Should it be gas, should it be rapid fire? What would rapid fire manage against this creeping ramshackle crowd? There were no weapons in their hands. They carried nothing in their hands. Rapid fire… too late to use gas. He had to find the words before the stinking rabble broke over him. Rapid fire… where was his bastard voice? Rudakov still pulling at the arm of his coat, still shouting.
'What is it?'
'Don't shoot – whatever you fucking do, don't shoot.'
'Rapid fire, that's for them.'
'Don't fucking shoot.'
He could see their eyes, he could read the names on their tunics, he could see the cotton darning round the knee cap patches and the boots sliding towards him across the snow.
'But they're going to kill us.'
'Only if you shoot. Remember the dog, Kypov, don't forget the fucking dog…'
Kypov could smell them. He could not remember when last he had smelt the zeks. A hideous smell of waste, of dirt, of old death. They could not beat him. A rabble in a camp could not be permitted to gain victory over a Major of paratroops. He knew he was raising the pistol in his hand.
His arm was rising and there was the hard hold of the pistol's butt in his hand. He felt Rudakov's first clamp on his forearm, and his arm slid back, relaxed.
'We'll be killed, Major. If one shot is fired, every last one of us…' Rudakov's voice was kindly.
He led Kypov past his troops. Out of step, out of mind, they returned to the gate. Kypov was weeping. If Rudakov had not supported him he would have fallen to the ground.
The line followed them.
The linked arms broke only when the gates had closed.
'What did you get?'
'Two of the mounted machine-guns.'
'Better than I'd hoped,' Holly smacked Byrkin across the shoulders.
'Not better, they're all charred to hell.'
The cold came fast to Holly's face. 'We don't have a gun that'll fire?'
'Nothing that'll fire… I'm sorry.'
Chapter 21
Holly stood near to the wire and above him was the angled, subsiding structure of the south-east watch- tower. He heard the smashing of glass, the breaking of the windows of the Shop and the Store and the Library. There was the thudding of a wooden pole used as a ram against the door of the shed behind the Kitchen where the week's rations for eight hundred men were kept. The windows of the Administration block that looked through barbed wire into the compound were deserted. There would be men on the roof, and the guards in the towers overlooking the Hospital to the east, the Factory to the north, the Women's zone to the west would have a slanted and partial view into the camp.
In his mind he tried to shun responsibility for the fracturing glass, for the splintering doors. They had come to him, they had taken the step of conspiracy. But responsibility is no easy garment to cast off. Responsibility is worn tight, buttoned surely. Chernayev had told him that he, Michael Holly, had breathed the kiss of life courage into the zeks. He would lead them to hell, Feldstein had accused, would he care if they returned…?
What is the price to be paid for pride, what is the reward of the humble?
'The price of pride is crippling. The reward of the humble is survival.'
Bloody words, Michael Holly, daft words. And outside the fences they would be mustering an army, and inside the fences we're at play smashing and destroying.
He walked away from the fences and towards the Kitchen. Half a dozen men were sitting on the step outside the doorway of Hut 6. They were drunk. They had broken open the store of distilled alcohol that had been the property of the hut's 'baron'. That was democracy, that was power to the people. The capitalist had been overthrown. They were from Georgia, dark-skinned and curly-haired, singing and belching and hiccuping.
You started it, Holly.
He walked past the back of the Kitchen where the Store door sagged away from its upper hinge. An old zek came out trying to stuff potatoes down into his trouser pockets. They were raw potatoes and he would have no way of cooking them adequately, but a man who has been starved of potato for half a decade does not have to concern himself with the niceties of cooking. He had yellow rat teeth that could handle raw potato. Another man chewed uncooked semi-frozen herrings, gulped at the grey white meat. Another bit and worried at a length of tripe stomach-lining that would make him vomit. They would be fighting soon, those who already crowded the Store and blocked its entrance, and those who shouted outside the door for access.
You started it, Holly.
He walked along the side of the Kitchen and saw the broken windows. The breaking served no purpose. The snow would come in, and later the rain, the Kitchen would be a worse place for the zeks of the future… Perhaps, perhaps they do not believe in the future of the camp.
Perhaps that is why they have begun to damage systematically everything that is the camp. That can be a man's freedom. A man's freedom can be to damage systematically all the apparatus of the Dubrovlag.
He walked to the door of the Kitchen, where a knot of men with their backs to him formed an inverted laager.
They craned forward to see something at their feet. He heard the oaths and the whimper of a man who had once been privileged. Of course there would be beatings, the settling of age-old scores. Hands pulled Holly closer, he was invited to watch. He saw Mamarev on the ground. The snow was dark with mud and bright with blood. Blood dripped from the boy's mouth, from his nose. Two zeks kneeled above him and scrabbled with each other for the chance to strike the next blow. One of the zeks was Poshekhonov. Holly thought he might be sick. He reached forward and tore the two men back, and there was sudden surprise drifting to anger from Poshekhonov. Holly didn't speak. He picked Mamarev up from the ground. The sobbing gratitude of the boy shrilled in Holly's head.
You started it, Holly.
He carried Mamarev into the Kitchen.
A meeting had started. Amongst the debris of furniture one table and two benches had been retrieved. A dozen men, perhaps fifteen, were round the table. He heard a cacophony of raised voices. Argument, dissent, discussion. Poor bastards… poor, stupid bastards. They had begun something incredible and they had not known what they had done.
They were debating what to do next. That was a kind of freedom.
Holly let Mamarev slide down to the floor. He wondered how the men, some from each of the six huts, had been chosen. They were the doomed ones, they were the condemned men. When it was over, these names would be on Yuri Rudakov's desk. They would shoot these men in the yard of the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas. Zeks rule, OK. .. and for how long? For a day? For a day and a night?
Chernayev and Byrkin were the representatives of Hut 2.
Some of the other men he recognized, some he had never spoken with.
You started it, Holly.
He raised his hand, cut the squabble. it won't be a small force the next time, they'll come in strength. Now they'll be waiting for reinforcement. This time they will shoot. We have no guns… When the big force arrives they will again offer us a choice, surrender or take the consequences. This is your camp, not mine, you must decide for yourselves which way you will fall.'
'You led us before, Holly,' Chernayev said mildly.
'When you had already made your decision. You either give in now or you finish what has begun.'
The voices that Holly had hushed were raised again. if we give in, all of us will be shot or get Fifteens… we'll be behind wire for the rest of our natural… how can we fight them when we have no g u n s… we slid into this, if we slide further we're screwed… '
Brave men. Men out of the gutters, men who were unable to read the page of a newspaper, men who had
