Little bug, he thought, you and I, we are brothers. So it is entirely appropriate that you nourish me with your little pinch of protein. I salute you. I admire you.
'Just eat it, damn you,' said Zek 5891, known to be Latkowsky, the Polish saboteur and wrecker. 'Don't torture us with your exquisite manners.'
It seemed rude to consume a sibling so quickly, however. Zek 4715 and the bug: both were held squirming against their will in the grasp of a larger organism, and would live or die according to the dictates, no, the whimsies, of that organism.
So be it.
Outside, a wind howled. This was not remarkable, as outside a wind always howled. It was Siberia, after all, where the wind was supposed to howl. It was Gulag No. 432, some twenty miles south of the arctic circle, not far- say 150 kilometers-from the big town of Verbansk, with its cosmopolitan population of thirty-five, and a railhead.
'Gentlemen,' said 4715, raising the bug, 'to you, the living, I dedicate this kindred soul.'
The living included Latkowsky; Zek 0567, one Rubel, an oppositionist; Zek 9835, Menshov, the famous careerist who had murdered hundreds for Beria only to be sent just as far north as anyone else; Zek 6854, Tulov, the spy for the Zionists; Zek 4511, Barabia, the spy for the French and Americans; Zek 2378, Krakov, the deviationist and wrecker; and…well, on and on, a barracks full of former intelligence officers, diplomats and soldiers who had in one way or another disappointed the regime or, more likely, its boss, and were turned magically into zeks, sentenced to die out here amid howling winds, nourished on beet soup and the odd potato or bug.
'Eat it, damn you!' someone called.
4715 did. There had never been any doubt about that. The bug squirmed against his teeth, then went still as it was halved, then quartered, then ground by forces beyond its comprehension. A weird prick of flavor, extremely odd, flew to 4715's brain, reminding him of something. What, possibly? The paella in Spain in '36, full of crackly shrimp and squid and zesty tomato? Or the leek soup at Stalingrad, so delicious after a day's battle in the snowy wreckage? Or possibly the veal sausage and sauerkraut he'd had in a German city, ruined though it was, in '45, before his final arrest.
The bug vanished, leaving an aftertaste on his tongue to be savored for hours.
Applause rose, for the diversion of 4715 and the cockroach had been more entertainment than the barracks had seen since Zek 2098 died spitting blood and cursing the boss several months or possibly years ago.
'Thank you, my friends,' 4715 said, and it was true: these were his friends, with their hollow faces and shaven scalps, cheek-bones like bedknobs, eyes black and deep and exquisite with suffering. Tomorrow, the road, the eternal road on which they labored in the cold, a road that would kill them. It was being built against the possibility that the Boss would someday want to drive to the North Pole. Although the Boss had died recently, and would never drive to the North Pole, that hadn't seemed to affect the roadbuilders of Gulag No. 432, not even a little bit. Onward, to the North Pole, in salute to triumphant socialism!
So resigned were they, in fact, that when Senior Sergeant Koblisky entered the barracks with a loud thump and a bump, escorted by three men with rifles, it was an astonishment to all. The guards pretty much left the zeks alone on the one Sunday afternoon of the month they were not required to build the road to the North Pole, in case the Boss should come back from the dead and demand to be driven there. The guards didn't want to be at 432 any more than the zeks did. Only one person wanted all these humans to be out here at 432 and he was dead now and it still didn't matter.
'Easy now, move back, you bastards, or I'll have the corporal run a bayonet through you.' That was Senior Sergeant Koblisky in a good mood.
It was so unfortunate that the Senior Sergeant, once a tank ace with Marshal Konshavsky's Fifth Shock Army at Kursk, had uttered a sentence of compassion for the poor German bastards he'd just machine-gunned as they surrendered (under NKVD orders of the day). That was enough to transfer him to 432 after war's end, a chestful of medals and twenty-eight Nazi Panzers destroyed or not.
'Let's see, where is he? I know you're here, damn you. You didn't die yet. I saw you yesterday, I saw you this morning, I-oh, there you are. 4715, get your ratty little ass over here.'
'What?' 4715 said. 'Why, I?'
'Goddammit, get over here. It's cold out, I want this over with so I can get back to my bottle. Wrap yourself up and let's go.'
4715 blinked, stunned. In fact this event was unprecedented in living memory. Men came, men died, men cried, men were buried, but men were never summoned. There was no point. It was almost incomprehensible.
'Yes, Senior Sergeant, I?'
'Here, wear this, dammit, it'll save time.'
He tossed the spindly 4715 a guard's wool coat, something that weighed so much it almost crushed the poor man, who was used to rags stuffed with newspapers as a barrier against the cold. 4715 found the strength to wrap it about himself, wished he had shoes of leather instead of wood, and, escorted by his protectors, stepped out.
Cold of course. The eternal wind, the eternal pelting of pieces of grit and ice and sand and vegetation; a gloom that was endless, a landscape that, beyond the wire, was itself an eternal flatness of snow and scrub vegetation giving way in a distance too far to be measured to leaden, lowering skies.
It was spring in Siberia.
The party trudged against the blistering wind across the compound to its one well-constructed building, a headquarters house, of stout timber, with actual smoke escaping a chimney to signify the presence of fire and warmth within. Immediately the clever 4715 spied the anomaly.
Camp 432's motley of vehicles, consisting mainly of old trucks that had somehow survived the war, were drawn up in formation outside the headquarters building. These were the ancient contrivances that hauled the prisoners' food out to them, and brought back the bodies, as the road headed farther and farther toward the Pole, a foot or so a day. Success was expected in 2056. But parked immediately before the building was something astonishing: a black, gleaming Zil limousine, well-waxed and showing only mud spatters on the fenders and a thin adhesive of dust after the drive from the railhead.
But 4715 hadn't time to conjecture on the meaning of this strangeness; he was inside and felt absolute, pure, quite beautiful warmth for the first time in many a month, or year, whatever.
'This way. You must be clean, of course. Important men can't be offended by your stink and filth. Really, it's sad how you've let yourself go.'
'True, I missed the morning bath. I decided on a second glass of tea instead, and a strawberry blintz with cream,' said 4715.
'See, men, how 4715 has kept his wit? Not like some I know. All right, 4715, there it is. Have fun and be quick.'
4715 stood before a shower stall in the guards' quarters. He stripped quickly, stepped inside and turned on the blast of hot water. It scalded blissfully, grinding off years of filth. He shivered in pleasure, found a rough bar of soap and lathered. Possibly they were readying him for his own hanging; it didn't matter. This was worth dying for.
'Speshnev, Speshnev, Speshnev,' came a voice familiar to 4715 from a thousand or so years ago. 4715 blinked hard in the newness of it all; yes, his name. His name spoken publicly, loudly, affectionately, when to utter it had been forbidden for so long. It was a weirdness so profound he had no idea how to comprehend it, but that drama was dwarfed by the next, when he encountered the speaker himself, large and blustery, but with shrewd eyes and glossy hair that only partially softened the brutality of his features.
It was his mentor, his teacher, his sponsor, his betrayer, his interrogator, his most reluctant torturer, his sentencer, the famous wizard of the service, one P. Pushkin, once a university professor and chess champion, then a secret soldier in the wars of Red conquest. P. Pushkin was the warrior incarnate, a kind of natural cossack who saw all opponents as manifestations of pure evil, fit only for obliteration. Though brilliant and even charming, his flaw and his genius was that he was without moderation in all things. He wore the dress uniform of a senior general of NKVD, and a chestful of ribbons that dwarfed even Senior Sergeant Koblisky's.
'How are you, my good man?' Pushkin inquired warmly, giving the spindly prisoner a bearish hug, as if Speshnev had just returned from a week in the country.
'Well, I am fine,' said the man named Speshnev. 'I just ate a delicious cockroach. I won it at cards from a Polish saboteur named 6732.'
