1. The Mayor's Speech
I am told our city is ripe for tourists on the Somalia-Darfur-Eastern Congo-Ciudad Juarez-Haiti-Chernobyl circuit. We could be blowing coal smoke up the ass of Murmansk soon! Think of it! Pushing back the mud, controlling the mosquitoes cleaning the cemeteries, by this time next year!
You Russian girls—famous for your makeup and short skirts at forty below—please stroll the streets and do not complain much or accept prizes. You men—beloved for quoting Pushkin and kicking dogs—oh yes, I forgot there are no dogs left—quote Pushkin, then.
As for food, it is said that tourists expect bacon. Whatever that is, we shall find it. The miners underground in the latest incident are blots—let them go. I still have gas for ten miles, the Vice-Mayor has vodka, my wife will cook fish. Please bring fish. Please bring vodka. Please bring
my wife. This time next year, our pockets full of rubles, we'll take the train to Vladivostok, go north past Sakhalin, overnight at Providentia, and ski across the Strait to Alaska. Then Miami. All of us!
Let's leave signs behind: "It's Happening in Vorkuta". "Warm welcome to the Gulag." Thank you, thank you. Now home you go, and haha, no dying on Main Street!
2. Early Life in Vorkuta
The boys used to sing a hearty song about how to have sex while wearing a fur coat, wool trousers and six-month-old underwear. With twelve people to a room, most of them grandmothers, we had to go outside, but there's little privacy in Vorkuta. The reindeer here are curious—how many times we had to push them away—those were the days!
Girls? there were no girls—don't ask for the moon, it's Vorkuta—
3. Folk-Songs of Vorkuta
Nobody misses me. They're all too cold to miss anything.
Singing a sad song the other miners lie down and die too.
Each workday we get up and do it again; that's how it is.
Freezing, death. Labor. Exile. Again. Still, the song is not
bad— about a maiden picking cloudberries—
4. Relaxing Sundays in Vorkuta
I wasn't coming out for anybody, it would just lead to more rending. While the tearing went on I lay undercover examining the blinds through which a low sun seeped.
I was not unhappy so long as no one watched, no busybody. Concrete floors, a single lamp with a red shade, low sounds of humanity in the street slushing through snow. A man tried to come in by knocking then kicking then using an axe. My door doesn't open unless I tell it to. He left some hot soup steaming in the corridor. I couldn't help but greedily eat, but generally speaking on Sundays in Vorkuta, when men roam with soup and axes, it's best to remain in bed.
5. That Old Gulag Feeling
How a respectable cheerful smart middle-aged lady can be wrapped in rags inside: blizzards run through her, but you'd never know. Her feet feel blackened, bandaged, but to the world those are cute shoes.
The workday starts early with the moans of prisoners, clang of steel doors;
all day she's deafened by the noise of heavy machinery; the food's so bad even maggots leave it. Dark falls at 2 p.m., night's a miserable thin blanket, while to the world
she sits at Starbucks reading the New York Times shopping bags at her feet diamond around her neck.
You think this is depression? this is not depression. It's a parallel gulag universe
where latte is made of reindeer piss.
6. A Tourist in Vorkuta
mosquitoes whining around the bare bulb bedbugs like soldiers with bayonets tonight
Yet I love Vorkuta. Not so long ago some cousins lived here while serving their sentences. When I'm in Vorkuta I'm unrecognizable— the old zeks follow me, I stay drunk all day
and watch American DVDs. Nothing else to do; enough to have made it to Vorkuta. Looking out the window at the slag mountain,
I think: what a relief to spend Saturday night in Vorkuta! I come here whenever my job permits. I slip away from my husband. I don't wear a bra. It's fine to wear jammies in Vorkuta.
7. Weather for Vorkuta this Week
Extended Forecast: Sunday Night, Chance of Snow. Partly Cloudy. Low: -23 °F . Wind South 6 mph. 20% chance of precipitation. Windchill: -40 °F . Monday: Chance of Snow. Overcast. High: -5 °F . Wind South 8 mph. 20% chance of precipitation. Windchill: -40 °F . Monday Night: Chance of Snow. Partly Cloudy. Low: -14 °F . Wind SE 17 mph . 20% chance of precipitation. Windchill: -38 °F . Tuesday: Chance of Snow. Scattered Clouds. High: -2 °F . Wind SSE 13 mph. 30% chance of precipitation. Windchill: -31 °F . Tuesday Night: Chance of Snow. Overcast. Low: -9 °F . Wind SE 13 mph. 30% chance of precipitation. Windchill: -29 °F .
8. The Mukluks
how can he sound so sincere cryin I'm dyin without ya to two maybe three? & hints to a few more he talks my he kisses my & hers & hers I can get redeye over the imaginary of them
Look here—you better put your fur hat on— you better put your fur coat on—your mukluks.
hedgin his like he saida monk of spiritual he doesn't love me hedges like he'd keep me for occasional
Hey, look, your tear broke off your nose and fell on your collar.
true I went looking for a & tried hard to catch it when it came close breathin all that now another is chasin squealin & she'll do so why's he resisting still keeping me following it ain't
Can I have your supper then? No, I'm listening, really I am.
it's all of us he wants but I'll quit this useless I'm out of she runs down the baying & she's good he should stop hedgin I wasn't hedgin naive as a...
Serves you right. Love-talk in Vorkuta! At least your boots fit.
9. God Visits Vorkuta
God visits Vorkuta,
turns to his driver, says get me out of here. He leaves behind an open gate and we all swarm out—
it's twelve hundred miles to the nearest city, though, and God forgot to leave planes. Maybe he'll turn around; maybe he'll pack us into his limo, it's dangerous standing in the wind, but nobody's coming, it's Vorkuta. Let's go back in, I say through numb lips. There's gruel. At five o'clock we can play a game of chess. If God
is good, he left us a couple of old Playboys.
10. The Madman of Vorkuta
My best friend the madman of Vorkuta
used to listen under the lowering clouds for birds. That one's a phoebe bird, he said, smiling, pulling off his ear, handing it to me, and I listened through his icy conch. A phoebe, probably. Maybe a dove, the wind blows, it's hard to say. I lay in wait all night trying to catch it.
These were dark days, and my friend's happiness was suspect. In truth, we had no birds, I knew it, but I wanted birds, I wanted them badly.
Watching my friend the madman, I could tell he was holding out on me. I turned out his pockets while he slept and lo, a feather! You could tickle your nose with it. You could verify it, photograph it.
When he found out I took his feather he walked out into the storm and slumped down. We found him holding his stiff finger out as if it were a perch. A bird sat frozen on it.
A dove. Lots of bones. Barely a mouthful.
A dove. Lots of bones. Barely a mouthful.
'
'
'