And so deep in contemplation of this grand futility was Alexander that, returning at last in the early morning, he did not even notice the little carriage standing in front of his house, or the group of men who stood waiting to receive him. So that he looked up in astonishment as one of them stepped forward and said to him quietly: ‘State Councillor Bobrov, you are to accompany us. You are under arrest.’
The cell was pitch black. There was no light from any source.
He did not know how long he had been there but since the door had half opened, twice, and a hand had pushed in a crust of bread and a small pitcher of water, he supposed it must be between one and two days.
The cell was very small. If he stood with his back to the heavy door and reached out his right hand and his left, he could place the palms flat against the two walls. From this position he discovered he could take two full paces before his head hit the wall opposite. The first few hours he thought there was a rat in one corner; but now he was not sure. Perhaps it had found a hole somewhere and gone away. For this was the dreaded Peter and Paul Fortress. He wondered whether the cell was above or below the water level. Below, he thought.
Only one thing puzzled him. Why had they arrested him? For what crime? The arresting officer had not told him – probably had not known. And since they had thrown him in here, no one had spoken to him. There was only one thing to do: keep calm.
Another day passed. No one came. He wondered if they would leave him there to die. Then, at the end of the third day, the door opened and they pulled him out, and a few minutes later he found himself standing, rather unsteadily, in a large room, blinking at the pain of the light, and becoming vaguely aware of the fact that, after his confinement, he was stinking. There was a single guard in the room and when Alexander asked him what was going on he replied gruffly: ‘You’ll be questioned.’
‘Oh. By whom?’
‘Don’t you know?’ The guard grinned. ‘By Sheshkovsky himself, of course.’ Then he laughed. ‘You’ll talk.’
And now, despite his determination to be calm, Alexander trembled. Everyone knew about Sheshkovsky – the most feared inquisitor in all Russia. The great interrogator had easily broken poor Radishchev, the radical writer. They said that his victims were lucky if they lived. Yet, Alexander reminded himself, I am a noble. By law he can’t torture me. He can’t give me the knout. The court had to strip him of his noble status before he could suffer those indignities.
He was still thinking nervously about these matters when he felt hands forcing him to sit on a bench. A table was put in front of him, with a lamp on it. Then, a moment later, he became aware of another figure in the room – somewhere out in the shadows, past the bright lamp – a figure he could not see but whose voice he could hear.
‘So,’ said the voice quietly, ‘tell me about Colovion.’
In the three weeks that followed, Alexander Bobrov was often confused. Some days they would leave him alone in his cell; but usually they would wait until he was falling asleep and then drag him back to the lighted room and shine the lamp in his eyes, or force him to move about so that he could not sleep.
His inquisitor came at irregular intervals. At first Alexander thought this was a ploy, but after a time it seemed to him that the inquisitor had other business elsewhere, and that he, Alexander, might be of only marginal interest. Yet each time he asked why they were keeping him there, the reply was indirect, and therefore all the more frightening: ‘I think you know, State Councillor,’ or, ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me, Alexander Prokofievich.’
They did not use torture: they did not threaten him with the knout. Yet no torture, he realized, can be worse than never being allowed to sleep. As for the interrogator, Alexander understood now why he was so feared. It’s not what he does to your body, he thought. It’s what he does to your soul.
For gradually, session after session, day after day, the inquisitor was taking over his mind.
It was a subtle process. When, for instance, he had denied all knowledge of Colovion, the interrogator had not contradicted him. But towards the end of the session, quietly, imperturbably, he had let Alexander know by a few words that he knew about the professor and the Rosicrucian circle. So he had probably been interrogating the professor too, Alexander realized. Yet how did he know about their connection? There were no written records. Had the professor talked? Perhaps. It began to occur to him that the interrogator might not be seeking information from him at all, but only trying to discover how much he would lie.
It was the same when they discussed other matters. His interrogator wanted to know about the articles he had written, years ago, on subjects like the emancipation of serfs. Yet those articles had been anonymous. No one knew who had written them. How was it then that, each time he denied having done so, the invisible voice would quietly accept his assertion and then, with incredible accuracy, recite a line or two that he had written perhaps an entire decade before?
Slowly, as the process continued and the gentle, reasonable voice, never accusing, allowed him to see, again and again, that he knew the truth, Alexander, to his own surprise, began to feel guilty.
By the seventh day, it seemed to Alexander that the interrogator knew everything there was to know about him. By the fourteenth day, it seemed to his confused brain that the interrogator knew more about him than he did himself. By the twentieth day, Alexander knew that the interrogator was all-knowing, god-like. What reason was there to try to hide anything from this voice – this kindly voice, which was only helping him to open his heart, and then at last to sleep?
On the twenty-first day, he talked.
It was a cool, damp October morning when Alexander Bobrov left the Peter and Paul Fortress, with his hands and feet manacled, and sitting in the back of a little open cart. In the front sat the driver and a soldier with a musket. There were two outriders.
The sky was grey. The waters of the Neva were high, and above the Admiralty he could see the little flags flying which warned that there was a risk of flooding. For it was not unusual, at such a season, for the waters of the Gulf of Finland to sweep in past Vasilevsky Island and take over the cellars and even the streets of the city of Peter.
Strangely, Alexander felt at peace with the world. Though manacled, he sat quite calmly, almost cheerfully, and watched the great city go by. His clothes were in tatters, his head bare, yet it did not seem to concern him unduly. In the distance, across the river, he caught a glimpse of the Bronze Horseman. There was the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The empress and her lover Zubov were in there somewhere, no doubt. Good luck to them.
It was odd: he had lost everything, yet he actually felt more comfortable now than he had done in years. Here in a cart, his head bare to the elements, he felt absolved of all earthly cares. Perhaps it was personal to Alexander, or perhaps it was a trait often found in Russia, but he realized that he only felt truly himself at life’s extremes. It was as though he had never really felt comfortable when he was striving for mediocrity, as he had been these last few years. Give me a palace, he considered, or a monk’s cell.
Anyway, he had been lucky. He had only been sentenced to ten years.
He had learned of it the day before. For several weeks now, he had been in a small cell with a window. He had not been allowed any visitors, nor any news of the outside world. He still did not even know what crimes he had been charged with. Then, that morning, the interrogator had come and told him his sentence.