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if there were a pleasant surprise awaiting you just over the horizon. All this, in order finally to reach the prison gates, to see the grey plank gangway, the fence, the plywood guard booths and the orderly’s gloomy mug.
    In this labour colony, Alikhanov was a guard in the penal isolator, where zeks who had committed offences were kept.
    These were peculiar people. In order to land in the penal isolator of a maximum-security camp, you had to commit some incredibly evil deed. Strange as it may seem, many managed to do so. What operated here was some principle contrary to natural selection. Conflicts arose between the horrible and the even more monstrous. The ones who landed in the isolator were considered thugs even among the most hardened criminals.
    Alikhanov’s job was a truly wretched one. Nevertheless, Boris Alikhanov carried out his duties conscientiously. The fact that he stayed alive can be taken as a qualitative indicator.
    One could not say that he was brave or cool-headed. But he did have a talent for switching off in moments of danger. Obviously, that was what saved him.
    As a result, he was regarded as cool-headed and brave. But a stranger. He was a stranger to everyone: zeks, soldiers, officers and civilian workers. Even the guard dogs considered him a stranger.
    A smile both absent-minded and anxious played constantly over his face. An intellectual can always be recognized by that smile, even in the taiga.

    This was the expression he maintained in all circumstances: when the cold made fences split and sparrows freeze in flight; when the vodka, on the eve of a scheduled demobilization, overflowed from the soldiers’ borscht tub; and even when prisoners broke his rib by the sawmill.
    Alikhanov had been born into an intellectual family which looked down upon poorly dressed people. Now he dealt with prisoners in striped jackets, with soldiers who used poisonous hair tonic that smelt like shoe polish, and with civilian workers at the camp who gambled away their civilian rags before they reached Kotlas, the regional centre.
    Alikhanov was a good guard, and that, at any rate, was better than being a bad guard. The only ones worse than bad guards were the zeks in the penal isolator.
    The dark army barracks stood a hundred metres away from the isolator. An over-laundered pale-pink flag hung above the attic window. Behind the barracks, in the kennel, German shepherds could always be heard, their barking deep and resonant. The German shepherds were trained by Volikov and Pakhapil. For months on end they taught the dogs to hate people wearing striped jackets. However, the hungry dogs also snarled at soldiers in green padded vests, and at re-enlistees in officers’ overcoats, and at the officers themselves. And even at Volikov and Pakhapil. To walk between the mesh cages of the kennel was not without its dangers.
    At night Alikhanov monitored the isolator, and then he was off for the next twenty-four hours. He could smoke, sitting on the parallel bars of the outdoor gym, play dominoes beneath the wheezing of the loudspeaker or, as a last resort, familiarize himself with the company library, where writings of Ukrainian authors predominated.
    In the army barracks he was respected, even if considered a stranger, and perhaps that was precisely why he was respected. Maybe it bespoke the old Russian deference to foreigners. Deference with no special liking.
    In order to command authority in the army barracks, it was enough to ignore the camp administration. It was easy for
Alikhanov to ignore the company command, because he was serving as a guard. He had nothing to lose.
    One time Captain Prishchepa summoned Alikhanov. This happened at the end of December.
    The captain held out cigarettes to him to indicate that the conversation was unofficial. He said, “The New Year is approaching. Unfortunately, this is unavoidable. It means there will be a drinking binge in the barracks. And a binge is a wreck waiting to happen. If you