Free The People's Act of Love by James Meek

at the floor and wiping his palms on his smock. ‘Christ said nothing to me about the widow. She lives here. In heaven, their names weren’t mentioned, sister. Friends! It’s late. A psalm, then let the needy make their petitions, and our closing prayer.’
    Balashov opened his mouth and sang:
    My wonderful Eden
    How bright was my day
    My soul and my comfort
    In paradise lay
    I lived there with God
    Immortal, as one;
    He loved me as closely
    As his own true son.
    ‘Amen!’ came the cryback from the wall shadows. And: ‘Immortal!’
    Mutz heard footsteps behind him and squirmed round, flailing his boots and arms like an overturned beetle in the darkness. His wet poncho became hopeless batwings in his panic, and he bit his lips together to stop himself crying out. His right foot connected with something mobile in space which, horror, took hold of the bootsole and would not let go.
    ‘Brother!’ whispered Nekovar. ‘You must go back to the shtab. They’ve caught a doubtful character sneaking about. Outsider, brother. Knife on him the size of a sabre.’

THE CONVICT
    O ne of the rooms in the shtab had been made into a cell. Several times Matula’s enforcers had brought Czech soldiers there to hurt them when they complained too often about not going home. Every once in a while, as now, the forest and the railway, a single track spur off the main Trans-Siberian one hundred miles to the south, threw up the scraps and peelings of war’s kitchen. A Cossack deserter from Omsk had been in, purging himself of alcohol and tearfully repenting his rapes and burnings. They let him go after a few weeks and he walked back into the forest. Perhaps he was still there. Perhaps he had walked out in a different place, with a different name and a different history. It was a good time for that. There was a Hungarian who claimed to be an ex-prisoner of war trying, like the Czechs, he said in broken German, to go home. Matula judged him a spy and shot him personally. There was socialist revolutionary Putov, who claimed he was visiting relatives. Eager young fellow, pleasant company, with big eyes and sleeves over his knuckles. He had wandered off somewhere. And the fur-buyer from Perm. They had no excuse to lock him up. He was as Russian as black bread and vodka, and he had papers. But there was no way Matula could persuade him to stay otherwise, and Matula wanted to talk to him about the mysteries and wealth of the taiga. So he put him in the cell for a week, then sent him on his way with asack of salt red fish and an ugly birch bark nativity scene by way of an apology.
    Mutz carried a lantern down the unlit corridor leading to the cell. It was dank and chilly in the night cold after the rain. The light from the lantern raced up and down the corridor as the lantern swung. It flashed on eyes and belt buckles ahead. The voices of Racansky and Bublik, the captors, rumbled. At night in these bare corridors, with parquet floors long since worn clean of varnish, with whitewashed walls and high damp ceilings, any two people talking together sounded like a conspiracy.
    ‘Look, Racansky,’ said Bublik as Mutz approached. ‘Illumination is for the officers. Now, there’s a metaphor for the class struggle.’
    ‘You’re right,’ said Mutz. ‘But I’m not going to give you the lantern.’
    ‘Even the prisoner has a candle,’ said Racansky.
    ‘We gave him ours,’ said Bublik. ‘Rightly.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I believe we’re in the presence of greatness, comrade Jew-lieutenant, sir. His name is Samarin. A political prisoner. Escaped from a place up north. I think he may be a Bolshevik. A revolutionary!’
    ‘And you like that.’
    ‘What good honest man doesn’t? The alliance of soldiers, peasants and workers –’
    ‘Then why did you lock him up?’
    There was silence. Bublik cleared his throat and fidgeted with the safety catch of his rifle.
    ‘Matula,’ said Racansky.
    ‘I know,’ said Mutz. ‘When are you going to