The Case of Comrade Tulayev (32 page)

“My con-con-gratulations … The investigation has made a great step … Now, Comrade Zvyeryeva, get the Rublev dossier ready for me …”

“You shall have it this morning, Comrade Popov.”

For almost ten full years Makeyev's life had consisted in inflicting or swallowing humiliation. The only art of government that he knew was to abolish every objection by repression and humiliation. At first, when some comrade stood on the platform before an ironical audience, struggling to admit his errors of yesterday, to abjure his companions, his friendships, his own thoughts, Makeyev used to feel uncomfortable. “Son of a bitch,” he would think, “wouldn't you do better to let them beat you up?” After the arguments of 1927–28, he brought a scorn heavily weighted with mockery to bear on the great veterans who had recanted to avoid being expelled from the Party. In a confused way, he felt that he was called to share their heritage. His monumental scoffing influenced audiences against the militants of 1918, who, suddenly stripped of their halos, stripped of their power, were seen to humiliate themselves before the Party — and in reality it was before mediocre men and women united by but one preoccupation: discipline. His whole head purple, Makeyev thundered: “No, it is not enough! Less beating around the bush! Tell us about the criminal agitation you took part in at the factories!” His interruptions — like blows from a blackjack full in the face — contributed largely to opening the path of power before him. He followed it as he had risen to it: persecuting his vanquished comrades; insisting on their repeating — over and over, and each time in blunter and more revolting terms — the same abjurations, because it was the only way left them to withdraw their claims to power (which, it seemed, was always about to fall into their hands, because actually they were free from the errors of the present); insisting that his subordinates should take the responsibility for his own errors, because he, Makeyev, was of more value to the Party than they were; hurrying to humiliate himself in turn, when someone bigger than himself demanded it. Prison plunged him into an animal desperation. In his dark, low cell he was like a steer which the slaughterer's hammer has not hit hard enough. His powerful muscles became flabby, his hairy chest caved in, a beard the color of weather-beaten straw grew up to his eyes, he became a big, bent muzhik, round-shouldered, with sad and timid eyes … Time passed, Makeyev was forgotten, no one answered his protestations of loyalty. He himself did not dare to claim an innocence which was as imprudent as it was doubtful, if not more so. The reality of the outside world came to an end, he could no longer picture his wife to himself, even at the moments when a sexual frenzy seized him and prostrated him on his cot, his flesh throbbing, an edge of foam in the corners of his mouth … When his questioning began, he felt a great relief. Everything would come out all right, it was only a broken career, it couldn't call for more than a few years in an Arctic concentration camp, and even there you can show that you are zealous, that you have a sense of organization, there are rewards to be won … There are women too … He was called upon to agree that he had carried the May directives too far and, on the other hand, had consciously neglected to apply those of September; to admit that he was responsible for the decrease in sown fields in the region; to admit that he had appointed to the agricultural directorate officials who had since been sentenced as counterrevolutionaries (he had denounced them himself); to admit that he had diverted for his personal use, specifically for the purchase of furniture, monies earmarked for a Rest House for Agricultural Workers … The point was arguable, but he did not argue, he agreed, it was all true, it could be true, it must be true … as you see, comrades, if the Party demands it, I am more than ready to take everything on myself … A good sign: none of the accusations rated capital punishment. He was allowed to read old illustrated magazines.

Wakened one night from the deepest of sleep, led to his interrogation by a different route — elevators, courtyards, well-lighted basements — Makeyev suddenly found himself facing new dangers. A terrible severity made everything clear:

“Makeyev, you admit that it was you who organized the famine in the district which the Central Committee entrusted to you …”

Makeyev made a sign of assent. But the formula was startlingly disquieting — it was reminiscent of recent trials … But what else could they ask of him? Of what could he reasonably accuse himself if not of that? No one at Kurgansk would doubt his guilt. And the Political Bureau would be freed of responsibility.

“The time has come for you to make us a fuller confession. What you are hiding from us shows what an indomitable enemy of the Party you have become. We know everything. We have proof of everything, Makeyev, irrefutable proof. Your accomplices have confessed. Tell us what part you played in the plot which cost the life of Comrade Tulayev …”

Makeyev bowed his head — or, more precisely, his strength failed him and his head dropped on his chest. His shoulders sagged, as if, while he had listened to the examiner's words, the very substance of his body had drained away. A black hole, a black hole before him, a vault, a grave, and there was nothing more he could say. He could neither speak nor move, he stared stupidly at the polished floor.

“Answer to the accusation, Makeyev! … Do you feel ill?”

If they had beaten him they could have got nothing from him, his big body appeared to have no more substance than a sack of rags. He was led away, doctored; a shave gave him back something of his usual appearance. He talked to himself ceaselessly. His head looked like a skull — high, conical, with prominent jawbones and carnivorous teeth. One night when he had recovered from the first nervous shock, he was led out to be questioned again. He walked totteringly, his heart sank, what little strength he had left failed him the nearer he came to the door …

“Makeyev, we have an overwhelming deposition against you in the Tulayev case — your wife's statement …”

“Impossible.”

The curiously unreal image of the woman who had been real to him in another life, one of those former lives which had become unreal, brought a flash of firmness into his face. His teeth gleamed balefully.

“Impossible. Or else she is lying because you have tortured her.”

“It is not for you to accuse us, criminal. You still deny the charge?”

“I deny it.”

“Then listen and be abashed. When you learned that Comrade Tulayev had been assassinated, you exclaimed that you had expected it, that it served him right, that it was he, and not you, who had organized the famine in the district … I have your actual words, do I need to read them to you? Is it true?”

“It is false,” Makeyev murmured. “It is all false.”

And the memory emerged mysteriously from his inner darkness. Alia, her face miserably swollen from crying … She held the queen of hearts in a trembling hand, she was shouting, but her wheezy breathless voice could hardly be heard: “And you, traitor and liar, when will someone kill you?” What could she have thought, what could they have suggested to her, the poor simpleton? Was she denouncing him to save him or to ruin him?

“It is true,” he said. “I ought to explain to you that it is more false than true, false, false …”

“That would be wholly useless, Makeyev. If you have the remotest chance of salvation, it lies in a complete and sincere confession …”

The urgent memory of his wife had revived him. He became like himself again, grew sarcastic:

“Like the others, you mean?”

“To what are you alluding, Makeyev? What is it that you presume to think, counterrevolutionary Makeyev, traitor to the Party, murderer of the Party?”

“Nothing.”

Again he collapsed.

“In any case, this may be your last interrogation. It may be your last day. A decision may be reached this very evening, Makeyev — did you hear me? Take the prisoner back to his cell.”

… At Kurgansk the man was taken from the prison in a van. Sometimes he was informed of his sentence, sometimes he was left in doubt — and that was better, because occasionally men who had no doubts left had to be carried, tied, helped along, gagged. The others walked like broken-down automatons, but they walked. A few miles from the station, at a place where the tracks make a shining curve under the stars, the van stopped. The man was led toward the underbrush … Makeyev attended the execution of four railwaymen who had stolen parcel-post packages. Traffic was being disorganized by such larcenies. At the regional Committee, Makeyev had demanded capital punishment for the proletarians turned brigands. The bastards! He held a grudge against them for forcing him into a hideous severity. The four still hoped for a transfer. “They won't dare shoot workers for so little …” seven thousand rubles' worth of merchandise … Their last hope vanished in the underbrush, under an ugly yellow moon whose sickly light filtered through little leaves. Standing at a turn in the path, Makeyev watched to see how the men would behave. The first walked straight on, his head held high, his step firm, charging forward toward the open grave (“the stuff of a revolutionary …”). The second stumbled over roots, jerked epileptically, hung his head — he looked as if he were plunged in deep thought, but when he came nearer Makeyev saw that, for all his fifty years, the man was crying silently. The third was like a drunken man with sudden intervals of clearheadedness. He dragged along, then ran a few steps (they were going in single file, followed by several men with rifles). The last, a lad of twenty, had to be supported. He recognized Makeyev, fell to his knees, and cried: “Comrade Makeyev, beloved father, pardon us, have mercy on us, we are workers …” Makeyev sprang back, his foot struck a root, he felt a stab of pain, the silent soldiers dragged the boy on … At that moment the first of the four turned his head and said calmly, in a voice perfectly distinct in the moonlit silence: “Keep quiet, Sacha, they are not men any more, they are hyenas … We ought to spit in his dirty face …” Four reports, quite close together, reached Makeyev in his car. A cloud darkened the moon, the driver almost drove the car into the ditch. Makeyev went straight to bed, put his arms around his sleeping wife, and lay so for a long time, his eyes open on darkness. Alia's warmth and her regular breathing calmed him. Since it was easy for him not to think, he was able to escape from himself. The next morning, seeing a brief notice of the execution in the paper, he was almost glad to feel that he was “an iron Bolshevik” …

Makeyev lived but little by his memories; rather, his memories lived a life of their own, an insidious and awkward life, in him. That one had appeared on the luminous screen of consciousness while he was being led toward his cell, toward … And, horribly, it brings another with it: In those days, Makeyev felt that he belonged to a different race from that of men who walked such paths at night, under the yellow moon, toward graves dug by soldiers of the Special Battalion. No conceivable event could cast him down from the summits of power, make him in turn one of the disinherited. Even disgraces would leave him in the files of the Central Committee. Nothing short of expulsion from the Party, and that was impossible … He was loyal, body and soul! Adaptable, too, and he knew very well that the Central Committee was always right, that the Political Bureau was always right, that the Chief was always right, because might is right; the errors of power compel recognition, become Truth; just pay the overhead, and a wrong solution becomes the right solution … In the little elevator cage Makeyev was pressed against the wall by the massive torso of a noncommissioned officer who might be forty and who looked like him — that is to say, who looked like the Makeyev of former days. The same rugged head and chin, the same stubborn eyes, the same broad shoulders. (But neither of them was aware of the resemblance at the time.) The guard fixed his prisoner with an anonymous eye. Man-pincers, man-revolver, man-password, man-might — and Makeyev was in the power of such men, from henceforth he belonged to the other race … He had a momentary vision of himself walking through a wood, under a patchwork of yellow moonlight and leaf shadows, with rifles following him at the ready … And the same man was waiting for Makeyev at a turn in the path, he was dressed in leather, his hands were in his pockets; and when Makeyev should be no more, the same man would go calmly home and climb into a wide, warm bed, beside a sleeping woman with burning breasts … The same man, or another, but with the same anonymous eyes, would come for Makeyev, perhaps that very night …

Yet another somber image rose from the past. At the Party club a new moving picture in honor of Soviet aviation,
Aerograd
, was being shown. In the Siberian forest, in the Far East, bearded peasants who had been Red partisans were standing up against Japanese agents … There were two old trappers who were like brothers, and one of them discovered that the other was a traitor. Face to face under the great grim trees, in the murmuring taiga, the patriot disarmed the traitor: “Walk ahead!” The other walked, bent toward the ground, feeling himself sentenced to death. Again and again, the two almost identical faces alternated on the screen — the face of an old bearded man, stricken with terror, and the face of his comrade, his like, who had judged him, who cried to him: “Prepare yourself! In the name of the Soviet people …” and who raised his carbine … Around them the maternal forest, the inescapable forest. Close-up: the enormous face of the guilty man baying at death … It disappeared at last in the welcome roar of a shot. Makeyev gave the signal for applause … The elevator stopped, Makeyev would have liked to bay at death. Yet he walked uprightly enough. When he reached his cell he sent for a sheet of paper. Wrote:

“I cease all resistance in the face of the Party. I am ready to sign a complete and sincere confession …”

Signed it:
Makeyev
. The
M
was still strong, the other letters looked crushed.