Struggle: Grip of steel
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Half an hour later, a prisoner was placed with him, who was not only sick, but was radiating bacilli and germs. He went straight to his bunk, even in front of the warder, who did not prevent him from doing so, even though he was only allowed to sit during the day. In a room of two by three meters it was unreal not to be infected by such a neighbor, and already by evening Samokh felt how from inside he began to feel fever, and darkness appeared in his eyes, and everything dimmed.
Close to bedtime, the patient was taken from his cell with a loud notification that he needed hospitalization due to a corona virus – the same one that periodically appeared in one corner of the
Empire or another. In general, the story of the disease seemed to be over, but periodically new outbreaks appeared, which were quickly localized, preventing the spread. And there was no doubt that this patient had been brought by the S.S.C. from a fresh region, where a new strain of the virus had formed.
Samoh began to vomit, and considering that he had eaten practically nothing, nothing came out. Even before lights out, he collapsed on his bunk and fell asleep half-lying. Then in the morning, the inspection burst in on him after his official rise. They had decided to arrange it not at six-thirty in the morning, but an hour and a half earlier, and the guard went around banging on the cell doors with a key, waking up the prisoners. All the doors except Samoh's cell, who didn't wake up. The inspection recorded a new and vicious demonstrative violation of the order of the pre-trial detention center – it was necessary to continue pretending to sleep after the official wake-up, when the warden woke up everyone personally, and when it made no sense, because anyway they would wake up by force not immediately, but in five minutes. It was impossible to think of anything else but the SHIZO, and the Metropolitan went there again. This time he was already sick.
Of course, no one was going to send him to any hospital as the one who had infected him. They said that he would only infect the recovering plagues there. He would only violate all their loyal and understandably written norms, and here he would also cause physical harm to the people around him. Later Samokh learns that the sick man who spent a few hours in the cell with him, lying on his bunk, was convicted of murdering his sister and her friend at their home during a week- long binge – he broke into his sister's house demanding an explanation, and then stuck a knife to her throat and then strangled her friend. For him, the wardens considered it more necessary to take care of his health by hospitalization.
The third visit to the SHIZO differed from the previous two except for the presence of fever in his body and constantly cloudy consciousness. Samokh regularly puked his nose while sitting on his bunk, and his surroundings in the form of his eternal companion yelling and the warden occasionally banging his key on the bars had merged into a single entity that was purposefully trying to tear his mind away from him. Eventually, sometime toward evening, someone tapped him with a baton – first on the shoulder, then on the ribs. Then in the ribs again.
It made him even more nauseous, and the pain played through his temples like a needle, but he got up. He got to his feet and collapsed. He vomited some kind of sludge, probably bile juice.
After that he felt a little better, though not for long. The warder kept demanding to get up, and it was unclear to the metropolitan himself how, but he succeeded. After shouting something directly at him, the SS officer went out and locked the bars behind him.
Samokh fell back into his bunk and, without even trying to make himself comfortable, fell into sleep. He dreamed of Nevrokh. Finally, someone who had given him the right advice, from whom he had learned to defeat his enemies and to weigh his strength before he acted.
– There is a man who is very dangerous to us. – the patriarch told him. – A man, not a plague.
Who is more dangerous to us than anyone else. Don't be a fool like others, don't think that people are weaker than us just because we once defeated them. Don't underestimate your enemy – there is a very high price to pay for that Don't underestimate your enemy. Don't underestimate your
enemy....
The last catches swirled in a merry-go-round around Samoh's consciousness. In the middle of the night he woke up remembering that dream. And then he remembered another one, where Bazankhr with general's epaulettes tells him about self-confidence, vanity and bluster. It all comes from misconceptions about his enemy. An enemy who now seeks to break him and make him beg for leniency.
– There will be no leniency. – The Metropolitan whispered aloud. – There will be nothing but one. The fires of the Holy Inquisition, which will make everyone tremble at the mere mention of it.
He felt a fever inside him even greater than the one he'd felt when he'd contracted this virus.
A heat that burned away all the sickness, all the weakness, all the indecision. His eyes seemed to come back to life, and he began to see clearly. At the same time, his hearing began to return to him. And then the screams from the cell across the hall.
Samoh winced. Pain shot through his temples from one to the other, a little nausea and it seemed harder to breathe. His eyes darkened momentarily, but he kept moving anyway. And the sensations of reality took hold stronger than the pain.
It was dark, for at night only a single light bulb at the beginning of the corridor illuminated the passage, but the prisoner in the cell opposite was clearly visible.
The Metropolitan stood up and walked to the door grate, still staring at the screaming madman. Raising one hand and pointing it palm up at him, Samokh said:
– Blessings on your healing, my son..... Only Jah's faith will heal you.....
Bolotnikov
That inane inability of people to become better than they can be. And the anger with which they meet any attempt at change. They see you as the enemy. An even bigger enemy than the person who actually made them live worse and make themselves worse. And weaker. What a hard line those two words have.
Weaker and stronger. If we allow ourselves to change, is it strength to change things, or weakness to allow change? Or conversely, is it strength that leaves us the same, or weakness that prevents us from changing error to truth?
Colonel Bolotnikov had no answers to these questions now. He was simply leading the very ten percent of people who had accepted the new changes, and agreed to be free against the will of the majority. About seven hundred people in all. And how they were still being looked at when they left. They even tried to shout phrases like "weaklings", "broken", and even "damned", the latter even caught on amongst themselves. When Bolotnikov gave them the opportunity to choose a name for the new Maquis unit they were now, they all eventually agreed on the word, and it was now the Cursed Battalion.