For in a struggle one must have both legs firmly planted on the earth. The Party taught one how to do it. The infinite was a politically suspect quantity, the “I” a suspect quality. The Party did not recognize its existence. The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.
The Party denied the free will of the individual—and at the same time it exacted his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity to choose between two alternatives—and at the same time it demanded that he should constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguish good and evil—and at the same time it spoke pathetically of guilt and treachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced—and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.
For forty years he had fought against economic fatality. It was the central ill of humanity, the cancer which was eating into its entrails. It was there that one must operate; the rest of the healing process would follow. All else was dilettantism, romanticism, charlatanism. One cannot heal a person mortally ill by pious exhortations. The only solution was the surgeon’s knife and his cool calculation. But wherever the knife had been applied, a new sore had appeared in place of the old. And again the equation did not work out.
For forty years he had lived strictly in accordance with the vows of his order, the Party. He had held to the rules of logical calculation. He had burnt the remains of the old, illogical morality from his consciousness with the acid of reason. He had turned away from the temptations of the silent partner, and had fought against the “oceanic sense” with all his might. And where had it landed him? Premises of unimpeachable truth had led to a result which was completely absurd; Ivanov’s and Gletkin’s irrefutable deductions had taken him straight into the weird and ghostly game of the public trial. Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.
Rubashov stared through the bars of the window at the patch of blue above the machine-gun tower. Looking back over his past, it seemed to him now that for forty years he had been running amuck—the running-amuck of pure reason. Perhaps it did not suit man to be completely freed from old bonds, from the steadying brakes of “Thou shalt not” and “Thou mayst not”, and to be allowed to tear along straight towards the goal.
The blue had begun to turn pink, dusk was falling; round the tower a flock of dark birds was circling with slow, deliberate wing-beats. No, the equation did not work out. It was obviously not enough to direct man’s eyes towards a goal and put a knife in his hand; it was unsuitable for him to experiment with a knife. Perhaps later, one day. For the moment he was still too young and awkward. How he had raged in the great field of experiment, the Fatherland of the Revolution, the Bastion of Freedom! Gletkin justified everything that happened with the principle that the bastion must be preserved. But what did it look like inside? No, one cannot build Paradise with concrete. The bastion would be preserved, but it no longer had a message, nor an example to give the world. No 1’s regime had besmirched the ideal of the Social state even as some Mediaeval Popes had besmirched the ideal of a Christian Empire. The flag of the Revolution was at half-mast.
Rubashov wandered through his cell. It was quiet and nearly dark. It could not be long before they came to fetch him. There was an error somewhere in the equation—no, in the whole mathematical system of thought. He had had an inkling of it for a long time already, since the story of Richard and the Pietà, but had never dared to admit it to himself fully. Perhaps the Revolution had come too early, an abortion with monstrous, deformed limbs. Perhaps the whole thing had been a bad mistake in timing. The Roman civilization, too, had seemed to be doomed as early as the first century B.C.; had seemed as rotten to the marrow as our own; then, too, the best had believed that the time was ripe for a great change; and yet the old worn-out world had held out for another five hundred years. History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations. Perhaps it was still only the second day of creation. How he would have liked to live and build up the theory of the relative maturity of the masses! …
It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.
It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them all run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? “We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.”
Perhaps the heart of the evil lay there. Perhaps it did not sit mankind to sail without ballast. And perhaps reason alone was a defective compass, which led one on such a winding, twisted course that the goal finally disappeared in the mist.
Perhaps now would come the time of great darkness.
Perhaps later, much later, the new movement would arise—with new flags, a new spirit knowing of both: of economic fatality and the “oceanic sense”. Perhaps the members of the new party will wear monks’ cowls, and preach that only purity of means can justify the ends. Perhaps they will teach that the tenet is wrong which says that a man is the quotient of one million divided by one million, and will introduce a new kind of arithmetic based on multiplication: on the joining of a million individuals to form a new entity which, no longer an amorphous mass, will develop a consciousness and an individuality of its own, with an “oceanic feeling” increased a millionfold, in unlimited yet self-contained space.
Rubashov broke off his pacing and listened. The sound of muffled drumming came down the corridor.
3
The drumming sounded as though it were brought from the distance by the wind; it was still far, it was coming closer. Rubashov did not stir. His legs on the tiles were no longer subject to his will; he felt the earth’s force of gravity slowly mounting in them. He took three steps backwards to the window, without taking his eye off the spy-hole. He breathed deeply and lit a cigarette. He heard a ticking in the wall next to the bunk:
THEY ARE FETCHING HARE-LIP. HE SENDS YOU HIS GREETINGS.
The heaviness vanished from his legs. He went to the door and started to beat against the metal quickly and rhythmically with the flat of both hands. To pass the news on to No. 406 was no use now. The cell stood empty; the chain broke off there. He drummed and pressed his eye to the spy-hole.
In the corridor the dim electric light was burning as always. He saw the iron doors of No. 401 to No. 407, as always. The drumming swelled. Steps approached, slow and dragging, one heard them distinctly on the tiles. Suddenly Hare-lip was standing in the spy-hole’s range of vision. He stood there, with trembling lips, as he had stood in the light of the reflector in Gletkin’s room; his hands in handcuffs hung down behind his back in a peculiarly twisted position. He could not see Rubashov’s eye behind the judas and looked at the door with blind, searching pupils, as though the last hope of salvation lay behind it. Then an order was spoken, and Hare-lip obediently turned to go. Behind him came the giant in uniform with his revolver-belt. They disappeared from Rubashov’s field of vision, one behind the other.
The drumming faded; all was quiet again. From the wall next to the bunk came the sound of ticking:
HE BEHAVED QUITE WELL….
Since the day when Rubashov had informed No. 402 of his capitulation, they had not spoken to each other. No. 402 went on:
YOU STILL HAVE ABOUT TEN MINUTES. HOW DO YOU FEEL?
Rubashov un
derstood that No. 402 had started the conversation in order to make waiting easier for him. He was grateful for it. He sat down on the bunk and tapped back:
I WISH IT WERE OVER ALREADY….
YOU WON’T SHOW THE WHITE FEATHER, tapped No. 402. WE KNOW YOU’RE THE DEVIL OF A FELLOW…. He paused, then, quickly, repeated his last words: THE DEVIL OF A FELLOW…. He was obviously anxious to prevent the conversation coming to a standstill. DO YOU STILL REMEMBER ‘BREASTS LIKE CHAMPAGNE GLASSES’? HA-HA! THE DEVIL OF A FELLOW….
Rubashov listened for a sound in the corridor. One heard nothing. No. 402 seemed to guess his thoughts, for he at once tapped again:
DON’T LISTEN. I WILL TELL YOU IN TIME WHEN THEY ARE COMING…. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE PARDONED?
Rubashov thought it over. Then he tapped:
STUDY ASTRONOMY.
HA-HA! expressed No. 402. I, TOO, PERHAPS. PEOPLE SAY OTHER STARS ARE PERHAPS ALSO INHABITED. PERMIT ME TO GIVE YOU SOME ADVICE.
CERTAINLY, answered Rubashov, surprised.
BUT DON’T TAKE IT ILL. TECHNICAL SUGGESTION OF A SOLDIER. EMPTY YOUR BLADDER. IS ALWAYS BETTER IN SUCH CASES. THE SPIRIT IS WILLING BUT THE FLESH IS WEAK. HA-HA!
Rubashov smiled and went obediently to the bucket. Then he sat down again on the bunk and tapped:
THANKS. EXCELLENT IDEA. AND WHAT ARE YOUR PROSPECTS?
No. 402 was silent for a few seconds. Then he tapped, rather slower than he had before:
EIGHTEEN YEARS MORE. NOT QUITE, ONLY 6, DAYS…. He paused. Then he added:
I ENVY YOU REALLY. And then, after another pause: THINK OF IT—ANOTHER 6,530 NIGHTS WITHOUT A WOMAN.
Rubashov said nothing. Then he tapped:
BUT YOU CAN READ, STUDY….
HAVEN’T GOT THE HEAD FOR IT, tapped No. 402. And then, loud and hurriedly: THEY’RE COMING….
He stopped, but a few seconds later, added:
A PITY. WE WERE JUST HAVING SUCH A PLEASANT CHAT….
Rubashov stood up from the bunk. He thought a moment and then tapped:
YOU HELPED ME A LOT. THANKS.
The key ground in the lock. The door flew open. Outside stood the giant in uniform and a civilian. The civilian called Rubashov by name and reeled off a text from a document. While they twisted his arms behind his back and put on the handcuffs, he heard No. 402 hastily tapping:
I ENVY YOU. I ENVY YOU. FAREWELL.
In the corridor outside, the drumming had started again. It accompanied them till they reached the barber’s room. Rubashov knew that from behind each iron door an eye was looking at him through the spy-hole, but he turned his head neither to the left nor to the right. The handcuffs grazed his wrists; the giant had screwed them too tightly and had strained his arms while twisting them behind his back; they were hurting.
The cellar steps came in sight. Rubashov slowed down his pace. The civilian stopped at the top of the steps. He was small and had slightly protuberant eyes. He asked:
“Have you another wish?”
“None,” said Rubashov, and started to climb down the cellar steps. The civilian remained standing above and looked down at him with his protuberant eyes.
The stairs were narrow and badly lit. Rubashov had to be careful not to stumble, as he could not hold on to the stair rail. The drumming had ceased. He heard the man in uniform descending three steps behind him.
The stairs turned in a spiral. Rubashov bent forward to see better; his pince-nez detached itself from his face and fell to the ground two steps below him; splintering, it rebounded lower down and remained lying on the bottom step. Rubashov stopped a second, hesitatingly; then he felt his way down the rest of the steps. He heard the man behind him bend down and put the broken pince-nez in his pocket, but did not turn his head.
He was now nearly blind, but he had solid ground under his feet again. A long corridor received him; its walls were blurred and he could not see the end of it. The man in uniform kept always three steps behind him. Rubashov felt his gaze in the back of his neck, but did not turn his head. Cautiously he put one foot before the other.
It seemed to him that they had been walking along this corridor for several minutes already. Still nothing happened. Probably he would hear when the man in uniform took the revolver out of its case. So until then there was time, he was still in safety. Or did the man behind him proceed like the dentist, who hid his instruments in his sleeve while bending over his patient? Rubashov tried to think of something else, but had to concentrate his whole attention to prevent himself from turning his head.
Strange that his toothache had ceased in the minute when that blessed silence had closed round him, during the trial. Perhaps the abscess had opened just in that minute. What had he said to them? “I bow my knees before the country, before the masses, before the whole people….” And what then? What happened to these masses, to this people? For forty years it had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land?
Did there really exist any such goal for this wandering mankind? That was a question to which he would have liked an answer before it was too late. Moses had not been allowed to enter the land of promise either. But he had been allowed to see it, from the top of the mountain, spread at his feet. Thus, it was easy to die, with the visible certainty of one’s goal before one’s eyes. He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain; and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.
A dull blow struck the back of his head. He had long expected it and yet it took him unawares. He felt, wondering, his knees give way and his body whirl round in a half-turn. How theatrical, he thought as he fell, and yet I feel nothing. He lay crumpled up on the ground, with his cheek on the cool flagstones. It got dark, the sea carried him rocking on its nocturnal surface. Memories passed through him, like streaks of mist over the water.
Outside, someone was knocking on the front door, he dreamed that they were coming to arrest him; but in what country was he?
He made an effort to slip his arm into his dressing-gown sleeve. But whose colour-print portrait was hanging over his bed and looking at him?
Was it No. 1 or was it the other—he with the ironic smile or he with the glassy gaze?
A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver-belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder-straps of its uniform—and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?
A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity.
About the Author
Born in Budapest in 1905, educated in Vienna, Arthur Koestler immersed himself in the major ideological and social conflicts of his time. A communist during the 1930s, and visitor for a time in the Soviet Union, he became disillusioned with the Party and left it in 1938. Later that year in Spain, he was captured by the Fascist forces under Franco, and sentenced to death. Released through the lastminute intervention of the British government, he went to France where, the following year, he again was arrested for his political views. Released in 1940, he went to England, where he made his home. His novels, reportage, autobiographical works, and political and cultural writings established him as an important commentator on the dilemmas of the twentieth century. He died in 1983.
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