Darkness at Noon (26 page)

“However that may be,” said Rubashov, “it would be more in accordance with our ideas to tell the people the truth, instead of populating the world with
saboteurs
and devils.”

“If one told the people in my village,” said Gletkin, “that they were still slow and backward in spite of the Revolution and the factories, it would have no effect on them. If one tells them that they are heroes of work, more efficient than the Americans, and that all evil only comes from devils and
saboteurs
, it has at least some effect. Truth is what is useful to humanity, falsehood what is harmful. In the outline of history published by the Party for the evening classes for adults, it is emphasized that during the first few centuries the Christian religion realized an objective progress for mankind. Whether Jesus spoke the truth or not, when he asserted he was the son of God and of a virgin, is of no interest to any sensible person. It is said to be symbolical, but the peasants take it literally. We have the same right to invent useful symbols which the peasants take literally.”

“Your reasoning,” said Rubashov, “sometimes reminds me of Ivanov’s.”

“Citizen Ivanov,” said Gletkin, “belonged, as you do, to the old intelligentsia; by conversing with him, one could acquire some of that historical knowledge which one had missed through insufficient schooling. The difference is that I try to use that knowledge in the service of the Party; but Citizen Ivanov was a cynic.”

“Was ... ?” asked Rubashov, taking off his pince-nez.

“Citizen Ivanov,” said Gletkin, looking at him with expressionless eyes, “was shot last night, in execution of an administrative decision.”

After this conversation, Gletkin let Rubashov sleep for two full hours. On the way back to his cell, Rubashov wondered why the news of Ivanov’s death had not made a deeper impression on him. It had merely caused the cheering effect of his little victory to vanish and made him tired and drowsy again. Apparently he had reached a state which precluded any deeper emotion. Anyhow, even before he had learnt of Ivanov’s death, he had been ashamed of that idle feeling of triumph. Gletkin’s personality had gained such power over him that even his triumphs were turned into defeats. Massive and expressionless, he sat there, the brutal embodiment of the State which owed its very existence to the Rubashovs and Ivanovs. Flesh of their flesh, grown independent and become insensible. Had not Gletkin acknowledged himself to be the spiritual heir of Ivanov and the old intelligentsia? Rubashov repeated to himself for the hundredth time that Gletkin and the new Neanderthalers were merely completing the work of the generation with the numbered heads. That the same doctrine became so inhuman in their mouths, had, as it were, merely climactic reasons. When Ivanov had used the same arguments, there was yet an undertone in his voice left by the past by the remembrance of a world which had vanished. One can deny one’s childhood, but not erase it. Ivanov had trailed his past after him to the end; that was what gave everything he said that undertone of frivolous melancholy; that was why Gletkin had called him a cynic. The Gletkins had nothing to erase; they need not deny their past, because they had none. They were born without umbilical cord, without frivolity, without melancholy.

Fragment of the diary of N. S. Rubashov

“... With what right do we who are quitting the scene look down with such superiority on the Gletkins? There must have been laughter amidst the apes when the Neanderthaler first appeared on earth. The highly civilized apes swung gracefully from bough to bough, the Neanderthaler was uncouth and bound to the earth. The apes, saturated and peaceful, lived in sophisticated playfulness, or caught fleas in philosophic contemplation; the Neanderthaler trampled gloomily through the world, banging around with clubs. The apes looked down on him amusedly from their tree tops and threw nuts at him. Sometimes horror seized them; they ate fruits and tender plants with delicate refinement; the Neanderthaler devoured raw meat, he slaughtered animals and his fellows. He cut down trees which had always stood, moved rocks from their time-hallowed place, transgressed against every law and tradition of the jungle. He was uncouth, cruel, without animal dignity—from the point of view of the highly cultivated apes, a barbaric relapse of history. The last surviving chimpanzees still turn up their noses at the sight of a human being. ...”

After five or six days an incident occurred: Rubashov fainted during the examination. They had just arrived at the concluding point in the accusation: the question of the motive for Rubashov’s actions. The accusation defined the motive simply as “counter-revolutionary mentality”, and mentioned casually, as if it were self-evident, that he had been in the service of a hostile foreign Power. Rubashov fought his last battle against that formulation. The discussion had lasted from dawn to the middle of the morning, when Rubashov, at a quite undramatic moment, slid sideways from his chair and remained lying on the ground.

When he came to a few minutes later, he saw the little fluff-covered skull of the doctor over him, pouring water on his face out of a bottle, and rubbing his temples. Rubashov felt the doctor’s breath, which smelt of peppermint and bread-and-dripping, and was sick. The doctor scolded in his shrill voice, and advised that Rubashov should be taken into the fresh air for a minute. Gletkin had watched the scene with his expressionless eyes. He rang and ordered the carpet to be cleaned; then he let Rubashov be conducted back to his cell. A few minutes later, he was taken by the old warder into the yard for exercise.

For the first few minutes Rubashov was as if intoxicated by the biting fresh air. He discovered that he had lungs which drank in oxygen, as the palate a sweet refreshing drink. The sun shone pale and clear; it was just eleven in the morning the hour at which he always used to be taken for his walk an immeasurable time ago, before this long, hazy row of days and nights had started. What a fool he had been not to appreciate this blessing. Why could one not just live and breathe and walk through the snow and feel the pale warmth of the sun on one’s face? Shake off the nightmare of Gletkin’s room, the glaring light of the lamp, that whole ghostly
mise en scène
—and live as other people do?

As it was the usual hour for his exercise, he again had the thin peasant with the bast-shoes as neighbour in the roundabout. He watched sideways as Rubashov walked along beside him with slightly swaying steps, cleared his throat once or twice, and said, with a glance at the warders:

“I have not seen you for a long time, your honour. You look ill, as though you won’t last much longer. They say there will be a war.”

Rubashov said nothing. He resisted the temptation to pick up a handful of snow and press it to a ball in his hand. The circle moved slowly round the yard. Twenty paces ahead the next pair stamped along between the low banks of snow—two men of about the same height in grey coats, with little clouds of steam in front of their mouths.

“It will soon be sowing time,” said the peasant. “After the melting of the snows the sheep go into the hills. It takes three days until they are up there. Before, all the villages in the district sent their sheep on the journey the same day. At sunrise it started, sheep everywhere, on all paths and fields, the whole village accompanied the herds during the first day. You have perhaps in all your life never seen so many sheep, your honour, and so many dogs and so much dust and such barking and bleating. ... Mother of God, what merriment it was. ...”

Rubashov held his face lifted to the sun; the sun was still pale, but already it lent the air a tepid softness. He watched the gliding, swerving play of the birds, high above the machine-gun turret.

The peasant’s whining voice went on:

“A day like to-day, when one smells the melting of the snow in the air, takes hold of me. We will neither of us last much longer, your honour. They have crushed us because we are reactionaries, and because the old days when we were happy must not come back. ...”

“Were you really so happy in those days?” asked Rubashov; but the peasant only murmured something unintelligible, while his Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat several times. Rubashov watched him from the side; after a time he said:

“Do you remember the part in the Bible where the tribes in the desert begin to cry: Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt”?

The peasant nodded eagerly and uncomprehendingly. ... Then they were conducted back into the building.

The effect of the fresh air vanished, the leaden drowsiness, the giddiness and nausea returned. At the entrance Rubashov bent down, picked up a handful of snow, and rubbed it on his forehead and burning eyes.

He was not taken back to his cell as he had hoped, but straight to Gletkin’s room. Gletkin was sitting at his desk, in the same position as Rubashov had left him in—how long ago? He looked as though he had not moved during Rubashov’s absence. The curtains were drawn, the lamp burning; time stood still in this room, as in a putrefying pond. While sitting down again opposite Gletkin, Rubashov’s glance fell on a damp patch on the carpet. He remembered his sickness. So it was, after all, but an hour since he had left the room.

“I take it that you feel better now,” said Gletkin. “We left off at the concluding question of the motive for your counter-revolutionary activities.”

He stared in slight surprise at Rubashov’s right hand, resting on the arm of the chair and still clenching a tiny lump of snow. Rubashov followed his glance; he smiled and lifted his hand to the lamp. They both watched the little lump melting on his hand in the warmth of the bulb.

“The question of motive is the last,” said Gletkin. “When you have signed that, we will have finished with one another.”

The lamp radiated a sharper light than it had for a long time. Rubashov was forced to blink.

“... And then you will be able to rest,” said Gletkin.

Rubashov passed his hand over his temples, but the coolness of the snow was gone. The word “rest”, with which Gletkin had ended his sentence, remained suspended in the silence. Rest and sleep. Let us choose a captain and return into the land of Egypt. ... He blinked sharply through his pince-nez at Gletkin:

“You know my motives as well as I do,” he said. “You know that I acted neither out of a ‘counter-revolutionary mentality’, nor was I in the service of a foreign Power. What I thought and what I did, I thought and did according to my own conviction and conscience.”

Gletkin had pulled a dossier out of his drawer. He went through it, pulled out a sheet and read in his monotonous voice:

“ ‘... For us the question of subjective good faith is of no interest. He who is in the wrong must pay; he who is in the right will be absolved. That was our law. ...’ You wrote that in your diary shortly after your arrest.”

Rubashov felt behind his eye-lids the familiar flickering of the light. In Gletkin’s mouth the sentence he had thought and written acquired a peculiarly naked sound—as though a confession, intended only for the anonymous priest, had been registered on a gramophone record, which now was repeating it in its cracked voice.

Gletkin had taken another page out of the dossier, but read only one sentence from it, with his expressionless gaze fixed on Rubashov:

“ ‘Honour is: to serve without vanity, and unto the last consequence.’ ”

Rubashov tried to withstand his gaze.

“I don’t see,” he said, “how it can serve the Party that her members have to grovel in the dust before all the world. I have signed everything you wanted me to sign. I have pleaded guilty to having pursued a false and objectively harmful policy. Isn’t that enough for you?”

He put on his pince-nez, blinked helplessly past the lamp, and ended in a tired, hoarse voice:

“After all, the name N. S. Rubashov is itself a piece of Party history. By dragging it in dirt, you besmirch the history of the Revolution.”

“To that I can also reply with a citation from your own writings. You wrote:

“ ‘It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch. For consumption by the masses, the political processes must be coloured like ginger-bread figures at a fair.’ ”

Rubashov was silent. Then he said:

“So that is what you are aiming at: I am to play the Devil in your Punch and Judy show—howl, grind my teeth and put out my tongue—and voluntarily, too. Danton and his friends were spared that, at least.”

Gletkin shut the cover of the dossier. He bent forward a bit and settled his cuffs:

“Your testimony at the trial will be the last service you can do the Party.”

Rubashov did not answer. He kept his eyes shut and relaxed under the rays of the lamp like a tired sleeper in the sun; but there was no escape from Gletkin’s voice.

“Your Danton and the Convention,” said the voice, “were just a gallant play compared to what is at stake here. I have read books about it: those people wore powdered pigtails and declaimed about their personal honour. To them, it only mattered to die with a noble gesture, regardless of whether this gesture did good or harm.”

Rubashov said nothing. There was a buzzing and humming in his ears; Gletkin’s voice was above him; it came from every side of him; it hammered mercilessly on his aching skull.

“You know what is at stake here,” Gletkin went on. “For the first time in history, a revolution has not only conquered power, but also kept it. We have made our country a bastion of the new era. It covers a sixth of the world and contains- a tenth of the world’s population.”

Gletkin’s voice now sounded at Rubashov’s back. He had risen and was walking up and down the room. It was the first time this had happened. His boots creaked at every step, his starched uniform crackled and a sourish smell of sweat and leather became noticeable.

“When our Revolution had succeeded in our country, we believed that the rest of the earth would follow suit. Instead, came a wave of reaction, which threatened to swamp us. There were two currents in the Party. One consisted of adventurers, who wanted to risk what we had won to promote the revolution abroad. You belonged to them. We recognized this current to be dangerous, and have liquidated it.”