10 November 2025
by Anna Karetnikova
Source: Facebook
It’s funny how social media suddenly reminds you what you were doing, feeling and thinking eight years ago. I’d never have remembered otherwise. It even shows me how I looked when all that was happening.
So here’s a story about how I didn’t make it home on time after an inspection.
(Oh, how does that Krug song go? – “a light drizzle spoiled the whole scene…” 🙂)
It was a Friday evening, on Police and Servicemen’s Day, and I decided to leave the remand centre a bit early. In detention centre No. 6, I’d received a few complaints – the most significant of which was from the “repeat offenders”, the women who not so long ago had raged and complained about everything under the sun, refusing to let us out of the cells for hours. Now they were saying it would be nice if there were non-smoking cells for previously-convicted women. The other complaint came from the mothers with children, wondering why no one could arrange a simple photo session so they could have pictures of their little ones growing up. All in all, rather good signs, you’ll agree.
I tried to coax something more serious out of them.
“Well, does the medical unit refuse treatment? No? Do they give you pills? Oh, you’re thankful for that? Hm. Did they give you warm clothes? They did? And you’re thankful for that too? Is the food disgusting at least?”
“No, not at all – you can see for yourself, the food’s fine!”
“Honestly,” I said, laughing, “I don’t think I’ll bother coming back! I’ll ask to be permanently assigned to Detention Centre No. 3.”
“No, do come back!” the women laughed. But they still refused to complain.
Feeling rather useless, I decided to slip out at 6 pm instead of 8 pm, spare the head of the facility my pointless presence, and finally prepare properly for tomorrow’s meeting.
At six o’clock I passed through the checkpoint (after waiting for the “freedom” process to finish – one of the young mothers was being released, the inspector whispered to me). I was already picturing how I’d sit down with a big mug of coffee to go through my notes, home by half past six, ready and calm. I called my son and told him to put the kettle on.
Man proposes, God disposes.
Outside the gates stood eighteen-year-old Yulia – nineteen in two days – who had just been released from the prison, her three-month-old baby, Dasha, in her arms. She was trembling in a thin jacket. Three enormous bags lay beside her, and from the sky poured sleet mixed with snow. She was shaking and crying into a phone she’d borrowed:
“Where are you?! Will you really be here in twenty minutes? It’s freezing!”
The Tajik boy who’d lent her the phone was waiting for his sister, who was due to be released that day. I looked at Yulia, the boy, the sky, my watch…
“Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
I fetched my car, parked outside the prison, turned on the heater, opened the door and called Yulia over. I cleared the seat of papers and humanitarian supplies, took the baby and settled Yulia in the passenger seat.
The wipers swept the slush back and forth.
“Look!” Yulia exclaimed, “that Tajik girl’s coming out! Oh, she’s sent her brother to throw away rubbish! They’ve given her loads of rubbish to take with her!”
“Why on earth?” I asked.
“It’s a superstition,” Yulia explained. “They say if a girl who’s just been released throws away your rubbish, you’ll soon be released too. Everyone believes it.”
“Ah, like catching the bride’s bouquet?” I said.
Yulia thought for a moment and laughed. “Exactly!”
She felt terribly guilty for taking up my time and kept apologising. Then I began to feel guilty that she felt guilty, so we talked. She’d served eleven months for getting into a drunken fight with a taxi driver – a Tajik – after quarrelling with him. She and her friend ran off, and only later did the friend admit she’d pocketed 1,500 roubles from the cab.
“Well, she took it, she took it,” Yulia shrugged. “We went to hail another taxi. It stopped – and there were policemen inside. The officers said: ‘Half a million, and you can go free.’”
“‘No,’” Yulia had replied, weighing it up. “‘For 1,500, I’ll just do a year.’”
Then she told me about prison – how it had been during her eleven months, what had changed, what had improved. The good and the kind, the funny, the crude and the cruel. How a big cell is better than a small one because in a big one you don’t hear the endless gossip about yourself (there’s nothing new to say, everything’s the same every day). How in a “transit cell” you’re supposedly isolated, but since everyone passes through on their way to court, you’re never bored. How the women once asked for a kitten and were sent, instead, a huge mangy old cat they couldn’t get rid of because, well, it was a “gift”. How Yulia gave birth to Dasha, and how that wonderful Dasha grew up in our cell.
Hours passed. Rain drummed on the windscreen. Yulia’s friend and her friend’s sister – who were supposed to collect her and put her on a train to Astrakhan – claimed they were stuck in a traffic jam.
“They say they’re at the ring road,” Yulia said nervously. “Is there a ring road here? Do you know if they’ll be here soon?”
“It’s hard to say,” I shrugged. “There is a ring road – but, you see, that’s the thing about it: it’s round.”
My kettle at home had long gone cold. Yulia drummed her fingers, rocked the now-awake baby and desperately needed the toilet – they hadn’t let her go before release.
“Go behind that car,” I said. “It’s fine, I’m in uniform – I’ll cover you. A successful special operation!”
The car idled in the rain for a while, then I politely turned on the headlights.
“Where are you?! Are you nearly here?” Yulia shouted into the phone. “They say three kilometres left. How long do you think three kilometres takes to drive?”
I pondered: at 60 km/h, that’s 60 km in an hour… 30 in half an hour… three in three minutes – but that’s only if the car is actually moving. If it’s not moving… it’s harder to say. I can’t calculate that.
An hour later, at last, a car with one working headlight pulled up beside us and stopped. Two women jumped out, shouting, “Yulka, hooray!” and “Auntie Anya, I recognise you!”
I climbed out into the downpour and gave them a stern talking-to about leaving a young mother and baby freezing in the street.
“But we came from Odintsovo!” they protested. “And the detention centre told us to come for seven!”
“Brilliant,” I said. “And if I hadn’t been here? What would have happened to her and baby Dasha? We waited two and a half hours!”
“Anna Georgievna,” the woman mumbled apologetically, “well… we always feel you’re somewhere nearby if you’re needed… and see, you were!”
“Brilliant,” I muttered again, but less grumpily. Because, really, she wasn’t wrong.
“Right then – into the car, quick! Off to Astrakhan! Don’t drink too much and don’t beat up any more of our Tajiks!”
With laughter and kisses, the girls grabbed the baby, the bags, Yulia, and piled into their car.
“Auntie Anya, we’ll never forget you!”
“Well, where were you, what were you doing, my tea’s gone cold – you said you’d be right back!” grumbled my son, Seryozha, when I got home.
I told him the story.
“Ah, a good deed, a good deed,” he nodded, half approving, half teasing, spinning around in a little dance.
I looked at him suspiciously. Well then, so I wouldn’t prepare for the meeting after all. But I think I already know what our main problems are – and what I need to say.
A good deed, yes. I’m glad I did it – and doubly glad I did it in uniform. I can’t be sure, but I want to believe that any officer of the Federal Penitentiary Service would have done the same: no one could walk past a fragile young woman lost in a strange city, a baby in her arms, under sleet and rain. Anyone would have thought of something. I just happened to be the first. I just happened, as usual, to be nearby. But anyone would have stopped. No one would have stayed indifferent.
Let them remember us kindly.
To save and to protect.
“Auntie Anya, we’ll never forget you!”
Translated by James Lofthouse
