Archangel

Holly in a personal hell.

On the evening of the tenth day they brought company for Holly.

He heard the sounds of their coming as he lay on the floor, huddled and shivering. Two sets of boots beating a tattoo in unison in the corridor and the scraping of feet that were dragged. He had found that he always lay on the floor at the far wall to the door, always distanced himself as greatly as possible from the door, from the warders' entry. A bolt scraped. A prisoner was supposed to stand when a warder entered his cell, and they carried the truncheons to enforce the rule. Holly started to climb to his feet, from his stomach to his hands and knees, and then his fingers reaching up at the smoothness of the wall to give him leverage.

He was halfway to his feet when the door opened, and the corridor light was impeded by the dwarfing shape of the men. They did not enter the cell, they pitched the old man in, and in the same movement that they discarded him they slammed shut the door. The bolt ran home. Holly rolled back onto the floor.

The old man was close to him.

'Bastards…' he growled at the door. 'Bastards… whores…'

Holly looked at him. A skinny bag of bones and tattered uniform. A grey parchment of skin drawn across the face, a white stubble of hair across a skull that was rivered in high veins. A tiny man, and if they had been standing he would have rested his forehead under Holly's chin.

'Scum… whoring scum.'

Holly saw the bruises, red and flushed, on the old man's cheek.

The old man turned to him, manoeuvred his shoulders slowly so that he stared at Holly. There was a brightness in the eyes. Holly recognized it and felt the disgrace that he had been clawing his way to his feet in submission while the old man had laid on the ground and cursed his captors. Holly had been caving, slipping, falling. If an old man could give back to them, then Michael Holly had no cause to slither upright in humility.

He had been shown a way back.

'Mikk Laas…'

'Michael Holly… '

'I've not seen you before.'

'I've been here a little over a month, in the camp.' i know everyone who comes to the SHIzo.'

'My first time.'

'For me it is home.'

'Thank you, Mikk Laas.'

'For what?'

'For showing me something that I had forgotten.'

'For shouting?'

'I had forgotten.'

'You are not Russian..

'English.'

'I am Estonian, from near Tallinn. You know where that is?'

'Only from the map.'

'How old are you, Michael Holly?'

'Just past thirty.'

'When you were a baby, perhaps even before you were born, they took me from Estonia.'

'All the time here?'

'Here -and in 4 and in 17 and in 19.'

'You have earned the right to shout at them, Mikk Laas.'

'What can they do to me now? What can they do that they have not already done?'

They talked a long time, Mikk Laas who was from Estonia, Michael Holly who was from England. They talked in quiet, concerned voices and built themselves a wall around their two bodies that curtained off the wet running walls and the harsh concrete floor and the spy hole of the door. Later, Holly pulled his tunic up from the waist and tugged his undershirt clear and dipped a pinch of it into his mug of water and moved close to the old man and wiped at the dirt that had gathered at his bruised cheek. With his eyes closed and the brightness gone, the fight went from the face of Mikk Laas and he was pathetic and worn, and Holly knew he was close to tears, tears of pity.

'You have been here thirty years?'

'Thirty years and it is a sentence of life. I will be here until I die.'

'For what?'

'They call it treason, we said it was freedom… And you Michael Holly…?'

'Fourteen years more. They call it espionage.'

Mikk Laas opened his rheumy eyes. They glowed in an instant sadness.

'You are right, Michael Holly. You are right to guard yourself. You are beginning your time, it is right that you should first find who you can trust and who will betray you.

It doesn't matter for me. I'm here, I stay here. You are right to have caution… but I tell you, Michael Holly, I'm not a

"stoolie"…'

'I'm sorry.'

'You have nothing to be sorry for.'

'Why are you in the punishment block?'

'This time…? Last time…?'

'This time.'

'I was in the Central Hospital. I have stomach ulcers.

They said I was malingering. Perhaps they were right, perhaps they are not too bad, my ulcers. I found the place where they dump the potato that they are feeding to the guards who are sick – not real potatoes, only the peelings. I was eating the peelings when I was caught. Under the blanket the bed was half-full of potato peelings.'

A slow grin came to Holly's face. 'Rudakov gave me some coffee in his office, proper coffee. I threw it back in his face. I think I spoiled his uniform.

Mikk Laas smiled too, and the laughter croaked in his throat. 'Always keep your pride, Michael Holly. Even if you must waste good coffee, keep your pride.'

'Does your face hurt still?'

' L e s s… I kicked the bastard that hit me, kicked his balls.

He hurts more. He'll whine to his woman tonight.'

'What happened thirty years ago…?'

Holly unlaced his boots, put them under his ear. He lay on his side and faced the wall. Over his shoulder the old man spoke. A quiet and assured voice, and their bodies were beside each other and their warmth spanned the two of them. He listened to Mikk Laas tell his story.

'I was a boy. In Tallinn my father had a small business, he sold gentlemen's clothes. Estonia was an independent country. For seven hundred years we had existed under the boot of conquerors, now for twenty-two years we knew freedom.

If you set twenty-two years against seven hundred then the freedom is brief, but it was rich wine to Estonians at that time. In 1941 the Red Army came to Estonia. They had made a non-aggression pact with Germany, they had divided their spheres of influence. Estonia was to be Soviet.

They purged anyone with brains, with initiative, with cul-ture. My father went… anyone who might have organized public opinion was taken. I don't know whether he went to the camps or whether he was shot outside the city, we have never heard. We fought them. Not an organized fight, not soldier to soldier. We fought them as guerillas. We went to the swamps south of Tallinn to the forests around the Suur Munamagi mountain. A few of us, and with old weapons.

We tried to snipe them, to harass them. Then the Germans came and the Red Army retreated. There was no choice to make between our enemies. The Germans were hideous, the Soviets were worse. We fought as partisans against the Germans. We lived rough outside the villages. We hit and we melted back. I don't know what we achieved, nothing perhaps, but at least we were Estonians fighting for Estonia.

At least the people who had stayed in Tallinn and Polt-samaa and Tartu knew that the freedom of Estonia lived in the hearts of a few men. And the Germans went and the Red Army returned. They came back to crush the last breath from free Estonia. They bombed Tallinn, they shipped the young men out. We fought on from the forests. When the Germans were there we had the weapons from the Soviets who had fled. Now. we used the weapons that the Germans abandoned. Perhaps it was all useless, I doubt that we hurt them. It ended near Mustvee, we were trapped on the shore of Lake Peipus. We had nowhere to run to. There was half a brigade in front of us and the lake behind. We surrendered.

It is the only time in my life that I have raised my hands.

They marched us through Mustvee to the army camp, the whole of the town had come out to look at us. We were in rags. No one shouted, no one gestured. There was no hate and no sympathy. They had been emasculated, those people.