The house was silent after the one shrill woman’s cry, but they had the feeling that all the inhabitants were awake in their beds, holding their breath.
Then they heard someone in an upper story pull the plug and the water rushing down evenly through the pipes.
4
At the front door stood the car in which the officials had come, a new American make.
It was still dark; the chauffeur had put on the headlights, the street was asleep or pretended to be. They got in, first the lad, then Rubashov, then the elder official.
The chauffeur, who was also in uniform, started the car.
Beyond the corner the asphalt surface stopped; they were still in the centre of the town; all around them were brig modern buildings of nine and ten stories, but the roads were country cart tracks of frozen mud, with a thin powdering of snow in the cracks.
The chauffeur drove at a walking pace and the superbly sprung motor car creaked and groaned like an oxen wagon.
“Drive faster,” said the lad, who could not bear the silence in the car.
The chauffeur shrugged his shoulders without looking round.
He had given Rubashov an indifferent and unfriendly look as he got into the car.
Rubashov had once had an accident; the man at the wheel of the ambulance-car had looked at him in the same way.
The slow, jolting drive through the dead streets, with the wavering light of the head lamps before them, was difficult to stand.
“How far is it?” asked Rubashov, without looking at his companions.
He nearly added: to the hospital.
“A good half-hour,” said the older man in uniform.
Rubashov dug cigarettes out of his pocket, put one in his mouth and passed the packet round automatically.
The young man refused abruptly, the elder one took two and passed one on to the chauffeur.
The chauffeur touched his cap and gave everybody a light, holding the steering-wheel with one hand.
Rubashov’s heart became lighter; at the same time he was annoyed with himself for it.
Just the time to get sentimental, he thought.
But he could not resist the temptation to speak and to awaken a little human warmth around him.
“A pity for the car,” he said.
“Foreign cars cost quite a bit of gold, and after half a year on our roads they are finished.”
“There you are quite right.
Our roads are very backward,” said the old official.
By his tone Rubashov realized that he had understood his helplessness.
He felt like a dog to whom one had just thrown a bone; he decided not to speak again.
But suddenly the boy said aggressively:
“Are they any better in the capitalist states?”
Rubashov had to grin.
“Were you ever outside?” he asked
“I know all the same what it is like there,” said the boy.
“You need not try to tell me stories about it.”
“Whom do you take me for, exactly?” asked Rubashov very quietly.
But he could not prevent himself from adding: “You really ought to study the Party history a bit.”
The boy was silent and looked fixedly at the driver’s back.
Nobody spoke.
For the third time the driver choked off the panting engine and let it in again, cursing.
They jolted through the suburbs; in the appearance of the miserable wooden houses nothing was changed.
Above their crooked silhouettes hung the moon, pale and cold
5
In every corridor of the new model prison electric light was burning.
It lay bleakly on the iron galleries, on the bare whitewashed walls, on the cell doors with the name cards and the black holes of the judas-eyes.
This colourless light, and the shrill echoless sound of their steps on the tiled paving were so familiar to Rubashov that for a few seconds he played with the illusion that he was dreaming again.
He tried to make himself believe that the whole thing was not real.
If I succeed in believing that I am dreaming, then it will really be a dream, he thought.
He tried so intensely that he nearly became dizzy; then immediately a choking shame rose in him.
This has to be gone through, he thought.
Right through to the end They reached cell No. 404.