But the lieutenant-colonel, one of his shoulders smudged with whitewash from the stove, walked up to the man sitting on the wooden stool – an expert on the workers' movement in the colonies of the Far East, a man with a commissar's star on the sleeves of his uniform, a man who had been brought up by a sweet, good-natured mother – and punched him in the face.
Krymov ran his hand over his lips and nose, looked at his palm and saw a mixture of blood and spittle. He tried to move his jaw. His lips had gone numb and his tongue was like stone. He looked at the painted floor – yes, it had just been washed – and swallowed his blood.
Only during the night did he begin to feel hatred for his interrogator. At first he had felt neither hatred nor physical pain. The blow on the face was the outward sign of a moral catastrophe. He could respond only with dumbfounded amazement.
The lieutenant-colonel looked at the clock. It was time for lunch in the canteen for heads-of-departments.
Krymov was taken across the dirty, frozen snow that covered the yard towards a rough log building that served as a lock-up. The sound of the bombs falling on Stalingrad was very clear.
His first thought as he came to his senses was that the lock-up might be destroyed by a German bomb… He felt disgusted with himself.
In the stifling, log-walled cell he was overwhelmed by despair and fury: he was losing himself. He was the man who had shouted hoarsely as he ran to the aeroplane to meet his friend Georgiy Dimitrov, he was the man who had borne Clara Zetkin's coffin – and just now he had given a furtive glance to see whether or not a security officer would hit him a second time. He had led his men out of encirclement; they had called him 'Comrade Commissar'. And now a peasant with a tommy-gun had looked at him – a Communist being beaten up and interrogated by another Communist – with squeamish contempt.
He had not yet taken in the full meaning of the words 'loss of freedom'… He had become another being. Everything in him had to change. He had lost his freedom…
He felt giddy… He would appeal to Shcherbakov, to the Central Committee! He would appeal to Molotov! He wouldn't rest until that scoundrel of a lieutenant-colonel had been shot. 'Yes – pick up that phone! Ring up Krasin! Stalin has heard my name. He knows who I am. Comrade Stalin once asked comrade Zhdanov: "Is that the same Krymov who used to work in the Comintern?" '
Then Krymov felt the quagmire beneath his feet: a dark, gluey, bottomless swamp was sucking him in. He had come up against something insuperable, something more powerful than the German Panzer divisions. He had lost his freedom.
Zhenya! Zhenya! Can you see me? Zhenya! Look at me – I'm in trouble, terrible trouble! I'm alone and abandoned. You too have abandoned me.
A degenerate had been beating him. His head span; his fingers were almost in spasm: he wanted to throw himself at the security officer.
Never had he felt such hatred towards the Tsarist police, the Mensheviks or even towards the SS officer he had once interrogated.
No, the man now trampling over him was not someone alien. Krymov could see himself in this officer, could recognize in him the same Krymov who as a boy had wept with happiness over those astonishing words of the Communist Manifesto: 'Workers of the World Unite!' And this feeling of recognition was appalling.
3
Darkness fell. Intermittently, the rumble of Stalingrad boomed through the close, evil air of the prison. Perhaps the Germans were going for Batyuk and Rodimtsev.
From time to time there were movements out in the corridor. The doors of the general cell – for deserters, traitors to the Motherland, looters and rapists – opened and closed. When the prisoners asked to go to the lavatory, the sentry would argue for a long time before opening the door.
Krymov himself had been put in the general cell after being brought over from Stalingrad. No one had paid any attention to the commissar with the red star still sewn on his sleeve: all the men cared about was whether he had any paper for rolling their dusty tobacco.
All they wanted was to be able to eat, smoke and carry out their natural functions.
Who had denounced him? What a torment it was: to know that he was innocent and yet to suffer from this chilling sense of irreparable guilt. Rodimtsev's conduit, the ruins of house 6/1, the White-Russian bogs, the Voronezh winter, the rivers they'd had to ford – everything light and joyful was lost for ever.
How he wanted simply to go out onto the street, stroll around, crane his neck and look up at the sky… And then buy a newspaper, have a shave, write a letter to his brother. He wanted a cup of tea. He had to return a book he'd borrowed for the evening. He wanted to look at his watch, go to the bath-house, take a handkerchief out of his suitcase. But he couldn't do anything. He had lost his freedom.
Then he had been taken out into the corridor. The commandant had shouted at the guard:
'I told you in plain Russian! Why the hell did you go and put him in the general cell? And don't just stand there gaping! Do you want to be sent to the front line?'
When the commandant had gone, the guard had complained:
'It's always the same. The solitary cell's occupied. He told us to keep it for people sentenced to death. If I put you there, what can I do with the fellow who's already there?'
Soon Krymov saw the firing-squad taking the man out to be executed. His fair hair clung to the narrow, scrawny nape of his neck. He could have been anything from twenty years old to thirty-five.
Krymov was then transferred to the solitary cell. In the semi-darkness he made out a pot on the table. Next to it he could feel a hare moulded from the soft inside of a loaf of bread. The condemned man must have just put it down – it was still soft. Only the hare's ears had had time to grow stale.
Krymov, his mouth hanging open, sat down on the plank-bed. He had too much on his mind to be able to sleep. Nor could he think. His temples were throbbing. He felt deafened. Everything was whirling around in his head. There was nothing he could catch hold of, no firm point from which to begin a line of thought.
During the night there was a commotion in the corridor. The guards called the corporal. There was a tramping of boots. The commandant – Krymov recognized his voice – said: 'To hell with that battalion commissar. Put him in the guard-room.' Then he added: 'What a story! I bet it'll get to the CO.'
The door of his cell opened and a soldier shouted: 'Out!'
Krymov went out. In the corridor stood a bare-footed man in his underwear.
Krymov had seen many terrible things in his life, but nothing so terrible as this small, dirty yellow face. Its lips, wrinkles, and trembling cheeks were all crying; everything was crying except for the eyes; and so terrible was the expression in those eyes, it would have been better never even to have glimpsed them.
'Come on, come on!' said the guard.
When Krymov was in the guard-room, he learned what had happened.
'They keep threatening to send me to the front, but this place is a thousand times worse. Your nerves get worn to a frazzle… A soldier's to be executed for self-mutilation – he'd shot himself in the left hand through a loaf of bread. They shoot him, cover him over with earth – and during the night he comes to life again and finds his way back!'
The guard avoided addressing Krymov directly – so as not to have to choose between the polite and impolite forms of the second person.
'They make a hash of everything they set their hands to. It wears your nerves to a frazzle. Even a pig gets slaughtered better than that! What a mess! The ground's frozen – so they rake up some weeds, sprinkle them over him and off they go. And then he gets up. What do you expect? He couldn't have done that if he'd been buried according to the rule-book.'
Krymov – who had always answered questions, given explanations, set people back on the true path – was bewildered.