The Buddha's Return (3 page)

But now I was far from such thoughts; they seemed obscure and insignificant by comparison with the egotistical considerations of my own destiny, the illusory and uncertain nature of which had never ceased to captivate my attention, all the more so as today’s encounter had coincided with the demise of this happy phase of my life, the blessedness—I could find no other word for it—of which lay in the fact that during these past few weeks I
had lived without dreaming and without thinking about anything.

The previous day I had been seized by a vague sense of anxiety, inexplicable as always and for that very reason particularly troubling. The next day the feeling intensified, and now it no longer left me. It began to seem to me as if some danger, intangible and unfathomable in equal measure, were lurking in the wings. Had I not been so used to the constant presence of this hallucinatory world that so doggedly pursued me, I might perhaps have been frightened that this was the onset of some persecution complex. Yet the singularity of my situation resided in the fact that, as opposed to people afflicted by genuine madness, those utterly convinced that some invisible, elusive figure truly was following them—someone with a multitude of agents at their disposal: a bus conductor, a laundress, a policeman, a strange gentleman in spectacles and a hat—I knew that my unease could be attributed wholly and exclusively to random flights of imagination. Living as I did, with almost no independent means at my disposal, unaffiliated with any political organization, partaking in no form of social activity and in no way distinguishing myself from the anonymous multimillion mass of the Parisian public, I knew there was no way I could be the object of anyone’s pursuit. There was not a single person in existence to whom my life could have presented any interest, no one who could have envied me.
I understood perfectly that my vague anxiety was entirely pointless, that there were and could be no grounds for it. Yet as inconceivable as it was, still the feeling persisted, and the fact that it was clearly unfounded failed to extricate me from this situation. Meanwhile, in contrast to maniacs, whose attention is strained to breaking point, who never miss a single detail of what is happening around them as they resolutely seek out the presence of their pursuant adversary, I lived and moved as if surrounded by a thin veil of fog, one that deprived objects and people of their sharply defined contours.

I would fall asleep and awake with this feeling of vague unease and foreboding. Days went by like this, and the feeling persisted until the moment when, in the twilight of a Parisian evening, while wandering aimlessly through the streets in an unfamiliar part of the city, I cut down a narrow passageway between two buildings. By now it was almost completely dark. The alley turned out to be surprisingly long, and when I reached the end I found myself standing in front of a blind wall, with a left turn leading off at right angles. I carried on, presuming a way out to be round the corner, but it grew even darker. As I walked between the two walls, I could just make out that one of them had been built with niches at regular intervals. Their purpose was a mystery to me. I continued another few dozen metres in the gloomy darkness, above which was a starless sky; there was total silence, broken only by
the sound of my own footsteps along the uneven paving. Suddenly, as I drew abreast of one of the niches I had spotted earlier, without a sound a man’s black shadow leapt out in front of me with extraordinary speed, and for a brief fraction of a second I experienced that mortal terror for which this unrelenting state of disquiet had prepared me over the course of many days. I then felt at my neck the vicelike fingers of the man who had so suddenly and unaccountably lunged at me. As strange as it may seem, from that moment on I ceased to feel any abstract unease or immediate terror. Then again, I had no time for it. Now amid the action there was something concrete and tangible; there was reality, not irresistible abstraction. Instinctively I tensed the muscles in my neck. Judging by the frantic clutch of fingers at my throat, it was obvious that they belonged to a strong adult male, who moreover had the element of surprise on his side. However, it was also clear to me that despite the apparent superiority of his position and the desperation of my own, the advantage ultimately lay with me. I comprehended this in the very first seconds; I was well trained in various types of sport, particularly combat, and I had no difficulty in determining that my assailant knew nothing of this and only hoped to rely on brute strength. He was probably expecting me to grab him by the hands and attempt to prise them from my neck—the natural and most often useless defence of the unprepared man. By now already choking, however,
I groped in the dark for his two little fingers, and then simultaneously, using both my hands, I bent them back sharply, breaking their lower joints. He gasped and started to groan, and my breathing strangely eased after he let go of my throat. He was now silently writhing about in front of me in the darkness, and at any other time this would no doubt have roused some compassion in me. But I was in a state of sudden, furious rage—as if this unidentified man had been the cause of that lengthy unease that had tormented me all this time, as if he himself were the culprit. I pressed into one of his shoulders while at the same time pulling the other one towards me, and when, without his having the time to realize what was happening, he turned away from me, I seized his neck from behind using my right arm bent at almost ninety degrees. With the fingers of my left hand I grasped my right wrist and began to tighten my deadly grip on him, not letting up for an instant. In short, I did what he ought to have done when trying to strangle me—precisely what he had failed to do, thus signing his own death warrant. He twitched a few times, although I knew that his situation was hopeless. Then, once all trace of resistance had vanished, I let go and his corpse slumped heavily to my feet. It was so dark that I was unable to examine his face properly. I noted only that he had a little moustache and black curly hair.

I listened intently. Around me, as before, there was total silence, and as I took my first step the sound of it seemed
alarmingly loud. Without looking back, I continued along the passageway. At last the indistinct light of what was probably a street lamp glinted in the distance, and I heaved a sigh of relief. However, just as I was about to leave this trap something struck me on the head with tremendous force, and I lost consciousness.

Through this blackout, I had the vague notion that I was being driven somewhere. Clearly I had been administered with some powerful narcotic, as my unconscious or semi-conscious state was unnaturally prolonged. When I finally opened my eyes, I found myself lying on a narrow stone bench in a small room with a high ceiling and three grey walls. There was no fourth wall: in its place shone a bright gaping hole. I had completely lost all concept of time. On the other side of a blind wooden door I could hear footsteps and voices shouting things that I was unable to make out. These voices soon receded into the distance. I looked around the cell and only then did I notice that I was not alone: to my right, on a second stone bench, was a figure clothed in rags, sitting with his legs crossed and leaning against the wall. His eyes were closed, but his lips moved silently. He then turned his head to me and slowly lifted his eyelids; I met his gaze—penetrating, empty and cold, so much so that I immediately felt out of sorts. I remembered everything after this exactly as it happened with the exception of one detail, which no effort of memory could ever return to me: I couldn’t remember in which language I
had spoken, at first with him, and then with all the others. Some phrases seemed to have been uttered in Russian, others in French, others in English or German.

“Permit me to welcome you,” said the man in rags, whose dull, inexpressive voice immediately struck me. “I haven’t the pleasure of knowing your name.”

I introduced myself and asked whether he could explain where I was and what I was doing here.

“You’ve been remanded in custody.”

“Remanded in custody?” I repeated in astonishment. “But on what grounds?”

“The relevant charges will likely be brought against you in the near future—what they are precisely, I don’t know.”

An enormous bird with a bald neck slowly flew past the bright aperture in the wall, almost brushing it with its wing. Its appearance here, coupled with the replies of my interlocutor, seemed so improbable that I asked:

“What country is this?”

“You are in the territory of the Central State.”

For some reason I found this answer satisfactory; this was probably because of the effect of the narcotic not yet having completely worn off. With an effort, I got to my feet and took a few steps towards the opening—evidently in lieu of a window—and instinctively recoiled: it gave onto a courtyard, but the cell was unusually high up, probably on the thirtieth floor. Opposite the building, separated by a distance of forty or fifty metres, was a solid wall.

“Escape is impossible,” said my companion, who had been following my every move.

I nodded. Then I told him that I refused to recognize the reasons for my being held here, that I was guilty of no crime and all this was utterly absurd. Next I asked him why he had been arrested and what lay in store for him. Then for the first time he smiled and replied that in his case there had been a clear misunderstanding and that he would personally face no punishment.

“But what exactly happened to you?” he asked.

I related to him in great detail the little-convincing facts that had led me here so unexpectedly. He asked me a few more pieces of information about my life and, having heard me out, said that he was entirely satisfied by my account and would advocate my release. Such a statement ought to have seemed at least a little strange coming from a prisoner in rags. However, I took him at his word; my analytical faculties had not yet returned to me.

After a while the door to the cell opened, and two armed soldiers, one of whom barked out my surname, escorted me down a long corridor with pink walls and a multitude of turns. At each turn hung the same enormous portrait of some elderly, clean-shaven man, with a face that looked like a common workman’s, albeit with an unnaturally narrow forehead and minuscule eyes; he was wearing something between a jacket and a military tunic decked with medals, anchors and stars. The walls of the
corridor were lined with several statues and busts of the same man. Finally we arrived—in complete silence—at a door, through which I was shoved into a room, where an elderly man in glasses was sitting at a large table. He was dressed in some peculiar semi-military, semi-civilian uniform, similar in style to the one depicted in the portraits and on the statues.

He began by extracting a massive revolver from a drawer and placing it beside a paperweight. Then, suddenly lifting his head and looking me straight in the eye, he said:

“Naturally you’ll be aware that only a full and frank confession can save you?”

After the long walk down the corridor—the soldiers had walked briskly and I had been obliged to keep pace with them—I felt as if the almost semi-unconscious state in which I had until now found myself had at last given way to something more normal. My body once again felt as it usually did, I could see what was before my eyes with perfect clarity, and now it became more apparent to me than ever that what had happened was obviously the result of some misunderstanding. At the same time, however, the prison setting and the prospect of an arbitrary interrogation rather vexed me. I looked at the seated figure in glasses and asked:

“Forgive me, but who are you?”

“There’ll be no questions here!” he answered sharply.

“There appears to be some confusion,” I said. “I seem to recall hearing a distinctly interrogatory tone in your voice when you just addressed me.”

“Try to understand that we’re dealing with your life here,” he said. “It’s too late now for dialectics. Though perhaps it would be beneficial to remind you that you stand accused of high treason.”

“High treason, no less?”

“No less indeed. You must have no illusions about it: it is a terrible charge. I repeat that only a full and frank confession can save you now.”

“In what respect am I alleged to have committed high treason?”

“You have the impertinence to ask? Very well, I’ll tell you. There is high treason in the very fact that you allow for the unlawful principle of there being any legitimacy in pseudo-governmental ideas that contradict the Great Theory of the Central State which has been devised by the foremost geniuses of mankind.”

“What you’re saying is so absurd and naive that I’m at a loss to respond. I would like only to point out that the possible admission of one principle or another is a theoretical stance, not a fact on the basis of which it’s possible to prosecute a man.”

“Even here, at a tribunal of the Central Government, you speak in a language whose every word echoes your crime. In the first instance, a representative of the state, particularly
an investigator, is, as far as you’re concerned, infallible, and no word of his may be termed either ‘absurd’ or ‘naive’. But that’s not all. Now, after what you’ve just said, there’s another point that further compounds your guilt: causing insult to a representative of the Central Government. You stand accused of high treason, of conspiracy to assassinate the head of state and, finally, of the death of Citizen Ertel, one of our finest representatives beyond these borders.”

“Who is this Ertel?”

“The man you killed. Don’t try to deny it: nothing escapes the knowledge of the Central Government. A full confession is your only option; it is what the state and the people expect of you.”

“The only response I’m able to give concerns Ertel. That man was a hired assassin. I was in a position of lawful self-defence. Evidently until now Ertel never had to deal with people in the habit of defending their own life, and this blunder wrought his downfall. As far as the remaining accusations are concerned, they’re sheer nonsense, which speaks volumes for the intellectual capacity of the people who contrived them.”