Secondly, he has been in prison for several months, and at the end was tortured for several days.
If you mention this during the public trial, or even so much as tap it through to your neighbours, I am done for.
About the reasons for treating Bogrov like that, we will speak later.
Thirdly, it was intentional that he was taken past your cell, and intentional that he was told of your presence here.
Fourthly, this filthy trick, as you call it, was not arranged by me, but by my colleague Gletkin, against my express instructions.”
He paused.
Rubashov stood leaning against the wall and said nothing.
“I should never have made such a mistake,” Ivanov went on; “not out of any regard for your feelings, but because it is contrary to my tactics and to my knowledge of your psychology.
You have recently shown a tendency to humanitarian scruples and other sentimentalities of that sort.
Besides, the story of Arlova still lies on your stomach.
The scene with Bogrov must only intensify your depression and moralistic leanings—that could be foreseen; only a bungler in psychology like Gletkin could have made such a mistake.
Gletkin has been dinning into my ears for the last ten days that we should use ‘hard methods’ on you.
For one thing, he doesn’t like you because you showed him the holes in your socks; for another, he is used to dealing with peasants. ...
So much for the elucidation of the affair with Bogrov.
The brandy, of course, I ordered because you were not in full possession of your wits when I came in.
It is not in my interest to make you drunk.
It is not in my interest to lay you open to mental shocks.
All that only drives you further into your moral exaltation.
I need you sober and logical.
My only interest is that you should calmly think your case to a conclusion.
For, when you have thought the whole thing to a conclusion—then, and only then, will you capitulate. ...”
Rubashov shrugged his shoulders; but before he could say anything, Ivanov cut in:
“I know that you are convinced that you won’t capitulate. Answer me only one thing: if you became convinced of the logical necessity and the objective rightness of capitulating—would you then do it?”
Rubashov did not answer at once.
He felt dully that the conversation had taken a turn which he should not have allowed.
The five minutes had passed, and he had not thrown out Ivanov.
That alone, it seemed to him, was a betrayal of Bogrov—and of Arlova; and of Richard and Little Loewy.
“Go away,” he said to Ivanov. “It’s no use.”
He noticed only now that he had for some time been walking up and down his cell in front of Ivanov.
Ivanov was sitting on the bunk.
“By your tone of voice, I notice,” he said, “that you recognize your mistake concerning my part in the Bogrov affair.
Why, then, do you want me to go?
Why don’t you answer the question I asked? ...”
He bent forward a little and looked Rubashov mockingly in the face; then he said slowly, emphasizing each word: “Because you are afraid of me.
Because my way of thinking and of arguing is your own, and you are afraid of the echo in your own head.
In a moment you will be calling out: Get thee behind me, Satan. ...”
Rubashov did not answer.
He was walking to and fro by the window, in front of Ivanov.
He felt helpless and incapable of clear argument.
His consciousness of guilt, which Ivanov called “moral exaltation”, could not be expressed in logical formula—it lay in the realm of the “grammatical fiction”.
At the same time, every sentence spoken by Ivanov did in fact evoke an echo in him.
He felt he ought never to have let himself be drawn into this discussion. He felt as if he were on a smooth; slanting plane, down which one slid irresistibly.
“Apage Satanas!” repeated Ivanov and poured himself out another glass.
“In old days, temptation was of carnal nature.
Now it takes the form of pure reason.
The values change.
I would like to write a Passion play in which God and the Devil dispute for the soul of Saint Rubashov.
After a life of sin, he has turned to God—to a God with the double chin of industrial liberalism and the charity of the Salvation Army soups.
Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic.
He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness.