Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [70]
had flown so quickly during the first two weeks of his arrest, now crawled. The hours disintegrated into minutes and seconds. He worked in fits and starts, but was brought to a standstill every time by lack of historical documentation. He stood for whole quarters of an hour at the judas, in the hope of catching sight of the warder who would take him to Ivanov. But the corridor wasdeserted, the electric light was burning, as always. Occasionally he hoped Ivanov himself would come, and the whole formality of his deposition would be settled in his cell; that would be far pleasanter. This time he would not even object to the bottle of brandy. He pictured the conversation in detail; how they would together work out the pompous phraseology of the "confession", and Ivanov's cynical witticisms while they did it. Smiling, Rubashov wandered up and down through his cell, and looked at his watch every ten minutes. Had Ivanov not promised in that night to have him fetched the very next day? Rubashov's impatience became more and more feverish; in the third night after his conversation with Ivanov, he could not sleep. He lay in the dark on the bunk, listening to the faint, stifled sounds in the building, threw himself from one side to another, and for the first time since his arrest wished for the presence of a warm female body. He tried breathing regularly to help himself fall asleep, but became more and more on edge. He fought for a long time against the desire to start a conversation with No. 402, who since the question "What is decency?" had not been heard of again. About midnight, when he had been lying awake for three hours, staring at the newspaper stuck to the broken windowpane, he could no longer hold out, and tapped against the wall with his knuckles. He waited eagerly; the wall remained silent. He tapped again and waited, feeling a hot wave of humiliation mounting in his head. No. 402 still did not answer. And yet certainly he was lying awake on the other side of the wall, killing time by chewing the cad of old adventures; he had confessed to Rubashov that he could never get to sleep before one or two o'clock in the morning, and that he had returned to the habits of his boyhood. Rubashov lay on his back and stared into the dark. The mattress under him was pressed flat; the blanket was too warm and drew an unpleasant dampness from the skin, yet he shivered when he threw it off. He was smoking the seventh or eighth cigarette of a chain; the stumps lay scattered round the bed on the stone floor. The slightest sound had died out; time stood still; it had resolved itself into shapeless darkness. Rubashov shut his eyes and imagined Arlova lying beside him, the familiar curve of her breast raised against the darkness. He forgot that she had been dragged over the corridor like Bogrov; the silence became so intense that it seemed to hum and sway. What were the two thousand men doing who were walled into the cells of this bee-hive? The silence was inflated by their inaudible breath, their invisible dreams, the stifled gasping of their fears and desires. If history were a matter of calculation, how much did the sum of two thousand nightmares weigh, the pressure of a two-thousand-fold helpless craving? Now he really felt the sisterly scent of Arlova; his body under the woolen blanket was covered with sweat. ... The cell-door was torn open janglingly; the light from the corridor stabbed into his eyes. He saw enter two uniformed officials with revolver-belts, as yet unknown to him. One of the two men approached the bunk; he was tall, had a brutal face and a hoarse voice which seemed very loud to Rubashov. He ordered Rubashov to follow him, without explaining where to. Rubashov felt for his pince-nez under the blanket, put them on, and got up from the bunk. He felt leadenly tired as he walked along the corridor beside the uniformed giant, who towered a head above him. The other man followed behind them. Rubashov looked at his watch; it was two o'clock in the morning, so he must have slept, after all. They went the way which led towards the