Why, then, did he go on tormenting himself and letting himself be tormented, instead of giving up the lost battle, so as not to be wakened any more?
The idea of death had a long time ago lost any metaphysical character; it had a warm, tempting, bodily meaning—that of sleep.
And yet a peculiar, twisted sense of duty forced him to remain awake and continue the lost battle to the end—even though it were only a battle with windmills.
To continue until the hour when Gletkin would have forced him down the last rung of the ladder, and in his blinking eyes, the last clumsy smudge of the accusation had been turned into a logically dotted “i”.
He had to follow the road until the end.
Then only, when he entered the darkness with open eyes, had he conquered the right to sleep and not to be wakened any more.
In Gletkin, too, a certain change occurred during this unbroken chain of days and nights.
It was not much, but Rubashov’s feverish eyes did not miss it.
Until the end Gletkin sat stiffly with unmoved face and creaking cuffs in the shadow of his lamp behind the desk; but gradually, bit by bit, the brutality faded from his voice, in the same way as, bit by bit, he had turned down the shrill light of the lamp, until it had become nearly normal.
He never smiled, and Rubashov wondered whether the Neanderthalers were capable of smiling at all; neither was his voice supple enough to express any shades of feeling.
But once, when Rubashov’s cigarettes ran out after a dialogue of several hours, Gletkin, who did not smoke himself, took a packet out of his pocket and passed it over the desk to Rubashov.
In one point Rubashov even managed to achieve a victory; that was the point in the accusation concerning his alleged sabotage in the aluminum trust.
It was a charge which did not weigh much in the sum total of the crimes to which he had already confessed, but Rubashov fought it with the same obstinacy as on the decisive points.
They sat opposite each other nearly the whole night..
Rubashov had refuted point for point all incriminating evidence and one-sided statistics; in a voice thick with tiredness, he had cited figures and dates, which as by miracle came up at the right moment in his numbed head; and all the time Gletkin had not been able to find the starting point from which he could unroll the logical chain.
For at their second or third meeting already, as it were, an unspoken agreement had come into existence between them: if Gletkin could prove that the root of charge was right—even when this root was only of a logical, abstract nature—he had a free hand to insert the missing details; “to dot the i’s”, as Rubashov called it.
Without becoming aware of it, they had got accustomed to these rules for their game, and neither of them distinguished any longer between actions which Rubashov had committed in fact and those which he merely should have committed as a consequence of his opinions; they had gradually lost the sense of appearance and reality, logical fiction and fact.
Rubashov would occasionally become conscious of this in his rare moments of clear-headedness, and he would then have the sensation of awakening from a strange state of intoxication; Gletkin, on the other hand, seemed never to be aware of it.
Towards morning, when Rubashov still had not given in over the question of sabotage in the aluminum trust, Gletkin’s voice acquired an undertone of nervousness—just as in the beginning, when Hare-lip had brought out the wrong answer.
He turned the lamp on more sharply, which had not happened for a long time; but he turned it down again when he saw Rubashov’s ironic smile. He put a few more questions, which had no effect, and said conclusively:
“So you definitely deny having committed any wrecking or subversive acts in the industry entrusted to you—or to have even planned such acts?”
Rubashov nodded—with a sleepy curiosity as to what would happen.
Gletkin turned to the stenographer:
“Write: the examining magistrate recommends that this charge be dropped for lack of evidence.”
Rubashov quickly lit a cigarette to conceal the movement of childish triumph which overcame him.
For the first time he had won a victory over Gletkin.
Certainly it was a pathetic little local victory in a lost battle, but yet a victory; and it had been so many months, even years, since he had last known this feeling. ...
Gletkin took the day’s record from the secretary and dismissed her, according to the ritual which had latterly developed between them.
When they were alone, and Rubashov had stood up to sign the protocol, Gletkin said, passing him his fountain pen:
“Industrial sabotage is, according to experience, the most effective means for the opposition to create difficulties for the Government, and to produce discontent amongst the workers.
Why do you so stubbornly maintain that you did not use—or intend to use—just this method?”
“Because it is a technical absurdity,” said Rubashov.
“And this perpetual harping on the saboteur as a bogyman produces an epidemic of denunciation which revolts me.”
The long-missed sensation of triumph caused Rubashov to feel fresher and speak louder than usual.
“If you hold sabotage for a mere fiction, what, in your opinion, are the real causes of the unsatisfactory state of our industries?”
“Too low piece-work tariffs, slave-driving and barbaric disciplinary measures,” said Rubashov.
“I know of several cases in my Trust in which workers were shot as saboteurs because of some trifling negligence caused by over-tiredness.
If a man is two minutes late at clocking-in, he is fired, and a stamp is put in his identity-papers which makes it impossible for him to find work elsewhere.”
Gletkin looked at Rubashov with his usual expressionless gaze, and asked him, in his usual expressionless voice:
“Were you given a watch as a boy?”
Rubashov looked at him in astonishment.
The most conspicuous trait of the Neanderthal character was its absolute humourlessness or, more exactly, its lack of frivolity.
“Don’t you want to answer my question?” asked Gletkin.
“Certainly,” said Rubashov, more and more astonished.
“How old were you when the watch was given you?”
“I don’t quite know,” said Rubashov; “eight or nine probably.”
“I,” said Gletkin in his usual correct voice, “was sixteen years old when I learnt that the hour was divided into minutes.
In my village, when the peasants had to travel to town, they would go to the railway station at sunrise and lie down to sleep in the waiting-room until the train came, which was usually at about midday; sometimes it only came in the evening or next morning.
These are the peasants who now work in our factories.
For example, in my village is now the biggest steel-rail factory in the world.