The Case of Comrade Tulayev (45 page)

Such should be those who prowl the taiga around the Upper Angara, in Vitim, around Chara, in the Zolotaya Dolina, the Valley of Gold. They follow wild beasts by invisible signs, they foretell the storm, they fear the bear, they say “thou” to him, as to an elder brother whom it is wise to respect. It is they who come to the solitary posts, bringing silvery furs and bulging leather purses filled with grains of gold — for the war chest of the Socialist Republic. A minor official, silent because he has lost the habit of speech, who lives alone with his wife, his dog, his machine pistol and the birds of the air, in an isba of heavy blackened logs, weighs the grains of gold, counts rubles, sells vodka, matches, gunpowder, tobacco, the precious empty bottle, makes notes on the work card issued by the Gold-Seekers' Co-operative. He smiles and swallows a glass of vodka, does some figuring, says to the man from the taiga: “Comrade, it's not enough. You are 8 per cent behind your Plan quota … Won't do. Make it up, or I can't sell you any more vodka …” He says it in a toneless voice, and adds: “Palmyra, bring us tea …” because his wife is named Palmyra, but he has no idea that it is the magical name of a vanished city in another world, a world of sand and palms and sun … Those hunters, those prospectors, those gold washers, those engineers, Yakuts, Buriats, Mongols, Tungus, Oirads, Great Russians from the capitals, Young Communists, Party members initiated into the sorceries of shamans, those clerks half mad with solitude, their wives, their little Yakut girls from obscure villages who sell themselves in a dark corner of the house for a pinch of yellow grains or a package of cigarettes, the Trust's inspectors, ambushed on the road by sawed-off shotguns, the engineers who know the latest statistics from the Transvaal and the new methods of hydraulic drilling to work deep-lying auriferous strata — all of them, all of them live a magnificent life under the twofold sign of the Plan and of glittering nights, in the vanguard of forward-marching mankind, in communion with the Milky Way! — The preamble to the
Report on Socialist Emulation and Sabotage in the Zolotaya Dolina Gold Placers
contained these lines: “… As our great Comrade Tulayev, traitorously assassinated by Trotskyist terrorists in the service of world imperialism, recently said, workers in gold production form an elite contingent at the spearhead of the Socialist army. They fight Wall Street and the City with capitalism's own weapons …” Ah, Tulayev, the stupid fool, and this verbiage of public prosecutors intoxicated with vileness … Prosaically put, but, so far as gold was concerned, true enough … The icy winds of the North carry violet snow-laden clouds down to that country. Behind them whiteness covers the universe, which has relapsed into a sort of void. Before them flee such multitudes of birds that they hide the sky. At sunset faraway flocks of white birds trace gilded snakes in the upper air. The Plan must be carried out before winter.

Kondratiev rediscovered the string-laced shoes of the poverty-stricken walker.

“Student?”

“Technology, third year.”

Kondratiev was thinking of too many things at once. Of the winter, of Tamara Leontiyevna, who would come, of life beginning again, of the prisoners in the prison where he had expected to end this day, of the dead, of Moscow, of the Valley of Gold. Without looking at the young man — and what did that thin, bitter face matter to him, after all? — he said:

“Do you want to fight with winter, with the wilderness, with solitude, with the earth, with night? To fight — understand? I am the head of an enterprise. I offer you work in the Siberian brush.”

Without taking time to reflect, the student answered:

“If you really mean it, I accept. I have nothing to lose.”

“Neither have I,” Kondratiev murmured cheerfully.

On his desk Prosecutor Rachevsky found a foreign newspaper which announced (the item was carefully circled in red pencil) the imminent trial of Comrade Tulayev's assassins. “From our special correspondent: Informed circles are discussing … — the principal defendants — the former High Commissar for Security, Erchov; the historian Kiril Rublev, former member of the Central Committee; the Regional Secretary for Kurgansk, Artyem Makeyev; an immediate agent of Trotsky's, whose name is still a secret … — are said to have made complete confessions … — it is hoped that this trial will cast light on certain points which the preceding trials left obscure …” The Foreign Affairs Commissariat's press bureau added a request for information concerning the source of this item. Originally emanating from the Supreme Court, the request had been officially communicated by the press bureau itself … Calamity. Toward noon the Prosecutor learned that the audience for which he had been asking for several days was granted.

The Chief received him in a small anteroom, before a glass-covered table. The audience lasted three minutes and forty-five seconds. The Chief seemed preoccupied. “Good day. Sit down. Well?” Discommoded by his thick glasses, Rachevsky could not see the Chief well. The lenses broke his image into absorbing details: wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, bushy black eyebrows in which there was a sprinkling of white hairs … Leaning slightly forward, his two hands resting on the edge of the table (because he did not dare to gesticulate), the Prosecutor made his report. He did not know quite what he was saying, but professional habit made him brief and precise: 1. Complete confessions from the principal defendants; 2. the unexpected death of the person who appeared to be the soul of the conspiracy, the Trotskyist Ryzhik, a death due to the unpardonable negligence of Comrade Zvyeryeva, who had been in charge of the preliminary investigation; 3. the very strong presumptive evidence collected against Ryzhik, whose guilt, if proven, would show the connection between the conspirators and foreign powers … In principle, a doubt must be admitted until Kondratiev should be questioned … However …

The Chief interrupted:

“I have investigated the Kondratiev matter. It is of no further interest to you.”

The Prosecutor bowed, choking. “Ah, so much the better. Thank you …” Why was he saying thank you? He felt as if he were falling, falling straight down. It was thus that one would fall from the skyscrapers of some inconceivable city, past oblongs of window, oblongs, oblongs, five hundred stories …

“Go on.”

Go on with what? The Prosecutor gropingly returned to the “complete confessions of the principal defendants …”

“They have confessed? And you have no doubts?”

A thousand floors, the sidewalk below him. His head hitting the sidewalk at meteor speed.

“… No,” said Rachevsky.

“Then apply the Soviet law. You are the Prosecutor.”

The Chief rose, his hands in his pockets. “Good-by, Comrade Prosecutor.” Rachevsky walked away like an automaton. No question presented itself to him. In the car he gave himself up to stupor — the stupor of a man stunned. “I will see no one,” he told his secretary, “leave me to myself …” He sat down at his desk. The huge office offered nothing to hold his eyes (the life-size portrait of the Chief was behind the Prosecutor's chair). “I am so tired,” he said to himself, and put his head in his hands. “When all is said and done, there is only one way out for me: to shoot myself …” The idea came to him of itself: there it was in his mind, quite simply. A telephone buzzed — direct wire from the Commissariat for the Interior. As he took up the receiver, Rachevsky became aware what a languor there was in his limbs. There was absolutely nothing in him but that one idea, reduced to an impersonal force, without emotion, without images, without argument, obvious. “Hello …” It was Gordeyev, inquiring into “this deplorable indiscretion which has communicated a so-called rumor to certain European newspapers … Do you know anything about it, Ignatii Ignatiyevich?” Excessively polite, Gordeyev — using circumlocutions to avoid saying: “I am making an investigation.” Rachevsky began by spluttering. “What indiscretion? What did you say? An English newspaper? But all communications of that nature go through the Foreign Affairs press bureau …” Gordeyev insisted: “I think you don't quite understand, my dear Ignatii Ignatiyevich … Allow me to read you this paragraph:
From our special correspondent
…” Rachevsky hastily interrupted: “Ah, yes, I know … My secretariat issued a verbal communication … at the suggestion of Comrade Popov …” Gordeyev appeared to be embarrassed by the unexpected precision of this answer. “Right, right,” he said, lowering his voice. “The point is” — his voice rose an octave: Perhaps there was someone with Gordeyev? Perhaps their telephone conversation was being recorded? — “have you a written memorandum from Comrade Popov?” — “No, but I am sure he remembers it very well …” — “Thank you very much. Excuse me now, Ignatii Ignatiyevich …”

When he was under great pressure of work, Rachevsky often slept at Government House. There he had the use of a small, plainly furnished apartment, which was crammed with dossiers. He did a great deal of work himself, since he did not know how to use secretaries and trusted no one. Sixty cases of sabotage, treason, espionage, which he must look into before he went to bed, were scattered over various articles of furniture. The most secret were in a small safe at the head of his bed. Rachevsky stopped in front of the safe and, to shake off his sluggishness, elaborately wiped his glasses. “Obviously, obviously.” His usual supper was brought in, and he devoured it standing by the window, without being aware of the suburban view, in which innumerable golden sparks were kindling into light. “It is the only thing to do, the only thing …” Of the thing as such, he thought hardly at all. Present within him, it offered no real difficulty. To blow out his brains — what could be simpler? No one suspects how simple it is. He was a rudimentary man, who feared neither pain nor death since he had been present at a number of executions. There is probably no real pain, only a shock of infinitesimal duration. And materialists like ourselves have no need to fear nothingness. He longed for sleep and for darkness, which gives the best idea of nothingness, which does not exist. — Let me be, let me be! He would write nothing. It would be better for his children. As he was thinking of his children, Masha called him on the telephone: “You won't be home tonight, Papa?” — “No.” — “Papa, I got
very good
today in history and political economy … Tiopka got a cut finger cutting out decalcomanias, Niura bandaged it the way it says to in the First Aid Manual. Mama's headache is better. All well on the Interior Front! Sleep well, Comrade Papa-Prosecutor!” — “Sleep well, all of you,” Rachevsky answered.

Oh, God. He opened the cupboard in the little bureau, took out a bottle of brandy and drank from it. His eyes dilated, a warmth ran through him, it was good. He slammed the bottle down and it rocked back and forth on the table. Will you fall or won't you? It did not fall. He banged at the table on either side of the bottle, but keeping one hand open, ready to catch the bottle if it should start to fall. “You won't fall, damn you — ha-ha-ha-ha!” He was laughing and hiccuping. “A-bullet-in-the-brain — poo-poo-poo-poo! A-bullet-in-the-bottle — poo-poo-poo-poo!” Leaning so far to one side that he almost toppled over, he tried to get his fingers on a blue dossier which lay on a stand against the wall. The effort made him groan. “So you won't let me catch you, damn you … damn you!” He worked his fingers to the edge of the dossier, drew it toward him craftily, caught it in the air while other papers showered onto the carpet, put it on the table, flung his glasses into a corner over his shoulder, licked his forefinger and, drawing it clumsily along under the words on the cover, began spelling them out:
Sa-bo-tage in the Chemical Industry, Armolinsk Case.
The syllables overlapped, ran after each other, and each letter, written in black ink in a big round hand, was fringed with fire. His finger captured the syllables, but they got away like mice, like rats, like the little lizards which, when he was a boy in Turkestan, he used to catch with a noose made from a blade of grass — ha ha ha! “I was always a specialist in nooses!” He tore the dossier across and then across again. Come here, bottle, come here, damn you — hurrah! He drank till he lost breath, the desire to laugh, consciousness …

When he arrived at his office on the afternoon of the next day, Popov was waiting for him, surrounded by the department heads, whom he dismissed with a wave. Popov looked bored, yellow, and ill. The Prosecutor sat down under the great portrait of the Chief, opened his brief case, assumed a pleasant look, but a headache pressed down on his eyelids, his mouth was woolly, he breathed laboriously. “Had a bad night, Comrade Popov, attack of asthma, my heart, I don't know what to make of it, haven't had time to see a doctor … At your service!”

Popov asked softly:

“Have you read the papers, Ignatii Ignatiyevich?”

“Haven't had time.”

He had not read his mail either, since the unopened envelopes lay there on his desk. Popov rubbed his hands. “So … so … Well, Comrade Rachevsky, it is just as well that I should tell you the news …” It couldn't be easy, because he looked in his pockets for a newspaper, opened it, found an item toward the middle of the third page. “There, read that, Ignatii Ignatiyevich … In any case, everything has been arranged, I saw to it this morning …”

“
By decision of
… and so on …
Comrade Rachevsky, I. I., Prosecutor to the Supreme Tribunal, is relieved of his functions … in view of his appointment to another post
…”

“It stands to reason,” said Rachevsky, without emotion, for he saw quite a different reason.

Weakly, using both hands, he pushed the heavy brief case toward Popov. “There you are.”

To an accompaniment of hand-rubbing, little coughs, and vaguely pleasant smiles — none of which had any meaning — Popov said: “You understand, do you not, Ignatii Ignatiyevich? … You have carried out a task … a superhuman task … Mistakes were inevitable … We have thought of a post which will give you a chance to take some rest … Your appointment is” — From the depths of his torpor, Rachevsky pricked up his ears — “is … Director of the Tourist Bureau … with two months' leave in advance … which, as a friend, I advise you to spend at Sochi … or at Suk-Su — they are our two best rest houses … Blue sea, flowers, Alupka, Alushta, views, Ignatii Ignatiyevich! You will come back renewed … ten years younger … and tourist travel, you know, is far from a negligible matter!”