“Half an hour ago you made me a speech full of the most impassioned attacks against our policy, any fraction of which would have been enough to finish you off.
And now you deny such a simple logical deduction as that you belonged to an oppositional group, for which, in any case, we hold all the proofs.”
“Really?” said Rubashov.
“If you have all the proofs, why do you need my confession?
Proofs of what, by the way?”
“Amongst others,” said Ivanov slowly, “proofs of a projected attempt on No. 1’s life.”
Again there was a silence.
Rubashov put on his pince-nez. “Allow me to ask you a question in my turn,” he said
“Do you really believe this idiocy or do you only pretend to?”
In the corners of Ivanov’s eyes appeared the same nearly tender smile as before:
“I told you. We have proofs.
To be more exact: confessions.
To be still more exact: the confession of the man who was actually to commit the attempt on your instigation.”
“Congratulations,” said Rubashov.
“What is his name?”
Ivanov went on smiling.
“An indiscreet question.”
“May I read that confession?
Or be confronted with the man?”
Ivanov smiled.
He blew the smoke of his cigarette with friendly mockery into Rubashov’s face.
It was unpleasant to Rubashov, but he did not move his head.
“Do you remember the veronal?” said Ivanov slowly.
“I think I have already asked you that.
Now the roles are interchanged: to-day it is you who are about to throw yourself head first down the precipice.
But not with my help.
You then convinced me that suicide was petty bourgeois romanticism.
I shall see that you do not succeed in committing it.
Then we shall be quits.”
Rubashov was silent.
He was thinking over whether Ivanov was lying or sincere—and at the same time he had the strange wish, almost a physical impulse, to touch the light patch on the wall with his fingers.
“Nerves,” he thought. “Obsessions.
Stepping only on the black tiles, murmuring senseless phrases, rubbing my pince-nez on my sleeve—there, I am doing it again. ...”
“I am curious to know,” he said aloud, “what scheme you have for my salvation.
The way in which you have examined me up till now seems to have exactly the opposite aim.”
Ivanov’s smile became broad and beaming.
“You old fool,” he said, and, reaching over the table, he grasped Rubashov’s coat button.
“I was obliged to let you explode once, else you would have exploded at the wrong time.
Haven’t you even noticed that I have no stenographer present?”
He took a cigarette out of the case and forced it into Rubashov’s mouth without letting go his coat button.
“You’re behaving like an infant. bike a romantic infant,” he added.
“Now we are going to concoct a nice little confession and that will be all for to-day.”
Rubashov at last managed to free himself from Ivanov’s grip.
He looked at him sharply through his pince-nez.
“And what would be in this confession?” he asked
Ivanov beamed at hint unabatedly.
“In the confession will be written,” he said, “that you admit, since such and such a year, to have belonged to such and such a group of the opposition; but that you emphatically deny having organized or planned an assassination; that, on the contrary, you withdrew from the group when you learned of the opposition’s criminal and terrorist plans.”
For the first time during their discussion, Rubashov smiled, too.
“If that is the object of all this talk,” he said, “we can break it off immediately.”
“Let me finish what I was going to say,” said Ivanov without any impatience.