His face, usually yellow, was chalky white, his nose pointed, the split upper-lip with the weal of flesh trembled over the naked gum. His hands hung slackly to his knees; Rubashov, who now had his back turned to the lamp, saw him like an apparition in the footlights of a stage.
A new row of figures went through Rubashov’s memory: “4-5; 3-5; 4-3 ...”—“was tortured yesterday”.
Almost simultaneously, the shadow of a memory which be could not seize passed through his mind-the memory of having once seen the living original of this human wreck, long before he had entered cell No. 404.
“I don’t know exactly,” he answered hesitantly to Gletkin’s question. “Now that I see him close to, it seems to me that I have met him somewhere already.”
Even before he had finished the phrase, Rubashov felt it would have been better not to have spoken it. He wished intensely that Gletkin would let him have a few minutes to pull himself together.
Gletkin’s way of rapping out his questions in a rapid, pauseless sequence called to his mind the image of a bird of prey hacking at its victim with its beak.
“Where have you met this man last?
The exactness of your memory was once proverbial in the Party.”
Rubashov was silent.
He racked his memory, but could not place anywhere this apparition in the glaring light, with the trembling lips.
Hare-lip did not move. He passed his tongue over the red weal on his upper-lip; his gaze wandered from Rubashov to Gletkin and back.
The secretary had stopped writing; one heard only the even buzzing of the lamp and the crackling of Gletkin’s cuffs; he had leaned forward and propped his elbows on the arms of the chair to put his next question.
“So you refuse to answer?”
“I do not remember,” said Rubashov.
“Good,” said Gletkin.
He leaned further forward, turning towards Hare-lip with the whole weight of his body, as it were:
“Will you help Citizen Rubashov’s memory a little?
Where did you last meet him?”
Hare-lip’s face became, if possible, even whiter.
His eyes lingered for a few seconds on the secretary, whose presence he had apparently only just discovered, but wandered on immediately, as though fleeing and seeking a place of rest.
He again passed his tongue over his lips and said hurriedly, in one breath:
“I was instigated by Citizen Rubashov to destroy the leader of the Party by poison.”
In the first moment Rubashov was only surprised by the deep, melodious voice which sounded unexpectedly from this human wreck.
His voice seemed to be the only thing in him which had remained whole; it stood in uncanny contrast to his appearance.
What he actually said, Rubashov seized only a few seconds later.
Since Hare-lip’s arrival he had expected something of the sort and scented the danger; but now he was conscious above all of the grotesqueness of the charge.
A moment later he heard Gletkin again—this time behind his back, as Rubashov had turned towards Hare-lip. Gletkin’s voice sounded irritated:
“I have not yet asked you that.
I asked you, where you had met Citizen Rubashov last.”
Wrong, thought Rubashov. He should not have emphasized that it was the wrong answer.
I would not have noticed it.
It seemed to him that his head was now quite clear, with a feverish wakefulness.
He sought for a comparison. This witness is an automatic barrel-organ, he thought; and just now it played the wrong tune.
Harelip’s next answer came even more melodiously:
“I met Citizen Rubashov after a reception at the Trade Delegation in B. There he incited me to my terroristic plot against the life of the leader of the Party.”
While he was speaking, his haunted gaze touched on Rubashov and rested there.
Rubashov put on his pince-nez and answered his gaze with sharp curiosity.
But in the eyes of the young man he read no prayer for forgiveness, rather fraternal trust and the dumb reproach of the helplessly tormented.
It was Rubashov who first averted his gaze.
Behind his back sounded Gletkin’s voice, again self-confident and brutal:
“Can you remember the date of the meeting?”
“I remember it distinctly,” said Hare-lip in his unnaturally pleasant voice.
“It was after the reception given on the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution.”
His gaze still rested nakedly on Rubashov’s eyes, as though there lay a last desperate hope of rescue.
A memory rose in Rubashov’s mind, hazily at first, then more clearly. Now at last he knew who Hare-lip was.
But this discovery caused him almost no other sensation than an aching wonder.
He turned his head to Gletkin and said quietly, blinking in the light of the lamp:
“The date is correct.
I did not at first recognize Professor Kieffer’s son, as I had only seen him once—before he had passed through your hands. You may be congratulated on the result of your work.”
“So you admit that you know him, and that you met him on the day and occasion aforementioned?”