Richard was half a head bigger than he and much broader, but he held his shoulders hunched, making himself small beside Rubashov and shortening his steps.
After a few paces he said:
“Was that meant to be a warning, when I asked you if I could go on living with my friend and you said ‘Better not’?”
Rubashov saw a taxi with bright lights coming up the avenue. He stopped on the curb and waited for it to come closer.
Richard was standing beside him.
“I have no more to say to you, Richard,” Rubashov said, and hailed the taxi.
“Comrade—b-but you couldn’t d-denounce me, comrade ...” said Richard.
The taxi slowed down, it was no more than twenty paces from them.
Richard stood hunched in front of Rubashov; he had caught the sleeve of Rubashov’s overcoat and was talking straight down into his face; Rubashov felt his breath and a slight dampness sprayed on to his forehead.
“I am not an enemy of the Party,” said Richard. “You c-can’t throw me to the wolves, c-comrade ...”
The taxi stopped at the curb; the driver must certainly have heard the last word Rubashov calculated rapidly that it was no use sending Richard away; there was a policeman posted a hundred yards further up.
The driver, a little old man in a leather jacket, looked at them expressionlessly.
“To the station,” said Rubashov and got in.
The taxi driver reached back with his right arm and slammed the door behind him.
Richard stood on the edge of the pavement, cap in hand; his Adam’s apple moved rapidly up and down.
The taxi started; it drove off towards the policeman; it passed the policeman.
Rubashov preferred not to look back, but he knew that Richard was still standing on the edge of the pavement, staring at the taxi’s red rear-light.
For a few minutes, they drove through busy streets; the taxi driver turned his head round several times, as if he wanted to make sure that his passenger was still inside.
Rubashov knew the town too little to make out whether they were really going to the station.
The streets became quieter; at the end of an avenue appeared a massive building with a large illuminated clock, they stopped at the station.
Rubashov got out; the taxis in this town had no meters yet.
“How much is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said the driver.
His face was old and creased; he pulled a dirty red rag out of the pocket of his leather coat and blew his nose with ceremony.
Rubashov looked at him attentively through his pince-nez.
He was certain he had not seen that face before.
The driver put his handkerchief away.
“For people like yourself, sir, it’s always free,” he said and busied himself with the handbrake.
Suddenly he held his hand out. It was an old man’s hand with thickened veins and black nails.
“Good luck, sir,” he said, smiling rather sheepishly at Rubashov.
“If your young friend ever wants anything—my stand is in front of the museum.
You can send him my number, sir.”
Rubashov saw to his right a porter leaning against a post and looking at them.
He did not take the driver’s outstretched hand; he put a coin into it and went into the station, without a word.
He had to wait an hour for the departure of the train.
He drank bad coffee in the buffet; his tooth tormented him.
In the train he fell into a doze and dreamed he had to run in front of the engine.
Richard and the taxi-driver were standing in it; they wanted to run him over because he had cheated them of the fare.
The wheels came rattling closer and closer and his feet refused to move.
He woke up with nausea and felt the cold perspiration on his forehead; the other people in the compartment looked at him in slight astonishment.
Outside was night; the train was rushing through a dark enemy country, the affair with Richard had to be concluded, his tooth was aching.
A week later he was arrested.
10
Rubashov leant his forehead against the window and looked down into the yard He was tired in the legs and dizzy in the head from walking up and down.
He looked at his watch; a quarter to twelve; he had been walking to and fro in his cell for nearly four hours on end, since first the Pieta had occurred to him.
It did not surprise him; he was well enough acquainted with the day-dreams of imprisonment, with the intoxication which emanates from the whitewashed walls.
He remembered a younger comrade, by profession a hairdresser’s assistant, telling him how, in his second and worst year of solitary confinement, he had dreamed for seven hours on end with his eyes open; in doing so he had walked twenty-eight kilometres, in a cell five paces long, and had blistered his feet without noticing it.
This time, however, it had come rather quickly; already, the first day the voice had befallen him, whereas during his previous experiences it had started only after several weeks.
Another strange thing was that he had thought of the past; chronic prison day-dreamers dreamed nearly always of the future—and of the past only as it might have been, never as it actually had been.
Rubashov wondered what other surprises his mental apparatus held in store for him.