The Buddha's Return

by Gaito Gazdanov

  “Permit me to welcome you,” said the man in rags, whose dull, inexpressive voice immediately struck me. “I haven’t the pleasure of knowing your name.”

  I introduced myself and asked whether he could explain where I was and what I was doing here.

  “You’ve been remanded in custody.”

  “Remanded in custody?” I repeated in astonishment. “But on what grounds?”

  “The relevant charges will likely be brought against you in the near future—what they are precisely, I don’t know.”

  An enormous bird with a bald neck slowly flew past the bright aperture in the wall, almost brushing it with its wing. Its appearance here, coupled with the replies of my interlocutor, seemed so improbable that I asked:

  “What country is this?”

  “You are in the territory of the Central State.”

  For some reason I found this answer satisfactory; this was probably because of the effect of the narcotic not yet having completely worn off. With an effort, I got to my feet and took a few steps towards the opening—evidently in lieu of a window—and instinctively recoiled: it gave onto a courtyard, but the cell was unusually high up, probably on the thirtieth floor. Opposite the building, separated by a distance of forty or fifty metres, was a solid wall.

  “Escape is impossible,” said my companion, who had been following my every move.

  I nodded. Then I told him that I refused to recognize the reasons for my being held here, that I was guilty of no crime and all this was utterly absurd. Next I asked him why he had been arrested and what lay in store for him. Then for the first time he smiled and replied that in his case there had been a clear misunderstanding and that he would personally face no punishment.

  “But what exactly happened to you?” he asked.

  I related to him in great detail the little-convincing facts that had led me here so unexpectedly. He asked me a few more pieces of information about my life and, having heard me out, said that he was entirely satisfied by my account and would advocate my release. Such a statement ought to have seemed at least a little strange coming from a prisoner in rags. However, I took him at his word; my analytical faculties had not yet returned to me.

  After a while the door to the cell opened, and two armed soldiers, one of whom barked out my surname, escorted me down a long corridor with pink walls and a multitude of turns. At each turn hung the same enormous portrait of some elderly, clean-shaven man, with a face that looked like a common workman’s, albeit with an unnaturally narrow forehead and minuscule eyes; he was wearing something between a jacket and a military tunic decked with medals, anchors and stars. The walls of the corridor were lined with several statues and busts of the same man. Finally we arrived—in complete silence—at a door, through which I was shoved into a room, where an elderly man in glasses was sitting at a large table. He was dressed in some peculiar semi-military, semi-civilian uniform, similar in style to the one depicted in the portraits and on the statues.

  He began by extracting a massive revolver from a drawer and placing it beside a paperweight. Then, suddenly lifting his head and looking me straight in the eye, he said:

  “Naturally you’ll be aware that only a full and frank confession can save you?”

  After the long walk down the corridor—the soldiers had walked briskly and I had been obliged to keep pace with them—I felt as if the almost semi-unconscious state in which I had until now found myself had at last given way to something more normal. My body once again felt as it usually did, I could see what was before my eyes with perfect clarity, and now it became more apparent to me than ever that what had happened was obviously the result of some misunderstanding. At the same time, however, the prison setting and the prospect of an arbitrary interrogation rather vexed me. I looked at the seated figure in glasses and asked:

  “Forgive me, but who are you?”

  “There’ll be no questions here!” he answered sharply.

  “There appears to be some confusion,” I said. “I seem to recall hearing a distinctly interrogatory tone in your voice when you just addressed me.”

  “Try to understand that we’re dealing with your life here,” he said. “It’s too late now for dialectics. Though perhaps it would be beneficial to remind you that you stand accused of high treason.”

  “High treason, no less?”

  “No less indeed. You must have no illusions about it: it is a terrible charge. I repeat that only a full and frank confession can save you now.”

  “In what respect am I alleged to have committed high treason?”

  “You have the impertinence to ask? Very well, I’ll tell you. There is high treason in the very fact that you allow for the unlawful principle of there being any legitimacy in pseudo-governmental ideas that contradict the Great Theory of the Central State which has been devised by the foremost geniuses of mankind.”

  “What you’re saying is so absurd and naive that I’m at a loss to respond. I would like only to point out that the possible admission of one principle or another is a theoretical stance, not a fact on the basis of which it’s possible to prosecute a man.”

  “Even here, at a tribunal of the Central Government, you speak in a language whose every word echoes your crime. In the first instance, a representative of the state, particularly an investigator, is, as far as you’re concerned, infallible, and no word of his may be termed either ‘absurd’ or ‘naive’. But that’s not all. Now, after what you’ve just said, there’s another point that further compounds your guilt: causing insult to a representative of the Central Government. You stand accused of high treason, of conspiracy to assassinate the head of state and, finally, of the death of Citizen Ertel, one of our finest representatives beyond these borders.”

  “Who is this Ertel?”

  “The man you killed. Don’t try to deny it: nothing escapes the knowledge of the Central Government. A full confession is your only option; it is what the state and the people expect of you.”

  “The only response I’m able to give concerns Ertel. That man was a hired assassin. I was in a position of lawful self-defence. Evidently until now Ertel never had to deal with people in the habit of defending their own life, and this blunder wrought his downfall. As far as the remaining accusations are concerned, they’re sheer nonsense, which speaks volumes for the intellectual capacity of the people who contrived them.”

  “You’ll sorely repent of those words.”

  “May I point out that the verb ‘to repent’ is inherently religious in its connotations? It seems strange to hear it on the lips of a representative of the Central Government.”

  “What will you say when confronted with your accomplices?”

  I shrugged.

  “Enough!” he said, firing the revolver: the bullet hit the wall about a metre and a half above my head. The door opened, and the soldiers who had brought me here entered the room.

  “Take the accused to his cell,” said the investigator.

  As I was returning to my cell, glancing from time to time at the portraits and statues, only then did it occur to me that I had acted wrongly, that I should never have answered the investigator as I had done. I simply had to prove to him that there was no way I could be the man for whom he had mistaken me. Rather than adopt this tactic, however, I had spoken to him as though I admitted the absurd legitimacy of his argument, and in disagreeing with it, as it were, dialectically, I was playing straight into his hands. Besides, it was obvious that I was a complete stranger to this world in which I now found myself. The faces of the soldiers who escorted me had displayed a complete absence of thought or emotion. These portraits looked like oleographs produced by a workman whose lack of artistry unwittingly provoked both pity and scorn; likewise the statues. The investigator’s words bore the mark of an equally grim intellectual poverty and, in the world I came from, any such man would have had no place in the machinery of justice.

  Back in my cell, I was just about to tell my companion about the interrogation, when
immediately I was led off again, this time in a different direction; I landed in front of a second investigator, who addressed me rather differently than the first had done.

  “We are aware,” he began, “that we are dealing with a relatively cultured man, and not just some mercenary from a hostile political organization. You must surely know that we are surrounded by enemies; this forces us to increase our vigilance and sometimes compels us to adopt measures that, although they may appear rather drastic, are not always avoidable. Such has been the case with you. We know, or at least we hope to establish, that your guilt is less severe than it may initially have seemed. Be candid with us; it is in your, and our, best interests.”

  Judging by the way he spoke, it was obvious that this man was much more dangerous than the first investigator. But I was almost glad of it; it was possible to talk to him in a different language.

  “I can understand your frustration during the earlier interrogation,” he continued. “There was a mistake, a most regrettable one: the investigator you spoke with usually handles only the simplest of cases, although he invariably strives towards matters clearly exceeding his competency. You see, he owes his position to party membership; one cannot make too many demands of him. Let us, however, get down to business. Are you aware of the charges brought against you?”

  “I would like to know,” I said, “who it is that I’ve been mistaken for. It’s obvious to me that what has happened here is the result of some misunderstanding, which I would very much like to clear up. My surname is”—I gave him my surname—“I live in Paris and I am a student of history at the university there. I have never—as is easy to ascertain through even the most superficial of investigations—engaged in any political activity, nor have I ever belonged to any political organization. The accusations concerning terrorist intentions are so absurd and illogical that I see no point in discussing them further. I admit that the man you take me for may be both a terrorist and your political adversary, but that has nothing to do with me. I only hope that your state apparatus is sufficiently organized to establish this.”

  “Are you alleging that Rosenblatt was mistaken? If so, your case will take a decidedly tragic turn.”

  “Who is this Rosenblatt? This is the first time I’ve heard the name, I’ve never seen the man.”

  “I must say, you did everything you could so that no one would ever see him again: you strangled him.”

  “Forgive me, but half an hour ago I was told that his surname was Ertel.”

  “That was a mistake.”

  “What, another mistake?”

  “Personally speaking, I never much rated Rosenblatt,” continued the investigator. “When you called him a hired assassin, you weren’t far from the truth. The pity is that he was the only man who could have saved you. You’ve robbed him of the opportunity to do so. We have in our possession his secret report on you and your activities. The intelligence it contains is much too detailed and accurate to be a fabrication. And in any case, the man was utterly bereft of imagination.”

  “It’s entirely possible that the intelligence contained in his report is accurate. But the single most important factor in all this is that it concerns someone else, and not me.”

  “Yes, but how are we to prove this?”

  “For a start, this man cannot be my twin. Moreover, I presume he would have a different surname. Then, of course, there are other distinguishing features: age, height, hair colour, and so forth.”

  “Rosenblatt’s report, although comprehensive in all other respects, unfortunately contains none of these indicators. And anyway, why should I believe you and not him?”

  “You may not believe me. But there would be nothing easier than to make enquiries in Paris.”

  “We avoid, insofar as possible, all contact with foreign police.”

  It began to dawn on me that my situation was hopeless. The judicial machinery of the Central State displayed absolute rigidity and a lack of any interest in the accused; its function was solely punitive. The primitivism characteristic of all justice had been reduced to an absurdity. There was one single formula: anyone brought before the court stood accused of crimes against the state and was liable to be punished. The innocence of the accused was admissible theoretically, although it was bound to be disregarded. Obviously a hint of desperation glinted in my eyes, for the investigator said:

  “I’m afraid you will find it objectively impossible to prove any error on our part. This leaves you with a choice: either to persist in this fruitless denial and thus knowingly to consign yourself to death, or else to sign a confession and make peace with the fact that you will spend a short period of time in prison, after which freedom awaits you.”

  “Do you hold the accused to be innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then I cannot sign a confession for an act I haven’t committed: doing so would result in my consciously perverting the course of justice in the Central State.”

  “Ideologically speaking, you’re correct. But that isn’t the point. You are obliged to act within the limitations of the options available to you. Unfortunately these are rather narrow, I’ll grant you that. Let us enumerate them once again. On the one hand, a complete denial of guilt and the prospect of capital punishment. On the other, a confession and temporary deprivation of liberty. The rest is all theory. I advise you to think about this. I’ll call for you again in the near future.”

  Back in my cell, I recounted the details of my first and second interrogations to my companion. He listened to me, sitting in that same pose with his eyes closed. When I finished, he said:

  “That was easily foreseeable.”

  Again I looked upon his rags and his unshaven face and recalled that this man had promised my release.

  “Do you think there’s anything to be done about it?”

  “You see,” he began, disregarding my question, “I know these laws better than any investigator. They aren’t actually laws, they’re more the spirit of the system, not a statutory code of any sort.”

  He spoke as if he were giving a lecture.

  “The absence of elementary legal norms is exacerbated by the fact that the ordinary workers of the judiciary are outstanding for a prodigious lack of culture and confuse their functions with those of some judicial executioner. You can crush their arguments and prove to them that twice two is four, that they are wrong and that the prosecution’s case is based on naive folly, which is the case more often than not. But this simply doesn’t register with them. They will still sentence you and adopt punitive measures—not because you’re guilty and it has been proven, but because this is how they understand the task of the Central Judiciary. Objection is unfavourable and punishable in principle. To argue with the law is a crime against the state, as is to doubt its inerrancy. There are a dozen formulas, each of which expresses a particular type of ignorance; all the miscellaneous activities of millions of people can be condensed into these dozen formulas. To fight this system, which is difficult to define in a few words…”

  “I would say: grim idiocy.”

  “Splendid. So, to fight this grim idiocy by rational means is impossible. One has to employ other strategies; which did you adopt when Ertel-Rosenblatt tried to strangle you?”

  “Those that my sports instructors had taught me.”

  “Very well. Had you acted otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have been long for this world.”

  “Quite possibly,” I said, recalling the darkness, the fingers clutched at my neck, and how I had begun to choke.

  “In this instance, knowing that neither your innocence nor your ability to prove it will achieve anything, you’ve got to change tack. I’ve discovered a way out; it’s cost me dearly, but I have nothing left to fear now. My method is infallible, and that’s why I assured you that you’d be freed. I repeat this promise to you now.”

  “I’m sorry, but if you have such a powerful weapon against this, then how is it that you’ve come to be in t
he same position as I am?”

  “I already told you there’s been a misunderstanding,” he replied with a shrug. “They arrested me during the night, as I slept.”

  “What exactly is this weapon?”

  He said nothing for a long time, although his lips moved silently, as they had done when I first saw him. Then, without raising his head, he said:

  “I’m a hypnotist. It is I who dictates the findings to the investigator.”

  “And if he resists hypnosis?”

  “I’ve yet to encounter such a case. But even if he were to resist this type of hypnosis, he would surely succumb to another.”

  “In other words…”

  “In other words, I’d force him to end his life by committing suicide, and the matter would be reassigned to someone else who would be susceptible.”

  “One more thing,” I said, astonished by his confidence. “I’ll soon be summoned by the investigator, but you won’t be present for the interrogation. Are you able to bend him to your will from a distance?”

  “That would be significantly more difficult. But you and I shall be summoned almost simultaneously.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “While you were being questioned by the first investigator, I was being questioned by the second.”

  Then this calm man sank into total silence, which he did not break during the course of those three days that passed as I awaited the next interrogation, at which—if I were to believe him—such incredible things were to occur. We were given food twice daily; at first I was unable to eat it, as it was so disgusting. Only on the third day did I manage to swallow a few spoonfuls of some clear-grey liquid and a crust of poorly baked bread that was revoltingly chewy. I felt weak, but my mind was alert. During all this time my cellmate did not touch his food. Mostly he remained absolutely still, and it was impossible to fathom how his muscles and joints could withstand such prolonged strain. Lying on my stone bed, I pondered how fantastical reality could be, and how there was a palpable sense of sheer inescapability in all my surroundings: the geometric composition of the walls and ceiling, opening onto a thirty-storey precipice where the sun and rain alternated, and the constant presence of this strange, ragged vagrant. Once, to break this stony silence, I started whistling an aria from Carmen, but the notes sounded so flat, so wild and so misplaced that I immediately stopped. I had time enough to contemplate many times over in minute detail what had happened to me and to establish that despite there being an undoubted logic to it, the combination of factors could but seem entirely irrational. Least of all did I think of the danger hanging over me, and in spite of the outward implausibility of what my companion had promised, I believed his every word.