Life And Fate

He was rotten all the way through. Why though? And were they any more guilty than he was? But he hadn't signed any confessions. Just wait, Nikolay, you will! Just like they did! Probably the real horrors are kept till later. They keep you for three days without sleep and then start beating you up. None of this seems much like Socialism, does it? Why does my Party need to destroy me? We were the ones who made the Revolution – not Malenkov, Zhdanov and Shcherbakov. We were merciless towards the enemies of the Revolution. Why has the Revolution been so merciless towards us? Perhaps for that very reason. Or maybe it hasn't got anything to do with the Revolution. What's this captain got to do with the Revolution? He's just a thug, a member of the Black Hundreds.

There he had been, just milling the wind, while time had been passing.

He was exhausted. The pain in his back and legs was crushing him… All he wanted was to lie down on his bunk, stick his legs in the air, flex his bare toes, scratch his calves.

'Stay awake!' shouted the captain, for all the world as though he were shouting out orders in battle.

It was as though the Front would break and the whole Soviet State collapse if Krymov were to close his eyes for one moment.

Krymov had never in all his life heard so many swear-words.

His friends, his closest associates, his secretaries, the people he had had the most intimate conversations with, had gathered together his every word and action. He was appalled when he remembered, 'Ivan was the only person I told about that'; 'That was when I was talking to Grishka – I've known him since 1920'; 'That was when I was talking to Mashka Kheltser, oh Mashka, Mashka!'

Suddenly he remembered the investigator saying that he shouldn't expect any parcels from Yevgenia Nikolaevna… That was a reference to a conversation in his cell with Bogoleev. People had been adding to the Krymov collection as recently as that.

In the afternoon someone brought him some soup. His hand was trembling so badly that he had to bend forward and sip from the rim of the bowl, leaving the spoon tapping away by itself.

'You eat like a pig,' said the captain sadly.

After that, one other thing happened: Krymov asked to go to the lavatory. This time he walked down the corridor without thinking anything at all, but he did have one thought as he stood over the lavatory-pan: it was a good thing his buttons had been ripped off- his fingers were far too shaky to be able to cope with fly-buttons.

Time passed, slowly doing its work. The State – the captain and his epaulettes – was victorious. A dense grey fog filled Krymov's head. It was probably the same fog that filled the brain of a monkey. Past and future had disappeared; even the file with its curling tapes had disappeared. There was only one thing left in the world – his need to take off his boots, have a good scratch and go to sleep.

The investigator came back.

'Did you sleep?' asked the captain.

'Your superior officer doesn't sleep,' replied the investigator in a schoolmasterly tone of voice. 'He takes a rest.' This was a very old chestnut.

'Of course,' agreed the captain.

The investigator was just like a worker coming on shift who looks over his bench and exchanges a few businesslike words with the man he is relieving; he glanced first at Krymov, then at his writing-desk, and said: 'Very well, comrade Captain.'

He looked at his watch, took the file out of his drawer, and said, in a voice full of animation: 'Now then, Krymov, let's continue.'

They got down to work.

Today, it was the war that most concerned the investigator. Once again he turned out to have a vast fund of knowledge: he knew about Krymov's different postings; he knew the numbers of the regiments and armies concerned; he mentioned the names of people who had fought beside him; he quoted remarks Krymov had made at the Political Section, together with his comments on an illiterate memorandum of the general's.

All Krymov's work at the front, the speeches he had made under fire, the faith he had been able to impart to his soldiers through the constant hardships of the retreat-all this had suddenly ceased to exist.

He was a miserable chatterbox who had demoralized his comrades, destroying their faith and infecting them with a feeling of hopelessness. How could it be doubted that German Intelligence had helped him to cross the lines in order to continue his work as a saboteur and spy?

During the first few minutes of the new session the investigator's lively enthusiasm communicated itself to Krymov too.

'Say what you like,' he said, 'but I'll never admit to being a spy.'

The investigator glanced out through the window. It was getting dark; he could no longer clearly make out the papers on his desk.

He turned on his desk-lamp and let down the blue black-out blind.

From outside the door came a sullen, animal-like howl. It broke off as suddenly as it had begun.

'Now then, Krymov,' he said as he sat down again at his desk.

He asked Krymov if he knew why he had never been promoted. Krymov's answer was somewhat confused.

'You just stayed on as a battalion commissar, when you should have been the Member of the Military Soviet for an Army or even a Front.'

For a moment he just stared at Krymov in silence. It was perhaps the first time he had really gazed at him as an investigator should. Then, very solemnly, he a

'Now he's playing trumps,' thought Krymov. 'The ace itself!'

All right then, he'd describe the whole incident – when and where it had taken place – but one could just as well put the same questions to comrade Stalin himself: Krymov had never had the least co

All he really wanted was to take off his boots, lie down, put up his bare feet, and scratch himself in his sleep.

Quietly, almost affectionately, the investigator said:

'Why won't you help us? Do you really think it's just a matter of whether or not you committed crimes before the war, whether or not you renewed contacts and agreed on rendezvous during the time you were surrounded? It's something more serious and deep-rooted than that. It's a matter of the new direction of the Party. You must help the Party in this new stage of its struggle. To do that, you must first renounce your past opinions. Only a Bolshevik is capable of such a task. That's why I'm talking to you now.'

'Very well,' Krymov said slowly and sleepily. 'I can allow that, in spite of myself, I may have given expression to views hostile to the Party. My own internationalism may have contradicted the policies of a sovereign Socialist State. I may have been out of touch with the way things were going after 1937, out of touch with the new people. Yes, I can admit all this. But espionage, sabotage…'

'Why that "but"? Can't you see that you're already on the way towards realizing your hostility to the cause of the Party? What does the mere form matter? Why that "but", when you've already admitted what's most important?'

'No, I deny that I'm a spy.'

'So you don't want to help the Party? Just when we get to the point, you try and hide. It's like that, is it? You're shit, real dogshit!'

Krymov jumped up, grabbed the investigator's tie, and banged his fist on the table. Something inside the telephone clicked and tinkled.

'You son of a bitch, you swine,' he cried out in a piercing howl, 'where were you when I led people into battle in the Ukraine and the Bryansk forests? Where were you during the winter I was fighting outside Voronezh? Were you ever in Stalingrad, you bastard? Who are you to say I never did anything for the Party? I suppose you were defending our Motherland here in the Lubyanka, you… you Tsarist gendarme! And you don't believe I fought for Socialism in Stalingrad! Were you ever nearly executed in Shanghai? Were you shot in the left shoulder by one of Kolchak's soldiers in 1917?'