Flash Fiction Friday, Cycle 96

The brief this week:-

"I imagine I’m not the only one who does this, but sometimes when I watch a movie or read a book my mind drifts and I begin to wonder how I would have written the final cut. That could just be a bit of narcissism. Grandiose ideas and whatnot.

So this week’s challenge is simple. Take a classic movie scene and rewrite it."

Apologies, in advance, if you conclude the following is not strictly in the spirit of Ron's challenge but a train of thought was triggered and I decided to follow it through. For reasons that will, hopefully, become apparent there are two movies referred to in my piece - 'Modern Times' and 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'.


ONE DAY IN THE LIFE

Summer 1948, Siberia

My dearest Svetlana,

I have no idea whether this letter will get to you or not.There is a young guard who seems to have a little kindness about him and says he will smuggle it out in return for a day's rations. Maybe I am being very foolish trusting him but I have to explain - have you understand - how our lives could fall apart like this.

I do not know the date today. No-one here does. We have all lost track of time. It seems like it must be summer. The weather is a little kinder than it was during the long months of the march to the camp. That was so hard with many falling by the wayside. It is still very cold but, "Hey-ho," we joke, "the work keeps us warm."

It makes me so angry, the fact that I could not speak to you during either the long weeks of my incarceration and torture in the Lubyanka or that farce of a trial. Every day I prayed that I could just see you and the children one more time. Anyway, I do not know what lies they have told about why I have been torn from our little family. Here is the truth of it my darling Svetlana.

It is as simple as this. I upset Uncle Joe with my grandiose plans to try and entertain him. Our people do not know that Stalin loves foreign films and particularly those by the great Charles Chaplin. Foremost among the films played in the Kremlin night after night is “Modern Times”. My ambitious plan was to have this film re-made in a Soviet setting. I had presented my script to Bolshakov, the People’s Commissar of Cinema, and the next I know I am being plucked by the NKVD from our lovely nest at three in the morning. It seems my proposals for a Russian comedy disturbed Stalin’s sensibilities. Why, I do not know.

I would like to tell you a little about my life here but I fear it will be too upsetting. It is very grim. There is no comfort. None of the tattered clothes issued to us fits and we have to make and mend all the time. I work for 16 hours each day outside in the bitter cold. They only let us stay in if it falls below -41. There are scant rations and what little we have is rotting and has no goodness in it. My teeth are falling out. I sleep on an ancient thin mattress filled with horse hair. The guards fare little better than us prisoners although we are very jealous of the fire they are allowed at night.

This gulag system is brutal. Mostly, the guards are vicious and vengeful towards us. They resent the work they do and take it out on us. We have to keep them happy by meeting our work quotas. They are punished if we do not.

I am in a fine team, the 104th. We are led by a good man called Andrey Prokofyevich Tiurin. He has been here 19 years and knows how to argue for the better jobs. We all have to pull our weight. If one of us slacks the whole team is punished.

They gave me 10 years. It is not unusual for another sentence of the same length to be added on before the first is served. Expecting the worst is better than being disappointed. It will, I know, be many years before I am able to come home. I cannot bear the thought that we will not be together but I have to be strong and tell you it is too long for you to have to wait. Your happiness is everything. I know our good friend, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, has a soft place in his heart for you. Svetlana, my love, you and the children could do a lot worse.

Maybe Alexander will write one of his books about me and my time here. Perhaps they could make a film of it. To describe one day of my life would say so much about the awfulness of what the Soviet system does to its people.

What folly it was to think that I could re-write a masterpiece of the cinema! How foolish I was to incur the wrath of Stalin in this way! I do not know how you can ever bring yourself to forgive me.

Please kiss the children and tell them how precious they are to their father.

All my love forever,

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov