In the First Circle

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  “Anyway, who’s talking? After all, you were a Komsomol yourself in those days.”

  “Yes, and I’ve paid in full for it! Been punished for it! You make a deal with Mephistopheles . . . Margarita! Her honor lost! Her brother dead! Her child dead! Madness! Perdition—”

  “Never mind Margarita! It can’t be true that your Komsomol days have left nothing in your soul.”

  “Soul, did you say? How your language has changed in the last twenty years! Nowadays you talk about ‘the soul’ and ‘conscience’ and ‘sacrilege.’ . . . I would have loved to hear you utter such words in your pious Communist days in 1927! . . . You corrupted a whole generation of young Russians. . . .”

  “Looking at you, you could be right.”

  “And then you set to work on the Germans, the Poles. . . .”

  On and on they charged, incapable now of matching argument and response, their thoughts no longer following each other in logical sequence, with no eyes for, no awareness of, the hallway, in which the only others left were two fanatical chess players and the old blacksmith with his hacking smoker’s cough, and where their agitated arm-waving, their inflamed faces, and their aggressively poised beards, one black and bristly, one neat and fair, were so conspicuous.

  “Gleb!”

  “Gleb!”

  Seeing Nerzhin and Spiridon coming upstairs from the bathroom, they both called out at once, each of them hoping to double his forces. Gleb was walking toward them anyway, alarmed by their shouting and gesticulation. Any passing idiot would have realized without hearing a word that they had gotten on to dangerous political matters. Nerzhin went up to them quickly, and before they could, both at once, fire contradictory questions at him, prodded each of them in the ribs.

  “Sense! Sense!”

  This was the code word they had all three agreed on. If two of them were involved in a heated argument, the third would put a stop to it by reminding them in this way of the danger of informers.

  “Have you gone mad? You’ve already earned yourselves another tenner each. Aren’t you satisfied? Dmitri! Think of your family!”

  There was no hope of parting them peacefully—or, for that matter, with a jet from a hose.

  “Just listen to him!” Sologdin said, shaking Gleb by the shoulder. “He sets all our sufferings at nought. They’re warranted as far as he’s concerned. The only sufferings he cares about are those of Negroes on plantations!”

  “Well, I’ve told Lev before, charity begins at home.”

  “What narrowness! You’re no internationalist!” Rubin exclaimed, glaring at Nerzhin as though he were a pickpocket caught in the act. “You should have heard the rot he’s been talking. He thinks the autocracy was a blessing for Russia! All our conquests, all our dirty tricks, the Straits, Poland, Central Asia. . . .”

  Nerzhin’s verdict was swift and firm. “In my view, it’s high time we set all our colonies free, for the salvation of Russia, and concentrated our people’s efforts on the internal development of the country.”

  “That’s childish!” Sologdin retorted peevishly. “If you had a free hand, you’d shake the land of your fathers to pieces. . . . You tell him—is all that Komsomol romanticism of theirs worth a bent kopeck? Remember how they taught peasant children to denounce their parents? How they wouldn’t leave those who’d grown the grain so much as husks to choke on? And he has the nerve to mouth the word ‘virtue’!”

  “Oh, a noble soul you are! Call yourself a Christian? You’re nothing of the sort!”

  “Don’t blaspheme. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

  “You think that just because you aren’t a thief or an informer, that’s enough to make you a Christian? Where’s your love for your neighbor? There’s a saying that just fits you: The hand that makes the sign of the cross also sharpens the knife. No wonder you’re such a fan of medieval bandits! You’re a typical conquistador!”

  “Flatterer!” Sologdin struck a picturesque pose.

  “You’re flattered? Horrible, horrible!”

  Rubin ran the fingers of both hands through his thinning hair. “Do you hear him, Gleb? Tell him what a poseur he is! I’m fed up with his posturing! He’s forever pretending to be Alexander Nevsky!”

  “Now, that I don’t find a bit flattering!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Alexander Nevsky is no sort of hero as far as I’m concerned. And no saint. So I don’t take what you said as a compliment.”

  Rubin was silenced. He and Nerzhin exchanged a baffled look.

  “So what has Alexander Nevsky done to upset you?” Nerzhin asked.

  “Kept chivalry out of Asia and Catholicism out of Russia. He was against Europe,” Sologdin said, still breathless with indignation.

  Rubin returned to the attack, hoping to land a blow.

  “Now this is something new! Something quite new! . . .”

  “Why would Catholicism have been good for Russia?” Nerzhin inquired, looking judicial.

  “I’ll tell you why!” The answer came like a flash of lightning. “Because all the people who had the misfortune to be Orthodox Christians paid for it with centuries of slavery! Because the Orthodox Church never could stand up to the state! A godless people was defenseless! The result was this cockeyed country of ours! A country of slaves!”

  Nerzhin’s eyes were popping out.

  “I just don’t understand. Wasn’t it you who blamed me for not being patriotic enough? Now you’re giving the land of your fathers a drubbing.”

  But Rubin had seen a break in his enemy’s defenses. He leaped in quickly.

  “What’s become of Holy Russia? And the Language of Utter Clarity? And the campaign against ‘birds’ words’?”

  “Yes, indeed!” added Nerzhin. “What’s the point of the Language of Utter Clarity if ours is a cockeyed country?”

  Sologdin beamed. He stretched out his arms and made circular movements with his hands.

  “A game, gentlemen! A game! A joust with lowered visor! We all need exercise! We must strive at all times to overcome resistance. We are imprisoned for good, and we must pretend to hold views as remote as possible from our real ones. As I’ve told you, one of the nine spheres. . . .”

  “Roundnesses, you mean.”

  “No, spheres!”

  Rubin flared up again. “So that was humbug, too! This country isn’t good enough for you. But who if not you reckless God botherers was responsible for Khodynka and Tsushima and the debacle of 1915?”

  Sologdin gasped.

  “So the murderers’ hearts bleed for Russia now, do they? Wasn’t it you who butchered Russia in 1917?”

  “Sense! Sense!” Gleb punched both of them in the ribs again. But the debaters were oblivious. They could no longer see him through the red mist before their eyes.

  “What makes you think you’ll ever be forgiven for collectivization?”

  “Remember what you told us in Butyrki? That your only object in life was to grab yourself a million? Why do you need a million to get to the Kingdom of Heaven?”

  They had known each other for two years. And now they were distorting all that they had learned about each other in heart-to-heart conversations, insulting each other as hurtfully as they could. Every little thing either of them could recall was flung in the other’s face as an accusation.

  “Don’t you understand ordinary human language?” Nerzhin croaked. “Wrap it up! Wrap it up!”

  He made a helpless gesture and left them to it. At least there was nobody else in the hallway, and all those in the rooms were asleep.

  “Shame on you! You corrupter of men’s souls! Those creatures who preside over East Germany are your nurslings!”

  “You puffed-up pygmy! How pathetically proud you are of your drop of gentry blood!”

  “If the Shishkin-Myshkins are furthering the good cause, why don’t you help them? Why not squeal for them? Shikin, too, will give you a good report. And they’ll review your case.”

  “Talk
ing like that could get you a bloody nose!”

  “I don’t see why. Look at it this way. Since all the rest of us are rightly here, and only you are not, our jailers must be in the right. That’s only logical.”

  By now they were exchanging random insults, scarcely listening to each other, each of them intent on one thing only—landing his blows where they would hurt most.

  “You’re an inveterate liar! Everything you do and say rests on a lie! Yet you pontificate as though you never let go of your crucifix.”

  “You didn’t want to discuss the importance of pride in a man’s life, but you really should try to borrow a bit of pride from somewhere. Twice a year you humbly petition them for a pardon—”

  “Lies! For a review of my case, not a pardon.”

  “The answer’s always no, but you go on humbly begging. You’re like a little dog on a chain; whoever holds the chain has you in his power.”

  “Wouldn’t you humbly beg if you could? In your case, release is ruled out. Otherwise you’d crawl on your belly for it!”

  Sologdin shook with indignation. “Never!”

  “I tell you, you would! You just lack the means of attracting attention!”

  They had tormented each other to the point of exhaustion. Innokenty Volodin could not have imagined that his fate would be influenced by a tedious nocturnal argument between two prisoners in a sealed and secluded building on the outskirts of Moscow.

  Each of them wanted to be executioner, but both were victims in this quarrel. They had long ago lost the thread, and the quarrel was not really theirs, but between two radically opposed and equally destructive forces.

  Each was well aware of the other’s destructive potential. Each knew for certain that whether yesterday’s or tomorrow’s blind and mindless conquerors prevailed, both were as impervious to reason as those prison walls.

  Rubin was almost tearing his hair.

  “Tell me this, then: If you always thought as you do now, how could you join the Komsomol?”

  For the second time in half an hour, Sologdin was so exasperated that he betrayed himself unnecessarily.

  “What else could I do? Did you leave us the option of not joining? If I hadn’t been in the Komsomol, I wouldn’t have gotten into the institute in a thousand years. I’d have been digging ditches!”

  “So you pretended? You put on a disgusting little act.”

  “No! I simply went into the attack with visor lowered!”

  What Rubin inferred from this was agonizing, heartstopping.

  “So if there’s a war, and you get your hands on a weapon. . . .”

  Sologdin raised himself to his full height, folded his arms, and backed away from Rubin as though he had leprosy.

  “You don’t think I’d defend you, do you?”

  “Your words reek of blood!” Rubin clenched his hairy fists.

  Whatever they said or did next—take each other by the throat, fly at each other with fists flailing—would have been a feeble expression of their feelings. All that was left to them was to seize machine guns and fire a burst. That was the only language the loser would have understood.

  But there were no machine guns.

  They parted, breathing heavily, Rubin hanging his head, Sologdin head in the air.

  Sologdin might have hesitated earlier, but now he savored in advance the joy of hitting those dirty dogs where it hurt! Don’t give them their encoder! Don’t let them have it! You don’t have to be one of those pulling their triumphal chariot! If you do, you’ll never show them up for the mediocrities they are! They shout themselves hoarse; they deafen us with their laws of historical inevitability: “It cannot be otherwise!” is their constant cry. They write history the way they want it, twist the hidden causes to suit themselves.

  Rubin went away to his corner and clasped his painfully throbbing head in his hands. He saw clearly now that there was one, only one, crushing blow he could inflict on Sologdin and the whole pack of Sologdins. The only way to ram anything into those thick heads. No factual arguments, no historical justification, would ever convince them that you were right! The atomic bomb—that was the one thing they would understand! He must overcome his illness, his weakness, his reluctance, and—first thing tomorrow morning—get his nose down and pick up the trail of that anonymous miscreant. He must save the atomic bomb for the Revolution!

  Petrov! Syagovity! Volodin! Shchevronok! Zavarzin!

  Chapter 70

  Dotty

  IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT, and Innokenty and Dotty were on their way home by taxi. A heavy snowfall was emptying the streets, half hiding buildings behind its white veil. It seemed to promise peace and oblivion.

  The warm feeling for his wife stirred by her unexpected docility at his father-in-law’s home remained with him now that there was no one to see them. Dotty prattled uninhibitedly, about everyone and everything—the party, the guests, whether Klara would ever get married and to whom. . . . Innokenty listened indulgently.

  He was relaxing, resting after the intolerable strain of the last twenty-four hours. And somehow there was no one he would have found more restful at that moment than this dear, degraded, unfaithful rejected woman—in spite of everything, his indispensable fellow traveler along the road of life.

  Absentmindedly he put an arm around her shoulders. They stayed like that for the rest of the journey. His body throbbed once more for the contact with this woman that he had renounced forever.

  He looked sideways at her. Glanced at her lips. Lips unlike any others, lips that you could press to your own in a long, long kiss and never feel sated.

  Innokenty knew from experience that there were few other women, if any, of whom this was true. He knew that no woman combined all the characteristics you might hope to find in her. You would have to select piecemeal and combine one woman’s lips with another’s hair, another’s complexion, and various features from yet others to produce what nature refused to provide. And, of course, you would need to select the preferred temperament, character, mentality, habits.

  It wasn’t Dotty’s fault that she wasn’t perfect. Nobody was. And she had many good points.

  What, he wondered, if this woman had never been his wife or mistress, what if he knew that she belonged to another but was sitting there submissively with his arm around her on the way to his apartment? What would his feelings toward her be then? Surely he would not hold it against her that she had been in the arms of other men? Many other men? Why, then, did he find the thought humiliating just because she was his wife?

  Yet, however absurd, however despicable he felt it to be, this woman, defiled as she was, was all the more fatally attractive to him.

  He took his arm away.

  Better, of course, to think of anything rather than his pursuers. Of the ambush perhaps awaiting him at home. On the stairs? Or actually inside his apartment? They could get in easily enough.

  That, in fact—he could see it clearly!—was just what was about to happen. They would be there already, in his own apartment, lying in wait. And the moment he unlocked the door, they would rush into the hallway and pounce on him.

  Perhaps these peaceful minutes in the back of a cab with his arm around the unsuspecting Dotty were in fact his last minutes of freedom.

  Perhaps, though, it was time he told her something?

  He looked at her compassionately, tenderly even. Dotty was immediately conscious of that look, and her upper lip quivered endearingly.

  What, though, could he tell her in a few words, even after he had paid and dismissed the cabbie? That country and government were not the same thing? . . . That it would be criminal to let a crazy regime get its hands on such a superhuman weapon? That their country did not need military might and that only when they were rid of it would they really begin to live?

  These were things hardly any of those in power would understand, not to mention the scientists who were feverishly laboring to produce some sort of bomb. So how could the overdressed, luxury-loving wife of a d
iplomat be expected to understand?

  Then again, he remembered how often Dotty had clumsily interrupted a heart-to-heart conversation with some crass, irrelevant remark. She was tactless, always had been, and no one could feel the want of something never possessed.

  He avoided looking at her and remained silent on the landing. He turned the first key in the lock, inserted the Yale key, and stood aside as usual to let her go first. Was he letting her walk into a trap? Perhaps it would be better that way. She had nothing to lose, and he would see them and . . . No, he wouldn’t run for it, but he’d have five more seconds to think of something!

  Dotty walked in and switched on the light.

  Nobody jumped them. There were no strange coats on the hooks. No footprints left by careless intruders.

  This meant nothing. He would still need to inspect every room.

  But deep down he was convinced that no one was lurking! Bolt the door at once! Double bolt it! Open it to no one! We’re fast asleep! Nobody home!

  His body was suffused with a warm feeling of security.

  And Dotty was there to share his safety and happiness.

  He felt grateful to her as he helped her take off her coat.

  She bowed her head so that he could see the nape of her neck and her unusual hairline and said penitently, softly, but clearly, “Beat me! Thrash me like a peasant thrashes his woman!”

  She looked up at him, wide-eyed. She meant it! There was no hint of tears. She never broke down and wept as most women do. Her eyes would be moist for just a moment, then so dry that they looked dull and vacant.

  But Innokenty was no peasant. He could not bring himself to beat his wife. It would never have occurred to him that such a thing was possible.

  He laid his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why are you so crude sometimes?”

  “I’m crude when I’m hurting badly. Beat me!”

  They stood there awkwardly, at a loss.

  “I’ve been so unhappy this last day or two. So terribly unhappy,” Innokenty said plaintively.

  Dotty, no longer penitent, said what it was right for her to say, and those luscious lips whispered, “I know! But I can make you feel better!”