This Gletkin, of course, believed that it was his tricks, and not Ivanov’s arguments, which had induced him to capitulate; probably Gletkin had also succeeded in persuading the higher authorities of this, and had thus brought about Ivanov’s fall.
Swine, thought Rubashov, but this time without anger.
You consequential brute in the uniform we created—barbarian of the new age which is now starting.
You don’t understand the issue; but, did you understand, you would be useless to us. ...
He noticed that the light of the lamp had become yet another grade shriller—Rubashov knew that there were arrangements for heightening or decreasing the power of these reflector lamps during a cross-examination.
He was forced to turn his head away completely and wipe his watering eyes.
You brute, he thought again.
Yet it is just such a generation of brutes that we need now. ...
Gletkin had started to read the accusation.
His monotonous voice was more irritating than ever; Rubashov listened with averted head and shut eyes.-He was decided to regard his “confession” as a formality, as an absurd yet necessary comedy, the tortuous sense of which could only be understood by the initiated; but the text which Gletkin was reading surpassed his worst expectations in absurdity.
Did Gletkin really believe that he, Rubashov, had planned these childish plots?
That for years he had thought of nothing else than to break up the building, the foundations of which he and the old guard had laid?
And all of them, the men with the numbered heads, the heroes of Gletkin’s boyhood—did Gletkin believe that they had suddenly fallen victims to an epidemic which rendered them all venal and corruptible and gave them but one wish—to undo the Revolution?
And that with methods which these great political tacticians appeared to have borrowed from a cheap detective story?
Gletkin read monotonously, without any intonation, in the colourless, barren voice of people who have learnt the alphabet late, when already grown-up.
He was just reading about the alleged negotiations with the representative of a foreign Power which, it was pretended, Rubashov had started during his stay in B., with the object of a reinstatement of the old regime by force, The name of the foreign diplomat was mentioned, also the time and place of their meeting.
Rubashov listened more attentively now.
In his memory flashed an unimportant little scene, which he had immediately forgotten at the time and had never thought of again. He quickly worked out the approximate date; it seemed to fit.
So that was to be the rope which would hang him? Rubashov smiled and rubbed his weeping eyes with his handkerchief. ...
Gletkin read straight on, stiffly and with deadly monotony.
Did he really believe what he was reading?
Was he not aware of the grotesque absurdity of the text?
Now he was at the period of Rubashov’s activity at the head of the aluminum trust.
He read out statistics which showed the appalling disorganization in that too hastily developed branch of industry; the number of workers victims of accidents, the series of aeroplanes crashed as a result of defective material.
This all was the consequence of his, Rubashov’s, devilish sabotage.
The word “devilish” actually occurred several times in the text, in between technical terms and columns of figures.
For a few seconds Rubashov entertained the hypothesis that Gletkin had gone mad; this mixture of logic and absurdity recalled the methodical lunacy of schizophrenia.
But the accusation had not been drawn up by Gletkin; he was only reading it along—and either actually believed it, or at any rate considered it credible. ...
Rubashov turned his head to the stenographer in her dimly lit corner. She was small, thin and wore spectacles.
She was sharpening her pencil with equanimity and did not once turn her head towards him.
Obviously, she too considered the monstrous things Gletkin was reading as quite convincing.
She was still young, perhaps twenty-five or six; she too had grown up after the flood.
What did the name Rubashov mean to this generation of modern Neanderthalers?
There he sat in front of the blinding reflector light, could not keep open his watering eyes, and they read to him in their colourless voices and looked at him with their expressionless eyes, indifferently, as though he were an object on the dissecting table.
Gletkin was at the last paragraph of the accusation.
It contained the crowning feature: the plot for an attempt on No. 1’s life.
The mysterious X mentioned by Ivanov in the course of the first hearing had appeared again.
It turned out that he was an assistant manager of the restaurant from which No. 1 had his cold lunch brought to him on busy days.
This cold snack was a feature of No. 1’s Spartan mode of life, most carefully fostered by propaganda; and it was just by means of this proverbial cold snack that X, on Rubashov’s instigation, was to prepare a premature end for No. 1.
Rubashov smiled to himself with eyes shut; when he opened them, Gletkin had stopped reading and was looking at him.
After a few seconds of silence, Gletkin said, in his usual even tone; more as a statement than a question:
“You have heard the accusation and plead guilty.”
Rubashov tried to look into his face. He could not, and had to shut his eyes again.
He had had a biting answer on his tongue; instead he said, so quietly that the thin secretary had to stretch out her head to hear:
“I plead guilty to not having understood the fatal compulsion behind the policy of the Government, and to have therefore held oppositional views.
I plead guilty to having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity.
I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them.
I plead guilty to having rated the question of guilt and innocence higher than that of utility and harmfulness.
Finally, I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind. ...”
Rubashov paused and again tried to open his eyes.