Archangel

by Gerald Seymour

  Perhaps it was the dependence on another living and breathing soul that died. If he comes home or if he stays in the place where he is now, still that death will be final. I could never meet him again, I could never bear to see him cry again. It's taken me three years to try to lose the memory of Holly weeping. I'll never lose it, Mr Millet. Holly will never cry again, he'll never love again . .. Suddenly he stood up, and his beer wasn't finished and his pie wasn't eaten and he wiped his sleeve across his face as if nobody was looking and half the pub was, and he waved to me as if we'd only known each other for half an hour and he walked out through the door. So you see, Mr Millet, Holly is none of my business.

  The man that I knew is dead, dead in his tears.'

  Millet stood up.

  i hope I haven't spoiled your party.'

  Chapter 19

  'What was it worth?' Mikk Laas asked.

  it was worth nothing,' Holly said.

  'Does freedom have a rare taste?'

  'For me it had nothing.'

  'To have gone through the wire you must have believed in that freedom?'

  'And not found it.'

  'On the outside, you saw people?'

  'Not until the helicopter came.'

  'You saw the face of no man who was free?'

  'The first face I saw was that of the helicopter marksman.'

  'Was it luck that beat you?'

  it was inevitable.'

  'The escape was wasted?'

  it was lunatic, we were exhausted, we were hungry, we had nowhere to go.' Holly said bitterly. 'I hadn't thought it out. I hadn't reckoned on the tiredness. I told Adimov that I had thought I would find an excitement when we were clear of the wire, a great breath of fresh excitement, and I felt nothing. Once you hear the siren there is no freedom. Out of the little camp and into the big camp, that's what they say, isn't it? Near my country is Ireland, they have a sport there that they call "coursing". They release a hare and the fastest dogs they have chase it. For the hare there is a moment of something like freedom because it can run. But the dogs are faster. The hare has only a moment of freedom, and its freedom is spent with the blood spurting in its heart. That's not freedom, Mikk Laas.'

  'Others before you have tried, others after you will try.'

  'Then they're better men.'

  'And now you will bend to them?'

  'They drag it out of you, don't they? They drag the guts and bowels out of you. You start by trying to fight. You run against a wall, you beat your head against their bricks. You kick, you punch the wall, but you cannot hurt the bricks.

  I've tried . . . '

  'How have you tried?'

  Michael Holly looked across the narrow width of the SHIzo cell towards the old Estonian. They had not talked the previous evening, but morning now, the morning after recapture, and he could talk. But he felt an impatience at the veteran's bleak questions. He felt the requirement of justification.

  'I burned down the Commandant's hut.'

  'You did that?' Mikk Laas nodded, an academic's approval.

  'I did that. I poisoned the garrison water supply.'

  'That too?'

  'I escaped, I cut through their bloody wire.'

  - 'And now you will bend to them?'

  ' I . . . I don't know . . . '

  'Have you achieved anything by the burning, the poisoning, the escape? Anything of value?'

  'You tell me.'

  'Time alone will tell you. Perhaps you have lit some fire in the camp.'

  'Did I have the right to do those things, Mikk Laas?' He thought of a man taken to Yavas to face capital trial, a man whom he had never seen.

  'When we were last together you spoke of reprisal, I remember. If at the end, Michael Holly, you have won a victory, then you were justified. If now you bend the knee to them, then you have no right to do those things.'

  'Thank you, Mikk Laas.'

  An incredible old man. In the camps from before the time Holly was born. An old fighter, an old idiot, who did not know when to bend to them. Not a spare pinch of flesh on his body, and he had strength to give away. He had never met a man like Mikk Laas before. He had to travel a thousand miles inside the frontiers of the big camp to find him. Holly squeezed the frail fingers in affection.

  A warder unbolted the door of the cell and dumped inside a bucket and a broom of bound twigs. They should slop out and clean the cell, and after that Mikk Laas would go to the workshop and Michael Holly would be taken to the office of the Political Officer. The door slammed shut.

  Holly was on his knees picking up the dirt between his forefinger and thumb.

  'There is a man at Yavas who will die because I poisoned the water.'

  'Only a victory can balance that man's life.'

  An old voice, a voice that shuffled between the close walls of the cell.

  It is not easy to administer with success the daily life of an organism as complex as a prison camp.

  The traditional way, the way of the Commandants of the Dubrovlag, is the iron-gloved routine. In theory the weight of repression and penalty is sufficient to make the inmates accept their demi-life behind the fences. For a thousand days, or ten thousand days, the tough way will ensure a pliability from the zeks. Short of food, short of rest, short of dignity, the prisoners will seek the one course that will permit their survival. They will strive above all to live. But one day, they refuse to lie down before the steam-roller wheel of camp routine. From the offices of senior officials of the Ministry of Interior in far away and comfortable Moscow right down to the stink of the living huts in the camps, there is no known science to explain those few and long separated moments when the prisoners' tolerance of their condition is overwhelmed.

  At the camp with the designated title of ZhKh 385/3/1

  that one day - the day that follows a thousand, the day that follows ten thousand - was a Tuesday in the last week of February.

  A report now rests in the basement filing library of the Ministry of the Interior, compiled from laborious interviews with Vasily Kypov, Yuri Rudakov, an assortment of officers and NCOs under their command, trusties from Internal Order, and senior warders. The report seeks to explain the events that were linked, in Zone 1 of Camp 3, on a Tuesday in the last week of the month of February, with the name of Michael Holly.

  Michael Holly, however, cannot be directly related to the initial action on that Tuesday morning - that point was to be most precisely made by the Ministry's senior official who was to be the final author and arbiter of the report. Michael Holly was isolated in the SHIzo punishment block with only a senile Estonian for company. But his name was spoken often on that Tuesday morning. Men conjured with that name, took it as a faith's cross, whispered it as a healing herb. Around the camp was a low wooden fence, and then a killing zone, and then two fences of barbed wire, and then a high wooden fence. Around the camp were watch-towers, guards, guns, dogs. Around the camp was an impasse of snow emptiness. Behind those barriers, in spite of those barriers, a defiance was born. On that Tuesday morning an anger fluttered, a spirit tickled and, in ways that could sometimes be touched and that were at other moments intangible, the name of Michael Holly grasped at the consciousness of the prisoners. There are many errors in the report of the Ministry of the Interior, but when the heavy typewritten sheets point to the central position of Michael Holly they do not lie.

  On that Tuesday morning from his bunk in Hut 2, Anatoly Feldstein declared that he had begun a hunger strike,

  When the body is semi-starved, when the diet provides sufficient calories and protein only to keep the prisoner as a working creature, then a hunger strike is no easy weapon for a man to take with his fist.

  Feldstein lay on his mattress and the hut around him was quiet. All the zeks had gone for exercise and breakfast, and then for roll-call before the march to the Factory zone. The trustie was the last who had spoken to him, sworn at him, cursed him.

  Not an easy weapon to hold, the self-denial of food. But he had seen a man jump
down from the cabin of a helicopter on the previous evening, a man who had crawled in the snow to slice through the strands of wire that bound them all to the compound, a man who had run before the hunting troops with the scream of the siren betraying his action, a man who had carried his friend, a man who had managed to wave to the zeks who watched his home-coming.

  He had seen a man who had fought back.

  Bukovsky, Orlov, Shcharansky, Kuznetsov — they were in the folklore of the dissident fighters. Bukovsky had led the hunger strike at Perm 35. Orlov, who was in Perm 37 and shadowed even in the camp by two KGB officers, alternated between hunger strike and the SHIzo punishment cell.

  Scharansky, while in the hard Christopol gaol, had organized a ten-day strike in solidarity with 'the Peoples struggling against Russia-Soviet Imperialism and Colonialism'.

  Kuznetsov had not compromised even under the sentence of death. They were the cream, they were the leaders who were known beyond the borders of their country. Anatoly Feldstein was a minnow in their company.

  He had been serving out his time, whiling away the months of his captivity. He had been in the SHIzo just once, for failing to remove his cap in the presence of an officer. He had dreamed of an exile in the West. The Englishman had nudged his guilt. Where before he had seen no value in confrontation, he now saw its worth. When he had passed the samizdat writings in Moscow he had known of the penalties, he had told Michael Holly that he knew of them.

  Now, as he lay on his mattress, he thought of the further penalties that he would face.

  Let the bastards come. When you have nothing, what then can be taken from you? This was his gesture . . .

  Four men around the bunk. Two warders with truncheons drawn, the trustie who had brought them, Captain Yuri Rudakov because Feldstein was political.

  'Get up, you little Jew shit,' from the first warder.

  'Off your arse before we kick you off,' from the second warder.

  'Why are you not at roll-call, Feldstein?' A coldness from Rudakov.

  Words hammering around Feldstein's ears, and he felt small and vulnerable and beneath the swing of their fists and truncheons he waited for the blows.

  'I declare a hunger strike in protest against the violation of my constitutional rights . . . '

  it's not like you to be stupid, Feldstein . . . '

  The boy saw the beginning of puzzlement on Rudakov's forehead, as if the Political Officer were weighted by another preoccupation.

  in addition to a hunger strike I declare a work strike in protest against the labour conditions of the camp, which are illegal under Soviet law because they contravene Soviet safety standards.'

  in five minutes you'll be off that bed and on roll-call and that's generous. If you want to diet, that's your business.

  You can diet to death for all I bloody care.'

  'I declare a hunger strike, I declare a work strike.'

  He saw the Political Officer step back. Rudakov's fingers snapped in annoyance.

  'I'm going back to my office. In five minutes Feldstein will be in the compound.'

  Above him he saw white hands that stroked the length of their truncheons.

  The officers did not notice a change of mood amongst the zeks lined in front of them to hear the names called. They were familiar only with docility. If the zeks stood straighter in their lines, if their eyes gazed more questioningly around them, if they had shed a little of their apathy, it was lost on the men in uniform.

  On that Tuesday morning the zeks missed nothing.

  They saw the Captain of KGB stamp out from Hut 2, the annoyance large on his face. From line to line the whisper spread that Feldstein, who was a political, had declared a hunger strike. The story of this small act of rebellion slipped from tongue to ear in a quiet murmur. Rebellion frightened some, excited others, but no man could be indifferent to it. A political on hunger strike, and two days before that a pair of men had cut their way out through the wire, and two weeks before that the guards' barracks had been struck by dysentery, and a week before that the office of the Commandant had been razed to the ground. A pulse ran along the lines.

  A name called and a name answered. A tedious rhythm of shout and counter-shout.

  Mamarev sensed the difference. He, and all the pervert prisoners who lived in the split world between captor and captive, could sense the small current of aggression that flowed steadily, imperceptibly, through the ranks of the prisoners. He felt a fear in his own body, he felt the pull of anticipation around him.

  Every man in the compound heard Feldstein's shout.

  In front of the parade, from the doorway of Hut 2, Anatoly Feldstein was pitched out into the snow.

  A boot swung, a truncheon lashed.

  'I declare a hunger strike, I protest against the violation of my constitutional rights . . . '

  A boot thudded his voice to a whimper, a truncheon smacked him flat to the ground.

  'I declare a work strike against illegal safety standards . .

  His head was deep in snow, his hands protected his genitals. He screamed the high-flung shriek of pain. As if a colour sergeant had howled a command at a squad of conscripts, so the zeks reacted, stiffened, stood erect.

  Of course, they had seen pain before. Each man of eight hundred had known for himself what it was to be hit. On a thousand days, on ten thousand days, they would have turned the cheek, dropped the eye.

  Not on this Tuesday morning.

  A growl ran through the lines, something heavy with menace.

  The two warders picked Feldstein up under his arms and dragged him across the snow so that his hanging legs made a tramline track between the imprint of their own boots. The growl had turned to a whistle. The whistle of the supporters who watch the home team defeated in the Lenin stadium. A whistle of derision. The warders took Feldstein to the edge of the rear rank, dropped him, scuttled back. Feldstein was not wearing his boots, his socks were black with the wet from the snow. He was bent double, the whistling sang in his ears. He wore no gloves, and blue tinged the fingers that were still tight around his groin.

  'Call the names.' The Adjutant shouted to his sergeant, and there was the smear of nervousness in his eyes.

  'Chernayev . . .'

  The shout soared over the spilling noise of the whistle.

  Afterwards he could not say why he took the action that he did. He had been seventeen years in the camps, seventeen years of preventive detention from the only trade that he knew, the work of thieving. He had been a model prisoner through the years of his second term. He had offended nobody. A docile and anonymous creature who had merged into the life of the camp. He heard his name called, listened as if he were a stranger to the shout. No answer slipped his tongue. His mind was far distanced. He thought of the perimeter path, he thought of evening when the zeks had gathered in their huts, he thought of walking with Michael Holly beside the killing zone, if everybody says that they cannot be beaten then that will be true.' Those were Holly's words, and now Feldstein had joined him hand in hand.

  Timid Feldstein who hid behind what he believed to be his intellectual superiority. Feldstein who had never known a knife-fight. Feldstein who buried himself in books to escape the surroundings of Hut z. if everybody says that they cannot be beaten then that will be true.'

  'Chernayev .. .'

  The repetition of the shout. Between the shoulders of the zeks in front he saw the reddening face of the sergeant. It was a caricature of pomposity. He found its fury amusing.

  Chernayev sat down.

  He sat down in the snow. He felt the wetness seep through the seat of his trousers, tickle against his skin. He was smiling as if a light-headed calm had captured him. It had been so easy, easier than he could ever have believed. He did not think of the truncheons and boots that had struck Feldstein. He thought of nothing but the contentment of sitting in the snow, and the ruddy anger of the sergeant's face. He reached up with his hand and tugged at Byrkin's tunic then pointed to the squeezed mess of slush
beside Byrkin's boots. Byrkin responded, Byrkin settled beside him. Chernayev saw Byrkin's chin jut out, take on the gaunt point of a rock's edge.

  The whistling had stopped. There was a great quiet clouding the compound. The guards cradled their rifles and looked to their sergeant. The sergeant studied his board with the lists of names, then turned to the Adjutant for guidance. The Adjutant clasped and unclasped his fingers behind his back and stared at the window of the Commandant's office in Administration as if from the steamed panes of glass* might come salvation.

  The gate of the compound opened. Just a few feet, sufficient to allow the passage of a prisoner who wore manacles on his wrists, and two warders who gripped his arms. The prisoner was being taken from the SHIzo punishment block to the Administration building.

  Chernayev saw Michael Holly and his escort, Byrkin too.

  They watched him as he walked, eyes straight ahead, before he was lost to their view behind the mass of legs.

  Poshekhonov saw Michael Holly. Poshekhonov who was the survivor, who had slept in a death cell, who now had the bunk beside the stove in Hut z. He had never joined the company of the whines and dissenters. Lucky to be alive, wasn't he? He had faced the executioner's bullet, and any life was better than » dawn death in a prison yard. He intended to walk out through those prison gates one day and collect the suit he had been wearing at the time of his arrest - it wouldn't fit him well, it would be a give away at every station between Barashevo and the Black Sea - and take his railway warrant and go home to dream of a bank account in Zurich gathering interest and dust. He'd find a way to get there. Bloody well swim the Black Sea if he had to. Poshekhonov was a survivor. That's what he had told Holly, told him that his weapon was the humour that won him small victories. And Holly had dismissed him. 'Little victories win nothing • • Extraordinary, that Chernayev had sat down. Sensible old goat, he'd always reckoned Chernayev. Byrkin, well Byrkin was different - half mad, wasn't he? Everyone knew that Byrkin was touched. And who wouldn't be if they'd been locked in a cabin below the waterline with the bombs falling. 'Little victories win nothing . . . ' Feldstein on hunger strike, Chernayev sitting down, Byrkin following him, that wasn't; a little victory, only an inconvenience. But if the whole of Hut z sat down, what then? Perhaps it would be a big victory if the whole of Hut z sat in the snow. He looked to the man on the right of him, who was described as a 'parasite to society', and saw that his gaze was questioned. He looked to the man on the left, who was described as a 'hooligan', and saw that his action was waited for. You're not mad, are you, Poshekho-