The secretary’s pencil squeaked on the paper and stopped.
Then again Gletkin’s voice was heard:
Were you at that time already initiated into your father’s counter-revolutionary activities?”
Hare-lip licked his lips.
“Yes,” he said.
“And you knew that Rubashov shared your father’s opinions?”
“Yes.”
“Report the principal phrases of the conversation.
Leave out everything non-essential.”
Hare-lip had now folded his hands behind his back and leaned his shoulders against the wall.
“After a time, my father and Rubashov changed the conversation over to the present.
They spoke in depreciative phrases of the present state of affairs in the Party, and about the methods of the leadership.
Rubashov and my father only referred to the leader as ‘No. 1.’
Rubashov said that since No. 1 sat on the Party with his broad posterior, the air underneath was no longer breathable.
That was the reason why he preferred missions abroad.”
Gletkin turned to Rubashov:
“That was shortly before your first declaration of loyalty to the leader of the Party?”
Rubashov turned half-way to the light.
“That Il be correct,” he said.
“Was Rubashov’s intention to make such a declaration mentioned during the evening?” Gletkin asked Harelip.
“Yes.
My father reproached Rubashov because of it and said he was disappointed in him.
Rubashov laughed, and called my father an old fool and a Don Quixote.
He said the important thing was to hold out the longest and to wait for the hour to strike.”
“What did he mean by this expression: ‘to wait for the hour’?”
Again the young man’s gaze sought Rubashov’s face with a forlorn and almost tender expression.
Rubashov had the absurd notion that he was about to come over from the wall and kiss him on the forehead.
He smiled at this idea, while he heard the pleasant voice answer:
“The hour in which the leader of the Party would be removed from his post.”
Gletkin, who had not missed Rubashov’s smile, said drily:
“These reminiscences seem to amuse you?”
“Perhaps,” said Rubashov, and shut his eyes again.
Gletkin pushed a cuff into place and went on questioning Hare-lip:
“So Rubashov spoke of the hour in which the leader of the Party would be removed from his post.
How was this to be brought about?”
“My father considered that one day the cup would overflow and the Party would depose him or force him to resign; and that the opposition must propagate this idea.”
“And Rubashov?”
“Rubashov laughed at my father, and repeated that he was a fool and a Don Quixote.
Then he declared that No. 1 was no accidental phenomenon, but the embodiment of a certain human characteristic—namely, of an absolute belief in the infallibility of one’s own conviction, from which he drew the strength for his complete unscrupulousness.
Hence he would never resign from power of his own free will, and could only be removed by violence. One could hope for nothing from the Party either, for No. 1 held all the threads in his hand, and had made the Party bureaucracy his accomplice, who would stand and fall with him, and knew it.”
In spite of his sleepiness, it struck Rubashov that the young man had retained his words with much accuracy.
He himself no longer remembered the conversation in detail, but did not doubt that Hare-lip had recounted it faithfully.
He observed young Kieffer through his pince-nez with a newly-awakened interest.
Gletkin’s voice boomed again:
“So Rubashov emphasized the necessity to use violence against No. 1—that is, against the leader of the Party?”
Hare-lip nodded.
“And his arguments, seconded by a liberal consumption of alcoholic drinks, made a strong impression on you?”
Young Kieffer did not answer at once.
Then he said, in a slightly lower tone than before:
“I had drunk practically nothing.