by Victor Serge
They were still conversing as night fell. Little by little the murmurs faded in the garage. A motor rumbled close by behind the wooden wallboards, which seemed extremely thin to Rodion after the stone walls of the cellar. Raising his head a bit, he glued his eye to the place where two boards met and clearly saw the night, the edge of a roof, a patch of marvellously dark, clear sky . . . He lay down again with his arms behind his neck, overcome by emotion. The vast night was so close! The chill of the earth penetrated his shoulders. He stretched his arm out along the wall and his fingertips felt the friable soil at the bottom of the planks. Damp earth, ash: his fingers dug into it of their own motion. As he lay on his side, his hand became like a sly animal eagerly digging the earth right next to the head of the red-bearded fisherman, who was now asleep, murmuring through his half-parted lips: for the Silent One only escaped from silence through sleep. Rodion watched him and Rodion dug. Now, without effort, his hand emerged on the other side, opened out. The free, starry night cooled his palm . . .
From that moment on Rodion stopped thinking, as if he had shut the eyes with which he watched himself. Yet his whole being was now charged with lucidity as if he had opened new eyes of flesh, long closed, with which to see reality . . . His hand bathed in the dazzling air. Then it deftly seized the edge of the board, which gave way under its pressure. Rodion loosened it slowly, irresistibly, noiselessly. The old rusty nails were pulling out of their holes: he could sense this. His movements were sure. Flat on his belly, chin on the ground, using his head as a battering-ram, he put his weight against the planks in the darkness. They creaked, but some of the sleepers were groaning. One of them got up and went to piss noisily into the tank. Rodion pushed harder so that the noise of the second creak would be covered by this gurgling fountain. The board came loose. He held on to it with both hands. The night poured in, cool on his face. He looked around him. The rear end of a Ford half hid him. The young Jew was sleeping; no, he was feigning sleep. He had heard, he had understood. His closed eyelids were flickering, his breathing was strained. Rodion could sense the sweat on the man’s nose and forehead. “Farewell, comrade,” said Rodion within himself, “the paths of Zion pass through prisons without number, like those of the proletariat . . .”
On his other side, Rodion encountered the wide-awake eyes of the Silent One. “Close your eyes! Sleep!” whispered Rodion with an authority born of desperation. No, replied the Silent One with an almost imperceptible flicker of his eyelids. Rodion felt fear. The Silent One, who was lying on his back, turned his whole body toward Rodion. He stretched out his hand, took hold of the loosened board, pushed it aside, and signalled with his head: Go. “Come,” murmured Rodion. This time he shook his beard ever so slightly. No. Why should I flee? Flee what? But you, since the cool night calls you, go. Follow your heart’s desire, may God help you! This thought was only silence, but it cut through the silence. Rodion crawled into the opening left by the board. The Silent One held the board up with one hand; with the other he pushed Rodion’s back. The earth—totally black. The night air in his nostrils. In his ears, in his chest, the regular beating of his heart. A sharp pain in his belly—oww—the touch of barbed wire. The hand of the Silent One, moving by divination, slid under him, freed him, protected him . . .
Once outside, Rodion at first got up on his knees. The neighbouring buildings were shapes of sheer blackness standing out against a sky all streaming with crystals. Total silence. Rodion ran, leaped a wall, slipped like an intelligent shadow under a watchtower on which a sentinel stood guard, and suddenly filled his lungs with unbelievable freshness . . . The bend of the Black-Waters glistened at his feet between the line of the rocks and the line of the woods, at the beginning of everything.
* * *
Galia was the first to get up, at the break of dawn, in order to split wood, draw water at the river, light the stove, hang out the laundry washed the night before, clean the fish, cook the bread, make ready for the day . . . She went out, hair bound in her red kerchief, thin and palefaced in her loose smock, a hatchet in her hand. The last stars were fading in the sky. Blue shadows were vanishing across the earth. The colour of the young woman’s red kerchief stood out unique in a universe flooded with brightness. She wore that colour but she did not see it. It was the hour of the day’s first solitude; her throat felt tight, her arms cold. You have to go on living. Split wood, carry water, even with that stab in the heart, that slight nausea, those puffy eyelids because she had awakened in the middle of the night to think about Dimitri and to cry for herself as she thought about Dimitri. She selected a birch log, planted it deftly on the ground, raised the hatchet . . . At the edge of the yard, in the bushes, someone moved. And Galia actually saw Dimitri wave to her. Then her mouth tightened. It was only Rodion. “Galia, I escaped! I don’t know how it happened. Elkin will certainly be sent to Moscow. Don’t hope for anything: with them you should never hope. Take courage. I’m hungry. Find me something to eat. I’ll be walking for three or four days through the woods and across the steppe until I get to the White-Waters. I’ll take the longest way round since they’ll be after me. Quick, Galia, I haven’t a minute and I’m hungry, hungry.”
There was a joyful vibration in his voice.
He waited in the bushes while Galia went down into the cellar. From one minute to the next things were growing clearer and clearer inside him, as they were on the earth. Galia returned with her hands full of riches: bread, onions, dried fish, a green apple, matches, a knife, ten roubles—all she had. “Here’s my brother’s passport. Leave quickly, before it’s completely light. Try to ford the river with the woodcutters . . .” She filled his pockets, happy to touch him. He felt overwhelmed by a happiness he did not yet deserve and which he would pay for later.
“Galia, I’ll . . .”
“What will you do, Rodion?”
Taut, erect, she stared at him avidly: mouth open, dark; eyes wide, tinged with silver.
“I promise you, Galia . . .”
“What are you promising, Rodion?”
“I promise you and the others, I promise you all . . .”
He couldn’t say what, overcome by something definitive, at last attaining certainties which neither his thoughts nor his words could express.
“Farewell, Galia. Thank you.”
“Rodion, Rodion, what joy, what sadness . . .”
Suddenly she took his head in her hands, which were soft and supple, pulled him to her, hugged him, and he felt her kissing his hair, felt Galia’s dark lips seeking his face . . . He heard them murmuring: “Farewell, Rodion, farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell . . . Be strong, Rodion, hold on to yourself with strong hands . . . Don’t be afraid. Follow your road, Rodion. God be with you. Go my Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri, go . . .”
When Rodion was gone, Galia picked up the hatchet which had fallen at her feet. It made her feel good to grasp it firmly and heft it at the end of her arm. She walked back to the house with determined steps. The tears continued to drip, one by one, down her ashen face. Her eyes gazed implacably at the log whose white bark was shimmering under the dew and she split it with the first blow.
* * *
Comrade Knapp, the District Chief, had summoned his collaborators—Department Heads and Deputies—to his office at two in the afternoon as on great occasions . . .
Present were seven uniforms, four pairs of spectacles, seven service revolvers; there were two thin men, one fat man, one bemedalled man, one bald man, and the Runt. The fat one was Fedossenko, taciturn for the moment, the most important of the lot, but tortured by an aching anxiety: on the previous day the Chief had asked him for the dossier of the big case under investigation. Missing were the head of the Criminal Brigade, who was off on an expedition in the neighbouring woods looking for Rodion, and his assistant, who had wandered even farther afield in pursuit of some bandits. The latter was only to return on a stretcher, his head severed from his body. At the first stroke of two, Knapp strode rapidly in and waved his hand around th
e room—please keep your seats, comrades—but he did not shake hands. They noted his ashen face, his pinched nostrils, his eyes, which were evasive rather than distant. A chill entered with him. He took his seat behind his desk. The secretary, a young officer with a Charlie Chaplin moustache—perpetually jolly, today anonymous—handed him a printed sheet and a scratch pad. Knapp, head down, gave a slight cough. His shoulders were square, his neck thin, erect, and wrinkled, his chest flat. A shrivelled old life, perhaps ascetic, perhaps diseased, in any case tired of itself, slowly drying up. His silence was so weighty that the head of the Economic Department, who was smoking, comfortably ensconced in a leather armchair, put out his freshly lighted cigarette on the floor. The new Deputy in charge of prisons (his predecessor had been in jail since the day before yesterday, when Rodion had escaped) choking with fear, grabbed at the collar of his tunic like a hanged man. Knapp, applying to his subordinates the procedure he had successfully used in the past on prisoners under interrogation, prolonged the glacial silence. He was barely breathing. Finally, raising his head, his glasses as grey as his face:
“Comrade Department Heads and Deputies . . . (Pause). I have called you together today for a matter of extreme importance which involves the honour of the Security Department and our responsibility before the Party . . .”
This solemn exordium took everyone’s breath away. The Runt’s shoulders trembled from sheer nervous agitation. The director of inner-departmental services made a super-human effort not to turn pale. He preferred to cough. My God! If someone had discovered a leak in supplies, if . . . The same thought rolled from head to head around the room: “Which of these bastards has informed on me for . . .?” Knapp did not condescend to follow his effect on their faces. No one was smoking anymore. Knapp said:
“Comrade Fedossenko.”
Normally, the person thus addressed would murmur “Comrade Chief . . .” in reply without moving and would remain seated. But this time his name was pronounced with such icy authority that Fedossenko slowly got up, in spite of himself. He straightened his belt and the hem of his tunic with thick, squared-off hands. None of this augured any good. The Chief’s tone of voice was not suggestive of congratulations; yet the dossier . . .
“Comrade Fedossenko. I spent the night studying the case of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist centre of Chernoe. Your manner of conducting the investigation was beneath criticism . . . Hum . . . beneath all criticism . . .
Fedossenko, choking, took one step forward and stood at attention. Everyone’s eyes were glued on him. Six pairs of lungs exhaled the same silent ouf! Take it on the chin, my fat friend! Ah! How you used to put on airs! The big-shot! In charge of a big political case! Well, dear colleague, well, pig-face, you can climb down off your high horse now. You’ve had it. And Fedossenko, through a secret sense of hearing, took it all in. Everything was crumbling around him, everything, everything . . . Awful. And Knapp went on:
“What about these cases of a seven-pound loaf of bread and twelve hundred school notebooks? The directive from Moscow states clearly: ‘In certain cases it will be permissible to prosecute them for common crimes, without, however, allowing this to appear systematic . . .’ You were preoccupied with a seven-pound loaf stolen by delivery men, while a secret Committee of Five was carrying on its activities—its pernicious activities—among the deportees under your supervision. Where do the twelve hundred notebooks come from? From Moscow. Did you warn the Central Collegium about the presence of active and organized counter-revolutionary Right opportunists in the distribution service of the Public Education Department right in Moscow? I’m asking you did you report this?”
“No,” stammered Fedossenko.
Murmurs of disapproval surrounded him on all sides. Who would have thought? Such criminal negligence! Oh!
“Among the prisoners in your custody, the most dangerous Trotskyist, by his own confession, escaped. ESCAPED! Comrade Department Heads and Deputies, we are all responsible for this inconceivable event . . .”
Knapp’s letter-opener rapped sharply on the edge of the desk. They were all aware of the event, but their collective stupefaction weighed all the more heavily on the guilty party to the extent that each felt relieved on his own account.
“. . . Myself first of all for having allowed a dossier of this importance to remain in hands that are incapable . . . (long pause, grey eyeglasses flashing from face to face, hushed voice) or suspect . . .”
If Fedossenko did not fall over backwards, it was because he had the backbone of a bull, which kept him erect, independent of his will. His last shred of self-respect fell with his last hope. He raised his hands in a gesture of supplication and said in a humbly reproachful voice: Comrade Chief, how could you . . .! then, pulling himself together, cried vehemently: Suspect? Me? Never! But all this took place inside him, Outwardly he remained stunned, totally immobile and utterly mute, while his face grew more and more flushed and a nasty fog drew over his eyes.
“In itself, the case of the Trotskyist Centre is unexpectedly serious, but your investigation, instead of shedding light on it, strangely obscures it. From now on I will conduct it myself. Fedossenko!”
(. . . just ‘Fedossenko?’ That’s it . . . It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s prison . . . pri . . .)
“. . . I had ordered you to stay within legal bounds, do you recall?”
Fortunately, whenever a superior addressed a question to him, whatever his personal inner turmoil, Fedossenko immediately recovered the power of verbal assent:
“Yes, Comrade Chief.”
“Yet the escaped perpetrator, before escaping, turned in a complaint against you for brutality. Do you admit your guilt?”
“I . . . No . . . I don’t know . . .”
“One of your subordinates corroborates the escaped man’s complaint. Don’t be in a hurry to deny or confess it. You’ll have time to think about what line of conduct to adopt in front of the investigating judges of the Party and Security. You have betrayed the Party’s confidence and sabotaged the work of Security. You will be under arrest until further orders.”
The Director of inner-departmental services, a cigarette dangling from his lips, had the outrageous effrontery to murmur “Very good!” Fedossenko said, “I obey, Comrade Chief,” turned on his heels, took three stiff paces, opened the door, went out, did not collapse, but continued to walk, his head buzzing, straight down the hall . . . Then the Runt burst into sight in front of him, limping, one shoulder higher than the other, with holes in place of eyes.
“This way, Comrade Chief, if you please . . . Your revolver, please, Comrade Chief, if you please . . .” The Runt was hopping around him, looking as Fedossenko had never seen him, with a head that was more of a death’s head than a living head, an outsized uniform hanging over a hollow chest, the flat voice of a puppet or a ghost . . . Puppet or ghost, he carefully shut the door of a white-washed cell on the demolished Fedossenko.
* * *
Rodion crossed over the Black-Waters with the first group of loggers on their way to the cutting-grounds in the woods. They removed their boots before entering the water, where they followed a trail among the rocks which was known only to them. One clumsy fellow fell into the stream and splashed about in the suddenly-seething water for a moment before regaining his balance. People laughed. “Easy to get drowned here,” someone said to Rodion. “There are holes—no way to know all of them—and then the rocks, they move around . . .” Rodion had to pretend that he, too, knew his way among the treacherous rocks, which were hard to see because of the reflections. He followed the footsteps of the men ahead of him. Once in the shelter of the woods, the loggers stepped up the pace in order to get warm: Rodion would have liked to run. All at once the excitement of escape electrified him from head to foot. He wanted to leap with joy, to burst out laughing, to dance, but he made an effort not to turn around too often so as not to attract attention. He mingled with the little groups stretched out along the path through the underbrush, which was slippe
ry with pine-needles. Around nine in the morning, they would be starting after him with dogs. What would they give the dogs to put them on the scent, since he had left nothing behind him? His straw mattress at the Kurochkin’s? So many sweaty bodies had slept on it . . . “My poverty protects me,” he thought with satisfaction. He had deliberately taken the longest, most dangerous, most improbable route . . .
Danger loomed simply at a turn in the path, much earlier than he had expected it, and Rodion approached it with steady steps . . . The silhouettes of the pines stood out more sharply before his eyes, the silence of the forest became softly, terribly resonant . . . Under a dark, ancient, pyramidal pine, a grey-coated horseman was inspecting the loggers’ papers. Attentively he fingered the passports or working papers of the “special colonists” (they were deportees, too); he barely glanced at the men. He was a puffy-faced young soldier with dirty hands who appeared to be half-awake. His little shaggy roan was licking the moss on the ground. Rodion got out the passport Galia had given him, which he had not had time to look over. He hadn’t yet learned his new name. Then, head held high, in order to hide the look in his eyes without appearing to conceal them, he stared calmly at the soldier, looking not into his eyes but just below, at his nostrils, his thick, chapped lips. “If you take me away, little brother, I’ll strangle you . . .” This clear resolve sank into Rodion like a stone dropping under water: everything remained calm on the surface. Attached to his passport was a little white card with the photo of a clean-shaven young man in his Sunday best wearing a blouse with an embroidered collar. Rodion had a ten-days’ growth of beard, a swollen right eye, scurfy scales on his chin . . . The soldier handed him back his papers. “Next.” The next man, an old fellow with broken-down shoulders, long hair, a face lined with deep wrinkles and furrowed all over with long, faded whiskers, did not have his papers in order. He was missing some visas on his deportee’s certificate. He explained in a whining voice, while showing his ribs, that he was suffering from a disease, that he wasn’t able, that Comrade Petrov knew it, that Comrade Petrov . . .
