The Man Who Could Only Say Nyet

"I spent most of my time reading. Lefortovo had a wonderful library--it looked as if all the books confiscated from the enemies of the people over half a century had ended up here. Up and down the country they had 'purged' libraries and burned 'pernicious' books, while in here, everything was preserved as in an oasis. It had never occurred to anyone to purge the libraries of the KGB prisons--who could be holier than the pope? Pre-revolutionary editions of Pushkin and Gogol, A.K. Tolstoy and Lermontov, Hamsun and Maeterlinck, Marcel Proust and Zamyatin. What didn't they have in here?

The books were in excellent condition, but almost all their pages were covered with rubber stamps. 'Internal prison of the GUGB NKVD' was a prewar stamp. 'Investigation isolator of the KGB under the SM of the U.S.S.R. was a modern stamp. And in capital letters running from top to bottom of the entire page: 'Any damage done to books or marking of the text by pencil, matches, fingernails, etc., will result in the withdrawal of library privileges.'"

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