Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [90]
6
After five or six days an incident occurred: Rubashov fainted during the examination. They had just arrived at the concluding point in the accusation: the question of the motive for Rubashov's actions. The accusation defined the motive simply as "counter-revolutionary mentality", and mentioned casually, as if it were self-evident, that he had been in the service of a hostile foreign Power. Rubashov fought his last battle against that formulation. The discussion had lasted from dawn to the middle of the morning, when Rubashov, at a quite undramatic moment, slid sideways from his chair and remained lying on the ground. When he came to a few minutes later, he saw the little fluff-covered skull of the doctor over him, pouring water on his face out of a bottle, and rubbing his temples. Rubashov felt the doctor's breath, which smelt of peppermint and bread-and-dripping, and was sick. The doctor scolded in his shrill voice, and advised that Rubashov should be taken into the fresh air for a minute. Gletkin had watched the scene with his expressionless eyes. He rang and ordered the carpet to be cleaned; then he let Rubashov be conducted back to his cell. A few minutes later, he was taken by the old warder into the yard for exercise. For the first few minutes Rubashov was as if intoxicated by the biting fresh air. He discovered that he had lungs which drank in oxygen, as the palate a sweet refreshing drink. The sun shone pale and clear; it was just eleven in the morning the hour at which he always used to be taken for his walk an immeasurable time ago, before this long, hazy row of days and nights had started. What a fool he had been not to appreciate this blessing. Why could one not just live and breathe and walk through the snow and feel the pale warmth of the sun on one's face? Shake off the nightmare of Gletkin's room, the glaring light of the lamp, that whole ghostlymise en scène --and live as other people do? As it was the usual hour for his exercise, he again had the thin peasant with the bast-shoes as neighbour in the roundabout. He watched sideways as Rubashov walked along beside him with slightly swaying steps, cleared his throat once or twice, and said, with a glance at the warders: "I have not seen you for a long time, your honour. You look ill, as though you won't last much longer. They say there will be a war." Rubashov said nothing. He resisted the temptation to pick up a handful of snow and press it to a ball in his hand. The circle moved slowly round the yard. Twenty paces ahead the next pair stamped along between the low banks of snow--two men of about the same height in grey coats, with little clouds of steam in front of their mouths. "It will soon be sowing time," said the peasant. "After the melting of the snows the sheep go into the hills. It takes three days until they are up there. Before, all the villages in the district sent their sheep on the journey the same day. At sunrise it started, sheep everywhere, on all paths and fields, the whole village accompanied the herds during the first day. You have perhaps in all your life never seen so many sheep, your honour, and so many dogs and so much dust and such barking and bleating. ... Mother of God, what merriment it was. ..." Rubashov held his face lifted to the sun; the sun was still pale, but already it lent the air a tepid softness. He watched the gliding, swerving play of the birds, high above the machine-gun turret. The peasant's whining voice went on: "A day like to-day, when one smells the melting of the snow in the air, takes hold of me. We will neither of us