The guards came for me at seven the next morning. The weather was misty and the damp chill struck through my clothes and caused me to shiver as we walked across the cobbled yard to the court building. There was the routine search at the entrance inside the big doors and again I was pushed through the curtained door to my place facing the long table.
But things inside were much different from yesterday. The tribunal, all of them with a sour-faced, early-morning look, were ready and waiting for me. There was none of yesterday’s badinage. The Soviet Supreme Court was showing me a very cold and businesslike face. The tribunal was the same as that which had sat at the end of yesterday — the younger deputy-President in the middle, his two N.K.V.D. advisers on right and left. This is it, I thought. They are going to announce my sentence. I stood up straight and waited The gentlemen of the court stared at me.
A quick shuffling of papers and the trial restarted. The deputy-President whipped out the questions. Name?… Age?… Where born?… The same routine. It was as though I had never before seen this white-walled courtroom. Yesterday might never have been. There was a new and forceful insistence about the catechism, as though my answers of the day before had been shrugged away, wiped off the slate. For the first half-hour I fought with waves of engulfing depression. I felt utterly miserable, downcast almost to breaking point. I told myself bitterly what a hopeful and stupid fool I had been to delude myself into thinking they would let me go so easily. I had relaxed and now I had to fight again, and the fight was all the harder for having allowed myself to weaken. These men and the men of Minsk and Kharkov were all Russians, motivated by the same hatreds, working along the same lines, one-tracked.
I was bawled at, my answers were cut off half-heard, the table was thumped until the heavy inkstand leapt up and rattled back. Polish spy. Polish traitor. Polish bastard. Polish fascist. Insults were thrown in with the questions.
A new and tense, unsmiling Mischa rose to continue the questioning. The court was for a moment quiet as he stood there eyeing me. Behind the presidential chair stood three young civilians I had not seen before. Each had a little notebook. They looked expectantly towards the chief prosecutor. I remember thinking back to The Bull and his coterie of apprentices.
‘Now, Rawicz, you Polish son of a bitch,’ he said, ‘we have finished pandering to your stupidity. You know you are a dirty spy and you are going to tell us all about it.’
‘I have told you all I know,’ I said. ‘There is nothing more to tell. I have nothing to hide.’
Dramatically, Mischa walked from behind the table, took about ten steady paces and pulled up in front of me. ‘You,’ he said, ‘are a professional liar.’ Then, very deliberately, he smacked me across the face with the full fling of his arm, once, twice, three times, four times. And as I shook my head he added, ‘But I will make you tell the truth.’ He turned abruptly, strode back to his place at the table. The young observers behind the presidential chair jotted furiously in their little notebooks.
I stood there shaking, hating him and them and all the Russians, all they were and all they represented. For fully fifteen minutes I shut my ears to a barrage of insults and questions and, tight-lipped, refused to answer. My cheeks burned from the face-slapping, a cut inside my mouth bled and I could taste the salt blood. Finally I talked because I knew I must go on fighting them to the end. I chose my moment to break silence when Mischa spoke three names — all unknown to me — of men he claimed to be self-confessed spies against Russia and who were witnesses of my own treacherous activities.
‘Why don’t you bring them here and confront me with them?’ I asked. ‘Maybe we will, maybe we will,’ said Mischa. But no ‘witnesses’ were ever produced against me. There was no real case against me. Except, perhaps that I was a Pole. That indeed seemed to be a grave offence against the Russians.
I cannot remember all the questions, but I do remember Mischa’s skill as a prosecutor. He was adept at leading me along a clear path of places and people I knew so that I could almost anticipate the next question and have my answer half-formed. Then, abruptly, with no change of tempo there would be another town mentioned, another name. I would pause to get on to the new track and Mischa would shout in triumph, ‘So, you Polish dog, that question stops your lying mouth! That was where you handed over your spy reports!’ A torrent of abuse and accusations would follow as I kept repeating that I knew neither the town nor the man he mentioned.
The day before, when I had been expansive and friendly, I had talked about the happy days when I went duck-shooting with my father in the Pripet Marshes. Today, Mischa used this as a theme for a blistering, blustering attack on my character as a spy and saboteur. Beyond the Pripet was Russia and Mischa did not intend that either I or the court should forget it. Yesterday I had quietly boasted of my prowess with a sporting gun. Today I was not only the most despicable of spies but also a well-trained potential assassin, a crack-shot hireling of Polish Army Intelligence. And so it went on.
It was a crazy trial, run by madmen. It became in the end a test of endurance between one weak, half-starved, ill-used Pole and the powerful, time-squandering State machine. I had been given no food before I came in and I received nothing throughout the long day’s trial that ended, astonishingly, at midnight. Seventeen hours I stood there. There were no cigarettes, no coffee. Mischa would occasionally step out and punch or slap me, especially when I looked like keeling over or nodding to sleep on my feet.
Everyone else in the court, Mischa included, took a break at intervals during the day. Other people took over the examination. The composition of the court was constantly changing. During the afternoon the President came in for a few hours to allow his deputy a rest. The guards were regularly changed every two hours. Only I went on standing there, dry-throated, swaying, wondering dully if this day would ever end.
When I stumbled back into my cell there was still no food for me. At 7 a.m. the next day when I was led back again I was still without food and again, hungry, aching and deathly tired, I survived another marathon madmen’s session of Soviet justice. Why do they do it, I kept asking myself. Why do they waste all this time on one Pole? Why don’t they just sentence me and have done with it? For myself, I could have admitted all the things they charged me with and ended it all. But I still did not want to die. For me it was a struggle for life.
They did not break me down. They even re-introduced the Kharkov trick of taking me off my staggering feet and sitting me on the edge of a chair for a few hours. It got painful, but it was at least a change from trying to stop my knees buckling under me.
The fourth day was the last. There seemed to be many more people there than at any previous stage. I imagine all those officials who from time to time had acted as stand-ins for the principals wanted to be present for the last act. The atmosphere was much the same as it had been on the first day. The President was back in his accustomed position, riffling through his sheaf of papers. Everybody talked and Mischa was in laughing conversation with an N.K.V.D. captain.
The old preliminaries were gone through. Again I identified myself. I was tired, sick and still unfed. There were some more questions, which I answered automatically. They were straightforward and unbaited.