Life as a Prisoner of War in Russia

I remember the cold before I remember anything else. It was the sort of cold that crept beneath the skin and nested in the bones, a slow and deliberate invader that seemed to take pleasure in the occupation. The cell was built of concrete that sweated frost even when the guards told us it was spring outside. I no longer believed in seasons; time in a Russian penal colony is measured only in degrees of cold, from biting to murderous.

Morning, if one may call that grey seep of light a morning, began with a kick. Not always aimed at me, but close enough to remind me that any man here could become the target without warning. The guards walked down the corridor striking the metal bars with batons, not to wake us but to unsettle us. Sleep, like food, was rationed to the point of cruelty.

Hunger was constant, a low throb that filled every quiet moment. The body eats itself first; the heart grows smaller; the mind becomes a fog. I learnt to chew slowly on the crusts we were given, not because it helped but because it stretched the illusion of sustenance. Sometimes they brought a thin broth. It tasted of nothing except defeat. We drank it greedily anyway, holding the tin bowls as though they might warm our hands. They never did; they were as cold as the concrete.

The worst part was not the hunger or even the cold. It was the arbitrary nature of everything. One day a guard might pass without looking at you. The next he might drag you out by the collar, slam you against a wall, and beat you until your legs refused to obey. There was no reason. Reason is a luxury for free men. In captivity, you learn to live without causality. Survival becomes a negotiation with chaos.

I remember one evening when a young lad from Kharkiv whispered across the cell that he could not feel his fingers. Frostbite had already set in, but we were not allowed to remove clothing to inspect the damage. The guards laughed when he asked for medical attention. They said he would not need fingers where he was going. They meant it as a joke. It was not.

Punishments came without warning. Sometimes a man was beaten because he looked too long at a guard. Sometimes because he did not look long enough. Once, a lieutenant decided that we all moved too slowly during the morning inspection. He ordered us outside. The wind contracted the lungs the moment we inhaled. We stood for an hour, maybe more, while he smoked and told stories about his dog. One of our number collapsed. The guards let him lie there like rubbish. Only when he stopped shivering did they drag him away.

I survived by shrinking myself. Not physically, though that happened too. I shrank my thoughts, my hopes, my memories. I became deliberate in every movement, every breath. If I thought too much about home, I risked breaking apart. So I rationed my memories as I rationed my stale bread: small pieces, chewed carefully.

There were moments, short and unexpected, when humanity returned in fragments. A fellow prisoner pressing half his crust into my hand. A guard who, perhaps distracted, did not strike me when I stumbled. A thin beam of sunlight that reached the far end of the corridor before disappearing as if ashamed to be there.

It is strange what one remembers. The smell of mould in the blankets. The metallic taste of fear when a key turned in the lock. The sight of a man’s back after a beating, the welts rising like red mountains on white skin. The way hunger sharpened the sound of everything: footsteps, coughing, the distant bark of a dog. Even silence grew loud.

When I was finally released, I did not feel free. Freedom requires warmth, and I could not yet convince myself I deserved any. The cold remained in me, deeper than the marrow, a reminder of the months when survival depended upon silence, obedience, and the thin hope that tomorrow’s beating might be shorter than today’s.

I do not know if I will ever be rid of that cold. But I write these words because silence is a kind of death, and I have had enough of death for one lifetime.