Darkness at Noon (6 page)

Dusk had now progressed so far that Rubashov could no longer see the hands on the drawing. A bell rang twice, shrill and penetratingly; in a quarter of an hour the museum would be closed. Rubashov looked at his watch; he still had the decisive word to say, then it would be over. Richard sat motionless next to him, elbows on knees.

“Yes, to that I have no answer,” he said finally, and again his voice was flat and very tired. “What you say is doubtless true. And what you said about that mountain path is very fine. But all I know is that we are beaten. Those who are still left desert us. Perhaps, because it is too cold up on our mountain path. The others—they have music and bright banners and they all sit round a nice warm fire. Perhaps that is why they have won. And why we are breaking our necks.”

Rubashov listened in silence. He wanted to hear whether the young man had any more to say, before he himself pronounced the decisive sentence. Whatever Richard said, it could not now change that sentence in any way; but yet he waited.

Richard’s heavy form was more and more obscured by the dusk. He had moved still further away on the round sofa; he sat with bent shoulders and his face nearly buried in his hands. Rubashov sat straight up on the sofa and waited. He felt a slight drawing pain in his upper jaw; probably the defective eye-tooth. After a while he heard Richard’s voice:

“What will happen to me now?”

Rubashov felt for the aching tooth with his tongue. He felt the need to touch it with his finger before pronouncing the decisive word, but forbade himself. He said quietly:

“I have to inform you, in accordance with the Central Committee’s decision, that you are no longer a member of the Party, Richard.”

Richard did not stir. Again Rubashov waited for a while, before standing up. Richard remained sitting. He merely lifted his head, looked up at him and asked:

“Is that what you came here for?”

“Chiefly,” said Rubashov. He wanted to go, but still stood there in front of Richard and waited

“What will now become of me?” asked Richard. Rubashov said nothing. After a while, Richard said:

“Now I suppose I cannot live at my friend’s cabin either?”

After a short hesitation Rubashov said:

“Better not.”

He was at once annoyed with himself for having said it, and he was not certain whether Richard had understood the meaning of the phrase. He looked down on the seated figure:

“It will be better for us to leave the building separately. Good-bye.”

Richard straightened himself, but remained sitting. In the twilight Rubashov could only guess the expression of the inflamed, slightly prominent eyes; yet it was just this blurred image of the clumsy, seated figure which stamped itself in his memory for ever.

He left the room and crossed the next one, which was equally empty and dark. His steps creaked on the parquet floor. Only when he had reached the way out did he remember that he had forgotten to look at the picture of the
Pietà
; now he would only know the detail of the folded hands and part of the thin arms, up to the elbow.

On the steps which led down from the entrance he stopped. His tooth was hurting him a bit more; it was cold outside. He wrapped the faded grey woollen scarf more tightly round his neck. The street lamps were already lit in the big quiet square in front of the gallery; at this hour there were few people about; a narrow tram ringing its bell clanged up the elm-bordered avenue. He wondered whether he would find a taxi here.

On the bottom step Richard caught him up, panting breathlessly. Rubashov went straight on, neither hastening nor slacking his pace and without turning his head. Richard was half a head bigger than he and much broader, but he held his shoulders hunched, making himself small beside Rubashov and shortening his steps. After a few paces he said:

“Was that meant to be a warning, when I asked you if I could go on living with my friend and you said ‘Better not’?”

Rubashov saw a taxi with bright lights coming up the avenue. He stopped on the curb and waited for it to come closer. Richard was standing beside him. “I have no more to say to you, Richard,” Rubashov said, and hailed the taxi.

“Comrade—b-but you couldn’t d-denounce me, comrade ...” said Richard. The taxi slowed down, it was no more than twenty paces from them. Richard stood hunched in front of Rubashov; he had caught the sleeve of Rubashov’s overcoat and was talking straight down into his face; Rubashov felt his breath and a slight dampness sprayed on to his forehead.

“I am not an enemy of the Party,” said Richard. “You c-can’t throw me to the wolves, c-comrade ...”

The taxi stopped at the curb; the driver must certainly have heard the last word Rubashov calculated rapidly that it was no use sending Richard away; there was a policeman posted a hundred yards further up. The driver, a little old man in a leather jacket, looked at them expressionlessly.

“To the station,” said Rubashov and got in. The taxi driver reached back with his right arm and slammed the door behind him. Richard stood on the edge of the pavement, cap in hand; his Adam’s apple moved rapidly up and down. The taxi started; it drove off towards the policeman; it passed the policeman. Rubashov preferred not to look back, but he knew that Richard was still standing on the edge of the pavement, staring at the taxi’s red rear-light.

For a few minutes, they drove through busy streets; the taxi driver turned his head round several times, as if he wanted to make sure that his passenger was still inside. Rubashov knew the town too little to make out whether they were really going to the station. The streets became quieter; at the end of an avenue appeared a massive building with a large illuminated clock, they stopped at the station.

Rubashov got out; the taxis in this town had no meters yet. “How much is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said the driver. His face was old and creased; he pulled a dirty red rag out of the pocket of his leather coat and blew his nose with ceremony.

Rubashov looked at him attentively through his pince-nez. He was certain he had not seen that face before. The driver put his handkerchief away. “For people like yourself, sir, it’s always free,” he said and busied himself with the handbrake. Suddenly he held his hand out. It was an old man’s hand with thickened veins and black nails. “Good luck, sir,” he said, smiling rather sheepishly at Rubashov. “If your young friend ever wants anything—my stand is in front of the museum. You can send him my number, sir.”

Rubashov saw to his right a porter leaning against a post and looking at them. He did not take the driver’s outstretched hand; he put a coin into it and went into the station, without a word.

He had to wait an hour for the departure of the train. He drank bad coffee in the buffet; his tooth tormented him. In the train he fell into a doze and dreamed he had to run in front of the engine. Richard and the taxi-driver were standing in it; they wanted to run him over because he had cheated them of the fare. The wheels came rattling closer and closer and his feet refused to move. He woke up with nausea and felt the cold perspiration on his forehead; the other people in the compartment looked at him in slight astonishment. Outside was night; the train was rushing through a dark enemy country, the affair with Richard had to be concluded, his tooth was aching. A week later he was arrested.

Rubashov leant his forehead against the window and looked down into the yard He was tired in the legs and dizzy in the head from walking up and down. He looked at his watch; a quarter to twelve; he had been walking to and fro in his cell for nearly four hours on end, since first the
Pietà
had occurred to him. It did not surprise him; he was well enough acquainted with the day-dreams of imprisonment, with the intoxication which emanates from the whitewashed walls. He remembered a younger comrade, by profession a hairdresser’s assistant, telling him how, in his second and worst year of solitary confinement, he had dreamed for seven hours on end with his eyes open; in doing so he had walked twenty-eight kilometres, in a cell five paces long, and had blistered his feet without noticing it.

This time, however, it had come rather quickly; already, the first day the voice had befallen him, whereas during his previous experiences it had started only after several weeks. Another strange thing was that he had thought of the past; chronic prison day-dreamers dreamed nearly always of the future—and of the past only as it might have been, never as it actually had been. Rubashov wondered what other surprises his mental apparatus held in store for him. He knew from experience that confrontation with death always altered the mechanism of thought and caused the most surprising reactions—like the movements of a compass brought close to the magnetic pole.

The sky was still heavy with an imminent fall of snow; in the courtyard two men were doing their daily walk on the shovelled path. One of the two repeatedly looked up at Rubashov’s window—apparently the news of his arrest had already spread. He was an emaciated man with a yellow skin and a hare-lip, wearing a thin waterproof which he clutched round his shoulders as if freezing. The other man was older and had wrapped a blanket round himself. They did not speak to each other during their round, and after ten minutes they were fetched back into the building by an official in uniform with a rubber truncheon and a revolver. The door in which the official waited for them lay exactly opposite Rubashov’s window; before it closed behind the man with the hare-lip, he once more looked up towards Rubashov. He certainly could not see Rubashov, whose window must have appeared quite dark from the courtyard; yet his eyes lingered on the window searchingly. I see you and do not know you; you cannot see me and yet obviously you know me, thought Rubashov. He sat down on the bed and tapped to No. 402:

WHO ARE THEY?

He thought that No. 402 was probably offended and would not answer. But the officer did not seem to bear grudges; he answered immediately:

POLITICAL.

Rubashov was surprised; he had held the thin man with the here-lip for a criminal.

OF YOUR SORT?he asked.

NO—OF YOURS, tapped No. 402, in all probability grinning with a certain satisfaction. The next sentence was louder-tapped with the monocle, perhaps.

HARE-LIP, MY NEIGHBOUR, NO. 400, WAS TORTURED YESTERDAY.

Rubashov remained silent a minute and rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve, although he was only using it to tap with. He first wanted to ask “WHY?” but tapped instead:

HOW?

402 tapped back drily:

STEAMBATH.

Rubashov had been beaten up repeatedly during his last imprisonment, but of this method he only knew by hearsay. He had learned that every
known
physical pain was bearable; if one knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen to one, one stood it as a surgical operation—for instance, the extraction of a tooth. Really bad was only the unknown, which gave one no chance to foresee one’s reactions and no scale to calculate one’s capacity of resistance. And the worst was the fear that one would then do or say something which could not be recalled.

WHY? asked Rubashov.

POLITICAL DIVERGENCIES, tapped No. 402 ironically.

Rubashov put his pince-nez on again and felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. He had only two cigarettes left. Then he tapped:

AND HOW ARE THINGS WITH YOU?

THANKS, VERY WELL ... tapped No. 402 and dropped the conversation.

Rubashov shrugged his shoulders; he lit his last cigarette but one and resumed his walking up and down. Strangely enough, what was in store for him made him nearly glad. He felt his stale melancholia leave him, his head become clearer, his nerves tauten. He washed face, arms and chest in cold water over the wash-basin, rinsed his mouth and dried himself with his handkerchief. He whistled a few bars and smiled—he was always hopelessly out of tune, and only a few days ago somebody had said to him: “If No. 1 were musical, he would long ago have found a pretext to have you shot.”

“He will anyhow,” he had answered, without seriously believing it.

He lit his last cigarette and with a clear head began to work out the line to take when he would be brought up for cross-examination. He was filled by the same quiet and serene self-confidence as he had felt as a student before a particularly difficult examination. He called to memory every particular he knew about the subject “steambath.” He imagined the situation in detail and tried to analyse the physical sensations to be expected, in order to rid them of their uncanniness. The important thing was not to let oneself be caught unprepared. He now knew for certain that they would not succeed in doing so, any more than had the others over there; he knew he would not say anything he did not want to say. He only wished they would start soon.

His dream came to his mind: Richard and the old taxi-driver pursuing him, because they felt themselves cheated and betrayed by him.

I will pay my fare, he thought with an awkward smile.

His last cigarette was nearly at an end; it was burning his finger-tips; he let it drop. He was about to stamp it out, but thought better of it; he bent down, picked it up and stubbed out the glowing stump slowly on the back of his hand, between the blue snaky veins. He drew out this procedure for exactly half a minute, checking it by the second hand of his watch. He was pleased with himself: his hand had not twitched once during the thirty seconds. Then he continued his walk.

The eye which had been observing him for several minutes through the spy-hole withdrew.

The lunch procession went past in the corridor; Rubashov’s cell was again left out. He wanted to spare himself the humiliation of looking through the spy-hole, so he did not discover what there was for lunch; but the smell of it filled his cell, and it smelled good.

He felt a strong desire for a cigarette. He would have to procure himself cigarettes somehow, in order to be able to concentrate; they were more important than food. He waited for half an hour after the doling out of food, then he began to hammer on the door. It took another quarter of an hour before the old warder shuffled up. “What do you want?” he asked, in his usual surly tone.