“Certainly not,” Sologdin said, eyes twinkling merrily. “That’s the marvelous thing about a proper man-to-man argument. Some people can go on idly bandying words and disturbing the air to no purpose for weeks on end. But an argument on paper can be over in ten minutes; it is immediately obvious if the opponents are talking about completely different things or if there is no real disagreement between them. When there is a clear case for continuing, the two sides start writing their views down alternately, each on his own half of the paper. Just like a duel—parry and thrust, or shot for shot. And just think—evasiveness and substituting different words for what was said before are impossible, and the result is that after two or three exchanges one side emerges clearly victorious and the other a clear loser.”
“And there’s no time limit?”
“To ensure that truth prevails? Certainly not.”
“And do we then go on to fight with broadswords?”
Sologdin’s flushed face darkened.
“I knew it! You pitch into me—”
“No, you started it. . . .”
“Call me all sorts of names—you’ve got bags of them. Caveman, backslider” (avoiding the “incomprehensible” foreign word “reactionary”), “king of lickspittles” (his rendering of “certified lackey”). You have a larger stock of insults than of scientific terms. And when I stand up to you and propose an honest debate, you have neither time nor appetite for it; you’re too tired. Yet you found both the time and the will to rip the guts out of our whole country!”
“Out of half the world!” Rubin politely corrected him. “We always have time and strength for action. But for pointless jawing? What have you and I got to talk about? We’ve said all we have to say to each other.”
“What have we got to talk about? I leave it to you to choose,” Sologdin said with a gallant gesture. “Choose your weapons! Name the place!”
“Right, then. My choice of subject is . . . nothing!”
“That’s against the rules!”
“What rules? Where do you get all these rules from? What sort of inquisition is this? Why can’t you understand that fruitful argument is impossible without some sort of common ground; there obviously has to be some sort of agreement on fundamentals.”
“There you go! Just as I said! You want us both to accept the theory of added value and workers’ rule”—the term for “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the Language of Utter Clarity. “And there’d be nothing left to argue about except whether certain flourishes were added by Marx on an empty stomach or Engels after a good dinner.”
There was no escape from this scoffer! Rubin boiled over.
“Why, oh why, can’t you see that this is just stupid! You and I have nothing to say to each other! However you look at it, we are from different planets. You still think, for instance, that the duel is the best way to seek redress for a grievance!”
“Disprove it if you can!”
Sologdin leaned back, beaming.
“If we had duels, who would dare slander another person? Who would dare jostle weaker people?”
“Why, those swaggering blades of yours would! Your knights erroneous! The darkness of the Middle Ages, those stupid, arrogant knights, the crusades—all that is the high point of history as far as you are concerned!”
Sologdin sat to attention and brandished one finger over his head.
“Yes, the highest point in the history of the human spirit!”
“And all those great cargoes of crusaders’ loot? What a sickening hidalgo you are!”
“And you’re an Old Testament fanatic! A man possessed!” Sologdin retorted.
“I suppose you regard Belinsky, say, and Chernyshevsky and all our greatest educators as half-educated sons of village priests?”
“Long-skirted seminarians!” Sologdin added joyfully.
“And I suppose you regard Revolution—let’s leave ours out of it—the French Revolution, say, a century and a half after the event, as the work of a mindless mob in thrall to its diabolical instincts—and the destruction of a nation? Am I right?”
“Yes, of course! Just try proving the opposite. The greatness of France ends with the eighteenth century. What came after the revolt? A handful of great men, yes, but in the wrong place and at the wrong time. A nation in terminal decline! Continual changes of regime have made France the laughingstock of the world. France is impotent! Will-less! Null! A handful of dust!”
Sologdin burst into demonic laughter.
“Savage! Troglodyte!” Rubin said indignantly.
“And France will never get on its feet again! Unless it’s with the help of the Church of Rome!”
“That’s another thing! The Reformation, to you, means not the inevitable liberation of the human mind from ecclesiastical shackles but—”
“But madness and blindness! Lutheran devil worship! The disruption of Europe! The self-destruction of the European peoples! Worse than the two world wars!”
“There you are, then! You’re a fossil! An ichthyosaurus! What is there for us to discuss? Look what a tangle you’ve got yourself into! Let’s just part friends.”
Sologdin saw that Rubin was about to get up and go away. That simply couldn’t be allowed! His bit of fun was walking out on him! Before it had even got started. He reined himself in and became unrecognizably mild.
“Forgive me, Lev, my friend, I got carried away. It’s late, of course, and I don’t insist on our tackling one of the major questions. Let’s just try out the ‘duel’ procedure on some neat little topic. I’ll give you some headings”—meaning “themes”—“to choose from. Would you like something literary? That’s your field, not mine.”
“Give it a rest, can’t you.”
This was his chance to leave without damage to his reputation. Rubin started getting up, but Sologdin hurriedly forestalled him.
“All right. A moral heading: the role of pride in the life of a human being.”
Rubin yawned with boredom.
“What are we, schoolgirls?”
He rose and stood between the beds.
“What about this one, then?” Sologdin said, seizing his hand.
“Get lost.” Rubin waved him away, laughing. “Everything’s topsy-turvy in that head of yours. You’re the one man on the face of the earth who still doesn’t recognize the three laws of the dialectic. From which all else follows!”
Sologdin’s pink palm dismissed this charge.
“What d’you mean, don’t recognize? I do in fact recognize them.”
“Wha-at? You’ve recognized the dialectic?” Rubin spluttered, lips protruding. “Darling boy! Let me give you a kiss! Have you really, though?”
“I haven’t just recognized the dialectic; I’ve thought about it. Every morning for two months! Which is more than you’ve done!”
“Even thought about it, have you? You’re getting more intelligent every day! But in that case what is there for us to argue about?”
“What d’you mean?” Sologdin was indignant. “First there’s no common ground, so there’s nothing to argue about; then when there is common ground, there’s nothing to argue about! That won’t do! Kindly get on with it!”
“Why are you such a bully? What is it you want to argue about?
Sologdin was also on his feet now and waving his arms.
“All right, then! I’m ready to fight on the most unfavorable conditions. I will defeat you with a weapon wrested from your own dirty paws! What we will discuss is whether you yourself really understand your three laws! You people are like cannibals dancing around a fire without the least idea what fire is. I can trip you up on those laws as often as I like.”
“Go ahead, then!”
Rubin could not help raising his voice. He was annoyed with himself but bogged down again.
“All right.” Sologdin sat down. “Take a seat.”
Rubin stayed on his feet.
“Now, where’s the best place to begin?” Sologdin mentally savored some possibilit
ies. “These laws now—they show us the direction of development, am I right?”
“Direction?”
“Yes. Which way a . . . a . . . process”—the word stuck in his throat—“is going.”
“Of course.”
“And where do you see that happening? Where, precisely?” Sologdin asked coldly.
“In the laws themselves. They exemplify movement.”
Rubin sat down himself. They began talking in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.
“Which law precisely tells us the direction of that movement?”
“Not the first, obviously. . . . The second. Or maybe the third.”
“Hm. The third, you say. And how do we determine it?”
“Determine what?”
“The direction of movement, what else?”
Rubin frowned. “Listen, what exactly is the point of all this scholasticism?”
“You call this scholasticism? That shows how unfamiliar you are with the exact sciences. If a law gives us no numerical coordinates and we don’t know the direction of development either, we don’t know a damn thing. Right. Look at it from another angle. You frequently and glibly trot out the term ‘negation of the negation.’ But what do you understand by those words? Can you, for instance, answer this question: Does negation of the negation always take place in the course of development, or doesn’t it?”
Rubin thought for a moment. An unexpected question. Not usually put that way. But never let the other man see that you’re stuck for an answer!
“Generally speaking,” he said. “As a rule.”
“There you go!” Sologdin roared triumphantly. “All those cant words! You’ve devised thousands of these little phrases—‘generally speaking,’ ‘as a rule,’ and so on—to avoid straight talk. Somebody says ‘negation of the negation’ and your brain prints out, ‘single grain, produces stalk, stalk produces ten grains.’ It sets my teeth on edge! It makes me sick! Give me a straight answer: When does negation of the negation occur, and when does it not occur? When should we expect it, and when is it impossible?”
All trace of Rubin’s apathy had disappeared. He collected his wandering thoughts and concentrated on this uncalled-for but nonetheless important debate.
“When does it occur, and when doesn’t it—what practical difference does that make?”
“I like that! This is one of the three laws by which you explain absolutely everything, and you ask whether it has any practical importance. It’s pointless talking to you!”
“You’re putting the cart before the horse,” Rubin said indignantly.
“More verbiage! More claptrap!”
“Cart before horse,” Rubin insisted. “We Marxists would be ashamed to proceed from the laws of the dialectic themselves to concrete analysis of phenomena. So we have no need whatsoever to know ‘when it occurs’ and ‘when it doesn’t.’ ”
“Well, let me give you the answer! Only, you’ll say right away that you knew it all along, that it’s obvious, that it goes without saying. . . . Listen, though; if it is possible to reverse a process so that a thing is restored to its previous condition, negation of the negation has not taken place. Suppose, for instance, a nut is tightened to the limit, and you want to loosen it; you just turn it the opposite way. There we have a process in reverse, a transition from quantitative to qualitative change, but no ‘negation of the negation’! But if the former qualitative state cannot be reproduced by movement in the reverse direction, then development may proceed through negation, but even so only if repetitions are allowed. In other words, irreversible changes will be negations only where the negation of the negations themselves is possible.”
“Ivan is a man, so what is not Ivan is not a man,” muttered Rubin. “You’re like somebody on parallel bars.”
“Back to our example. If while tightening the nut, you were to break the thread, then unscrewing it will not restore its previous quality, its unbroken thread. You can only reproduce that quality now by melting down the nut, rolling a hexagonal bar, shaping it on a lathe, and finally cutting a new nut.”
“Wait a bit, Mitya,” Rubin said mildly. “You can’t seriously use the tightening and loosening of a nut to exemplify the laws of the dialectic.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t a nut do as well as a grain of corn? No machine can hold together without nuts. Well, then, each of the states I’ve enumerated is irreversible; it negates the previous state, but the new nut in relation to the old, damaged one is the negation of the negation. Simple, eh?” Pointing his neatly trimmed goatee at Rubin.
“Wait a bit! What makes you think you’ve beaten me? It follows from what you’ve said yourself that the third law gives us the direction of development.”
Sologdin bowed, hand on heart.
“If you weren’t such a quick thinker, my dear Lev, I would hardly do myself the honor of talking to you. You’re right; the third does just that. But we must learn how to take what the law gives us. Do you know how? How to use the law, instead of worshipping it? You have deduced that it tells us the direction of development. To which we say, does it always do so? In the physical world? In animate nature as well? In society? Well?”
“Hm, well,” Rubin said thoughtfully, “maybe there’s a rational kernel in all this. But most of what you say, my dear fellow, is mere twaddle.”
Sologdin flared up again and cut him short with a gesture.
“You are the twaddlers!”
He could have been brandishing a sword, hemmed in by Saracens. “You don’t understand a single one of your laws, although you deduce everything from them.”
“I keep telling you, we do not.”
“Don’t deduce everything from them?”
Sologdin was so astonished that his sword arm froze.
“No, we don’t.”
“So they’re just a tail to pin on the donkey? In that case, how did you decide in which direction society was going to develop?”
“Listen, can’t you!” Rubin intoned his answer for extra emphasis. “What are you, a block of oak or a human being? We resolve all questions by concrete analysis of the material facts. Got it? All questions having to do with society are answered by analysis of the class situation.”
“So why the dialectic?” Sologdin roared, heedless of the silence around them. “The three laws aren’t really needed at all.”
“Oh, yes they are. Very much so.”
“What for? If nothing can be deduced from them? If you don’t need them to find out the direction of change—why all that twaddle? If all you can do is keep parroting negation of the negation, why in hell’s name do you need them at all?”
Potapov, who had been trying in vain to shelter himself from the growing storm, angrily whipped the pillow from his ear and raised himself on one elbow.
“Listen, friends!” he said. “If you can’t sleep yourself, show some respect for those who can”—pointing obliquely upward at Ruska’s bunk—“or find a more suitable place.”
The wrath of Potapov, that lover of order and moderation, the hush which had settled on the whole semicircular room, and their awareness that they were surrounded by stool pigeons (though Rubin of course could fearlessly shout his beliefs on this subject) would have brought any sober person to his senses.
But these two sobered up only slightly. Their long dispute, the latest of many, was just beginning. They realized that they had to leave the room, but they were incapable by now of lowering their voices or of relaxing their grip on each other. They were still bandying insults as the door to the hallway closed behind them.
The white light went out almost as they left, and the blue nightlight was turned on.
Ruska Doronin’s wakeful ear had been closer than any other to the debate, but no one could have been less interested in collecting “material” for use against them. He had heard Potapov’s hint and understood it, without seeing the finger aimed at himself. He felt the helpless resentment we all experience when we are reproached by those whose opinions matter
to us.
When he began his dangerous double game with the operations officers, he had allowed for everything, he had cheated the vigilance of his enemies, and now he was on the verge of a spectacular triumph with the “147 rubles” affair. But he had no protection against the suspicions of his friends. His solitary scheme, simply because it was so out of the ordinary and so secret, had earned him disgrace and contempt. It surprised him that these mature, sensible, experienced people lacked the generosity of mind to understand him and believe that he was not a traitor.
Whenever we lose the sympathy of others, the one who goes on loving us becomes triply dear.
And if that one is a woman. . . .
Klara! She would understand! He would tell her all about this risky scheme tomorrow, and she would understand.
With no hope of going to sleep, or indeed any wish to, he tossed and turned in his sweaty bed, remembering Klara’s questioning eyes, searching for the flaws in his plan to escape under the wire and along the gulley to the high road, where he would just take a bus straight to the city center.
Once he was there, Klara would help him.
He would be harder to find in a city of seven million people than in the bare expanses of Vorkuta. Moscow was the place for an escape!
Chapter 66
Going to the People
RUBIN AND SOLOGDIN indulgently referred to Nerzhin’s friendship with the yardman, Spiridon, as his “going to the people,” in quest of that great homespun truth Gogol, Nekrasov, Herzen, the Slavophiles, Lev Tolstoy, and finally the much-maligned Vasisuali Lokhankin had sought in vain before him.
Whereas Rubin and Sologdin themselves had never sought that homespun truth, because each of them possessed the ultimate truth, crystal clear and his very own.
Rubin knew for certain that “the people” is an artificial generalization, that every people is divided into classes, and that even they change as time goes by. Seeking a superior understanding of life in the peasant class was unimaginative and futile. The proletariat was the only consistently and thoroughly Revolutionary class, the future belonged to the proletariat, and only the collectivism and selflessness of the proletariat gave life a higher meaning.
In the First Circle Page 65
