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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

A Fiction, With Apologies to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

By Harry Peterson-Nedry

Harvest crew --- in the tank
Grizzled and Beaten, the 2003 Gulag Harvest Gang 104, (Left to Right) Michael (Since 1999), Hilary, Marieta, Elizabeth, Greg (Since 2002), Steve, Mike (Since 2001), and Malcolm.

The tractor banged reveille hauling bins up the washboard road past the Home Block to reach upper vineyards at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The first of the vineyard crew is there before light, since bins must be laid out before picking can begin. This Harvest is not new anymore. Picking began three weeks ago, long enough for working crush in a foreign land to lose its thrill, enough to make the damp and chill of early morning seep unwelcome into a body already afflicted by a bone-weariness.

Ivan never overslept. But today he felt he could not put feet to the cold fir floor much less force legs into jeans made rigid by days of sweet, sticky juice and frigid from their resting place against the concrete walls of the Chehalem House which now never have a chance to warm in the shortening days of late October. He had not that long ago tossed them there, on top of his Bluntstones soaked by washing this, then washing that and in the process making each shoe a weight. He had not been back from midnight punchdowns long enough to permit clothes to dry. His feet were still raw and cold, prickling as if from nettles and throbbing to the sounds of the waking day.

Rain on a window Continual rain makes confined quarters even more of a prison

The year had been hot and dry to a point. Then much cooler days came, and with them a few days of rain. Oddly, the permanent winemaking staff welcomed the rain. Said it helped move nitrogen compounds, stop desiccation, correct pH and fruit chemistries. But enough is enough, and the extra days of rain have brought frowns. Splitting of berries had allowed botrytis a foothold that now required fruit be sorted closely. The sorting tables were slowed to a crawl while Ivan and three others, including Beryl Newsome in his cowboy hat and bandana, rolled clusters over to see all sides as they inched up to the destemmer. They now were throwing out much more than earlier in the week. And certain lots of fruit were worse than others. Clusters were rejected if fuzzy botrytis growth showed at all or if flaccid silver or tan berries indicated a younger stage of the fungus. Or tossed if grapes were underripe, evidenced by purple rather than dusty black saturated color, a recent state borne of tough decisions forcing earlier picking before things get worse.

Michael as the ringleader And with hard times, it is easy for firebrands to foment unrest in the Gang

The winery that had begun organized and governed by the confidence of smiling faces had slipped into a grimness. Set jaws now ask for longer hours and scrounged vessels in which fruit could be fermented, picked into bins raced from winery to field to be filled twice and possibly more in a day. Lunches had lost the casual, warm weather dinner feel outside at the house, with impromptu wine tastings from wine regions proudly presented by interns like Ivan. Lunches have become pizza on an idling forklift. Banter and song at the sorting table moved to sighs and the shifting of weight from fatigue, a grinding admission almost palpable that there is no end in sight. A sag, a slump. Relief only comes when you add sulfur to the tank or change the bone bin, an anthropomorphic name given to containers that catch stems as they fly from the precision German machine sitting atop the tank, stainless and imperious. Or, relief as an occasional beer break is called to celebrate a fiery sunset, not as the end of the workday, but as admission that half of the day still remained. A truck, illegal to drive on state roads, would arrive late limping under a groaning load of fruit from Ridgecrest, the far vineyard on Ribbon Ridge. So far that Ivan had not been there, even to sample fruit.

The Hardened, Callused Gang Boss, a pustule of a man, unwilling even to give a handout.

Ivan Denisovich would soon capitulate and begin the day. But on something of his own terms, he would put on clean clothes and would take the half-hour required to dry his shoes with a hair dryer. He would walk the short drive from the house to the winery, a pink pasteling the rim of hills in the eastern sky, picking crew cars zipping past him to join the tractor brigade. Ivan's warm and swollen feeling, reminiscent of all-niters, would not retreat until coffee coursed his veins, heavily roasted, black and better smelling than tasting. Before he did anything he had to compose himself, understand how today might be different from yesterday. Michael would review the long list of picking yet to be done, when it would reach them, how the emailed early morning weather forecast of strong fronts streaming from the Alaskan Gulf, added to the week's rain, might cause him to flail the faithful horse for more speed, and with little mercy. With even less hope for anything different, yet with caffeine and a routine as guide, Ivan would push himself from the chair, to open the fermentation hall doors and turn on fans to expel the night's carbon dioxide.

The laboratory trailer contained the warroom, as well as burettes, reagents and spectrometers. To Ivan it seemed apropos to the campaign they waged on many fronts. The beleagured harvest crew collected there, standing around looking at walls papered with fermentation chemistries and temperatures and logistical strategies to keep battles from stalling. Foggy brains try to remember times before the war's acceleration, try to imagine a time when fewer bodies might be needed, not more. Twenty-four fermentations of varied sizes were represented by cryptic medical charts plotting their health and by specimen beakers arranged neatly on the lab bench, in purple and garnet hues only subtly differing, a gradient of transformation from simple fruit to noble elixir. Ivan could not help but think the nobility was pulled from him in processing. But still he stayed and helped move the war forward, pointing a stained index finger at a lot that had developed telltale faint aromas of ethyl acetate and needed vigorous punchdowns and heat to kickoff fermentation.

Dark and Dolorous Skies, as leaden as the spirits of the interned souls, lift to brightness.

And by mid-morning Ivan Denisovich had recovered an energy, if not the naïve passion of newcomers. He would not startle observers, but he would survive. He felt pleased with life as he punched down the eight tonners with long, thunking thrusts of the mechanical tool. The aromas were of hot blackberry preserves, chocolate and raspberry, cola complete with carbonation. Ivan noted a giddiness. Later this week the last of the vineyard blocks would be picked and, given time, the size of the battlefield would begin to shrink. One-by-one there would be fewer tanks to take care of, as tanks are pressed-off and, at last, no more added.

And much like the just-picked vineyard block changes overnight from green to yellow, Ivan Denisovich's year will end. Just one vintage of his 40 lifetime harvests, from bell to bell. The extra harvests he worked abroad like this his attempt to take life back, on something of his own terms.