Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [19]
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 thePietà 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 roundhimself . 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?heasked. 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 everyknown 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.