The Case of Comrade Tulayev

by Victor Serge

  His promotion had brought him yet another reward: the window was at his right, he had only to turn his head to see trees in courtyards, washing drying on wires, the roofs of old houses, the pinnacles of a church, washed with yellow and old rose, humbly surviving beside a modern building — almost too much space, almost too many astonishing things, for him to concentrate properly on his work. Why does man have such a need for dreams? Romachkin thought that it would be a sensible idea to put opaque glass in office windows, so that the sight of the outside world should not be a distraction which might reduce the quantity of work accomplished. Five small, almost round pinnacles, surmounted by tottering crosses, survived amid a forgotten garden and a group of ill-assorted houses a century and a half old. They were an invitation to meditate, like forest paths leading to unknown clearings which perhaps did not exist … Romachkin felt slightly afraid of them even as he loved them. Perhaps people still prayed under those meaningless and almost colorless pinnacles, in the heart of the new city mathematically laid out in straight lines drawn by steel, concrete, glass, and stone.

  “It is strange,” Romachkin said to himself. “How can anyone pray?” To keep himself in good working trim, Romachkin allowed himself a few minutes between one job and the next. These minutes he devoted to dreaming — without letting it be apparent, of course, pencil in hand, brows knit … What alley through which I have never walked leads to that fantastically surviving church?

  Romachkin went to see, and the result was a new accomplishment in his life — a friendship. He had to go down a blind alley, pass through a carriage gateway, cross a courtyard lined with workshops; thus he arrived at a small, ancient square, shut off from the rest of the world. Children were playing marbles; and there was the church, with its three beggars on the steps and its three praying women kneeling in the solitude of the nave. Pleasant to read the nearby signboards — they made up a poem studded with harmonious and meaningless words and names: Filatov, Teaseler and Mattressmaker, Oleandra, Shoemakers’ Craft Co-operative, Tikhonova, Midwife, Kindergarten No. 4, The First Joy. Romachkin met Filatov, teaseler and mattressmaker, a childless widower, a prudent man who no longer drank, no longer smoked, no longer believed, and who, at fifty-five, was taking free night courses at the Higher Technical School to learn mechanics and astrophysics. “And what have I left now but science? I have lived half a century, Citizen Romachkin, without suspecting that science existed, like a blind man.” Filatov wore an old-fashioned leather apron and a proletarian cap, unchanged for fifteen years. His room was only nine feet by five, a converted vestibule, but in the back of it he had cut a window which gave onto the church garden; and on the window sill he had a hanging garden of his own, constructed of old boxes. A copying stand in front of his flowers gave him a place to copy out Eddington’s Stars and Atoms, with annotations of his own … This unexpected friendship occupied an exalted place in Romachkin’s life. At first the two men had not understood each other very well. Filatov said:

  “Mechanics rules technique, technique is the base of production, that is, of society. Celestial mechanics is the law of the universe. Everything is physical. If I could begin my life over again, I would be an engineer or an astronomer; I believe that the real engineer must be an astronomer if he is to understand the world. But I was born the grandson of a serf, under the Czarist oppression. I was illiterate until I reached thirty, a drunkard until I reached forty, I lived without understanding the universe until my poor Natassia died. When she was buried at Vagankovskoye, I had a small red cross set up on her grave, because she was a Believer herself, being ignorant; and because we live in the Socialist age, I said: Let the cross of a proletarian be red! And I was left all alone in the cemetery, Comrade Romachkin, I paid the watchman fifty kopecks so that I could stay after closing time until the stars came out. And I thought: What is man on this earth? A wretched speck of dust which thinks, works, and suffers. What does he leave behind him? Work, the mechanisms of work. What is the earth? A speck of dust which revolves in the sky with the work and sufferings of man, and the silence of plants, and everything. And what makes it revolve? The iron law of stellar mechanics. ‘Natassia,’ I said over her grave, ‘you can no longer hear me because you no longer exist, because we have no souls, but you will always be in the soil, the plants, the air, the energy of nature, and I ask you to forgive me for having hurt you by getting drunk, and I promise you I will stop drinking, and I promise you I will study so that I may understand the great mechanism of creation.’ I have kept my word because I am strong, with proletarian strength, and perhaps I shall marry again one day, when I have finished my second year of study, for I should not have money to buy books if I were to take a wife now. Such is my life, comrade. I am at peace, I know that it is man’s duty to understand and I am beginning to understand.”

  They were sitting side by side on a little bench at the door of Filatov’s workshop, late in the afternoon — Romachkin pale and worn, not yet old, but with all his youth and vigor gone, if he had ever had either; and Filatov, beardless and with shaven skull, his face lined with symmetrical wrinkles, solid as an old tree. From the “Oleandra” Co-operative came the sound of hammers on leather, the chestnut trees were beginning to loom larger in the twilight. Had it not been for the muffled noise of the city, they could have thought they were in an old-time village square, not far from a river on the other side of which was a forest … Romachkin answered:

  “I have not had time to think about the universe, Comrade Filatov, because I have been tortured by injustice.”

  “The causes of injustice,” Filatov answered, “lie in the social mechanism.”

  Romachkin feebly wrung his hands, then put them on his knees. They lay there, flat and without strength.

  “Listen, Filatov, and tell me if I have done wrong. I am almost a Party member, I go to meetings, I am trusted. At yesterday’s meeting, the rationalization of work was discussed. And the Secretary read us a newspaper paragraph on the execution of three enemies of the people, who assassinated Comrade Tulayev, of the C.C. and the Moscow Committee. It is all proven, the criminals confessed, I don’t remember their names, and what do their names matter to us? They are dead, they were murderers, they were miserable creatures, they died the death of criminals. The Secretary explained it all to us: that the Party defends the country, that war is at hand, that we must kill the mad dogs for love of mankind … It is all true, very true. Then he said: ‘Those in favor raise their hands!’ I understood that we were to thank the C.C. and Security for the execution of these men, I suffered, I thought: And pity, pity — does no one think of pity? But I did not dare not to raise my hand. Should I be the only one to remember pity, I who am nothing? And I raised my hand with the rest. Did I betray pity? Should I have betrayed the Party if I had not raised my hand? What is your answer, Filatov, you who are upright, you who are a true proletarian?”

  Filatov reflected. Darkness fell. Romachkin’s face, turned toward his companion, became beseeching.

  “The machine,” said Filatov, “must operate irreproachably. That it crushes those who stand in its way is inhuman, but it is the universal law. The workman must know the insides of the machine. Later there will be luminous and transparent machines which men’s eyes can see through without hindrance. They will be machines in a state of innocence, comparable to the innocence of the heavens. Human law will be as innocent as astrophysical law. No one will be crushed. No one will any longer need pity. But today, Comrade Romachkin, pity is still needed. Machines are full of darkness, we never know what goes on inside them. I do not like secret sentences, executions in cellars, the mechanism of plots. You understand: there are always two plots, the positive and the negative — how is one to know which is the plot of the just, which the plot of the guilty? How is one to know whether to feel pity, whether to be pitiless? How should we know, when the men in power themselves lose their heads, as there is no doubt that they do? In your case, Romachkin, you had to vote Yes, otherwise things would have turned o
ut badly for you, and there was nothing you could do about it, was there? You voted with pity — well and good. I did the same thing, last year. What else could we do?”

  Romachkin had the impression that his hands were becoming lighter. Filatov invited him in, they drank a glass of tea and ate pickled cucumbers with black bread. The room was so small that they touched each other. Their proximity gave birth to an increased intimacy. Filatov opened Eddington’s book and held it under the light. And:

  “Do you know what an electron is?”

  “No.”

  Romachkin read more compassion than reproach in the mattressmaker’s eyes. That a man should have a long life behind him and not know what an electron was!

  “Let me explain it to you. Every atom of matter is a sidereal system …”

  The universe and man are made of stars, some infinitely little, others infinitely great, Figure 17 on Page 45 showed it clearly. Romachkin had difficulty in following the admirable demonstration because he was thinking of the three executed criminals, of his hand raised in favor of their death, of his hand which had felt so heavy then, which had now — strangely — become light again because he had set pity against machines and stars.

  A child cried in the next courtyard, the lights in the shoemaker’s shop went out, a couple embraced, almost invisible, against the church railing. Filatov came as far as the end of the square with his friend. Romachkin walked on toward the railing. Before going into his room, Filatov stopped for no reason and looked at the black ground. What have we done with pity in this human mechanism? Three more men executed … They are more numerous than the stars, since there are only three thousand stars visible in the northern hemisphere. If those three men killed, did they not have profound reasons for killing, reasons connected with the eternal laws of motion? Who weighed those reasons? Weighed them without hatred? Filatov felt pity for the judges: the judges must suffer most of all … The sight of the couple embracing in the shadows, making but a single being by force of the eternal law of attraction, consoled him. It is good to see the young live, when one is at the sunset of life oneself. They have half a century before them, by the law of averages: perhaps they will see true justice, in the days of transparent machines. It takes a great deal of fertilizer to feed exhausted soil. Who knows how many more men must be executed to feed the soil of Russia? We thought we could see ahead so clearly in the days of the Revolution, and now we are in the dark again; perhaps it is the punishment for our pride. Filatov went in, put the iron bar across his door, and undressed. He slept on a narrow mattress spread out on boxes, and kept a night light burning. The spiders began their nocturnal travels over the ceiling: the little black creatures, with legs like rays, moved slowly, and it was absolutely impossible to understand the meaning of their movements. Filatov thought of the judges and the executed men. Who is to judge the judges? Who will pardon them? Need they be pardoned? Who will shoot them if they were unjust? Everything will come in its time, inexorably. Under the ground, everywhere, under the city, under the fields, under the little black square where the lovers were no doubt still continuing their caresses and endearments, a multitude of eyes shone for Filatov, on the edge of visibility, like stars of the seventh magnitude. “They wait, they wait,” Filatov murmured; “eyes without number, forgive us.”

  Romachkin’s anxiety returned when he found himself once more in the poverty-stricken whiteness of his room. The noise of the collective apartment smote ceaselessly at his bastion of silence: telephones, music from the radio, children’s voices, toilets being flushed, hissing of kerosene pressure stoves … The couple next door, from whom he was separated only by a plank partition, were arguing feverishly over a deal in secondhand cloth. Romachkin put on his nightshirt: undressed, he felt even more puny than dressed; his bare feet showed wretched toes, absurdly far apart. The human body is ugly — and if man has only his body, if thought is only a product of the body, how can it be anything but doubtful and inadequate? He lay down between cold sheets, shivered for a moment, reached out to his bookshelf, took a book by a poet whose name he did not know, for the first pages were missing — but the others still kept all their magical charm. Romachkin read where the book opened.

  Divine revolving planet

  thy Eurasias thy singing seas

  simple scorn for the headsmen

  and behold o merciful thought we are

  almost like unto heroes

  Why was there no punctuation? Perhaps because thought, which embraces and connects by invisible threads (but do such threads exist?) planets, seas, continents, headsmen, victims, and ourselves, is fluid, never rests, stops only in appearance? Why, precisely tonight, the reference to headsmen, the reference to heroes? Who should reproach me, who despise nothing but myself? And why, if there are men who have this ardor for life and this scorn for the headsmen, am I so different from them? Are not the poets ashamed of themselves when they see themselves in their solitude and their nakedness? Romachkin put away the book and returned to the papers of the last few days. At the foot of a Page 3, under the heading Miscellaneous Information, the government daily described the preparations for an athletic festival in which three hundred parachutists, members of school sports clubs, would take part … Huge bright flowers float down from the sky, each bearing a brave human head whose eyes intently watch the approach of the alluring and threatening earth … The next item, which had no heading and was set in small type, read:

  The case of the assassins of Comrade Tulayev, member of the Central Committee. — Having confessed that they were guilty of treason, plotting, and assassination, M. A. Erchov, A. A. Makeyev, and K. K. Rublev, sentenced to capital punishment by the special session of the Supreme Tribunal sitting in camera, have been executed.

  The Chess-Player’s Association, affiliated with the All-Union Sports Federation, plans to organize a series of elimination games in the Federated Republics preparatory to the forthcoming Tournament of Nationalities.

  The chessmen had human faces, unfamiliar but grave-eyed. They moved of themselves. Someone aimed at them from a long way off: suddenly they jumped into the air, their heads bursting open, and vanished inexplicably. Three accurate shots, one after the other, instantaneously demolished three heads on the chessboard. Numb and half asleep, Romachkin felt fear: someone was knocking at the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “I, I,” answered a radiant voice.

  Romachkin went to the door. The floor was rough and cold under his bare feet. Before drawing the bolt he waited a moment to master his panic. Kostia came rushing in so impulsively that he picked Romachkin up like a child.

  “Good old neighbor! Romachkin! Half-thinker, half-Hero of Toil, shut up in your half-room and your half-pint destiny! Glad to see you again! Everything all right? Why don’t you say something? Ultimatum: Everything all right? Answer yes or no!”

  “Everything’s all right, Kostia. Good of you to come. I am fond of you, you know.”

  “In that case I order you to stop looking at me like a man who’s just been pulled out from under a bus! … The earth is revolving magnificently, the devil take you! Can you see it revolving, our green globe inhabited by toiling monkeys?”

  Back in the warmth of his bed, Romachkin saw the little room enlarge, the light burn ten times brighter.

  “I was just falling asleep, Kostia, over this hodgepodge in the papers: parachutists, executions, chess tournaments, planets … Absolute madness. Life, I suppose. How handsome and healthy you look, Kostia. It’s wonderful to see you … As for me, things are going extremely well. I’ve had a promotion at the Trust, I go to Party meetings, I have a friend, a remarkable proletarian with the brain of a physicist … We discuss the structure of the universe.”