Midnight in the Century (NYRB Classics) (27 page)

“And this fellow, this Prokofii, what have you done with him? And all his brothers?”

Ryzhik went back to the desk, jaws clenched, and added a sentence to the epistle—which the other man, in his Kremlin, would certainly read—with shame and spite . . .

. . . Now Fedossenko, reading it, was overcome by confusion and anxiety.
They
would know that he had read this formidable text. And how, indeed, could he forget it? They would know that he would never forget it. Certain phrases stood out, stuck in his brain in spite of himself, like hidden nails, clinging to the venerated image of the Chief, deforming it, besmirching it. The poison of counter-revolution was insinuating itself into his brain—but the worst, the irreparable part, was that
they
would know it . . . He sealed the envelope containing the two appeals: “Forwarded to the CCC of the Party without examining the contents, in conformity with the regulation dated . . .” Eh! Who would believe him? Messages from prisoners were handed in unsealed.

Fedossenko had a decent cell fixed up for Ryzhik, with a desk, a chair, a bed, two odd volumes of Lenin’s
Works
. . . “Just wait a little until I get the shadow of evidence against you, and you’ll see how much your titles impress me. I’ll give you a taste of straw, black stone, and salt-fish soup.” Through a supreme touch of cleverness in his villainy, Ryzhik was succeeding in compromising him: him, a man unshakably loyal to the general line, pure in every thought, devoted to the point of death to the Chief—to “Koba, the organizer of famine, the harbinger of Fascism in Germany . . .” Fedossenko muttered vile curses under his breath at the idea that this repulsive epithet had clung, all by itself, in his mind, to the exalted image of . . .

Comrade Knapp, the District Chief, Fedossenko’s superior, entered familiarly without knocking. “Well, that difficult case? We have so little time, Alexei Alexeich . . .” Knapp was bent and cave-chested with a shrivelled, wrinkled head tottering over a crumpled scare-crow neck supported by the stooped shoulders of an old consumptive. Even the lenses of his
pince-nez
glasses were grey. He was rarely seen: he gave his underlings free reign, himself absorbed in the composition of his reports to the Centre, which he wrote in the idiosyncratic language of a former German prisoner. This time he was friendly, chatting of this and that. “When you’re finished, Alexei Alexeich, we’ll take a nice hunting trip together . . . hmm . . . hmm . . .” Fedossenko felt his opportunity taking shape. Knapp gave him only one suggestion, but when he made it, he assumed his official voice—neutral, matching the grey reflections of his glasses: “Naturally, the proceedings must be prompt, efficient, and entirely regular . . .”

Knapp withdrew with light footsteps. He had forgotten the very memory of the little file clerk at the Nuremburg Town Hall, Gottfried Knapp, member of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, who in 1910 was saving his money to buy a suite of Tietz furniture, before the mobilizations, the bombings, the devastations, the requisitions, the Volga, the Ural, Tashkent—in a word the Year One Thousand. He demanded an extremely conspicuous zeal from his subordinates, in order that it should be noticed. What, indeed, is the use of unnoticed zeal? And life is so tiring: let’s keep our troubles to a minimum. He never bothered anyone, being himself relegated to minor positions in the North on account of his irrational attachment to Clara Zetkin, who was connected with the German Right—Brandler, Thalheimer, designated as unstable elements in the International and ultimately expelled. From time to time he went hunting. The Ford would deposit him at the edge of a thicket, which he entered resolutely, preceded by his dog. Two orderlies would wait for him in the middle of the living silence of the forest. Knapp strode along for a half-hour, barely straying from a straight line. He penetrated the silence, contemplated a tall anthill, smiled with all his yellow teeth at the dog, who came back to inform him, with frisking and tail-wagging, that they were approaching a burrow. “Not yet, my friend, not yet.” The animal looked at him affectionately, like no one else on earth. Knapp began whistling through his teeth, louder and louder, until he filled the forest with uninterrupted, enchanted harmonies . . . If a well-aimed shot had killed him during one of these moments, he would have died far above himself, far beyond himself.

Knapp wanted to interrogate Elkin, from whom Fedossenko had got nothing more than a few annoying jokes. “We are among old Party members, Comrade Elkin . . .”

“Really, Comrade Kneppe . . .”

“Excuse me, it’s Knapp . . .”

“No, Kneppe, if you please, esteemed Comrade. I would be unable to pronounce Knapp, for I used to know a fawning dog who bore that name . . .”

Elkin exuded insolence. Kneppe shook his head and grimaced. “The old dead rat,” thought Elkin, with a joyful expression.

“Do you have any statements to make?”

“No.”

“Any complaints?”

“Yes indeed. A pile of them, which you must have received in written form. Your establishment is hardly on par with socialism, citizen chief. Beginning with the bedbugs.”

“I know. Do you think that we are on par with socialism, you and I?”

“Me, yes. You, no. I doubt that you are one step above the police of the Empire . . .”

Kneppe threw him a vague look. The replies of this man of the Year Eighteen, pulled out of a cell of the Year Thirty-Four, reminded him in a ridiculous way of his youth, of the little roving Chekas, of days and nights of danger, of an enthusiasm sure of itself, sure of holding the world—and long since erased from his soul . . .

“A strange creature,” he said between his teeth, wearily. “Very well. Goodbye.”

“Isn’t it tiresome, all these useless formalities, Comrade Kneppe?” added Elkin with the most hurtful condescension he could summon.

Rodion’s arrest didn’t add anything new. They knew perfectly well that he would turn himself in, for the Opposition is disciplined: you hold them all, the ones through the others . . . He did, in fact, come. Greeted by a sharp “What do you want?” from the Runt, the lad said: “I’ve come to ask you for news of my comrades.”

“Why they’re fine. Everyone is fine in our establishment,” answered the Runt who, after all, perhaps even believed it. “Anyway, you’re going to see for yourself . . .” He led Rodion to an isolation-cell, in a cellar with walls of bare black stone. A perpetual twilight descended through a grilled ventilator. Above, outside, a sentry paced by; the faint sound of footsteps announced passers-by whose unlined shadows blocked the gloomy grey light for a second.

“You see, citizen,” said the Runt. “You have fresh air.”

* * *

By the time he had lost ten days, Fedossenko was nearly out of his mind. Even Kostrov was resisting, despite his declarations of loyalty, despite his sick heart, the lack of news from his wife and his daughter, despite the filthy cell where he was kept, alone with a miserable wretch who lay in his own excrement. He looked older every day—hirsute, jaundiced, puffy-faced, tortured by a sty in his right eye. He spent his days sprawled in the straw, as far away from the other fellow as he could get, moving as little as possible to conserve his failing strength. Fedossenko had him brought to his office one last time. “This time I’ll break him, or the case is wrecked and my promotion with it.”

“Sit down, Kostrov. Ah! You don’t look well. I’m sorry for you. If I treat you harshly, it’s because I have orders. When the Republic is going through a crisis like this, it’s no time to coddle two-faced people. We treat declared enemies better: they deserve a certain amount of respect and then, with them, we know where we stand. Maybe they’ll never get out of here, but at least we can give them the only ventilated cell, right?”

“Kostrov, I’m appealing to you for the last time, in your own interest. Understand me clearly: the chance I’m offering you will be your last. Just declare to me: I’m a Trotskyist—and refuse to answer. You’ll get better treatment right away, I’ll close the investigation, and I’ll send you the doctor first thing tomorrow. That admission is all I want from you. Naturally, you will be treated with increased rigour for having deceived us for so long. But you’re not afraid of jail, I know that.”

(This would have been ideal, a blank check for Fedossenko; the un-hoped for advantage of unmasking an Oppositionist who had concealed himself for years, in short a master-stroke.)

“You’re shaking your head? You refuse? Well then I want to try to believe you. I’m speaking to you as a Party comrade. I am at my post, a Bolshevik like yourself. They tortured you in Romania? They stabbed me in Transcaspia. We survive for the same cause, you and I. It’s for the socialist fatherland that we are here. Go ahead and smoke. Take the whole pack, you can take it with you. In a little while I’ll give you some good news about your wife and child. But before questioning you, I’m going to share some secrets with you . . .”

Kostrov was coming out of his annihilation. Even if some new trap was being set for him, at least this voice had a human accent. And it was speaking truly: we are members of the same Party. Distantly, strangely shrunken, the images of Ganna and Tamarochka passed through his mind. Alive, both of them. Tiny luminous particles coursed through his veins. Fedossenko enveloped him in a confidential voice. “You have no idea what is going on in the countryside. You think the resistance of the peasantry to collectivization has been overcome? Come now! Listen to a few statistics about livestock, crops and social crimes in the countryside—unpublishable statistics . . .” Here Kostrov, interested, asked a question. Indeed, the gravity of the situation surpassed expectations. “How the newspapers lie! (
An admission that didn’t make anything better
.) Furthermore, the war-preparations of Japan and Germany, the state transportation system, the gold-reserve situation, the persistent sabotage in the Donetz basin . . . Kostrov can you now see the state we’re in?”

Kostrov, completely alert now, said: “Yes.”

“Danger everywhere. The power of the proletarian State undermined in its most vital functions and the impossibility of publishing these facts, which would disarm all the oppositions, for the Chief—forget his personality, forget theoretical disputes and events which at this point belong only to history—remains under the circumstances the sole rallying point for the forces of the Party. His personal authority is our principal chance for salvation. Can’t you see that, Kostrov? You, an old Party man? Are you so embittered by your personal frustrations?”

“No,” said Kostrov enthusiastically. “Comrade Fedossenko, I beg you to . . . Why that’s the very reason I made my submission to the Central Committee in 1928 . . . I . . .”

Fedossenko let him get up, wander around the room with the floating steps of a drunk. How dirty he was! Wisps of straw in his hair, grey bristles thickening his neck . . . Fedossenko went over to him as he stood in the corner of the room, between the safe and the door to the secretariat, and backed him amiably against the wall.

“You don’t know all of it yet, Kostrov . . . This is the time that those hare-brains on the far Left, those people without the least consciousness who, in spite of themselves are doing everything they can to unleash the backward, discontented masses against the power of the Soviets, have chosen to conspire . . . Your comrades here, all these Ryzhiks, these Elkins . . .

“Reports on the deportees in Kansk, in Minusinsk, in Turgai, in Krassnokokshiask, combined with the reports from the directors of the Federal penitentiaries, have put the finger on a vast underground organization, spread out across the whole USSR, connected with centres abroad . . .

“They’re sincere, they have the revolutionary flame, we know it as well as you do, Kostrov. But does that make them any less dangerous? And now I’m asking you: which side are you on? With them or with us? If you’re with us, you must help me right away. The Chernoe case is not very important, but I have to get to the bottom of it. What are the theses they discuss? You must know from . . .”

“Why the Verkhne-Uralsk theses, of course, and the ones from the
Bulletin
on the liquidation of under-mechanized
Kolkhozes
, on the adventuristic and exploitative mentality directing industrialization on the
Alianza Obrera
in Spain . . .”

They kept to the terrain of ideas, but already the very mention of Verkhne-Uralsk pointed an accusing finger at Varvara, established a connection with the Left’s Federation in the isolator. The mention of the
Bulletin
traced that connection back to Prinkipo, Berlin, Paris; the
Alianza Obrera
, what was that? Italian or Spanish: something concerning the Communist International in any case . . . Fedossenko would have rubbed his hands together, if it hadn’t been necessary to play his cards close to his chest. His report would make a magnificent impression . . .

“Don’t mention any names, if you prefer not to, Kostrov. I respect your scruples. Talk to me about the ideas with precision. I note . . .”

Rodion’s name appeared, nonetheless, after two hours, in M. I. Kostrov’s detailed statement on the illegal activities of the Chernoe Trotskyist Centre. Kostrov, exhausted by his mental effort, was holding his head in both hands. He still hoped he hadn’t said anything in any way compromising, for these ideas were known, but he was wincing with physical self-disgust. Maybe it was only hunger.

Fedossenko rang. He, too, felt broken. When the Runt entered, he ordered, very quietly:

“Have them give him a bath. Soup from the ward-room. A clean cell.”

The Runt, standing at attention, replied:

“Right, Comrade Chief. I have a report to make, Comrade Chief about the demand of prisoner Rodion, who presented himself voluntarily this morning. He wants to make a confession, Comrade Chief.”

“What?”

“Precisely, Comrade Chief, just as I said.”

Kostrov left. In his hand, an incredible little rectangle of thin cardboard: a card postmarked Moscow in Ganna’s handwriting . . . Yet no fever lighted up within him. Wearily, as if he had been emptied of himself, he headed for the passage to the cellars. The Runt pushed past him, amiably. “No, this way, citizen, allow me . . .” This way, any way, what difference did it make? To sleep. To end.