But as time passed he realized it wasn't just a matter of there being a few sadists around.

He had learned the laws that applied on convict trains and in the holds of convict ships. He had seen criminals gambling away other people's belongings at card-games, even their lives. He had seen pitiable debauchery and betrayal. He had seen the criminal ' India ', [23] bloody, hysterical and impossibly cruel. He had seen terrible battles between the 'bitches', who agreed to work, and the orthodox 'thieves', who refused to work.

He had repeated, 'You don't get arrested for nothing,' believing that only a tiny minority, himself among them, had been arrested by mistake. As for everyone else – they had deserved their sentences. The sword of justice was chastising the enemies of the Revolution.

He had seen servility, treachery, submissiveness, cruelty… And he had referred to all this as 'the birthmarks of capitalism', believing that these marks were borne by people of the past – White officers, kulaks, bourgeois nationalists…

His faith was unshakeable, his devotion to the Party infinite.

Just as he was about to leave, Nyeumolimov said: 'Oh, I forgot to say, someone was asking about you.'

'Who?'

'Someone from yesterday's transport. They were being assigned work. One of them asked about you. I said, "Yes, I do know him, I happen to have slept next to him for the last three years." He told me his surname, but it's gone clean out of my head.'

'What did he look like?'

'Well, rather shabby – and he had a scar on his temple.'

'Oh!' cried Abarchuk. 'You don't mean Magar?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'But he's my very oldest comrade, my teacher, the man who introduced me into the Party. What did he say? What did he ask about?'

'Just the usual question: the length of your sentence. I said you'd asked for five years and been given ten. I said you were beginning to cough and that you'd be released early.'

But Abarchuk was no longer listening.

'Magar, Magar…,' he repeated. 'At one time he used to work in the Cheka. He was someone special, you know, very special. He'd give anything of his to a comrade. He'd take off his overcoat for you in the middle of winter, give you his last crust of bread. And he's intelligent, well-educated. And a true proletarian by birth, the son of a fisherman from Kerch.'

He glanced round and then bent towards Nyeumolimov.

'Do you remember? We used to say that the Communists in the camp should set up an organization to help the Party. Abrasha Rubin asked, "Who should we choose as secretary?" Well, he's the man.'

'I'll vote for you,' said Nyeumolimov. 'I don't know him. Anyway, how are you going to find him? Ten lorries have left for the sub-camps by now. He was probably in one of them.'

'Never mind. We'll find him. Magar… Well, well. And he asked after me?'

'I almost forgot why I came here,' said Nyeumolimov. 'Give me a clean sheet of paper. My memory's going.'

'For a letter?'

'No, for a statement to Marshal Budyonniy. I'm going to ask to be sent to the front.'

'Not a hope.'

'But Syoma remembers me!'

'They don't take politicals in the Army. What you can do is help increase our output of coal. The soldiers will thank you for that.'

'But I want to join up.'

'Budyonniy won't be able to help you. I wrote to Stalin myself.'

'What do you mean? Budyonniy not be able to help! You must be joking! Or do you grudge me the paper? I wouldn't ask, but I can't get any from the Culture and Education Section. I've used up my quota.'

'All right then, you can have one sheet,' said Abarchuk.

He had a small amount of paper that he didn't have to account for. In the Culture and Education Section paper was strictly rationed and you had to account for each sheet.

That evening everything was the same as usual in the hut.

The old guards officer, Tungusov, was recounting an endless romantic story: the criminals listened attentively, scratching themselves and nodding their heads in approval. The characters in this confused and elaborate yarn included Lawrence of Arabia and various ballerinas he had known; some of the incidents came from the life of the Three Musketeers and the voyage of Jules Verne's Nautilus.

'Wait a minute!' said one of the listeners. 'How was she able to cross the Persian frontier? You said yesterday she'd been poisoned by the cops.'

Tungusov paused, glanced meekly at his critic and announced brightly: 'It was only on the surface that Nadya's situation appeared hopeless. Life returned to her thanks to the efforts of a Tibetan doctor who poured several drops of a precious decoction – obtained from the blue herbs of the high mountains – through her half-open lips. By morning she was so far recovered that she was able to walk about her room without assistance. Her strength was returning.'

'Right then, carry on!' said his now satisfied listeners.

In the corner known as the 'kolkhoz sector' everyone was laughing loudly as they listened to Gasyuchenko reciting obscene ditties in a sing-song voice. He was an old buffoon whom the Germans had appointed headman of his village.

A journalist from Moscow, a good-natured, shy, intelligent man with a hernia, was slowly chewing on a rusk of white bread – from a food parcel he had received from his wife the day before. His eyes were full of tears: the taste of the crunchy rusk evidently reminded him of his past life.

Nyeumolimov was engaged in an argument with a member of a tank-crew who had been sent to the camp for a particularly foul murder. The murderer was entertaining the listeners by making fun of the cavalry, while Nyeumolimov, pale with hatred, was shouting: 'Don't you know what we did with our swords in 1920!'

'Yes, you stabbed stolen chickens. One KV tank could have routed the whole of your First Cavalry Army. And you can hardly compare the Civil War with the War for the Fatherland.'

A young thief called Kolka Ugarov was pestering Abrasha Rubin, trying to persuade him to swap his boots for a pair of very worn slippers whose soles were coming off. Sensing trouble, Rubin yawned nervously and glanced round at his neighbours in the hope of finding support.

'Listen, Yid,' said Kolka, who looked like a wild, bright-eyed cat. 'Listen, you swine, you're beginning to get on my nerves.'

Then he asked: 'Why wouldn't you sign the form to release me from work?'

'I don't have the right. You're in excellent health.'

'Are you going to sign?'

'Kolya, my friend, I swear I'd be only too glad to, but I can't.'

'Are you going to sign?'

'Please understand. Surely you realize that if I could…'

'Very well then. That's that.'

'Wait a moment! Please understand.'

'I do understand. Soon you will too.'

Stedling, a Russified Swede supposed to have been a spy, looked up for a moment from the picture he was drawing on a piece of cardboard from the Culture and Education Section; he glanced at Kolka, then at Rubin, shook his head and returned to his picture. The picture was entitled 'Mother Taiga'. Stedling was not afraid of the criminals; for some reason they left him alone.

After Kolka had left, Stedling said to Rubin: 'You're behaving like a madman, Abram Yefimovich.'

The Byelorussian Konashevich was another man who wasn't afraid of the criminals. Before the war he had been an aircraft mechanic in the Far East and he had won the Pacific Fleet middleweight boxing championship. The criminals respected Konashevich, but he never intervened on behalf of anyone they were maltreating.

Abarchuk walked slowly down the narrow passageway between the two tiers of bedboards. His despair had returned. The far end of the long barrack-hut was thick with tobacco smoke. Abarchuk always imagined that when he reached that distant horizon he would see something new, but everything was always exactly the same: the hallway where the prisoners washed their foot-cloths in wooden troughs, the mops leaning against the wall, the painted buckets, the bedboards themselves, the mattresses stuffed with shavings that leaked out of the sacking, the even hum of conversation, and the drab, haggard faces of the zeks.