in diamonds, who walked down the line and gave each man a quarter. When she got to the former millionaire she saw the
'Forgive me for asking,' she said, 'but are you Jewish?' 'Jesus,' the former millionaire said. 'That's all I needed.'
And Zimma had remembered, totally, completely, the party, his suit, his tie, the young Swede and his story, and he had laughed. It was the first time anybody had laughed in that coal mine, except a guard. It was a beginning.
At first it had been enough that there were two of them. They had begun by exchanging biographies, but from the start the nostalgia was carefully rationed. They had concentrated more on the fact of their Jewishness, and how much it had contributed to their being in the camp, even after the terrifying old madman had died in Moscow, convinced till the last that Jewish doctors were poisoning him. Then Avramov began to eat with them, and he too began to talk. Avramov had lectured on political science in Riga. It had been Zimma who brought in Moskowitz, and then Avramov reported that Daniel, who had lived in his hut, would like to join, but Daniel worked in the forest. He could not come and talk in the mine. Daniel was also the camp's millionaire. He had been a soldier and had risen to the rank of major. He was strong and ruthless and had somehow stored away a little hoard of gold. One day Avramov brought word that Daniel would donate some of his gold to hiring a meeting place. Moskowitz, a former lawyer, sought an interview with the commandant of his sector of the camp. The commandant had first beaten Moskowitz, who expected it. The commandant, an Uzbek, always beat prisoners who asked for interviews. But in the end he agreed. They could meet for an hour once a week. The place they were given was a tool shed, the entirely unofficial rent a hundred rubles a month. The limit of their membership was to be ten, a number Moskowitz accepted at once. It was the number of the minyan. But they said nothing of religion. Not then.
Daniel brought a young poet with him, and the poet, Asimov, suggested Kaplan, an agronomist. Zimma produced Goldfarb, another doctor, and then Klein the singer and Zhelkov the psychologist appeared. That closed the list. By then other Jews in the camp had heard about them, and begged to join, but they would accept no more. It was the other Jews who called them the minyan: the minimum number of Jewish men who must meet together before a service can be held. The ten.
At their first meetings they talked about communism. Avramov lectured, and the rest asked questions, dialecti-cally pure questions about the dangerous fallacy of Israel and the gratifying decline in Judaic religion; questions one could address to the hidden microphone that Gabrilovich found within minutes of entering the hut. After four weeks the microphone was withdrawn; the Uzbek had found the tapes both boring and pathetic. Obviously these men hoped to have their sentences reduced by proving how deserving of rehabilitation they were. But the Uzbek knew they would never be released.
So did they. When the microphone went they talked about the world as it should be, not as it was. Avramov told them how the world need never hunger, Zhelkov told them how the human mind could develop into an instrument beyond their comprehension, Kaplan how the desert in Israel could blossom, quite literally, like a rose. Asimov related stories, Klein sang. Without books or writing materials they created something new with their voices, part seminar, part magazine. Then Gabrilovich discussed survival, their own—how to hoard their food, their sleep, their strength, to give them the best possible chance to avoid the terror of the hospital and a slow but certain death. It was Daniel, always the bravest, who asked the questions: How many of us want to survive? To their surprise, their joy, they found they all did, so long as they could meet together, and that night Klein prayed. He alone was Orthodox, he alone knew the words, but that night when Klein prayed they all prayed with him and from him took lessons in their own religion.
Daniel let two more weeks go by before he talked of escape. He had never spoken before, and at first they did not want to hear him, but Daniel had two persuasive arguments: his gold rented their meeting place, now, inevitably, nicknamed the synagogue, and on escape he was the expert, and a rule of their society was always to listen to the expert. He disarmed them at once by saying that it was inevitable that most of them would fail, but even they would achieve the reward of a quick death. For the others, the successful ones, there would be a chance to get out of the country, and if they succeeded, they could tell of their suffering and contribute to the arrival of the world as it should be. That was a debt they would owe to God. Asimov agreed at once; he was by far the youngest, and the enormous odds frightened him least. With the others it took time, but in the end they all agreed, even Kaplan, who at fifty had no chance at all. Two things persuaded them: the fact that it was a moral—even a religious—duty, and the fact that if they failed, as most of them would, death was their only punishment, and death, so long as it came quickly, was the only release that would ease them once the minyan was disbanded.
Even so, the magnitude of their task, when they began to examine it, appalled them. The camp was at Volochanka, two hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle. In its bitter winter no human being could survive outside the camp, in summer the guards were doubled, dogs roamed the spaces between the huts all night, and searchlights played at random, without predictable patterns. There were, besides, two tangles of barbed wire and machine guns mounted at each corner of the camp's perimeter. The guards, armed with tommy guns and clubs, used skis in winter and Mongolian ponies in summer. And it was all waste, all display. Until the ten men began plotting together, none of the prisoners, even the crazy ones, had even thought of escaping. There was nowhere to escape to.
They began by nourishing and training their bodies. Daniel taught them how to exercise, Klein how to develop their breathing, Gabrilovich how to work their muscles to the utmost limit of their capacity. They pooled all their possessions except Daniel's gold—that would be needed after their escape—and used them to buy food. They were ruthless about this: when food could not be bought it was stolen, and to steal prisoners' food at Volochanka meant agonizing death at the hands of other prisoners, if they were caught. Here, too, the Mosaic law operated. A life for a life. To take a man's food
The break was planned for July. There were only two hours of darkness in Siberia then, and Kaplan's flowers had reached the state they needed. Nightshade, most of it, but there were other ingredients. One day he picked them all, as the camp jeered, and let them wither, then he and Goldfarb set to work extracting the poison that would deal with the dogs. It was Zhelkov who fed the dogs. They loved him. Whatever he fed them, they would eat ... Zimma had his own plans to deal with the power cable. They might work, and they might not—insulation was impossible even to steal, but Zimma had agreed to tackle the job, and the risks were his own. God might yet let him live. They had their escape route planned, their rallying point in the forest that Daniel had mapped out for them already memorized, their hopes and prayers centered on a boat that might take them to Vadso, in Norway, eight hundred miles away. Then Zimma cut his leg in the mine, and he knew that he, who by his laughter had started the movement, would not see it through to the end. The cut was not serious, but it turned septic and there were no medicines. It grew worse and he found it harder to work, his strength faded. But every day until the escape he staggered to work. On the last three days he gave the others his food. And he was happy. God had been generous. Even if he had decided not to let Zimma live, at least he had simplified the problem of cutting the power supply.
On the night of the break nine of them assembled in the hut and waited for Kaplan, whose job it was to bring the poison for the dogs. This they needed desperately, but even more they needed his presence. Without him they were not ten; there could be no ritual prayer. It was strange how important prayer was to them. Zhelkov had lectured on it once, not stating a theory, but verbalizing the question that nagged in all their minds, except the Orthodox Klein's: Why do we need the prayers when we none of us believe in God? They had decided at last that the answer was in their Jewishness, which the ritual, the prayers, the Hebrew tongue all made manifest. But there was more than that, and they knew it, though what that 'more' was they never could define. To the end the question nagged at some of them, though Zimma, Klein, and Daniel joined Kaplan in his faith. But now, all alike, believer and non-believer, waited for Kaplan and their prayers.
He came in at last and they moved toward him in a wave of impatience and relief. What had delayed him? Was anything wrong? Why did he have to be late on this night of all nights? It was Daniel who called them to order. Daniel was leader now. He took Kaplan to the window and examined him in its light. Beside Daniel's huge, slab- muscled body, Kaplan's wiry toughness looked frail. His face was gray and there was a bruise already darkening his
