Darkness at Noon (17 page)

“Do you feel ill?” asked Ivanov.

Rubashov blinked at him, blinded by the light. “Give me my dressing-gown,” he said.

Ivanov watched him. The right side of Rubashov's face was swollen. “Would you like some brandy?” Ivanov asked. Without waiting for a reply, he hobbled to the spy-hole and called out something in the corridor. Rubashov's eyes followed him, blinking. His dazedness would not go. He was awake, but he saw, heard and thought in a mist.

“Have you been arrested too?” he asked.

“No,” said Ivanov quietly. “I only came to visit you. I think you have a temperature.”

“Give me a cigarette,” said Rubashov. He inhaled deeply once or twice, and his gaze became clearer. He lay down again, smoking, and looked at the ceiling. The cell door opened; the warder brought a bottle of brandy and a glass. This time it was not the old man, but a lean youth in uniform, with steel-rimmed spectacles. He saluted Ivanov, handed the brandy and glass over to him and shut the door from outside. One heard his steps receding down the corridor.

Ivanov sat down on the edge of Rubashov's bunk and filled the glass. “Drink,” he said. Rubashov emptied the glass. The mistiness in his head cleared, events and persons—his first and second imprisonment, Arlova, Bogrov, Ivanov—arranged themselves in time and space.

“Are you in pain?” asked Ivanov.

“No,” said Rubashov. The only thing he did not yet understand was what Ivanov was doing in his cell.

“Your cheek is badly swollen. Probably you also have a temperature.”

Rubashov stood up from the bunk, looked through the spy-hole into the corridor, which was empty, and walked up and down the cell once or twice until his head became quite clear. Then he stopped in front of Ivanov, who was sitting on the end of the bunk, patiently blowing smoke-rings.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I want to talk to you,” Ivanov said. “Lie down again and drink some more brandy.”

Rubashov blinked at him ironically through his pincenez. “Until now,” he said, “I was tempted to believe you were acting in good faith. Now I see that you are a swine. Get out of here.”

Ivanov did not move. “Be good enough to give the reasons for this assertion,” he said.

Rubashov leaned his back against the wall of No. 406 and looked down at Ivanov. Ivanov was smoking with equanimity.

“Point one,” said Rubashov. “You knew of my friendship with Bogrov. Therefore you take care that Bogrov—or what was left of him—is taken past my cell on his last journey, as a reminder. To make sure that I do not miss
this scene, Bogrov's execution is discreetly announced beforehand, on the assumption that this news will be tapped through to me by my neighbours, which, in fact, happens. A further finesse of the producer's is to inform Bogrov of my presence here, just before he is dragged off—on the further assumption that this final shock will draw from him some audible manifestation; which also happens. The whole thing is calculated to put me into a state of depression. In this darkest hour, Comrade Ivanov appears as a saviour, with a bottle of brandy under his arm. Follows a touching scene of reconciliation, we fall into each other's arms, exchange moving war memories and incidentally sign the statement with my confession. Whereupon the prisoner sinks into a gentle slumber; Comrade Ivanov leaves on the tip of his toes with the statement in his pocket, and is promoted a few days later…. Now have the goodness to get out of here.”

Ivanov did not move. He blew smoke into the air, smiled and showed his gold teeth. “Do you really think I have such a primitive mind?” he asked. “Or, to be more exact: do you really believe I am such a bad psychologist?”

Rubashov shrugged. “Your tricks disgust me,” he said. “I cannot throw you out. If you have a trace of decency left in you, you will now leave me alone. You can't imagine how you all disgust me.”

Ivanov lifted the glass from the floor, filled it and drank it. “I propose the following agreement,” he said. “You let me speak for five minutes without interrupting me, and listen with a clear head to what I am saying. If after that you still insist on my going—I will go.”

“I'm listening,” said Rubashov. He stood leaning
against the wall opposite Ivanov and glanced at his watch.

“In the first place,” said Ivanov, “in order to remove any possible doubts or illusions you may have: Bogrov has in fact been shot. Secondly, he has been in prison for several months, and at the end was tortured for several days. If you mention this during the public trial, or even as much as tap it through to your neighbours, I am done for. About the reasons for treating Bogrov like that, we will speak later. Thirdly, it was intentional that he was taken past your cell, and intentional that he was told of your presence here. Fourthly, this filthy trick, as you call it, was not arranged by me, but by my colleague Gletkin, against my express instructions.”

He paused. Rubashov stood leaning against the wall and said nothing.

“I should never have made such a mistake,” Ivanov went on; “not out of any regard for your feelings, but because it is contrary to my tactics and to my knowledge of your psychology. You have recently shown a tendency to humanitarian scruples and other sentimentalities of that sort. Besides, the story of Arlova still lies on your stomach. The scene with Bogrov must only intensify your depression and moralistic leanings—that could be foreseen; only a bungler in psychology like Gletkin could have made such a mistake. Gletkin has been dinning into my ears for the last ten days that we should use ‘hard methods' on you. For one thing, he doesn't like you because you showed him the holes in your socks; for another, he is used to dealing with peasants…. So much for the elucidation of the affair with Bogrov. The brandy, of course, I ordered because you were not in full
possession of your wits when I came in. It is not in my interest to make you drunk. It is not in my interest to lay you open to mental shocks. All that only drives you further into your moral exaltation. I need you sober and logical. My only interest is that you should calmly think your case to a conclusion. For, when you have thought the whole thing to a conclusion—then, and only then, will you capitulate….”

Rubashov shrugged his shoulders; but before he could say anything, Ivanov cut in:

“I know you are convinced that you won't capitulate. Answer me only one thing:
if
you became convinced of the logical necessity and the objective Tightness of capitulating—would you then do it?”

Rubashov did not answer at once. He felt dully that the conversation had taken a turn which he should not have allowed. The five minutes had passed, and he had not thrown out Ivanov. That alone, it seemed to him, was a betrayal of Bogrov—and of Arlova; and of Richard and Little Loewy.

“Go away,” he said to Ivanov. “It's no use.” He noticed only now that he had for some time been walking up and down his cell in front of Ivanov.

Ivanov was sitting on the bunk. “By the tone of your voice, I notice,” he said, “that you recognize your mistake concerning my part in the Bogrov affair. Why, then, do you want me to go? Why don't you answer the question I asked?…” He bent forward a little and looked Rubashov mockingly in the face; then he said slowly, emphasizing each word: “
Because you are afraid of me.
Because my way of thinking and of arguing is your own, and you are afraid of the echo in your own head. In a
moment you will be calling out: Get thee behind me, Satan….”

Rubashov did not answer. He was walking to and fro by the window, in front of Ivanov. He felt helpless and incapable of clear argument. His consciousness of guilt, which Ivanov called “moral exaltation”; could not be expressed in logical formula—it lay in the realm of the “grammatical fiction”. At the same time, every sentence spoken by Ivanov did in fact evoke an echo in him. He felt he ought never to have let himself be drawn into this discussion. He felt as if he were on a smooth, slanting plane, down which one slid irresistibly.

“Apage Satanas!”
repeated Ivanov and poured himself out another glass. “In the old days, temptation was of carnal nature. Now it takes the form of pure reason. The values change. I would like to write a Passion play in which God and the Devil dispute for the soul of Saint Rubashov. After a life of sin, he has turned to God—to a God with the double chin of industrial liberalism and the charity of the Salvation Army soups. Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn no to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it—an abstract and geometric love.
Apage Satanás!
Comrade Rubashov
prefers to become a martyr. The columnists of the liberal Press, who hated him during his lifetime, will sanctify him after his death. He has discovered a conscience, and a conscience renders one as unfit for the revolution as a double chin. Conscience eats through the brain like a cancer, until the whole of the grey matter is devoured. Satan is beaten and withdraws—but don't imagine that he grinds his teeth and spits fire in his fury. He shrugs his shoulders; he is thin and ascetic; he has seen many weaken and creep out of his ranks with pompous pretexts….”

Ivanov paused and poured himself another glass of brandy. Rubashov walked up and down in front of the window. After a while he said:

“Why did you execute Bogrov?”

“Why? Because of the submarine question,” said Ivanov. “It concerns the problem of tonnage—an old quarrel, the beginnings of which must be familiar to you.

“Bogrov advocated the construction of submarines of large tonnage and a long range of action. The Party is in favor of small submarines with a short range. You can build three times as many small submarines for your money as big ones. Both parties had valid technical arguments. The experts made a big display of technical sketches and algebraic formulae; but the actual problem lay in quite a different sphere. Big submarines mean: a policy of aggression, to further world revolution. Small submarines mean: coastal defense—that is, self-defense and postponement of world revolution. The latter is the point of view of No. 1, and the Party.

“Bogrov had a strong following in the Admiralty and
amongst the officers of the old guard. It would not have been enough to put him out of the way; he also had to be discredited. A trial was projected to unmask the partisans of big tonnage as
saboteurs
and traitors. We had already brought several little engineers to the point of being willing to confess publicly to whatever we liked. But Bogrov wouldn't play the game. He declaimed up to the very end of big tonnage and world revolution. He was two decades behind the times. He would not understand that the times are against us, that Europe is passing through a period of reaction, that we are in the hollow of a wave and must wait until we are lifted by the next. In a public trial he would only have created confusion amongst the people. There was no other way possible than to liquidate him administratively. Would not you have done the same thing in our position?”

Rubashov did not answer. He stopped walking, and again remained against the wall of No. 406, next to the bucket. A cloud of sickening stench rose from it. He took off his pince-nez and looked at Ivanov out of red-rimmed, hunted eyes.

“You did not hear him whimpering,” he said.

Ivanov lit a new cigarette on the stump of the old one; he too found the stench of the bucket rather overpowering.

“No,” he said. “I did not hear it. But I have heard and seen similar things. What of it?”

Rubashov was silent. It was no use to try and explain it. The whimpering and the muffled drumming again penetrated his ears, like an echo. One could not express that. Nor the curve of Arlova's breast with its warm, steep point. One could express nothing. “Die in silence,” had been written on the message given him by the barber.

“What of it?” repeated Ivanov. He stretched out his leg and waited. As no answer came, he went on speaking:

“If I had a spark of pity for you,” he said, “I would now leave you alone. But I have not a spark of pity. I drink; for a time, as you know, I drugged myself; but the vice of pity I have up till now managed to avoid. The smallest dose of it, and you are lost. Weeping over humanity and bewailing oneself—you know our race's pathological leaning to it. Our greatest poets destroyed themselves by this poison. Up to forty, fifty, they were revolutionaries—then they became consumed by pity and the world pronounced them holy. You appear to have the same ambition, and to believe it to be an individual process, personal to you, something unprecedented….” He spoke rather louder and puffed out a cloud of smoke. “Beware of these ecstasies,” he said: “Every bottle of spirits contains a measurable amount of ecstasy. Unfortunately, only few people, particularly amongst our fellow countrymen, ever realize that the ecstasies of humility and suffering are as cheap as those induced chemically. The time when I woke from the anaesthetic, and found that my body stopped at the left knee, I also experienced a kind of absolute ecstasy of unhappiness. Do you remember the lectures you gave me at the time?” He poured out another glass and emptied it.

“My point is this,” he said; “one may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one's own navel, to turn up one's eyes and humbly offer the back of one's neck to Gletkin's
revolver—that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears….”