There was the opportunity to think: just what they wanted him to do. He had to put it together in his mind, sort out where it had started, and why, and what were their aims and intentions.
Quicker for them that way – they'd get their answers faster. And be easier for him, too – he'd suffer less. Have it all ready when they come for you, then they won't need to hurt you so much. The awful fear of waiting – but this would be only the start of it. First the waiting for the time when they were ready to take the confession. Then the waiting for the trial. And after that more waiting.
Waiting for sentence, waiting for execution. Be from a cell like this that they'd take you out. Still dark before the creep of dawn, and floodlights playing on the high walls, and somewhere in the yard they'll trip you over, Moses, then jerk you down to your knees, and there'll be a hand to hold your head steady and then the grip will loosen from the hair and there will be the noise of the pistol being cocked. That's what you're going to wait for, Moses, that's the future, that's eternity.
They'd grown up together, the four of them. The war was long over when they were born, and the fighting finished, but nothing changed in the lot of the Ukrainian Jew. Second- class people, on the outside, without benefit or recognition. They didn't live in a ghetto – that was not the way the housing was allocated – but they'd learned to fall in together because that was survival in an alien world. Taught to be quiet, taught not to answer back, taught not to risk provocation, to ride a jibe or an insult, and to be better and fitter and stronger and more able, because those were the necessities of equality.