Vasilii Petrovich squeezed Artiom’s shoulder more and more firmly, then suddenly relaxed his fingers, removed his hand, and turned away.
They remained silent for another half a minute.
“… They almost killed you here,” he said with an impossibly tired voice. “They almost trampled you to death. How can this be?”
“That’s not all,” suddenly said Artiom. “Eichmanis was speaking of something else. He said that we ourselves… we do it to ourselves. And I see that it’s true.”
“We do it to ourselves — yes!” Vasilii Petrovich continued, immediately understanding the point of the conversation. “But why then is he placed as our authority? So that we can torture ourselves even more painfully?”
Somewhere nearby a gull cried painfully, as though someone had stepped on its tail, and several others shr
