Rubashov lived by day and by night in the atmosphere of her large, lazy body.
Her behaviour during work remained unaltered, her voice and the expression of her eyes was the same; never did they contain the least suggestion of an allusion.
From time to time, when Rubashov was tired by dictating, he stopped behind her chair and leaned his hands on her shoulders; he said nothing, and under the blouse her warm shoulders did not move; then he found the phrase he had been searching for, and, resuming his wandering through the room, he went on dictating.
Sometimes he added sarcastic commentaries to what he was dictating; then she stopped writing and waited, pencil in hand, until he had finished; but she never smiled at his sarcasm and Rubashov never discovered what she thought of them.
Only once, after a particularly dangerous joke of Rubashov’s, referring to certain personal habits of No. 1’s she said suddenly, in her sleepy voice:
“You ought not to say such things in front of other people; you ought to be more careful altogether. ...”
But from time to time, particularly when instructions and circulars from above arrived, he felt a need to give vent to his heretical witticisms.
It was the time of preparation for the second great trial of the opposition.
The air in the legation had become peculiarly thin.
Photographs and portraits disappeared from walls overnight; they had hung there for years, nobody had looked at them, but now the light patches leaped to the eye.
The staff restricted their conversation to service matters; they spoke to each other with a careful and reserved politeness. At meals in the Legation canteen, when conversation was unavoidable, they stuck to the stock phrases of official terminology, which, in the familiar atmosphere, appeared grotesque and rather uneasy; it was as though, between requests for salt-cellar and mustard-pot, they called out to each other the catch-words of the latest Congress manifesto.
Often it happened that somebody protested against a supposed false interpretation of what he had just said, and called his neighbours to witness, with precipitate exclamations of
“I did not say that”, or “That is not what I meant”.
The whole thing gave Rubashov the impression of a queer and ceremonious marionette-play with figures, moving on wires, each saying their set piece.
Arlova alone, with her silent, sleepy manner, seemed to remain unchanged.
Not only the portraits on the walls, but also the shelves in the library were thinned out.
The disappearance of certain books and brochures happened discreetly, usually the day after the arrival of a new message from above.
Rubashov made his sarcastic commentaries on it while dictating to Arlova, who received them in silence.
Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves—their author, the People’s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history of antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors of jurisprudence and philosophy; all pamphlets dealing with the problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People’s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People’s state; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopaedia published by the Academy—a new revised edition being promised shortly.
New books arrived, too; the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.
In the meantime, a few weeks ago, an order had come from “above”, to appoint a librarian who would take the political responsibility for the contents of the Legation library.
They had appointed Arlova to this post.
At first Rubashov had mumbled something about a “kindergarten” and had held the whole thing for an imbecility, up to the evening when, at the weekly meeting of the legation Party cell, Arlova had been sharply attacked from several sides.
Three or four speakers, amongst whom was the First Secretary, rose and complained that some of the most important speeches of No. 1 were not to be found in the library, that on the other hand it was still full of oppositional works, and that books by politicians who had since been unmasked as spies, traitors and agents of foreign Powers had until quite recently occupied prominent positions in the shelves; so that one could hardly avoid a suspicion of an intentional demonstration.
The speakers were dispassionate and cuttingly business-like; they used carefully selected phrases. It seemed as though they were giving each other the cues for a prearranged text.
All speeches ended with the conclusion that the Party’s chief duty was to be watchful, to denounce abuses mercilessly, and that whoever did not fulfil this duty made himself an accomplice of the vile saboteurs.
Arlova, summoned to make a statement, said with her usual equanimity, that she was far from having any evil intent, and that she had followed every instruction given to her; but while she was speaking in her deep, slightly blurred voice, she let her glance rest a long time on Rubashov, which she otherwise never did in the presence of others.
The meeting ended with the resolution to give Arlova a “serious warning”.
Rubashov, who knew only too well the methods lately brought into use in the Party, became uneasy.
He guessed that there was something in store for Arlova and felt helpless, because there was nothing tangible to fight against.
The air in the Legation became even thinner.
Rubashov stopped making personal comments while dictating, and that gave him a singular feeling of guilt.
There was apparently no change in his relations with Arlova, but this curious feeling of guilt, which was solely due to the fact that he no longer felt capable of making witty remarks while dictating, prevented him stopping behind her chair and putting his hands on her shoulders, as he used to do.
After a week, Arlova stayed away from his room one evening, and did not come the following evenings either. It was three days before Rubashov could bring himself to ask her the reason.
She answered something about a migraine in her sleepy voice and Rubashov did not press her any further.
From then on she did not come again, with one exception.
This was three weeks after the cell meeting which had pronounced the “serious warning”, and a fortnight after she had first stopped visiting him.
Her behaviour was almost as usual, but the whole evening Rubashov had the feeling that she was waiting for him to say something decisive.
He only said, however, that he was glad she was back again, and that he was overworked and tired—which actually was the case.
In the night he noticed repeatedly that she was awake and staring into the dark. He could not get rid of this tormenting sense of guilt; also his toothache had started again.
That was her last visit to him.
Next day, before Arlova had appeared in his office, the Secretary told Rubashov, in a manner which was supposed to be confidential, but with each sentence carefully formulated, that Arlova’s brother and sister-in-law had been arrested a week ago “over there”. Arlova’s brother had married a foreigner; they were both accused of having treasonable connections with her native country in the service of the opposition.
A few minutes later Arlova arrived for work.
She sat, as always, on her chair in front of the desk, in her embroidered blouse, slightly bent forward.
Rubashov walked up and down behind her, and all the time he had before his eyes her bent neck, with the skin slightly stretched over the neck-bones.
He could not take his eyes off this piece of skin, and felt an uneasiness which amounted to physical discomfort.
The thought would not leave him that “over there” the condemned were shot through the back of the neck.
At the next meeting of the Party cell Arlova was dismissed from her post as librarian because of political untrustworthiness, on the motion of the First Secretary.
No comment was made and there was no discussion.
Rubashov, who was suffering from almost intolerable toothache, had excused himself from attending the meeting.