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he understood what it felt like to be haunted, as he was now, by the absence of Inspector Pekkala.
    *
     
    Far to the east the freezing, clanking wagons of ETAP-1889 crossed the Ural Mountains and officially entered Siberian territory. From then on, the train stopped once a day to allow the prisoners out.
    Before the wagons were opened, the guards would walk along the sides and beat the doors with rifle butts, in hopes of dislodging any corpses that had frozen to the inner walls.
    Piling out of the wagons, the prisoners inevitably found themselves on windswept, barren ground, far from any town. Sometimes they stayed out for hours, sometimes for only a few minutes. The intervals did not appear to follow any logic. They never knew how long they would be off the train.
    During these breaks, the guards made no attempt to keep track of the prisoners. For anyone who fled into this wilderness, the chances of survival were non-existent. The guards did not even bother to take roll calls when the train whistle sounded for the prisoners to board. By then, most convicts were already huddled by the wagons, shivering and waiting to climb in.
    Beside Pekkala stood a round-faced man named Savushkin, who kept trying to make conversation. He had patient, intelligent eyes hidden behind glasses that were looped around his ears with bits of string. He was not a tall man, which put him at a disadvantage when trying to move around the cramped space of the wagon. To remedy this, he would raise his hands above his head, press his palms together‚ and drive himself like a wedge through the tangled thicket of limbs.
    Confronted with Pekkala’s stubborn silence, Savushkin had set himself the task of luring Pekkala into conversation. With the faith of an angler tying one kind of bait after another to his line, Savushkin broached every topic that entered his head, trusting that the fish must bite eventually.
    Sometimes Pekkala pretended not to hear. Other times, he smiled and looked away. He knew how important it was for his identity to remain secret, and so the less he said, the better.
    Savushkin did not take offence at his companion’s silence. After each attempt, he would wait a while before trying again to find some chink in Pekkala’s armour.
    When Pekkala finally spoke, a bright, clear day had warmed the wagons, melting ice which usually jammed the cracks between the walls. While the wheels clanked lazily over the spacers, their sound like a monstrous sharpening of knives, Savushkin hooked his fish at last.
    ‘Do you want to hear the joke that got me fifteen years in prison?’ asked Savushkin.
    ‘A joke?’ Pekkala was startled at the sound of his own voice after so many days of silence. ‘You were sent here because of a joke?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Savushkin.
    ‘Well,’ said Pekkala, ‘it seems to me you’ve earned the right to tell it twice.’
    The others were listening, too. It grew quiet in the wagon as they strained to hear Savushkin’s voice.
    ‘Stalin is meeting with a delegation of workers from the Ukraine,’ he continued. ‘After they leave, the Boss notices that his fake moustache is missing.’
    ‘Are you saying that Stalin has a fake moustache?’ asked a man standing beside him.
    ‘Now that you mention it,’ another voice chimed in.
    Savushkin ignored this.
    ‘You can’t tell jokes about Stalin!’ someone called from the far end of the wagon. ‘Not in here!’
    ‘Are you kidding?’ shouted Savushkin. ‘This is the only place where I can tell a joke about him!’ He paused and cleared his throat before continuing. ‘Stalin calls in his chief of security. “Go and find the delegation!” says the Boss. “One of the workers has stolen my moustache.” The chief of security rushes out to do as he is told. A while later, Stalin realises he has been sitting on his fake moustache, so he calls back his chief of security and tells him,  “Never mind. I found my moustache.” “It’s too late, Comrade