The Buddha's Return (4 page)

“You’ll sorely repent of those words.”

“May I point out that the verb ‘to repent’ is inherently religious in its connotations? It seems strange to hear it on the lips of a representative of the Central Government.”

“What will you say when confronted with your accomplices?”

I shrugged.

“Enough!” he said, firing the revolver: the bullet hit the wall about a metre and a half above my head. The door opened, and the soldiers who had brought me here entered the room.

“Take the accused to his cell,” said the investigator.

As I was returning to my cell, glancing from time to time at the portraits and statues, only then did it occur to me that I had acted wrongly, that I should never have answered the investigator as I had done. I simply had to prove to him that there was no way I could be the man for whom he had mistaken me. Rather than adopt this tactic, however, I had spoken to him as though I admitted the absurd legitimacy of his argument, and in disagreeing with it, as it were, dialectically, I was playing straight into his hands. Besides, it was obvious that I was a complete stranger to this world in which I now found myself. The faces of the soldiers who escorted me had displayed a complete absence of thought or emotion. These portraits looked like oleographs produced by a workman whose lack of artistry unwittingly provoked both pity and scorn; likewise the statues. The investigator’s words bore the mark of an equally grim intellectual poverty and, in the world I came from, any such man would have had no place in the machinery of justice.

Back in my cell, I was just about to tell my companion about the interrogation, when immediately I was led off again, this time in a different direction; I landed in front of
a second investigator, who addressed me rather differently than the first had done.

“We are aware,” he began, “that we are dealing with a relatively cultured man, and not just some mercenary from a hostile political organization. You must surely know that we are surrounded by enemies; this forces us to increase our vigilance and sometimes compels us to adopt measures that, although they may appear rather drastic, are not always avoidable. Such has been the case with you. We know, or at least we hope to establish, that your guilt is less severe than it may initially have seemed. Be candid with us; it is in your, and our, best interests.”

Judging by the way he spoke, it was obvious that this man was much more dangerous than the first investigator. But I was almost glad of it; it was possible to talk to him in a different language.

“I can understand your frustration during the earlier interrogation,” he continued. “There was a mistake, a most regrettable one: the investigator you spoke with usually handles only the simplest of cases, although he invariably strives towards matters clearly exceeding his competency. You see, he owes his position to party membership; one cannot make too many demands of him. Let us, however, get down to business. Are you aware of the charges brought against you?”

“I would like to know,” I said, “who it is that I’ve been mistaken for. It’s obvious to me that what has happened
here is the result of some misunderstanding, which I would very much like to clear up. My surname is”—I gave him my surname—“I live in Paris and I am a student of history at the university there. I have never—as is easy to ascertain through even the most superficial of
investigations
—engaged in any political activity, nor have I ever belonged to any political organization. The accusations concerning terrorist intentions are so absurd and illogical that I see no point in discussing them further. I admit that the man you take me for may be both a terrorist and your political adversary, but that has nothing to do with me. I only hope that your state apparatus is sufficiently organized to establish this.”

“Are you alleging that Rosenblatt was mistaken? If so, your case will take a decidedly tragic turn.”

“Who is this Rosenblatt? This is the first time I’ve heard the name, I’ve never seen the man.”

“I must say, you did everything you could so that no one would ever see him again: you strangled him.”

“Forgive me, but half an hour ago I was told that his surname was Ertel.”

“That was a mistake.”

“What, another mistake?”

“Personally speaking, I never much rated Rosenblatt,” continued the investigator. “When you called him a hired assassin, you weren’t far from the truth. The pity is that he was the only man who could have saved you. You’ve
robbed him of the opportunity to do so. We have in our possession his secret report on you and your activities. The intelligence it contains is much too detailed and accurate to be a fabrication. And in any case, the man was utterly bereft of imagination.”

“It’s entirely possible that the intelligence contained in his report is accurate. But the single most important factor in all this is that it concerns someone else, and not me.”

“Yes, but how are we to prove this?”

“For a start, this man cannot be my twin. Moreover, I presume he would have a different surname. Then, of course, there are other distinguishing features: age, height, hair colour, and so forth.”

“Rosenblatt’s report, although comprehensive in all other respects, unfortunately contains none of these indicators. And anyway, why should I believe you and not him?”

“You may not believe me. But there would be nothing easier than to make enquiries in Paris.”

“We avoid, insofar as possible, all contact with foreign police.”

It began to dawn on me that my situation was hopeless. The judicial machinery of the Central State displayed absolute rigidity and a lack of any interest in the accused; its function was solely punitive. The primitivism characteristic of all justice had been reduced to an absurdity. There was one single formula: anyone brought before
the court stood accused of crimes against the state and was liable to be punished. The innocence of the accused was admissible theoretically, although it was bound to be disregarded. Obviously a hint of desperation glinted in my eyes, for the investigator said:

“I’m afraid you will find it objectively impossible to prove any error on our part. This leaves you with a choice: either to persist in this fruitless denial and thus knowingly to consign yourself to death, or else to sign a confession and make peace with the fact that you will spend a short period of time in prison, after which freedom awaits you.”

“Do you hold the accused to be innocent until proven guilty?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I cannot sign a confession for an act I haven’t committed: doing so would result in my consciously perverting the course of justice in the Central State.”

“Ideologically speaking, you’re correct. But that isn’t the point. You are obliged to act within the limitations of the options available to you. Unfortunately these are rather narrow, I’ll grant you that. Let us enumerate them once again. On the one hand, a complete denial of guilt and the prospect of capital punishment. On the other, a confession and temporary deprivation of liberty. The rest is all theory. I advise you to think about this. I’ll call for you again in the near future.”

Back in my cell, I recounted the details of my first and second interrogations to my companion. He listened to me, sitting in that same pose with his eyes closed. When I finished, he said:

“That was easily foreseeable.”

Again I looked upon his rags and his unshaven face and recalled that this man had promised my release.

“Do you think there’s anything to be done about it?”

“You see,” he began, disregarding my question, “I know these laws better than any investigator. They aren’t actually laws, they’re more the spirit of the system, not a statutory code of any sort.”

He spoke as if he were giving a lecture.

“The absence of elementary legal norms is exacerbated by the fact that the ordinary workers of the judiciary are outstanding for a prodigious lack of culture and confuse their functions with those of some judicial executioner. You can crush their arguments and prove to them that twice two is four, that they are wrong and that the prosecution’s case is based on naive folly, which is the case more often than not. But this simply doesn’t register with them. They will still sentence you and adopt punitive measures—not because you’re guilty and it has been proven, but because this is how they understand the task of the Central Judiciary. Objection is unfavourable and punishable in principle. To argue with the law is a crime against the state, as is to doubt its inerrancy. There are a dozen formulas,
each of which expresses a particular type of ignorance; all the miscellaneous activities of millions of people can be condensed into these dozen formulas. To fight this system, which is difficult to define in a few words…”

“I would say: grim idiocy.”

“Splendid. So, to fight this grim idiocy by rational means is impossible. One has to employ other strategies; which did you adopt when Ertel-Rosenblatt tried to strangle you?”

“Those that my sports instructors had taught me.”

“Very well. Had you acted otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have been long for this world.”

“Quite possibly,” I said, recalling the darkness, the fingers clutched at my neck, and how I had begun to choke.

“In this instance, knowing that neither your innocence nor your ability to prove it will achieve anything, you’ve got to change tack. I’ve discovered a way out; it’s cost me dearly, but I have nothing left to fear now. My method is infallible, and that’s why I assured you that you’d be freed. I repeat this promise to you now.”

“I’m sorry, but if you have such a powerful weapon against this, then how is it that you’ve come to be in the same position as I am?”

“I already told you there’s been a misunderstanding,” he replied with a shrug. “They arrested me during the night, as I slept.”

“What exactly is this weapon?”

He said nothing for a long time, although his lips moved silently, as they had done when I first saw him. Then, without raising his head, he said:

“I’m a hypnotist. It is I who dictates the findings to the investigator.”

“And if he resists hypnosis?”

“I’ve yet to encounter such a case. But even if he were to resist this type of hypnosis, he would surely succumb to another.”

“In other words…”

“In other words, I’d force him to end his life by committing suicide, and the matter would be reassigned to someone else who would be susceptible.”

“One more thing,” I said, astonished by his confidence. “I’ll soon be summoned by the investigator, but you won’t be present for the interrogation. Are you able to bend him to your will from a distance?”

“That would be significantly more difficult. But you and I shall be summoned almost simultaneously.”

“How do you know that?”

“While you were being questioned by the first investigator, I was being questioned by the second.”

Then this calm man sank into total silence, which he did not break during the course of those three days that passed as I awaited the next interrogation, at which—if I were to believe him—such incredible things were to
occur. We were given food twice daily; at first I was unable to eat it, as it was so disgusting. Only on the third day did I manage to swallow a few spoonfuls of some clear-grey liquid and a crust of poorly baked bread that was revoltingly chewy. I felt weak, but my mind was alert. During all this time my cellmate did not touch his food. Mostly he remained absolutely still, and it was impossible to fathom how his muscles and joints could withstand such prolonged strain. Lying on my stone bed, I pondered how fantastical reality could be, and how there was a palpable sense of sheer inescapability in all my surroundings: the geometric composition of the walls and ceiling, opening onto a thirty-storey precipice where the sun and rain alternated, and the constant presence of this strange, ragged vagrant. Once, to break this stony silence, I started whistling an aria from
Carmen
, but the notes sounded so flat, so wild and so misplaced that I immediately stopped. I had time enough to contemplate many times over in minute detail what had happened to me and to establish that despite there being an undoubted logic to it, the combination of factors could but seem entirely irrational. Least of all did I think of the danger hanging over me, and in spite of the outward implausibility of what my companion had promised, I believed his every word.

Finally, on the evening of the third day, they came for me. I got up and for the first time in all this while felt a
strange chill inside me, perhaps the remote fear of death, perhaps a deep-seated dread of the unknown. In any case, I knew that I was now powerless to defend myself. I thought how this made everything simpler and how I had faced less danger in that dark Parisian alley with the hands of an unknown assassin at my throat. Previously I had depended on myself for survival, on some primitive mental alertness and my natural agility. Now I was defenceless.

I was led into the investigator’s office. He indicated a seat and offered me a cigarette. Then he asked:

“Have you thought about what I said to you during our last meeting?”

I nodded. The chill within me was for some reason preventing me from speaking.

“Will you sign your confession?”

I had to make an exceptional effort to reply to the investigator’s question in the negative. I knew, however, that only the word “no” could possibly save me. I felt as if I lacked the strength to utter the word, and in that moment it dawned on me why people admit to crimes they have not committed. Every muscle in my body was tensed, the blood rushed to my face, and I felt as if I were bearing up an enormous weight. At last I replied:

“No.”

Everything came crashing down before me, and I thought I was on the verge of losing consciousness. Yet I distinctly heard the investigator’s voice:

“We’ve been able to ascertain that your testimony, while on first appearance most convincing—which will aggravate your guilt—was false. Your right-hand man in the organization you headed has betrayed you and signed a full confession.”

I felt an immediate sense of relief. However, I had the impression that my voice lacked conviction.