“Rest in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…” “There’s something quite comforting about it all…” Suddenly it struck me that these words contained an infinitely sad truth. Perhaps it would be better if he were to die right now, just as it would have been better for my commandant to have died back then in Greece, and not much later in a factory town in France. At long last he, Pavel Alexandrovich Shcherbakov, had found true happiness. But who knows what could happen next. He might grow used to such comfort and stop appreciating it; it might seem as if he had always lived like this and what happened to him was dull and commonplace. He would soon be in his sixties, and presently those cruel hardships he had endured would begin taking their toll; there would be ailments, illnesses, doctors, all the burdens that old age brings, and the irreversible awareness that money had come too late: instead of desire there would be pain, instead of appetite an aversion to food, instead of deep sleep lingering insomnia. Yes, it would be better for him to die right now. He had known everything: youth, the dawning of strength, the spectre of death on the battlefield, passion, wine, poverty, man’s steepest fall and his triumphant return to a world that had long been inaccessible to him, the incredible journey from having recollections to being recollected, from nothingness to life. What was left for him—within the confines of human existence? No rest could ever bring back his former strength, for time had robbed him of the chance to recover it: such miracles did not happen. Perhaps a truly worthy and timely conclusion to this existence would be the journey to the place where there is no “sorrow, nor any sighing, but life everlasting”.
Perhaps that would have been best. Although personally I would have felt sorry for him. I liked his serenity, his genuine benevolence towards me, the intonations of his deep voice, his unaffected elegance—these were all qualities that he had borne through those cruel trials and succeeded in preserving just as they would be when youth and vigour permit a man the luxury of magnanimity. Would I have occasion to witness their gradual dissolution and to see before me not the current Pavel Alexandrovich, but an embittered old man, weary from chronic ailments and hateful of others because their own good health would let them comprehend neither his suffering nor his impotent rage?
I suddenly thought of the frenzied, ecstatic face of the Buddha with its arms raised aloft. Perhaps he saw before him a nirvana to which we were closer than we thought, which we took for granted, which we desired, towards which, in the depths of our consciousness, we even strove.
“Which we desired.” Let us replace the plural with a singular: “Which I desired.” Why, in some purely speculative domain, was I condemning Pavel Alexandrovich Shcherbakov to death, or to the approach of nirvana? Why was I in my imagination—as it could happen nowhere else, and my imagination was after all a distorted reflection of myself—deliberately and actively wishing for his death? Why was I conducting this theoretical assassination? And to what end was I responsible for this crime? For in the world to which my stubborn illness condemned me, the border between reality and abstraction, between deeds and ideas, was neither well defined nor fixed. I had, for instance, to make a phenomenal effort in order to remember whether Lida had in fact been mine—in that room of mirrors. How naive it would have been to think that my whole life, this long and complex journey whose origin was lost in a baffling mist, could perhaps be reduced to a sequence of overt external facts. The remainder, as vague and uncertain as it was, could be termed a departure from reality, delirium or madness. And yet it also contained a strange, undeniable coherence, passing from one fit of madness to the next—probably until the point where the last remnants of my consciousness would be swallowed up by the approaching darkness, and either I would vanish once and for all, or, after a long interval, like a coma lasting for many years, I would see myself again in some far-flung country, at the roadside, an unknown tramp with no name, no age, no nationality. Then perhaps I would be able to breathe freely and forget the criminal darkness of my imagination, the abstract odiousness of my depravity, and this theoretical assassination.
It had already gone two o’clock by the time I reached my hotel. Mado stopped me at the street corner and asked for a cigarette. Then she glanced at me and said:
“You’ve an odd look about you today. What’s the matter, are you tired?”
“It’s just the way the lamplight is falling on my face,” I said. “No, I’m not tired. I just want to go to bed.”
“Well, good night then.”
“Good night, Mado.”
I went up to my room and pulled the blanket off the divan; in the soft light the sheets and the pillowcases gleamed white. I remember that as I undressed I envisaged falling into a deep sleep and waking up in the morning, having forgotten all this unnecessary, imaginary nonsense.
* * *
I awoke, however, with a heavy head. After a cold shower and a shave I left my hotel. To the right of the entrance I was surprised to notice a dark-blue motor car of the type generally used by the police. Scarcely had I taken a few steps when I felt someone’s hand at my shoulder. I turned around. Before me stood a broad man in a suit, with a flat, inexpressive face.
“You’re under arrest,” he said. “Follow me.”
I was so stunned that for the first few seconds I was unable to say a single word. Presently a second man in a suit appeared; we got into the vehicle and set off. Only then did I ask:
“On what charges?”
“You ought to know that better than anyone else.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then let’s hope there’s been some misunderstanding that we can soon clear up.”
The car stopped at the embankment of the Seine. I sat in a waiting room; one police inspector stayed with me, while the other left. He was gone for a long time. I sensed the weight in my head returning, and I felt a strange detachment from everything that was going on around me; I was struck by the similarity to the long hallucination that had led me to the building where I was remanded in custody in the imaginary Central State.
Eventually I was taken into another room, where an inspector was waiting for me. On both sides of his chair stood a number of men who all looked very similar to one another. The one who began questioning me had a clean-shaven, doleful face; he was no longer young, and wore a tired expression that he appeared to have assumed once and for all. He asked for my surname, my address, my occupation, my place and date of birth, and I gave him all the relevant answers. He looked me straight in the eye and suddenly asked, with a strange tone of reproach in his voice:
“Why did you kill him?”
That moment the ground seemed to slip away beneath my feet. Like a spectator to the event, I could see myself from a distance, walking along that street the previous night, and I remembered the pattern of my thoughts, which could have nothing to do with anything that was happening now. I shook my head and said:
“I’m sorry, I don’t feel quite well and I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Just what is it that you’re trying to say?”
“I doubt this will come as any surprise to you. This morning Monsieur Shcherbakov was found dead in his apartment.”
Again I felt delirious and devoid of the strength to overcome it. Naturally, I accepted the possibility that he had died; I was even inclined to think that it would have been to some degree timely at that very moment. Through a heavy mist two menacing human eyes stared threateningly and reproachfully at me; with a great effort I recalled that these belonged to the inspector.
“It was a purely theoretical supposition,” I said. “It wasn’t even a desire, it was just an arbitrary logical construct.”
“Regrettably I fail to see anything theoretical about this. Shcherbakov has been murdered, stabbed in the back of the head. The blow was delivered from behind, while he was sitting in his armchair.”
I stood up without raising my eyes. No, such a coincidence was out of the question. It was just an arbitrary logical construct, and I was ready to repeat it a tho
usand times over. No one but I could have known about it; my thoughts could not have been broadcast to some unknown assassin. And yet the times matched. No, of course this was impossible.
“But that’s impossible,” I said. And suddenly I realized that there could be no more dangerous a situation than the one I was in now. In the eyes of the inspector my words would take on an entirely different meaning, and if I kept up this dialogue with myself it would be the end of me.
“May I have a glass of water, please?” I asked.
He handed me a glass of water and a cigarette. Then he said:
“Of course, I’d be only too happy if it’s proven that you aren’t the murderer. But for that I need evidence, and so I must rely on you to help me.”
“I’m sincerely grateful to you.”
A policeman then arrived to conduct me to a photographer. I was placed on a revolving metal stool coated in white oil paint; the flashlight punched me in the face, and the stool swung in various directions as the camera clicked away. My fingers were then smeared with some black substance and pressed onto a sheet of white paper, after which I was escorted back.
Although it was fairly bright in the room where I was being questioned, they shone a lamp in my face that was almost as bright as those they had just used to photograph me. I recalled that this was a common method of interrogation.
The original inspector, however, was absent. In his place sat a man who was unknown to me, strikingly like the first, with a dark, sullen expression on his face.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m listening.”
He grimaced from boredom and disgust.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said. “I need to go for lunch and you need a break. If you make a full and frank confession I’ll try to help you. What were the motives for your crime?”
“I’d like to get out of this labyrinth,” I said in response to my own thoughts.
“As would I. But that doesn’t answer my question. I’ll repeat it: what were the motives for your crime?”
I made a supreme effort to cross this border separating my thoughts on Pavel Alexandrovich’s fate—thoughts that were evoked by a definite feeling of sympathy for him—from the facts that lay, or could lay, the blame squarely on me. I perfectly understood the profound difference between this dark sense of theoretical culpability and the thrust of a knife that had caused his death. I understood this, yet the combination of both one and the other was so powerful that in attempting to stick to the facts I felt as if I were forever stumbling into invisible walls barring me from even the simplest logical line of argument. I was unable to break free of this mental fog, although I knew that my next journey into it, as well as this absurd consciousness of my guilt—I realized the ridiculousness of it, but could do nothing to escape the sensation depriving me of the necessary presence of mind—threatened me with the most immediate and terrible danger.
The inspector posed several more questions that I was unable to answer with the necessary precision. He then left, only to be replaced by another. My eyes hurt from the glare of the lamp; I was thirsty, hungry and in need of a cigarette. Shortly after, I felt sleep begin to take hold of me; I nodded off for a brief moment and awoke to find someone tapping me on the shoulder. Another man I did not recognize asked me again what had driven me to murder. I took courage and replied once more that it was not a crime, but a logical construct. A familiar voice said:
“He’s delirious from exhaustion, but he’s still holding out.”
Thereupon, however, the interrogation unexpectedly came to an end, and I was taken away. I walked like a drunk between the two policemen, swaying and stumbling. Then a door opened and I found myself in a narrow cell, on the floor of which lay a mattress covered by a blanket. I literally fell onto this, but sleep seemed to overcome me before I even touched it.
I awoke probably several hours later in total darkness, immediately recalling everything that had happened. I knew I was in prison and that I stood accused of Shcherbakov’s murder. Only now did I truly comprehend it. Poor Pavel Alexandrovich, how short his enjoyment of the good life had been. But who could have murdered him, and more importantly why?
I spent almost three days trying vainly to regain my clarity of mind, which seemed forever to be slipping away, but the light, opaque mist that usually engulfed me during these strange episodes of mental illness refused to disperse. When I was finally called in for further questioning, I felt little better than I had done on the day of my arrest.
This time I found myself before an investigator, an elderly man with gentle eyes. After the initial formalities, he said:
“I have examined your file carefully, and there is nothing in it that affects you adversely. Do you deny murdering Shcherbakov?”
“Most categorically.”
“You were on friendly terms with him, is that not correct?”
“Yes.”
“Had you known him for long?”
“About three years.”
“Do you remember where and when you first met him?”
I told him how I had come to know Pavel Alexandrovich.
“So he was a beggar in those days?”
“That’s right.”
“And three years later we find him living in a comfortable apartment on Rue Molitor? That sounds rather suspicious. How did it come about?”
I explained everything to him. I noticed that I found it much easier to answer his questions, and that the facts were more or less clear to me when the discussion had nothing to do with the murder.
“Very well,” he said. “What were your movements on the evening of the eleventh of February, that is, the evening of Shcherbakov’s murder? Can you remember your whereabouts?”
“Of course,” I said. And indeed I vividly recalled everything that had happened: the cold evening, the occasional snowflake in the light of the street lamps, Odéon station, where I had begun my journey to Pavel Alexandrovich’s, and my arrival at his apartment. I remembered the face of the conductor on the train, as well as that of the mechanic, and I would have recognized the passengers who were travelling in the same carriage as I was. I described everything to the investigator, right down to the menu for the dinner that Pavel Alexandrovich had served.
“Have you ever been engaged in any hard physical labour? Which trades do you know?”
I looked at him in astonishment, replying that, no, I had never done any hard physical labour and that I knew no trades. However, he seemed to attach no significance to this question, for he immediately said:
“After dinner you spent the whole evening chatting, is that not so?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall what you were talking about? This is very important.”
At this point in the interrogation I was horrified suddenly to detect a gap in my memory. I was unable to remember anything of our conversation—it was as if it had never happened. Perspiration appeared on my forehead from the effort I was making to recall even some of what had been said that evening, and my head began to ache. I pulled myself together and said:
“Forgive me, but I’m in no fit state to remember anything right now. If you give me a little time, I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”
His eyes met my uneasy gaze. He was silent for a moment, then he nodded and finally said:
“Very well, try to tell me next time.”
Once again I slept like a log for hours on end. When I awoke, I took a few steps about in the darkness. I hadn’t felt like this in a long time. I was in a happy, almost forgotten state of physical and mental equilibrium, and it had come on so unexpectedly that I could scarcely believe my own senses. Catherine’s distant face flashed before my eyes. I had nearly given up hope of seeing her again. What had happened to me during those hours, whose life veiled by heavy, impenetrable sleep had flitted past me, what had emerged out of this nothingness? How was it that what I had striven for at all costs, what I had so vainly expended this tremendous willpower on over the cou
rse of these interrogations, had suddenly revealed itself with such miraculous clarity in these few hours of sleep? Not only was I now unafraid of any interrogation, rather I looked forward to it.
When I was next brought before the investigator, the expression on his face was markedly graver than it had been on the previous occasion. I couldn’t help but notice this, although it had none of the effect on me that it would undoubtedly have done even the night before.
“I must inform you,” he began, “that your position has sharply deteriorated since we last spoke, which is to say nothing of the fact that we found no one else’s fingerprints in Shcherbakov’s apartment, except for yours and the deceased’s.”
He examined a piece of paper.
“There is a further aspect that doesn’t bode well for you. Did you and Shcherbakov ever discuss his will?”
“Never,” I said. “I’d be amazed to learn that he had ever given any thought to it.”
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