So it happened that in the most crucial moment the hardly heard music suddenly chased the force of hypnosis away and gave me back the will to live, the only thing capable of bringing one to the victory in all hell's despite. I regained my calmness and confidence and said firmly, «You are right, this life is not attractive enough to be afraid of death. Probably this is the best way out. But I am not going to lie in the face of death. I can disapprove your system, can be disgusted with injustices it generates. But I am Russian and doing a mischief to the motherland is as impossible for me as raising my hand against the Mother! Everything I have said it the truth. And you will hear nothing else from me.»
And all of that was due to the music from the loudspeaker in the investigator's office in the Barnaul Inner Prison reviving a memory of the night when I had been listening to the same music in the bosom of my family, there in Tsepilovo.