And a lot depended on the operations officer – the ways of attaining high position were obscure and mysterious. He might end up working in the laboratory: he'd wear a white smock, the woman in charge would be a civilian worker and he would no longer be at the mercy of the criminals; or he might join the planning section or be put in charge of a mine… But all the same, Rubin was wrong. Rubin liked to degrade a man by ferreting out what was creeping up from his subconscious. Rubin was a saboteur.
Abarchuk had always been uncompromising with opportunists. He had hated all double-dealers and socially-alien elements.
His spiritual strength, his faith, had always lain in his right to make judgements. He had doubted his wife – and had separated from her. He hadn't trusted her to bring up his son a steadfast fighter – and had denied him the right to bear his surname. He had damned anyone who wavered; he had despised all grumblers and weak-minded sceptics. He had brought to trial some engineers in the Kuzbass who had been pining for their families in Moscow. He had condemned forty socially unreliable workers who had left the construction site for their villages. He had renounced his petty-bourgeois father.
It was sweet to be unshakeable. In passing judgement on people he had affirmed his own inner strength, his ideals, his purity. This was his consolation and his faith. He had never deviated from the directives of the Party. He had willingly renounced Party maximalism. For him, self-renunciation had been equivalent to self-affirmation. He had worn the same boots and the same soldier's tunic whether he was at work, at meetings of the Board of the People's Commissariat, or going for a walk along the quay at Yalta when he had been sent there to convalesce. He had wanted to become like Stalin.
And in losing his right to pass judgement, he lost himself. Rubin had sensed that. Almost every day he would allude to the weaknesses and cowardice, to all the petty desires that somehow stole into your soul in the camp.
The previous day he had said: 'Barkhatov supplies his young thugs with metal from the store, and our Robespierre doesn't say a word. As the song goes, even a chicken wants to stay alive.'
When Abarchuk was about to condemn someone and then felt he could equally well be condemned himself, he began to hesitate, to lose himself, to fall into despair.
Abarchuk stopped by the place where old Prince Dolgoruky was talking to Stepanov, a young professor at the Economics Institute. Stepanov behaved very arrogantly, refusing to get up when the camp authorities came into the hut and openly expressing anti-Soviet views. He was proud of the fact that, unlike the majority of the political prisoners, he was there for a reason: he had written an article entitled 'The State of Lenin and Stalin' and distributed it to his students. He had been denounced by either the third or fourth person who had read it.
Dolgoruky had returned to the Soviet Union from Sweden. Before that, he had lived for a long time in Paris and felt deeply homesick. He had been arrested a week after his return. In the camp he prayed, made friends with members of the different Christian sects and wrote mystical poems. At this moment he was reading one of them to Stepanov.
Abarchuk listened, leaning his shoulder against the post supporting the two tiers of boards. Dolgoruky's eyes were half-closed and his chapped lips were trembling as he recited.
I feel that I have chosen everything -
The time and place, the day I came into the world;
I chose the strength to suffer fire, to fling
Myself into the water, to be hurled
Into the stench of flesh, smeared and profaned
With blood and pus, dabbed with these wads of filth
And fouled by the ten-horned beast – his belly's stealth
And blasphemies have left my soul unstained!
For I believe in justice from above,
The imponderable source of best and worst
That hears burned Russia speak in flames – and burst
Free in these words! Great lord of truth and love!
You carve in plenitudes of fire the life
Which craves abundance, craves your absolute -
Prune to fruition with your burning knife!
The tree submits! Now make my soul your fruit!
After he had finished, he sat for a moment with his eyes half-closed, his lips still moving.
'That's shit,' said Stepanov. 'Pure decadence!'
Dolgoruky gave a dismissive wave of his pale, anaemic hand.
'Look where all your Chernyshevskys and Herzens have got us! Don't you remember what Chaadayev wrote in his Third Philosophical Letter?'
'I detest you and your mystical obscurantism as much as I detest the organizers of this camp,' replied Stepanov in a schoolmasterly tone. 'Both they and you forget the third and most natural path for Russia: the path of democracy and freedom.'
Abarchuk had often argued with Stepanov, but just then he didn't feel like it; for once he didn't want to brand Stepanov as an enemy, an internal émigré. He went to the corner where the Baptists were praying and began listening to their muttering.
Suddenly the stentorian voice of hut-foreman Zarokov rang out: 'Everyone stand up!'
They all jumped up – someone in authority must have come into the hut. Abarchuk squinted round and saw Dolgoruky's long pale face. Yes, he was a goner. He was standing there at attention, still muttering away. Probably he was repeating the same poem. Stepanov was sitting; like the anarchist he was, he refused to submit to the sensible regulations of the camp.
'A search, there's going to be a search,' whispered the prisoners.
But no search took place. The two young escort-guards in their red and blue service caps just walked down between the bedboards, looking round at the prisoners.
As they passed Stepanov, one of them said: 'Still sitting there, professor? Afraid your arse will catch cold?'
Stepanov looked up – he had a wide snub-nosed face – and answered by rote in a loud parrot-like voice: 'Citizen guard, I request you to address me politely. I'm a political prisoner.'
That night there was an incident in the barrack-hut: Rubin was murdered.
The murderer had placed a large nail against his ear while he was asleep and driven it into his brain with one blow. Five people, Abarchuk among them, were summoned by the operations officer. What seemed to concern him was the provenance of the nail. This particular type of nail had only recently been delivered to the store; as yet there had been no requests for it from the production sections.
While they were washing, Barkhatov came and stood next to Abarchuk at the wooden trough. Licking the drops of water off his lips, his face still wet, he turned to Abarchuk and said very quietly: 'Listen, swine, nothing's going to happen to me if you squeal. But you'll really catch it! Yes, I'll fix you – and in a way that will make the whole camp shit themselves!'
He wiped himself dry, looked calmly into Abarchuk's eyes, saw what he was looking for and shook Abarchuk by the hand.
In the canteen Abarchuk gave Nyeumolimov his bowl of cornmeal soup.
His lips trembling, Nyeumolimov said: 'The swine! Our Abrasha! He was a real man!' and then pulled Abarchuk's bowl of soup towards him.
Abarchuk got up from the table without a word.
The crowd of people by the exit parted as Perekrest came in. He had to bend as he came through the doorway: camp ceilings were not designed for men of his height.