Ivan is in a cage. He is dressed like this: from under a blue jacket, not washed for five years, the green hoodie of a ski suit, which was once fleeced, peeks out. He is not forty, but the North, where he was born and lived, and two terms in the zone, his face was covered with a grid ...

AND

van sits in a cage. He is dressed like this: from under a blue jacket, not washed for five years, the green hoodie of a ski suit, which was once fleeced, peeks out. He is not forty, but the North, where he was born and lived, and two terms in the zone, covered his face with a network of wrinkles that cheerfully scatter from his eyes when he answers a question from a judge or a prosecutor. I don't understand why he shines. Appeases the court? "How long have you been free?" Shines: "Four days." He received the first term for his wife, whom he found with a neighbor and "sweeped" (the word of the judge). The second - "for robbery": drunk, he stuck to a passerby, grabbed his bag and pulled him towards him (they detained him, put him in jail). And now, five and a half years later, he leaves the camp near Irkutsk, having received a ticket to Arkhangelsk (in transit through Moscow) and 100 rubles for the journey. He rode for 4 days, a neighbor on the reserved seat (convicted earlier) told his life, fed and watered him. In Moscow, they celebrated “welcome”, the neighbor was lucky, Ivan sat with him on the station bench, then pulled off his luggage token, got his suitcase and went to the exit. There he was arrested. And now, after seven months, Butyrka is sitting in a court cage. There is a relapse - "two terms did not fix it" (I like this romantic "fix" in relation to peasants, especially rural ones). "Do you have a profession?" Shining face: "Mechanic, carpenter." - "Did you work in the zone?" “No, but where is it?” - "What, tired of freedom in four days?" - “No, it was good ...” - “Why did they act so vilely? He fed you." - “Yes ... I didn’t know how to go further ...” - “Did you open the suitcase?” - “No, they took it right away” (happily answers). The girl with glasses assigned to him as a lawyer barely audibly says that half of Russia cannot be driven for a hundred rubles, and that such an amount is a provocation for a new crime, and that he was imprisoned for robbery (“open theft”, when the victim also suffers morally) , and now he committed a secret theft, that is, not a similar, but a less serious crime, and since he did not use the stolen, the value of the stolen should be excluded from the charge, leaving only the price of the token. In the last word, Ivan asks: "Don't give a lot, it hurts." But where to go: the recidivist is entitled to a term not “below the lowest limit” - my favorite legal term - but to the fullest, and the camp is no longer a general, but a strict regime camp (food is easier and correspondence is less common, although he does not need it: “Who are you? is waiting in the village?" - "No, no one"). He was brought to the verdict already in a tattered pea jacket, buttoned to the throat on a hot day at the end of May (judging by the thickness, both the jacket and the ski hoodie were on him). Hearing the term “six years”, he muttered: “Well, I see ...” He didn’t laugh, he looked at the floor.

And when I heard “six years”, I thought: wow, and Kozlenok the same amount for a hundred million dollars, villas, yachts and planes (one even gave to the Los Angeles police). Two fates, two crimes, the same term.

But here to compare - the convolutions will be entwined. If such a table is drawn up (to whom for what how much) and thrown into the Duma, unity will burst, everyone will quarrel (“A beaten army lies around the tent in a narrow gorge”), and there will be no one to improve the code.

The kid is smart, and Ivan is a fool (many wives blizzard, but he managed to sit down alone), he mated with passers-by, stole the token, for which he will spend about 15 years of his life in the zone (or more, if he decides to look for money for grub on the way back) . A mechanic and a carpenter, he could earn money in the colony, but who will give him - unemployment hit the zone too. Once upon a time, the Gulag was created specifically for slave labor in the northern expanses, almost the rivers did not turn south. Later they began to pay for work, at least for a penny, but still saved up for the exit. Now they say: there is no demand for the labor of a convict. Lie, as always. The sensible head of the camp scours and finds demand (it is immeasurable), and the incompetent head starves the inmates and releases them without pants.

Maybe on that day, apart from impotent pity for the fool, I would not have experienced anything if I hadn’t been next in Ruslan’s cage. He was under thirty, also two convictions for small things, he also went out and immediately got caught. “Why did they reach into the girl’s bag?” - “I went into McDonald's ... to look, it smells of food, there is no money ... her bag is open ...” She answers stupidly, her face is indifferent and white as paper, bloodless (did you catch consumption?), never looked to the hall or to the judge. He said that he did not remember what date it was (and after all, he has been sitting since that day, that is, there are no notches and notches for you, as we think, time has simply stopped). He had already been given a term - four years - for this theft, but a free lawyer (a good person, probably) sent an appeal, and the court considered that the punishment was understated for a repeat offender. Now the judge grumbles: why the hell did they complain, the third conviction, well, get six years of strict regime. Wow, I think, there are so many for the Kid ... As if he climbed into the girl's bag.

I have already seen such a special whiteness of the face, like Ruslan's. The head of one colony, a major, took me and a colleague to show me a shizo (penalty cell - punishment cell for behavior). We go along a long corridor. From behind the doors of the cells I hear shouts: “Compote, come on!” I ask what kind of compote they require. Major: “Not compote, but boiling water. We didn’t have electricity since morning, they didn’t boil water for them.” It turned out that one day they were given gruel, the other - only bread and boiling water. Today, this little thing was also delayed. Opened one chamber. A penalty box rises from the floor with a face the color of potato sprouts in the basement. It stands and sways, does not hold balance. The major himself was embarrassed (he opened the wrong cell). "How long are you sitting?" — “I don’t remember…” Major looks into his notebook: “Wow, the third month! They forgot you, brother... Why did you sit down? - For a bottle. Major - to us: “Oh, this is a terrible thing, vodka was handed over from the outside. Vodka is worse than a grenade for the regime.”

After Ruslan, inhibited by the zone, there was Vasily, who “took a bag from a drunk so that others would not rob him” (as he explained to the court), wanted to “give it back tomorrow”, but he was caught (the first two terms were about the same) - a recidivist, get that the same term as the kid.

There was also such a trifle: “in a restaurant ... from the table ... a wallet” and - a solid volume of two hundred pages, written in the course of the investigation (I can just see how an investigator with a higher education bent over this volume by the light of a state-owned desk lamp, writes, flips, thinks), although there was nothing to investigate, the recidivist immediately returned the wallet. But the term will no longer be simple, but tripled.

... Longing takes, who our zone is full of. Stupid fools from idleness, indifferent to themselves and others (got out - stole - sat down - left - got into a fight - sat down, etc.). Since there is no work for them, society simply feeds (starving, as it lives) hundreds of thousands of these peasants. It is also absurd that many of them are ordered to pay damages from theft, robbery, arson, pay for the treatment of victims in a fight, etc. But there will be no compensation - it was deducted from the salary. The judge knows that the zone is not working, but automatically adds this line to the verdict.

... The other day there was a laudatory report on TV, how one colony guessed to feed itself (bread, vegetables, meat, milk - all its own), but the worker must serve half the term, have no comments and generally withstand the competition, like in an institute. This colony is doing well, others still "have no demand for labor." But the very condition that self-service is a reward is absurd. I also wonder where the Kid will be when he has served half his term.