Flesh of their flesh, grown independent and become insensible.
Had not Gletkin acknowledged himself to be the spiritual heir of Ivanov and the old intelligentsia?
Rubashov repeated to himself for the hundredth time that Gletkin and the new Neanderthalers were merely completing the work of the generation with the numbered heads.
That the same doctrine became so inhuman in their mouths, had, as it were, merely climactic reasons.
When Ivanov had used the same arguments, there was yet an undertone in his voice left by the past by the remembrance of a world which had vanished.
One can deny one’s childhood, but not erase it.
Ivanov had trailed his past after him to the end; that was what gave everything he said that undertone of frivolous melancholy; that was why Gletkin had called him a cynic.
The Gletkins had nothing to erase; they need not deny their past, because they had none.
They were born without umbilical cord, without frivolity, without melancholy.
5
Fragment of the diary of N.
S.
Rubashov
“... With what right do we who are quitting the scene look down with such superiority on the Gletkins?
There must have been laughter amidst the apes when the Neanderthaler first appeared on earth.
The highly civilized apes swung gracefully from bough to bough, the Neanderthaler was uncouth and bound to the earth.
The apes, saturated and peaceful, lived in sophisticated playfulness, or caught fleas in philosophic contemplation; the Neanderthaler trampled gloomily through the world, banging around with clubs.
The apes looked down on him amusedly from their tree tops and threw nuts at him.
Sometimes horror seized them; they ate fruits and tender plants with delicate refinement; the Neanderthaler devoured raw meat, he slaughtered animals and his fellows.
He cut down trees which had always stood, moved rocks from their time-hallowed place, transgressed against every law and tradition of the jungle.
He was uncouth, cruel, without animal dignity—from the point of view of the highly cultivated apes, a barbaric relapse of history.
The last surviving chimpanzees still turn up their noses at the sight of a human being. ...”
6
After five or six days an incident occurred: Rubashov fainted during the examination.
They had just arrived at the concluding point in the accusation: the question of the motive for Rubashov’s actions.
The accusation defined the motive simply as “counter-revolutionary mentality”, and mentioned casually, as if it were self-evident, that he had been in the service of a hostile foreign Power.
Rubashov fought his last battle against that formulation.
The discussion had lasted from dawn to the middle of the morning, when Rubashov, at a quite undramatic moment, slid sideways from his chair and remained lying on the ground.
When he came to a few minutes later, he saw the little fluff-covered skull of the doctor over him, pouring water on his face out of a bottle, and rubbing his temples.
Rubashov felt the doctor’s breath, which smelt of peppermint and bread-and-dripping, and was sick.
The doctor scolded in his shrill voice, and advised that Rubashov should be taken into the fresh air for a minute.
Gletkin had watched the scene with his expressionless eyes.
He rang and ordered the carpet to be cleaned; then he let Rubashov be conducted back to his cell.
A few minutes later, he was taken by the old warder into the yard for exercise.
For the first few minutes Rubashov was as if intoxicated by the biting fresh air.
He discovered that he had lungs which drank in oxygen, as the palate a sweet refreshing drink.
The sun shone pale and clear; it was just eleven in the morning the hour at which he always used to be taken for his walk an immeasurable time ago, before this long, hazy row of days and nights had started.
What a fool he had been not to appreciate this blessing.
Why could one not just live and breathe and walk through the snow and feel the pale warmth of the sun on one’s face?
Shake off the nightmare of Gletkin’s room, the glaring light of the lamp, that whole ghostly mise en scene—and live as other people do?
As it was the usual hour for his exercise, he again had the thin peasant with the bast-shoes as neighbour in the roundabout.
He watched sideways as Rubashov walked along beside him with slightly swaying steps, cleared his throat once or twice, and said, with a glance at the warders:
“I have not seen you for a long time, your honour.
You look ill, as though you won’t last much longer.
They say there will be a war.”
Rubashov said nothing.
He resisted the temptation to pick up a handful of snow and press it to a ball in his hand.
The circle moved slowly round the yard.
Twenty paces ahead the next pair stamped along between the low banks of snow—two men of about the same height in grey coats, with little clouds of steam in front of their mouths.
“It will soon be sowing time,” said the peasant.