Darkness at Noon (21 page)

Rubashov felt for his pince-nez under the blanket, put them on, and got up from the bunk. He felt leadenly tired as he walked along the corridor beside the uniformed giant, who towered a head above him. The other man followed behind them.

Rubashov looked at his watch; it was two o'clock in the morning, so he must have slept, after all. They went the way which led towards the barber's shop—the same way as Bogrov had been taken. The second official remained three paces behind Rubashov. Rubashov felt the impulse to turn his head round as an itching in the back of his neck, but controlled it. After all, they can't
bump me off so completely without ceremony, he thought, without being entirely convinced. At the moment it did not matter to him much; he only wished to get it over quickly. He tried to find out whether he was afraid or not, but was aware only of the physical discomfort caused by the strain of not turning his head round towards the man behind him.

When they turned the corner beyond the barber's shop, the narrow cellar staircase came into view. Rubashov watched the giant at his side to see whether he would slacken his pace. He still felt no fear, only curiosity and uneasiness; but when they had passed the staircase, he noticed to his surprise that his legs felt shaky, so that he had to pull himself together. At the same time he caught himself mechanically rubbing his spectacles on his sleeve; apparently, he must have taken them off before reaching the barber's shop without noticing it. It is all swindle, he thought. Above, it is possible to kid oneself, but below, from the stomach downwards, one knows. If they beat me now, I will sign anything they like; but tomorrow I will recall it….

A few steps further on, the “theory of relative maturity” came to his mind again, and the fact that he had already decided to give in and to sign his submission. A great relief came over him; but at the same time he asked himself in astonishment how it was possible that he should have so completely forgotten his decisions of the last few days. The giant stopped, opened a door and stood aside. Rubashov saw a room before him similar to Ivanov's, but with unpleasantly bright lighting, which stabbed his eyes. Opposite the door, behind the desk, sat Gletkin.

The door shut behind Rubashov and Gletkin looked up from his pile of documents. “Please sit down,” he said in that dry, colourless tone which Rubashov remembered from that first scene in his cell. He also recognized the broad scar on Gletkin's skull; his face was in shadow, as the only light in the room came from a tall metal standing lamp behind Gletkin's armchair. The sharp white light which streamed from the exceptionally strong bulb blinded Rubashov, so that it was only after a few seconds that he became aware of a third person—a secretary sitting behind a screen at a small table, with her back to the room.

Rubashov sat down opposite Gletkin, in front of the desk, on the only chair. It was an uncomfortable chair, without arms.

“I am commissioned to examine you during the absence of Commissar Ivanov,” said Gletkin. The light of the lamp hurt Rubashov's eyes; but if he turned his profile to Gletkin, the effect of the light in the corner of his eye was nearly as unpleasant. Besides, to talk with averted head seemed absurd and embarrassing.

“I prefer to be examined by Ivanov,” said Rubashov.

“The examining magistrate is appointed by the authorities,” said Gletkin. “You have the right to make a statement or to refuse. In your case a refusal would amount to a disavowal of the declaration of willingness to confess, which you wrote two days ago, and would automatically bring the investigation to an end. In that eventuality I have the order to send your case back to the competent authority, which would pronounce your sentence administratively.”

Rubashov thought this over quickly. Something had
obviously gone wrong with Ivanov. Suddenly sent on leave, or dismissed, or arrested. Perhaps because his former friendship with Rubashov had been remembered; perhaps because he was mentally superior and too witty, and because his loyalty to No. 1 was based on logical considerations and not on blind faith. He was too clever; he was of the old school: the new school was Gletkin and his methods…. Go in peace, Ivanov. Rubashov had no time for pity; he had to think quickly, and the light hindered him. He took his pince-nez off and blinked; he knew that without glasses he looked naked and helpless, and that Gletkin's expressionless eyes registered every trait in his face. If he now remained silent he would be lost; there was no going back now. Gletkin was a repellent creature, but he represented the new generation; the old had to come to terms with it or be crushed; there was no other alternative. Rubashov felt suddenly old; he had never known this feeling up till now. He had never held in account the fact that he was in his fifties. He put his pince-nez on and tried to meet Gletkin's gaze, but the shrill light made his eyes water; he took it off again.

“I am ready to make a statement,” he said and tried to control the irritation in his voice. “But on the condition that you cease your tricks. Put out that dazzle-light and keep these methods for crooks and counter-revolutionaries.”

“You are not in a position to make conditions,” said Gletkin in his calm voice. “I cannot change the lighting in my room for you. You do not seem fully to realize your position, especially the fact that you are yourself accused of counter-revolutionary activities, and that in the course of these last years you have twice admitted to them in
public declarations. You are mistaken if you believe you will get off as cheaply this time.”

You swine, thought Rubashov. You filthy swine in uniform. He went red. He felt himself going red and knew that Gletkin had noticed it. How old might this Gletkin be? Thirty-six or seven, at the most; he must have taken part in the Civil War as a youth and seen the outbreak of the Revolution as a mere boy. That was the generation which had started to think after the flood. It had no traditions, and no memories to bind it to the old, vanished world. It was a generation born without umbilical cord …. And yet it had right on its side. One must tear that umbilical cord, deny the last tie which bound one to the vain conceptions of honour and the hypocritical decency of the old world. Honour was to serve without vanity, without sparing oneself, and until the last consequence.

Rubashov's temper gradually quietened down. He kept his pince-nez in his hand and turned his face towards Gletkin. As he had to keep his eyes shut, he felt even more naked, but this no longer disturbed him. Behind his shut lids shimmered a reddish light. He had never had such an intense feeling of solitude.

“I will do everything which may serve the Party,” he said. The hoarseness had gone from his voice; he kept his eyes shut. “I beg you to state the accusation in detail. Up till now this has not been done.”

He heard rather than saw through his blinking eyes, that a short movement went through Gletkin's stiff figure. His cuffs on the chair-arms crackled, he breathed a shade deeper, as if for an instant his whole body had relaxed. Rubashov guessed that Gletkin was experiencing the triumph
of his life. To have laid out a Rubashov meant the beginning of a great career; and up to a minute ago all had still hung in the balance for Gletkin—with Ivanov's fate as a reminder before his eyes.

Rubashov understood suddenly that he had just as much power over this Gletkin as the latter over him. I hold you by the throat, my lad, he thought with an ironic grimace; we each hold the other by the throat, and if I throw myself off the swing, I drag you down with me. For a moment Rubashov played with this idea, while Gletkin, again stiff and precise, searched in his documents; then he rejected the temptation and slowly shut his painful eyes. One must burn out the last vestiges of vanity—and what else was suicide but an inverted form of vanity? This Gletkin, of course, believed that it was his tricks, and not Ivanov's arguments, which had induced him to capitulate; probably Gletkin had also succeeded in persuading the higher authorities of this, and had thus brought about Ivanov's fall. Swine, thought Rubashov, but this time without anger. You consequential brute in the uniform we crated—barbarian of the new age which is now starting. You don't understand the issue; but, did you understand, you would be useless to us…. He noticed that the light of the lamp had become yet another grade shriller—Rubashov knew that there were arrangements for heightening or decreasing the power of these reflector lamps during a cross-examination. He was forced to turn his head away completely and wipe his watering eyes. You brute, he thought again. Yet it is just such a generation of brutes that we need now….

Gletkin had started to read the accusation. His monotonous voice was more irritating than ever; Rubashov listened
with averted head and shut eyes. He was decided to regard his “confession” as a formality, as an absurd yet necessary comedy, the tortuous sense of which could only be understood by the initiated; but the text which Gletkin was reading surpassed his worst expectations in absurdity. Did Gletkin really believe that he, Rubashov, had planned these childish plots? That for years he had thought of nothing else than to break up the building, the foundations of which he and the old guard had laid? And all of them, the men with the numbered heads, the heroes of Gletkin's boyhood—did Gletkin believe that they had suddenly fallen victims to an epidemic which rendered them all venal and corruptible and gave them but one wish—to undo the Revolution? And that with methods which these great political tacticians appeared to have borrowed from a cheap detective story?

Gletkin read monotonously, without any intonation, in the colourless, barren voice of people who have learnt the alphabet late, when already grown-up. He was just reading about the alleged negotiations with the representative of a foreign Power which, it was pretended, Rubashov had started during his stay in B., with the object of a reinstatement of the old regime by force. The name of the foreign diplomat was mentioned, also the time and place of their meeting. Rubashov listened more attentively now. In his memory flashed an unimportant little scene, which he had immediately forgotten at the time and had never thought of again. He quickly worked out the approximate date; it seemed to fit. So that was to be the rope which would hang him? Rubashov smiled and rubbed his weeping eyes with his handkerchief….

Gletkin read straight on, stiffly and with deadly monotony.
Did he really believe what he was reading? Was he not aware of the grotesque absurdity of the text? Now he was at the point of Rubashov's activity at the head of the aluminum trust. He read out statistics which showed the appalling disorganization in that too hastily developed branch of industry; the number of workers victims of accidents, the series of aeroplanes crashed as a result of defective material. This all was the consequence of his, Rubashov's, devilish sabotage. The word “devilish” actually occurred several times in the text, in between technical terms and columns of figures. For a few seconds Rubashov entertained the hypothesis that Gletkin had gone mad; this mixture of logic and absurdity recalled the methodical lunacy of schizophrenia. But the accusation had not been drawn up by Gletkin; he was only reading it along—and either actually believed it, or at any rate considered it credible….

Rubashov turned his head to the stenographer in her dimly lit corner. She was small, thin and wore spectacles. She was sharpening her pencil with equanimity and did not once turn her head towards him. Obviously, she too considered the monstrous things Gletkin was reading as quite convincing. She was still young, perhaps twenty-five or six; she too had grown up after the flood. What did the name Rubashov mean to this generation of modern Neanderthalers? There he sat in front of the blinding reflector light, could not keep open his watering eyes, and they read to him in their colourless voices and looked at him with their expressionless eyes, indifferently, as though he were an object on the dissecting table.

Gletkin was at the last paragraph of the accusation. It contained the crowning feature: the plot for an attempt
on No. 1's life. The mysterious X mentioned by Ivanov in the course of the first hearing had appeared again. It turned out that he was an assistant manager of the restaurant from which No. 1 had his cold lunch brought to him on busy days. This cold snack was a feature of No. 1's Spartan mode of life, most carefully fostered by propaganda; and it was just by means of this proverbial cold snack that X, on Rubashov's instigation, was to prepare a premature end for No. 1. Rubashov smiled to himself with eyes shut; when he opened them, Gletkin had stopped reading and was looking at him. After a few seconds of silence, Gletkin said, in his usual even tone, more as a statement than a question:

“You have heard the accusation and plead guilty.”

Rubashov tried to look into his face. He could not, and had to shut his eyes again. He had had a biting answer on his tongue; instead he said, so quietly that the thin secretary had to stretch out her head to hear:

“I plead guilty to not having understood the fatal compulsion behind the policy of the Government, and to have therefore held oppositional views. I plead guilty to having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them. I plead guilty to having rated the question of guilt and innocence higher than that of utility and harmfulness. Finally, I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind….”

Rubashov paused and again tried to open his eyes. He blinked over to the secretary's corner, his head turned away from the light. She had just finished taking down
what he had said; he believed he saw an ironic smile on her pointed profile.

“I know,” Rubashov went on, “that my aberration, if carried into effect, would have been a mortal danger to the Revolution. Every opposition at the critical turning-points of history carries in itself the germ of a split in the Party, and hence the germ of civil war. Humanitarian weakness and liberal democracy, when the masses are not mature, is suicide for the Revolution. And yet my oppositional attitude was based on a craving for just these methods—in appearance so desirable, actually so deadly. On a demand for a liberal reform of the dictatorship; for a broader democracy, for the abolition of the Terror, and a loosening of the rigid organization of the Party, I admit that these demands, in the present situation, are objectively harmful and therefore counter-revolutionary in character….”