The other zeks don't dare gather around us. That would be a provocation of the guards, to gather and obviously shirk work. However, they find other ways of showing their appreciation.

Smiles.

Coming over to "help" with a piece of wood that Luka and I can obviously carry on our own, even with our wounds.

One even asked what I did before coming to the camp.

Through it all, Luka hums softly. I know it's his Raise Spirits skill at work, but that doesn't make the effect any less real. It doesn't make the songs any less beautiful. None are as haunting as that first one, but they each have an effect on my psyche.

Through it all, I begin to think of them as people just like me. They are not horrible criminals. They are people who said the wrong thing once, who didn't declare their love strongly enough, who were the first to stop clapping for Mecha Stalin.

I realize that I am not a horrible criminal. That American mathematician did fine work. So what if he didn't rattle off Communist Orthodoxy? So what if he didn't bow down to Mecha Stalin. You don't declare that a man lost the chess match just because he is a capitalist or a religionist. You declare that he loses the match when he loses the match, his beliefs be damned! Why should math be any different?

It was good math.

"God's opening your eyes," says Luka.

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"Something like that," I say. Let the man have his fairy tales. I'll let him ramble on about God as much as he wants as long as he keeps humming.

How is it that we can hear that music, wordless as it is, and know immediately that it's treasonous?

"You never said what that song was called."

"It's an old hymn," says Luka. "It's about grace."

"It felt like pain." Even as I say it I know it's not quite right.

Luka nods anyways. "That's certainly part of it."

"What it would be like without the pain? If you kept all the good parts of the song, but dropped the pain."

He traces his biggest scar. "Do you know how long I was tortured?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It has to do with everything. How can you pretend to understand life when you keep on ignoring it happening all around you?

"Without pain, the song would be nothing. It would be trite. A toy. A lie. But you would feel the pain anyways. Don't you see? We've tried to reject pain, but it keeps on coming back. We've tried to deny it, to cover it up, to pretend that the Soviet Union is a world without pain, but what does it lead to? In these camps, our lives contain all of the pain denied to them. Concentrated suffering. But they have it worse, for their lives are empty. The spark has been drained out of them.

"Music, real music, gives us life. We can't have life free of pain, and so we can't have music free of pain."

He is a madman. He is absolutely insane.

"But what if we could?" I protest. "Surely your God can give us a life without pain."

He laughs. "Don't you know anything? My God was tortured. My God died."