Free Brotherhood of the Tomb by Daniel Easterman

polished, would finally emerge.
    Patrick had no way of telling how much time passed. No natural light entered the room. The powerful bulb in the ceiling was never extinguished. Patrick would waken from a broken, desperate sleep to see Natalya Pavlovna or Chekulayev standing by his side, ready to begin another session.
    The worst were those with the woman. She had served her apprenticeship on the women’s block in Leningrad’s Kresty prison, before the block was turned into a psychiatric wing. There she had learned the rhythms of pain and the cadences of despair. She understood the finesse that left the skin unbroken and the mind in tatters. She spoke the language of betrayal in all its vernaculars. But the language of her heart was suffering: she knew it in herself and taught it to others, unselfconsciously.
    From the Kresty, she had been transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where she had worked on dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Bukovskii. She had talked at length about her experiences there. Above all, she remembered the great nets the authorities had stretched across the gaps between the landings, to prevent inmates from throwing themselves to their deaths.
    ‘Think of me as a net,’ she would say to Patrick. ‘I’m here to help you, to stop you falling. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’
    The room became a nightmare. Floor and walls and ceiling merged into a landscape without shape or dimension. The light never dimmed or flickered. Soon after Patrick’s arrival, an orderly had taken away his clothes and given him a long white shift to wear instead. No sounds reached him from outside. He knew he could not be heard, even if he screamed.
    It was clear from the outset that the mirror was a one-way glass through which they kept him under
    constant surveillance. He would sit facing it for hours, like an animal in a zoo, staring at his captors. At other times, he turned his back on them and stared at the other wall.
    Food was left for him in bowls while he slept. It came regularly enough to stave off real hunger pangs, but not often enough or in sufficient quantities to satisfy. It never varied: white rice, a few beans, cold black coffee. The empty bowls were removed while he slept again, which was seldom. The coffee kept him high and awake for long periods. When he did sleep, he was restless and easily wakened. He quickly became disorientated. He suffered from constipation, then bouts of severe diarrhoea that kept him huddled for hours over the toilet. He would wake from disturbed dreams, shaking and nauseous.
    Sometimes they would let him sleep ten or fifteen minutes, then waken him by banging loudly on the door. That would continue for hours: each time he began to nod off, the banging would start, until he grew agitated and angry. By the tenth or eleventh time, he would be so tired and confused that he started weeping from sheer frustration. Afterwards, he would feel ashamed of his tears: he was determined to show his gaolers no signs of weakness. But the tears came, whether he wished them or not.
    He dreamed of De Faoite incessantly, of the wounded and bleeding altar on which he lay, inarticulate, like a tortured animal. The priest would rise and open cracked lips and whisper a single word over and over: Passover, Passover. And in the dream flakes of plaster would crumble and fall from the high vaulted ceiling, white and sharp as snow, drifting across the bloody church, blanching its floor and walls, bleaching it of all corruption.
    ‘Talk to me, Patrick,’ Natalya Pavlovna would say
    in a hushed voice, like one of the nuns he had known as a child, praying, alone with God. ‘Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your past. We have plenty of time, all the time in the world.’
    But he sensed an urgency in her voice, a frisson of alarm that belied the patience with which she approached her task. She never spoke of things directly, never asked leading questions. Her inquisition was roundabout, yet Patrick