Far North by Marcel Theroux

Author:Marcel Theroux
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

From then on, my days took a whole different pattern. I worked with the prisoners in the morning, but two or three times a week the guards came in the afternoon to collect me for my work in the garden. The guards’ names were Zhenia and Abelman. They watched over me while I was working, but though I was never entirely alone, it still felt like a taste of solitude.

Zhenia was the junior guard who was sent on errands and once in a while helped me wrangle a tree root out of the ground or carry cut branches while Abelman kept an eye on me. They were fierce and aloof inside the palisade, but once out they grew easier with me and occasionally made small talk about the weather or complimented my work. Abelman was a city fellow, but Zhenia was a country boy and he understood what I was doing.

My new duties also meant small freedoms inside the prison compound. I persuaded Abelman I needed a half-moon spade to edge the turf right. First it appeared there was no such thing to be had; then, when I drew him a sketch of what I wanted, he brought me one, but it had been badly made and broke apart the first time I used it. I showed him there was a cold shut in the blade and said that I could make a better one myself, if he would just let me into the smithy.

The smithy was outside the palisade and it was under constant watch because of what the prisoners could get up to there if they had a mind to.

It was a time before he gave me answer, but after a wait he came back with a yes.

From then on, I made my own tools when I needed them, and I enjoyed the work in the smithy almost as much as the solitary toil in the garden. I think, too, that the prison smiths, who were a kind of nobility among us, were impressed by the skills I had picked up from all those years swaging my own bullets, and their good opinion of me made life easier in the barracks.

I knew there would be less to do in the winter months, so I saved myself jobs to last me through to spring: I talked them into letting me fell the lime, I cleared brush from around the edge of the garden, and I worked up tools for the planting season—anything to keep me out of the barracks and working on my own. The labor I spent on that garden kept me sane.

Now and again, while I was working there, I noticed someone in the house watching. I’d hear voices, too—women’s voices, and the quick scattering sound of feet in the house. But the strangest thing was this: One day in the fall, when I had stayed longer than usual and I was gathering up my tools in the half-dark, I heard a humming sound. I turned around, and the windows of the house were blazing with yellow electric light.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.