Perhaps others were also present.
How did they look?
Did the man fall forwards or backwards?
Did he call out?
Perhaps it was necessary to put a second bullet in him to finish him off.
Rubashov smoked and looked at his toes.
It was so quiet that one heard the crackling of the burning cigarette paper.
He took a deep pull on his cigarette.
Nonsense, he said to himself.
Penny novelette.
In actual fact, he had never believed in the technical reality of “physical liquidation”.
Death was an abstraction, especially one’s own.
Probably it was now all over, and what is past has no reality.
It was dark and quiet, and No. 402 had stopped tapping.
He wished that outside somebody might scream to tear this unnatural silence.
He sniffed and noticed that for some time already he had the scent of Arlova in his nostrils. Even the cigarettes smelled of her; she had carried a leather case in her bag and every cigarette out of it had smelled of her powder. ...
The silence persisted. Only the bunk creaked slightly when he moved.
Rubashov was just thinking of getting up and lighting another cigarette when the ticking in the wall started again. THEY ARE COMING, said the ticking.
Rubashov listened.
He heard his pulses hammering in his temples and nothing else.
He waited.
The silence thickened.
He took off his pince-nez and tapped:
I HEAR NOTHING. ...
For a whole while No. 402 did not answer.
Suddenly he tapped, loudly and sharply:
NO. 380. PASS IT ON.
Rubashov sat up quickly.
He understood: the news had been tapped on through eleven cells, by the neighbours of No. 380.
The occupants of the cells between 380 and 402 formed an acoustic relay through darkness and silence.
They were defenceless, locked within their four walls; this was their form of solidarity.
Rubashov jumped from his bunk, pattered over bare-footed to the other wall, posted himself next to the bucket, and tapped to No. 406:
ATTENTION. NO. 380 IS TO BE SHOT NOW. PASS IT ON.
He listened.
The bucket stank; its vapours had replaced the scent of Arlova.
There was no answer.
Rubashov pattered hastily back to the bunk.
This time he tapped not with the pince-nez, but with his knuckles.
WHO IS NO. 380?
There was again no answer.
Rubashov guessed that, like himself, No. 402 was moving pendulum-like between the two walls of his cell.
In the eleven cells beyond him, the inhabitants were hurrying noiselessly, with bare feet, backwards and forwards between the walls.
Now No. 402 was back again at his wall; he announced:
THEY ARE READING THE SENTENCE TO HIM. PASS IT ON.
Rubashov repeated his previous question:
WHO IS HE?
But No. 402 had gone again.
It was no use passing the message on to Rip Van Winkle, yet Rubashov pattered over to the bucket side of the cell and tapped it through; he was driven by an obscure sense of duty, the feeling that the chain must not be broken.
The proximity of the bucket made him feel sick.
He pattered back to the bed and waited.