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.'

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.'

'It seems as though he can interrupt us even now.'

'That's hardly surprising,' said Magar. Abarchuk could recognize the excitement in his voice. Magar had always begun serious conversations in this tone.

'It's not really him we're talking about,' Magar continued. 'We're talking about ourselves.'

'No!' said Abarchuk.'No!'

He caught hold of Magar's hot hand, squeezed it, put his arms round his shoulders and then began to choke, sobbing silently and trembling.

'Thank you,' Magar murmured, 'my comrade, my friend.'

They both fell silent, breathing heavily. They were breathing in time with one another. To Abarchuk, it was not only their breathing that was united.

It was Magar who broke the silence.

'Listen now,' he said, sitting up in bed. 'Listen, my friend. This will be the last time I call you like this.'

'Don't talk like that,' said Abarchuk. 'You're going to live!'

'I'd sooner undergo torture, but I have to say this… You listen too,' he added, turning to the corpse. 'What I'm going to say has to do with you and your Nastya… This is my last duty as a revolutionary and I must fulfil it… You're someone very special, comrade Abarchuk. And we met at a very special time – our best time, I think… Let me begin now. First. We made a mistake. And this is what our mistake has led to. Look! You and I must ask this peasant to pardon us… Give me a fag. What am I saying? No repentance can expiate what we've done. I have to say this… Secondly. We didn't understand freedom. We crushed it. Even Marx didn't value it – it's the base, the meaning, the foundation that underlies all foundations. Without freedom there can be no proletarian revolution… Thirdly. We go through the camp, we go through the taiga, and yet our faith is stronger than anything. But this faith of ours is a weakness – a means of self-preservation. On the other side of the barbed wire, self-preservation tells people to change – unless they want to die or be sent to a camp. And so Communists have created idols, put on uniforms and epaulettes, begun preaching nationalism and attacking the working class. If necessary, they'll revive the Black Hundreds… [24] But here in the camp the same instinct tells people not to change, not to change during all the decades they spend here – unless they want to be buried straight away in a wooden jacket. It's the other side of the coin.'

'Stop!' screamed Abarchuk, raising his clenched fist to Magar's face. 'They've broken you. You weren't strong enough. What you're saying is all lies. You're raving.'

'I'm not. I wish I were. I'm calling you to follow me! Just as I called you twenty years ago. If we can't live the life of true revolutionaries, then the best we can do is die.'

'I've had enough! Stop!'