...of an investigator

How can there have been so many informers? I must remember everything. I must work out who can have denounced me. But why bother? Muska Grinberg... The investigator will come to Zhenya in time... But it is strange that he hasn't asked about her at all, that he hasn't said a word... Surely Vasya didn't inform on me? But what, just what am I supposed to confess...? What's hidden will remain hidden, but here I am. Tell me what all this is for, Party. Iosif, Koba, Soso. What can have made him kill so many fine, strong people? Katsenelenbogen's right - it's not the investigator's questions I should be afraid of, but his silences, the things he keeps silent about. Yes, soon he'll come to Zhenya. She must have been arrested too. Where had all this started, how had it begun? Can it really be me sitting here? How awful. What a lot of shit there is in my life. Forgive me, comrade Stalin! Just say one word to me, Iosif Vissarionovich! I'm guilty, I've been confused, I've said things I shouldn't, I've doubted, the Party knows everything, the Party sees everything. Why, why did I ever talk to that literary critic? What does it matter anyway? But how does my time in encirclement fit into all this? The whole thing's quite mad. It's a lie, a slander, a provocation. Why on earth didn't I say about Hacken, 'My brother, my friend, I have no doubt at all of your purity...'? Hacken had averted his unhappy eyes.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]