In passing, they both turned their heads towards Rubashov and Richard.
They were just about to leave the room, when the girl pointed her finger at the pen drawing on the Pieta; they stopped to look at it.
“Is it very di-disturbing when I s-stammer?” asked Richard in a low voice, staring down at the floor.
“One must control oneself,” said Rubashov shortly.
He could not now let any feeling of intimacy creep into the conversation.
“It will b-be b-better in a minute,” said Richard, and his Adam’s apple moved convulsively up and down.
“Anny always laughed at me about it, you kn-now.”
As long as the couple remained in the room, Rubashov could not steer the conversation.
The back of the man in uniform nailed him down next to Richard.
The common danger helped the boy over his shyness; he even slid a bit closer to Rubashov.
“She was fond of me all the s-same,” he continued, whispering in another, quieter kind of agitation.
“I n-never knew quite how to take her.
She did not want to have the child, b-but she could not get rid of it.
P-perhaps they won’t do anything to her as she is p-pregnant.
You c-can see it quite clearly, you know.
Do you think that they beat pregnant women, t-too?”
With his chin, he indicated the young man in uniform. In the same instant the young man suddenly turned his head towards Richard.
For a second they looked at each other.
The young man in uniform said something to the girl in a low voice; she too turned her head.
Rubashov again grasped his cigarette case, but this time let it go while still in his pocket.
The girl said something and pulled the young man away with her. The pair of them left the gallery slowly, the man rather hesitatingly. One heard the girl giggling again outside and their footsteps receding.
Richard turned his head and followed them with his eyes.
As he moved, Rubashov gained a better view of the drawing; he could now see the Virgin’s thin arms up to the elbow. They were meagre, little girl’s arms, raised weightlessly towards the invisible shaft of the cross.
Rubashov looked at his watch.
The boy moved a bit further away from him on the sofa.
“We must come to a conclusion,” said Rubashov. “If I understand you rightly, you said that you purposely did not distribute our material because you did not agree with its contents.
But neither did we agree with the contents of your leaflets.
You will understand, comrade, that certain consequences must come of that.”
Richard turned his reddened eyes towards him. Then he lowered his head.
“You know yourself that the material you sent was full of nonsense,” he said in a flat voice.
He had suddenly stopped stammering.
“Of that I know nothing,” said Rubashov drily.
“You wrote as if nothing had happened,” said Richard in the same tired voice.
“They beat the Party to shambles, and you just wrote phrases about our unbroken will to victory—the same kind of lies as the communique in the Great War.
Whoever we showed it to would just spit.
You must know all that yourself.”
Rubashov looked at the boy, who now sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his chin on his red fists.
He answered drily:
“For the second time you ascribe to me an opinion which I do not hold.
I must ask you to stop doing so.”
Richard looked at him unbelievingly out of his inflamed eyes.
Rubashov went on.
“The Party is going through a severe trial.
Other revolutionary parties have been through even more difficult ones.
The decisive factor is our unbroken will.
Whoever now goes soft and weak does not belong in our ranks.
Whoever spreads an atmosphere of panic plays into our enemy’s hands.
What his motives are in doing so does not make any difference.
By his attitude he becomes a danger to our movement, and will be treated accordingly.”
Richard still sat with his chin in his hands, his face turned to Rubashov.