In the afternoon someone brought him some soup. His hand was trembling so badly that he had to bend forward and sip from the rim of the bowl, leaving the spoon tapping away by itself.
'You eat like a pig,' said the captain sadly.
After that, one other thing happened: Krymov asked to go to the lavatory. This time he walked down the corridor without thinking anything at all, but he did have one thought as he stood over the lavatory-pan: it was a good thing his buttons had been ripped off- his fingers were far too shaky to be able to cope with fly-buttons.
Time passed, slowly doing its work. The State – the captain and his epaulettes – was victorious. A dense grey fog filled Krymov's head. It was probably the same fog that filled the brain of a monkey. Past and future had disappeared; even the file with its curling tapes had disappeared. There was only one thing left in the world – his need to take off his boots, have a good scratch and go to sleep.
The investigator came back.
'Did you sleep?' asked the captain.
'Your superior officer doesn't sleep,' replied the investigator in a schoolmasterly tone of voice. 'He takes a rest.' This was a very old chestnut.
'Of course,' agreed the captain.
The investigator was just like a worker coming on shift who looks over his bench and exchanges a few businesslike words with the man he is relieving; he glanced first at Krymov, then at his writing-desk, and said: 'Very well, comrade Captain.'
He looked at his watch, took the file out of his drawer, and said, in a voice full of animation: 'Now then, Krymov, let's continue.'
They got down to work.
Today, it was the war that most concerned the investigator. Once again he turned out to have a vast fund of knowledge: he knew about Krymov's different postings; he knew the numbers of the regiments and armies concerned; he mentioned the names of people who had fought beside him; he quoted remarks Krymov had made at the Political Section, together with his comments on an illiterate memorandum of the general's.
All Krymov's work at the front, the speeches he had made under fire, the faith he had been able to impart to his soldiers through the constant hardships of the retreat-all this had suddenly ceased to exist.
He was a miserable chatterbox who had demoralized his comrades, destroying their faith and infecting them with a feeling of hopelessness. How could it be doubted that German Intelligence had helped him to cross the lines in order to continue his work as a saboteur and spy?
During the first few minutes of the new session the investigator's lively enthusiasm communicated itself to Krymov too.
'Say what you like,' he said, 'but I'll never admit to being a spy.'
The investigator glanced out through the window. It was getting dark; he could no longer clearly make out the papers on his desk.
He turned on his desk-lamp and let down the blue black-out blind.
From outside the door came a sullen, animal-like howl. It broke off as suddenly as it had begun.
'Now then, Krymov,' he said as he sat down again at his desk.
He asked Krymov if he knew why he had never been promoted. Krymov's answer was somewhat confused.
'You just stayed on as a battalion commissar, when you should have been the Member of the Military Soviet for an Army or even a Front.'
For a moment he just stared at Krymov in silence. It was perhaps the first time he had really gazed at him as an investigator should. Then, very solemnly, he announced: 'Trotsky himself said, "That's pure marble!" about one of your works. If that reptile had seized power, you'd be doing well for yourself. "Pure marble" indeed!'
'Now he's playing trumps,' thought Krymov. 'The ace itself!'
All right then, he'd describe the whole incident – when and where it had taken place – but one could just as well put the same questions to comrade Stalin himself: Krymov had never had the least connection with Trotskyism; he had always, without exception, voted against any Trotskyist resolutions.
All he really wanted was to take off his boots, lie down, put up his bare feet, and scratch himself in his sleep.
Quietly, almost affectionately, the investigator said:
'Why won't you help us? Do you really think it's just a matter of whether or not you committed crimes before the war, whether or not you renewed contacts and agreed on rendezvous during the time you were surrounded? It's something more serious and deep-rooted than that. It's a matter of the new direction of the Party. You must help the Party in this new stage of its struggle. To do that, you must first renounce your past opinions. Only a Bolshevik is capable of such a task. That's why I'm talking to you now.'
'Very well,' Krymov said slowly and sleepily. 'I can allow that, in spite of myself, I may have given expression to views hostile to the Party. My own internationalism may have contradicted the policies of a sovereign Socialist State. I may have been out of touch with the way things were going after 1937, out of touch with the new people. Yes, I can admit all this. But espionage, sabotage…'
'Why that "but"? Can't you see that you're already on the way towards realizing your hostility to the cause of the Party? What does the mere form matter? Why that "but", when you've already admitted what's most important?'
'No, I deny that I'm a spy.'
'So you don't want to help the Party? Just when we get to the point, you try and hide. It's like that, is it? You're shit, real dogshit!'
Krymov jumped up, grabbed the investigator's tie, and banged his fist on the table. Something inside the telephone clicked and tinkled.
'You son of a bitch, you swine,' he cried out in a piercing howl, 'where were you when I led people into battle in the Ukraine and the Bryansk forests? Where were you during the winter I was fighting outside Voronezh? Were you ever in Stalingrad, you bastard? Who are you to say I never did anything for the Party? I suppose you were defending our Motherland here in the Lubyanka, you… you Tsarist gendarme! And you don't believe I fought for Socialism in Stalingrad! Were you ever nearly executed in Shanghai? Were you shot in the left shoulder by one of Kolchak's soldiers in 1917?'
After that he was beaten up. He wasn't just beaten up any old how; he wasn't just punched in the face like in the Special Section at the front; he was beaten up carefully, intelligently, by two young men in new uniforms who had an understanding of anatomy and physiology. As they beat him up, he shouted:
'You swine, you should be sent to a penal detachment… You should be sent to face a tank-attack with nothing but rifles… Deserters…'
They carried on with their work, quite without anger and leaving nothing to chance. They didn't seem to be hitting him at all hard, to be putting any force behind their punches; nevertheless, there was something terrible about each blow, just as there is in a wounding remark delivered with icy calm.
They hadn't once hit Krymov in the teeth, but blood was pouring out of his mouth. The blood hadn't come from his nose or his jaw; it wasn't that he had bitten his tongue like in Akhtuba… This was blood from deep inside him, blood from his lungs. He could no longer remember where he was or what was happening to him… Then he caught sight of the investigator's face looming over him; he was pointing at the portrait of Gorky above the desk and asking: 'What was it the great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky once said?'
He answered his question himself, sounding like a schoolmaster again: 'If an enemy won't yield, he must be destroyed.'
After that Krymov saw a light on the ceiling and a man with narrow epaulettes.
'Very well,' said the investigator. 'You don't need any more rest, thanks to medical science.'