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hoisted out again twelve hours later. The team got back to the sector just before eight. I scanned their faces; I stared so hard that I felt my eyes might have the power to carve him out of the air. Yes—he was among them. With dropped head, and shoulderless and bowlegged; but he was among them. I knew then that Lev had made the norm. If he hadn’t, they would have left him down there until he had. The team leader, the Latvian, Markargan, would have seen to that. This was a strong brigade.
    Toward the end of the week his face wasn’t brick-red any more. It was black-and-blue.
    You’re a
what
? I said.
    “A pacifist. I didn’t want to tell you on the first night.” He spat, bloodily, and wiped his pulped lips. “Nonviolence—that’s my ticket.”
    Who did your face?
    “There’s a Tartar who covets my shovel. He’s got the other half of it. I won’t fight but I won’t give it up. He’s getting the idea. Yesterday he practically bit my hand off at the wrist—look. I’m nineteen. It’ll heal. And I didn’t give it up.”
    What is all this? I said. You can fight. I’ve seen you. You were even quite talented for a while—quite savory—after you did Vad. And you’re stronger now. They had you digging fucking ditches in the street for four years. You’re no milksop.
    “I’m not weak anymore. But I’m a pacifist. I turn the other cheek. Listen,” he said. “I’m not Gandhi—I don’t believe in heaven. If my life is threatened, I’ll fight to defend it. And I think I’d fight to defend yours. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. But that’s all. I have my reasons. I have my reason.” He shook his head, and again he spat. “I didn’t tell you this either. They killed Solomon Mikhoels.”
    Solomon Mikhoels was the most famous Jew in Russia: venerable actor, and intercontinental envoy. During the war he mobilized American Jewry and raised millions of dollars. Once he performed for Joseph Vissarionovich in the Kremlin. Shakespeare.
Lear
.
    “The Organs killed him. ‘Road accident.’ They beat him to death and then a truck ran him over. It’s starting. Zoya threw up when she heard.”
    I said, There’s nothing you can do about that. What’s the Tartar’s name? You’re not there. You’re here.
    “That’s right. I’m here.”
    You see, Lev had just told me that after a week in his barracks—one of the most caked and clotted in the whole of Norlag—he was still sleeping on the floor. I feel the need for italicization:
on the floor
. And you just couldn’t do that. Down there you churned in a heap of spongy shiteaters, decrepit fascists, and (another subsection) Old Believers inching their way into martyrdom. And the smell, the smell…As the dark-age Mongol horde approached your city, it hurt the ears when it was still some distance from the walls. More terrifying than the noise was the smell, expressly cultivated—the militarization of dirt, of heads of hair, armpits, docks, feet. And the breath: the breath, further enriched by the Mongol diet of fermented mare’s milk, horse blood, and other Mongols. So it was in camp, too. The smell was penal, weaponized. The floor of the barracks was where it gathered—all the breath of the zona.
    “Everything comes down on you,” he conceded. “I reach into my shirt for a handful of lice. And if they’re only little ones I think fuck it and put them back.”
    There were about fifteen reasons why he couldn’t stay down there. He had to make it to the second tier. The topmost boards were, of course, the inalienable roosts of the urkas, of the brutes, of the bitches; but Lev had to make it to the second tier.
    So I went through it all again, in soft-voiced earnest. Markargan will be behind you, I told him. He needs your labor—he needs your sleep, your health. You’re not going to last in that brigade so use the clout
now
. Gain the face. For the ground bunk, pick someone who’s on the low ration. They won’t fight for long. Then trade that for