“What do you call dignity? It doesn’t mean anything.”
The telephone rang. “My life,” thought Kyo. KOnig did not pick up the receiver.
“The opposite of humiliation,” said Kyo. “When one comes from where I come, that means something.”
The phone was ringing amid the silence. KOnig put his hand on the instrument.
“Where are the arms hidden?” he asked.
“You can leave the phone alone. At last I understand. That call is merely stage-business for my benefit.”
Kyo ducked his head: KOnig had been on the point of throwing one of the two revolvers-no doubt empty- in his face; but he put it back on the table.
“I’ve got something better,” he said. “As for the telephone, you will soon see if it was a fake, little feUow.
I take it you’ve seen men tortured?”
In his pocket, Kyo was trying to press his swollen fingers together. The cyanide was in this left pocket, and he was afraid of dropping it if he were to lift it to his mouth.
“At least I’ve seen men who had been tortured: I’ve been in the civil war. What puzzles me is why you asked me where the arms are. You know where they are, or you will know it. So what?”
“The Communists have been crushed everywhere.” “It’s possible.”
“They have been. Think carefully: if you work for us, you are saved, and no one will know it. I’U help you to get away. ”
“That’s how he should begin,” thought Kyo. Nervousness gave him wit, in spite of himself. But he knew that the police did not content itself with vague promises. However, the proposal surprised him as though, by being conventional, it ceased to be true.
“Only I will know it,” KOnig went on. “That’s all that’s necessary. ”
Why, Kyo wondered, did he seem to gloat over the words: “That’s all that’s necessary”?
“I shall not enter your service,” he said, almost absent- mindedly.
“Look out: I can lock you up with a dozen innocent men, telling them that their fate depends on you, that they will remain in prison if you don’t speak and that they are free to choose their own means. ”
“It’s simpler with executioners.”
“The alternate entreaties and tortures are worse. Don’t talk about what you don’t know-not yet, at least.”
“I have just seen a lunatic practically tortured. A lunatic. You understand?”
“Do you fuUy realize what you are risking?”
“I have been in the civil war, I tell you. I know. Ours also have tortured: men will need a good many pleasures to compensate for all this. Enough. I shall not serve you.”
KOnig was thinking that, in spite of what Kyo was saying, he had not understood his threat. “His youth helps him,” he said to himself. Two hours before he had questioned a prisoner who had been a member of the Cheka; after ten minutes he had felt a bond of brotherhood: the world in which they both lived was no longer that of men; henceforth they belonged elsewhere. If Kyo was immune to fear through lack of imagination, patience.
“Aren’t you wondering why I haven’t yet sent this revolver flying into your face?”
“I think I am very close to death: that kills curiosity. And you have already said, ‘I’ve got something better. ’ ”
KOnig rang.
“Perhaps I’ll come tonight and ask you what you think of human dignity. ,To the prison-yard, series A,” he said to the guards were entering.
Four o’clock in the afternoon
Clappique mingled in the stir that was pushing the crowd of the concessions towards the barbed wires: in the Avenue of the Two Republics the executioner was passing, his short saber on his shoulder, followed by his escort of Mauserists. Clappique immediately turned about, and made for the concession. Kyo arrested, the Communist defense crushed, a great number of sympathizers murdered in the European city itself. KOnig had given him until evening: he would no longer be protected after that. Gun-shots here and there on every side. Carried by the wind, it seemed to him that they were coming nearer to him, and death with them. “I don’t want to die,” he said between his teeth, “I don’t want to die.” He became aware of the fact that he was running. He reached the docks.
No passport, and not enough money left to get a ticket.
Three steamships, one of them French. Clappique stopped running. Stow away in one of the life-boats under the tarpaulin? But he would have to get aboard, and the man at the gangway would not let him pass. Anyway, the idea was idiotic. The hatches? Idiotic, idiotic, idiotic. Go and find the captain and try to bluff him? He had gotten out of scrapes in this way before; but this time the captain would take him for a Communist, and would refuse to take him on board. The ship was leaving in two hours: a bad moment to disturb the captain. If he were discovered on board once the ship was out at sea, he could manage; but the trick was to get aboard.
He could just see himself hidden in some corner, crouched in a barrel; but this time his imagination did not save him. He seemed to be offering himself, as if to the mediators of an unknown god, to those enormous, bristling steamships, charged with destinies, indifferent to the point of hatred. He had stopped before the French ship. He was thinking nothing, looking, fascinated by the gangplank, at the men who were getting on and off (none of whom was thinking of him, nor guessed his torment and whom he would have liked to for this), who showed their tickets as they passed the bulwarks. Make a false ticket? Absurd.
A mosquito stung him. He brushed it away, touching his cheek as he did so: he needed a shave. As though any act of attention to one’s personal appearance were propitious to departures, he decided to go and get a shave, but without going far from the ship. Beyond the sheds, among the bars and curio-shops, he discovered a Chinese barbershop. The proprietor also ran a wretched cafe, and the two businesses were separated only by a hanging mat. While waiting for his turn, Clappique sat down near the mat and continued to watch the gangway of the ship. On the other side, people were talking:
“It’s the third one,” said a man’s voice.
“With the baby, nobody will take us. What if we tried one of the rich hotels?”
A woman answered:
“Dressed as we are? The fellow at the door would throw us out before we even reached it.”
“There they don’t mind if the children make a noise. Let’s try some more-anywhere.”
“As soon as the managers see the kid, they’ll refuse. Only the Chinese hotels would take us in, but the kid would get sick from their dirty food.”
“In a poor European hotel, if we could manage to get him in without their noticing it, perhaps they wouldn’t dare to throw us out, once we were there. In any case, we’d be gaining time. We’d have to wrap up the little fellow, so they would think it was linen.” “Linen doesn’t cry.”
“With the bottle in his mouth he won’t cry. ” “Perhaps. I could make arrangements at the desk, and
you could come in afterward. You could just pass by the clerk without stopping.”
Silence. Clappique was looking at the gangway. A rustle of paper.
“You can’t imagine how it hurts me to carry him like this. … I have the feeling that it’s a bad omen for his whole life. And I’m afraid it will hurt him.” Silence again. Had they left? The client was getting out of the barber’s chair. The barber made a sign to Clappique, who got into it, still keeping his eye on the ship. The gangplank was deserted, but scarcely was Clappique’s face covered with lather than a sailor went on board, carrying two new pails (which he had perhaps just bought) and brooms on his shoulder. Clappique’s eyes followed him, step by step-he would have identified himself with a dog, if the dog were climbing the gangplank and leaving with the ship. The sailor passed in front of the man at the bulwark without a word.
Clappique paid for the shave, throwing the coins on the washstand, tore off the towels and ran out, his face full of soap. He knew where he could find some secondhand dealers. People were looking at him: after taking ten steps, he went back, washed his face, started off again.