Was it really him sitting here? Was all this really happening to him? It was a dream, a midsummer nightmare…
'Before the war you supplied an émigré Trotskyist centre with information about the thinking of leading figures in the international revolutionary movement.'
You didn't have to be a scoundrel or an idiot to suspect such a filthy, pathetic creature of treachery. If Krymov had been in the investigator's shoes, he certainly wouldn't have trusted such a creature… He knew the new type of Party official very well – those who had replaced the Old Bolsheviks liquidated or dismissed from their posts in 1937. They were people of a very different stamp. They read new books and they read them in a different way: they didn't read them, they 'mugged them up'. They loved and valued material comforts: revolutionary asceticism was alien to them, or, at the very least, not central to their character. They knew no foreign languages, were infatuated with their own Russian-ness – and spoke Russian ungrammatically. Some of them were by no means stupid, but their power seemed to lie not so much in their ideas or intelligence, as in their practical competence and the bourgeois sobriety of all their opinions.
Krymov could understand that both the new and the old cadres were bound together by a great common goal, that this gave rise to many similarities, and that it was unity that mattered, not differences. Nevertheless, he had always been conscious of his own superiority over these new people, the superiority that was his as an Old Bolshevik.
What he hadn't noticed was that it was no longer a matter of his own willingness to accept the investigator, to recognize him as a fellow Party member. Now his longing to be one with his investigator was really a pathetic hope that the latter would accept him, would accept Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov, or would at least admit that not everything about him was wretched, dishonest and insignificant.
Krymov hadn't noticed how it had happened, but now it was his investigator's self-assurance that was the assurance of a true Communist.
'If you are genuinely capable of sincere repentance, if you still feel any love at all for the Party, then help the Party with your confession.'
Suddenly, shaking off the terrible impotence that was eating into his cerebral cortex, Krymov shouted: 'No, you won't get anything out of me! I'm not going to give false testimony! Do you hear? I won't sign even if you torture me!'
'Think about it for a while,' said the investigator.
He began leafing through some papers. He didn't once look at Krymov. The minutes went by. He moved Krymov's file to one side and took a sheet of paper out of a drawer. He seemed to have forgotten about Krymov. He was writing calmly, unhurriedly, screwing up his eyes as he collected his thoughts. Then he read through what he had written, thought about it, took an envelope out of a drawer and started writing an address on it. It was possible that this wasn't an official letter at all. He read through the address and underlined the surname twice. He filled his fountain-pen, spending a long time wiping off the drops of ink. He began sharpening pencils over an ashtray. The lead in one of the pencils kept breaking. Without showing the least sign of irritation, the investigator began sharpening it again. Then he tried the point on his finger.
Meanwhile the creature thought. It had a lot to think about.
How can there have been so many informers? I must remember everything. I must work out who can have denounced me. But why bother? Muska Grinberg… The investigator will come to Zhenya in time… But it is strange that he hasn't asked about her at all, that he hasn't said a word… Surely Vasya didn't inform on me? But what, just what am I supposed to confess…? What's hidden will remain hidden, but here I am. Tell me what all this is for, Party. Iosif, Koba, Soso. What can have made him kill so many fine, strong people? Katsenelenbogen's right – it's not the investigator's questions I should be afraid of, but his silences, the things he keeps silent about. Yes, soon he'll come to Zhenya. She must have been arrested too. Where had all this started, how had it begun? Can it really be me sitting here? How awful. What a lot of shit there is in my life. Forgive me, comrade Stalin! Just say one word to me, Iosif Vissarionovich! I'm guilty, I've been confused, I've said things I shouldn't, I've doubted, the Party knows everything, the Party sees everything. Why, why did I ever talk to that literary critic? What does it matter anyway? But how does my time in encirclement fit into all this? The whole thing's quite mad. It's a lie, a slander, a provocation. Why on earth didn't I say about Hacken, 'My brother, my friend, I have no doubt at all of your purity…'? Hacken had averted his unhappy eyes.
Suddenly the investigator asked: 'Well, have you remembered yet?'
Krymov threw up his hands helplessly. 'There isn't anything for me to remember.'
The telephone rang.
'Hello.' The investigator glanced cursorily at Krymov. 'Yes, you can get everything ready. It will soon be time.' For a moment Krymov thought the conversation was about him.
The investigator put down the receiver and picked it up again. The ensuing conversation was extraordinary: it was as though the creature sitting next to the investigator were not a man, but some quadruped.
He was obviously talking to his wife. First of all they discussed household matters: 'At the special store? Goose – that's fine. But they should have given it to you on your first coupon. Sergey's wife rang the department. She got a leg of lamb on her first coupon. They've asked us… By the way I got some cottage cheese in the canteen. Eight hundred grams. No, it's not sour… How's the gas been today? And don't forget about the suit.'
After this he said: 'Well then, take care, don't miss me too much. Did you dream about me? What did I look like? In my underpants again? Pity! Well, I'll teach you a thing or two when I get home. Now you be careful – housework's all very well, but you mustn't lift anything heavy.'
There was something improbable about how very bourgeois and ordinary it all was: the more normal, the more human the conversation, the less the speaker seemed like a human being. There's something ghastly about a monkey imitating the ways of a man… At the same time Krymov had a clear sense that he himself was no longer a human being – when had people ever had conversations like this in front of a third person…? 'Want a big fat kiss? No? Oh well…'
Of course, if Bogoleev's theory was correct, if Krymov was a Persian cat, a frog, a goldfinch or a beetle on a stick, then there wasn't anything in the least surprising about this conversation.
Towards the end, the investigator said: 'Something burning? Run then, run. So long.'
Then he took out a book and a writing pad and began to read. From time to time he noted something down in pencil. He might be preparing for a meeting of some study-group, or perhaps he was going to give a lecture…
Suddenly, in extreme exasperation, he said: 'Why do you keep tapping your feet like that? This isn't a gymnastics exhibition.'
'I've got pins and needles, citizen investigator.'
But the investigator had already buried himself again in his book.
After another ten minutes he asked absent-mindedly: 'Well? Have you remembered?'
'Citizen investigator, I need to go to the lavatory.'
The investigator sighed, walked to the door and gave a quiet call. His face was just like that of a dog-owner whose dog asks to go out for a walk at the wrong time. A young soldier in battledress walked in. Krymov looked him up and down with a practised eye: everything was in order – his belt was properly tucked in, his collar was clean and his forage cap was tilted at the right angle. It was only his work that was not that of a soldier.