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December 17 - December 29, 2023
The language of the novel—a blend of peasant slang, prison jargon, and reportage, captured vividly here in H. T. Willetts’s blunt, clean translation—always serves the senses, and emotion is a luxury only the reader can afford.
In jail and in the camps Shukhov had lost the habit of scheming how he was going to feed his family from day to day or year to year. The bosses did all his thinking for him, and that somehow made life easier. But what would it be like when he got out?
The great news was that the gruel was good today, the very best, oatmeal gruel. You don’t often get that. It’s usually magara or grits twice a day. The mushy stuff around the grains of oatmeal is filling, it’s precious. Shukhov had fed any amount of oats to horses as a youngster and never thought that one day he’d be breaking his heart for a handful of the stuff.
After the dinner break Buynovsky had begun by working with Fetyukov. The ramp was steep and treacherous and he didn’t make a very good job of it to begin with. Once or twice Shukhov gave him a gentle touch of the whip. “Hurry it up a bit, Captain! Captain, let’s have some blocks here!” But while the captain moved more briskly with every load, Fetyukov got lazier: the dirtbag would walk along, deliberately tilting the handbarrow and splashing mortar out to make it lighter. Once Shukhov punched him in the back. “Filthy rat! I bet you kept the men hard at it when you were the manager!” “Foreman!”
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He could work on the wall without crouching now, but had to bend his aching back for every cinder block and every spoonful of mortar. “Come on, boys,” he said roughly. “You could put the blocks up here on the wall for me.” The captain would have obliged, only he hadn’t the strength. Wasn’t used to it. But Alyoshka said: “Right, then, Ivan Denisovich. Just show me where you want them.” Never says no, that Alyoshka, whatever you ask him to do. If everybody in the world was like him, I’d be the same. Help anybody who asked me. Why not? They’ve got the right idea, that lot.
It was strange when you came to think of it. The bare steppe, the deserted site, the snow sparkling in the moonlight. The guards spaced out ten paces from each other, guns at the ready. The black herd of zeks. One of them, in the same sort of jacket as the rest, Shch-311, had never known life without golden epaulettes, had been pals with a British admiral, and here he was hauling a handbarrow with Fetyukov. You can turn a man upside down, inside out, any way you like.
The mess manager was an overstuffed swine with a head like a pumpkin and shoulders a yard and a half across. He was so strong he looked fit to burst, and walked in jerks as though his legs and arms had springs instead of joints.
