The Accused

by Alexander Weissberg

  I had to stand against the wall and I had been there for some time when Ryeznikov came in. He laughed when he saw me.

  “Hullo, Alexander Semyonovitch,” he said cheerfully. “How are you? Is your examination concluded yet?”

  I made no reply.

  “Now, now, don’t be disagreeable. I’m not your examiner now, and I can’t say I’m sorry either.”

  “Who is my examiner, then?”

  “No one. You’re a sort of odd man out. The captain himself has your case in hand. Perhaps Shalit will help him.”

  “That’ll be nice.”

  “It won’t be so bad. We’re not inhuman. And then we need you; you’re a specialist.”

  I wondered why Ryeznikov no longer had charge of my case and why he now spoke in such an amiable tone. In any case it gave me new courage. Perhaps that was his intention. Did he want to make things as difficult as possible for his successor?

  A few months later Ryeznikov disappeared and very much later a prisoner returning from Arkhangelsk told me he had met him there as a fellow prisoner.

  They left me standing against that wall all night and all the following day. At midnight Shalit came to fetch me. We went through a corridor, and from the doors on either side came a horrifying sound of prisoners shrieking and groaning. I don’t know whether men were actually being tortured there or whether it was a put-up job to intimidate others. Shalit’s room was at the far end of the corridor and the journey seemed endless. In the meantime he had been promoted and now he was an examiner in his own right. Against the wall was a chair out of which the seat had been taken. Shalit motioned me to sit down in it. I did so. The bare supports cut into my thighs. This was obviously a technical improvement. No one would be able to stand a “conveyer” for long in such a chair.

  “And now,” said Shalit, turning to me, “will you confess finally?”

  “I would have confessed long ago if I had had anything to confess,” I answered, “but I haven’t. And furthermore I won’t answer you at all until I’ve seen the Prosecutor.”

  Shalit rushed to his desk and picked up a heavy ruler with a metal edge, and began to hit me on the head with it. He was not very enthusiastic about it and I could see that he was more than a little afraid of me. I was a bigger and stronger man than he was. However, I did nothing but ward off the blows as well as I was able. After a certain amount of this four other G.P.U. men entered the room, seized me, put a dunce’s cap decorated with a swastika on my head, and pinned a large swastika on my breast. Then they let me go and stood back and laughed. I sprang to my feet furiously and tore away the offending symbols.

  “You’re going too far,” I shouted furiously. “You can’t tell me the Party lets you make swastika symbols.”

  Shalit hit me on the head with the flat of the ruler again, but I could see that what I had said had produced an impression. The thought of what the Party might say about it made their little joke seem less funny, and they made no attempt to repeat it. A few minutes later they left the room.

  After that my third and last “conveyer” began. I was not beaten any more. From time to time I was allowed to stand up. That bottomless chair was excruciatingly painful. I had summed up the situation in my mind and I was determined to hold out until October 8th, my birthday. For one thing I felt physically stronger than I had been in the summer. However, on the evening of October 4th, this new “conveyer” was broken off without result. I breathed a sigh of relief. Something seemed to tell me that my worst troubles were over.

  Back in the Kholodnaya Cora there were many new prisoners. I lay down on the bed during the day, and at the first sound of the warder they unsighted him by standing in front of me.

  I was already feeling very much better when at midnight the next day the wicket opened.

  “Letter W,” said the warder.

  There were three others in the cell whose names began with W and one by one we went up to the wicket and whispered our names. I was the last and it was for me. Once again I was taken direct to Captain Tomuyev’s office. Another prisoner was sitting at a table facing the writing desk with his back to me. Tornuyev indicated that I was to sit at the other side of the table. A warder with a stick in his hand took up his post behind me. It was only when the other prisoner began to talk that I realized who it was: Professor Shubnikov. At a sign from Tornuyev, Shubnikov began in a toneless voice:

  “Weissberg came to the Institute from Germany in 1931, where he had been recruited by the Gestapo. His task was to organize sabotage and espionage. He tried to recruit me for his organization, but as I had already been in the services of a German espionage organization since 1924, I refused. From that time on we worked parallel but without contact with each other.”

  Shubnikov avoided my eyes as he muttered this pitiful rubbish. What had they done with this once vigorous and strong-willed man? He looked exhausted, but there were no signs of any direct physical maltreatment.

  “Do you confirm the statements of the Accused Shubnikov?” asked Tornuyev.

  I took no notice of his question and turned to Shubnikov.

  “Lev Vassiliyevitch, have you gone off your head? How could you possibly have signed such rubbish...”

  I had no time to say anything further because Tomuyev roared like an angry bull:

  “You have no right to address a single word to the other accused. You must speak only in reply to my questions. Do you confirm the statements of the Accused Shubnikov, or do you not?”

  “I do not.”

  Tornuyev began to question me about the details. I denied everything. He made no attempt to exercise any pressure on me but just wrote down my replies. Then he handed me the record of the confrontation for signature. I signed and he rang. Shubnikov was taken away. I summoned up sufficient courage to urge him:

  “Shubnikov, whatever you do withdraw that nonsense before the court.”

  The warder behind me then struck me a violent blow over the head which almost put me out.

  The next evening I was back there again, this time to be confronted with a little man who was a complete stranger to me.

  “Do you know this man?” asked Tornuyev.

  “No.”

  Tomuyev turned to the other man.

  “Do you know the accused?”

  “Yes, it’s Alexander Semyonovitch Weissberg. I’ve known him for years.”

  I took a closer look at him but I still could not recall his face, and it was only when Tornuyev mentioned his name that I recalled that I had met him once before. It was on March 29, 1931, the day I first crossed the Soviet frontier. I had a ticket to Kharkov but not a single ruble. The conductor in the sleeping compartment on the Russian train demanded five rubles for the linen. A fellow traveler, a man named Flenning, who was a teacher at a German school in Kharkov, offered to lend me the money. When I arrived in Kharkov I sent him the five rubles. This was Flenning. He had never had much flesh on his bones, but now he looked like a little specter.

  “Accused Flenning,” said Tomuyev, “repeat your statement in the presence of Accused Weissberg.”

  “I first met Weissberg in the train from Shepetovka to Kharkov in the year 1931. He told me that he was going to Kharkov on the instructions of the Gestapo to organize an espionage network. He asked me if I cared to join his organization and he offered me a large salary, but I refused.”

  “Why did you refuse, Accused Flenning?” asked Tornuyev.

  “I explained to Weissberg that there was no point in joining his organization because I had been working for the Gestapo for a long time.”

  “Did you maintain any contact with the espionage group organized by Weissberg, Accused Flenning, or did your particular work lie in a different direction?” went on the captain.

  “My work lay in a different direction, Citizen Captain.”

  Captain Tornuyev then asked me formally whether I confirmed the statements of the Accused Flenning. I had already experienced one or two extraordinary things and I knew from my own exp
erience how confrontations were organized. I had also heard many grotesque details from fellow prisoners, but nevertheless this was so incredibly stupid that I hardly knew what to say. Tomuyev noticed my hesitation and apparently misinterpreted it.

  “So you confirm the statements of the Accused Flenning?” he asked in all seriousness.

  “Really, Captain,” I said, “do you expect me to take such utter foolishness seriously?”

  “Are you mad, Weissberg?” he exclaimed. “How dare you talk like that! Haven’t you had enough of the chair yet? Answer my questions with yes or no.”

  I was thinking hard. It occurred to me that the whole examination could be made ridiculous through Flenning’s deposition, but I should have to be careful not to let Tornuyev see my real intentions too soon.

  “Accused Weissberg, for the last time, do you admit having attempted to recruit the Accused Flenning for your espionage organization in the Shepetovka-Kiev express?”

  “Before I answer I should like to ask the Accused Flenning two questions.”

  “You may.”

  “First of all, when is this attempt at recruitment supposed to have taken place?”

  “Flenning, answer the question,” he ordered.

  “I don’t know the exact date,” Flenning replied, “but it was somewhere about the end of March, 1931. I was returning from Berlin to Kharkov and I met the Accused Weissberg in Shepetovka. I lent him five rubles to pay for his bed linen and we got into conversation.”

  “Would you please put that down in the record, Citizen Captain?” I asked.

  “That can be done at the conclusion of the confrontation,” Tornuyev replied.

  “Citizen Captain, in this case, which I regard as of decisive importance, I think what Flenning says should be taken down at once in order to give him no opportunity of subsequently denying it.”

  Either Tornuyev did not realize what I was aiming at, or he was not averse to helping me demonstrate the idiocy of the charge’s against me. In any case he agreed to write down Flenning’s answers to my two questions there and then.

  “The second question is: Had the Accused Flenning known me before this meeting? Had he even heard of me? Had someone or other given him an introduction to me—or not?”

  Flenning was obviously nervous. He seemed to realize that something was in the wind.

  “No,” he replied after a moment or two of hesitation. “I had never seen Weissberg before and I did not even know of his existence.”

  “That’s enough,” I said when the captain had written it down. “No, I do not confirm the statements of Flenning. They are a complete invention. No such conversation ever took place between us.”

  “Do you maintain the truth of what you have said, Accused Flenning?” asked Tornuyev.

  “Yes, I do, Citizen Captain,” replied Flenning, but his tone was far from confident.

  Tornuyev wrote down the record of the confrontation and then handed it to me for signature. Before I signed I declared:

  “Citizen Captain, I must insist that the record should remain with the papers in the case. Should it prove to be missing later I shall refuse to sign the dvukhsotka.”

  “Don’t try to tell me my business,” replied the captain. “No one will take anything out of the dossier.”

  Flenning was taken away, and Tornuyev demanded:

  “Well, what have you got to say now? All the time you’ve been complaining that we can’t prove anything against you, and now we’ve produced two living witnesses against you. You have been caught in the act of trying to recruit spies for your organization. Now won’t you give up your useless resistance at last?”

  “Citizen Captain, may I talk openly to you?”

  “You can always talk openly to me, but don’t try to be too clever.”

  A conversation now began which would have been impossible at that time with any other examiner but Captain Tornuyev. With any of the others I should have risked a serious beating. But I knew Tornuyev. I knew he might curse, but that at least he would let me say what I wanted to say. Sometimes I even suspected that he was secretly amused to observe how my arguments exploded the fictions of the G.P.U.

  “Now look, Citizen Captain, you have agents abroad. What would you think of a Soviet agent who within half an hour of crossing the German frontier told an absolute stranger all about himself, told him that he had come to spy for the N.K.V.D. and asked him whether he’d like to join in the spying? If such an idiot ever managed to get back at all you’d shoot him, wouldn’t you? But let us assume just for the sake of the thing that some person in your organization did actually choose such a man to send abroad. He crosses the German frontier, accosts the first man he comes across and asks him whether he happens to be unemployed and would like a job: spying for the N.K.V.D. And then the second improbable thing happens: the man he talks to just happens to be another agent of the N.K.V.D. Now there are seventy million Germans, and if there are seven hundred agents of the N.K.V.D. in Germany that’s one in a hundred thousand. Even if we assume that the man is lucky and happens to pick on the one in the hundred thousand, then there’s a third improbability. This other Soviet agent is also a reckless idiot. Unlike all other Soviet agents, he doesn’t in the least mistrust strangers, and he doesn’t for one moment suspect that the other might be a Gestapo man trying to provoke him, because he is first of all an idiot and secondly he is very naïve and trustful, and they are two things which practically predestine him for the role of secret agent, don’t you think, Citizen Captain?”

  Accompanied by a flow of the usual Russian bad language, the worthy captain reproached me indignantly for speaking ill about the agents of the G.P.U.

  “How dare you talk about our people like that?” he demanded. “Do you think you can say anything you like just because I behave myself like a man of culture toward you? But don’t provoke me. I warn you, I can be very different.”

  “Citizen Captain,” I explained patiently, “I am not saying that such things are possible in the N.K.V.D. In fact, what I’m saying is that such things are impossible. I am only trying to show you how fantastically improbable Flenning’s story is. Think, three improbabilities must coincide, and in order to coincide they have to be multiplied by each other.”

  “What are you talking about now? Is that some new invention of yours?”

  “No, Citizen Captain, it isn’t. I am a physicist, a scientist, and as such I have had to study the law of probabilities. And I am now trying to show you on the basis of an example how improbable a result is when it depends on components which are themselves highly improbable.”

  “Alexander Semyonovitch,” the good man replied, “you think you’re very clever, but in reality you’re not half as sensible as our peasants. You forget that we don’t send such agents abroad as the Gestapo sends here. The result is that our men don’t get caught, whereas their men get caught by the hundreds.”

  “Citizen Captain, I have no idea what sort of agents the Germans send abroad. Perhaps they are idiots. All I’ve pointed out to you is how improbable Flenning’s statements are even if German agents are stupid—and suicidal into the bargain, if you like. Now, it’s not a question of any old German agent, who may be stupid; it’s a question of me. I’m supposed to be the German agent. Now, do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “Yes, Alexander Semyonovitch, you are an idiot. You’ve read a lot of books, I know, but that won’t help you much here. If you take my advice—and it’s good advice—put an end to this business. Really, I’m beginning to feel sorry for you.”

  He rang the bell and they came to take me away. At the door I turned back.

  “Citizen Captain, there’s one thing I forgot to mention: in March, 1931, there was no Gestapo in Germany. It was formed only two years later after Hitler came to power.”

  “Get out, you—”

  Such a conversation would have been impossible with anyone but Captain Tornuyev. Shalit always refused to let prisoners say a word beyond yes or no, and Ryeznikov
would have smelled a rat at once. But Tornuyev was simple and on the whole good-natured. He was a swashbuckling old soldier, but he was not a malicious fellow. I knew from a variety of indications that, in fact, he rather liked me, and he certainly liked to talk to me. On one occasion he had me called to his room at three o’clock in the morning. His secretary had gone home. He rang and ordered tea for us and then he began to ask me questions about the development of the opposition groups in Germany. At first I thought it was an official interrogation and it would all be taken down in writing, but during the course of the interview I realized that although he was always careful to use the proper Party jargon he really wanted information about the working-class movement abroad which he could not get through the press, or only in a distorted form.

  “Have the Trotskyists and Bukharinists much influence on the workers in your country?” he asked.

  “Not the slightest. They are uninfluential sectarians.”

  “I don’t understand that. When those sons of bitches slander the Party and no one stops them how is it that the workers don’t believe them? Now tell me the truth.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. If a worker no longer believes in the Communist Party then generally speaking he goes back to the Social Democrats or he joins the Nazis, not the opposition. Generally speaking, the workers don’t understand what it is the opposition wants.”

  I often thought about these talks later. Did they mean that even men in responsible positions doubted the correctness of what Stalin was doing?

  The night after the Flenning confrontation Tornuyev called me out again. When I got there he read me the statement of Comrade Lessing. She had become secretary of the German Workers’ Club after Vlakh’s resignation. What she said agreed with what he had said, namely, that after the German Communist Maddalena had made a speech at the Club I had invited the leading members of the German colony in Kharkov back to my apartment and given three people instructions to go to the Caucasus and kill Stalin and Voroshilov.