act by which he could bring it nearer. It
might be ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might keep him for years in
solitary confinement, they might send him to a labour-camp, they might
release him for a while, as they sometimes did. It was perfectly possible
that before he was shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation
would be enacted all over again. The one certain thing was that death never
came at an expected moment. The tradition -- the unspoken tradition:
somehow you knew it, though you never heard it said -- was that they shot
you from behind; always in the back of the head, without warning, as you
walked down a corridor from cell to cell.
One day -- but 'one day' was not the right expression; just as
probably it was in the middle of the night: once -- he fell into a strange,
blissful reverie. He was walking down the corridor, waiting for the bullet.
He knew that it was coming in another moment. Everything was settled,
smoothed out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no
more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy and strong. He walked easily,
with a joy of movement and with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was
not any longer in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he
was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down which he had
seemed to wal