'Yes,' said Bova. 'You're right there. In 1941 we had two colonels sent out to us from Moscow to check on the execution of that very order. They didn't have any transport themselves and during three days we retreated two hundred kilometres from Gomel. If I hadn't taken them in my truck, they'd have been captured by the Germans in no time. And there they were – being shaken about in the back like a sack of potatoes and asking what measures we'd taken to implement the order "Not one step back"! And what else could they do? They couldn't not write their report.'

Darensky took a deep breath, as though preparing to plunge still deeper. 'I'll tell you when bureaucracy really is terrible. It's when a lone machine-gunner has defended a height against seventy Germans. When he's held up the enemy's advance all on his own. When a whole army's bowed down before him after his death. And then his tubercular wife is abused by an official from the district soviet and thrown out of her flat…! It's when a man has to fill in twenty-four questionnaires and then ends up confessing at a meeting: "Comrades, I'm not one of you. I'm an alien element…" It's when a man has to say: "Yes, this is a workers' and peasants' State. My mother and father were aristocrats, parasites, degenerates. Go on, throw me out onto the street.'"

'I don't see that as bureaucracy,' said Bova. 'The State does belong to the workers and peasants. They're in control. What's wrong with that? That's as it should be. You wouldn't expect a bourgeois State to trust down-and-outs.'

Darensky was taken aback. The man he was speaking to evidently thought very differently to himself.

Bova lit a match. Instead of lighting a cigarette, he just held it up towards Darensky. Darensky screwed up his eyes; he felt like a soldier caught in the beam of an enemy searchlight.

'I'm from the purest of working-class backgrounds myself,' Bova went on. 'My father was a worker, and so was my grandfather. My background's as pure as crystal. But I was no use to anyone before the war either.'

'Why not?'

'I don't look on it as bureaucracy if a workers' and peasants' State treats aristocrats with suspicion. But why did they go for my throat? I thought I was going to end up picking potatoes or sweeping the streets. And all I'd done was criticize the bosses – from a class viewpoint. I'd said they were living in the lap of luxury. Well, I really caught it then! That's what I see as the root of bureaucracy – a worker suffering in his own State.'

Darensky had the feeling that Bova had touched on something of great importance. He felt a sudden happiness: he was unaccustomed either to talking about his own deepest preoccupations or to hearing other people talk about theirs. To do this, to speak one's mind freely and without fear, to argue uninhibitedly and without fear, seemed a great joy.

Everything felt different here: as he lay on the floor of this shack, talking to a simple soldier who had only just sobered up, sensing the invisible presence of thousands of men who had retreated from the Western Ukraine to this wilderness, Darensky knew that something had changed. Something very simple and natural, something very necessary – and at the same time quite impossible, quite unthinkable – had come about: he and another man had talked freely and sincerely.

'Yes,' said Darensky. 'But you've got one thing wrong. The bourgeoisie don't allow down-and-outs into the Senate, that's for sure. But if a down-and-out becomes a millionaire, then it's another story. The Fords started out as ordinary workers. We don't trust members of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy with positions of responsibility – and that's fair enough. But it's another matter altogether to stamp the mark of Cain on the forehead of an honest worker simply because his mother and father were kulaks or priests. That's not what I call a class viewpoint. Anyway, do you think I didn't meet workers from the Putilov factory or miners from Donetsk during my time in camp? They were there in their thousands. What's really terrifying is when you realize that bureaucracy isn't simply a growth on the body of the State. If it were only that, it could be cut off. No, bureaucracy is the very essence of the State. And in wartime people don't want to die just for the sake of the head of some personnel department. Any flunkey can stamp "Refused" on some petition. Any flunkey can kick some soldier's widow out of his office. But to kick out the Germans you have to be strong. You have to be a man.'

'That's for sure,' said Bova.

'But don't think I feel any resentment,' said Darensky. 'No, I bow down and take off my hat. I'm happy. A thousand thank-you's. What's wrong is that we had to undergo such terrible tragedies before I could be happy, before I was allowed to devote my energies to my country. If that's the price of my happiness, I'd rather be without it.'

Darensky felt that he still hadn't dug down to what really mattered, that he still hadn't been able to find the simple words that would cast a new, clear light on their lives. But he was happy to have thought and talked about what he had only very seldom thought or talked about.

'Let me say one thing. I can tell you that, whatever happens, I shall never ever regret this conversation of ours.'

14

Mikhail Mostovskoy was kept for over three weeks in the isolation ward. He was fed well, examined twice by an SS doctor, and prescribed injections of glucose.

During his first hours of confinement Mostovskoy expected to be summoned for interrogation at any moment. He felt constantly irritated with himself. Why had he talked with Ikonnikov? That holy fool had betrayed him, planting compromising papers on him just before a search.

The days passed and Mostovskoy still wasn't summoned… He went over the conversations he had had with the other prisoners about politics, wondering which of them he could recruit. At night, when he couldn't sleep, he composed a text for some leaflets and began compiling a camp phrase-book to facilitate communication between the different nationalities.

He remembered the old laws of conspiracy, intended to exclude the possibility of a total débâcle if an agent provocateur should denounce them.

Mostovskoy wanted to question Yershov and Osipov about the immediate aims of the organization. He was confident that he would be able to overcome Osipov's prejudice against Yershov.

Chernetsov, who hated Bolshevism and yet longed for the victory of the Red Army, seemed a pathetic figure. Now Mostovskoy felt quite calm about the prospect of his impending interrogation.

One night Mostovskoy had a heart attack. He lay there with his head against the wall, feeling the agony of a man left to die in a prison. For a while the pain made him lose consciousness. Then he came to. The pain had lessened, but his chest, his face and the palms of his hands were all covered in sweat. His thoughts took on a deceptive clarity.

His conversation about evil with the Italian priest became confused with a number of different memories: with the happiness he had felt as a boy when it had suddenly begun to pour with rain and he had rushed into the room where his mother was sewing; with his wife's bright eyes, wet with tears, when she had come to visit him at the time he was in exile by the Yenisey; with pale Dzerzhinsky whom he had once asked at a Party conference about the fate of a young and very kind Social Revolutionary. 'Shot,' Dzerzhinsky had answered… Major Kirillov's gloomy eyes… Draped in a sheet, the corpse of his friend was being dragged along on a sledge – he had refused to accept his offer of help during the siege of Leningrad.

A boy's dreamy head and its mop of hair… And now this large bald skull pressed against the rough boards.

These distant memories drifted away. Everything became flatter and lost its colour. He seemed to be sinking into cold water. He fell asleep – to wake up to the howl of sirens in the early-morning gloom.