«Do you know what being friends means?» [Oki, a Japanese boy, a friend of my childhood in Odessa,] asked me.
«Certainly I do. To be friends is to be faithful to your friend. Rush to help, share everything, both grief and joy. In short, help to live!»
«You say 'Help to live'. What you say is true. But it is not all! A true friend has one more responsibility, the most difficult of all - in need the friend should help to die.»
... What will happen to me in prison? I behaved as the conscience orders. And everything I thought to be right led me to failure. Here, in the TsBL at the most favourable conditions I always ended in trouble. «There are two ways out of the morgue, to the freedom or down under the Shmitikha,» Dmohovsky said. He is right. The only remaining resource is death. I have no friend in the Japanese sense. Thus I should create an alternative where the death is the lesser evil. But what is it the death would be lesser evil in comparison. The answer is clear, it is the mine. And I demanded, «Send me to the mine.»