'Today's my birthday,' he said to Abarchuk. 'Come and join us. We've got some vodka.'
It was terrible. Dozens of people must have heard last night's murder, must even have seen the man walking up to Rubin's place. It would have been easy for one of them to jump up and raise the alarm. Together they could have dealt with the murderer in no time. They could have saved their comrade. But no one had looked up; no one had called out. A man had been slaughtered like a lamb. And everyone had just lain there, pretending to be asleep, burying their heads in their jackets, trying not to cough, trying not to hear the dying man writhing in agony.
How vile! What pathetic submissiveness!
But then he too had been awake, he too had kept silent, he too had buried his head in his jacket… Yes, there was a reason for this submissiveness – it was born of experience, of an understanding of the laws of the camp.
They could indeed have got up and stopped the murderer; but a man with a knife will always be stronger than a man without a knife. The strength of a group of prisoners is something ephemeral; but a knife is always a knife.
Abarchuk thought about the coming interrogation. It was all very well for the operations officer to ask for statements. He didn't have to sleep in the hut at night, he didn't have to wash in the hallway, leaving himself open to a blow from behind, he didn't have to walk down mine-shafts, he didn't have to go into the latrine where he might get jumped on and have a sack thrown over his head.
Yes, he had seen someone walk up to Rubin. He had heard Rubin wheezing, thrashing his arms and legs around in his death-agony.
The operations officer, Captain Mishanin, called Abarchuk into his office and closed the door. 'Sit down, prisoner.'
He put the usual initial questions, questions the political prisoners always answered quickly and precisely.
He then looked up with his tired eyes, and knowing very well that an experienced prisoner, afraid of the inevitable reprisals, would never say how the nail had come into the murderer's hands, stared at Abarchuk for a few seconds.
Abarchuk looked back at him. He scrutinized the captain's young face, looking at his hair and his eyebrows, and thought to himself that he could only be two or three years older than his own son.
The captain then asked the question which three prisoners had already refused to answer.
Abarchuk didn't say anything.
'Are you deaf or something?'
Abarchuk remained silent.
How he longed for the man to say to him, even if he weren't sincere, even if it were just a prescribed interrogation technique: 'Listen, comrade Abarchuk, you're a Communist. Today you're in the camp, but tomorrow we'll be paying our membership dues together. I need your help as a comrade, as a fellow Party member.'
Instead the captain said: 'So you've gone to sleep, have you? I'll wake you up.'
But it wasn't necessary. In a hoarse voice Abarchuk said: 'Barkha-tov stole the nails from the storeroom. He also took three files. The murder was, in my opinion, committed by Nikolay Ugarov. I know that Barkhatov gave him the nails and that he threatened Rubin several times. Yesterday he swore he would kill him – Rubin had refused to put him on the sick-list.'
He took the cigarette that was offered him. 'I consider it my duty to the Party to inform you of this, comrade Operations Officer. Comrade Rubin was an old Party member.'
Captain Mishanin lit Abarchuk's cigarette, then took up his pen and began to write.
'You should know by now, prisoner,' he said gently, 'that you have no right to talk about Party membership. You are also forbidden to address me as "comrade". To you I am "citizen chief".'
'I apologize, citizen chief,' replied Abarchuk.
'It will be several days before I finish the inquiry,' said Mishanin. 'Then everything will be set straight. After that, well… We can have you transferred to another camp.'
'It's all right, citizen chief, I'm not afraid,' said Abarchuk.
He went back to the storeroom. He knew that Barkhatov wouldn't ask him any direct questions. Instead, he would watch him unrelentingly, squeezing out the truth from his movements, from his eyes, from the way he coughed…
He was happy. He had won a victory over himself.
He had won back the right to pass judgement. And when he thought about Rubin now, it was with regret that he'd never have the chance to say what he'd thought of him the other day.
Three days went by and there was still no sign of Magar. Abarchuk asked about him at the mines administration, but none of the clerks he knew could find his name on their lists.
That evening, just as Abarchuk had resigned himself to the fact that fate had kept them apart, a medical orderly called Trufelev came into the hut. Covered in snow and pulling splinters of ice from his eyelashes, he said to Abarchuk: 'Listen, we had a zek in the infirmary just now who wanted to see you. I'd better take you there straight away. Ask leave from the foreman. Otherwise… you know what our zeks are like. He might snuff it any moment – and it will be no good talking to him when he's in his wooden jacket.'
41
Trufelev led Abarchuk down the corridor of the infirmary. It had a foul smell of its own, quite distinct from that of the hut. They walked in semi-darkness past heaps of wooden stretchers and bundles of jackets waiting to be disinfected.
Magar was in the isolation ward, a cell with log walls containing two iron bedsteads standing side by side. This ward was usually kept for goners and people with infectious illnesses. The thin legs of the two bedsteads seemed to be made of wire, but they weren't in the least bent – no one of normal weight ever lay there.
'No, no, the bed on the right!' came a familiar voice. Abarchuk forgot about the camp and his white hair. It was as though he had found once again what he had lived for during so many years, what he would gladly have sacrificed his life for.
He stared into Magar's face. 'Greetings, greetings, greetings…,' he said very slowly, almost ecstatically.
Afraid of being unable to contain his excitement, Magar spoke with deliberate casualness. 'Sit down then. You can sit on the bed opposite.'
Noticing the way Abarchuh looked at the bed, he added: 'Don't worry – you won't disturb him! No one will ever disturb him now.'
Abarchuk bent down to take a better look at his comrade's face, then glanced again at the corpse draped in blankets.
'How long ago?'
'It's two hours since he died. The orderlies won't touch him till the doctor comes. It's a good thing. If they put someone else there, we won't be able to talk.'
'True enough,' said Abarchuk.
Somehow he couldn't bring himself to ask the questions he so desperately wanted to: 'Were you sentenced along with Bubnov – or was it the Sokolnikov case? How many years did you get? Which isolation prison were you in-Vladimir or Suzdal? Were you sentenced by a Special Commission or a Military Board? Did you sign a confession?'
'Who was he?' he asked, indicating the draped body. 'What did he die of?'
'He was a kulak. He'd just had too much of the camp. He kept calling out for some Nastya or other. He wanted to go away somewhere…'
Gradually, in the half-light, he made out Magar's face. He would never have recognized him. It wasn't that he'd changed – it was that he was an old man who was about to die.
He could feel the corpse's hard, bony arm against his back. It was bent at the elbow. Sensing that Magar was looking at him, he thought: 'He's probably thinking the same thing – "Well, I'd never have recognized him." '
'I've just realized,' said Magar. 'He kept muttering something: "Wa… wa… wa… wa…" He wanted water. There's a glass right beside him. I could have carried out his last wish.'