“I have just told you that,” said Rubashov tiredly.
The feverish wakefulness had vanished, and the dull hammering in his head started again.
“If you had told me at once that he was the son of my unfortunate friend Kieffer, I would have identified him sooner.”
“In the accusation his full name is stated,” said Gletkin.
“I knew Professor Kieffer, like everybody did, only by his nom de plume.”
“That is an unimportant detail,” said Gletkin.
He again bent his whole body towards Hare-lip, as though he wanted to crush him with his weight across the space between them.
“Continue your report.
Tell us how this meeting came about.”
Again wrong, thought Rubashov, in spite of his sleepiness.
It is certainly not an unimportant detail.
If I had really incited this man to this idiotic plot, I would have remembered him at the first allusion, with or without name.
But he was too tired to embark on such a long explanation; besides, he would have had to turn his face to the lamp again.
As it was, he could at least keep his back to Gletkin.
While they were discussing his identity, Hare-lip had stood with sunken head and trembling upper lip in the white glare.
Rubashov thought of his old friend and comrade Kieffer, the great historian of the Revolution.
On the famous photograph of the Congress table, where all wore beards and small numbered circles like haloes round their heads, he sat to the old leader’s left.
He had been his collaborator in matters of history; also his chess partner, and perhaps his sole personal friend.
After the death of the “old man”, Kieffer, who had known him more intimately than anyone else, was commissioned to write his biography.
He worked at it for more than ten years, but it was destined never to be published.
The official version of the events of the Revolution had gone through a peculiar change in these ten years, the parts played in it by the chief actors had to be rewritten, the scale of values reshuffled; but old Kieffer was stubborn, and understood nothing of the inner dialectics of the new era under No. 1. ...
“My father and I,” Hare-lip went on in his unnaturally musical voice, “on our return from the International Ethnographical Congress, to which I had accompanied him, made a detour by B., as my father wanted to visit his friend, Citizen Rubashov. ...”
Rubashov listened with a queer mixture of curiosity and melancholy.
Up till now the story was correct; old Kieffer had come to see him, led by the need to pour out his heart and also to ask counsel of him.
The evening that they spent together had probably been the last pleasant moment in old Kieffer’s life.
“We could only stay one day,” Hare-lip went on, his gaze glued to Rubashov’s face, as if he sought there strength and encouragement. “It was just the day of the celebration of the Revolution; that is why I remember the date so exactly.
The whole day Citizen Rubashov was busy at the reception, and could only see my father for a few minutes. But in the evening, when the reception in the Legation was over, he invited my father to his own apartment and my father allowed me to accompany him.
Citizen Rubashov was rather tired and had put on his dressing-gown, but he welcomed us very warmly.
He had set out wine, cognac and cakes on a table and greeted my father, after embracing him, with the words:
‘The farewell party for the last of the Mohicans.’ …”
Behind Rubashov’s back Gletkin’s voice interrupted:
“Did you notice at once Rubashov’s intention to put you into a state of intoxication, in order to make you more amenable to his plans?”
It seemed to Rubashov that a slight smile flitted over Hare-lip’s ravaged face: for the first time he noticed a faint resemblance to the young man he had seen that evening.
But the expression vanished immediately; Hare-lip blinked and licked his split lip.
“He seemed to me rather suspect, but I did not yet penetrate his scheme.”
Poor swine, thought Rubashov, what have they made of you? ...
“Go on,” boomed Gletkin’s voice.
It took a few seconds for Hare-lip to pull himself together again after the interruption.
In the meantime one heard the thin stenographer sharpening her pencil.
“Rubashov and my father exchanged reminiscences for a long while.
They had not seen each other for years.
They talked about the time before the Revolution, about persons of the older generation whom I only knew of by hearsay, and about the Civil War. They talked frequently in allusions which I could not follow, and laughed about reminiscences which I did not understand.
“Was much drunk?” asked Gletkin.
Hare-lip blinked helplessly into the light.
Rubashov noticed that he swayed slightly while speaking, as though he could only with difficulty remain on his feet.
“I believe, quite a lot,” Hare-lip went on.
“In the last few years I had never seen my father in such a good mood.”
“That was,” sounded Gletkin’s voice, “three months before the discovery of your father’s counterrevolutionary activities, which led to his execution in a further three months?”
Hare-lip licked his lips, gazed dully into the light and remained silent.
Rubashov had turned to Gletkin on a sudden impulse, but, blinded by the light, he shut his eyes and turned slowly away again, rubbing his spectacles on his sleeve.