Darkness at Noon (25 page)

“So you admit the conversation took place,” Gletkin said.

“It was completely harmless,” Rubashov said tiredly, and knew that Gletkin had pushed him a step further down the ladder.

“As harmless,” said Gletkin, “as your purely theoretic
dissertations to young Kieffer on the necessity of the removal of the leader by violence?”

Rubashov rubbed his spectacles on his sleeve. Had the conversation been really so harmless as he tried to make himself believe? Certainly he had neither “negotiated” nor come to any agreement; and comfortable Herr von Z. had had no kind of official authority to do so. The whole thing could at most be considered as what was known in diplomatic language as “taking soundings”. But this kind of sounding had been a link in the logical chain of his ideas of that time; besides, it fitted in with certain Party traditions. Had not the old leader, shortly before the Revolution, used the services of the General Staff of that same country in order to be able to return from exile and lead the Revolution to victory? Had he not later, in the first peace treaty, abandoned certain territories as a price for being left in peace? “The old man sacrifices space to gain time,” a witty friend of Rubashov's had remarked. The forgotten, “harmless” conversation fitted into the chain so well that it was now difficult for Rubashov to see it otherwise than through Gletkin's eyes. This same Gletkin, who read clumsily, whose brain worked just as clumsily and arrived at simple, graspable results—perhaps precisely because he understood nothing of guinea-pigs…. How, by the way, did Gletkin know of this conversation? Either it had been overheard, which in the circumstances was rather unlikely; or else the comfortable Herr von Z. had been acting as
agent provocateur—
God only knew for what complicated reasons. Such things had happened often enough before. A trap had been laid for Rubashov—a trap planned according to the primitive mentality of
Gletkin and No. 1; and he, Rubashov, had promptly walked into it….

“Being so well informed of my conversation with Herr von Z.,” Rubashov said, “you must also know that it had no consequences.”

“Certainly,” said Gletkin. “Thanks to the fact that we arrested you in time, and destroyed the opposition throughout the country. The results of the attempted treason would have appeared if we had not.”

What could he answer to that? That it would not in any case have led to serious results, if only for the reason that he, Rubashov, was too old and worn-out to act as consequentially as the Party traditions required, and as Gletkin would have done in his place? That the whole activity of the so-called opposition had been senile chatter, because the whole generation of the old guard was just as worn-out as he himself? Worn by the years of illegal struggle, eaten by the damp of the prison walls, between which they had spent half their youth; spiritually sucked dry by the permanent nervous strain of holding down the physical fear, of which one never spoke, which each had to deal with alone—for years, for tens of years. Worn by the years of exile, the acid sharpness of factions within the Party, the unscrupulousness with which they were fought out; worn out by the endless defeats, and the demoralization of the final victory? Should he say that an active, organized opposition to No. 1's dictatorship had never really existed; that it had all only been talk, impotent playing with fire, because this generation of the old guard had given all it had, had been squeezed out to the last drop, to the last spiritual calorie; and like the dead in the graveyard at Errancis, had only one thing left to
hope for: to sleep and to wait until posterity did them justice.

What could he answer this immovable Neanderthal man? That he was right in everything, but had made one fundamental mistake: to believe that it was still the old Rubashov sitting opposite him, whilst it was only his shadow? That the whole thing came to this—to punish him, not for deeds he had committed, but for those he had neglected to commit? “One can only be crucified in the name of one's own faith,” had said comfortable Herr von Z.…

Before Rubashov had signed the statement and was conducted back to his cell, to lie unconscious on his bunk until the torment started anew, he put a question to Gletkin. It had nothing to do with the point under discussion, but Rubashov knew that each time a new deposition was to be signed, Gletkin became a shade more tractable—Gletkin paid cash. The question Rubashov asked—concerned the fate of Ivanov.

“Citizen Ivanov is under arrest,” said Gletkin.

“May one know the reason?” asked Rubashov.

“Citizen Ivanov conducted the examination of your case negligently, and in private conversation expressed cynical doubts as to the well-foundedness of the accusation.”

“What if he really could not believe in it?” asked Rubashov. “He had perhaps too good an opinion of me?”

“In that case,” said Gletkin, “he should have suspended the enquiry and should have officially informed the competent authorities that in his opinion you were innocent.”

Was Gletkin mocking him? He looked as correct and expressionless as ever.

The next time that Rubashov again stood bowed over the day's record, with Gletkin's warm fountain pen in his hand—the stenographer had already left the room—he said:

“May I ask you another question?”

While speaking, he looked at the broad scar on Gletkin's skull.

“I was told that you were a partisan of certain drastic methods—the so-called ‘hard method'. Why have you never used direct physical pressure on me?”

“You mean physical torture,” said Gletkin in a matter-of-fact tone. “As you know, that is forbidden by our criminal code.”

He paused. Rubashov had just finished signing the protocol.

“Besides,” Gletkin continued, “there is a certain type of accused who confess under pressure, but recant at the public trial. You belong to that tenacious kind. The political utility of your confession at the trial will lie in its voluntary character.”

It was the first time that Gletkin had spoken of a public trial. But on the way back along the corridor, walking behind the giant, with short tired steps, it was not this perspective which occupied Rubashov, but the sentence “you belong to that tenacious kind”. Against his will, this sentence filled him with a pleasant self-satisfaction.

I am becoming senile and childish, he thought as he lay down on his bunk. Yet the pleasant feeling lasted until he fell asleep.

Each time he had, after tenacious argument, signed a new confession and lain down on his bunk, exhausted and yet in a strange way satisfied, with the knowledge that he would be wakened in an hour or at most two—each time Rubashov had but one wish: that Gletkin would just once let him sleep and come to his senses. He knew that this desire would not be fulfilled until the fight was fought to the bitter end, and the last dot put on the last “i”—and he knew, too, that each new duel would end in a new defeat and that there could be no possible doubt about the final result. Why, then, did he go on tormenting himself and letting himself be tormented, instead of giving up the lost battle, so as not to be wakened any more? The idea of death had a long time ago lost any metaphysical character; it had a warm, tempting, bodily meaning—that of sleep. And yet a peculiar, twisted sense of duty forced him to remain awake and continue the lost battle to the end—even though it were only a battle with windmills. To continue until the hour when Gletkin would have forced him down the last rung of the ladder, and in his blinking eyes, the last clumsy smudge of the accusation had been turned into a logically dotted “i”. He had to follow the road until the end. Then only, when he entered the darkness with open eyes, had he conquered the right to sleep and not to be wakened any more.

In Gletkin, too, a certain change occurred during this unbroken chain of days and nights. It was not much, but Rubashov's feverish eyes did not miss it. Until the end Gletkin sat stiffly with unmoved face and creaking cuffs in the shadow of his lamp behind the desk; but gradually,
bit by bit, the brutality faded from his voice, in the same way as, bit by bit, he had turned down the shrill light of the lamp, until it had become nearly normal. He never smiled, and Rubashov wondered whether the Neanderthalers were capable of smiling at all; neither was his voice supple enough to express any shades of feeling. But once, when Rubashov's cigarettes ran out after a dialogue of several hours, Gletkin, who did not smoke himself, took a packet out of his pocket and passed it over the desk to Rubashov.

In one point Rubashov even managed to achieve a victory; that was the point in the accusation concerning his alleged sabotage in the aluminum trust. It was a charge which did not weigh much in the sum total of the crimes to which he had already confessed, but Rubashov fought it with the same obstinacy as on the decisive points. They sat opposite each other nearly the whole night. Rubashov had refuted point for point all incriminating evidence and one-sided statistics; in a voice thick with tiredness, he had cited figures and dates, which as by miracle came up at the right moment in his numbed head; and all the time Gletkin had not been able to find the starting point from which he could unroll the logical chain. For at their second or third meeting already, as it were, an unspoken agreement had come into existence between them: if Gletkin could prove that the root of charge was right—even when this root was only of a logical, abstract nature—he had a free hand to insert the missing details; “to dot the i's”, as Rubashov called it. Without becoming aware of it, they had got accustomed to these rules for their game, and neither of them distinguished any longer between actions which Rubashov had committed in fact and those which he
merely should have committed as a consequence of his opinions; they had gradually lost the sense of appearance and reality, logical fiction and fact. Rubashov would occasionally become conscious of this in his rare moments of clearheadedness, and he would then have the sensation of awakening from a strange state of intoxication; Gletkin, on the other hand, seemed never to be aware of it.

Towards morning, when Rubashov still had not given in over the question of sabotage in the aluminum trust, Gletkin's voice acquired an undertone of nervousness—just as in the beginning, when Hare-lip had brought out the wrong answer. He turned the lamp on more sharply, which had not happened for a long time; but he turned it down again when he saw Rubashov's ironic smile. He put a few more questions, which had no effect, and said conclusively:

“So you definitely deny having committed any wrecking or subversive acts in the industry entrusted to you—or to have even planned such acts?”

Rubashov nodded—with a sleepy curiosity as to what would happen. Gletkin turned to the stenographer:

“Write: the examining magistrate recommends that this charge be dropped for lack of evidence.”

Rubashov quickly lit a cigarette to conceal the movement of childish triumph which overcame him. For the first time he had won a victory over Gletkin. Certainly it was a pathetic little local victory in a lost battle, but yet a victory; and it had been so many months, even years, since he had last known this feeling…. Gletkin took the day's record from the secretary and dismissed her, according to the ritual which had latterly developed between them.

When they were alone, and Rubashov had stood up to sign the protocol, Gletkin said, passing him his fountain pen:

“Industrial sabotage is, according to experience, the most effective means for the opposition to create difficulties for the Government, and to produce discontent amongst the workers. Why do you so stubbornly maintain that you did not use—or intend to use—just this method?”

“Because it is a technical absurdity,” said Rubashov. “And this perpetual harping on the
saboteur
as a bogyman produces an epidemic of denunciation which revolts me.”

The long-missed sensation of triumph caused Rubashov to feel fresher and speak louder than usual.

“If you hold sabotage for a mere fiction, what, in your opinion, are the real causes of the unsatisfactory state of our industries?”

“Too low piece-work tariffs, slave-driving and barbaric disciplinary measures,” said Rubashov. “I know of several cases in my Trust in which workers were shot as
saboteurs
because of some trifling negligence caused by over-tiredness. If a man is two minutes late at clocking-in, he is fired, and a stamp is put in his identity-papers which makes it impossible for him to find work elsewhere.”

Gletkin looked at Rubashov with his usual expressionless gaze, and asked him, in his usual expressionless voice:

“Were you given a watch as a boy?”

Rubashov looked at him in astonishment. The most conspicuous trait of the Neanderthal character was its absolute humourlessness or, more exactly, its lack of frivolity.

“Don't you want to answer my question?” asked Gletkin.

“Certainly,” said Rubashov, more and more astonished.

“How old were you when the watch was given you?”

“I don't quite know,” said Rubashov; “eight or nine probably.”

“I,” said Gletkin in his usual correct voice, “was sixteen years old when I learnt that the hour was divided into minutes. In my village, when the peasants had to travel to town, they would go to the railway station at sunrise and lie down to sleep in the waiting-room until the train came, which was usually at about midday; sometimes it only came in the evening or next morning. These are the peasants who now work in our factories. For example, in my village is now the biggest steel-rail factory in the world. In the first year, the foremen would lie down to sleep between two emptyings of the blast furnace, until they were shot. In all other countries, the peasants had one or two hundred years to develop the habit of industrial precision and of the handling of machines. Here they only had ten years. If we didn't sack them and shoot them for every trifle, the whole country would come to a standstill, and the peasants would lie down to sleep in the factory yards until grass grew out of the chimneys and everything became as it was before. Last year a women's delegation came to us from Manchester in England. They were shown everything, and afterwards they wrote indignant articles, saying that the textile workers in Manchester would never stand such treatment. I have read that the cotton industry in Manchester is two hundred years old. I have also read, what the
treatment of the workers there was like two hundred years ago, when it started. You, Comrade Rubashov, have just used the same arguments as this women's delegation from Manchester. You, of course, know better than these women. So one may wonder at your using the same arguments. But then, you have something in common with them: you were given a watch as a child….”