576
PARTISAN REVIEW
Perhaps thinking there was sense in what he had said, the officer
ordered Gershanovich to be taken away. But, until he was dead,
Gershanovich lived, and struggled, and hoped to be the victor.
This officer was not the one who had interrogated Gershanovich the
first time, and so Gershanovich once again proposed his innovation: one
bullet could be used to kill not six men, but seven; the seventh would die
later, not straight away, but he would die all the same, and to the state this
would represent a savings of 14 percent on ammunition.
"The seventh doesn't die," said the officer. "The penetrative force of
the bullet is already significantly weaker by the sixth head.
It
has been
reported to me that on a previous occasion they tried adding a seventh
man. He survived, and escaped from an unfilled grave, wounded in the
back of the head."
"He was a survivor," Gershanovich explained. "He knew what was
what, but his head still hurt; it had been damaged. And that's the truth!"
"Who was it?" asked the officer.
"How would I know? Could have been anyone. There lived a man–
he didn't live long; they tried to kill him; he lived again and died anyway;
he missed his family...."
The officer thought for a moment: "We're trying out a new type of
modernized musket. You can be the seventh man, but for the experiment
I'll put an eighth there as well."
"By all means!" Gershanovich quickly agreed.
"It'll be interesting to see," said the officer, "whether the bullet lodges
in
your brain or
if
it goes out through your forehead and into the eighth
man. These muskets keep up a fierce rate of fire, but we don't know their
penetrative force ."
"That will be interesting. You and I will soon find out," said
Gershanovich, and thought what a fool the officer was. A guard then took
the prisoner away.
In the common cell, inhabited by the deceased-to-be, life went on as
usual: people were mending clothes, chatting, sleeping, and thinking about
the way life was and the way it ought to be according to universal justice.
The cell had no windows; the small paraffin lamp burned all day and all
night. Only a newly arrived prisoner could say what time it was, but soon
they all forgot the time again, and argued about it, and nobody knew for
sure whether it was day or night in the world, though this was a matter that
interested them all.
Gershanovich found himself a place on the floor and lay down to rest.
A thought was now troubling him: who would be the eighth man when
they were shot? This eighth man was guaranteed a sure salvation, as long
