“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Grisha asked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “It never is. It’s our imagination that is the problem.”
“Yes, but what can we do about it?” Dmitri asked. His face wore a look of supplication.
“Tell the truth,” Grisha stated triumphantly.
“And that will control our imagination?” Dmitri countered doubtfully.
Dmitri clearly thought that he, Grisha, had heard his confession. Grisha thought it better not to reveal the truth to him now. After all, there were lesser and greater truths, istina and pravda. Pravda was the very newspaper of the party, and only the party could determine the greater truth, the revolutionary truth. How could he begin to explain that to a nonparty person, and such a troubled one at that?
“Of course the truth will help control the imagination. If necessary, the truth can even spark the revolutionary imagination. Lenin first imagined the revolution, didn’t he? And Stalin imagined the new man.”
Grisha had added the latter for good form, but he noticed that the prisoner shrank back in horror.
Embarrassed at his ignorance and frustrated by the failure of his gentle technique, Grisha asked abruptly, “When did all this begin?”
The prisoner’s lips began to move.
“I can’t hear a word you are saying. You’ll have to speak louder,” Grisha announced.
“I’m sorry,” Dmitri said softly, but loud enough for Grisha to hear.
“That’s better. Now, my friend, when did all this trouble begin?”
“I think after Kirov, the Leningrad party chairman, was shot,” he answered.
Here at last was something Grisha could sink his teeth into. Stalin himself had rushed to Leningrad to investigate the murder of the second most important Communist.
“Were you in Leningrad at the time?” Grisha asked. Dmitri shook his head. “Did you know the assassin, Leonid Nikolayev?” A shake of the head in reply. “Were you involved with the desperate Zinovievite circles that manipulated Nikolayev?” Another negative response. “The White Guards, then?” A shake of the head. “Trotskyite?” Another no. “But you did welcome the Leningrad party chairman’s murder?” Grisha accused with certainty.
“No,” Dmitri murmured innocently, horrified at the suggestion.
“Why not?” Grisha asked, as if the prisoner had every reason to.
The question confused the prisoner. “No,” he murmured. “I didn’t know very much about Kirov. I should have known more. He was one of the party’s most important leaders.” His voice trailed off.
“In what way were you implicated in Kirov’s death?” Grisha asked, slightly exasperated.
“In the way everyone was—a lack of vigilance and a lack of Communist awareness,” the prisoner answered.
“And do you admit to this?” Grisha demanded.
“I thought everyone did. Only party members spoke at the meetings, and they said we were all responsible.”
“These were meetings of the library staff ?” Grisha asked. Dmitri nodded.
“And they began after Kirov’s death?”
“No, we had them before, but they weren’t so important. After Kirov’s murder, we began having them regularly, every day for two weeks. Work at the library practically came to a halt. We met from the afternoon until the late evening. We learned about the murder and the threats to the state.”
“And it was at one of these meetings that you admitted your betrayal?”
Dmitri shook his head.
“You didn’t admit your betrayal?” Grisha asked reasonably.
Again Dmitri shook his head.
“What other possibility is there?” Grisha wondered affably. Without confirming or denying Grisha’s rhetorical question, the prisoner sat staring at the NKVD officer. Grisha waited while a tremor of guilt played across the man’s face like wind over water, then he asked gently, “Are you going to answer?”
Dmitri nodded. He looked as if something were stuck in his throat.
“I thought we agreed that you would feel better if you told the truth,” Grisha gently reminded him.
“No one spoke except party members. They were very upset.”
“At whom?”
“At everyone.”
“At everyone?” Grisha asked incredulously.
“Not at Comrade Stalin himself. Comrade Stalin had relied on all of us, and we had all failed him. Enemies were everywhere, and we had to become more alert to these destroyers and wreckers,” Dmitri recited by rote.
“You didn’t believe it?” Grisha suggested.
“At first I didn’t understand it. It seemed that Comrade Stalin could do everything alone if he had to, but that it would be so much better if we helped him,” Dmitri explained in his usual timid manner. Then he fairly exploded, “They talked about Stalin all the time!”
“What were you hiding that you didn’t think they should know?” Grisha queried.
The prisoner, however, paying no attention to Grisha, continued his narrative. “You couldn’t help but think about Stalin. The more I listened to them, the more I thought about the general secretary. We were instructed to follow Stalin, even to anticipate his thoughts, but in fact it was only through Stalin that we could know what was right or wrong. I couldn’t understand our relationship to him. He needed us, and he didn’t need us. He loved us, and he hated us. I thought, What does he want from us? He wanted to be all things, but only to the parts of us he wanted. We were urged to think about the general secretary all the time.”
Dmitri suddenly turned to Grisha. His impassioned eyes still held a full measure of fright.
“Do you understand?” he pleaded.
Grisha was afraid that he did.
“Everyone claims they don’t. Even the psychiatrists. The NKVD ignored the letter I sent them. Do you understand?” Dmitri implored.
“Go on,” Grisha ordered dryly, but with a scratchy voice that betrayed him.
Obsequious, almost sycophantic rapture shone through the frightened eyes. Grisha was worried that the man would say, “Good,” for the prisoner knew that he understood. Grisha was thankful that the man merely nodded slightly and returned to his tale.
“You see, Stalin was the party. The party was the state. The state was the people. So Stalin was us. But we weren’t Stalin. How could mere little insects like us be Stalin? I admit the thought is preposterous. Poor Stalin had enemies everywhere. Not just in the wicked foreign capitals, not just in the old Russia. Stalin had an enemy in every one of us. These enemies permitted Kirov to be killed and by extension the party, and thereby Stalin himself. Stalin was building the new Soviet man, and we were trying to kill this new man. So of course he was angry. After all, hadn’t we killed Kirov? And weren’t we planning far worse acts against the Great Teacher Stalin himself?”
Here the prisoner paused.
“Were you?” Grisha asked gravely.
“How could I plot against Stalin? How could I plot against myself? How could I do such a thing?” the man fairly shouted in indignation.
He gripped the arms of the chair. His eyes burned with shame. “How could I do such a thing?” he repeated in quiet, amazed horror. His voice broke suddenly, the great open eyes blinked, and the man was crying.
Grisha pointed to the water pitcher, but the prisoner ignored the suggestion. He composed himself to continue. When he did so, it was in a calm, sober voice filled with all its former apology and embarrassment.
“I must admit that I had been warned, but I didn’t listen. The party members warned us that it seemed easy, whereas in reality nothing was more difficult. They warned us that in our most unsuspecting moments we could fall prey to counterrevolutionary anti-Soviet activity. Do you know why I didn’t listen?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I was bored. Everything was Stalin. Stalin this and Stalin that. These meetings became our primary work. We were to defend Stalin against everything. Politics didn’t interest me. I barely knew who Kirov was. How could I join coun
terrevolutionary activity? What could I do? It all seemed so fantastic. It was fantastic, and of course they were right. I had been warned and—” The prisoner paused. “And as I told you, it happened. I admit it was my fault.”
Not having heard the original confession, Grisha did not quite understand what this strange, bewildered, and bewildering man was supposed to have done.
“Let’s go through it again. In detail,” Grisha suggested.
“In detail?” the prisoner asked in revulsion.
“Yes, you seem to have found your tongue. We want to hear the truth, don’t we?”
Grisha paused, but Dmitri simply stared across the great expanse of desk as if he were overlooking an abyss.
“And another thing. Don’t lower your voice. You don’t have to shout either. Just speak normally.”
“May I have some more water?” the prisoner rasped. He sounded as if his tongue were sticking to his mouth.
“Yes, of course,” Grisha said.
The man poured a large glassful and began to sip it, staring alternately into the disappearing fluid and at his NKVD officer.
“You didn’t hear me the first time, did you?” Dmitri asked softly.
Embarrassed at being caught in his subterfuge, Grisha said noncommittally, “Just repeat it.”
“They never do,” the prisoner said. “No one ever has. I’m to blame. I always drop my voice in shame. It’s not your fault.”
Annoyed at the prisoner’s arrogant attempt to exonerate him, Grisha said, “Speak up, please.”
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
“Louder,” Grisha ordered.
“Is this better?” the prisoner asked in a nearly normal speaking voice.
“Much,” Grisha answered.
The prisoner nodded, but didn’t continue speaking.
Grisha stifled his rising impatience. “I know it must be difficult, but I can assure you that you will feel better once you have told me the truth.”
“I was always thinking about Stalin,” the prisoner began quietly.
“Yes, I understand that,” Grisha said patiently.
“Good. Most people don’t. I’m not sure that I do. But I think my confusion began after what happened.”
The prisoner was staring at his investigator. Grisha nodded.
“And every night I would find myself alone with him.”
“You would go home and imagine that Comrade Stalin was in your living room?” Grisha asked.
“No,” the prisoner answered, then added, “In the bedroom.”
He stopped again, a mask of anguish on his face.
“What was the general secretary doing there?” Grisha wondered.
“He was with me. We were together . . .” The man’s voice trailed off, then he closed his eyes and whispered, “like a man and a woman.”
He opened his great fearful eyes to view the reaction. It was slow in coming.
“Like a man and woman?” Grisha repeated in prudish confusion.
“As much as such things are possible,” the prisoner answered.
“Possible?” Grisha repeated uncertainly.
“Every night it’s the same. There we are together like two creatures. One mounting the other from behind. Every night. Always the same.”
He made this confession in horror, suffused with relief at having told the truth.
“This has been going on every night since Kirov was killed. You can’t imagine what it is like to live with something like that,” he added.
Grisha heard the man’s relief at having confessed to the sword and shield of Soviet society, but he himself could not believe that he had heard it right.
“You and . . . the general secretary?” he said in a tone of revulsion.
“Yes,” the prisoner said forthrightly, and in the rush of confession sought for greater clarity. “Like two dogs, one on the other. Every night. It’s disgusting.”
“Disgusting? It’s revolting. It’s filth!” Grisha was sincerely horrified.
“Yes, I know,” the prisoner agreed shamefully.
In his puritanical revulsion, Grisha felt the carousel begin to turn. Slowly, ever so slowly at first, with no sense of motion as the machine slipped its brake. His first realization came as the background began sliding around. Grisha knew that soon the platform would gather speed and revolve with merciless rapidity. If only it could be stopped now. A case of mistaken identity. Grisha prayed for a simple case of mistaken identity.
“Are you sure?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, very,” the prisoner insisted.
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean the general secretary. Are you sure it was him?”
Dmitri looked confused. “Absolutely. His picture is everywhere.”
“Yes, of course it is,” Grisha frantically agreed. “But if”—he paused reflexively—“if you are down on all fours like a dog, how can you be sure who is on top? It could be anyone. You are facing the ground in front of you, and you can’t see who is behind you. It might be anyone. That’s so, isn’t it?” he demanded triumphantly.
This brilliant analysis pained the prisoner but didn’t lessen his certainty.
“Well, I suppose you’re right about the person on the bottom if he doesn’t turn around, but I’m always on top,” he explained.
“You mean?” Grisha whispered in shock.
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t catch what you said,” the prisoner apologized, sliding forward in his seat to hear better.
“You!” Grisha rasped, directing an accusing finger at his prisoner, “and . . .” his finger pointed down, indicating the party on the bottom whose exalted name he couldn’t dare mention in such an inferior position.
“Yes, the general secretary is always on the bottom. He prefers it that way. I know, because when he does turn around, he is smiling.”
The prisoner sat back in his armchair. Grisha, however, moved forward to the edge of his. Feeling as if his head were going to explode, he grasped it on either side and pressed in on his temples. Through a haze of murky sensations—contempt for Svetkov, fear of Stalin, hatred of Trotsky—that began to swirl, he knew that only one preventive explosion might save him, his career, and his life. He pushed against his skull to compose himself, dropped his hands, sat up, and very deliberately unfastened his holster. Without removing his eyes from the prisoner, he drew his pistol. This time he did not place it on the desk. Releasing the safety, he continued to point the heavy weapon directly at the prisoner.
“Dreams are not permitted the new Soviet man. They cannot be controlled,” he explained in a quiet, menacing voice. “They are inevitably insurrectional and anti-Soviet.”
“Yes, I know.” The prisoner confirmed the verdict.
As Dmitri Cherbyshev stared at the deadly, cocked weapon, his eyes widened in fearful vulnerability. Slowly they changed, and Grisha read in them no sense of outrage or desire to escape. Quivering slightly, Cherbyshev stared almost worshipfully at the instrument that would determine his fate. The gentle nocturnal lemur faced the sharp-toothed cat in daylight. Denizen of a nightmare world from which one could never wake up, he had only one hope, to stop dreaming. In the chamber of the automatic lay the dark, leaden release from his horrors.
The prisoner appealed to the NKVD officer to liberate him. It was an appeal that in most cases would have been immediately successful, but in the netherworld of the Lubyanka, a prisoner’s wishes were rarely met—even when they coincided with those of the state security administration. Otherwise, the terror would hardly be worthy of its name, and names were very important to the masters of the Lubyanka. Grisha, as Colonel Hershel Shwartzman, knew at once that his only chance to survive dictated that he march the prisoner off the rug onto the marble floor and blow his filthy anti-Soviet scheming brains out. Logic demanded it, and the NKVD colonel who held the pistol was not squeamish about executing such brutal logic. Grisha, however, was hesitant, for he did understand what even the Soviet psychiatrists refused to admit: Stalin had driven the
man crazy. If Stalin were us, as Dmitri had said, then Grisha was Dmitri. Grisha chose not to shoot the prisoner, and thereby Colonel Shwartzman applied inadvertently an even more inspired principle of the Lubyanka: mercy can be the cruelest torture of all.
Grisha placed the exposed weapon on the desk and reached for a pen and several sheets of paper. He could see the great wave of disappointment flooding the prisoner’s eyes. Colonel Shwartzman was determined to keep the prisoner from slipping below their surface.
“It won’t take long. You understand that we must have a few particulars before we proceed.”
The prisoner stirred, blinking his eyes as if at the gentler rays of daylight. When the colonel was certain that he had the man’s attention, he gently patted his pistol.
“It won’t go anywhere. I promise. I know what you want. Trust me,” he said duplicitously.
The prisoner nodded. His eyes remained on the pistol. Colonel Shwartzman glanced down to straighten the several sheets he had placed one upon the other.
It seemed warmer, and although the colonel didn’t quite understand why, Grisha did: he felt the itch, not of historical necessity, but of burgeoning curiosity as to Dmitri Cherbyshev’s filthy insurrectional activities. His other self, the colonel, stifled this interest as inappropriate. He, too, certainly shared it, but Grisha had sought refuge in the bureaucratic world of the colonel’s NKVD. The normal operating procedure of the NKVD demanded a complete signed confession in accordance with Bolshevik methods that “have proven effective,” as he had preached to Svetkov some time earlier.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARXISM, OR SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM, AS MARX HIMSELF referred to it, was very much a child, albeit a radical one, of the Western tradition. Therefore the Marxist critical dialectic expressed a dynamic of change that was analytic, precise, intellectual, and moral. And just as the conservative Western tradition of governance had transferred sanctity from traditional divinity to secular constitution and law (even if these were only bourgeois legalisms), so, too, for supremely secular Leninist-Stalinist bolshevism, constitution and law were of paramount importance. Consequently, as bolshevism developed into lethal terror, Soviet law remained essential and became even more progressive.
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