In the First Circle

My 23 highlights

• The captain was always there in the morning because the brass might want him in the course of the day; he never turned up in the evening, since he did not aspire to promotion.

• People describing prisons have always tried to lay the horror on thick. But perhaps prison is most horrible when there is no horror? When the horror consists in the gray routine never varying from week to week? When you forget that the one and only life given to you on this earth has been wrecked? When you are willing to forgive, have already forgiven the swine for all this? When your only thought is how to grab a crusty piece of bread, not one that is all crumb? Or how to get underwear with no holes in it, and not too small, next bath day?

• Having convinced himself that he loved her, Anton fell at her feet in one of those forest clearings and proposed. Agnia was deeply dismayed. “I’m afraid I’m misleading you. I don’t know what to say. I just don’t feel anything. When I think about it, I just don’t want to live. You are a clever man, a brilliant man, and I ought to be overjoyed; but, instead, it makes me want to die.”

• this far-from-beautiful girl

• The best people were always killed by somebody else; it fell to Stalin to finish off the worst.

• More often than not, there just wasn’t time to study. For a month and more every autumn, students were whisked off to collective farms to dig potatoes, so that for the rest of the year they had eight or even ten lectures a day, with no time to go over their notes.

• What I meant was that we do not sacrifice ourselves completely. The wives of the Decembrists spared themselves nothing; they gave up everything to follow their husbands. . . . If we can’t hope to free them, perhaps we can get their sentences commuted to banishment? If he was sent to the very depths of the taiga, beyond the Arctic Circle, I would be content to follow him; I would give up everything. . . .”

• To get from the Nile to Jerusalem, the Jews had no need at all to walk more than four hundred kilometers, so that even resting on the Sabbath, they could easily have gotten there in three weeks! Must we not therefore suppose that for the remainder of the forty years Moses was leading them not through the Arabian desert but around and around in the Arabian desert, until all those who remembered their well-fed Egyptian servitude would have died off and the survivors would appreciate so much more the modest paradise that Moses would be able to offer them?

• He came from an old gentry family that had long been dwindling like a spent candle and had finally sputtered out in the fiery intensity of the Revolution.

• Lieutenant Smolosidov was an unpleasant character. Perhaps you believe that there is some good in every living creature? Your search for it in Smolosidov would be rendered difficult by that unsmiling iron-hard stare and the sour twist of those thick lips.

• AKONOV HAD HELD his position of trust as chief engineer of the Special Technology Department of the MGB for several years now, during and since the war. He wore with dignity the insignia of an engineer colonel, silver epaulets with blue borders and three big stars, which his knowledge had earned him. His position was such that he could exercise general supervision from a distance, make an occasional erudite report to an audience of high officeholders, indulge in an occasional clever and colorful conversation with some engineer over his finished model, and in general enjoy the reputation of an expert, bear no responsibility, and pick up a good few thousand rubles a month

• while the need for interrogators grew just as rapidly, Abakumov was found to have a talent for the job, his long arms making deft and damaging contact with a prisoner’s ugly mug. That was the beginning of a great career.

• “And will it really tell me what we all need to know? Where humanity went wrong?”

• It was just that prolonged lack of exercise had rendered the minister’s brain useless to him. His whole career had worked out in such a way that thinking had always brought setbacks, whereas zealous subordination had always brought gain. Abakumov therefore tried to avoid mental exertion as far as possible.

• They had gone to the Maly Theater together. The play was Vassa Zheleznova. It was a dismal affair. The theater was less than half full, which may have been why the actors seemed half dead. They came on looking bored, like clerks arriving at the office, and cheered up only when it was time to leave. It was almost humiliating to perform to such a poor house; the makeup and the characters became a silly joke unworthy of adults. At any moment somebody, speaking quietly as though in his own sitting room, might break the silence of the audience and say, “Why don’t you good people stop this tomfoolery?” and the play would collapse in ruins. The humiliation of the actors was contagious. The whole audience felt as though they were taking part in some deed of shame and were too embarrassed to look at each other. It was just as quiet during the intermissions. Couples exchanged whispered remarks and walked noiselessly about the foyer.

• What made Stalin terrifying was that any slip in dealing with him was like mishandling a detonator: You would do it only once in your life; there was no chance to correct it. What made Stalin terrifying was that he never listened to excuses; he did not even make accusations. One end of his mustache twitched slightly, and sentence was passed somewhere inside there, but the condemned man was not informed of it; he went peacefully on his way, was arrested that night and shot before morning.

• Alas, what this director of communications knew about communications went no further than the handling of a telephone receiver. Strictly speaking he was not capable of work but only of management.

• As head of department he was determined not to be a mere figurehead. Since his appointment to that post, he had become more and more convinced of his superior merits, and he fully believed that he could master all the department’s problems and solve them more easily than anyone else; otherwise he would not have been appointed.

• His skin was affected by the lack of fresh air, and his face had a wilted look

• Malignant Smolosidov hung over the tape recorder like a sullen dog. Pompous Bulbanyuk, elbows on Anton’s spacious desk, supported his imposing potato head in hands half hidden by his loose-skinned neck. From what stock had this impenetrably complacent breed proliferated? From the weed of Commie-cockiness, maybe? How quick and clever his comrades had once been. Now the whole apparatus had fallen into the hands of these people. And they were bulldozing the whole country along the road to perdition. How could it have happened? Rubin could not look at them. They disgusted him so much that he would have liked to toss a hand grenade at them then and there, in that office, and blow them to bits!

• With a little key that he carried in his waistband, Stalin unlocked the metal lid of a decanter, poured himself a glass of his favorite cordial, drank it, and locked the decanter again.

• Offices in this building grew larger as occupants rose in rank. So did desks. So did the conference tables with their dark blue, scarlet, or blush pink cloths. But nothing grew with such zealous haste as the portraits of the Inspirer and Organizer of Victories. Even in the offices of simple investigators he was portrayed much larger than life, and in Abakumov’s office the Leader of Mankind had been painted by a member of the school of Kremlin realists on a canvas five meters high, full length from his shoes to his marshal’s cap, ablaze with all his decorations, which in real life he never wore, most of them conferred on himself by himself, some few the gift of kings and presidents, no longer, however, including the Yugoslav orders, which had been skillfully dabbed out with paint matching his tunic.

• Chelnov did not, as any normally vain person would, make the most of his freedom to dress as he pleased. He wore an inexpensive suit, and the jacket and trousers were not even identical in color. He always wore felt boots. Over the few gray hairs left to him he tugged a nondescript woolen cap, knitted perhaps for a skier or a little girl. But his most distinctive article of dress was a weird woolen traveling shawl, pinned in two thicknesses around his shoulders and his back and somewhat resembling a woman’s warm shawl.