by Victor Serge
Forced smiles displayed above new uniforms surrounded Kondratiev during the ball. The garrison commander, who had understood not a word of the speech but whose good humor was fortified by a slight degree of intoxication, displayed all the grace of a bear gorged on sweetmeats. The sandwiches which he offered Kondratiev — going to fetch them from the buffet, three rooms away — he recommended in coy phrases and with languishing looks: “Just taste this adorable caviar, my dear comrade … ah, life, life!” When, tray in hand, he made his way through the circle of dancers, his face beaming, his boots so highly polished that they reflected the fluttering silks of the women’s dresses, he seemed grotesquely on the point of falling over backward, but he forged ahead despite his stoutness, with the amazing lightness of a steppe horseman. The head of the school, a ruddy bulldog whose very small blue eyes remained cold and steely through everything, neither moved nor spoke. His legs crossed, his face frozen into a grimacing Oriental smile, he sat beside the Central Committee’s delegate, pondering fragments of incomprehensible sentences, which he clearly saw might be terrible, and which hung over him like an obscure menace, however loyal he might be. “We are covered with crimes and yet we are justified before the universe … Your elders have nearly all perished servilely, servilely …” It was so incredible that he stopped pondering to scrutinize Kondratiev out of the corner of his eye — was he, in fact, the genuine Kondratiev, deputy member of the C.C.? Or was he some enemy of the people who had abused the confidence of the bureaus, forging official documents with the help of foreign agents, to bring a message of defeat into the heart of the Red Army? Suspicion gripped him so intensely that he rose and went to the buffet to look at the beribboned portrait of Comrade Kondratiev. The picture left no room for doubt, but the enemy’s artifices are inexhaustible — plots, trials, even marshals turned traitors, had more than demonstrated it. The impostor might be made up; intelligence services use chance resemblances with consummate skill; the photograph might be a forgery! Comrade Bulkin, who had recently been promoted to lieutenant colonel, and who had seen three of his superiors disappear (probably shot) in three years, was completely panic-stricken. His first thought was to order the exits guarded and to alert the secret service. What a responsibility! Sweat stood on his forehead. Beyond the tangoing couples he saw the city’s Chief of Security talking very earnestly with Kondratiev — perhaps he had actually penetrated his disguise, was questioning him without seeming to? Lieutenant Colonel Bulkin, built like a bulldog, his conical forehead drawn into horizontal wrinkles which expressed his state of tension, wandered through the rooms looking for the Political Commissar and finally found him, equally preoccupied, at the door of the telephone booth — direct wire to the capital. “Saveliev, my friend,” said Bulkin, taking him by the arm, “I don’t know what’s happening … I hardly dare to think … I … Are you sure he is really the speaker from the Central Committee?”
“What, Filon Platonovich?”
It was not an answer. They talked for a moment in terrified whispers, then walked the length of the room to examine Kondratiev again. Kondratiev was sitting with his legs crossed, smoking, feeling thoroughly at ease, pleased by the dancers, among whom there were not a few pretty girls and not a few young men made of excellent human material … The sight of him nailed the two men to the spot with respect. Bulkin, the less intelligent of the two, gave a long sigh and murmured confidentially: “Don’t you think, Comrade Saveliev, that this may augur a change in policy by the C.C. … may indicate a new line for the political education of subalterns?”
Commissar Saveliev asked himself if he had not been out of his head when he had telephoned a brief summary of Kondratiev’s speech to Moscow, though he had been extremely circumspect in what he had said. In any case, when he took leave of the C.C. envoy he must tell the comrade that “the precious directives contained in his most interesting report would henceforth form the basis of our educational work …” Aloud he concluded: “It is possible, Filon Platonovich; but until we receive supplementary instructions, I believe we should refrain from any initiatives …”
Kondratiev rose and walked away, trying to escape from the obsequious circle of officials. He succeeded for only a very short time, having, by some unlikely chance, found himself alone at the door of the great room. It was alive with movement and music. The faces of a dancing couple emerged before him, one charming, with eyes that smiled like pure spring, the other firm-featured and, as it were, illuminated by a restrained light: Sacha. Sacha held back his partner and they danced slowly round and round in one spot so that the young man could lean toward Kondratiev:
“Thank you, Ivan Nicolayevich, for what you said to us…”
The rhythmical revolution brought the other face toward Kondratiev, a face framed in chestnut braids caught in a knot at the neck, a smooth forehead, golden eyebrows; again the movement carried it away, and here was Sacha, his lips colorless, his eyes intense and veiled. Through the music, Sacha said softly, without apparent emotion:
“Ivan Nicolayevich, I believe you will soon be arrested.”
“I believe so too,” Kondratiev said simply, waving them an affectionate good-by.
He was impatient to escape from this irritating gathering, these too-well-fed heads with rudimentary minds, these insignia of command, these girls with too carefully dressed hair who were nothing but young sex organs under gaudy silks, these young men who were uneasy despite themselves, incapable of really thinking because discipline forbade it, and who bore their lives almost joyously to imminent sacrifices which they did not understand…Perhaps it is a very good thing that we cannot wholly rule our minds and that they force on us ideas and images which we would ignobly prefer to dismiss; thus truth makes its way in spite of egotism and unconsciousness. In the great, brightly lit room, to the rhythm of a waltz, Kondratiev had suddenly remembered a morning inspection by the Ebro. A useless inspection, like so many others. The General Staffs could no longer do anything to better the situation. For a moment they looked professionally at the enemy positions on reddish hills dotted with bushes like a leopard’s hide. The morning was fresh as the beginning of the world, blue mists dissolved on the slopes of the sierra, the purity of the sky increased from moment to moment, the rays of the sun rose into it, prodigiously straight, prodigiously visible, fanning out just above the glittering curve of the river which separated the armies…Kondratiev knew that the orders neither could nor would be carried out, that the men who would give them, these colonels, some of whom looked like mechanics exhausted by too many sleepless nights, others like elegant gentlemen (which indeed they doubtless were) who had left their ministries for a week end at the front and were all ready to set off for Paris on secret missions by plane and Pullman — that all these leaders of defeat, at once heroic and contemptible, had ceased to have any illusions about themselves…Kondratiev turned his back on them and, following a goat track strewn with white pebbles, climbed back up the hill alone, toward the battalion commander’s shelter. At a turn in the path a muffled, rhythmical sound drew him to a nearby ridge; on its summit, thistles grew, thorny and solitary, springing from a stony soil, and the tough thickets of them, spared by yesterday’s bombardment, speared up into the sky. Just below that miniature landscape of desolation, a squad of militiamen were at work, silently filling a wide grave in which lay the corpses of other militiamen. The living and the dead were dressed in the same clothes, they had almost the same faces: those of the dead, taking on the color of the soil, more harrowing than terrible, with their partly open mouths, their swollen lips, mysterious in their bloodlessness; those of the living, famished and concentrated, bent toward the ground, oily with sweat, unseeing, as if the morning light knew them not. The men were working fast and in unison; their shovels threw up a single stream of earth, which fell with a muffled sound. No officer was in command of them. Not one of them turned to look at Kondratiev, probably not one of them was aware of his presence. Embarrassed to be there behind them, completely useless, Kond
ratiev went back down the slope, making an effort to keep the pebbles from rolling under his feet… Now, in the same way, he stole away from the ballroom, and no one turned to look at him — he was as distant from these young dancing soldiers as he had been from the grave-digging militiamen in Spain. And just as there in Spain, here too the General Staff overtook him, danced attendance on him, asked his advice — here on the great marble staircase. He had to make his way down surrounded by commissars, commandants, declining their invitations. Those of the highest rank offered to put him up for the night, offered to take him to the maneuvers in the morning, to show him the factories, the school, the barracks, the library, the swimming pool, the disciplinary section, the motorized cavalry, the model hospitals, the traveling printing press… He smiled, thanked them, spoke familiarly to people he did not know, even joked, in spite of his violent desire to shout at them: “Enough! Shut up, will you? I don’t belong to the species ‘general staff’ — can’t you tell it from my face?” Not one of these puppets suspected that he would be arrested one of these days, they all saw him only through the gigantic shadow of the Central Committee’s stamp of approval …
He slept in the C.C. Lincoln. Somewhere on the road, just before dawn, a jolt waked him. The landscape was beginning to emerge from darkness — black fields under pale stars. A few hours later Kondratiev saw the same dark desolation in a woman’s face, in the depths of Tamara Leontiyevna’s eyes. She had come into his office at the Combustibles Trust to report. He felt in a good humor, he made a healthy man’s ordinary gesture, he took her arm with a smile, and instantly he felt a vague terror enter into him. “This matter of the Donets Syndicate is in fine shape, it will be all settled in twenty-four hours, but what’s the trouble, Tamara Leontiyevna, are you ill? You shouldn’t have come in this morning if you didn’t feel well…” — “I would have come at any cost,” the girl murmured, her lips pale, “excuse me, I have, I have to warn you…” She was desperate, finding no words. Then: “Go away, Ivan Nicolayevich, leave at once and never come back. I involuntarily overheard a telephone conversation between the Director and… I don’t know who … I don’t want to know, I have no right to know, I have no right to tell you either, what am I doing, my God!” Kondratiev took her hands — they were as cold as ice. “There, there, I know all about it, Tamara Leontiyevna, calm yourself … You think that I am going to be arrested?” She barely nodded. “Go away, quick, quick!”
“No indeed,” he said. “Not under any circumstances.”
He freed himself from her, became again the distant assistant director in charge of special plans:
“I am much obliged to you, Tamara Leontiyevna, please have the documents on the Yuzovka Refineries ready by two o’clock. Meanwhile, get the General Secretary of the Party on the telephone for me. Use my name, and insist on getting through to the General Secretary’s office. At once, if you please.”
Could this light be the light of the last day? One chance in a thousand that he would be granted an audience … And once there? The beautiful fish, armed all over with scales each one of which reflects the whole light of an asphyxiating universe, struggles in the net, struggles in utter impossibility, suffocating — but I am ready. He smoked furiously, taking two puffs from a cigarette, then crushing it out on the edge of the desk and flinging it on the floor. He instantly lighted another, and his jaws clenched, he forgot himself in his director’s chair, in this absurd office, antechamber to a place of unforeseeable tortures. Tamara Leontiyevna came back without knocking. “I didn’t call you,” he said crossly, “leave me alone…Ah, yes, put the call on my line here …” To escape — perhaps there actually was a slight possibility that he could? “What now? The Gorlovka Refineries?” — “No, no,” said Tamara Leontiyevna, “I asked for an audience for you, He expects you at three sharp at the Central Committee…”
What, what! You did that? But who gave you permission? You are mad, it is not true! I tell you, you are mad! “I heard HIS VOICE,” Tamara went on, “HE came to the telephone HIMSELF, I assure you…” She spoke of him with terrified reverence. Kondratiev turned to stone — the great fish beginning to die.
“Very well,” he said dryly. “Keep after the reports on the Donets, Gorlovka, and so on … And if you have a headache, take aspirin.”
Ten minutes to three, the great reception room of the General Secretariat. Two presidents of Federated Republics were conversing in low tones. Other presidents of Republics had disappeared, it was said, after leaving here … Three o’clock. The void. Steps in the void.
“Go in, please…”
Go into the void.
The Chief was standing in the attenuated whiteness of the huge office. Tensely collected. He received Kondratiev without a gesture of welcome. His tawny eyes were impenetrable. He murmured: “Greetings” in an indifferent voice. Kondratiev felt no fear; his feeling was more one of surprise at finding himself almost impassive. Good — now we are face to face, you, the Chief, and I who do not know whether I am a living man or a dead one — leaving out of account a certain period of minor importance. Well?
The Chief took two or three steps toward him, without holding out his hand. The Chief looked him up and down, from head to foot, slowly, harshly. Kondratiev heard the question, too serious to be spoken: Enemy? and he answered in the same fashion, without opening his lips: Enemy, I? Are you mad?
The Chief quietly asked:
“So you are a traitor too?”
Quietly, from the depths of an assured calm, Kondratiev answered:
“I am not a traitor either.”
Each syllable of the terrible sentence stood out like a block of ice in Arctic whiteness. There was no going back on such words. A few more seconds, and all would be over. For such words in this place, one should be annihilated on the spot, instantaneously. Kondratiev finished them firmly:
“And you must know it.”
Would he not summon someone, give orders in a voice so furious that it would sound stifled? The Chief’s hands, still hanging at his sides, sketched several little incoherent movements. Were they looking for the bell? Take this creature out of here, arrest him, do away with him! What he says is a thousand times worse than treason! A calm and completely disarmed resolve forced Kondratiev to speak:
“Don’t get angry, it will do no good. All this is very painful to me… Listen…You can believe me, or you can not believe me, I hardly care, the truth will still be the truth. And it is that, despite everything…”
Despite EVERYTHING?
“…I am loyal to you… There are many things that escape me. There are too many that I understand. I am in agony. I think of the country, of the Revolution, of you, yes, of you — I think of them … Of them above all, I tell you frankly. Their end has left me with an almost unbearable regret: what men they were! What men! History takes millenniums to produce men so great! Incorruptible, intelligent, formed by thirty or forty decisive years, and pure, pure! Let me speak, you know that I am right. You are like them yourself, that is your essential worth…”
(So Cain and Abel, born of the same womb under the same stars …)
The Chief swept away invisible obstacles with both hands. With no apparent emotion, looking away, and even giving himself an air of detachment, he said:
“Not another word on this subject, Kondratiev. What had to be had to be. The Party and the country have followed me… It is not for you to judge… You are an intellectual …” A malevolent smile appeared in his leaden face. “I, as you know, have never been one…”
Kondratiev shrugged his shoulders.
“What has that to do with us? … This is hardly the moment to discuss the failings of the intelligentsia… The intelligentsia did a lot of useful work, though, eh? … We shall soon be at war … Accounts will be settled, all the dirty old accounts, you know it better than I do … Perhaps we shall all perish, even to the last — and drag you down with us. Let us put the best face on things: you will be the last of the last. You will hold out an hou
r longer than we do, thanks to us, on our bones. Russia is short of men, men whose brains know what ours know, what theirs knew… Who have studied Marx, known Lenin, lived through October, gone through all the rest, the best of it and the worst! How many of us are left? You know the figure, you are one of them yourself… And the earth is going to begin shaking, as when all volcanoes come to life at once, from continent to continent. We shall be under the ground at the dark hour — and you will be alone. That’s it.”