Painted Rust

By his thirtieth morning in the camp, Victor no longer remembered waking. One month had already stretched into a lifetime, and his body still ached from the previous day’s logging. The morning bell wailed through the endless boreal forest, hundreds of men climbed from their plank bunks, and the next thing Victor knew, gray slop was splashing into the bottom of his crusted metal bowl; striking with a wet sound that turned his stomach. He couldn’t even remember leaving the barracks.

He no longer tried to guess what it was, or why it moved at times on its own. A prisoner shoved past him, knocking him hard against the shoulder, seized a bowl, and moved quickly toward the fields. Someone whispered behind Victor:

“That one walks with the devil.”

Victor did not turn.

“Yes… there are cult markings, all across his back. He will smile as a friend while the knife enters your back.”

The words meant little to Victor other than useful intelligence. Every man in the camp seemed to carry a different whisper; this man seemed to carry more than most.

Then came the second bell; the one that summoned the men into the forest for work. A steady stream of bodies began moving toward the assigned meeting spot, where the guards gathered for roll call.

Victor closed his eyes, and swallowed the slime as quickly as he could and hurried to his designated spot, and that was when a heavy hand blindsided him. He could feel the firm grip closing around the back of his neck.

A guard’s voice hissed into his ear. “Come… someone needs to see you.”

The grip steered Victor toward an old, beaten-down warehouse, where the guard loosened his hold and tossed him onto the floor in front of a man. Victor’s heart raced in his chest. Grimacing, he stood and looked with dread at the man who walked with the devil.

“Painted rust…” Sergei said, staring into a blackened metal cup he had set over the flame to warm.

Victor stood sweating, trying to capture enough oxygen with each short breath, yet the more air he pulled in, the less he seemed to hold onto.

“This one steeped through the night,” Sergei said, nodding toward the mug on the stool beside him. “I’m about to make another batch.”

He took a small bag of Georgian black tea leaves and emptied its contents into a tin cup — one that looked as if it had survived every five-year plan the Soviet Union had ever conceived. It was stained black from years of cooking. Chifir, they called it. The prison drug of choice.

Sergei brewed the leaves until they gave up all their essence, the liquid turning the color of soot, thick and bitter enough to strip the moisture from anyone’s mouth.

“Burns a hole straight through your nervous system,” Sergei said, setting a mug on the stool between them. Steam curled violently upward from the cup.

Sergei’s eyes seemed lit with fire as he stared into the flame, then he smiled. “They gave me three new boxes. Some stranger came by, wanted to build a metal playground for the school.” He rested his calloused, welder’s hands on the wooden stool, his shirt hanging open to reveal a history of ink across both arms.

Victor knew enough to recognize prison ink. It all meant something; each mark telling its own story. On his hands: the years served, and from rumor, even the number of men who’d crossed him and never lived to try again.

“I… um…” Victor tried to say something, hating his own clumsiness. One thing was clear to him already: he disliked this man, and wanted no part of whatever plan was coming.

Sergei, unbothered by the silence, broke it himself. “I came in one way… and now, I’m a lot like this.” He handed the blistering mug to Victor. Too frightened to refuse it, Victor sipped until it burned the inside of his mouth, blistering his lips and fingers, the bitterness souring his tongue, before he finally set it aside. He could already feel the caffeine turning into a pulse beneath his skin.

“What’s your name?” Sergei asked, looking away.

“Victor…” This time, he felt he’d said something intelligible.

“I have no interest in killing the old man. He brightens my day — every day, actually,” Sergei said, his face betraying no hidden limits to what he might do. He struck a match against the flint and lit a rolled cigarette, staring hard at Victor as smoke rose between them. Silence settled over the room. Anger flared in Victor at being made to stand here at all.

“I know the man… Dyadya Mikhail, we call him,” Victor said, hating himself again for trying to sound helpful, though it seemed to brighten Sergei’s mood all the more.

“Oh, that old goat.” Sergei seemed to savor some private thought. “What are you in for?”

“I have no idea… except I may have written things I shouldn’t have, in a letter to our magistrate,” Victor said, knowing the answer would surprise no one in these parts of the forest.

“I’m a welder. Who are you?”

“I taught history.”

Sergei smiled.

“You can go…but take this. The next few weeks, I’ll need your help. Do this for me, and I’ll help you when the time comes. Fail me…” He let the sentence hang. “You’ve heard what manner of man I am.” He handed Victor a small, jagged piece of metal, then a letter, then a piece of bread.

“Give these to the old man,” Sergei said, in a way that made clear Victor’s life meant nothing to him at all.

**

Mosquitoes and sweat clung to everyone’s bodies like maggots on rotten flesh. Victor tried to get sight of him. The humidity soaked his body, and he had a hard time locating him through the forest. One man was already tied to a stump, shirt off, pants gone, while the mosquitoes drank him dry. Another day of logging, building a brighter future for all, they said. And then there he saw the frail old man; a shovel in his hand, two guards watching.

“Dig, as your life depends on it,” one guard said. “Once you’re done with that hole, take the same dirt and fill it back in.” This was his four hundred and fiftieth day doing this exact same thing, each hole dug in a consecutive line beside the last.

“Break isn’t for an hour,” the guard reminded him.

The old man’s hands trembled as he continued to dig, the same two guards circling him as if he would run to the woods to escape.

The thousands around him carried tools outdated and dull, yet the quota was unreasonable: the trees that needed felling, the bark that needed stripping. Endless days of the far north, where the sun never set, as they toiled until 11 p.m. The chifir had long since worn its effects on Victor. He kept his eye on the old man as best he could.

Sweat burned his eyes as he tried to get near the old man. Finally he had his chance. One guard had to pee, while the lazy one wanted to bum a cigarette. He walked as quickly as he could, thankful for a little wind caressing his legs with coolness. He dropped the letter, bread, and knife in front of the old man and kept walking. With one purposeful movement, the old man leaned down as he had all day and picked it up, no one the wiser. Then he reached over and placed a wrapped-up object in Victor’s hands along with a little note.

Victor dared not explore the contents of the letter or the little object. At the end of the day, before the blast of the prison bells, exhausted, he found Sergei and slipped the contents to him. Just a small nod was all he received in return.

***

For over two weeks, every few days, this was the arrangement between them. Letters. Small packages. Sometimes dried fish. His only payment so far had been a steady supply of chifir.

The next delivery came wrapped in cloth, heavy and oddly cold against Victor’s palm when Sergei pressed it into his hand.

“Same as before,” Sergei said.

Victor waited for more, for instructions, or warnings, but Sergei had already turned back to the flame of his tea, as if Victor were no longer in the room.

“You can go,” Sergei said, with what seemed like indifference.

Victor carried it through the forest, in the palm of his hand. It didn’t rattle or smell of anything he recognized. By the time he reached the old man, Victor was frustrated by the myriad of possible explanations: a weapon, stolen medicine, or treason?

That night, Victor tossed and turned, his hips aching against the hard wooden planks. Men around him were either snoring or groaning under the white-night of the northern sky. The heat had made their sweaty bodies stick to the wood that supported them. There Victor lay, his mind trying to wander far from the man next to him, who smelled of both sweat and sickness.

I did not ask for this. Fear began darkening the corners of his imagination. If I stop, will he kill me? What if he does help me when I most need it? He turned onto his side, then his back, then his side again, chasing an answer that never came. Somewhere in the space between exhaustion and dawn, a colder thought slipped in, one he didn’t remember inviting. What if I kill him? It sat with him until morning.

****

The outhouses were far too few with the new arrivals. In the winter the ground beneath becomes a stalagmite of fecal matter, and in the summer transforms into a moving organism that slithers. Sergei stood out front, as if waiting. Victor hurried, placing their regular exchange into Sergei’s blood-soaked hand. He felt a wave of nausea roll through him between the smell and the sight.

“Tomorrow, give this to the old man.” It was a few salt-dried fish. “Do not forget who you are working for… as the idiot who unfortunately left a stain on my hands a moment ago. If curious, or have questions, take a look at outhouse number…” Sergei glanced over to see which outhouse, and continued, “six…” He wiped his hands on a cloth he pulled out of his pocket, then turned around and walked off.

Victor walked over to the outhouse. Why do I even need to see this? Arguing out loud to himself, he walked over to the wooden stall and placed his hand on the latch.

Victor did not know what pushed him, but he opened the door and saw nothing. He walked in and looked down, and there he was, face up, lying on the ground that slithered. Victor ran out and lost what little gruel he’d had that morning for breakfast.

*****

The next morning, Victor met Sergei again in the warehouse. He watched him brew another batch of chifir, the steam twisting upward, vanishing into the cobwebbed rafters above. Victor set the latest letter and package on the table without a word. He turned to leave. Sergei barely seemed to register he’d been there at all, which angered Victor more than he expected.

Hazy yellow light filtered through the dust-caked windows of the warehouse. Victor took a small, sharp rod from a pile of broken farm machinery and stood just outside, in the corner, where he had a clear view of Sergei’s movements. The rod felt strangely reassuring in his hand.

He watched him open the package. Read the letter.

Sergei glanced left, then right, before walking out toward a field where rusted farm equipment had gone to rot, swallowed by grass. A single stunted tree blocked most of the view. Sergei knelt, then dropped to something closer to a crawl, and disappeared into the grass. A moment later, the grass stopped moving entirely, as if he’d vanished.

Victor gripped the rod and moved closer, palms slick with sweat, a deep unease building until it made him feel sick. He wasn’t sure anymore what he wanted — only that something in him needed to know. Have I lost my mind? Is this some hidden tunnel? He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled through the grass, until he saw it: a cylindrical concrete structure a few meters ahead.

There was Sergei.

Grinning like a child. Talking to someone.

Victor’s grip tightened on the rod. I could end this myself, right now. He crept closer, the face from the outhouse pressed into his mind.

Sergei pulled a piece of his own dinner from his coat, along with some fish.

Then he saw her.

She walked toward Sergei, her tail sliding gently along his jaw, and purred as she rubbed her face against his nose.

“You’re eating again,” Sergei said, with a softness Victor had never heard him use.

“That old man’s a magician with creatures like you.”

“Kittik,” he murmured. “Kittik…” Small voices cried out from somewhere behind him, stirred by their mother’s voice.

He gathered the kittens into his arms, one after another, and held them there as they wandered in circles and played across his lap.

Victor stood frozen, rod still in hand, palms sweating until the metal grew slippery against his skin. The whispered words from the ration line returned to him.

That one walks with the devil.

He’ll smile as a friend while the knife enters your back.

Several of the kittens climbed over Sergei’s tattooed arms, and he scratched each one gently beneath their chins. The iron rod slipped from his hand and disappeared into the grass. Victor no longer knew which of the two men the rumors had been describing. As he eased backward, his boot nudged an empty bottle. It rolled across the concrete with a hollow clatter until silence.

Sergei moved before the bottle completed its roll.

He gently set the kittens on the ground.

And a jagged prison-made knife appeared in his hand.