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'Why are you only allowed to grow flowers.'

  'Because vegetables have vitamins .. .'

  'The skulls won you nothing.'

  it won us a laugh and that was precious. It was a gesture and we laughed, there has been a gesture here now and we are afraid. Which is better for us, Holly, to laugh or to be afraid?'

  'Tell me of another time that you laughed.'

  'There were the underpants . . . next to our compound is the women's camp and past that is the small camp for men, Camp 3, Zone 5. The underpants were there . . . This man had a tenner, he didn't give a shit for them. He found a man in the hut who had just had a visit and his wife had brought new, clean pants, white pants. The tenner got the pants -1

  don't know how, not for gold would I give up clean pants -

  and he made a flag of them, and then he painted on the symbol of the United Nations, he smuggled some blue paint out of the workshop. He was an intellectual, shit knows how he knew the symbol. It was in December, the tenner said it was the Human Rights Day set aside by the United Nations, and he flew his flag from the roof of his hut. What was funny was that they didn't know what to do. The warders wanted to rip down the flag, but he said that was treason because the government of the Soviet Union observed Human Rights Day, because the government of the Soviet Union was a member of the United Nations. The warders had to send for the officers, the officers sent for the Commandant, and the flag flew all morning . . . in the afternoon they pulled it down. The flag, the pants, was trimmed in black ribbon, they didn't know why. It was very funny, really.'

  'And again you won nothing.'

  'There is no victory. Not even for the politicals, for the intellectuals. Those with the brains don't win. They still rot in Perm.'

  'Tell me.'

  They were underneath the watch-tower again and this time the guard leaned through his window as he peered down at the two men beneath him whose shoulders wore a snow mantle and whose heads were close as lovers'.

  'The politicals went on hunger strike at Perm in '74 and

  '76 . . . this is only what I heard. They said they were prisoners of conscience and they shouldn't be made to work. They said that the heaviest work was given to them.

  The strike started at Camp 35, it spread to 36 and 37. It lasted a month and then they sent a man from Moscow to negotiate. The prisoners were given everything they demanded, they started to eat again. So what happened? The leaders were transferred to Vladimir, to Chistopol. They took back what they had given, nibbled it back. They didn't even have anything to laugh about, they had nothing.'

  'Perhaps some pride,' Holly said thoughtfully.

  'Perm lives on. And after some man has put shit in the water-mains, our camp will live on.'

  The bell sounded. The call for all prisoners to be in their huts. In a few minutes, after the hut lights had been doused, the warders would enter the gate in pairs, and the dogs would run loose and sniff under the stilted huts before being called to heel.

  'Thank you for your time, Chernayev.'

  A hoarseness captured Chernayev's voice. They were near to the door of Hut z. The light from a window brimmed onto their faces. The snow was matted across their clothes. An old thief who was hoarse and frightened. 'Don't play with them, Holly. Don't think they are fools. Be careful, all the time be careful...'

  Holly saw there were tears running on Chernayev's cheeks.

  The arrival close to midnight in four jeeps of the interrogators from KGB was a bitter pill to Yuri Rudakov. They came with the arrogance of an outside elite, loud-voiced and heavy-booted in the corridors of the Administration block.

  Of course, he himself could not have tooth-picked through the stories of eight hundred men. Of course, he had known that an investigation on this scale must be boosted by fresh faces and fresh minds. But the manner of their coming had wounded him. A dozen men who could be spared from their own camps and from headquarters at Yavas, because there they had achieved the quiet life that enabled them to be sent to ZhKh 385/3/1. He had believed he had the quiet life until the office of the Commandant had burned, until the water of his garrison had been fouled. In their presence he had survived their cool politeness, yet he had read in the cold of their faces the contempt that they felt for a Political Officer who must call in help to suppress a spreading anarchy.

  In the privacy of his office, deep in self-pity, he stared at the uncurtained window, at the lights and the wire and the darkened huts.

  The Superintendent of Public Health had suggested that the faeces were introduced to the pipe two nights before the obvious outbreak of the dysentery epidemic. The red band men, Internal Order, had provided him with the lists of those whom they thought they remembered seeing outside the huts on that evening. Not many names - some worked in the Library, some had cleaning duty in the Kitchen, some who walked on the perimeter path. No prisoner was allowed into a hut other than his own. There were few places for them to go after darkness, few names on the lists . . .

  Some who had walked on the perimeter path . . . Holly, Michael Holly . . . Internal Order said he had been out that night . . . and that evening before the arrival of the KGB

  interrogators he himself had seen Holly before the bell. . .

  Holly who circled the perimeter, a tiger in a cage. He wouldn't have known of the water-mains, wouldn't have known the routing of the pipes, and wouldn't have known the drill for the filling of the coal buckets for the Administration. But in the morning twelve new men would be siphoning the prisoners into groups for interrogation, hard interrogation with the fist and rubber truncheon. Rudakov thought of the hours that he had invested in Michael Holly, thought of the prize he could win himself if he was able to unlock the loyalties of Michael Holly.

  The light blazed down from the ceiling, and the central heating pipes were tepid behind him, and the arid lists of names littered his table. The small, bitter hours for Yuri Rudakov.

  He said aloud, 'No way any of those bastards get their hands on Holly, not on my Holly.'

  His words bounced back from the walls, and from the photograph of Comrade Andropov and from the reproduction print of Lenin and from the filled ashtray and from the unwashed coffee mug, bounced back and mocked the Captain of KGB.

  Holly lay on his back on his bunk and listened to the recitation of the words. The words were spoken quietly, privately, by Anatoly Feldstein, as if from them he could draw a strength.

  The hut was silent, free from movement and sound. Only the rhythm of the words that comforted the young Jew.

  I will go out on the square

  And into the city's ear

  I will hammer a cry of despair .. .

  This is me

  Calling to truth and revolt

  Willing no more to serve

  I break your black tethers

  Woven of lies .. .

  'Who wrote that, Anatoly?'

  'I didn't know you were awake . . .'

  'Who wrote it?'

  it was written by Yuri Galanskov. He read it to a group in the Mayakovsky Square in Moscow. That was after Sinyavsky and Daniel were sentenced. They gave him seven years. He was at Camp 17, it's ten kilometres from here.'

  it's beautiful, beautiful and brave.'

  'They murdered him. He had an ulcer. They told his mother that he wasn't ill, just "a hooligan who shirked his work", that's what they called him. The ulcer burst, he developed peritonitis. They sent a doctor from Moscow, eventually, but too late. They murdered him.'

  'Good night, Anatoly.'

  Holly turned his back on Feldstein, lay on his side, pulled his blanket over his head, tried again to sleep.

  Chapter 10

  In the night a guard died at the Central Hospital.

  Nineteen years old. A swarthy boy before the sickness found him. A conscript from a village of fishermen near the Black Sea's city of Sukhumi. A soldier of the M V D killed by a perforation of the intestine and severe haemorrhage from the gut.

  One death, seventeen casualties for treatment. A
doctor from Saransk said that he had read that dysentery was most likely to provide complications for the malnourished. He asked whether it was possible that a guard could suffer malnourishment. His question was not answered.

  The news of the death reached Vasily Kypov as he dressed in his bungalow half a kilometre from the compound. There was a telephone beside his bed and, while he spoke, his Orderly was brewing coffee in the kitchen and whistling a popular tune of the young people in Moscow. A breath of cheerfulness swam from the kitchen as Kypov listened to the message from the hospital. As a military man he knew of casualties. The paratroops had taken killed and wounded on the streets of Budapest when he was a junior Lieutenant.

  As a Captain he had known the pain of casualties in the old quarter of Prague. Casualties were inevitable; even on manoeuvres in the German Democratic Republic or on exercise in eastern Poland there would be accidents. His former colleagues serving out time as garrison troops in Jalalabad would know the meaning of casualties — unused sleeping bags, packaged personalized belongings. Casualties were part of the paraphernalia of war.

  But this was not war. This was the tedium of camp administration. This was the boredom of watching over a criminal scum.

  The Hungarians had kicked back. The Czechs had struck out. The Afghans would fight with the teeth of ground-to-air missiles, rockets, medium machine-guns. That was pre-dictable, acceptable. But this? . . . Was he in a state of war with eight hundred scarecrow filth as an enemy? He had never thought of the zeks as his enemy, never believed they had the will to bite against his authority. One pig from out there had killed a young man for whom Vasily Kypov, formerly a major of paratroops, was responsible.

  He had not been a hard man, he told himself that, he had never resorted to brute repression. He had been fair, and they had shown their gratitude. They had given him a boy who was dead.

  His chin shook, his hand trembled with his anger. When the Orderly brought his coffee the liquid slurped from the filled mug and dribbled from his jaw.

  From the distant lit line that was the perimeter fence of the camp he could hear the amplified strains of the National Anthem. The night's snow lay on the track, sheeting the previous day's ice and grit. The Orderly drove slowly, with great care, towards the Administration block.

  There was more coffee in the Officers' mess.

  Kypov and his own at one end and, away across the room, the huddle of the interrogators who had arrived during the night. He saw that Rudakov flitted between the two groups as if uncertain of his allegiance. If one fell then all would fall.

  And camp security was the one area of administration where the Commandant gave ground to the junior KGB

  officer on attachment.

  He was buggered if he would be a prisoner in his own mess.

  He strode across the room, introduced himself to the senior interrogator. The two men stood for several minutes on the no-man's-land of the central carpet, heads close, voices low. The mess was warm, the stove fire well ablaze, and when they had finished talking he found that his eyes wandered to the red coals, and he remembered the searing flash as the flames had leaped from his own fireplace, and he glanced at the coal bucket. He was afraid, in his own mess he was afraid. That was the cancer that had to be cut. He turned back to the senior interrogator.

  'You have everything that you need?'

  'Everything. Each man has a room allocated.'

  'Excellent.'

  'We are not patient, Major . . . there have been very firm instructions from Moscow.'

  'I hope you kick the shit out of them,' Kypov said.

  He buttoned his greatcoat, drew on his gloves. Out from the mess and into the darkness. The snow flakes nicked the skin of his cheeks. Around him were his officers and guards with machine-pistols, and dogs and warders with wooden staves.

  In front of him the gates were pushed open, piling snow to the side. He saw the prisoners, vague through the snow-fall.

  He was at war, and victory in war demanded the harshest resolution. Out there was his enemy. An enemy bent in its rags against the wind. But a boy lay dead in the refrigerated mortuary of the Central Hospital, and amongst his enemy was that boy's murderer.

  A few metres forward of the centre of the front line of prisoners had been placed a wooden box, white from the snow-fall. He marched towards it and the murmur of talk died in the ranks.

  As if it were a drill movement, and looking straight ahead, Kypov stepped onto the box . . . slipped . . . skidded . . .

  His arms flailed for support and could clutch at nothing.

  He landed in the snow on his back, arms and legs spread, sinking in its softness. And the boots and the hems of greatcoats crowded around him, and gloved hands lifted him and beat the snow from his shoulders and his buttocks.

  It started as a growl, the laughter of the men in front of him. It began as a tremor, became a quake, and as far as he could see there were mouths open in mirth. His fingers gripped tight inside his gloves. And in front of him the faces were animated, alive, bright with fun.

  He turned.

  The nearest man with a machine-pistol. He snatched it, and still the laughter rattled in his ears. With his teeth he dragged a glove from his hand. All the time the laughter. He cocked the weapon and the crack of the metal movement was lost in the laughter's gale. He fired over their heads, his forefinger locked to the trigger. All of the magazine. Thirty-six shots. When the magazine was exhausted his finger was still tight on the trigger.

  The report of the gunfire beat back at him from the low snow-cloud.

  The prisoners were silent. Heads down, shoulders cowed, mouths shut.

  He shouted and his words carried clearly across the compound.

  'Within the last week a part of the Administration block, the property of the State, was sabotaged by fire. Within the last forty-eight hours the water supply to the garrison has been poisoned. As a result of the first action, property of the State was destroyed to the value of many hundreds of roubles. As a result of the second action the life of a young man has been taken . . . he has been murdered. Neither of these actions was accidental. I guarantee that the malefac-tors will be sought out and will be subject to the most rigorous penalties laid down by law. Some of you may labour under the misguided belief that you have a duty to shield a killer and a saboteur. If we discover that any of you have followed that road then I promise that you, too, will feel the full harshness of the law. Every man from this compound will be questioned by investigators. You must co-operate fully with the investigation team. Until we have arrested this murderer certain penalties will be imposed on all prisoners . . . No visits, short or long, will be permitted.

  No parcels will be accepted. No incoming mail will be distributed, no outgoing mail will be despatched. The Library will be closed, all entertainments are cancelled. If the culprit has not been discovered by Sunday then a full day's work will be peformed on that day. There is one, or there are some, amongst you who want to play rough with me. I, too, can play. I can play rough with all of you.'

  They waited in the snow. They waited for the order to move off towards the Factory compound and the shelter of the workshops. The order was not given. They stood in their lines and ranks and the snow fluttered to their caps and lay on the shoulders of their tunics and gathered over their thin felt boots.

  Twelve from the front rank were taken to the Administration block.

  They watched the camp Commandant, alone and brooding, as he paced around them, and they were encircled by guards and the dogs crept close to the legs of their handlers.

  Few bothered to brush the snow from their caps and tunics. They had not been forbidden to talk, but the voices of the zeks were dampened.

  In the rear rank were the men from Hut z.

  Byrkin who had been a Petty Officer said, 'They will never let go of this one. That is the way of the Services, they will go on until they have a body. At first they will try to have the right body, afterwards they won't care . . . My wife was to
have come next week and the children. Nothing is worse than missing a visit. I can just remember what the children look like.'

  Mamarev who carried the stain of informer said, 'Who-

  ever did this, he had no right to involve us all. He's hiding behind us. We owe nothing to the bastard that killed a guard who hadn't harmed him.'

  Poshekhonov who had been a fraud said, 'The man who did this, he has destroyed Kypov, he has ruined Rudakov.

  Perhaps not finally, but near to it. They have trouble in their camp, and what other camp has trouble? They have to call for more troops, for interrogators from outside. Now Moscow knows that this camp has trouble and they will ask why, why this camp alone? Did you see Kypov, like a bloody savage this morning? One man has beaten him. You could almost feel sorry for the pig.'

  Adimov who was a killer said, 'It is not a man from Hut 2.

  I know when a mouse farts in Hut 2. Huts 3 and 4 are closest to the pit, he'll have come from them... I had a letter taken out that night, a little creep from the perimeter guard, I've not seen him again. He'll have the shits, he'll be in the hospital. . . their man's not from our hut.'

  Feldstein who considered himself the political prisoner said, 'I cannot support such an action as this. The boy who died was as oppressed as we are. All the conscripts are ignorant and captive. If we strike at them with violence then we only justify the repression tactics of the Politburo, of the fascists of the monolith. It will only be by non-violence that we win anything, by passive resistance. To attack them like this is to be as crude and vulgar as they are.' .

  Chernayev who had not been a thief for seventeen years said, 'They can do nothing to us. One only they can shoot

  . . . perhaps he would have died of pneumonia, or coronary exhaustion, perhaps anyway he would have run for the wire

  . . . They can't do anything. But the man who killed the guard, I hope that man knows why the guard had to die.

  Unless he knows why, then what he did was wasted.'

  The voices around Michael Holly.