Darkness at Noon (12 page)

“No. 1 has faith in himself, tough, slow, sullen and unshakable. He has the most solid anchor-chain of all. Mine has worn thin in the last few years. ...

“The fact is: I no longer believe in my infallibility. That is why I am lost.”

The day after the first hearing of Rubashov, the Examining Magistrate Ivanov and his colleague Gletkin were sitting in the canteen after dinner. Ivanov was tired; he had propped his artificial leg up on a second chair and undone the collar of his uniform. He poured out some of the cheap wine which the canteen provided, and silently wondered at Gletkin, who sat straight up on his chair in his starched uniform, which creaked at every movement. He had not even taken off his revolver belt, although he must have been pretty tired, too. Gletkin emptied his glass; the conspicuous scar on his clean-shaven head had reddened slightly. Besides them, only three other officers were in the canteen at a distant table; two were playing chess, the third looking on.

“What is to happen about Rubashov?” asked Gletkin.

“He is in rather a bad way,” answered Ivanov. “But he is still as logical as ever. So he will capitulate.”

“That I don’t believe,” said Gletkin.

“He will,” said Ivanov. “When he has thought out everything to its logical conclusion, he will capitulate. Therefore the essential thing is to leave him in peace and not to disturb him. I have allowed him paper, pencil and cigarettes—to accelerate the process of thought.”

“I consider that wrong,” said Gletkin.

“You don’t like him,” said Ivanov. “You had a scene with him a few days ago, I believe?”

Gletkin thought of the scene when Rubashov had sat on his bunk and pulled his shoe over his ragged sock. “That does not matter,” he said. “His personality does not matter. It is the method which I consider wrong. It will never make him give in.”

“When Rubashov capitulates,” said Ivanov, “it won’t be out of cowardice, but by logic. It is no use trying the hard method with him. He is made out of a certain material which becomes the tougher the more you hammer on it.”

“That is just talk,” said Gletkin. “Human beings able to resist any amount of physical pressure do not exist. I have never seen one. Experience shows me that the resistance of the human nerve system is limited by Nature.”

“I wouldn’t like to fall into your hands,” said Ivanov smilingly, but with a trace of uneasiness. “Anyhow, you are a living refutation of your own theory.”

His smiling glance rated for a second on the scar on Gletkin’s skull. The story of that scar was well-known. When, during the Civil War, Gletkin had fallen into the enemy’s hands, they had tied a lighted candlewick on to his shaven skull, to extract from him certain information. A few haws later his own people recaptured the position and found him unconscious. The wick had burnt right to the end; Gletkin had kept silence.

He looked at Ivanov with his expressionless eyes. “That’s only talk, too,” he said. “I did not give in because I fainted. If I had stayed conscious another minute, I should have spoken. It is a question of constitution.”

He emptied his glass with a deliberate gesture; his cuffs crackled as he put it down on the table again. When I came to, I was convinced at first that I
had
spoken. But the two N.C.O.s who were freed together with me asserted the contrary. So I was decorated. It is all a question of constitution; the rest is just fairy tales.”

Ivanov was drinking too. He had already drunk quite a lot of the cheap wine. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Since when have you had this notable constitution theory? After all, during the first years these methods did not exist. At that time we were still full of illusions. Abolition of punishment and of retaliation for crime; sanatoriums with flower gardens for the a-social elements. It’s all humbug.”

“I don’t believe it is,” said Gletkin. “You are a cynic. In a hundred years we will have all that. But first we have to get through. The quicker, the better. The only illusion was, to believe the time had already come. When I first was put here, I was also under that illusion. Most of us were—in fact, the entire apparatus up to the top. We wanted to start at once with the flower gardens. That was a mistake. In a hundred years we will be able to appeal to the criminal’s reason and social instincts. To-day we have still to work on his physical constitution, and crash him, physically and mentally, if necessary.”

Ivanov wondered whether Gletkin was drunk. But he saw by his quiet, expressionless eyes that he was not. Ivanov smiled at him rather vaguely. “In a word, I am the cynic and you are the moralist.”

Gletkin said nothing. He sat stiffly on his chair in his starched uniform; his revolver belt smelled of fresh leather.

“Several years ago,” said Gletkin after a while, “a little peasant was brought to me to be cross-examined. It was in the provinces, at the time when we still believed in the flower-garden theory, as you call it. Cross-examinations were conducted in a very gentlemanly way. The peasant had buried his crops; it was at the beginning of the collectivization of the land. I kept strictly to the prescribed etiquette. I explained to him in a friendly way that we needed the corn to feed the growing city population and for export, in order to build up our industries; so would he please tell me where he had hidden his crops. The peasant had his head drawn into his shoulders when he was brought into my room, expecting a beating. I knew his kind; I am myself country-born. When, instead of beating him, I began to reason with him, to talk to him as an equal and call him ‘citizen,’ he took me for a half-wit. I saw it in his eyes. I talked at him for half an hour. He never opened his mouth and alternately picked his nose and his ears. I went on talking, although I saw that he held the whole thing for a superb joke and was not listening at all. Arguments simply did not penetrate his ears. They were blocked up by the wax of centuries of patriarchal mental paralysis. I held strictly to the regulations; it never even occurred to me that there were other methods. ...

“At that time I had twenty to thirty such cases daily. My colleagues the same. The Revolution was in danger of foundering on these little fat peasants. The workers were undernourished; whole districts were ravaged by starvation typhus; we had no credit with which to build up our armament industry, and we were expecting to be attacked from month to month. Two hundred millions in gold lay hidden in the woollen stockings of these fellows and half the crops were buried underground. And, when cross-examining them, we addressed them as ‘citizen,’ while they blinked at us with their sly-stupid eyes, took it all for a superb joke and picked their noses.

“The third hearing of my man took place at two o’clock at night; I had previously worked for eighteen hours on end. He had been woken up; he was drunk with sleep and frightened; he betrayed himself. From that time I cross-examined my people chiefly at night. ... Once a woman complained that she had been kept standing outside my room the whole night, awaiting her turn. Her legs were shaking and she was completely tired out; in the middle of the hearing she fell asleep. I woke her up; she went on talking, in a sleepy mumbling voice, without fully realizing what she was saying, and fell asleep again. I woke her once more, and she admitted everything and signed the statement without reading it, in order that I should let her sleep. Her husband had hidden two machine guns in his barn and persuaded the farmers of his village to burn the corn because the Anti-Christ had appeared to him in a dream. That the wife had been kept waiting on her feet the whole night was due to the carelessness of my sergeant; from then onwards I encouraged carelessness of that kind; stubborn cases had to stand upright on one spot for as long as forty-eight hours. After that the wax had melted out of their ears, and one could talk to them. ...”

The two chess-players in the other corner of the room threw over the chess-men and started a new game. The third man had already left. Ivanov watched Gletkin while he talked. His voice was as sober and expressionless as ever.

“My colleagues had similar experiences. It was the only possible way to obtain results. The regulations were observed; not a prisoner was actually touched. But it happened that they had to witness—so to speak accidentally—the execution of their fellow prisoners. The effect of such scenes is partly mental, partly physical. Another example: there are showers and baths for reasons of hygiene. That in winter the heating and hot-water pipes did not always function, was due to technical difficulties; and the duration of the baths depended on the attendants. Sometimes, again, the heating and hot-water apparatus functioned all too well; that equally depended on the attendants. They were all old comrades; it was not necessary to give them detailed instructions; they understood what was at stake.”

“That’ll about do,” said Ivanov.

“You asked me how I came to discover my theory and I am explaining it to you,” said Gletkin. “What matters is, that one should keep in mind the logical necessity of it all; otherwise one is a cynic, like you. It is getting late and I must go.”

Ivanov emptied his glass and settled his artificial leg on the chair; he again had rheumatic pains in the stump. He was annoyed with himself for having started this conversation.

Gletkin paid. When the canteen waiter had gone, he asked:

“What is going to be done about Rubashov?”

“I have told you my opinion,” said Ivanov. “He should be left in peace.”

Gletkin stood up. His boots creaked. He stood by the chair on which Ivanov’s leg rested.

“I recognize his past merits,” he said. “But to-day he has become as harmful as my fat peasant was; only more dangerous.”

Ivanov looked up into Gletkin’s expressionless eyes.

“I have given him a fortnight’s time for reflection,” he said. “Until that is over I want him to be left in peace.”

Ivanov had spoken in his official tone. Gletkin was his subordinate. He saluted and left the canteen with creaking boots.

Ivanov remained seated. He drank another glass, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out in front of him. After a while he stood up and limped over to the two officers to watch their game of chess.

Since his first hearing, Rubashov’s standard of life had improved miraculously. Already on the following morning the old turnkey had brought him paper, pencil, soap and a towel. At the same time he gave Rubashov prison vouchers to the value of the cash he had had in his possession when he was arrested, and explained to him that he now had the right to order tobacco and extra food from the prisoners’ canteen.

Rubashov ordered his cigarettes and some food. The old man was just as surly and monosyllabic as ever, but he shuffled up promptly with the things Rubashov had asked for. Rubashov thought for a moment of demanding a doctor from outside the prison, but he forgot about it. His tooth did not hurt for the moment, and when he had washed and had had something to eat, he felt much better.

The courtyard had been cleared of snow, and groups of prisoners walked round it for their daily exercise. It had been interrupted because of the snow; only Hare-lip and his companion had been allowed daily ten minutes’ walk, perhaps because of special doctor’s orders; every time that they entered or left the yard, Hare-lip had looked up to Rubashov’s window. The gesture was so clear as to exclude any possibility of doubt.

When Rubashov was not working at his notes or walking up and down his cell, he stood at the window with his forehead against the pane, and watched the Prisoners during their round of exercise. This occurred in groups of twelve at a time, who circled round the yard in pairs at a distance of ten paces from each other. In the middle of the yard stood four uniformed officials who saw that the prisoners did not talk; they formed the axis of the roundabout, which turned slowly and steadily for exactly twenty minutes. Then the prisoners were conducted back into the building through the door on the right, while simultaneously a new group entered the yard through the left door, and went through the same monotonous roundabout until the next relief.

During the first few days Rubashov had looked for familiar faces, but found none. That relieved him: for the moment he wanted to avoid any possible reminder of the outside world, anything which might distract him from his task. His task was to work his thoughts to a conclusion, to come to terms with the past and future, with the living and the dead. He had still ten days left of the term set by Ivanov.

He could only hold his thoughts by writing them down; but writing exhausted him so much that he could at the most force himself to it for an hour or two a day. The rest of the time his brain worked on its own account.

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the “first person singular,” and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found out that those processes wrongly known as “monologues” are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as “I” instead of “you”, in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation and even refuses to be localized in time and space.

Now, however, it seemed to Rubashov that the habitually silent partner spoke sometimes, without being addressed and without any visible pretext; his voice sounded totally unfamiliar to Rubashov, who listened in honest wonder and found that his own lips were moving. These experiences held nothing mystic or mysterious; they were of a quite concrete character; and by his observations Rubashov gradually became convinced that there was a thoroughly tangible component in this first person singular, which had remained silent through all these years and now had started to speak.

This discovery preoccupied Rubashov far more intensely than did the details of his interview with Ivanov. He considered it as settled that he would not accept Ivanov’s proposals, and that he would refuse to go on with the game; in consequence, he had only a limited time still to live; and this conviction formed the basis of his reflections.