He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it—an abstract and geometric love.
Apage Satanas!
Comrade Rubashov prefers to become a martyr.
The columnists of the liberal Press, who hated him during his lifetime, will sanctify him after his death.
He has discovered a conscience, and a conscience renders one as unfit for the revolution as a double chin.
Conscience eats through the brain like a cancer, until the whole of the grey matter is devoured.
Satan is beaten and withdraws—but don’t imagine that he grinds his teeth and spits fire in his fury.
He shrugs his shoulders; he is thin and ascetic; he has seen many weaken and creep out of his ranks with pompous pretexts ...”
Ivanov paused and poured himself another glass of brandy.
Rubashov walked up and down in front of the window. After a while he said:
“Why did you execute Bogrov?”
“Why? Because of the submarine question,” said Ivanov.
“It concerned the problem of tonnage—an old quarrel, the beginnings of which must be familiar to you.
“Bogrov advocated the construction of submarines of large tonnage and a long range of action.
The Party is in favour of small submarines with a short range. You can build three times as many small submarines for your money as big ones.
Both parties had valid technical arguments.
The experts made a big display of technical sketches and algebraic formulae; but the actual problem lay in quite a different sphere.
Big submarines mean: a policy of aggression, to further world revolution.
Small submarines mean coastal defense—that is, self-defense and postponement of world revolution.
The latter is the point of view of No. 1, and the Party.
“Bogrov had a strong following in the Admiralty and amongst the officers of the old guard.
It would not have been enough to put him out of the way; he also had to be discredited.
A trial was projected to unmask the partisans of big tonnage as saboteurs and traitors.
We had already brought several little engineers to the point of being willing to confess publicly to whatever we liked.
But Bogrov wouldn’t play the game.
He declaimed up to the very end of big tonnage and world revolution. He was two decades behind the times.
He would not understand that the times are against us, that Europe is passing through a period of reaction, that we are in the hollow of a wave and must wait until we are lifted by the next.
In a public trial he would only have created confusion amongst the people.
There was no other way possible than to liquidate him administratively.
Would not you have done the same thing in our position?”
Rubashov did not answer.
He stopped walking, and again remained leaning against the wall of No. 406, next to the bucket.
A cloud of sickening stench rose from it.
He took off his pince-nez and looked at Ivanov out of red-rimmed, hunted eyes.
“You did not hear him whimpering,” he said.
Ivanov lit a new cigarette on the stump of the old one; he too found the stench of the bucket rather overpowering.
“No,” he said. “I did not hear it.
But I have heard and seen similar things.
What of it?”
Rubashov was silent.
It was no use to try and explain it.
The whimpering and the muffled drumming again penetrated his ears, like an echo.
One could not express that.
Nor the curve of Arlova’s breast with its warm, steep point.
One could express nothing.
“Die in silence,” had been written on the message given him by the barber.
“What of it?” repeated Ivanov.
He stretched out his leg and waited.
As no answer came, he went on speaking:
“If I had a spark of pity for you,” he said, “I would now leave you alone.