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 compound for what is classified as Exercise. Above them hovers the white wool vapour of their breath, beneath them the fresh overnight snow is beaten to another layer of ice. They hear the stamping of the guard in his watch-tower, they hear the swish of the skis of the guards who are between the high wire fence and the high wooden fence, they hear the snap bark of the dogs. When they exercise, the zeks see nothing but their feet dropping forward on the path. Head down, balaclava tight on the face, scarf wrapped close, tunic collar raised. There is no talk at morning Exercise because no man is concerned with his neighbour. The young go fast on the perimeter path, and the old take the way more slowly, but each man is struggling for speed, because speed is warmth. Exercise is for every morning. If the tunics and trousers are wet then that is hard for the prisoners and they will be damper and colder for the length of the day that follows. The old cannot run, and they want the latrine, but only after Exercise are the men permitted to queue for the privilege of the latrines. The latrines are better in winter because the droppings under che board seats are frozen and the ice quickly binds the smell of men's waste. After the latrines, a wash of hands and face, but no shave because shaving is done by the barber and that is once a week with the bath. After the cold wash, it is breakfast of gruel swill and a cup of hot water. After breakfast it is parade and the men stand in the lines while the warders, who are backed by the fire power of the guards, come with their lists to count and recount.
Seven-thirty. The start of the working day. Each morning there is a faint stirring of excitement when the zeks march to work. They must walk out through the camp gate and cross the road and the railway line and then the file will enter the compound of the Factory. It is a brief walk, no more than a hundred metres, but it is a sliver of freedom. The men march with their warders and when they are clear of the confines of the fences for those few steps they are hemmed in by the soldiers and the dogs. The road serves the village of Barashevo and sometimes the civilians have to stand behind the lines of the guards and wait for the columns of criminals to go by before they can proceed on their way. They areas much prisoners as the zeks. Their gaols are the villages of Barashevo and Yavas and Lepley and Sosnovka and Lesnoy. They live between the islands of wire and wooden walls, they exist within sight of the watch-towers and beside the garrison barracks. Meagre villages that are blighted by the camps and their factories. And because they, too, are prisoners they detest the convicts, and their children ape their elders and shout 'Fascists!' as the zeks walk in their guarded column between the Zone and the Factory. The villagers' employment is the Camp. They are the warders, the drivers, the technicians, the Factory supervisors. A manacle secures them to the Dubrovlag. While the camps remain, the villagers are themselves captive. Against the shuffling columns, they have only the weapons of abuse and loathing.
There is a break of one hour for lunch. During that hour the zeks recross the railway line and the road and return to the Zone, once more to be counted and to be searched. In the afternoon they return to the Factory. In the evening they return again to the Zone. The searches are painstaking, the roll-calls are long. The men must stand in the wind and the stamped snow. Always they must wait.