveled everything he could lift at his face. He lifted the bowl to his face and tipped it back, letting the goush flow down his throat like the waters of the Neva. This was no longer about taste or even hunger, just a desperate gamble to fry the part of his brain that was only just realizing how the rest of his life would go starting from here. This was Arkady's first escape attempt on his second day in prison and he had already reflexively gone to the indulgence of madness. It seemed easier and less painful than cwing his hands bloody on the walls, but God above, he would have dropped his pants and stuck his dick in that bowl of goush if that had in any way helped him get out.3That must be some damn good goush.
The whistles blew and the game was over.
Arkady's hands seemed glued to his tray, while his eyes bored holes through the bowl opposite him, the goush that so held his desperate attention, but a quick look around told Arkady the power in the mess hall had shifted from the lunch item he had given up to the correctional officers who were now surrounding him. He was too slow to get up but too quick to look them in the eyes, which earned him a stick across the ribs for dessert.
Arkady would never quite be able to recall how he made it up from his bed and down the hallway all the way to Viktor's cell. As if to make up for this memory hole, he would never be able to forget the first sight of said cell. It seemed like half the room was filled with bunk beds, and what little floor space was left was taken up by a table and chairs, furniture that combined the great Soviet achievements in the chemistry of adhesives and thrifty reuse of wood shavings. Sitting on those chairs were eight men, none of them wearing anything above their belt lines, and four of them, Viktor among them, were pying a card game. Well, “card” game — they were pying with cut-up squares of an old book, someone having gone to the trouble of painting the symbols on each square to approximate a 32 card deck.4Prison logic: among criminals, all card games are presumed to be gambling, and gambling’s not allowed, so decks of pying cards are contraband.
Arkady had never seen so many tattoos in one pce. But the second thing he noticed — right as everybody rose from the table and turned to face him — was the pile of cigarettes in front of Viktor and how pitifully small it looked in comparison to the others. With the final cards cast, the hand ended, and one lucky pyer collected the pot from the middle of the table. The lucky pyer was not Viktor.
“It was a pleasure to py, gentlemen,” Viktor said. That earned him a few grunts and nods, but Arkady could see his eyes dart between the men. Arkady stepped to the side and cast his eyes down, letting the men pass him on the way out. He had no desire to interfere with Thieves, but when he entered the room, he caught a third critical observation: Viktor was not, in fact, the top dog he had been advertised as, at least not in every field of criminal endeavor.
Arkady had to try not to smile at having made such a critical discovery. But it didn't mean he had to stop thinking.
“Go on,” Viktor said. “You are here to pay for my protection now.”“I am,” Arkady said, walking in. “I did what you told me to do. Ask anyone else who was in the hall with me.”“You guarded my property,” Viktor said with a nod. “I cannot tell if you are a man of honor or a masochist, but either will suffice for my purposes.”“Which bed?” Arkady asked.
Viktor grunted and pointed to one in the far corner of the room. He gathered up the cards on the table and hurriedly secured what remained of his stock of cigarettes for the next game. Arkady slowly walked over to the bed, but his eyes remained on Viktor, studying him some more.
“What did you py?” Arkady asked.“Cards,” Viktor said.“Oh, I py cards, too,” Arkady said.“Well, we are not going to py cards now,” Viktor said. He walked over to a small cupboard, hidden from Arkady's initial scan of the room by the bulk of one of the beds. “You have done this before.”“No,” Arkady said. “But I know friends who have.”“You look like the type of person who befriends homosexuals,”5Let's all agree internalized homophobia sucks, yeah? Viktor said.
Arkady thought quite hard about his next words.
“How often do we do this?” he asked. “For my protection.”“Whenever I feel like it,” Viktor said. ”Perhaps you think there are better uses of your time here.”“No,” Arkady said. “But it is good to know the deal before it is struck.”“The deal is struck already,” Viktor said. “Yet you talk as if you still think you can renege.”“Forgive me,” Arkady said. “This is not what I meant to imply.” Carefully, he stripped off his repcement prison jacket. Two months of hard bor, he had been told, to make up for his btant disrespect for the people's bor in losing his original issue. “I am yours to use, if you will accept me.”
Viktor grunted again.
“I will not go easy on you just for pying nice,” he said.“No, I do not believe you are so simple to manipute,” Arkady said. “What's on my mind is the question of how much going easy on me is worth to you. Perhaps I can sweeten the deal.”Viktor chuckled. Exactly once. “You have nothing more to offer,” he said.“I had nothing more to offer, but I did not know the value of my own experience,” Arkady said. “What do they py? Vint, preferans, bura?”6Lotta Russian card games out there, I tell ya.“Bura, sometimes,” Viktor said. “Ters, more often.”“I can teach you,” Arkady said.Viktor chuckled again, a chuckle that Arkady found he didn't care for at all. “I know how to py, citizen. Your offer is hardly worth the spit on your asshole.”7Please don’t use spit as lube, guys. Or butter or cano oil or anything else you dig up from your pantry. You know what makes good lube? Lube. So go ahead and buy some already. It’s not that expensive.“But you don't know how to win,” Arkady said, speaking faster as he noticed Viktor's expression darken. “On a pot of about 250 cigarettes, you left with less than 15 — I don't know what you started with, but I assume you pyed more than one round so the wagers would have to be roughly even. And when the game ended, I only saw two tricks in front of you.” Viktor walked up to him, but Arkady kept talking even as he took a step back. “How many cigarettes will you earn before the next game? Will you have enough to cover your bets? Or will you end up in debt to someone?”“You should not irritate me,” Viktor said. “I'm sure your friends told you that, too.”“I'm not here to irritate you —““Exactly,” Viktor growled. “You are here to please me. Now get on the bed and pull down your pants. I am tired of talking.”
Arkady sucked in a sharp breath. His hands quivered while his eyes were making a valiant effort to look at everything except Viktor. This is it, his body told him. All that quick thinking and fast talking came to nothing, time to give in and pay up. Slowly, he climbed into the lower bunk of the bed and crawled up on his belly. His thumbs hooked into the waistband of his prison-issue pants and slowly pushed them down.
“Don't dawdle,” Viktor said. “All the way down.”
Arkady tried his best to do so, rolling on his side to draw in his knees. He turned onto his belly and tried to simultaneously not move any muscle at all, which was a lot harder than he had hoped it would be.
“Twenty for the jar of vaseline,” Viktor said, and Arkady felt the cool gel getting rubbed on his backside. “Five per condom. And you will need a stock to start pying. You will receive a pack from my reserve. I expect you to repay the fifty cigarettes within the week. You understand this, of course.”Arkady jerked his head up and down.“I look forward to our partnership, Arkady Arsenovich,” Viktor said. And before Arkady could remember when he had told Viktor his name — wait a minute, no he hadn't, he hadn't oh shit — Viktor chuckled one st time. “Your friends say you pay your debts.”
