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Stalin,” says the chief. “Half the workers have already signed confessions that they stole it and the other half committed suicide during interrogation.”’
    For a moment after Savushkin had finished telling the joke, there was silence in the wagon.
    Savushkin looked around, amazed. ‘Oh, come on. That’s a good joke! If it was a bad one, they would only have given me ten years!’
    At that‚ the men began to laugh. The sound multiplied, echoing off the wooden boards as if the ghosts of those who had been dumped beside the tracks were laughing now as well.
    Turning to look through the barbed-wire opening, Pekkala caught sight of a farmer sitting on a stone wall at the edge of a field only a few paces from the tracks. The old man was wearing a sheepskin vest and knee-length felt boots called valenki . A horse and cart had been tied to a tree beside the wall, and the back of the cart was filled with turnips scabbed with clumps of frozen earth. The farmer had laid out a red handkerchief on the snow-topped wall and was sitting on it. This gesture, in spite of its uselessness in fending off the damp and cold, struck Pekkala as strangely dignified. In one hand, the man held a small jack-knife and in the other hand he held a piece of cheese. He was chewing away contentedly, eyes narrowed in the rush of wind as railcars clattered past, filling the air with a glittering veil of ice crystals.
    Hearing the laughter of the convicts‚ the farmer’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. In that moment he had suddenly realised that the cargo rattling past him was human and not livestock as was painted on the cars, just as the prisoner transport vehicles in Moscow were disguised as delivery vans, complete with advertisements for non-existent brands of beer.
    The farmer jumped down from the wall and grabbed an armful of turnips from his cart. He began to jog along the side of the tracks, holding out the turnips.
    One of the convicts reached out his hand through the barbed-wire-laced opening and seized one.
    More arms appeared, wrists and knuckles traced with blood where the rusty barbs had cut them.
    Another hand snatched a turnip from the man’s outstretched hand.
    The convicts began to shout, even those who could not see what was happening. The noise took on a life of its own as it spread from wagon to wagon until the roar of their voices drowned out even the sword-clash of the wheels over the tracks. Slowly, the engine pulled ahead.
    The old farmer could not keep up.
    The turnips spilled from his arms.
    The last Pekkala saw of the man, he was standing beside the tracks, hands on his knees, red-faced and puffing milky clouds of breath into the sky.
    When the commotion had finally died down, Savushkin made another stab at conversation. ‘What class of criminal are you?’ he asked Pekkala.
    ‘Fifty-nine,’ replied Pekkala, remembering the designation he’d been given as part of his cover.
    ‘Fifty-nine! That means you are a dangerous offender! You don’t look like a killer to me.’
    ‘Maybe that’s why I’m so dangerous.’
    Savushkin gave a nervous laugh, like air squeaking out of a balloon. ‘Well, I bet a class 59 has a good tale to tell.’
    ‘Maybe you’ll hear it someday,’ replied Pekkala.
    ‘I’ll tell you his story,’ said a man pressed up against the wall, ‘as soon as I remember where I’ve seen him.’
    Pekkala glanced at him but said nothing.
    The man was shaking with fever. Sweat poured off his face. At some time in his past, he had been cut about the face. Now the white ridges of old scar tissue criss-crossed his cheeks like strands of spider web. These wounds had damaged the nerves, leaving a permanently crooked smile, which seemed to mock not only those around him but also the prisoner himself.
    Savushkin turned to the man with the knife-cut face. ‘Brother, you look like you could use a holiday,’ he said.
    The man ignored Savushkin. His focus remained on Pekkala. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you