Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [86]
to his cell, tohe unconscious on his bunk until the torment started anew, he put a question to Gletkin. It had nothing to do with the point under discussion, but Rubashov knew that each time a new deposition was to be signed, Gletkin became a shade more tractable--Gletkin paid cash. The question Rubashov asked--concerned the fate of Ivanov. "Citizen Ivanov is under arrest," said Gletkin. "May one know the reason?" asked Rubashov. "Citizen Ivanov conducted the examination of your case negligently, and in private conversation expressed cynical doubts as to the well-foundedness of the accusation." "What if he really could not believe in it?" asked Rubashov. "He had perhaps too good an opinion of me?" "In that case," said Gletkin, "he should have suspended the enquiry and should have officially informed the competent authorities that in his opinion you were innocent." Was Gletkin mocking him? He looked as correct and expressionless as ever. The next time that Rubashov again stood bowed over the day's record, with Gletkin's warm fountain pen in his hand--the stenographer had already left the room--he said: "May I ask you another question?" While speaking, he looked at the broad scar on Gletkin's skull. "I was told that you were a partisan of certain drastic methods--the so-called ‘hard method'. Why have you never used direct physical pressure on me?" "You mean physical torture," said Gletkin in a matter-of-fact tone. "As you know, that is forbidden by our criminal code." He paused. Rubashov had just finished signing the protocol. "Besides," Gletkin continued, "there is a certain type of accused who confess under pressure, but recant at the public trial. You belong to that tenacious kind. The political utility of your confession at the trial will lie in its voluntary character." It was the first time that Gletkin had spoken of a public trial. But on the way back along the corridor, walking behind the giant, with short tired steps, it was not this perspective which occupied Rubashov, but the sentence "you belong to that tenacious kind". Against his will, this sentence filled him with a pleasant self-satisfaction. I am becoming senile and childish, he thought as he lay down on his bunk. Yet the pleasant feeling lasted until he fell asleep. Each time he had, after tenacious argument, signed a new confession and lain down on his bunk, exhausted and yet in a strange way satisfied, with the knowledge that he would be wakened in an hour or at most two--each time Rubashov had but one wish: that Gletkin would just once let him sleep and come to his senses. He knew that this desire would not be fulfilled until the fight was fought to the bitter end, and the last dot put on the last "i"--and he knew, too, that each new duel would end in a new defeat and that there could be no possible doubt about the final result. Why, then, did he go on tormenting himself and letting himself be tormented, instead of giving up the lost battle, so as not to be wakened any more? The idea of death had a long time ago lost any metaphysical character; it had a warm, tempting, bodily meaning--that of sleep. And yet a peculiar, twisted sense of duty forced him to remain awake and continue the lost battle to the end--even though it were only a battle with windmills. To continue until the hour when Gletkin would have forced him down the last rung of the ladder, and in his blinking eyes, the last clumsy smudge of the accusation had been turned into a logically dotted "i". He had to follow the road until the end. Then only, when he entered the darkness with open eyes, had he conquered the right to sleep and not to be wakened any more. In Gletkin, too, a certain change occurred during this unbroken chain of days and nights. It was not much, but Rubashov's feverish eyes did not miss it. Until the end Gletkin sat stiffly with unmoved face and creaking cuffs in the shadow of his lamp behind the desk; but gradually, bit by bit, the brutality faded from his voice, in the same way as, bit by bit, he had turned down the shrill light of the lamp, until it had become nearly