He turns his head to the KGB woman and says, “She needs a doctor! She’s not well, she had a cesarean section three days ago!”

“She needs a doctor! Please!” echoes Ruth. She’s wrapped her hands around the bars of the window.

“Of course she’ll have a doctor,” says the KGB woman soothingly. “As soon as our dear Dubinin agrees to cooperate.”

“But I can’t cooperate! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Ruth. “Are you not even human?”

For an instant Sasha thinks she meant him. But when he looks in her direction, she’s staring instead at the KGB woman. She speaks in a sore, frayed voice.

“You see what it does to your soul? This is what it makes you. It turns you into a brute with no soul, a stone for a heart, movements and classes instead of human beings. My sister is a person! She’s beautiful and loyal and she saved my life when we were kids. I’m not kidding. I had a stomachache and she made my parents take me to the doctor and they got my appendix out just in time. And I never thanked her. She needs to live. Please. She needs a doctor. She’s a human being!”

“That’s up to her husband.”

“My God! Who are you? Don’t you have a sister, don’t you have anyone you love? What if she were your own sister? What if she were your daughter?”

From Iris’s cell comes the sound of a baby crying. Sasha turns and bangs his forehead on the window bars. “Let me in! For God’s sake, let me hold him!”

Behind him, Ruth screams at the KGB woman. Iris stirs and turns to the crying baby in her arms. In his panic, Sasha can’t even remember the name. The name of his own son! He bangs the bars with such strength, the door rattles in its hinges. The baby bawls his heartbreaking newborn cry. Iris shushes him. A pair of hands grasp Sasha by the shoulders and haul him away from the door. He shouts his wife’s name, he sobs at each breath. He struggles against the arms that hold him, but they’re massive arms and he’s as weak as a kitten from the drive—his hands are handcuffed behind his back—he’s helpless. The guard drags him outside and the door clangs shut. He falls to his knees. The prison hut is soundproof—all those desperate cries and shouts are cut off like a faucet. Sasha tilts his head to the sky and stares disbelieving at the gray pattern of midnight clouds. He has the strange feeling that his chest and stomach have been cut open and his entrails are spilling onto the ground before him.

“All right,” he whispers. “I’ll talk.”

Lyudmila

JULY 1952

Outside Riga, Latvia