Invitation to a Beheading (21 page)

Cincinnatus got up, made a running start and smashed headlong into the wall—the real Cincinnatus, however, remained sitting at the table, staring at the wall, chewing his pencil, and presently shuffled his feet under the table and continued to write, a little less rapidly:

“Save these jottings—I do not know whom I ask, but save these jottings—I assure you that such a law exists, look it up, you will see!—let them lie around for a while-how can that hurt you?—and I ask you so earnestly—my last wish—how can you not grant it? I must have at least the theoretical possibility of having a reader, otherwise, really, I might as well tear it all up. There, that is what I needed to say. Now it is time to get ready.”

He paused again. It had already grown quite light in the cell, and Cincinnatus knew by the position of the light that half-past five was about to strike. He waited until he heard the distant ringing, and went on writing, but now quite slowly and haltingly, just as if he had spent all his strength on some initial exclamation.

“My words all mill about in one spot,” wrote Cincinnatus. “Envious of poets. How wonderful it must be to speed along a page and, right from the page, where only a shadow continues to run, to take off into the blue. The untidiness, sloppiness of an execution, of all the manipulations, before and after. How cold the blade, how smooth the ax’s grip. With emery paper. I suppose the pain of parting will be red and loud. The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express it, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before. It is hard to imagine that this very morning, in an hour or two …”

But two hours passed, and more, and, just as always, Rodion brought breakfast, tidied the cell, sharpened the pencil, removed the close-stool, fed the spider. Cincinnatus did not ask him anything, but, when Rodion had left, and time dragged on at its customary trot, he realized that
once again he had been duped, that he had strained his soul to no purpose, and that everything had remained just as uncertain, viscous and senseless as before.

The clock had just finished striking three or four (he had dozed off and then half awakened, and so had not counted the strokes, but had only retained an approximate impression of their sum of sound) when suddenly the door opened and Marthe came in. Her cheeks were flushed, the comb at the back of her head had worked loose, the tight bodice of her black velvet dress was heaving—and something did not fit right, and this made her appear lopsided, and she kept trying to straighten her dress, tugging at it, or very rapidly wriggling her hips, as if something underneath were wrong and uncomfortable.

“Some cornflowers for you,” she said, tossing a blue posy upon the table, and at the same time, nimbly lifting the hem of her skirt above her knee, she put on the chair a plump little leg in a white stocking, pulling it up to the place where the garter had left its imprint on the tender, quivering fat. “My, how hard it was to get permission! Of course, I had to agree to a little concession—the usual story. Well, how are you, my poor little Cin-Cin?”

“I must confess I was not expecting you,” said Cincinnatus. “Sit down somewhere.”

“I tried yesterday, no luck—and today I said to myself, I’ll get through if it’s the last thing I do. He kept me for an hour, your director. Spoke
very
highly of you, by the way. Oh, how I hurried today, how I was afraid that I would be too late. What a mob there was in Thriller Square this morning!”

“Why did they call it off?” asked Cincinnatus.

“Well, they said everybody was tired, didn’t get enough sleep. You know, the crowd simply did not want to leave. You ought to be proud.”

Oblong, marvelously burnished tears crept down Marthe’s cheeks and chin, closely following all their contours—one even flowed down her neck as far as the clavicular dimple … Her eyes, however, kept on gazing just as roundly, her short fingers with white spots on the nails kept spreading out, and her thin mobile lips kept emitting words:

“There are some who insist that now it’s been postponed for a long time, but then you can’t really find out from anyone. You simply cannot imagine all the rumors, the confusion …”

“What are you crying about?” asked Cincinnatus with a smile.

“I don’t know myself—I’m just worn out …” (In a low chesty voice): “I’m sick and tired of all of you. Cincinnatus, Cincinnatus, what a mess you have got yourself into! … The things people say about you—it’s dreadful! Oh, listen,” she suddenly began in a different tempo, beaming, smacking her lips, and preening herself. “The other day—when was it?—yes, day before yesterday, there comes to me this little dame, a lady doctor or something—a total stranger, mind you, in an awful raincoat, and begins hawing and hemming. Of course,’ she says, ‘you understand.’ I says, ‘No, so far I don’t understand a thing.’ She says:—‘Oh, I know who you are, you don’t know me’… I says …” (Marthe miming her interlocutress, assumed a fussy and fatuous tone, slowing soberly, however, on the drawn-out “says,” and, now that she was conveying her own words, she depicted herself as being calm as snow). “In a word,
she tried to tell me that she was your mother—though I think even her age wouldn’t be right, but we’ll overlook that. She said she was terribly afraid of being persecuted, since, you see, they had questioned her and subjected her to all sorts of things. I says: ‘What do I have to do with all this and why should you want to see me?’ She says: ‘Oh, yes, I know you are terribly kind, you’ll do all you can.’ I says: ‘What makes you think I’m kind?’ She says: ‘Oh, I know’—and asks if I couldn’t give her a paper, a certificate, that I would sign hand and foot, stating that she had never been at our house and had never seen you … This, you know, seemed so funny to Marthe, so funny! I think” (in a drawling, low-pitched voice) “that she must have been some kind of a crank, a nut, don’t you think so? In any case, I of course did not give her anything. Victor and the others said it might compromise me—since it would seem that I knew your every move, if I knew you weren’t acquainted with her—and so she left, very crestfallen, I would say.”

“But it really
was
my mother,” said Cincinnatus.

“Maybe, maybe. After all, it’s not so important. But tell me, why are you so dull and glum, Cin-Cin? I imagined you would be so happy to see me, but you …”

She glanced at the cot, then at the door.

“I don’t know what the rules are here,” she said under her breath, “but if you need it badly, Cin-Cin, go ahead, only do it quickly.”

“Oh, don’t—what nonsense,” said Cincinnatus.

“Well, as you please. I only wanted to give you a treat because it’s the last interview and all that. Oh, by the way, do you know who wants to marry me? Guess who—you’ll never guess. Remember that old grouch who used to live
next door to us, who kept stinking with his pipe across the fence, and always used to peek when I climbed the apple tree? Can you imagine? And the thing is, he was perfectly serious! Can you see me marrying him, the old scarecrow? Ugh! Anyway I feel it’s time I had a good, long rest—you know, close my eyes, stretch out, not think about anything, and relax, absolutely alone of course or else with someone who would really care, and understand everything, everything …”

Her short, coarse eyelashes again glistened, and the tears crept down, visiting every dimple on her apple-rosy cheeks.

Cincinnatus took one of these tears and tasted it: it was neither salty nor sweet—merely a drop of luke-warm water. Cincinnatus did not do this.

Suddenly the door squealed and opened an inch; a red-haired finger beckoned to Marthe. She quickly went to the door.

“Well, what do you want, it isn’t time yet, is it, I was promised a whole hour,” she whispered rapidly. Something was said in reply.

“Not on your life!” she said indignantly. “You can tell him that. The agreement was that I should do it only with the direct—”

She was interrupted; she listened carefully to the insistent mumbling; she looked down, frowning, and scraping the floor with the toe of her slipper.

“Well, all right,” she blurted out, and with innocent vivacity turned to her husband: “I’ll be back in five minutes, Cin-Cin.”

(While she was gone he thought that not only had he not even begun his urgent talk with her, but that now he
could no longer formulate those important things … At the same time his heart was aching, and the same old memory whimpered in a corner; but it was time, it was time to wean himself from all this anguish.)

She returned only in three quarters of an hour, snorting contemptuously. She put one foot on the chair, snapped her garter, and, angrily readjusting the pleats below her waist, sat down at the table, precisely as she had been sitting before.

“All for nothing,” she said with a sneer and began fingering the blue flowers on the table. “Well, why don’t you tell me something, my little Cin-Cin, my cockerel? … You know I picked them myself, I don’t care for poppies, but these are lovely. Shouldn’t try if you can’t manage it,” she added unexpectedly in a different tone of voice, narrowing her eyes. “No, Cin-Cin, I wasn’t speaking to you.” (Sigh) “Well, tell me something, console me.”

“My letter—did you …” began Cincinnatus, then cleared his throat. “Did you read my letter carefully?”

“Please, please,” cried Marthe, clutching her temples, “let’s talk about anything but that letter!”

“No, let us talk about it,” said Cincinnatus.

She jumped up, spasmodically straightening her dress, and began speaking incoherently, lisping a little, as she did when she was angry. “That was a horrible letter, that was some kind of delirium, I didn’t understand it, anyway; one might have thought you had been sitting here alone with a bottle and writing. I didn’t want to bring up that letter, but now that you … Listen, you know the transmitters read it—they copied it, and they said to themselves, ‘Oho! She must be in cahoots with him, if he writes to her like that.’ Can’t you
see, I don’t want to know anything about your affairs, you have no right to send me such letters, to drag me into your criminal—”

“I did not write you anything criminal,” said Cincinnatus.

“That’s what you think, but everyone was horrified by your letter, simply horrified! Me, I’m stupid maybe, and don’t know anything about the laws, but still my instinct told me that every word of yours was impossible, unspeakable … Oh, Cincinnatus, what a position you put me in—and the children—think of the children.… Listen—please listen to me for just a minute—” she went on with such ardor that her speech became quite unintelligible, “renounce everything, everything. Tell them that you are innocent, that you were merely swaggering, tell them, repent, do it—even if it doesn’t save your head, think of me—already they are pointing fingers at me and saying, ‘That’s her, the widow, that’s her!’ ”

“Wait, Marthe, I don’t understand. Repent of what?”

“That’s right! Mix me up in it, ask me leading … If I knew all the answers, why, then I’d be your accomac … accomplice! That’s quite obvious. No, enough, enough. I’m dreadfully afraid of all this … Tell me one last time, are you sure you don’t want to repent, for my sake, for all our sakes?”

“Good-bye, Marthe,” said Cincinnatus.

She sat down and lapsed into thought, leaning on her right elbow, and sketching her world on the table with her left hand.

“How dreadful, how dull,” she said, heaving a deep, deep sigh. She frowned and drew a river with her fingernail. “I thought we would meet quite differently. I was ready to
give you everything. And this is what I get for my pains! Well, what’s done is done.” (The river flowed into a sea—off. the edge of the table.) “You know, I’m leaving with a heavy heart. Yes, but how am I going to get out?” she remembered suddenly, innocently and even cheerfully. “They won’t be coming for me for a while yet, I talked them into giving me oodles of time.”

“Don’t worry,” said Cincinnatus, “every word we say … They will open it in a moment.”

He was not mistaken.

“Bye, bye-bye,” chirped Marthe. “Wait, stop pawing me, let me say good-bye to my husband. Bye-bye. If you need anything in the way of shirts or anything … Oh yes, the children asked me to give you a big, big kiss. There was something else … Oh, I nearly forgot—daddy took the wine-cup I gave you—he says you promised him—”

“Hurry, hurry, little lady,” interrupted Rodion, kneeing her in familiar fashion toward the door.

Next morning they brought him the newspapers, and this reminded him of the first days of his confinement. He noticed at once the color photograph: under a blue sky, the square, packed so densely with a motley crowd that only the very edge of the red platform was visible. In the column dealing with the execution half the lines were blacked out, and out of the remainder Cincinnatus could fish only what he already knew from Marthe—that the maestro was not feeling too well, and that the performance was postponed, possibly for a long time.

“What a treat you are getting today,” said Rodion, not to Cincinnatus but to the spider.

In both hands, most carefully, but at the same time
squeamishly (care prompted him to press it to his chest, distaste made him hold it away) he carried a towel gathered together in a lump in which something large stirred and rustled.