If this conversation had taken place a few months earlier, I would doubtless have interpreted Werner’s remarks as an expression of thorough distrust and contempt. Now, however, when my soul yearned for peace and comfort, I reacted quite differently. I was pleased by the thought that my comrades knew nothing of my crime and that even its very existence might be open to question. I thought about it less and less often.
My recovery began to proceed more rapidly. Occasionally I would suffer attacks of my former distress, but they never lasted long. Werner was obviously satisfied with my progress and even almost released me from medical observation. On one occasion, recalling his diagnosis of my “delirium,” I asked him to let me read a typical case history of an illness like mine, one that he had observed and recorded at the hospital. He hesitated considerably and was obviously reluctant, but he finally complied with my request. In my presence he selected and gave to me one of a large pile of case histories.
The report dealt with a peasant from a remote, isolated little village who had been forced by poverty to seek his living in the capital, where he had begun working at one of the largest factories. The life of the huge city evidently proved a great shock to him, and, as his wife put it, for a long time he was “not himself.” This eventually passed and he began living and working like everyone else. When a strike broke out at the factory he joined the ranks of his comrades. The strike was long and persistent, and he and his wife and child were on the verge of starvation. Suddenly he “got cold feet,” started rebuking himself for getting married and having a child, and condemned his whole way of life as “ungodly.” Soon he began to “babble utter nonsense.” He was taken to a hospital and later transferred to a clinic in his native province. He claimed that he was a strikebreaker who had betrayed both his comrades and a certain “kind engineer” who secretly sympathized with the strike and was hanged by the government. By a coincidence I happened to be intimately acquainted with the entire history of this strike, as I was working at the time in the capital. In reality there had been no treachery, and the “kind engineer” had not only not been hanged, but had never even been arrested. The worker finally recovered from his illness.
This story put my thoughts into a new context. I began to doubt whether I had ever actually committed the murder; perhaps, as Werner had said, my memory was merely “adapting itself to my delirium melancholia.” At the same time, my recollections of life among the Martians were strangely vague and even fragmentary and full of gaps. Although I remembered the murder more distinctly than anything else, even it became jumbled and faded beside the simple and clear impressions of the present. At times I would overcome my cowardice and reassuring doubts and clearly realize that everything had indeed happened and that nothing could alter the fact, but soon my uncertainty and sophisms would return. They helped me escape my thoughts about the past. People are so ready to believe what they want to believe . . . And although deep down I knew I was deceiving myself, I surrendered to the lie much as one might abandon oneself to pleasant dreaming. I think now that without this deceptive autosuggestion my recovery would never have been as rapid or complete.
3. The Revolution
Werner painstakingly shielded me from any impressions which he felt might not be conducive to my recovery. He did not permit me to visit him at the hospital itself, and the only patients I was allowed to observe were the incurably degenerate and the feebleminded who had permission to leave the grounds to work in the fields, the wood, and the garden. To tell the truth, I was not at all interested in them, for I very much dislike anything that I already know to be hopeless, superfluous, and doomed to failure. I wanted to see the critically ill patients who still had a chance for recovery, especially those suffering from manic depression and elation. Werner said he would show them to me as soon as my own health had been sufficiently restored, but he kept putting it off and putting it off, and nothing ever came of his promise.
Werner took even greater pains to isolate me from the political life of the country. He evidently assumed that my illness had been brought on by the distressing events of the revolution, unaware that I had been cut off from my native land during that whole period and could not even know what was happening there. He considered my total ignorance to be merely amnesia caused by my illness and even thought that it was good for me. Not only did he refuse to tell me anything on the subject himself, but he also forbade my bodyguards to speak of it, and there was not a single recent issue of a newspaper or journal in the whole apartment. He kept all such publications in his office at the hospital. Thus I was forced to live on a politically uninhabited island.
At first, when all I wanted was peace and quiet, I liked the situation. As I became stronger, however, I began to feel cramped by this little shell. I badgered my companions with questions, but they loyally obeyed the doctor’s orders and refused to answer. I became irritated and bored and began looking for a way out of my political quarantine. I tried to convince Werner that I was well enough to read the newspapers, but to no avail. He told me it was still too early for that, and that he would decide when the time had come to alter my intellectual diet. Trickery was my last resort. I had to recruit one of my companions as an accomplice. It would have been very difficult to win over Werner’s assistant, for he had too solemn a view of his professional duty. I concentrated my efforts instead on my other bodyguard, comrade Vladimir, and here I encountered little resistance.
Vladimir was a former worker. Poorly educated and still only a boy, he was already a battle-hardened soldier from the rank and file of the revolution. During one famous pogrom, in which many of his comrades had been shot or perished in the flames, he stormed his way through a crowd of thugs, killing several of them but escaping without a scratch himself. For a long time afterward he lived underground, traveling from town to town in the modest but dangerous function of smuggler of weapons and forbidden literature. Finally things got too hot for him and he was forced to seek temporary asylum with Werner. He did not tell me about any of this until later, of course, but from the very first I noticed that the young man was very disheartened by his deficient education and lack of rudimentary scholarly discipline, which made even independent study difficult. I began to tutor him. It went well, and soon I had won his heart forever. The rest was easy; Vladimir had little understanding of medical considerations, and we hatched a little conspiracy which neutralized Werners stern precautions. Conversations with Vladimir, and the newspapers, journals, and political brochures which he smuggled to me, soon revealed to me the life my country had been living during the years I was away.
The revolution had developed fitfully and had dragged on over a frustratingly long period. The working class was the first to attack, and the swift offensive resulted in significant early victories. Lacking the support of the peasant masses at the critical moment, however, it subsequently suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the united reactionary forces. While the proletariat was gathering strength for new battles and waiting for the peasant rear guard, the landowners and bourgoisie entered into negotiations with the government, haggling to settle their internal differences so as to be able to crush the revolution once and for all. Disguised in the form of a parliamentary comedy, these attempts repeatedly ran aground against the uncompromising attitude of the reactionary feudal landlords. Puppet parliaments were convened and brutally dissolved one after the other.
The bourgeoisie, exhausted by the storms of revolution and intimidated by the independence and energy of the first offensives of the proletariat, drifted further and further to the right. The peasant masses were in a thoroughly revolutionary frame of mind, and as they slowly gained political experience the flames of countless burning manor houses illuminated their path to higher forms of struggle. Besides bloodily repressing the peasantry, the old regime also attempted to bribe part of it by selling plots of land, but the whole scheme was managed so idiotically and on such a petty scale that nothing came of it. Insurrections, led by bands of partisans o
r other groups, multiplied day by day. From above and below, the country was gripped by a dual terror the likes of which had never been witnessed before anywhere in the world.
We were clearly on our way toward new and decisive battles. The road was so long and so full of twists and turns, however, that many became weary and even began to despair. The so-called radical intelligentsia, whose participation in the struggle had been limited for the most part to demonstrations of sympathy, betrayed the cause almost to a man. There was nothing to regret in that, of course, but despondency and despair had even infiltrated the ranks of my former comrades. That fact alone told me what a trying ordeal revolutionary life must have been at the time. I was fresh; I remembered the period before the revolution and the beginning of the struggle but had not experienced the full impact of the later defeats, and I could clearly see how senseless it was to bury the revolution. I could see that much had changed during these years; many new elements had joined the struggle, and it was obviously impossible to maintain a balance between reaction and terror. A new upsurge was inevitable and near at hand.
Yet we would have to wait for the time being. I understood how agonizingly difficult it was for my comrades to work in such a situation. Quite apart from what Werner thought about my health, however, I was in no hurry to join them. I thought it wiser to conserve my strength for the day when I would need all I could muster. Vladimir and I discussed the chances and prerequisites for the coming struggle. I was deeply touched by his naively heroic plans and dreams. He seemed to be a noble, sweet little child, destined for a warrior’s death that would be as beautiful and humble as his life had been. The revolution selects her glorious martyrs and paints her proletarian banner in their rich blood. . . .
Vladimir was not the only one who impressed me as being a child. I discovered that the veteran revolutionary Werner, other comrades I remembered, and even our leaders were in many respects just as naïve and childish. In fact, all the people I had known on Earth struck me as little more than children, striplings who were only dimly aware of their own life and surroundings and who half-consciously yielded to elemental forces pressing upon them from within and without. There was not a trace of condescension or contempt in this feeling, only a deep sympathy and fraternal solicitude for these embryonic human beings, children of a youthful humanity.
4. The Envelope
It was as if the hot summer sun melted the ice that had lain like a shroud over the life of the country. The people awoke, sheets of lightning were already flashing on the horizon, and thunder could once again be heard rolling dully up from the depths. This sun and this reawakening warmed my heart and filled me with fresh strength, and I felt that soon I would be healthier than ever before. In this hazy, buoyant frame of mind I had no desire to think of the past, and it was pleasant to realize that I had been forgotten by everyone, by the whole world. I intended to reappear among my comrades at a time when no one would even think of asking me where I had been the past few years, when everyone would be much too busy for such questions, when my past would have sunk forever beneath the stormy waves of the new surging tide. If I happened to take note of facts which seemed to cast doubt upon my plans, I would become anxious and uneasy and feel a vague hostility toward everyone who might still remember me.
One summer morning Werner returned from his rounds at the hospital, but instead of going as usual to the garden to rest (his rounds tired him greatly), he came to me and began asking me in considerable detail how I felt. It seemed to me as though he were deliberately making a mental note of my answers. All of this was out of the ordinary, and at first I thought that somehow he must have stumbled onto my little conspiracy. It soon became obvious, however, that he suspected nothing. Then he went away again, not to the garden but to his office, and it was not until a half hour later that I saw him through the window walking along his favorite shaded path. I could not help thinking about these trifles, for nothing else of any great importance was going on around me. After considering several possibilities, I settled for what seemed to be the most likely hypothesis, namely that Werner had received a special inquiry on the state of my health and was therefore preparing a detailed report. The mail was delivered every morning to his office at the hospital, so the letter asking about me must have come there.
Who had written the letter and why? If I was to have any peace of mind I simply had to find out immediately. It was no use asking Werner. For some reaon he evidently felt he could not tell me, for otherwise he would have done so straightaway. Did Vladimir know anything? No, it turned out that he did not. I began thinking of a way to get to the bottom of the matter. Vladimir was prepared to help me in any way he could. He considered my curiosity legitimate and Werner’s secretiveness uncalled for. He did not hesitate a moment to subject Werner’s office and apartment to a thorough search, but he found nothing of interest.
“We must assume,” said Vladimir, “that he either has the letter on him or has ripped it up and thrown it away.”
“Well then, where does he usually throw his wastepaper?” I asked.
“In the basket under his desk in the office,” replied Vladimir.
“Fine. In that case bring me all the scraps you can find in the basket.”
Vladimir left and returned in a short while.
‘There weren’t any scraps there,” he said, “but I did find this: an envelope that he must have received today, judging by the stamp.”
I took the envelope and glanced at the address. The ground trembled beneath my feet and the walls came crashing down around me . . . Netti’s handwriting!
5. Summing Up
Amid the chaos of thoughts and recollections that surged up within me when I found out that Netti was on Earth and did not want to meet me, the only point that was clear to me at first was my plan and its final outcome. It was not the product of any conscious logical reasoning on my part, but arose by itself and was beyond question. Simply implementing the plan as soon as possible, however, was not enough. I felt I had to justify it both to myself and to others. I was especially unable to accept the thought that even Netti might misunderstand me and think that my action was merely an emotional outburst rather than a logical necessity, an inevitable consequence of all that had happened to me.
The first thing I had to do, therefore, was to tell my story in logical sequence—tell it to my comrades, to myself, to Netti. That is the reason for the present manuscript. Werner, who will be the first to read it the day after Vladimir and I have disappeared, will see to its publication. Naturally, he will make such alterations as may be dictated by considerations of political secrecy. This is my only testament to him. I regret very much that I will not have the opportunity to bid him farewell.
In the process of setting these memories to paper, the past gradually became clear to me. Chaos yielded to order, and I began to understand my role and position in events. Being of sound mind and lucid memory, I can now undertake a final summary.
It is patently evident that the task entrusted to me was more than I could handle. Why did I fail, and how could a penetrating judge of human nature like Menni make such an unfortunate choice?
I remember a conversation with Menni during that happy time when Netti’s love inspired me with a boundless faith in myself.
“How is it, Menni,” I asked him, “that out of all the many different people of our country you met on your search, you chose me as the best qualified to represent Earth?”
“The choice was not really so very great,” he replied. “From the very beginning we were obliged to limit ourselves to the supporters of scientific and revolutionary socialism. All other outlooks are much too distant from our own.”
“All right, but among the representatives of this current you have also met people who are doubtless stronger and more gifted than I. You knew the leader we jokingly call the Old Man of the Mountain, you knew our comrade the Poet . . .”
“Yes, and I have observed them closely. But the Old Man of the Mountain is excl
usively a man of struggle and revolution. Our order would not suit him at all. He is a man of iron, and men of iron are not flexible. They also have a strong measure of inborn conservatism. As for the Poet, he could not take it physically. He has gone through too much on his ramblings through all the social strata of your world and would have difficulty surviving yet another transition to ours. In addition, both of them—the political leader and the artist who speaks for millions—are too indispensable to the struggle going on among you.”
“Your last argument seems very persuasive. But in that case let me remind you of Mirsky, the philosopher.* In his profession he is accustomed to advancing, comparing, and reconciling the most disparate points of view. I should think that this experience would be of great assistance to him in coping with the difficulties of the assignment.”
“True, but we must not forget that he is above all a man of abstract thought. He hardly has the spiritual vigor necessary to bring his emotions and will to bear on his experience of the new life. He even impressed me as being somewhat weary, and you can understand that that is a very serious handicap.”
“Perhaps you are right. But what of the proletarians who constitute the base and main strength of our movement? Surely you could find what you are looking for among them.”
“Yes, that would be the best place to look. However, workers usually lack what I feel to be a very important prerequisite, namely a broad, well-rounded education based on the best your culture has achieved. This deflected my search in another direction.”
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