At the far end from the door was a hatch at waist height, the level at which a man will naturally hold his steel tray.
The man who ladles the food into the steel bowl on the tray cannot see the face of the man to whom he gives the food.
He is blind to him and cannot therefore offer the favour of increased rations to a friend, reduced rations to an enemy.
Except that Adimov and his fellow barons will speak their names, and the cook will respond, which is the way of survival. Their bowls will be brimming, they will head the queue for the sprat of meat or fish that floats in the soup gruel. There is a rule, there will be a path around it. That is the way of Camp 3, it is the way of all camps in the Dubrovlag.
Adimov had not looked at Holly, he was far to the front of the slow-moving line with his cronies, the iron men of the huts, Feldstein stood half a wall's length ahead of Holly, beyond conversation.
The soup was a mash of wheatmeal flour and groats.
There was a skim of grease that shone in the fluorescent light of the Kitchen. A square of grey fish floated like a hostile iceberg, all but submerged. A tight chopped stalk of a cabbage plant. Different to Lefortovo, back in the dark ages from the second floor of the hospital block at Vladimir. Hot water to drink and rye bread to chew.
Holly found a place at the end of a table, extra room was made for him. He sat down, he smiled.
'You are the Englishman… the one who insists on his English name… I am Poshekhonov, from Hut z. I sleep close to the stove.'
Holly looked across the table at the stubby, round-faced little fellow who breathed a cheerfulness that was alien here.
He could have been a bank manager from the High Street of Twickenham, he could have sold insurance policies or slashed-price holidays to Benidorm.
'Pleased to meet you – I'd rather it were elsewhere.'
'The way you look at your food you are new to the camps. You have to close your eyes, close your nose, close your guts, you swallow it down. You throw the bread on top of it, the bread is the cork. The bread holds, it below till you're ready to shit. You don't eat like this in London?'
'Not everyday…'
Holly lifted the steel bowl to his mouth, tipped and tilted it, swallowed and felt the lukewarm drip in his throat and then the rising sickness, and he clamped his mouth shut, and swallowed again. More from the bowl.
'You have to feed, you must feed,' said Poshekhonov sombrely, and then his laughter broke again. 'There is some goodness in the food. They even say there is protein, but that may be propaganda.'
Holly thought he would choke. He bit at his lip and swallowed again. is this the worst?'
'Not the worst and not the best, this is everyday.'
Poshekhonov leaned across the table and slapped at Holly's shoulder. 'You will get used to it. How long do you have to learn to love our food? I once had two weeks to learn to love everything, two weeks until I was to be shot. The two men sentenced with me, they killed them, they spared me. Since that day I love to eat, I love all the food. Life here is very beautiful, to me any life is preferable to death. You understand me, Englishman?'
'Holly… yes, I understand you.'
Only the grease lay at the bottom of the bowl. Holly took the bread and tugged it between his fingers and wolfed it to his mouth. Tasteless and dry, it suffocated the revulsion.
The man next to him winked in a fast act of conspiracy, a runner bean of a man who then extended his hand to Holly and their fists gripped in a distant greeting, but there were no words. The camp was not a place of easy friendships. It was a place where men weighed and evaluated before they extended kindliness. They have learned to co-exist, they have learned to live without a colleague. He wiped the scattered crumbs on his tray to a neat heap and then pinched them between his fingers and gobbled them. The meal had done little to staunch the hunger pains in his stomach.
Hunger would be the battle. But they survived, all of these men in the Kitchen hut had found a track of survival. And so, too, would Holly…
'Englishman, you have not asked me why I am here
…' The disappointment was flushed on Poshekhonov's face.
Holly stood up. Around him the benches emptied. When the food was finished, the tables cleared.
'Because it is not my business. Nor your business why I am here.'
'Easy, Englishman, you cannot be an island, not in this place. The man who can live here is the one who reaches out to his fellows.' Poshekhonov had gripped Holly's arm.
'They have the guns and the dogs and the wire, they have their norms of output in the Factory, they have their regulations and their camp regime. They seem to have everything.
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.