Gletkin stood up. His boots creaked. He stood by the chair on which Ivanov’s leg rested.
“I recognize his past merits,” he said.
“But to-day he has become as harmful as my fat peasant was; only more dangerous.”
Ivanov looked up into Gletkin’s expressionless eyes.
“I have given him a fortnight’s time for reflection,” he said.
“Until that is over I want him to be left in peace.”
Ivanov had spoken in his official tone.
Gletkin was his subordinate.
He saluted and left the canteen with creaking boots. Ivanov remained seated.
He drank another glass, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out in front of him. After a while he stood up and limped over to the two officers to watch their game of chess.
3
Since his first hearing, Rubashov’s standard of life had improved miraculously.
Already on the following morning the old turnkey had brought him paper, pencil, soap and a towel. At the same time he gave Rubashov prison vouchers to the value of the cash he had had in his possession when he was arrested, and explained to him that he now had the right to order tobacco and extra food from the prisoners’ canteen.
Rubashov ordered his cigarettes and some food.
The old man was just as surly and monosyllabic as ever, but he shuffled up promptly with the things Rubashov had asked for.
Rubashov thought for a moment of demanding a doctor from outside the prison, but he forgot about it.
His tooth did not hurt for the moment, and when he had washed and had had something to eat, he felt much better.
The courtyard had been cleared of snow, and groups of prisoners walked round it for their daily exercise.
It had been interrupted because of the snow; only Hare-lip and his companion had been allowed daily ten minutes’ walk, perhaps because of special doctor’s orders; every time that they entered or left the yard, Hare-lip had looked up to Rubashov’s window.
The gesture was so clear as to exclude any possibility of doubt. When Rubashov was not working at his notes or walking up and down his cell, he stood at the window with his forehead against the pane, and watched the Prisoners during their round of exercise.
This occurred in groups of twelve at a time, who circled round the yard in pairs at a distance of ten paces from each other.
In the middle of the yard stood four uniformed officials who saw that the prisoners did not talk; they formed the axis of the roundabout, which turned slowly and steadily for exactly twenty minutes.
Then the prisoners were conducted back into the building through the door on the right, while simultaneously a new group entered the yard through the left door, and went through the same monotonous roundabout until the next relief.
During the first few days Rubashov had looked for familiar faces, but found none.
That relieved him: for the moment he wanted to avoid any possible reminder of the outside world, anything which might distract him from his task.
His task was to work his thoughts to a conclusion, to come to terms with the past and future, with the living and the dead.
He had still ten days left of the term set by Ivanov.
He could only hold his thoughts by writing them down; but writing exhausted him so much that he could at the most force himself to it for an hour or two a day.
The rest of the time his brain worked on its own account.
Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well.
Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the “first person singular,” and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit.
Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries.
He found out that those processes wrongly known as “monologues” are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as “I” instead of “you”, in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation and even refuses to be localized in time and space.
Now, however, it seemed to Rubashov that the habitually silent partner spoke sometimes, without being addressed and without any visible pretext; his voice sounded totally unfamiliar to Rubashov, who listened in honest wonder and found that his own lips were moving.
These experiences held nothing mystic or mysterious; they were of a quite concrete character; and by his observations Rubashov gradually became convinced that there was a thoroughly tangible component in this first person singular, which had remained silent through all these years and now had started to speak.
This discovery preoccupied Rubashov far more intensely than did the details of his interview with Ivanov.
He considered it as settled that he would not accept Ivanov’s proposals, and that he would refuse to go on with the game; in consequence, he had only a limited time still to live; and this conviction formed the basis of his reflections.
He did not think at all of the absurd story of a plot against No. 1’s life; he was far more interested in the personality of Ivanov himself.
Ivanov had said that their rules . could equally well have been reversed; in that he was doubtless right.
He himself and Ivanov were twins in their development; they did not come from the same ovum, yet were nourished by the same umbilical cord of a common conviction; the intense environment of the Party had etched and moulded the character of both during the decisive years of development.
They had the same moral standard, the same philosophy, they thought in the same terms.
Their positions might just as well have been the other way round.
Then Rubashov would have sat behind the desk and Ivanov in front of it; and from that position Rubashov would probably have used the same arguments as had Ivanov. The rules of the game were fixed. They only admitted variations in detail.
The old compulsion to think through the minds of others had again taken hold of him; he sat in Ivanov’s place and saw himself through Ivanov’s eyes, in the position of the accused, as once he had seen Richard and Little Loewy.
He saw this degraded Rubashov, the shadow of the former companion, and he understood the mixture of tenderness and contempt with which Ivanov had treated him.
During their discussion, he had repeatedly asked himself whether Ivanov was sincere or hypocritical; whether he was laying traps for him, or really wanted to show him a way of escape.
Now, putting himself in Ivanov’s position, he realized that Ivanov was sincere—as much so or as little, as he himself had been towards Richard or Little Loewy.
These reflections also had the form of a monologue, but along familiar lines; that newly discovered entity, the silent partner, did not participate in them. Although it was supposed to be the person addressed in all monologues, it remained dumb, and its existence was limited to a grammatical abstraction called the “first person singular”. Direct questions and logical meditations did not induce it to speak; its utterances occurred without visible cause and, strangely enough, always accompanied by a sharp attack of toothache.
Its mental sphere seemed to be composed of such various and disconnected parts as the folded hands of the Pieta, Little Loewy’s cats, the tune of the song with the refrain of “come to dust”, or a particular sentence which Arlova had once spoken on a particular occasion.
Its means of expression were equally fragmentary: for instance, the compulsion to rub one’s pince-nez on one’s sleeve, the impulse to touch the light patch on the wall of Ivanov’s room, the uncontrollable movements of the lips which murmured such senseless sentences as “I shall pay”, and the dazed state induced by daydreams of past episodes in one’s life.