Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Itale knew the peasant houses of Val Malafrena: more crowded even than this house, darker, and warm. Opposite the hearth would be a partition and visible and audible across it the cow and perhaps a couple of pigs or goats. The enormous bed, usually next to the stall, the clothespress, the table and chairs were of oak. Everything smelled of hay, manure, bedding, onions, woodsmoke. Whatever the housewife owned of pewter, copper, or painted ware stood out on a shelf above the table. One was not asked into those houses, any more than into a badger’s earth or a foxes’ den. One stood in the doorway speaking to the housewife or the husband, the youngest children staring from the rich darkness. In such places people had lived always, on the land. The houses of privilege, Valtorsa and the Sorde house, were the same house made light and large, and the cattle moved out. But this house, Fabbre’s house in the double row, this was something else; it was slave quarters. “The Company keeps us well enough…”

  Itale saw them stand in groups on the streets on Saturday nights, knots and clumps of women and men, dark and forceful then, null when they walked alone; he listened to their talk in the soft, nasal dialect, always of the factories and politics; he saw they knew more, wanted more, hoped for more than the peasants, and sensed their violence, the will to justice too long outraged; and he wanted to withdraw from them, to dissociate himself from their impotence and violence, their inchoate lives and the clever, inchoate, slave minds of their spokesmen such as Fabbre. He could not do so. He was one of them. He and they could talk, could understand one another’s ideas. He could never be one of or one with the peasants of his home: the difference of experience and knowledge, the difference of privilege there was too wide and nothing could annull it, nothing bridge it, even, except personal affection, personal love. But here among these people who understood what he was working for he began, for the first time, to doubt his own purposes. If this was progress, if this was the future, did he want it—did anyone want it except the rich, the powerful, the owners?

  In Krasnoy crowds formed and unformed easily, coalitions and driftings-apart of individuals; here it was the crowd that was the center, not the man, and the mob temper was always uneasy, angry. There was little street oratory in Krasnoy, beyond street-corner debates in the River Quarter; here there seemed always to be a speech going on somewhere in the city, and a crowd around the speaker. The governor of the Polana province had forbidden public meetings, any man seen addressing a crowd was liable to arrest and imprisonment, but it made no difference: they spoke, they met, they lived in unrest, resentment, wakefulness. They had all that Itale had sought first as a student in Solariy: the sense of justice, the spirit of revolt. But then revolt to what end?

  He let some of this break out one night talking with Isaber. “Whom are we really working for, I wonder? For whom are we making the way plain? The king—old Duke Matiyas—a restored constitutional monarchy…That’s a bit flat but perhaps it’s the best of a bad lot. Better than working for Emperor Franz and Metternich, by making an armed rebellion which they can crush and use for an excuse to snuff out national independence altogether. Better than working for the Ferman Brothers by telling the poor they can better their lot, they can rise in the world, so long as the Ferman Brothers rise on their necks, of course.”

  Isaber gaped, scared, for he had never seen Itale bitter. “But as the people become educated—” he stammered.

  “Educated!” Itale jeered, but then he looked at Isaber, the fragile enthusiast whom he had educated, for whom he was literally responsible. “Forget it, Agostin. I’m in a bad temper, this place gets on my nerves.”

  He turned back to the table and got on with his writing. A half hour passed. Isaber was restless, roaming around the room—they had taken a two-room tenement flat, since it was cheaper than staying at an inn—stirring the fire, rearranging papers. Itale knew he wanted reassurance, but he had none to offer. His conscience was heavy. Isaber was a born follower; and he, he had seen himself as a leader, guiding men on towards the light. A leader! Had he outgrown that ambition, or merely fallen short of it? It was hard enough to keep the single candle alight in the depths of one’s mutable, vulnerable being, against the indifferent winds of heaven; it was hard to stand up alone, and know where one stood, let alone where one was going.

  The next night he was to speak to a meeting of journeymen silkweavers, a strong association despite the government bans on laborers’ unions. They wanted a report on the Assembly meetings in Krasnoy, and he could not refuse them. Since his journal was prevented from publishing the news, he was obliged to give it as he could; that was one reason, perhaps the best reason, for his coming to Rakava. Isaber did not go with him this time. His talk went well enough. They asked questions for an hour after, and that was an ordeal, for, lacking a politician’s unfailing flow of words, he thought before he answered and while he answered: so he was slow, and his audience grew impatient. They wanted quick answers and definite ones. He got still slower, more cautious. He heard his own voice, dry and hesitant. The blood began to burn in his cheeks, he resented the men, sitting so patient in their worn clothes, the tired, intelligent faces, the minds impatient, destructive, arrogant. “Why don’t the Assembly do something about the Bura’ o’ Censorship then? Why don’t they question its pow’rs?” a thin, persistent man demanded. Itale flung out his hands and laughed, driven out of patience. “Why don’t they question the powers of the emperor of Austria? Why don’t they question the powers of Light and Darkness? What can the Assembly do, man? If it once directly questions the government’s authority, the government will dissolve it by force. Would you defend it then? Do you want armed revolution? That’s what you’re asking for. Are you ready for it? We’ve got no arms, and no allies. Yet suppose we rebelled and won out—then what? What next? You know what you don’t like, and I don’t like it either, but what is it you do like—when there’s no censorship what are you going to say?”

  He had found his tongue at last, and set them all against him. It was inevitable. They turned on him because he was an outsider and because he was middle-class, and yet they demanded that he offer them hope. He, feeling that to promise them hope was to lie to them and to deny them hope was to betray them, stood answering their questions, fighting back at their attacks, defiant and sore-hearted.

  When the meeting broke up, one of the officers of the weavers’ association, a man named Klenin, caught up with him in the hall. “Will you come out this way, Mr Sorde,” he said, leading him away from the main door where the crowd was going out.

  “Are they that angry?” Itale said sarcastically, but began to cool down as he looked at Klenin’s face, sensitive as were so many faces among these city workmen; he looked like Itale’s neighbor in Krasnoy, Kounney the linen-weaver.

  “They don’t stop us meeting, since ’21,” Klenin explained in his soft voice, “but lately they’ve been taking up some o’ the speakers, different places in the city, and questioning ’em. Just bogeying. If they don’t see you then you’re spared the trouble. You had to answer enough questions tonight, maybe.” He smiled.

  “I let them down tonight. I’m sorry.”

  Klenin looked at him. His eyes were blue, a soft blue, intent and serious. “The men always jump Krasnoyers, you know. I respect what you said, Mr Sorde. There’s no use pretending it’s easy.”

  They were at the door, and Itale said, “Thanks, Klenin.” He wanted to tell this man that he was grateful, he wanted to express the liking he felt for him, his blue eyes and fine, tired face, but all he could do was say “Thank you” and shake his hand, the one human touch, the one meeting with another man, of the whole evening. They parted on a dark street in the rain.

  II

  He was glad to look up from the dark streets at last and see the light shine from his windows. Isaber, with a Krasnoyer’s instinct for good cheer, had put up red curtains which he had got for a few pennies as mill-ends. The candle light shone rosy through them, and Itale felt his heart lighten a little. At least he was not alone
here! Isaber was a good fellow, with his loyal heart and his red curtains. He climbed the unlit staircase and turned off at the second landing; a baby was crying, a thin, almost ceaseless wail, on the floor above. As he felt with his key for the lock he thought he heard Isaber call something, “Come in!” or “Don’t come in!” As he hesitated, startled, the door was opened abruptly from within. He saw Isaber standing by the table, and other men in the room, one at the door not a foot from him. His first action was to step back and turn. A man stood behind him halfway up the stairs. His conscious reaction was to the fixed, staring look on Isaber’s face: this troubled him, and he said, “What’s wrong, Agostin?”

  The boy did not answer. The man holding the door open said, “Mr Sorde?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Please come in.”

  Itale came in, followed by the man who had been on the stairs. The man who had opened the door closed it, carefully, taking the trouble not to be noisy, rather like a butler, Itale thought.

  “You are Itale Sorde, employed by the journal Novesma Verba of Krasnoy, is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Isaber was looking down now, still with a stuporous expression. The other men stood wooden-faced, a lot of posts. “Will you sit down, gentlemen?” Itale said in a clear, harsh voice. They all went on standing. None of them looked at his face. “Stand if you like,” he said, and sat down in his usual chair by the table.

  “Are you the author of these writings, Mr Sorde?”

  They were his last dispatch to Krasnoy, two articles and a private letter to Brelavay.

  “When I saw them last they were sealed,” he said, and leaned back in his chair a little to keep himself sitting down, to keep his rage under control. “Is opening mail your profession or do you do it for pleasure?”

  “Did you write them?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Arassy,” the man said with annoyance. He had a tenor voice, an intelligent, inexpressive face.

  “And mine’s Sorde, as you know, but that gives me no right to ask you questions, I think? Who are you, and am I under arrest or merely being intimidated?”

  “You’re under arrest, Mr Sorde, and I think the rest of this can wait—all right, Gavral?”

  One of the others, a somber man in his twenties, nodded.

  “You’ll want your coat, Mr Isaber. This room will be sealed until you’ve stood trial, Mr Sorde. You might want to bring along a change of clothing.”

  “Let me see your authority.”

  Arassy produced a warrant signed by Kastusso, commander of the Polana militia.

  Isaber still had not moved. Itale went to him. “Come on, Agostin,” he said, and then, lower, with irritation, “Don’t freeze like a rabbit. Get your coat.”

  Tears started into the boy’s eyes and he whispered, staring at Itale, “Sorde, I’m sorry!”

  “Come on, get your coat.”

  They rode in a closed cab through the dark rainswept streets uphill to the building Itale had seen when he first entered the city, the Courts of Law. Its crenellated tower loomed up through sweeping clouds of half-frozen rain, dizzying in the flare of the cab-lamps. In a warm shabby room without windows Arassy interrogated them briefly before a secretary. “Very good, Mr Sorde,” he said, rubbing his hand over his forehead as if he had a headache. “Thanks. You and Mr Isaber will be detained here until trial.”

  “What are the charges against us?”

  “Article 15, activities prejudicial to public order. It’s a very common charge, Mr Sorde.”

  He was not bad, this Arassy; polite, tired, matter-of-fact.

  “I know. How long is it likely to be before we stand trial?”

  “I can’t say. Possibly in a few days. Usually within two months.”

  Arassy bowed. Two militiamen came at his signal and took Itale and Isaber off down a corridor, up three long flights of stone steps, and to a dark room at the end of a last, curving corridor. They entered the room, the soldiers with them. “Gentlemen, please, you carry knives, penknives, any metal instrument?” The accent as usual was foreign, German or Bohemian. Isaber mechanically surrendered his penknife, Itale as mechanically did not; in fact he was surprised to find it in his pocket next morning. “Very good. Good night, gentlemen.” The door of the room closed with a loud, peculiar click.

  “What do—” Itale began and then backed against the door with a start, seeing a faceless figure rear up from a couch or bench almost under his left hand. It gave a kind of groaning snarl. The only light in the room came from a lamp or candle down the corridor, reflected dimly on the ceiling through a grating high in the door. Everything was high, the ceiling eighteen or twenty feet, the door ten or twelve, a queer effect in the faint wavering light. The shapeless figure on the bench pushed its face out of blankets, though no features were visible, and said, “Cell-mates?” Only at the word did it occur to Itale that this curious room was a prison cell.

  “Right,” he said, interested; but he had to turn and give his attention to Isaber, who had crouched down onto his heels and was rocking back and forth, back and forth, saying nothing. Itale talked to him but he squatted there silent, swaying. At last Itale hauled him up by the arm, by main force, and said, “Sit down!”—pushing him onto the bench that ran around two walls of the room. “Get hold of yourself!” He was rough, and his voice was very angry. The boy sank his head into his hands and burst into tears.

  “How long were they there before I came?” Itale asked him after a while, casting about for some hook of simple fact to draw Isaber out of his formless and grotesque abasement.

  “I don’t know. An hour.” He tried to stop sobbing. “I don’t know.”

  “What did they ask you?”

  “I don’t know. I tried not to answer. Oh, Jesus, Mary!” He clenched his hands over his face. “I’m sorry, Itale, I’m sorry!”

  “Look, Agostin, they are trying to frighten us; don’t give them that pleasure.”

  “I believe you gentlemen are politicals,” said the third man, sardonic, still faceless in the shadowy deep room.

  “Yes. My name’s Sorde.” He did not know if giving your name was prison etiquette; he did not introduce Isaber, who was still crying.

  “Sorde? From Krasnoy? Yes. What an honor. Not surprised perhaps, but honored.” The man gave an edgy, ingratiating snicker. “I’m Givan Forost. I’ll be out in a few days, and you gents will have more room.”

  “Is this St Lazar Prison?” Itale asked, remembering that the two towered buildings, the court and the jail, adjoined.

  “St Lazar! Are you joking! This is the Courts tower, this is no jail, look at it, a palace! Blankets, light, window, all the comforts. Thought you political gentlemen knew more about the inside of jails than that. What’s wrong with sonny?” Forost got up, trailing the blankets he had cocooned himself in, and approached them.

  “Let him be,” Itale said stiffly.

  “Needs his mammy,” Forost said. “All right. So long as he doesn’t keep it up all night. Choose your beds, plenty of room, in Lazar there’d be forty in a room like this. Piss-pot’s in the corner. Sleep well, gents.” He rolled himself up again in his blankets and was silent. Itale talked a little while softly with Isaber, persuaded him to lie down, and then did the same himself, feeling suddenly dead tired. Forost had not shared his blankets with them, but the bench was covered with a burlap matting and the air, though cold, was still and fresh. Itale stretched out and at once felt comfortable. He closed his eyes, all his thoughts escaped him, and he fell into sound and peaceful sleep.

  Forost was with them for a week. He never said what he had been arrested for; he was apparently some kind of clerk, but was vague about that too. He was certain of being released, and was indeed released at the end of the week—“Friends in power,” he said with his snicker. He gave them detailed descriptions of the St Lazar Prison, without ever saying if he had been jailed there or visited it or spoke from hearsay: the wards of twenty to a hundred men, sick and well, s
ane, insane, and imbecile, murderers and petty thieves all together; the rats, fleas, lice, bedbugs; the typhus, typhoid, and smallpox that twice in the last forty years had, in Forost’s phrase, “cleaned out the prison”; the solitary cells, and the cells below street level, where the water was a foot deep on the floor in winter. “That’s a real prison,” Forost said with admiration. “But see, you gents don’t fit. Rioters, sure, they get locked up in the wards in Lazar, commoners, workingmen, lock ’em up, who cares? But you gentlemen politicals, they don’t want you on their hands. You two aren’t going to stand trial yet for a while. They don’t want to bring you up and sentence you, see, because they don’t know where to put you when you’re sentenced. If they get orders from the government, from Krasnoy, give this one a sentence, then they’re in for it, they have to do it, but God knows where they stick him. So the longer you wait the safer you are. You’ll wait six months, then be released without trial. That’s how they like to do it. Cool you off a while here in the tower, then let you out; you run off quick; and they don’t have to worry about you any more.”