Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [69]
in actual fact America was at the bottom of a depression, which would only be overcome by the victorious revolution. On the very day on which the special number appeared, No. 1 received an American journalist and staggered him and the world, between two pulls at his pipe, by the pithy sentence: "The crisis in America is over and business is normal again." The members of the Committee of Experts, expecting their dismissal and possible arrest, composed in the same night letters in which they confessed their "misdemeanours committed by the setting-up of counter-revolutionary theories and misleading analyses"; they emphasized their repentance and promised public atonement. Only Isakovitch, a contemporary of Rubashov, and the only one in the Board of Editors who belonged to the old guard--preferred to shoothimself . The initiated afterwards asserted that No. 1 had set the whole affair going with the sole intention of destroying Isakovitch, whom he suspected of oppositional tendencies. The whole thing was a pretty grotesque comedy, Rubashov thought; at bottom all this jugglery with "revolutionary philosophy" was merely a means to consolidate the dictatorship, which, though so depressing a phenomenon, yet seemed to represent a historical necessity. So much the worse for him who took the comedy seriously,who only saw what happened on the stage, and not the machinery behind it. Formerly the revolutionary policy had been decided at open congresses; now it was decided behind the scenes--that also was a logical consequence of the law of relative maturity of the masses. ... Rubashov yearned to work again in a quiet library with green lamps, and to build up his new theory on a historical basis. The most productive times for revolutionary philosophy had always been the time of exile, the forced rests between periods of political activity. He walked up and down in his cell and let his imagination play with the idea of passing the next two years, when he would be politically excommunicated, in a kind of inner exile; his public recantation would buy him the necessary breathing-space. The outward form of capitulation did not matter much; they should have as manymea culpas and declarations of faith in No. 1's infallibility as the paper would hold. That was purely a matter of etiquette--a Byzantine ceremonial which had developed out of the necessity to drill every sentence into the masses by vulgarization and endless repetition; what was presented as right must shine like gold, what was presented as wrong must be as black as pitch; political statements had to be coloured like gingerbread figures at a fair. These were matters of which No. 402 understood nothing, Rubashov reflected. His narrow conception of honour belonged to another epoch. What was decency? A certain form of convention, still bound by the traditions and rules of the knightly jousts. The new conception of honour should be formulated differently: to serve without vanity and unto the last consequence. ... "Better die than dishonour oneself," No. 402 had announced, and, one imagines, twirled his moustache. That was the classic expression of personal vanity. No. 402 tapped his sentences with his monocle; he, Rubashov, with his pince-nez; that was the whole difference. The only thing which mattered to him now was to work peacefully in a library and build up his new ideas. It would need many years, and produce a massive volume; but it would be the first useful clue to the understanding of the history of democratic institutions and throw a light on the pendulum-like movements of mass psychology, which at the present time were particularly in evidence, and which the classical class struggle theory failed to explain. Rubashov walked rapidly up and down his cell, smiling to himself. Nothing mattered as long as he was allowed time to develop his new theory. His toothache was gone; he felt wide awake, enterprising, and full of nervous impatience. Two days had passed since the nocturnal conversation with Ivanov and the sending off of his declaration, and still nothing happened. Time, which