The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 2 An Experiment in Literary Investigation - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Knock, Knock, Knock. •. " 369
Of course, this was a pitiful way of getting out of it. Because
I was recognizing their actual right to recruit. And what I should
have done was to ridicule and deny that right. It was a refusal
.•. on my knees.
And he still didn't accept it, the smart aleck! For half an hour
more he kept trying to prove to me that even a gravely ill person
also ought to collaborate! But when he saw that I was totally
immovable; he took another tack:
"Do you have an extra certificate?"
''What kind?"
"Certifying that you are so ill."
"Yes, I have a certificate." ,
"Then bring it to me."
_ Yes, he had to have his "output," too, for his own workdayl
Justification that I had been correctly selected as a c~date,
but that they had not known that this person was gravely ill.
The certificate was required not merely for him to read, but to
be stapled into the case file, and thereby to end the whole !lttempt.
I gave him the document, and with that we were quits.
Those were the freest months in our co~try in a whole halfcentury
I
'
. And what about the person who had no medical excuse?
•
The skill of the security officer consisted in immediately picking
the right master key. In one of the Siberian camps, a native of
one of the Baltic countries, U., who knew Russian well (which
was why the choice fell on him), was summoned "to the chief."
And there in ~e chiefs office sat an unfamiliar captain with an
aquiline nose and the hypnotic gaze ofa cobra. "Shut the door
tight!" he warned very gravely, as if enemies were about to. burst
in, wi,thout lowering his burning eyes, wh!ch stared at U. from
beneath shaggy brows-and inside U. everything wilted, something
burned' and suffocated him. Before- summoning U., of
course, the captiUn had gathered all the information available
about bini, and without even having seen hin1 had, determined
that keys 1, 2, 3, and 4 would all be of no avail, that here only
the last and strongest key could be used, but he kept staring for
several minutes into U.'s unclouded, defenseless eyes, checking
370 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
him out with his own eyes and at the Same time depriving him
of his will power, and already invisibly raising above him that
which would immediately descend upon him.
The security chief took time for only the briefest introductiQn,
speaking not· in the tone of an abstract political catechism, but
tensely, as if something were aboU:t to'explode today or tomorrow
right there in their own camp. ''Do you know the world is divided
into two camps, and one will be defeated, and we know very well
which it will be? Do you know which? So that's how it is: if you
want to survive, you must b~ away from the doomed capitalist
shore and swim across to the new shore .. Are you familiar with
Latsis' To the New Shore?"· And he added a few more such
phrases, and did not for a moment lower his hot threatening
gaze, and having finally confirmed in his own mind the number
of the key, he then asked with alarmed serioUsness: "And what
about your family?" And one by one, without ceremony, he
reeled off all their names! And he knew the ages of the children
too! That meant he had already famiJiarized himself with the
family-that was very serious! "You understand, of course," he
pronounced hypnotically, "that you and yOUl' family are a single
whole. If you make a mistake and perish, your family will immediately
perish too. We do not permit the families of traitors
[his voice grew more meaningful] to go on living in the healthy
Soviet . environment. So make your choice between the two
worlds! Between life ana death! I am offering you an opportunity
to pledge to assist the Security Section! In case you refuse, your
entire family will be immediately imprisoned in camp! In our
hands We have full power [how right he was!] and we are not
accustomed to backtrack on our decisions. [Once again he was
right!] Since we have chosen you, you will work with us!"
All this was loosed suddenly on U.'s head. He was not prepared
for it. He would never have thought of it. He had considered
that only scoundrels became informers. But that they might
approach him? A blow-direct, without waste motion, without
the cushion of time-and the captain was waiting for his anSwer,
and was about to, explode right then, and then everything would
explode! And U. took thought: What is there that is really impossible
for them? When have they ever spared anyone's family?
They didn't hesitate to liquidate the "kulak" families right down
to tiny children, and they even wrote about it proudly in th~ news-