The Struggle and the Triumph

It was time for an execution. Hurriedly, Fyodor sipped the last of
his hot tea, absolutely a luxury in these times, and stepped into his
parka. All around him, in the shoddy square recreation room, his fellow
guardsmen were doing the same, adding another layer of protection
against the brutal cold waiting for them on the other side of the
aluminum door. Even now, their breaths puffed through the air, and that
was with the waves of jolly heat the thrice-painted radiators threw
into the room. They had grown up in the kind of cold in this room, in
towns and kolkhozes in Russia or the Ukraine or Georgia, but outside
was a whole different species of cold. Outside was Siberia, and it was
winter.

The long underwear was hardly ever removed, only twice a month to
bathe. Then there were trousers and shirts and sweaters. Everything was
either gray or black or ivory-although ivory didn't stay ivory too
long, and normally looked beige. One always wore fur-lined boots and a
felt-lined hat, even inside. The recreation room was comfortable
compared to the barracks. In the barracks, if you left water out
overnight, it would be frozen solid in the cheerily dark morning.
Scarves were wrapped around the neck, next, and then the gloves. The
gloves were the hardest part, because they were more like mittens than
anything else. It was hard to pull the trigger of a gun with these
badly-made gloves. But although they were guards and had to carry the
guns, they hardly ever had to use them. Siberia, the GULAG, and work
had a way of beating the prisoners so badly they never thought of
resisting.

When everyone was bundled up and ready to go, looking like fabric
snowmen carrying tommy guns, Petrovna, the citizen-leader of their
squad, pushed open the door. There was no cinematic gust of snow-laden
air, with the great, frigid outdoors depressurizing into the room. It
was just as if they stepped from the normal world onto the face of the
moon. Warmth had no home here. Life had no home here. The air was still
and utterly bereft of heat, so cold that the cold seemed to have a
color and sharpness of its own. The precious heat of their bodies was
held tightly within their miniature biospheres. Although morning, light
would not peek over the tundra's horizon for months. It was black as
midnight, and only the rules and laws of GULAG made it morning.

The factory was over a mile's walk in the hard-packed snow of the road.
Gas was too scarce to squander on such a short trek, and besides, few
of the trucks in the motor pool currently worked. Once summer came, and
fluids and oils stopped freezing so persistently, the mechanics would
try to get the great olive-painted beasts back in order. Until then,
there would be a lot of walking. It was good exercise and warmer than
sitting in a steel, unheated truck.

They trundled along the narrow road, as silent as the
rest of the world. Petrovna's narrow profile tottered at the front of
the line, followed by Kruglov, Yakushev, Rudenko, and Lukomsky. Fyodor
Sergeiovich Suslov lagged at the end. He was not a good walker.

The good thing about walking in Siberia was the lack of topographical
features. One could go left, right, or straight ahead, but never up or
down. The ground was hard from decades of accumulated and unmelted
snow. The trick was not to overdo it; it wouldn't do to inhale too much
frigid air. They left the housing area for the guards, which seemed to
sleep but for a few yellow lights here and there. The road carried them
along the prisoners' barracks. Again, all was quiet. All of the
prisoners able to work would already be at work, and besides, the
prisoners never made much noise, even during their free time. There was
no barbed wire fence or guard tower here. Such measures were
unnecessary in a land so utterly inhospitable to man. To leave the
protective embrace of the GULAG was to walk to one's death. No
sanctuary existed for a thousand miles. Every week, a few prisoners
would die within the camp, simply from sitting down and forgetting to
get up, or by taking a wrong turn seeking the cafeteria.

Now industrial towers, gray and wreathed in dangling machinery, rose
high into the sky, jutting a sharp profile perpendicular to the
flatness of the tundra. They neared their goal. Warehouses and
buildings grew from the soil like mushrooms after a rain. But these
edifices had not sprung up overnight, but were hammered together, piece
by piece, from materials transported here in trucks. The grunt work had
been done by the prisoners, the lifting and the carrying and the
sorting. They were the ones least fitted to do hard work, for their
caloric intake never matched the demands of their captors. Heavy
lifting cannot be accomplished on a diet of meager bits of black bread
and a few ladles of potato peel soup. The buildings were already there,
massive and industrial, by the time Fyodor arrived, but he heard that
thousands of prisoners had died during their construction, that the
warehouse had served as a sort of morgue for them that winter until the
trucks could be repaired to dump them in one of the common
graves.

They approached, and Fyodor could see people through the windows of the
factory. He caught only a flash of a gaunt man, with a scalp retaining
only ragged patches of hair, before the door was flung open and the
squad entered. The smell of the factory, sour shaved steel and pungent
oil, struck him even past the fur-lined fringe of his hood. It was
almost warm here, and with the rhythmic, circular sounds of the
machines, it had an almost soporific quality. Kruglov, the eager and
the brutal, the second in command of the squad behind Petrovna, shut
the door.

The prisoners waited for them docilely, hundreds and hundreds of them.
They were assembled in this cavernous factory, on the floor in front of
the treasured, stolid machines. They looked at guards with bored,
hollow expressions, and all wore dark gray like an army of the dead.
Beneath their clothes, they were emaciated like scarecrows. The
assembly numbered perhaps eight hundred, and this was only one of the
four factories in the GULAG. The mines, also attached to this GULAG,
had their own buildings, their own guards and trucks, and even their
own Chekist, or representative from the MGB. Surprisingly,
significantly, he was here. His name was Ivan Godunov, and he was a
fat, solid man, who wore pince-nez, even here in Siberia.

Ivan Godunov smiled at the newly-arrived guards. It was the smile of a
goblin, the smile of death. For though all of the guards were good
Communists, loved father Stalin and revered the memory of Lenin, those
from the MGB, the political police, seemed hardly human. The Chekists
knew everything about everyone. They preached vigilance to the people,
and they themselves had supernatural vigilance. They were the judges
and executioners of all the enemies of Stalin and the people. Everyone
knew friends, relatives, or acquaintances who had disappeared on cold
nights, during walks to the park or on business trips. Everyone knew,
in these situations, not to say or ask anything, but to pretend as if
all were normal. Even to know someone who had disappeared was
dangerous. And everyone knew that these people had faced this man, Ivan
Godunov, or someone like him, and after him came to either a common
grave or a GULAG.

"Comrade Petrovna, how is your health?" asked Godunov in the sibilant
syllables of a snake.

Petrovna managed a smile, though his cheeks were frozen. "Well,
Comrade, thank you. And yourself?"

"I am doing just wonderful," said Godunov, emphasizing the last two
words.

"We came as soon as we received the summons."

"And I appreciate your promptness, Comrade Petrovna," said Godunov
mellifluously. "The radio man told you about our little problem here,
correct?"

"Yes, Comrade. An uprising of some sort here in the factory."

"That is correct. An uprising of some sort." Godunov turned from the
conversation to pace languidly, his hands clasped behind his back. He
wore a black greatcoat that made him look large and formidable. The
walls of the factory were simple concrete, stained from the fumes and
adorned only by tubes and wires and fluorescent, industrial lights and
mass-produced portraits of Stalin. Stalin looked down at them, his
features benevolent, wise, and noble. His hair was perfect and black
fused with iron gray streaks. He wore the olive uniform of the army,
and his insignia showed the rank that only he owned, that he had in
fact created for himself, the Generalissimo.

"You wanted us to execute someone, Comrade?" asked Petrovna, after
Godunov had paced for awhile.

"Oh, no, there will be no execution today," said Godunov, perking up
and smiling brightly. He gestured toward a row of inmates in front of
and apart from the rest of the prisoners, like an honor guard.

"These men here constitute the uprising. They failed to sing the 'Ode
to Stalin' this morning, before work."

There were a few gasps and worried looks among the newly arrived
guards. One might as well jump off a building than fail to sing the
'Ode' among co-workers or other convicts. It would be dangerous to fail
to sing it even when among one's own family. Most families in the USSR
sang it together every day before leaving for work or school.
Misgivings stirred in Fyodor's stomach when he gazed at the rebellious
prisoners, who had dared to defy when the only possible consequence of
defiance was torture and death. He was not the rebellious type and had
always been a good Communist. He believed in Communism and father
Stalin and that everything was going pretty well. Everything was not
perfect, but things were headed in the right direction. It would not
even occur to Fyodor to disobey orders. And here were these twenty
human beings who would not do what they were told.

They looked no different than the other prisoners, apart from being
seated off to one side. Most were gaunt and sad, and their bodies
hadn't received enough sustenance, calories, vitamins, protein. It
seemed that in these people, all the soft parts dried up and
disappeared, leaving only shriveled skin to cling to weakened, brittle
bones. Some of them were so skinny, it was amazing to see their arms
and legs move. Others had roughly the dimensions of normal human
beings. They were the ones who had not been here long.

"No," said Godunov grandly, "there will be no execution today, because
today everyone is going to be a good Communist. These prisoners that
have failed to sing the 'Ode' will sing the 'Ode' before the end of the
day. They will sing it in front of all of us, and they will sing it
with feeling."

The rebellious prisoners did not react to his words, they did not react
with either defiant glares or fearful cringes. And among Fyodor's
comrades, there was a hardening, a bracing. For whatever reason, they
had been chosen to do the dirty work today. And sometimes that work
could be very dirty, indeed. Kruglov, the second in command of the
squad, did not smile, but his eyes burned in eager anticipation.

Godunov strode to the prisoners and bade one of them rise. The man
rose, with some difficulty, and he stood before Godunov, who seemed
three times as thick although he was shorter.

"You, prisoner. What is your name?"

"Pavlusha."

"Are you ill? Is your throat constricted?"

"No, sir."

"Hmm. Well, then are you short of breath?"

"No, sir."

"Well, why is it then, Pavlusha--that you failed to sing the 'Ode to
Stalin' this morning? Are you aware that this is the most foul
sacrilege and treason?"

The prisoner failed to respond, and merely stared ahead somewhere at
the wall. His body was so frail and brittle that a man of Godunov's
strength could hurt him terribly with a blow to the midsection. But
Godunov was not known to get his own hands dirty. He was bloodthirsty,
malicious, in only an academic way. Fyodor felt Kruglov take half a
step forward. Kruglov's zeal to enforce the rules of the GULAG
disturbed Fyodor, and the rest of the squad as well, although not one
of them would admit it. One got the feeling that if Kruglov had not
grown up to be a prison guard, he would have ended up in one inevitably
by the other route. He had learned, it seemed, to channel his evil or
brutality within the strict rules of the Plan and Communism.

Godunov suddenly ignored the first prisoner, and moved down the row to
another one. He gestured for him to stand, whispering a gentle summons.
The man struggled to his feet. He was another one of the skinny
prisoners. His hair was long, but only grew in patches, and his beard
looked like something rotten. His eyes were brown, his skin was pale
white.

"Your name, prisoner."

"I am Kapler."

Godunov's eyes narrowed. "A Jew."

"Yes."

"And what did you do before you were arrested?"

"I was a doctor."

"A bourgeois Jew intellectual," declared Godunov triumphantly. "And on
top of that, a traitor! Why did you fail to sing the 'Ode,' Jew?"

The Jew did not answer. He became as cold and silent as a stone, and
his eyes lost their focus.

"Collaboration, conspiracy," intoned Godunov. "We have standard methods
to deal with these sorts of treasonous crimes against the
people."

Godunov walked over to Fyodor and the rest of the guards. Fyodor felt a
shiver creep up his spine at the unhurried, cordial approach of the
Chekist. He smiled at all of them, and stepped close to Petrovna.

"Comrade Petrovna, I will need the services of your men for the
next-oh, I don't know how long. We are going to do something a little
out of the ordinary today. We are going to beat them. But we are going
to do it right here."

"Comrade?" said Petrovna, questioningly. There were places to do this
sort of thing. In the cities, there were places with tiled floors and
walls, thick walls that muffled sound. Here in the GULAG, there were
sheds with corrugated aluminum walls, strong wooden tables, and light
bulbs dangling from the ceilings.

"There is no execution?" asked Petrovna, with an almost hopeful tone in
his voice. His hand fell lightly on the revolver in the holster on his
belt. Petrovna had been in Siberia for three years, two more than
Fyodor. One got used to killing, but perhaps not the other.

Godunov smiled with understanding. "There will be no execution, today,
Comrade Petrovna. As you know, things are not as they were in years
past. We are not getting as many prisoners as before; we can't be
killing them indiscriminately. The engineers tell me we are already
short of resources. If we lose many more, we won't be able to work the
machines. That is the reason for the unusual methods."

Petrovna nodded. "Very well, Comrade. Direct, and we will do."

"We are going to beat them, one after another, until they capitulate.
The way we are going to do it, we will take the first man and punch him
in the mouth until all of his teeth are gone. Then, we will move along
the line and knock out the teeth of the second man. If all goes well,
by the third or fourth man, they will all surrender. It will be good
for the rest of the prisoners to see this discipline enforced. I think
it will make a lasting impression on the rest of them to see the
toothless men singing with blood in their mouths. It is essential that
defiance be punished absolutely. Comrade, in an ideal world, we could
just take the disobedient ones out and have them shot. Unfortunately,
we are constrained with reality. So, this is the way of it."

"Very well," said Petrovna, his face pale. "Which one do you want done
first?"

Godunov scanned the row of prisoners whimsically, and pointed out the
Jew. "That one, there, get him first. It can't hurt to kill two birds
with one stone."
Kruglov chose this moment to step forward, his face stern, his
expression serious and Communist. "Comrade Petrovna, I volunteer to
strike the first blow at those who hate our father, Stalin."

Fyodor felt sick to his stomach at Kruglov's sincere and unhidden
desire to hurt another human being. The other guards kept their
feelings to themselves, masking whatever they thought behind faces
bland with indifference. Petrovna's expression, the expression one
would use while washing dishes or peeling potatoes, did not change.
Although Kruglov was his subordinate, it was best to watch one's back
from the front, the back, and the sides. Fyodor had always felt that
Petrovna was a good leader and a good man.

"No, comrade Kruglov, I strike the first blow," he said. He locked
gazes with a bristling Kruglov, then turned resolutely to the task at
hand. As he walked to where the prisoners sat, Godunov accompanied him.
A chair was brought. The Jew was forced to sit in the chair, and he was
tied to it.

"Wrap your knuckles in cloth," advised Godunov, with the smooth cadence
of the serpent. "Double wrap it, or you will bruise your knuckles. Aim
right for the teeth, because hitting the bone will hurt your hand more
than the prisoner. Don't look at his eyes. Look at the teeth. Hit the
teeth, and knock them out."

Kruglov settled for the privilege of holding the Jew's head steady in
the chair. Petrovna punched the Jew squarely in the mouth, a straight,
hard blow. The Jew cried out in pain.

"Did any come out?" demanded Godunov. "Hit him harder, much
harder!"

Petrovna punched him again, harder. The Jew shrieked again, but this
time there was a horrible inarticulate quality to the shriek. The act
of crying out hurt. The front two teeth had come out.

"Good, good," said Godunov, stooping a little to inspect the damage.
"Hit him again!"

Petrovna punched the Jew, again and again. His arm was like a hammer,
falling with a steady, unhurried cadence. It seemed to Fyodor that the
Jew was unusually strong, for he did not faint from the pain. He merely
sat where he was bound so tightly by the ropes and held so vigorously
by Kruglov's hairy hands, and continued to shriek in horrible pain
after each blow, and moan pitifully in between punches. Fyodor thought
he would faint after the first few punches. He could not imagine such
pain. Fyodor was not a hardy person in either body or spirit. He wished
the beating would stop, and eventually, it did. The Jew's mouth was a
bloody mess, caved in like an old man's. His front teeth were scattered
on his clothes and the floor, along with spots of blood and spittle. He
moaned in a dull monotone. It was the only sound in the entire,
cavernous room, besides the machines.

Godunov inquired of the Jew, "So, Jew, will you sing the 'Ode to
Stalin'?"

The Jew nodded his head with its ruined mouth vigorously. Godunov's
pig-eyes squinted as he smiled with supercilious geniality. He was a
man at other times, nothing less than a monster right now.

"That is good, Jew, that is very good. And the rest of you, do you
still refuse to sing, or are you ready now?"

The nineteen other rebellious prisoners stared at Godunov, or ignored
him. Their silence was very loud. Godunov seemed a little taken aback,
mildly and politely.

"I see, we will just have to move on to the next one, then," he said,
drawing out the last few words, watching carefully those in the group
who seemed to be wavering.

One of the prisoners stood. "Brothers, remember-hold firm,
brothers."

Fyodor watched this all with alarm, wishing that they would agree to
sing the 'Ode,' but when the prisoner stood, and he realized that he
knew the prisoner, it hit him like a shock wave. The face was dirty and
strange, yet primally familiar. It was the face of a man who was dead.
Recognition came over the face of that man, and his eyes widened and
his mouth dropped open in amazement.

"Fyodor!" he gasped.

"Father!" cried Fyodor involuntarily, and then he fainted.

He came to with a splash of icy, metallic water, hearing the words of
Comrade Godunov like in a dream:

"What a wonderful opportunity fate presents us! Like the movie,
Comrades, when the young boy, a faithful Communist, denounces his
father as a bourgeois traitor! When that movie was shown to a house
full of young people, they cheered at that famous scene!"

Fyodor regained awareness of his surroundings; he was in a chair, and
Comrade Rudenko held an old pail, dripping with water. The rest of his
squad stood nearby, and to his horror, he saw Kruglov's eyes, yellow
like a tiger's, watching him avidly. The Jew was on the ground, now,
holding a bloody rag gingerly to his mouth. The man he recognized as
his father was tied to the Jew's chair. Petrovna and Godunov stood
together, both watching him wake. He started in blackness, and each
element of the preceding day occurred to him in sequence, each adding
horror in greater clarity. When the final scene flashed before him, he
felt a cold hand grasp his heart. The bad dream of everyday life had
suddenly transmogrified into nightmare.

And then, the questions sprang to mind. Why was his father here? His
father was dead. That was what he had always been told, by his mother
and grandmother and uncles. His father had gone to the war against
Hitler and died there. Yet here he was, ten years later, gaunt yet
unmistakably his father.

A hand rested heavily on his shoulder; it was the manicured fingers of
Godunov. The glare from harsh white fluorescent lights made his
pince-nez opaque momentarily, and then he could see the black pig eyes
gazing down at him, a kind smile of a favorite uncle.

"Comrade Suslov, that is your name, citizen?"

"Yes," he stammered. The hand felt like a hundred pounds on his
shoulder.

"You are a good Communist, yes, Comrade?"

He nodded, everything coming at him at once with tornado-like speed.
"Yes, Comrade."

"And what do you feel about traitors who do not sing the 'Ode to
Stalin,' our great educator and leader?"

"They're ungrateful, and don't deserve to live," he heard himself say.
As the words stuttered out, he could hardly believe he was saying them,
and at that point, he was no longer sure he believed them. His father
was a kind, good man; his memories of him were happy, joyful times. But
his father was a traitor. He was one of "them." It was all so
confusing, and he was so very, very afraid.

Godunov gazed at the prisoners expansively, his smile, this time,
undisputedly genuine. "It warms my heart to see such a faithful child
of this wonderful country. That is true patriotism, when a man sees
through the random, the biological, the traditional, to what is true!
For what hold should a biological parent have, when his only claim to
your loyalty is a stream of semen? A ridiculous way of thinking,
Comrades! Should not your loyalty lie with he who has made your happy
childhood possible? Who stays awake each and every night thinking and
planning and fighting for you? Is not the true father of every man in
this country the great and inspired Stalin?"

The prisoners seemed less than impressed; perhaps the ranting of the
Chekist had less importance than the emptiness of their stomachs or the
ache of their bones on the hard, concrete floor. The guards listened to
the speech without reaction, but Kruglov's eyes burned fanatically. And
Fyodor's father stared at him openly, with love and curiosity and all
of his defenses vanished.

Godunov leaned in closely, his hand on Fyodor's shoulder paternally.
"Comrade," he said, already forgetting Fyodor's name. "I want you to
prove to us and to father Stalin that your true allegiance is to your
country and not this condemned traitor. I want you to prove this by
punching him in the mouth until all of his teeth are gone."

Fyodor hardly knew what happened next; it was an involuntary reaction
in his gut. But the next second, he was on his knees and vomiting the
bread and potatoes and carrots he had eaten for breakfast. He had only
eaten them an hour ago, so they were identifiable. Half of them ended
up on Godunov's immaculate black greatcoat, the rest spilled thinly on
the concrete. Godunov cursed, a guttural sound unlike his normal voice,
but regained control of himself quickly. He brushed off the vomit with
a handkerchief and smiled ambiguously.

Kruglov patted him hard on his back in a caricature of a reassuring
gesture. "You will do it, Comrade," he said through his strong, white
teeth. He was loving every minute of this, enjoying the sensations like
a connoisseur. Full of energy, he looked ready to spring into violence
at the slightest provocation.

Godunov took his arm and gently helped him to rubbery feet. The
unnatural fluorescent lights, glaring suns, reeled around his head and
buffeted to him. He leaned heavily on Godunov, feeling the tightness of
the woven cloth of his greatcoat, smelling the icy, mint aftershave on
the Chekist's skin. He regained his internal balance, and the room came
into focus. The prisoners watched him without interest. The Jew bled
into his rag and stared at the floor. Only his father watched him with
curiosity and love. Suddenly Kruglov's yellow, tiger-eyes were in front
of him.

"You will do it, Comrade."
Petrovna seized Kruglov's arm and pulled the smaller, compact man away
from Fyodor with a violent heave. "We don't need your help, Kruglov,"
he said, omitting the "Comrade."

Godunov's great, pale cheek was near his, and the machines thumped
repetitively in the irrelevant background. "It is not an easy thing,
Comrade. The right thing is never the easy thing. It is the wrong
thing, the betrayal, the surrender, that is the easy way. The right
thing to do is the struggle and the triumph. Do you understand,
Comrade? Do you understand that to be a Communist is to discard the
outdated modes of thinking? This traitor is not your father; he is a
bad memory, a stain in your past to be cleansed. Your father is Stalin.
This thing you must do, you must do it for Stalin, for Communism, for
Russia. If you fail, you fail all of us, and yourself."

Fyodor swooned again, quickly and then consciousness resumed to torture
him. The steady beat of the machines seemed to synchronize with the
heartbeats thumping in his temples. The people in front of him came
into greater clarity; he could see their eyes on him, wary or
contemptuous. His choice rose before him like a ghost from the grave.
He could do this thing, or he could refuse to do it. If he did it, a
distasteful task of a few minutes, he would be validated in the eyes of
his fellows; he might even receive promotions or an invitation to join
the Party. If he did not do it, he would soon see the GULAG from the
other side. The black-and-white of the consequences mingled with the
ambiguous moral grays of the intrinsic values of the
alternatives.

He was led to where his father was bound and stared at him openly. The
only person with unveiled eyes was his father. Godunov saw through
polished pince-nez, and the glare prevented anyone from seeing into his
soul. Petrovna watched the scene with an active mask, Kruglov
voraciously like an animal that knows its greed is distasteful to its
keepers. Everyone else had eyes of dead white and black, unseeing for
all they mattered, as if they were faded cardboard props dressed in
grays and blacks. They shrank and all that was left was the gentle,
all-powerful grip of Godunov's hand on his forearm and the wall of
Communist concrete that was Kruglov entrapping him on the right, and in
front of him, growing larger and larger in his consciousness, his
emaciated, grimy-faced father.

"I know it is a struggle," said Godunov softly, sibilantly,
reassuringly, in an almost paternal tone. "But you see you must do it,
for this is what we are all fighting for."

Every ounce of Fyodor's training, indoctrination, and education pulled
him grimly toward the grisly task. All that remained between his
unwilling, cloth-wrapped fists and his father was that bit of mythology
that was love. A man who had not been part of his life, but for memory,
for ten years, now had suddenly become the most important part. For
twenty four years, he had been a strict conformist and followed
Communism to the spirit of the law. The weight of the largest country
in the history of the world fell upon his shoulders. The formulae of
Lenin and Stalin and the kolkhozes and tractors and the Red Army and
the old women in the bread lines in the market corralled his
thoughts.

"I never made it to the front," his father was saying, ignored by
almost everyone. "They told me to come to the recruiting station on
Mosky street. Then they took me to the MGB. I've been in these GULAGs
for ten years."

"Comrade," said Godunov, with urgency. "Take the fist. Swing cleanly
and with force. That is all that must be done. Cleanly. And with force.
Purge your mind of the detritus of our unclean past."

He felt like a robot. He had marched here like a robot, and let them
wrap his fists with the tough, woven rags, wet and slimy with the Jew's
blood. He had done everything they told him, every day of his life.
Inertia twitched the muscles of his right shoulder.

"Suslov, you must," said Kruglov, a certain insane reason wreathing his
words.

His father looked him full in the face, openly and with love. "Yes,
Fyodor, you must."

Petrovna was standing close to him, tall and just and kind. He had
displaced an unwilling, spiteful, angry Kruglov. Around his waist was
metal, heavy metal, a black, heavy revolver, and the strap that secured
the revolver within the holster was ostentatiously unfastened.

"You must do what you must," said Petrovna, in a caricature of the
others. His eyes looked down into Fyodor's opaquely; they revealed
nothing, leaving his true meaning impossibly uncertain.

All of Fyodor's life had condensed to a simple tortured marble in time,
all of the rich possibilities ground down to a tiny glass bead.
Despair, inevitability, fate, hate, confusion, clarity. What was next
was instantaneous-the scene within the bead. He lurched forward and
seized the revolver. Kruglov, eyes yellow and face snarling, pounced
like the tiger that he was under his skin. The revolver exploded into
Kruglov's abdomen and a great hole was opened in the many layers of
clothing; he died hating. Godunov cringed backward, his bulk moving too
slowly; his pince-nez fell from his face to his belly. The guards, his
old comrades, reached for their tommy guns. He put the barrel of the
revolver to his father's temple. His father looked up at him, fearful
but validating. He pulled the trigger and his father died. He quickly
put the revolver to his own forehead and seized a last glance at the
chaotic scene of the guards ducking for cover or running for their
guns; and Godunov was running frantically down a hallway; and the
prisoners were watching with open-mouthed stares; and then he pulled
the trigger.