Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [42]
wrongly known as "monologues" are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you", in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation and even refuses to be localized in time and space. Now, however, it seemed to Rubashov that the habitually silent partner spoke sometimes, without being addressed and without any visible pretext; his voice sounded totally unfamiliar to Rubashov, who listened in honest wonder and found that his own lips were moving. These experiences held nothing mystic or mysterious; they were of a quite concrete character; and by his observations Rubashov gradually became convinced that there was a thoroughly tangible component in this first person singular, which had remained silent through all these years and now had started to speak. This discovery preoccupied Rubashov far more intensely than did the details of his interview with Ivanov. He considered it as settled that he would not accept Ivanov's proposals, and that he would refuse to go on with the game; in consequence, he had only a limited time still to live; and this conviction formed the basis of his reflections. He did not think atall of the absurd story of a plot against No. 1's life; he was far more interested in the personality of Ivanov himself. Ivanov had said that theirrules .could equally well have been reversed; in that he was doubtless right. He himself and Ivanov were twins in their development; they did not come from the same ovum, yet were nourished by the same umbilical cord of a common conviction; the intense environment of the Party had etched and moulded the character of both during the decisive years of development. They had the same moral standard, the same philosophy, they thought in the same terms. Their positions might just as well have been the other way round. Then Rubashov would have sat behind the desk and Ivanov in front of it; and from that position Rubashov would probably have used the same arguments as had Ivanov. The rules of the game were fixed. They only admitted variations in detail. The old compulsion to think through the minds of others had again taken hold of him; he sat in Ivanov's place and saw himself through Ivanov's eyes, in the position of the accused, as once he had seen Richard and Little Loewy. He saw this degraded Rubashov, the shadow of the former companion, and he understood the mixture of tenderness and contempt with which Ivanov had treated him. During their discussion, he had repeatedly asked himself whether Ivanov was sincere or hypocritical; whether he was laying traps for him, or really wanted to show him a way of escape. Now, putting himself in Ivanov's position, he realized that Ivanov was sincere--as much so or as little, as he himself had been towards Richard or Little Loewy. These reflections also had the form of a monologue, but along familiar lines; that newly discovered entity, the silent partner, did not participate in them. Although it was supposed to be the person addressed in all monologues, it remained dumb, and its existence was limited to a grammatical abstraction called the "first person singular". Direct questions and logical meditations did not induce it to speak; its utterances occurred without visible cause and, strangely enough, always accompanied by a sharp attack of toothache. Its mental sphere seemed to be composed of such various and disconnected parts as the folded hands of thePietà , Little Loewy's cats, the tune of the song with the refrain of "come to dust", or a particular sentence which Arlova had once spoken on a particular occasion. Its means of expression were equally fragmentary: for instance, the compulsion to rub one's pince-nez on one's sleeve, the impulse to touch the light patch on the wall of Ivanov's room, the uncontrollable movements of the lips which murmured such senseless sentences as "I shall pay", and the dazed state induced by daydreams of past