He had probably fallen asleep for the second time—for a few minutes or seconds; but this time he did not remember having dreamed.
He must have been woken by Gletkin to sign the statement.
Gletkin passed him his fountain pen which, Rubashov noticed with slight disgust, was still warm from his pocket.
The stenographer had ceased writing; there was complete silence in the room.
The lamp had also stopped humming and spread a normal, rather faded light, for dawn appeared already at the window.
Rubashov signed.
The feeling of relief and irresponsibility remained, though he had forgotten the reason for it; then, drunk with sleep, he read through the statement in which he confessed to having incited young Kieffer to murder the leader of the Party.
For a few seconds he had the feeling that it was all a grotesque misunderstanding; he had an impulse to cross out his signature and to tear up the document; then everything came back to him again, he rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve and handed the paper over the desk to Gletkin.
The next thing he could remember was, that he was walking through the corridor again, escorted by the uniformed giant who had conducted him to Gletkin’s room an immeasurable time ago.
Half asleep, he passed the barber’s room and the cellar steps; his fears on the way there occurred to him; he wondered a little at himself and smiled vaguely into the distance.
Then he heard the cell door bang behind him and sank down on his bunk with a feeling of physical bliss; he saw the grey morning light on the window-panes with the familiar piece of newspaper stuck to the frame, and fell asleep at once.
When his cell door opened again, it was not yet quite daylight; he could hardly have slept an hour.
He thought at first that the breakfast was being brought; but outside stood, instead of the old warder, again the giant in uniform.
And Rubashov understood that he had to return to Gletkin and that the cross-examination would go on.
He rubbed cold water on forehead and neck at the washbasin, put on his pince-nez, and again started the march through the corridors, past barber’s room and cellar stairs, with steps which swayed slightly without his knowing it.
4
From then onwards the veil of mist over Rubashov’s memory became thicker.
Later, he could only remember separate fragments of his dialogue with Gletkin, which extended over several days and nights, with short intervals of an hour or two.
He could not even say exactly how many days and nights it had been; they must have spread over a week.
Rubashov had heard of this method of complete physical crushing of the accused, in which usually two or three examining magistrates relieved each other in turn in a continuous cross-examination.
But the difference with Gletkin’s method was that he never had himself relieved, and exacted as much from himself as from Rubashov. Thus he deprived Rubashov of his last psychological resort: the pathos of the maltreated, the moral superiority of the victim.
After forty-eight hours, Rubashov had lost the sense of day and night.
When, after an hour’s sleep, the giant shook him awake, he was no longer able to decide whether the grey light at the window was that of dawn or of evening.
The corridor, with the barber’s shop, cellar steps and barred door, was always lit by the same stale light of the electric bulbs.
If, during the hearing, it gradually grew lighter at the window, until Gletkin finally turned out the lamp, it was morning.
If it got darker, and Gletkin turned the lamp on, it was evening.
If Rubashov got hungry during the examination, Gletkin let tea and sandwiches be fetched for him.
But he seldom had any appetite; that is to say, he had fits of ravenous hunger, but when the bread stood before him, he was overcome by nausea Gletkin never ate in his presence, and Rubashov for some inexplicable reason found it humiliating to ask for food.
Anything which touched on physical functions was humiliating to Rubashov in the presence of Gletkin, who never showed signs of fatigue, never yawned, never smoked, seemed neither to eat nor to drink, and always sat behind his desk in the same correct position, in the same stiff uniform with creaking cuffs.
The worst degradation for Rubashov was when he had to ask permission to relieve himself.
Gletkin would let him be conducted to the lavatory by the warder on duty, usually the giant, who then waited for him outside.
Once Rubashov fell asleep behind the closed door. From then onwards the door always remained ajar.
His condition during the hearing alternated between apathy and an unnatural, glassy wakefulness.
Only once did he actually become unconscious; he often felt on the brink of it, but a feeling of pride always saved him at the last minute.
He would light a cigarette, blink, and the hearing would go on.
At times he was surprised that he was able to stand it.
But he knew that lay opinion set far too narrow limits to men’s capacity of physical resistance; that it had no idea of their astonishing elasticity.
He had heard of cases of prisoners who had been kept from sleeping for fifteen to twenty days, and who had stood it.
At his first hearing by Gletkin, when he had signed his deposition, he had thought that the whole thing was over.
At the second hearing it became clear to him, that it was only the beginning of it.
The accusation consisted of seven points, and he had as yet confessed to only one.
He had believed that he had drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs.
Now he was to find that powerlessness had as many grades as power; that defeat could become as vertiginous as victory, and that its depths were bottomless.
And, step by step, Gletkin forced him down the ladder.
He could, of course, have made it simpler for himself.
He had only to sign everything, lock, stock and barrel, or to deny everything in a lump—and he would have peace.
A queer, complicated sense of duty prevented him giving in to this temptation.
Rubashov’s life had been so filled by one absolute idea that he had known the phenomenon “temptation” only theoretically.
Now temptation accompanied him through the indistinguishable days and nights, on his swaying walk through the corridor, in the white light of Gletkin’s lamp: the temptation, which consisted of the single word written on the cemetery of the defeated: Sleep.
It was difficult to withstand, for it was a quiet. and peaceful temptation; without gaudy paint, and not carnal. It was dumb; it did not use arguments.