The English Prisoner by Tig Hague

Author:Tig Hague
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141959023
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-07-22T21:00:00+00:00

20

January was a cruel month in Mordovia. It was dark for eighteen hours a day, and it was as cold as anywhere on the planet outside of the North and South Poles. There were some mornings and evenings when the temperature suddenly plunged so low that everyone, prisoners and guards alike, had to remain inside the atrads or the office building. The heating system in the wooden living quarters was not powerful enough to keep out the very worst of the cold, and often we had to pull on as many layers as we could and wrap ourselves in our blankets, but still we shivered and shuddered. At night I slept with my thick coat and woolly hat on. One morning we woke to discover that the Zone boiler had broken in the night – a common occurrence, apparently. The pipes inside the atrad went cold and all 100 of us took refuge in the TV room, trying to get as many bodies as we could into one space, to try and generate some warmth.

A few days later, during evening preverka, a dramatic freeze, a kind of ice storm, descended on the Zone and left us all standing in awe as if we were witnessing a biblical experience. The temperature had risen steadily during the day, and just as darkness began to fall there was a heavy shower of sleety snow that soaked our hats and coats as we stood waiting for the guards to hurry up and count us. It was then that the cold came down in a snap, an invisible but audible force rolling off the flat landscape beyond and enveloping the Zone. The branches of the trees crackled, the wood of the buildings creaked as the air tightened its icy grip and the cold hit us in the face like a stinging slap. It was beautiful and thrilling to watch and hear, but as soon as the guards disappeared inside, the rest of us made a run for the atrads to escape its painful clasp.

It was easy to understand why there was so much illness in the Zone. Bodies, already feeble from a poor diet and hard work, were weakened further by the perishing cold. The atrads were hothouses for germs, with eighty or so of us – and almost twice as many in Atrad 3 – living and sleeping, literally, cheek by jowl. Often I rolled over and woke up in the night to find the snoring, wheezing face of my Afghan neighbour less than a foot from my own, or an arm accidentally draped over my bed. A Nigerian called Uba had the bunk below me, but as he worked night shifts the only contact we had was when we passed each other heading to and from the factory. During the day, the building resounded to the sound of men hacking, sneezing, and clearing the snot from their noses and throats. All the Far Eastern guys, especially the Chinese, and most of the Arab

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