In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  After lunch this Saturday, Rubin had put in two hours’ work in the new room allotted to him, identified the wanted criminal’s typical “speech tune” and “bands of resonance,” run them through the “visible speech” apparatus, hung the wet tapes up to dry, and formed some preliminary conjectures and suspicions, but was still not particularly excited about his new line of work when he watched Smolosidov sealing the room for the night. After this, Rubin had joined the stream of zeks on their way to the prison building like cattle returning to the village at night.

  As always, he had under his pillow, under his mattress, under his bed, and in his locker, higgledy-piggledy with his food, a dozen or so extremely interesting books—interesting, that is, to him alone, which is why they were not stolen. There were Chinese-French, Latvian-Hungarian, and Russian-Sanskrit dictionaries. Rubin had been busy for two years with a grandiose work in the spirit of Marx and Engels, tracing all words in all languages to the concepts “hand” and “manual labor.” (He had no inkling that the Coryphaeus of Linguistic Science had the night before raised the headman’s ax over Academician Marr.) He also had ˇCapek’s War with the Newts, a collection of stories by very progressive (i.e., pro-Communist) Japanese writers, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls in English (he had ceased to be progressive, so Russian translation was lagging), a novel by Upton Sinclair that had never been translated into Russian, and Colonel Lawrence’s memoirs in German, acquired as part of the confiscated property of the Lorenz company.

  There was an enormous number of books, indispensable books, books of the first importance in the world, and his greed for them had made it impossible for Rubin to produce one of his own. Right now he was ready to go on and on reading long after midnight, with never a thought of the working day ahead. But Rubin was also at his wittiest and his appetite for argument and oratory keenest in the evening, so that it didn’t take much to mobilize these talents in the service of the public. There were people in the sharashka who did not trust Rubin, taking him for a stoolie (because of his ultra-Marxist views, which he did not conceal), but there was no one in the place who did not delight in his powers of invention.

  The memory of “The Crow and the Fox,” embellished with clever borrowings from criminal slang, was so vivid that many of those in the room loudly seconded Kagan’s plea for some new gag. And when Rubin, morose and bearded, raised himself and emerged as if from a cave from the cover afforded by the bunk above him, they all abandoned whatever they were doing and prepared to listen. All except Dvoetyosov on his top bunk, who went on cutting his toenails so savagely that clippings flew into the distance, and Abramson under his blanket, who did not look up from his book. Curious people from other rooms blocked the doorways, and one of them, the Tatar Bulatov in his horn-rimmed spectacles, rapped out: “Come on, Lyova! Let’s have it!”

  Rubin had no wish at all to gratify people most of whom hated or despised all that was dear to him; he knew, too, that another jape would inevitably mean more unpleasantness no later than Monday, more nervous strain, further interrogation by “Shishkin-Myshkin.” But Rubin was the proverbial hero who would sacrifice his own father for the sake of a funny remark, so he pretended to frown, cast an expert eye over his audience, and said in the sudden hush: “Comrades! I am amazed by your frivolity. How can you think of fun when brazen criminals are at large among us, as yet undetected? No society can flourish without a just legal system. I consider it necessary to begin our evening with a modest trial. As a warm-up.”

  “Good idea!”

  “Whom shall we try?”

  There was a chorus of “Doesn’t matter who!” “Comes to the same thing!”

  “Amusing! Most amusing!” Sologdin said encouragingly, making himself comfortable. He had earned his evening’s rest as never before and needed entertainment.

  Cautious Kagan, sensing that the game he had started might overstep the boundaries of discretion, faded from the foreground and sat on his bed.

  “The identity of the defendant you will learn as the trial proceeds,” Rubin announced. (He hadn’t yet decided himself.) “I may as well be public prosecutor, since that office has always aroused very special emotions in me.” (Everybody in the sharashka knew that certain prosecutors were among Rubin’s pet hates and that he had for five years been engaged in single combat with the All-Union and with the Main Military Prosecution Services.)

  “Gleb! You’ll be presiding judge. Choose yourself two colleagues quickly. They must be impartial, objective, and, in a word, completely subservient to your will.”

  Nerzhin had slipped off his shoes down below and was sitting on his top bunk. As Sunday went by and the familiar prison world closed in around him, his meeting with Nadya seemed more and more remote. In response to Rubin’s call, he drew himself up to the rails at the end of the bed and let his feet dangle between them, so that he appeared to be seated on a judicial bench looking down on the room.

  “All right—where are my assessors? Get up here!”

  A lot of prisoners had gathered in the room, and they all wanted to listen to the trial, but nobody wanted to be an assessor, whether out of caution or from fear of looking ridiculous. To one side of Nerzhin, on another top bunk, lay Zemelya the vacuum man, reading his morning paper again.

  “Ulyba!” Nerzhin said, tugging at the paper. “You’ve educated yourself enough. The way you’re going, you’ll be wanting to rule the world soon. Tuck your legs under and be a jury man!”

  Applause was heard from below. “Come on, Zemelya!”

  Zemelya thawed easily and could not resist for long. All smiles, he hung his balding head over the bedrail and said: “To be the people’s choice is a great honor! Just think what you’re doing, friends! I have no education; I don’t know how. . . .”

  General laughter (“None of us know how; we’re all only learners!”) greeted his objection, and he was duly elected.

  To the other side of Nerzhin lay Ruska Doronin. He had undressed, covered himself from head to foot with his blanket, and hidden his ecstatically happy face under a pillow. He didn’t want to hear or see anything or to be seen. Only his body was there; his thoughts and his feelings were following Klara on her way home. She had finished braiding the basket for the tree and presented it discreetly to Ruska just before she left. He was holding it under the blanket and kissing it.

  Realizing that it would be pointless to try to stir Ruska, Nerzhin looked around for someone else.

  He called to Bulatov. “Amantai! Amantai! Come and join the jury!”

  Bulatov’s eyes flashed mischievously. “I would, only there’s nowhere to sit! I’ll stay here by the door and be bailiff.”

  Khorobrov (by this time he had given Abramson and two others their haircuts and set to work on a new client, who was sitting in the middle of the room stripped to the waist to save him the trouble of removing hairs from his underclothes later) shouted out, “Who needs two jury men? You’ve got the verdict up your sleeve anyway. One’s enough! Get the show on the road!”

  “He’s right, you know,” Nerzhin said. “Why pay a man for nothing? So where’s the defendant? Bailliff, bring in the defendant! Silence in court!”

  He rapped on the bed frame with his large cigarette holder. The talking died down.

  There were calls of “Get on with the trial!”

  Some of the public remained standing; others were seated.

  “Yea, though I ascend into the heavens, Thou art there; though I descend into hell, Thou art there,” Potapov intoned in a lugubrious voice from below the presiding judge’s seat. “Though I make my abode in the depths of the sea, even there Thy right hand will discover me!” (Potapov had picked up a little scripture in his pre-Revolutionary secondary school, and his precise engineer’s mind had preserved the words of the prayer book.)

  Also down below, under the jury man, the rattle of a spoon stirring tea was distinctly heard.

  “Valentulya!” Nerzhin shouted threateningly. “How many times have you been told not to ra
ttle your spoon?”

  “Put him on trial,” Bulatov yelled, and several obliging hands dragged Pryanchikov from the twilight of his lower bunk into the middle of the room.

  “Cut it out!” Pryanchikov struggled furiously to free himself. “I’ve had enough of public prosecutors! I’m sick and tired of courts and courtrooms! What right does any man have to sit in judgment on another? Ha-ha! It’s ridiculous! I despise you, you pipsqueak!” he yelled at the presiding judge. I don’t give a . . . for you!”

  While Nerzhin had been putting his makeshift court together, Rubin had thought it all out. His dark brown eyes shone with the light of inspiration. He absolved Pryanchikov with a magnanimous gesture.

  “Release that fledgling! Valentulya, with his passion for universal justice, will do very well as official defense counsel! Give him a chair!”

  There is in every joke an elusive moment at which it either becomes crude and offensive or is transmuted by inspiration. Rubin draped a blanket round his shoulders like a robe, climbed onto a locker in his stockinged feet, and addressed the presiding judge. “State Counselor of Justice! The defendant has failed to present himself and will be tried in absentia. Let us begin!”

  Spiridon, the yardman with the ginger mustache, was one of the crowd in the doorway. His pendulous cheeks were scored with harsh wrinkles; but, strangely, merriment was always about to break out of the net. He scowled at the officers of the court.

  Behind Spiridon the long, fine-drawn, waxy face and woolen ski cap of Professor Chelnov could be seen.

  Nerzhin called the court to order in a rasping voice: “Your attention, Comrades! The military tribunal of the Marfino sharashka is now in session. The case before us is that of—”

  The prosecutor supplied a name: “Olgovich, Igor Svyatoslavich.”

  Nerzhin caught on and continued in a nasal drawl, as if reading: “The case before us is that of Olgovich, Igor Svyatoslavich, prince of Novgorod-Seversk and Putivl, approximate date of birth . . . Clerk of the Court, why the devil is it only approximate? . . . Attention! In view of the fact that the court has nothing in writing before it, the prosecutor will read the indictment.”

  Chapter 55

  Prince Igor

  RUBIN BEGAN SPEAKING as easily and fluently as if his eyes really were skimming a written document (he had been tried or retried four times over, and the procedural formulas were imprinted on his memory).

  “Act of indictment on completion of investigation of case number five million slash three million six hundred and fifty-one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four, the accused being Olgovich, Igor Svyatoslavich.

  “The prosecution in the present case is brought against Olgovich, I. S., by the Organs of State Security. Investigation has established that Olgovich, being at the time leader of the valiant Russian army in the field, holding the title of prince and the post of commander of a warrior band, proved to be a dastardly traitor to his motherland. His treasonable activity took the form of surrendering of his own free will to Khan Konchak, now unmasked as a sworn enemy of our people, and furthermore surrendering into captivity his son Vladimir Igorevich, as also his brother, his nephew, and the full complement of his warrior band with all their arms and all supplies and equipment for which he was responsible.

  “His treasonable conduct manifested itself further in the fact that he from the very beginning allowed himself to be taken in by a trick, to wit, an eclipse of the sun, contrived by the reactionary clergy, and in consequence did not take the lead in mass political briefing of his warrior band as it set out to ‘quaff the Don from its helmets.’ I make no mention here of the unhygienic condition of the Don River in those years, before the introduction of double chlorination. Instead of all this, the accused confined himself to a completely irresponsible exhortation to his army, when already in sight of the Polovtsians.

  Brothers, this we sought, let us now stiffen our sinews!

  INVESTIGATOR’S REPORT, VOL. 1, SHEET 36

  “The disastrous significance for our motherland of the defeat of the combined warrior bands of Novgorod-Seversk, Kursk, and Putivl is best characterized in the words of Svyatoslav, grand prince of Kiev:

  God gave the heathen into my hand to chasten them

  But thy youth was hasty.

  IBID., VOL. 1, SHEET 88

  “It is, however, a naive mistake on the part of Svyatoslav, resulting from his class blindness, to ascribe the poor organization of the whole campaign and the fragmentation of Russia’s military effort to the youth of the accused, failing to understand that what we are concerned with here is a treasonable act planned long in advance.

  “The criminal himself has succeeded in eluding interrogation and trial, but we have from the witness Borodin, Aleksandr Porphirievich, and also a witness who has expressed a wish to remain unknown and will henceforth be known as the Author of the Lay, irrefutable depositions not only exposing the abominable role of Prince I. S. Olgovich during his conduct of the battle itself, which was joined in meteorological conditions unfavorable to the Russian command:

  The winds blow, bearing now the arrows,

  Raining them upon Igor’s ranks

  and in equally unfavorable tactical conditions:

  From all sides the enemies advance,

  Hemming our men in all ways.

  IBID., VOL. 1, SHEETS 123, 124; DEPOSITION OF THE AUTHOR OF THE LAY

  but also revealing the still more revolting behavior of Olgovich and his princely offspring in captivity. The living conditions of both of them in so-called captivity show that they stood high in the favor of Khan Konchak and objectively were being rewarded by the Polovtsian high command for the treasonable surrender of their warrior band.

  “Thus, for instance, it is established by the testimony of the witness Borodin that, while in captivity, Prince Igor had a horse of his own, and indeed more than one:

  Take any horse, choose where thou wilt!

  IBID., VOL. 1, SHEET 233

  “Khan Konchak, on this occasion, said to Prince Igor:

  Dost thou yet think thyself a prisoner?

  Is it a prisoner’s life thou leadest?

  Art thou not rather my dear guest?

  IBID., VOL. 1, SHEET 281

  and further

  Say truly—is this the way a prisoner lives?

  IBID., VOL. 1, SHEET 300

  “The Polovtsian khan here reveals the full cynicism of his relations with the traitor prince:

  For your valor, for your great daring

  I have come to love you, prince.

  INVESTIGATOR’S REPORT, VOL. 2, SHEET 5

  “More thorough investigation has revealed that these cynical relations existed long before the battle on the Kayala River:

  For thou wert always dear to me.

  IBID., SHEET 14; TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESS BORODIN

  and even

  Thy faithful ally, trusty friend and brother

  And not thy foe I’d be. . . .

  IBID.

  “All this puts the accused in focus as an active aider and abettor of Khan Konchak and a Polovtsian agent and spy of long standing.

  “On the basis of the facts here set out, Olgovich, Igor Svyatoslavich, born 1151, native of the city of Kiev, Russian, not a Party member, no previous convictions, citizen of the USSR, warlord by trade, having served as commander of a warrior band with the rank of prince, and having been awarded the Varangian Order, First Class, the Order of the Little Red Sun, and the Golden Shield medal, is charged as follows: that he committed a vile act of treachery to his motherland, accompanied by sabotage, espionage, and collaboration over many years with the Polovtsian khanate, that is to say, that he committed the crimes envisaged in Article 58, subsections 1b, 6, 9, and 11 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics.

  “Olgovich is by his own admission guilty of the charges brought against him and stands convicted by the testimony of witnesses in the form of a poem and an opera.*

  “In accordance
with article 208 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the RSFSR, the present case has been referred to the prosecutor so that he may bring the accused to trial.”

  Rubin paused to take a deep breath and triumphantly surveyed the assembled zeks. Swept along on the flood tide of his fantasy, he could no longer stop. Peals of laughter from the bunks and the doorway spurred him on. He had already said more and spoken more caustically than he would normally wish to with a sprinkling of stoolies among his audience or to people bitterly hostile to the regime.

  Spiridon, under the graying ginger mop straggling over his brow and ears and down his neck, had not laughed once. He surveyed the scene with a frown. Fifty years old and a Russian, he had never heard of this prince of long ago who had been taken prisoner, but faced with the familiar surroundings of the courtroom and the impregnable self-assurance of the prosecutor, he relived his own experiences, and instinctively understood the gross unfairness of the prosecutor’s arguments and the woes of the hapless prince.

  Nerzhin spoke again, in the same nasal drawl.

  “In view of the absence of the accused, and there being no need to cross-examine witnesses, we will proceed to counsel’s arguments. I call upon the prosecutor again.”

  He glanced at Zemelya, his jury man, who nodded agreement to this and whatever was to come.

  “Comrade Judges!” Rubin cried sternly. “I have only a little to add to the concatenation of terrible accusations, the foul tangle of crimes that has been unraveled before your eyes. I should like first to reject emphatically the decadent view so widely held that a wounded man has a moral right to surrender. That is radically opposed to our way of thinking, Comrades. Especially where Prince Igor is concerned. We are told that he was wounded on the field of battle. But what proof is there of that 765 years later? Has any record of his wound, signed by the divisional medical officer, been preserved? One thing is sure, that no such document is on the investigator’s file, Comrade Judges!”