Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [74]
that he was an assistant manager of the restaurant from which No. 1 had his cold lunch brought to him on busy days. This cold snack was a feature of No. 1's Spartan mode of life, most carefully fostered by propaganda; and it was just by means of this proverbial cold snack that X, on Rubashov's instigation, was to prepare a premature end for No. 1. Rubashov smiled to himself with eyes shut; when he opened them, Gletkin had stopped reading and was looking at him. After a few seconds of silence, Gletkin said, in his usual even tone; more as a statement than a question: "You have heard the accusation and plead guilty." Rubashov tried to look into his face. He could not, and had to shut his eyes again. He had had a biting answer on his tongue; instead he said, so quietly that the thin secretary had to stretch out her head to hear: "I plead guilty to not having understood the fatal compulsion behind the policy of the Government, and to have therefore held oppositional views. I plead guilty to having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them. I plead guilty to having rated the question of guilt and innocence higher than that of utility and harmfulness. Finally, I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind. ..." Rubashov paused and again tried to open his eyes. He blinked over to the secretary's corner, his head turned away from the light. She had just finished taking down what he had said; he believed he saw an ironic smile on her pointed profile. "I know," Rubashov went on, "that my aberration, if carried into effect, would have been a mortal danger to the Revolution. Every opposition at the critical turning-points of history carries in itself the germ of a split in the Party, and hence the germ of civil war. Humanitarian weakness and liberal democracy, when the masses are not mature, is suicide for the Revolution. And yet my oppositional attitude was based on a craving for just these methods--in appearance so desirable, actually so deadly. On a demand for a liberal reform of the dictatorship; for a broader democracy, for the abolition of the Terror, and a loosening of the rigid organization of the Party, I admit that these demands, in the present situation, are objectively harmful and therefore counterrevolutionary in character. ..." He paused again, as his throat was dry and his voice had become husky. He heard the scratching of the secretary's pencil in the silence; he raised his head a little, with eyes shut, and went on: "In this sense, and in this sense only, can you call me a counter-revolutionary.With the absurd criminal charges made in the accusation, I have nothing to do." "Have you finished?" asked Gletkin. His voice sounded so brutal that Rubashov looked at him in surprise. Gletkin's brightly-lit silhouette showed behind the desk in his usual correct position. Rubashov had long sought for a simple characterization of Gletkin: "correct brutality"--that was it. Your statement is not new," Gletkin went on in his dry, rasping voice. "In both your preceding confessions, the first one two years ago, the second time twelve months ago, you have already publicly confessed that your attitude had been ‘objectively counter-revolutionary and opposed to the interests of the people.' Both times you humbly asked the forgiveness of the Party, and vowed loyalty to the policy of the leadership. Now you expect to play the same game a third time. The statement you have just made is mere eye-wash. You admit your ‘oppositional attitude,' but deny the acts which are the logical consequence of it. I have already told you that this time you will not get off so easily." Gletkin broke off as suddenly as he began. In the ensuing silence Rubashov heard the faint buzzing of the current in the lamp behind the desk. At the same time the light became another grade stronger. "The declarations I made at that time," Rubashov