8. 'The Glass'
I didn’t stay long in the waiting room. The door opened. They shouted my name.
I was taken to the “stakan.” The “stakan” was a space like a closet built into the wall, where a person could only stand or sit. Inside, it was lined with iron, pierced with nails on all four sides. The floor was concrete. The darkness was so complete that your eyes never adjusted to it. After a few hours, you felt the lack of oxygen. If someone started shouting in the stakan, the guard on duty would open the door and beat him with a truncheon. Altogether, I spent more than two hundred hours in such stakans. You go in, as usual, facing forward. The door slams shut. You find yourself in total darkness. In the stakan, it doesn’t really matter whether you are facing the door or have your back to it, but by some instinct you turn to face the door. You turn slowly, carefully, so as not to scratch yourself on the iron, spiked walls. You turn around. Now it seems okay, the door is in front of you. Now the main thing is to calculate and lean against the walls as little as possible. You shift your weight onto one leg; when that leg tires, you shift to the other. This helps only for the first couple of hours. Then your legs begin to ache, as if filling with lead, and start to swell.
Confined in that narrow, dark stakan, I always felt my helplessness keenly and truly experienced the weariness of the investigation. How little physical strength I had left. Anguish, like a vise, squeezed my chest so that my lungs lacked air, even though enough oxygen remained in the stakan. And in my ears rang: “See how we move and banish God.”
I began to pray. My lungs began to work more calmly, my blood began to receive more oxygen, and I gave myself over again to memories.
August 1976. Moscow. My first meeting with Alexander Ginzburg. I went up to the second floor and rang the bell. His wife Arina opened the door.
“Hello. My name is Boris. I’m from Fedya Sidenko and Vasily Patrushev.”
“Hello. You need Alik? He’s not at home just now, but he’ll be back soon. Go into the living room; there are books there. Read for now, if you like.”
I went into the living room. There were a table, several chairs, and a sofa; the rest was taken up by books. They stood on shelves right up to the ceiling, even lying in stacks on the floor. I began leafing through them and became so engrossed that I did not notice Alexander come in.
We introduced ourselves. I said I was from Fedya and Vasily. He brought his index finger to his lips, indicating that his apartment was bugged. He talked about all sorts of everyday things, while at the same time handing me a self-erasing notepad. I had never seen such a notepad before; you lifted the sheet and not a word remained. I wrote that I had come on the immigration matter of the 520 people. Alexander read it and gave me his notepad. “I don’t deal with emigration questions, but the reasons that compelled people to immigrate interest me.” Ginzburg recommended that I meet with Anatoly Shcharansky and Professor Yuri Orlov, writing that this would interest them too. We continued our business dialogue by means of the notepad, and at the same time Alexander told me that he had to work as a laborer in a shop, that before this he had worked as Solzhenitsyn’s secretary, and that Sakharov was now inviting him to work as his secretary. This conversation was for the microphones of the listening devices. “How long do you plan to stay in Moscow?” Alexander wrote to me. “Until I get everything done.”
“Let’s go to Orlov’s. Shcharansky will be there today. Leave all the papers here; don’t take anything with you. After leaving the apartment, you will definitely be followed. Since the founding of the Helsinki group, all of us are being watched,” Alexander wrote and lifted the sheet of the notepad to erase what was written.
After dinner, we set off for Orlov’s. His house was a ten-minute walk from Alexander’s place. Professor Orlov was home alone. His apartment resembled Alexander’s. Here, too, wherever you looked, there were books, books, and more books. Orlov handed out similar notepads to everyone — fortunately he had several — and we began our conversation.
At that time, it was mainly Jews and Germans leaving for their historical homeland abroad, but 520 Pentecostals — that was unusual; that was emigration for ideological reasons. Orlov was interested in what had forced these people to take such a desperate step, the outcome of which was still unknown. He asked me to set it all out in detail.
I began to write. At that moment Anatoly Shcharansky arrived. Once all three had read what I had written, Anatoly was the most interested and suggested that I meet with him separately.
We met in a park. We sat down on a bench. After a short pause, Anatoly began to speak: “You are Pentecostals; you are not Jews, you are Russians. Not only do you reject communist ideology and refuse to obey Soviet laws, you also complain about these laws, and now your main guilt before the communists is that you have decided to leave, to flee from communist laws. Do you understand what awaits you? Moreover, you have no support abroad. World Jewry stands behind us, but even that does not always save us. Therefore, I believe that first of all you need to secure the support of the global Christian community. To do this, you need to maintain constant contact with us and to establish your own connections with foreign correspondents and diplomats. You must not remain silent,” Anatoly continued. “You must inform the world community of everything that happens to you. Difficult and dangerous work lies ahead of you.” At that moment, we heard a rustling behind us. We turned around. A woman was standing about two or three meters away. We got up and walked along the path. We found a convenient spot and sat down again on a bench.
“I don’t like this situation; I think we’re being eavesdropped on,” said Anatoly, quickly getting up and stepping behind the bench.
Right behind our backs, in the bushes, sat the same woman. She had a bag, and apparently it contained a tape recorder. Anatoly began to shame her. She was not at all embarrassed, pretended it had nothing to do with her, and walked away. That same day a policeman stopped me.
“Your documents,” he said.
I handed him my passport. He opened it, looked it over, and said:
“Come with me to the police station; it’s nearby.”
At the police station, they copied down all the details from my passport and said that I resembled a criminal they were looking for, but that they had been mistaken. I was released.
The next day, all four of us met again, but this time in the forest, so that no one would disturb us. The question was: where should we begin?
We had to start with the same thing Vasily and Fedya had started with: gathering material about the persecution of believers and sending it to the West. I was asked to collect the biographical data of all those who wanted to leave the country on religious grounds, in order to clarify the reasons that had prompted people to take this step. That same day I flew home on an evening flight. A month and a half later, the biographical data had been collected. We prepared for the trip meticulously. Eleven years earlier, for such papers, Vasily and Fedya had received prison sentences. We had to carry the papers in such a way that they did not fall into the hands of the authorities. I decided to go with Zina and our three-year-old son Vitaly. We did not dare to fly directly to Moscow and bought tickets to Leningrad. From there we safely reached Moscow.
We stayed in Moscow for only two days. On the second day, Alexander arranged a meeting with a BBC English correspondent.
A press conference was scheduled for the twentieth of November on the persecution of Pentecostals in the USSR. I suggested that Vasily Patrushev and Valentin Burlachenko go with me to this press conference. Both were leaders of our congregation in Nakhodka, and both already had experience of being in the Gulag. The press conference took place at the apartment of Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a member of the Helsinki group. There I met Sakharov for the first time. Vasily and I spoke at the press conference. When we flew home, we learned that the Voice of America had already broadcast about the press conference and our speeches.
After this, the Helsinki group sent its representative, Lydia Voronina, to investigate the situation of believers.
The authorities did not expect such a turn of events. They were used to ignoring everyone; we had always remained silent. And now we had stopped being silent. This infuriated them. KGB activity in Nakhodka became more noticeable at this time. A group of five bishops, led by Viktor Ivanovich Belykh, came to our church. They began to preach that we should not complain abroad, because that was politics, and that we should not do anything that displeased the authorities. We understood that these bishops were cooperating with the KGB. Until then, I had not suspected that the interests of such bishops as Viktor Ivanovich Belykh could intertwine with the interests of the KGB. Viktor Belykh demanded that a meeting of the Nakhodka congregation be convened and declared that anyone who spoke with the “impious” Lydia Voronina would be excommunicated from the church. After Voronina’s return to Moscow, she was stripped of her Soviet citizenship and deported abroad. Lyudmila Alexeyeva was also deported.
At the meeting, believers asked Belykh questions: “How did he know that Lydia Voronina had come to Nakhodka, since he lived in Moldavia and had no contacts with dissidents?” Belykh answered: “He who resists the Soviet authority resists God.” It was clear that Belykh was traveling on KGB instructions. Later, he gained access to the camp where the pastor of the Chuguyevka church, Viktor Walter, was serving a five-year sentence. Besides Viktor, ten other people from his congregation were serving sentences. At that time, Viktor was not even allowed visits from his wife. He was surprised to see Belykh.
Viktor asked him how he had gotten there. Belykh replied that the KGB had entrusted him to have a conversation with Viktor. Without offering his hand, Viktor turned away and told the guards that he did not wish to speak with KGB agents. For refusing to speak with Belykh, Viktor was given fifteen days in the punishment cell. Of course, not all bishops were like Belykh. There were also those who supported us. Bishop Ivan Fedotov was at that time serving yet another term in the camps.
In 1977, after the Christmas holidays, I flew to Moscow again to broaden our contacts and find new people who could help us. I became a member of the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR, organized by Gleb Yakunin. When I returned to Nakhodka, the Pentecostal congregation, just as twelve years before, had split. Only this time, those who decided to actively seek freedom or emigration were the majority.
We openly declared to both the authorities and the bishops sent by the authorities that if the Soviet Union could not give us freedom of religion, then we wanted to leave the country. We wrote collective statements, and each person wrote their own, to the Soviet authorities, saying that we would no longer tolerate the existing situation. A week after my arrival, the Voice of America reported the arrest of Alexander Ginzburg, and another week later, the arrest of Yuri Orlov.
After the congregation split and our new one was formed, we had added worries: besides spiritual work, we continued to engage in human rights activity. Our church had over three hundred members, and all were united.
For about two months, we worked on organizing the church. We organized a choir and meetings for children and youth.
In the first half of March, I again had to be in Moscow. I immediately went to Anatoly Shcharansky. We talked almost the whole night. Anatoly told me that he was being watched more closely than ever before. He was in a depressed state. He complained that he had lost sleep from constant tension. The following morning, he was arrested. Arrests followed one after another. By this time, more than half of the Helsinki group members had been arrested. We understood that the arrests would reach Nakhodka as well, and we expected them to begin any day. April passed in tension.
And then May came. Everything around grew green and bloomed. Nature came to life. And just as it awakened from its winter sleep, so too did hope awaken in our hearts that we would after all be able to leave for a free country, where we would not be persecuted for our convictions. Seventy families from our church received invitations from their fellow believers in the USA. Word of this spread quickly. The Voice of America began regularly broadcasting information about the situation of Pentecostals in the Far East. People all over the Soviet Union already knew that something unusual was happening in Nakhodka. Everyone was watching to see what would happen to us. The majority thought that everything we were doing was madness, that we were doomed.
And then we received invitations to the USA. At last, at least some result.
Oh, how we rejoiced then. It was a holiday for us. I recalled the picnic organized for this occasion far outside the city, on the bank of a stream. We caught fish, made a fire, and cooked fish soup… Remembering this, I felt hungry, and thought about the prison food. In prison, they often served fish soup for dinner, but it was always made from fish scraps, sometimes already starting to spoil. Sometimes they gave soup made from some cheap grain and a few pieces of potato. Breakfast and supper usually consisted of five or six spoonfuls of kasha or grain boiled in water, without butter. Sometimes they served boiled cabbage with a few pieces of potato. The bread was always underbaked, and to make it more edible you had to dry it and make rusk. Once a week, usually on Saturdays, they gave pea soup, and on Wednesdays — pea kasha. In prison, that was a delicacy. Today happened to be Wednesday. The stakan door opened. “Out,” said the guard. “Taking me to supper,” I thought. The guard led me to the cell. Supper had long since passed, and everyone was already asleep. Only Boris was sitting on his bunk.
“Finally,” he said. “Where from?”
“From the stakan,” I answered. Boris shook his head.
“I saved my kasha for you. It was pea today. Eat.”
I always fell asleep at once in prison. To this day I am amazed that during such emotional turmoil I did not suffer from insomnia. The worst was the morning, when you feel reality. Usually I woke up ten or fifteen minutes before reveille. There is a state like that, when you are neither asleep nor fully awake, not yet sensing the reality of your situation, and with your eyes still closed you think: “Maybe this is a dream? I’ll open my eyes, and I’ll be at home.” But the prison siren jolted me out of that state.
Fifteen minutes after reveille, breakfast. Another fifteen minutes later, the guard on duty begins going around the cells and announcing who is being sent on a transport, who is summoned for investigation or to court.
- Perchatkin, no belongings! — announced the duty officer. I understood that I was being taken back to the KGB prison for interrogation again.
A few minutes later, the KGB car was racing me through the streets of Vladivostok once more. - Well, now defend yourself, — Istomin greeted me, — Today I’m interested in the appeal to the participants of the Belgrade Conference, the telegram to the President of the USA, and most importantly — we have information about the theft of an official notebook from one of the employees of the Nakhodka KGB. I advise you to voluntarily confess to criminal anti-state activity.
There was turmoil in my soul. How did they find out about the notebook? Could they really have such powerful listening devices? How much do they know? By an effort of will, I pulled myself together. I must be calm. - I composed and sent both the appeal to the participants of the Belgrade Conference and the telegram myself, but as for the theft of an official notebook, I’m hearing about it from you for the first time. Maybe you’ll say I stole an atomic bomb, and you’ll force me to defend myself, to prove I didn’t steal it. According to the law, you must present me with charges and evidence, and then I will defend myself. And besides, you are an experienced investigator — why do you classify me as a criminal before the trial? It’s the court’s job to decide: whether I am a criminal or not. Yet you place yourself above that, and already now you’ve judged me and called me a criminal.
- Don’t split hairs over words, — the investigator got angry,
- I am acting according to the law and I am offering you what I am obligated to offer under the Code of Criminal Procedure.
I understood that they had no material concerning the notebook. - During Stalin’s time, they offered people to voluntarily shoot themselves, voluntarily hang themselves, and now you are offering me to voluntarily admit to being a criminal.
- Eh, this won’t do, we can’t get so heated, let’s relax, have some tea, listen to some music. I don’t smoke either, just like you, I only drink coffee, and I indulge in strong tea, I have to work a lot. You people are stubborn, but you’re interesting to deal with. Before this, about two months ago, I returned from Perm. There, in four months, I crushed an entire underground party made up of students. And there was a huge uproar in Moscow — a democratic party in Perm! They urgently sent me from Moscow to Perm, and there, it was just students playing at politics, they’d dreamt up a party charter, membership cards. They jailed everyone. I thought they’d give the ringleaders two or three years for this foolery, and let the rest go, but they slammed them all with five, even seven years.
He turned on a tape recorder with recordings of Vysotsky.
Are you acquainted with Vysotsky?
No.
Well, he’s from your company, you’re all tied by the same string, the same ideas unite you. By the way, I interrogated him. Death saved him from the camp.
Or maybe you helped him so he wouldn’t end up in the camp?
Well, from your perspective, that’s logical.
At that moment, his assistant, Captain Svinchuk, brought in tea, but I refused. Istomin sipped his tea, looking through some papers, then said:
Your brothers are testifying against you, you know. You showed them one version of the appeal, and they signed it, but you submitted an appeal of a completely different content to the Belgrade Conference. This is outright anti-Soviet activity, and if they had known, they would never have signed such an appeal. You deceived them.
I don’t believe it. That’s a fabrication. Let me examine this testimony.
Only after the investigation is concluded, but I can read you some excerpts to sober you up.
In that case, I will only discuss this matter after a confrontation with the people who, as you say, are testifying against me.
Very well — said Istomin, and summoned the guards.
Usually after an interrogation, I was first sent to a KGB prison cell, then later transferred to a criminal prison.
“To the criminal prison, right away,” Istomin ordered the guards. I was taken to the criminal prison. And once again — the box. Again I turned slowly, carefully, to face the door. “Who could have testified against me?” I wondered, recalling these events.
I remembered the summonses again, recalled that in June 1977, several other members of our church had also received summonses from the USA.
Many churches across the entire Union began seeking contact with us. The church council decided to send me and Vladimir Stepanov to Moscow to meet with representatives of other churches and discuss our next steps. We were to gather information about the situation of believers in other parts of the Union and find people who could keep us constantly informed of what was happening to believers elsewhere.
Two weeks later, we presented this information at a press conference held in the apartment of General Pyotr Grigorenko.
That press conference was especially memorable for me. There I met the writer Geliy Snegirev. He gave me his latest book with an autograph. “People, do not be afraid!” he wrote. And at the press conference, I remembered his words for the rest of my life: “The fewer people fear, the quicker this regime will end. This whole regime is built on fear. Take away the fear — and the regime is gone.”
Six months later, Geliy Snegirev died in prison. When I remembered Snegirev’s death, I recalled a prophetic word spoken to me when I was sixteen: “You shall be an instrument in My hand for the deliverance of My people, but I will lead you along fiery paths.”
That meant I would survive, but it would be very hard for me. Here they were, these fiery paths, but I had only just stepped onto them, and the most terrible things still lay ahead.
To my surprise, about two hours later, the door of the box opened. Standing in the doorway, for some reason, was the bathhouse attendant, nicknamed Vova-202. He was one of those who carried out the kaberne torture. If you met such a man on the street, it would never cross your mind that he torments people with chemical compounds almost every day. Just as he smiles on the street, he smiles while watching suffering prisoners. He smiles when people faint from his torture or are driven to the brink of madness. He always smiles.
This Vova had already heard about me, but had never had the chance to speak with me. You couldn’t talk in front of witnesses; everyone fears everyone else, everyone betrays everyone. But now such an opportunity had presented itself. He led me through the prison corridors.
“Why do they take you to the KGB? I heard you’re a CIA agent. You must have a lot of money. Did they pay you well? Got about a hundred thousand?”
I decided to joke with him.
“Yeah, I’ve got a little.”
“Do you keep it in a Swiss bank?”
“Where else? Of course, in a Swiss bank.”
“From cell 53?” asked the sergeant, the head of the bathhouse. Rumors circulated around the prison that he had once been an executioner, that he shot people, and now he had become the head of the prison bathhouse. “Lice were discovered in your cell, so we’ll disinfect you now.”
“I don’t have any lice. And there are none in our cell. If you were ordered to torment me, don’t invent such stupid excuses.”
“You talk too much with me. We coddle you now. We didn’t shoot enough of your kind before. We should have wiped you out, root and branch, so that not even a memory of your faith remained.”
He looked at me with a kind of animal malice. He was very short, with sparse red hair, lips like a bow; he looked to be over sixty, apparently already retired, but still carrying out his favorite work. And this little beast, to spite me even more, smiled viciously and continued:
“We used to transport your kind to Russky Island and shoot them there, and into the bay. Oh, how the crabs multiplied there afterwards. I still go there to fish to this day.”
“Maybe he shot my grandfather too,” I thought. A desire arose in me to grab the bucket of chemical solution and put it over his head. With a great effort of will, I overcame this desire. If I had done it, they would have set the dogs on me. They always had executioners on duty with dogs. This was in case people driven mad by pain threw themselves at their tormentors.
“Don’t you think the time will come when you’ll have to answer for everything?”
The executioner became amused.
“Before whom? Before you, is it, that I’ll have to answer?”
“Why before us? You are already an old man, and you have very little time left to live.”
I was surprised by his reaction. Apparently, he had seen many deaths and feared his own. The reminder of death drove him into a rage.
Vova, standing behind, signaled to me not to talk to him.
But the old man, like a little imp, clutched my shirt and yelled:
“I order you to undress! You’ll confess to us now that you’re Adolf Hitler.”
Buttons flew from my shirt. He began tearing my clothes off. A few seconds later, he was zealously smearing me with his own hands, while whimpering and howling somehow, as if I had dealt him a mortal insult. I became even more convinced that he was terribly afraid of death.
And when he had smeared me with the satanic mixture, he stepped aside, admiring his work; it was clearly his favorite occupation to watch a person suffer. “No, Satan, I will not give you the pleasure. I’ll faint, but I won’t writhe in pain, I won’t scream, I won’t even groan. I will stand and look you in the eyes.” Involuntary convulsions ran through my body, but I stood and asked God to give me the strength to endure it. Terrible pain filled my body; everything within me groaned. This pain squeezed my consciousness like an iron hoop, seeking to fill it and remain there, so that nothing would be left inside me except pain and the desire to be free of it.
Now there were only me and the pain, a terrible tearing pain, but I did not utter a sound.
“Will you talk, will you confess, or should I add more?” the executioner raged.
“Maybe that’s enough?” Vova addressed the old man.
“No, I think more should be added,” said the executioner, looking at me in amazement.
“He’ll go mad, or his heart will give out, and we’ll have to answer to the KGB.”
This instantly sobered the executioner. Evidently, he feared the KGB no less than death.
“Alright, open the shower room for him, just don’t turn the water on right away.”
He threw down the brush he had been using to smear me and darted out of the bathhouse. He took no pleasure today. Vova quickly opened the shower room and immediately turned on the water. When I took a few steps, a new wave of pain crashed down upon me, perhaps because I relaxed upon seeing the water. With my consciousness already clouded, I found myself under the shower. I don’t know how I got under the shower, whether I walked myself or Vova helped me. When I had washed off the solution, Vova looked into the shower room.
“You can wash for an hour even. When you’re tired of it, knock,” he said.
I slowly came to myself under the streams of warm water. I don’t know how long I was under the shower. “Maybe it’s almost lunchtime,” I thought, “or I’ll miss lunch again.” The feeling of hunger never left me in prison. I knocked. Vova looked in.
“That’s enough,” I said, “lunch is soon.”
“Well, come out, only I was ordered to lead you back to the box. Maybe they’ll feed you there — I don’t know.”
Vova led me out, and we went through the prison corridors again.
“Vova, what is that filth you torture people with? What is that solution made of?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll tell you now so you can pass it on abroad.”
“How could I pass it on from here? Maybe I’ll never get out of here at all.”
“Well, actually, yes, maybe you won’t; many don’t leave here, but characters like you survive. You’ll survive, nothing will happen to you.”
“Then tell me, I’m just curious.”
“It’s a mixture of acetone, kerosene, bleach, and something else. The fourth component is an invention of our prison. We don’t know what it is; they don’t tell us.”
“And have they been using this for long?”
“No, maybe about a year. Anyway, I advise you not to try and prove anything to anyone here. Better to play the fool; they’ll torment you less — what can you expect from a fool. Do you have a family?”
“A wife and six children.”
“Well, you really got yourself stuck. With a family like that, you should sit quietly at home.”
By this time, we had reached the hall where the boxes were located, and he handed me over to the duty officer. A couple of minutes later, I was plunged back into the dark belly of the box. Once again, utter darkness and prickly steel walls. I stood on legs weakened by torture. The pain had crept inside and no longer left me. I already knew this would last for about three days.
For a long time, my thoughts were jumbled, and I could not focus my attention on anything. I was under the impression of the torture. I began to pray.
My legs refused to hold me, and I leaned carefully, first on one shoulder, then on the other, then on my back. Sweat poured down my face, my neck, all over my body. Weakness made me nauseous. From the rapid heartbeat, I felt a pounding in my temples. At times, I felt I was on the verge of fainting, but somehow strength would come, as if a second wind opened up. I would cross that threshold, stand again, and pray again. I had heard much about miraculous healings sent by God, and of course, I also very much wanted to receive such deliverance; I very much wanted to be home, in the circle of my family, but I knew that what a person is destined to go through, he must go through. I had willingly set out on this path and was here not by chance; I knew what I was getting into. I did not ask for deliverance. I only asked for strength to endure and survive, and that God would care for my family. Time dragged on infinitely long.
Finally, the door of the box opened, and I was taken back to the cell. Once again, I had been kept in the box without lunch or dinner.
This time, no one was sleeping. Everyone guessed I had been in the box again, and everyone was waiting for me. That day, someone in the cell had received a package from the outside. They had saved a piece of sausage for me, a piece of real bread from outside, and an apple. And then Boris made me some tea.
“You look terrible today,” Boris said. “You’ve just aged. You won’t be able to tell us about God today.”
“No, I want to speak. All your life you’ve been told that there is no God. They beat human morality out of you, that’s why you’re here. But look: if there is no God, what sense is there for me to fight for nothing, and for them to fight against nothing?”
In truth, I could not speak at all that evening. I lay down on the bunk and fell asleep almost instantly. The next day, Friday, I was not summoned for interrogation. “Saturday and Sunday are days off; that means I’ll rest for three days,” I thought, walking in the exercise yard. I always walked beside Boris. We were silent. I thought about my own things, Boris about his. Suddenly, Boris unexpectedly asked:
“Is the surname Bykov familiar to you?”
“It is. Konstantin Bykov, a lieutenant colonel of the regional KGB. I’ve had dealings with him. Why?”
“Yesterday, he recruited me to inform on you. They called me to the office, offered me wine, food from a restaurant. He was so brazen. ‘Serve the Motherland,’ he says, ‘and the Motherland will extend a helping hand to you. You’re tubercular; you’ve got a year or two left to live.’ ‘Is the Motherland the cops, then, or the KGB?’ I asked him. He said straight out: ‘Help us, and we’ll help you, even though you’ve already helped us. We put him in with you on purpose. He’ll catch tuberculosis from you and won’t last long. And we’ll help you, give you treatment, release you early.’ ‘What, do you want to make me a stool pigeon?’ ‘Why put it like that? That’s what you criminal types call it; with us, you’ll be a secret agent with a number. Even the cops will be afraid of you.’ ‘I’ve never been a stoolie or a snitch, and I never will be. In your language, it’s called a secret agent; in ours, just a snitch. And the health that the Motherland took from me, you still can’t give back.’” We returned from the exercise period to the cell. I began to remember again.
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