Only the guards in the watch-towers were visible to the men on the inside, and they were distant dolls high above their ladders and half-hidden by the sides of their platforms.
It was unbelievable to the zeks, it was rich wine to these long stretch men on Strict Regime. It had never happened before.
How were they to respond?
As the gates slipped shut behind the retreat of Kypov and his force, the zeks had risen from their stomachs and their knees.
They swept the snow from their tunics and trousers and felt the excitement that comes only from unscheduled success. Kypov had fled from his own camp. So unbelievable, so extraordinary that the delight was merged with fast suspicion. From where would the hammer blow come?
Without a leader the zeks were pulled as if by a magnet towards the very centre of the compound. They gathered between the living huts and close to the north wall of the Kitchen. There seemed a certain security there, and for many the sight of the wire and the watch-towers was blocked off by the buildings.
Eight hundred men and each offering his opinion or listening to that of another, and interrupting, and shouting and whispering. But there was still the sight of the steel-clad stack of the Factory chimney. Only a narrow smoke column drifted from the chimney-top. No work in the Factory. The civilian foreman would be beside the lathes and saws and varnish pots. One h o u r… perhaps a few hours, and then the Commandant would seek to lead them back to the Factory.
Most men felt their freedom as a passing pleasure.
A shimmer of a whisper sped amongst the prisoners.
Fingers pointed towards the north-west corner of the compound. A guard was climbing the ladder to a watch-tower and he held the rungs with one hand, and in the other was the dark outline of a machin-gun, and his body was wrapped in belt ammunition. They watched him climb.
Then the pointing fingers changed direction as the flock of birds will turn to another course. The fingers pointed to the south-west corner watch-tower, and another guard was climbing and another machine-gun was carried to a vantage platform. And the fingers swung again and the direction was south-east. And swung again, and to the north-east.
It had been a titbit of freedom. The happiness died under the barrels of the newly-placed machine-guns. A man in freedom must own a certain privacy. What privacy could there be under the sights of eight machine-guns? Now the prisoners watched the gates. The gates were massive and shut and held their secret. Behind the gates the force that Kypov had mustered would be collecting, absorbing its orders. The whisper had gone. Voices raised now in argument, in confusion.
Men from Hut i talking with men from Hut 3 and men from Hut 5. The thief with the drug addict. The speculator with the rapist. The killer with the homosexual. The first tide of fear, fear that hissed over a shingle beach.
Fear recalled the pain at Anatoly Feldstein's bruised groin, fear carried once more the dull ache to Poshekho nov's savaged shoulder, reminded Byrkin of the thunder of falling bombs above a water-line cabin. Feldstein, Poshekhonov, Byrkin, and Chernayev… all together, and a crush of men around them. Men pressing against them, men listening and waiting and hoping…
Feldstein who had been strong on his bunk, brave in the snow when the boots and truncheons flew, now small and frightened and hurt and cold.
'What will they do?'
Poshekhonov who had sat down only after others had made the gesture and who still felt the teeth marks in his skin and the chill from the rip of his tunic.
'They'll give us one chance, then they'll fire.'
Chernayev who had taken the action he would never have considered before on any day of the seventeen years that he had laboured in the camps.
'They will subdue us. We'll all be for the courts at Yavas.'
Byrkin who had only followed, who had never initiated.
'They have the names, they have the faces. There'll be ten years 'Special' Regime at best, fifteen years at Vladimir or Chistopol at worst.'
Feldstein said, it wasn't supposed to be like this. Just an individual protest… '
Poshekhonov said, it's no longer one silly bastard's hunger strike. It's collective bloody mutiny. They stamp out mutiny, they make an example of it. Down the line, in the camp at Lesnoy, there was a mutiny in '77, they shot two boys for that, neither more than twenty years old.'
Chernayev said, 'They'll kill us, or they'll let us rot.'
'We're wrecked…' said Feldstein.
'We can't find an end to what was started,' said Poshekhonov.
'Holly started it, Holly is the beginning,' said Chernayev.
'Holly fought them from the first bloody day he was here.
We have drifted this far, if we drift further we might as well run at the wire,' said Byrkin.
Each man's opinion now must count. This is not the; outside world. In the small camp the minority cannot dictate to the majority. The decision must be collective.
Chernayev could see Holly. Over the close pack of heads he saw that Holly stood apart from the mass, leaning against the door frame of Hut z. He had isolated himself from the debate, he was no part of the crowd that had come together in the heart of the compound. A calmness seemed to bandage his face. He leaned with his hands in his trouser pockets.
A group of men is a herd. It follows a leader. It gives ground to the loudest, to the most certain. Those with faint hearts stand back, though they have the opportunity to speak they will not take advantage of that opportunity.
Those in the crowd who spoke with certainty were those who believed in the retaliation of Kypov that would fall on their heads, all of their heads.
'They'll butcher us when they come in… ' if we live we'll have a Fifteen on top of what's there… ' if we stand together we have strength, if we're apart they'll eat us…'
'They ran, the shit bastards are frightened… '
Chernayev listened to the litany of confrontation. Seventeen years in the camps, more to go, and there would be another fifteen to run. Additional sentences were always consecutive, never concurrent. Why had he sat down in the snow? Abruptly Chernayev elbowed his way through the crowd that mouthed the brave words of fight and resistance.
They'd learn, they'd learn what the fine words meant.
He shoved a path for himself, his eyes locked on Michael Holly.
'You were wrong with your advice. I was wrong to have accepted it.'
'When you have fired over the top you have only one option left to you.' For the fourth time since they had left the compound, Rudakov explained his reasoning to the Commandant. 'After that you can only fire into them. Then you have a massacre. As it is, we have a problem, a small problem that will go away. They're milling about in there, all piss and wind, no leaders and no plan.'
He wished he believed in his own words.
They stood together a few metres from the gate.
Vasily Kypov was restless. He stamped and pirouetted, and seemed prepared to listen only with a minimum of attention to his Political Officer. As if he were rousing himself before combat, Rudakov thought, and shuddered.
The bloody man had no sensitivity. The sledgehammer was all he understood. in twenty minutes we go.'
Close to the two men a small phalanx of guards waited.
They wore full riot gear – helmets with plastic visors, gas canisters fastened to their webbing, infantry assault rifles alternating with long wooden sticks.
'Before we return to the compound I will address the men over the loudspeaker system.'
'You can do what you like, you have nineteen minutes.
Then we're going in.'
'Go away.'
