Archangel

We have only our strength to laugh at them.'

'And does your laughter wound them?'

'From laughter we can have small victories.'

'Small victories win nothing.'

'That is the answer of a man who hurries. There is nobody in this camp who runs. There is nowhere to run to… it is your first night, Englishman, you have to learn of a new world, you have to be patient if it is to give up to you its secrets. I tell you now – the big victory is not possible.'

'If you say so,' Holly said over his shoulder. He joined the slow column heading out of the double doors of the Kitchen.

Poshekhonov was still beside him. 'You have yet to sleep here one night. The man from Internal Order is already your enemy… Adimov, who is a killer, is your enemy. A man cannot be an island here if he-is ever to turn his back on this place.'

'Thank you,' said Holly quietly.

Beyond the door the snow was falling more heavily and the men who crowded there braced themselves to run or shamble back to their huts. Holly stepped out into the bitter wind. You give yourself to no man, Holly. Myself first, myself second, myself third. Dancing shadows passed by him. No talk now, because the business was serious, crossing the open metres from the Kitchen to the huts.

The shots ripped aside the murmur sound of sliding feet.

The shots dipped and gouged into Holly's consciousness.

And Holly knew where to look. The instant of clarity.

God, Holly, you had forgotten him. You had been swilling food into your guts and making the small talk of camp survival, and you had lost him from your memory… The columns of men that splintered from the Kitchen to their huts were first frozen still, then drawn in concert to where the lights were brilliant, where the fences hung between the blackness and the snow.

One more shot.

You could have spoken to him, you could have offered something of yourself, but you left him there in the stinking bloody cold. You went to your fucking soup and your fucking swill and left him in the night.

Holly ran.

He barged aside those who were in front of him. He cannoned against grey-quilted bodies, his breath came in sobs and the chill caught at that breath and sucked out little gauze puffs of air. He ran, and came with the front rank to the perimeter path and the low wooden fence.

Only his arms had reached to the top strands. He hung from his arms and his body was quivering and his boots kicked at the snow. Not dead.

Around Holly there was a wail of anger that seethed across the illuminated strip and reached up to the watch-tower from where the searchlight dazzled them. And there was the roaring of the dogs and shouting from across the compound and the Guard Room. Afterwards Holly could not explain to himself his action. He could offer no reason as to why he had stepped deliberately over the low wooden fence and onto the clean snow beside this one man's spaced footsteps. Instinct took control of him and the noise of the men behind him died to a whisper. With clean, sharp steps Holly walked to the wire.

He did not look up towards the guard in the watch-tower.

He did not see the guard revise his aim, away from the gathered crowd.

Two shots into the snow a metre to the right of his legs, tiny puffs in the snow.

Holly saw only the man on the wire. He reached up, took the weight of the body and lifted it higher and then wrenched the material of the tunic from the barbs of the wire.

A tall and awkward body and yet light as a child's. Holly carried him cradled in his arms, retraced his steps, stretched over the low wooden fence and was back, swallowed again among the zeks. Other arms took on the burden, and blood stained richly on the sleeves of Holly's tunic. Two guards on skis had infiltrated themselves between the high wire and the high wooden fence and covered the growing mass of prisoners with their rifles. From the interior of the camp, warders pitched through the crowd with the aid of weighted staves and forced back the crush around the prone body.

Amongst the warders was one man who wore no uniform, but instead a warm quilted anorak. This man spared one short glance at the crippled zek, then looked away, folded his gloved hands across his stomach and set himself to wait patiently. This one man set himself above the bloody incident in the snow and the yelping sound of the siren.

Holly watched him.

Life was ebbing fast. It was ten minutes before the stretcher came, and then the prisoners parted and allowed this one from their number to be taken to the opened gates.

When the gates were shut again the crowd broke, drifted again towards the huts.

Poshekhonov was beside Holly.

'You should not have intervened, Englishman.'

Holly felt a slow wave of exhaustion. 'It was bloody murder.''*

'He is now outside the camp, that is why he climbed the wire. He has found his freedom… Who were you to stop him? Who were you in your arrogance to try to save him from his wish? That was his freedom, against the wire.'

'I couldn't watch him, not like that.'

'It is the way of the camp. Any man is free to go to the wire. It is an intrusion to prevent it. You saw the man who came in his padded coat; that was Rudakov. It was from Rudakov that our friend sought his freedom. Rudakov made an ice rink of the floor of his punishment cell. A man who has slept on ice, whose clothes have been ice, should not be prevented by a stranger from making his journey to what freedom he can find. You will learn that, Englishman.'

On that Sunday night there should have been a film show for the camp, but the projector was broken and the prisoner who knew the trade of projectionist and might have repaired it was serving his second consecutive fifteen day spell in a SHIzo isolation cell. A concert had been organized in place of the cancelled film. A group of Militia from Yavas, who formed a choir that was well known throughout the Dubrovlag, sang for an hour and a quarter. With special enthusiasm they gave their pressed and numbed audience

'The Party is our Helmsman', and 'Lenin is always with You'.

Holly knew the man who had climbed the wire would be dead before the concert was finished.

Chapter 5

The old zeks, the long-term men, they say that the first months in the camps are the hardest. And harder than the first months are the first weeks. And harder than the first weeks are the first days. And worst and most horrible is the first morning.

The regime of the darkness and the arc lights still rules when the loudspeakers erupt and relay the national anthem of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A crackling and worn tape plays the music of the nation from the Guard House, and it is six-thirty. It is never late, never earlier. The volume is high and the sounds of the military band with their brass and their drums rampage into the slumber of the men in the huts. No sleep will survive that wakening call.

The old ones say that the first morning, the first experience of dawn in the camps, is the greatest test.

The old zeks say that if a man has a nightmare then he should not be disturbed because the awakened life of the camps is more awful than the pain of any dream.

The old zeks say that a man is weakest when he comes to the camps for the first time, when the desire for life is first squeezed from him.

They have all slept in their clothes under the one permitted blanket. They sleep in their socks and their trousers and their tunics, and still the cold bites them. They are fast out of their bunks and the hut shakes from the futile cursing. The warders and the trusties from Internal Order are at the doors of the huts, and the zeks are pitched out into the night darkness and spill to the perimeter path, and like an ant trail they wind around the