Darkness at Noon

by Arthur Koestler

  “Was that meant to be a warning, when I asked you if I could go on living with my friend and you said ‘Better not’?”

  Rubashov saw a taxi with bright lights coming up the avenue. He stopped on the curb and waited for it to come closer. Richard was standing beside him. “I have no more to say to you, Richard,” Rubashov said, and hailed the taxi.

  “Comrade—b-but you couldn’t d-denounce me, comrade …” said Richard. The taxi slowed down, it was no more than twenty paces from them. Richard stood hunched in front of Rubashov; he had caught the sleeve of Rubashov’s overcoat and was talking straight down into his face; Rubashov felt his breath and a slight dampness sprayed on to his forehead.

  “I am not an enemy of the Party,” said Richard. “You c-can’t throw me to the wolves, c-comrade….”

  The taxi stopped at the curb; the driver must certainly have heard the last word. Rubashov calculated rapidly that it was no use sending Richard away; there was a policeman posted a hundred yards further up. The driver, a little old man in a leather jacket, looked at them expressionlessly.

  “To the station,” said Rubashov and got in. The taxi driver reached back with his right arm and slammed the door behind him. Richard stood on the edge of the pavement, cap in hand; his Adam’s apple moved rapidly up and down. The taxi started; it drove off towards the policeman; it passed the policeman. Rubashov preferred not to look back, but he knew that Richard was still standing on the edge of the pavement, staring at the taxi’s red rear-light.

  For a few minutes, they drove through busy streets; the taxi-driver turned his head round several times, as if he wanted to make sure that his passenger was still inside. Rubashov knew the town too little to make out whether they were really going to the station. The streets became quieter; at the end of an avenue appeared a massive building with a large illuminated clock, they stopped at the station.

  Rubashov got out; the taxis in this town had no meters yet. “How much is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said the driver. His face was old and creased; he pulled a dirty red rag out of the pocket of his leather coat and blew his nose with ceremony.

  Rubashov looked at him attentively through his pince-nez. He was certain he had not seen that face before. The driver put his handkerchief away. “For people like yourself, sir, it’s always free,” he said and busied himself with the handbrake. Suddenly he held his hand out. It was an old man’s hand with thickened veins and black nails. “Good luck, sir,” he said, smiling rather sheepishly at Rubashov. “If your young friend ever wants anything—my stand is in front of the museum. You can send him my number, sir.”

  Rubashov saw to his right a porter leaning against a post and looking at them. He did not take the driver’s outstretched hand; he put a coin into it and went into the station, without a word.

  He had to wait an hour for the departure of the train. He drank bad coffee in the buffet; his tooth tormented him. In the train he fell into a doze and dreamed he had to run in front of the engine. Richard and the taxi-driver were standing in it; they wanted to run him over because he had cheated them of the fare. The wheels came rattling closer and closer and his feet refused to move. He woke up with nausea and felt the cold perspiration on his forehead; the other people in the compartment looked at him in slight astonishment. Outside was night; the train was rushing through a dark enemy country, the affair with Richard had to be concluded, his tooth was aching. A week later he was arrested.

  10

  Rubashov leant his forehead against the window and looked down into the yard. He was tired in the legs and dizzy in the head from walking up and down. He looked at his watch; a quarter to twelve; he had been walking to and fro in his cell for nearly four hours on end, since first the Pietà had occurred to him. It did not surprise him; he was well enough acquainted with the day-dreams of imprisonment, with the intoxication which emanates from the whitewashed walls. He remembered a younger comrade, by profession a hairdresser’s assistant, telling him how, in his second and worst year of solitary confinement, he had dreamed for seven hours on end with his eyes open; in doing so he had walked twenty-eight kilometres, in a cell five paces long, and had blistered his feet without noticing it.

  This time, however, it had come rather quickly; already, the first day the voice had befallen him, whereas during his previous experiences it had started only after several weeks. Another strange thing was that he had thought of the past; chronic prison day-dreamers dreamed nearly always of the future—and of the past only as it might have been, never as it actually had been. Rubashov wondered what other surprises his mental apparatus held in store for him. He knew from experience that confrontation with death always altered the mechanism of thought and caused the most surprising reactions—like the movements of a compass brought close to the magnetic pole.

  The sky was still heavy with an imminent fall of snow; in the courtyard two men were doing their daily walk on the shovelled path. One of the two repeatedly looked up at Rubashov’s window—apparently the news of his arrest had already spread. He was an emaciated man with a yellow skin and a hare-lip, wearing a thin waterproof which he clutched round his shoulders as if freezing. The other man was older and had wrapped a blanket round himself. They did not speak to each other during their round, and after ten minutes they were fetched back into the building by an official in uniform with a rubber truncheon and a revolver. The door in which the official waited for them lay exactly opposite Rubashov’s window; before it closed behind the man with the harelip, he once more looked up towards Rubashov. He certainly could not see Rubashov, whose window must have appeared quite dark from the courtyard; yet his eyes lingered on the window searchingly. I see you and do not know you; you cannot see me and yet obviously you know me, thought Rubashov. He sat down on the bed and tapped to No. 402:

  WHO ARE THEY?

  He thought that No. 402 was probably offended and would not answer. But the officer did not seem to bear grudges; he answered immediately:

  POLITICAL.

  Rubashov was surprised; he had held the thin man with the hare-lip for a criminal.

  OF YOUR SORT? he asked.

  NO—OF YOURS, tapped No. 402, in all probability grinning with a certain satisfaction. The next sentence was louder—tapped with the monocle, perhaps.

  HARE-LIP, MY NEIGHBOUR, NO. 400, WAS TORTURED YESTERDAY.

  Rubashov remained silent a minute and rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve, although he was only using it to tap with. He first wanted to ask “WHY?” but tapped instead:

  HOW?

  402 tapped back drily:

  STEAMBATH.

  Rubashov had been beaten up repeatedly during his last imprisonment, but of this method he only knew by hearsay. He had learned that every known physical pain was bearable; if one knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen to one, one stood it as a surgical operation—for instance, the extraction of a tooth. Really bad was only the unknown, which gave one no chance to foresee one’s reactions and no scale to calculate one’s capacity of resistance. And the worst was the fear that one would then do or say something which could not be recalled.

  WHY? asked Rubashov.

  POLITICAL DIVERGENCIES, tapped No. 402 ironically.

  Rubashov put his pince-nez on again and felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. He had only two cigarettes left. Then he tapped:

  AND HOW ARE THINGS WITH YOU?

  THANKS, VERY WELL … tapped No. 402 and dropped the conversation.

  Rubashov shrugged his shoulders; he lit his last cigarette but one and resumed his walking up and down. Strangely enough, what was in store for him made him nearly glad. He felt his stale melancholia leave him, his head become clearer, his nerves tauten. He washed face, arms and chest in cold water over the wash-basin, rinsed his mouth and dried himself with his handkerchief. He whistled a few bars and smiled—he was always hopelessly out of tune, and only a few days ago somebody had said to him: “If No. 1 were musical, he would long ago have found a pretex
t to have you shot.”

  “He will anyway,” he had answered, without seriously believing it.

  He lit his last cigarette and with a clear head began to work out the line to take when he would be brought up for cross-examination. He was filled by the same quiet and serene self-confidence as he had felt as a student before a particularly difficult examination. He called to memory every particular he knew about the subject “steambath.” He imagined the situation in detail and tried to analyse the physical sensations to be expected, in order to rid them of their uncanniness. The important thing was not to let oneself be caught unprepared. He now knew for certain that they would not succeed in doing so, any more than had the others over there; he knew he would not say anything he did not want to say. He only wished they would start soon.

  His dream came to his mind: Richard and the old taxi-driver pursuing him, because they felt themselves cheated and betrayed by him.

  I will pay my fare, he thought with an awkward smile.

  His last cigarette was nearly at an end; it was burning his finger-tips; he let it drop. He was about to stamp it out, but thought better of it; he bent down, picked it up and stubbed out the glowing stump slowly on the back of his hand, between the blue snaky veins. He drew out this procedure for exactly half a minute, checking it by the second hand of his watch. He was pleased with himself: his hand had not twitched once during the thirty seconds. Then he continued his walk.

  The eye which had been observing him for several minutes through the spy-hole withdrew.

  11

  The lunch procession went past in the corridor; Rubashov’s cell was again left out. He wanted to spare himself the humiliation of looking through the spy-hole, so he did not discover what there was for lunch; but the smell of it filled his cell, and it smelled good.

  He felt a strong desire for a cigarette. He would have to procure himself cigarettes somehow, in order to be able to concentrate; they were more important than food. He waited for half an hour after the doling out of food, then he began to hammer on the door. It took another quarter of an hour before the old warder shuffled up. “What do you want?” he asked, in his usual surly tone.

  “Cigarettes to be fetched for me from the canteen,” said Rubashov.

  “Have you got prison vouchers?”

  “My money was taken from me on my arrival,” said Rubashov.

  “Then you must wait until it has been changed for vouchers.”

  “How long will that take in this model establishment of yours?” asked Rubashov.

  “You can write a letter of complaint,” said the old man.

  “You know quite well that I have neither paper nor pencil,” said Rubashov.

  “To buy writing materials you have to have vouchers,” said the warder.

  Rubashov could feel his temper rising, the familiar pressure in the chest and the choking feeling in the throat; but he controlled it. The old man saw Rubashov’s pupils glitter sharply through his pince-nez; it reminded him of the colour prints of Rubashov in uniform, which in the old days one used to see everywhere; he smiled with senile spite and stepped back a pace.

  “You little heap of dung,” said Rubashov slowly, turned his back on him and went back to his window.

  “I will report that you used insulting language,” said the voice of the old man at his back; then the door slammed.

  Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve and waited until he breathed more calmly. He had to have cigarettes, else he would not be able to hold out. He made himself wait ten minutes. Then he tapped through to No. 402:

  HAVE YOU ANY TOBACCO?

  He had to wait a bit for the answer. Then it came, clearly and well spaced:

  NOT FOR YOU.

  Rubashov went slowly back to the window. He saw the young officer with the small moustache, the monocle stuck in, staring with a stupid grin at the wall which separated them; the eye behind the lens was glassy, the reddish eyelid turned up. What went on in his head? Probably he was thinking: I gave it to you all right. Probably also: Canaille, how many of my people have you had shot? Rubashov looked at the whitewashed wall; he felt that the other was standing behind it with his face turned towards him; he thought he heard his panting breath. Yes, how many of yours have I had shot, I wonder? He really could not remember; it was long, long ago, during the Civil War, there must have been something between seventy and a hundred. What of it? That was all right; it lay on a different plane to a case like Richard’s; and he would do it again to-day. Even if he knew beforehand that the revolution would in the end put No. 1 in the saddle? Even then.

  With you, thought Rubashov and looked at the white-washed wall behind which the other stood—in the meantime he had probably lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke against the wall—with you I have no accounts to settle. To you I owe no fare. Between you and us there is no common currency and no common language…. Well, what do you want now?

  For No. 402 had started to tap again. Rubashov went back to the wall…. SENDING YOU TOBACCO, he heard. Then, more faintly, he heard No. 402 hammering on his door in order to attract the warder’s attention.

  Rubashov held his breath; after a few minutes he heard the old man’s shuffling footsteps approaching. The warder did not unlock No. 402’s door, but asked through the spy-hole:

  “What do you want?”

  Rubashov could not hear the answer, although he would have liked to hear No. 402’s voice. Then the old man said loudly, so that Rubashov should hear it:

  “It is not allowed; against the regulations.”

  Again Rubashov could not hear the reply. Then the warder said:

  “I will report you for using insulting language.” His steps trailed over the tiles and were lost in the corridor.

  For a time there was silence. Then No. 402 tapped:

  A BAD LOOK-OUT FOR YOU.

  Rubashov gave no answer. He walked up and down, feeling the thirst for tobacco itching in the dry membranes of his throat. He thought of No. 402. “Yet I would do it again,” he said to himself. “It was necessary and right. But do I perhaps owe you the fare all the same? Must one also pay for deeds which were right and necessary?”

  The dryness in his throat increased. He felt a pressure in his forehead; he went restlessly back and forth, and while he thought his lips began to move.

  Must one also pay for righteous acts? Was there another measure besides that of reason?

  Did the righteous man perhaps carry the heaviest debt when weighed by this other measure? Was his debt, perhaps, counted double—for the others knew not what they did?…

  Rubashov stood still on the third black tile from the window.

  What was this? A breath of religious madness? He became conscious that he had for several minutes been talking half aloud to himself. And even as he was watching himself, his lips, independently of his will, moved and said:

  “I shall pay.”

  For the first time since his arrest Rubashov was scared. He felt for his cigarettes. But he had none.

  Then again he heard the delicate tappings on the wall over the bedstead. No. 402 had a message for him:

  HARE-LIP SENDS YOU GREETINGS.

  He saw in his mind’s eye the yellow, upturned face of the man: the message made him feel uncomfortable. He tapped:

  WHAT IS HIS NAME?

  No. 402 answered:

  HE WON’T SAY. BUT HE SENDS YOU GREETINGS.

  12

  During the afternoon Rubashov felt even worse. He was seized by periodic fits of shivering. His tooth also had started to ache again—the right eye-tooth which was connected to the eye-nerve orbitalis. He had had nothing to eat since his arrest, yet did not feel hungry. He tried to collect his wits, but the cold shudders which ran over him and itching and tickling in his throat prevented him. His thoughts circled alternatively round two poles: the desperate thirst for a cigarette and the sentence: I shall pay.

  Memories overwhelmed him; they hummed and buzzed subduedly in his ears. Faces and voices came
up and vanished; wherever he tried to hold them they hurt him; his whole past was sore and festered at every touch. His past was the movement, the Party; present and future, too, belonged to the Party, were inseparably bound up with its fate; but his past was identical with it. And it was this past that was suddenly put in question. The Party’s warm, breathing body appeared to him to be covered with sores—festering sores, bleeding stigmata. When and where in history had there ever been such defective saints? Whenever had a good cause been worse represented? If the Party embodied the will of history, then history itself was defective.

  Rubashov gazed at the damp patches on the walls of his cell. He tore the blanket off the bunk and wrapped it round his shoulders; he quickened his pace and marched to and fro with short, quick steps, making sudden turns at the door and window; but shivers continued to run down his back. The buzzing in his ears went on, mixed with vague, soft voices; he could not make out whether they came from the corridor or whether he was suffering from hallucinations. It is the orbitalis, he said to himself; it comes from the broken-off root of the eye-tooth. I will tell the doctor about it tomorrow, but in the meantime there is still a lot to do. The cause of the Party’s defectiveness must be found. All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but wherever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested?

  We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voice is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked….