Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [21]
and well spaced: NOT FOR YOU. Rubashov went slowly back to the window. He saw the young officer with the small moustache, the monocle stuck in, staring with a stupid grin at the wall which separated them; the eye behind the lens was glassy, the reddish eyelid turned up. What went on in his head? Probably he was thinking: I gave it to you all right. Probably also: Canaille, how many of my people have you had shot? Rubashov looked at the whitewashed wall; he felt that the other was standing behind it with his face turned towards him; he thought he heard his panting breath. Yes, how many of yours have I had shot, I wonder? He really could not remember; it was long, long ago, during the Civil War, there must have been something' between seventy and a hundred. What of it? That was all right; it lay on a different plane to a case like Richard's, and he would do it again to-day. Even if he knew beforehand that the revolution would in the end put No. 1 in the saddle?Even then. With you, thought Rubashov and looked at the whitewashed wall behind which the other stood--in the meantime he had probably lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke against the wall--with you I have no accounts to settle. To you I owe no fare. Between you and us there is no common currency and no common language. ... Well, what do you want now? For No. 402 had started to tap again. Rubashov went back to the wall. ... SENDING YOU TOBACCO, he heard. Then, more faintly, he heard No. 402 hammering on his door in order to attract the warder's attention. Rubashov held his breath; after a few minutes he heard the old man's shuffling footsteps approaching. The warder did not unlock No. 402's door, but asked through the spy-hole: "What do you want?" Rubashov could not hear the answer, although he would have liked to hear No. 402's voice. Then the old man said loudly, so that Rubashov should hear it: "It is not allowed; against the regulations." Again Rubashov could not hear the reply. Then the warder said: "I will report you for using insulting language." His steps trailed over the tiles and were lost in the corridor. For a time there was silence. Then No. 402 tapped: A BAD LOOK-OUT FOR YOU. Rubashov gave no answer. He walked up and down, feeling the thirst for tobacco itching in the dry membranes of his throat. He thought of No. 402. "Yet I would do it again," he said to himself. "It was necessary and right. But do I perhaps owe you the fare all the same? Must one also pay for deeds which were right and necessary?" The dryness in his throat increased. He felt a pressure in his forehead; he went restlessly back and forth, and while he thought his lips began to move. Must one also pay for righteous acts? Was there another measure besides that of reason? Did the righteous man perhaps carry the heaviest debt when weighed by this other measure? Was his debt, perhaps, counted double--for the others knew not what they did? ... Rubashov stood still on the third black tile from the window. What was this?A breath of religious madness? He became conscious that he had for several minutes been talking half aloud to himself. And even as he was watching himself, his lips, independently of his will, moved and said: "I shall pay." For the first time since his arrest Rubashov was scared. He felt for his cigarettes. But he had none. Then again he heard the delicate tappings on the wall over the bedstead. No. 402 had a message for him: HARE-LIP SENDS YOU GREETINGS. He saw in his mind's eye the yellow, upturned face of the man: the message made him feel uncomfortable. He tapped: WHAT IS HIS NAME? No. 402 answered: HE WON'T SAY. BUT HE SENDS YOU GREETINGS.
12
During the afternoon Rubashov felt even worse. He was seized by periodic fits of shivering. His tooth also had started to ache again--the right eye-tooth which was connected to the eye-nerve orbitalis. He had had nothing to eat since his arrest, yet did not feel hungry. He tried to collect his wits, but the cold shudders which ran over him and itching and tickling in his throat prevented him. His thoughts circled alternatively round