And you don't even pray, but mutter deliriously, and you don't know if you're dead or alive. And then you finish up the second night and get to the patrol point with your swag. The guards are there with their machine guns. And those bastards, those toads really hate you. There's no great joy in arresting you, they're terrified that you're contaminated. All they want to do is bump you off and they've got all the aces—go prove that you were killed illegally. So that means you bury your face in the dirt again and pray until dawn and until dark again. And the swag lies next to you and you don't know whether it's just lying there or slowly killing you. Or you could end up like Knuckles Itzak, who got stuck at dawn in an open space. He got off the track and ended up between two ditches. He couldn't go right or left. They shot at him for two hours, but couldn't hit him. For two hours he made believe he was dead. Thank God, they finally believed it and left. I saw him after that. I couldn't even recognize him. He was a broken man, no longer human.

I wiped my tears and turned on the water. I showered for a long time. First hot, then cold, then hot again. I used up a whole bar of soap. Then I got bored. I turned off the shower. Someone was banging on the door. Kirill was shouting:

"Hey, you stalker! Come on out of there! There's a scent of the green around here."

Greenbacks, that's always good. I opened the door. He was standing there, half naked, in his shorts. He was ecstatic, his melancholy gone. He handed me the envelope.

"Here,” he said. “From a grateful humanity."

"I spit on your humanity. How much is there?"

"In view of your bravery beyond the call of duty, and as an exception, two months' pay!"

Yes, I could live on that kind of money. If I could get two months' pay for every empty, I could have sent Ernest packing a long time ago.

"Well, are you pleased?” He was glowing, positively radiant, grinning from ear to ear.