sip…'
Poshekhonov liked to talk. That was his happiness, to talk to a captured ear was for him the thrill of seeing the Commandant's office roofless and destroyed. Holly did not interrupt him, and broke his bread into small pieces and husbanded the crumbs.
The report that the office of Major Vasily Kypov, Commandant of ZhKh 385/3/1 in the Mordovian ASSR, had been burned to destruction in as yet unexplained circumstances was a matter of sufficient significance to be seen by a senior official at the Ministry of the Interior.
The official was a member of the staff of the Procurator General who had responsibility for the smooth running of the Correctional Labour Colonies scattered across the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Before giving up this half-filled sheet of paper to his file system, the official had noted well its contents. Anything extraordinary that happened in Camp 3, Zone 1, was out of place. Such a well-administered camp, so little difficulty springing from it, a Commandant in whom great confidence was justly placed.
In the weeks that followed, the teleprinter messages from Barashevo were to become familiar reading to the official who now hobbled on the built-up shoe that supported his club foot towards his filing cabinets.
Chapter 8
A building has been destroyed and can be rebuilt. A roof has fallen and can be replaced.
The Captain of KGB begins an investigation. The Major in command is at first flustered, then morose.
There is labour in Zone i, and to spare. In a few days there will be a new office for Major Kypov at the end of the Administration block.
For nearly half a century the camp has survived the storms. More than fire is required to break the regimen of ZhKh 385/3/1.
Later, those who were to piece together the events at the camp of the early months of that year, from the time of snow till the approach of spring, were to wonder what was the ambition of Michael Holly, prisoner of Hut z in Zone i of Camp 3 in the Dubrovlag complex.
For a few days there was a swirl of conversation in the camp about the fire and its likely cause, and then the talk slipped.
The zeks had more to concern them. Interest in food, in warmth, in punishment, soon outstripped a matter as trivial as a fire. The fire was a dream, the fire was as nothing as the new bricks were slapped into cold cement and the air rang with the rasp of the carpenters' saws as they fashioned the ceiling framework.
Only for Holly did the fire live on. If he had chosen to confide in anyone then he could not have said clearly what was the summit of his aspiration. He would have fumbled for explanations. But the point was irrelevant because he had no confidant. He offered his friendship to no one.
Feldstein the dissident, Chernayev the thief, Poshekhonov the fraud, all reached for the Englishman as if to draw out some spark of friendship. All were resisted.
When he walked the perimeter fence, when he worked at the bench with the wood that would become a chair's leg, when he ate in the Kitchen, when he lay on the top tier of the bunk, he was alive and alert. Always watching.
Holly searched for the next opportunity to strike again at the administration of the camp that held him.
Darkness outside the hut, and beyond that darkness the ring of light from the arc lamps over the fence and the wire. The hut windows were misted as if a concerted bluster of hot air had steamed them. The lights were on inside the hut.
A few men read magazines, Feldstein was as always with a book. Another hour until lights out. Some tried already to sleep. At the end of the hut a boy waited, sitting hunched on an upper bunk, for darkness to come to the living quarters because then he could go to the mattress of the man who loved him… A low drone of talk hummed in the hut, and Holly lay on his back on his bunk and gazed at the roof rafters and counted the time between each fall of a water drop to his feet.
Near to Holly, Adimov was stretched on his bunk stomach down. For a long time he had held the envelope in his chubby fingers and close to his face. He had seemed to sniff at the opened envelope as though it carried some scent, but the letter inside only peeped from the tear and was not taken out. A man seeming to fight some inner struggle. Lying still, with the fingers clenched on the envelope and the eyes saucer wide.
' H o l l y… ' A hissed whisper from Adimov.
The knife had never been spoken of again. Holly did not interfere with the 'baron's' running of the hut.
'Adimov…' No move of Holly's head.
'Come here, Holly.' An instruction, a command.
'I'm very comfortable, Adimov.'
'Come… now.'
'Listen when I speak to you… I said I'm comfortable.'
Holly heard him shift on his bunk and the mattress seemed to belch at the movement.
'Please come, Holly… please…'
Holly jack-knifed his legs over the side of the bunk, swung himself down to the floor, dropped his feet beside Adimov's bunk. His head was close to Adimov, close enough to smell the force of the man's breath, to see the white anger of the scar on his face.
'What is it, Adimov?' spoken gently.
The toughness caved, the face of a child who is frightened.
'I had a letter this morning, a letter from my wife's mother. It is the first letter that I have had here in a year…'
'Yes.' i can't read, Holly.'
The voice grated in Adimov's throat. Holly's ear was beside Adimov's mouth.
'You want me to read it for you?'
'They read it for me in Administration.'
'You want me to read it again?'
'You don't know whether those pigs lie to you…'
'Give it to me, Adimov… no one here will know.'
Only when Holly's hand was on the envelope did Adimov release his fingers' grip. He had held the paper as tightly as an old woman holds a rosary. Holly looked over the single sheet of paper that was covered in the large hand of one for whom writing was slow and difficult. He read the few lines through, then closed his eyes for a moment before reading aloud.
Terminal cancer, cancer of the bowel. Perhaps a month. is that what they told you?'
That is what they told me that the letter said.'
Adimov sagged down onto his mattress and his head was half-buried in his pillow and there was a redness in his eyes.
'Will they let you go to her?'
There was a choking laugh from Adimov, derisive.
'Will they bring her to you?'
'Would you bring a woman to this place? Would you give to a dying woman as a last memory the sight of our camp?
Would you, Holly…?'
'What can I do, Adimov?'
'I saw you with Byrkin's soup.'
Holly started back and something of the kindness was lost from his face.
'I saw you, it means nothing that I saw you… I thought you would help me, too. If you helped Byrkin, that you would help me.'
'What can I do?'
'I can't read, I can't write… '
The man who dominated the hut, who controlled the tobacco racket, who took an undisputed place at the
