Free Apricot Jam: And Other Stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Then, of course—we ’ ll simply let you go back to your family.
     
    What else could he do?
     
    You would have to have an incredibly stony heart to trample in the mud all that was dearest to you. And now, for what cause?
     
    Oboyansky ’ s melodious incantations also left their trace on him. He was right, they were a powerful generation! The new Huns, but armed with a socialist ideology. A strange mixture . . .
     
    And perhaps it was also true that we, the old school intelligentsia, had failed to understand something. The paths to the future don ’ t easily reveal themselves to the human eye.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Ektov ’ s assignment was this: He was to be a guide for the cavalry brigade of the famous Grigory Kotovsky, the Civil War hero. (The brigade had just moved through the rebellious Pakhotny Ugol and slaughtered 500 rebels.) Ektov was not to invent any new identity for himself, he was to go as the famous Ego from Antonov ’ s staff. (Antonov ’ s forces had been utterly routed and his army had ceased to exist. He had fled and was still in hiding. But Antonov was not their concern.)
     
    And what was his job to be?
     
    That would be explained on the way.
     
    (Still, somehow, he might be able to wriggle out of it.)
     
    It was a short trip from Tambov to Kobylinka , a place that bordered on one of the areas the partisans favored.
     
    They went on horseback. (And the Chekists, in civilian clothes, rode beside him, never leaving him for a minute. They had half a squadron of Red Army troops with them.)
     
    Once again he was in the open air, under the open sky. It was early June, and the lindens were in blossom. Just fill your lungs with that air!
     
    So many of our poets and writers had told us the same thing: How beautiful the world is, and how people debase and poison it with their endless antagonisms. Will this strife never end? Will people ever be able to create a life freed from such afflictions, a splendid, sensible life of abundance? That was the dream of generations.
     
    A few versts before Kobylinka , they met Kotovsky himself. He was a huge, powerful man with a shaven head and the savage face of a convict. Kotovsky ’ s squadron was in peasant garb, not Red Army uniforms, though they all wore riding boots and sheepskin hats or astrakhans. A few of them had the red Cossack stripe on their trousers. Were they supposed to be Cossacks?
     
    Indeed, they were. They had been told to call each other “ neighbor, ” in Cossack fashion, and not “ comrade. ”
     
    The senior Chekist accompanying Ektov now explained his task: This night they were to meet with the representative of a band of some 500 rebels. Ego was to confirm that we were Cossacks from the Kuban and Don insurgent army and had broken through Voronezh Province to link up with Antonov.
     
    As night fell, Ego was given an unloaded Nagan pistol to strap on his hip and a puny nag to ride. (The four Chekists in civilian clothes stuck close to him, playing the role of the new staff he had collected after the defeat of Antonov ’ s forces. Their Nagans were fully loaded, and it was clear they would shoot him at his first wrong move.)
     
    Kotovsky and his squadron had arranged the meeting in a forester ’ s cabin on the edge of a clearing. Misha Matyukhin, brother of Ivan Matyukhin, the commander of a rebel detachment that was still active, was coming from the other direction with a few dozen horsemen. (Several brothers would often join the Tambov rebels. Aleksandr Antonov ’ s younger brother Mitka , a village poet, always went into battle by his side. The two of them had also escaped together.)
     
    The riders stopped at the clearing. The main negotiators entered the forester ’ s hut, where two candles burned on the table. Their faces could just be made out.
     
    Misha Matyukhin had never seen Ego ’ s face, but his brother Ivan had. “ He ’ ll vouch for me, ” said Ektov, who could barely recognize his own voice and believe that he was