And yet, in one point, it seemed to Rubashov that an injustice was being done him.
But he was too exhausted to put it into words.
“Have you any more questions?” asked Gletkin.
Rubashov shook his head
“You may go,” said Gletkin to Hare-lip. He pushed a bell; a uniformed warder entered and put metal handcuffs on young Kieffer.
Before he was led away, at the door, Hare-lip turned his head once more to Rubashov, as he used to do at the end of his walk in the yard.
Rubashov felt his gaze as a burden; he took off his pince-nez, rubbed it on his sleeve, and averted his eyes.
When Hare-lip was gone, he nearly envied him.
Gletkin’s voice grated in his ear, precise and with brutal freshness:
“Do you now admit that Kieffer’s confession accords with the facts in the essential points?”
Rubashov had again to turn to the lamp.
There was a humming in his ears and the light flamed hot and red through the thin skin of his lids.
Yet the phrase “in the essential points” did not escape him. With this phrase Gletkin bridged over the rent in the accusation and gave himself the possibility of changing “instigation to murder by poison” into “instigation to murder” simply.
“In the essential points—yes,” said Rubashov.
Gletkin’s cuffs creaked, and even the stenographer moved in her chair.
Rubashov became aware that he had now spoken the decisive sentence and sealed his confession of guilt.
How could these Neanderthalers ever understand what he, Rubashov, regarded as guilt what he, by his own standards, called the truth?
“Does the light disturb you?” asked Gletkin suddenly.
Rubashov smiled.
Gletkin paid cash.
That was the mentality of the Neanderthaler.
And yet, when the blinding light of the lamp became a degree milder, Rubashov felt relief and even something kindred to gratefulness.
Though only blinkingly, he could now look Gletkin in the face.
He saw again the broad red scar on the clean-shaven skull.
“... excepting only one point which I consider essential,” said Rubashov.
“Namely?” asked Gletkin, again become stiff and correct.
Now, of course, he thinks I mean the tete-a-tete with the boy, which never took place, thought Rubashov.
That is what matters to him: to put the dots on the i’s—even if the dots look more like smudges.
But, from his point of view, he may be right. ...
“The point which matters to me,” he said aloud, “is this.
It is true that according to the convictions I held at the time, I spoke of the necessity of acting by violence.
But by this I meant political action, and not individual terrorism.”
“So you preferred civil war?” said Gletkin.
“No.
Mass action,” said Rubashov.
“Which, as you know yourself, would inevitably have led to civil war.
Is that the distinction on which you place so much value?”
Rubashov did not answer.
That was indeed the point which, a moment ago, had seemed so important—now it also had become indifferent to him.
In fact, if the opposition could attain victory against the Party bureaucracy and its immense apparatus only by means of a civil war—why was this alternative better than to smuggle poison into the cold snack of No. 1, whose disappearance would perhaps cause the regime to collapse quicker and less bloodily?
In what way was political murder less honourable than political mass killing?
That unfortunate boy had evidently mistaken his meaning—but was there not more consistency in the boy’s mistake than in his own behaviour during the last few years?
He who opposes a dictatorship must accept civil war as a means.
He who recoils from civil war must give up opposition and accept the dictatorship.
These simple sentences, which he had written nearly a lifetime ago, in a polemic against the “moderates”, contained his own condemnation.
He felt in no state to continue the argument with Gletkin.
The consciousness of his complete defeat filled him with a kind of relief; the obligation to continue the fight, the burden of responsibility were taken from him; the drowsiness of before returned.
He felt the hammering in his head only as a faint echo, and for a few seconds it seemed to him that behind the desk sat, not Gletkin, but No. 1, with that look of strangely understanding irony he had given Rubashov as they shook hands at their last leave-taking.
An inscription came into his mind which he had read on the gateway of the cemetery at Errancis where Saint-Just, Robespierre and their sixteen beheaded comrades lay buried It consisted of one word; Dormir—to sleep.
From that moment onwards, Rubashov’s recollection again became hazy.