He is the creator of a categorical imperative opposite to Kant’s; for him, a man, and mankind as a whole, are simply means to be employed in the course of his never-ending hunt for objects. There is always a tense, hurt, irritated look in his eyes, whatever their color. Someone has always just stepped on his toes; there is invariably someone he has to settle accounts with.
For him the State’s passion for unmasking enemies of the people is a blessing. It is like a steady trade wind blowing over the ocean, a gracious following wind filling his small yellow sail. And at the price of the suffering of those he destroys, he gets what he needs: additional living space, a salary increase, a neighbor’s hut, a suite of Polish furniture, a little garden, a heated garage for his Moskvich car...
He despises books, music, the beauty of nature, love, and maternal tenderness. He wants objects, only objects.
But even he is not moved exclusively by material considerations. He is extremely touchy; his grievances fester inside him.
He will denounce a colleague who has made him jealous by dancing with his wife, a wit who has made fun of him during a meal, even just someone from the communal apartment who has accidentally knocked into him in the kitchen.
He has two distinguishing features. First, he is a volunteer. No one frightened him into it; he writes denunciations of his own accord. Second, what he sees in a denunciation is the direct, definite material benefit that he can derive from it.
Nevertheless, let us restrain the fist that has been raised to strike him: his passion for objects is a passion born of poverty. Yes, he could tell you about a room eight meters square that is home to eleven people, where a paralyzed man is snoring while a young couple rustles and moans beside him, where an old woman is muttering a prayer and a child who has wet himself keeps crying and crying. He could tell you about greenish-brown village bread made with ground-up leaves, and about a staple Moscow soup, made from frozen potatoes that were being sold off cheap, that he used to have three times a day.
He could tell you about a house without a single beautiful object; about chairs with plywood seats; about tumblers made of thick, murky glass; about tin spoons and two-pronged forks; about underwear that has been mended many times over; about a dirty rubber raincoat that he had worn, in December, over a torn quilted jacket.
He could tell you about waiting for a bus on a dark winter morning, about the unimaginable crush in the tram after a night spent in a desperately cramped room.
It was, surely, living an animal life that had first engendered his animal passion for things, his longing for a more spacious den. The bestiality of his life had turned him into a beast.
Yes, yes, of course. But it is clear that he lived no worse than others. It is clear, in fact, that he lived better than many.
And these many, many others did not do what he did. Let us take our time; let us think—and only then pronounce judgment.
Prosecutor: Do you all confirm that you wrote denunciations against Soviet citizens?
Informers: Yes, in a way.
Prosecutor: Do you admit that you are guilty of the deaths of innocent Soviet people?
Informers: No, we categorically deny it. The State had already doomed these people. Our work was, one might say, cosmetic. It served to keep up appearances. Essentially, whatever we wrote and however we wrote it, whether we accused or defended them, these people were already doomed.
Prosecutor: But sometimes you wrote denunciations out of your own free will. In such cases, you yourselves chose the victim.
Informers: Our freedom of choice was only apparent. People were destroyed according to statistical methods. Those who belonged to particular social and ideological strata were scheduled for extermination. We were well aware of those parameters—and so were you. We never informed against members of social strata that were healthy and not already marked for destruction.
Prosecutor: Or in the words of the new gospel: “Push that which is falling!” Nevertheless, there were occasions, even during the harshest of times, when the State acquitted those you had slandered.
Defense Counsel: Yes, there were indeed such occasions—because of mistakes. But only God makes no mistakes. And the fact that there were very few acquittals—as you well know—indicates that there were very few mistakes.
Prosecutor: Yes, you informers knew what you were doing. But please answer me: Why did you inform?
Informers (in unison): They forced me to, they beat me...I was hypnotized by terror, by the power of boundless violence...As for me I was carrying out my duty as a Party member, to the best of my understanding at the time.
Prosecutor: And you, comrade Number Four, why aren’t you saying anything?
Judas IV: Me? Why are you picking on me? I know, it’s because I’m uneducated. Because it’s easier for you to get the better of someone uneducated, someone not so intelligent!
Defense Counsel (interrupting): Please allow me to make a clarification. My client really did write denunciations in pursuit of personal ends. But please bear in mind that his personal interests in no way contradicted those of the State. The State did not reject my client’s denunciations. From this it can be deduced that he performed a service that was of use to the State, even though it may appear at first glance that he was impelled only by personal and egotistic considerations. And now—something more important still. In Stalin’s day you yourself, comrade Prosecutor, would have been accused of underestimating the role of the State. Do you not understand that the force fields generated by our State, its heavy, multitrillion-ton mass, the super-terror and super-submissiveness that it evokes in a speck of human dust are such as to render meaningless any accusations directed against a weak, defenseless, individual human being? It’s absurd to blame a particle of fluff for falling onto the earth.
Prosecutor: Your own position is clear. You are reluctant to allow your clients to accept even the least share of guilt. Only the State, only the State is to blame. But what about you informers? What do you all think? Do you really not consider yourselves in the least to blame?
Informers (They exchange looks and whispers. A learned informer takes the floor): Allow me to reply. For all its apparent simplicity, your question is, in fact, far from simple. In the first place, it is pointless. What use is it now to attempt to find out who is guilty with regard to crimes committed in the era of Stalin? That would be like emigrating to the Moon and then starting a lawsuit about title deeds to a plot of land here on Earth. On the other hand, if we are to take the line that the two eras are not so distant from each other and that, sub specie aeternitatis, they stand “almost side by side”—as the poet said—then many other complexities arise. Why are you so eager to condemn those, like us, who are small and weak? Why not begin with the State? Why not try the State? Our sin, after all, is its sin. Pass judgment on the State then—fearlessly, out loud, and in public. You have no choice but to be fearless—you claim, after all, to be speaking in the name of truth. Come on then, get on with it!
And please also explain one other thing. Why have you waited till now to raise these questions? You’ve known us all long enough. In Stalin’s lifetime you were only too glad to spend time with us. You used to wait outside our offices for us to receive you. Sometimes you used to whisper about us in thin, sparrowlike voices. We too used to whisper like sparrows. Yes, like us, you participated in the Stalin era. Why must we, who were participants, be judged by you, who were also participants? Why must you determine our guilt? Do you not see where the difficulty lies? Maybe we really are guilty, but there is no judge who has the moral right to discuss the question of our guilt. Remember how Leo Tolstoy said that no one in the world is guilty? But in our State things are different: everyone is guilty—there is not one innocent person anywhere. All that we can argue about is the degree of guilt. So is it for you, comrade Prosecutor, to accuse us? Only the dead, only those who did not survive, have the right to judge us. But the dead do not ask questions; the dead are silent. So please allow me to answer yo
ur question with another question. I’m speaking to you straightforwardly, man to man, from the heart, like a true Russian. What is the reason for this vile, universal weakness? Your weakness, our weakness, everyone’s weakness? This mass submissiveness?
Prosecutor: You’re evading the question.
(Enter a secretary. He holds out an envelope to the learned informer, saying, “Official.”)
Learned Informer (after reading a sheet of paper, he holds it out to the prosecutor): Please have a look. On the occasion of my sixtieth birthday, my more than modest achievements in the field of Soviet science have been recognized.
Prosecutor (after reading the paper): In spite of myself, I can’t but be glad for you. We are, after all, all Soviet people.
Learned Informer: Yes, yes, of course we are. Thank you. (Muttering to himself.) Allow me, through the columns of your newspaper, to express my gratitude...to the institutions and organizations...and also to my comrades and friends...
Defense Counsel (striking a pose as he makes his final plea): Comrade Prosecutor and you, sworn jurymen! The comrade prosecutor has accused my client of evading the question put to him: Does he admit to even the least degree of guilt? But no more have you, comrade Prosecutor, answered the question put by my client to you: What is the reason for our mass submissiveness? Maybe it is human nature itself that has engendered informers, stool pigeons, writers of denunciations, collaborators with the security organs? Perhaps informers are born from the secretions of glands, from the pap slopping about our intestines, from the noise of gas in our stomachs, from mucous membranes, from the activity of the kidneys? Perhaps they are born from blind instinct—from the noseless, eyeless instinctual drives for nourishment, self-preservation, and reproduction?
But anyway, isn’t it all the same whether or not informers are to blame? Whether they are to blame or whether they aren’t, what is loathsome is the fact that they exist. The animal, vegetable, mineral, physiochemical side of human beings is horrible. It is from this slimy, hairy, base side of human nature that informers are born. The State does not itself give birth to people. Informers have sprouted from man. The hot steam of State terror breathed upon mankind and little grains that had been sleeping swelled and came to life. The State is the earth. If the earth has no grains lying hidden inside it, neither wheat nor tall weeds will grow from it. Humanity has only itself to blame for human filth.
But do you know the vilest thing of all about stool pigeons and informers? Do you think it is the bad in them?
No! The most terrible thing is the good in them; the saddest thing is that they are full of merits and good qualities.
They are loving and affectionate sons, fathers, and husbands...They are capable of real achievements of virtue and labor.
They love science, our great Russian literature, fine music. Some of them can talk boldly and intelligently about the most complicated aspects of modern philosophy and art...
And what good, devoted friends you can find among them! How touching they can be when they visit a comrade who has been taken to the hospital.
Among them are brave and patient soldiers who shared with their comrade their last crust of bread or last pinch of tobacco and who, in their own arms, carried a wounded, bleeding fighter off the field of battle.
And what gifted poets, musicians, physicists, and doctors there are among them. What skilled craftsmen—metalworkers and carpenters—men who are spoken of with admiration as having “golden hands.”
This is what is so terrifying; that there is so much good in them, so much good in their human essence.
Whom, then, should we judge? Human nature! Human nature is what engenders these heaps of lies, all this meanness, cowardice, and weakness. But then human nature also engenders what is good, pure, and kind. Informers and stool pigeons are full of virtue, they should all be released and sent home—but how vile they are! Vile for all their virtues, vile even with all their sins absolved...Who was it who made that cruel joke about the proud sound made by the word “Man”?
Yes, yes, dark saturnine forces pushed them. They were subjected to billion-ton pressures—and no one among the living is innocent. All the living are guilty...You, the defendant, are guilty—and you, the prosecutor, and I myself, as I think about the defendant, the prosecutor, and the judge.
But why is all this so painful? Why does our human obscenity make us feel such shame?
8
“What the hell made me decide to go on foot?” Pinegin kept asking himself. He had no desire to think about that dark bad something that had slept for decades and then suddenly awoken. Whether or not he had done wrong was not what mattered; it was all just a matter of blind chance, of an unfortunate coincidence that had brought him face-to-face with a man he had ruined. Had they not bumped into each other on the street, the sleeper would have gone on sleeping.
But the sleeper had awoken, and Pinegin, though not quite realizing this, was feeling less and less convinced by these thoughts about blind chance. He was feeling more and more troubled and regretful: “No, it’s true: it was me who snitched on Vanechka and—and I didn’t need to. I destroyed the man, damn him! Otherwise we could have met today and everything would have been fine. Oh God, how grubby it all is. It’s as if I’d reached into some lady’s handbag, and she’d caught hold of my arm, and me with my driver, my advisers, my secretaries all standing around me...My God! How can one go on living when the whole world feels so dirty and grubby? Maybe my whole life is just vile and rotten. I should have lived it quite differently.”
And it was with a confused and heavy heart that Pinegin entered the Intourist restaurant, where the maître d’ and the doorman and the waiters had all known him for many years.
On catching sight of him, two cloakroom attendants sprang out from behind a partition, calling “G’day! G’day!” Prancing like young stallions, snorting with impatience, they stretched out their hands toward Pinegin’s luxurious accoutrements. They were quick, sharp-eyed Russian boys from an Intourist restaurant cloakroom—boys with a precise memory for who had been there before, what he had been wearing, and what he had happened to say. But they were, naturally, entirely openhearted and spontaneous with Pinegin, treating him, with his badge of a deputy to the city soviet, almost as if he were their immediate superior.
Unhurriedly, sensing beneath his feet the soft yet resilient pile of the carpet, Pinegin made his way through to the restaurant. The room was spacious; it had high ceilings and was filled with a solemn half-light. Pinegin slowly breathed in the calm air, which was cool and warm at the same time, and looked around at the tables with their starched tablecloths; vodka glasses, wineglasses, and cut-glass vases with flowers were all gleaming softly. He made his way to a familiar and comfortable spot beneath the intricate foliage of a philodendron.
As he passed between little tables displaying the miniature flags of various world powers, it seemed to him that these tables were battleships and cruisers, and that he was an admiral reviewing his fleet.
This sense of himself as an admiral made it easier to go on living, and he sat down at his little table. Without hurrying, he reached out for the dark, olive-green menu that looked more like the certificate awarded to some laureate. Opening it, he focused on the section: “Hors d’Oeuvres.”
Examining the names of dishes, which were printed both in his native Russian and in other major world languages, he turned over a stiff, crackling page, glanced at “Soups,” chewed his lips for a moment and then looked sideways at “Meat Dishes” and “Game Dishes.”
He hesitated, torn between Meat and Game. With perfect timing, guessing his predicament, the waiter pronounced, “The sirloin’s quite exceptional today.”
Pinegin did not reply for a long time. “All right then,” he said finally. “Sirloin it is.”
He sat in the half-light and the quiet, his eyes half closed—and the full weight of his own sense of rectitude battled with the fire and ice of repentance, with the confusion and horror that had sudde
nly been resurrected within him.
Then the heavy velvet over the doorway into the kitchen gently parted, and Pinegin recognized the bald head of a waiter— his waiter.
Out of the half dark a tray was floating toward him, and Pinegin saw ash-pink salmon surrounded by small lemon suns, dusky caviar, the hothouse green of cucumbers, the steep sides of a vodka decanter, and a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water.
He was not really so very much of a gourmet, nor was he even feeling so very hungry, but it was at this precise moment that that old man, that old man in a padded jacket, ceased for a second time to trouble his sense of rectitude.
9
Back at the railway station, Ivan Grigoryevich began to feel that there was no point in wandering about Leningrad any longer. He stood inside the cold, high building and pondered. And it is possible that one or two of the people who passed by the gloomy old man looking up at the black departures board may have thought, “There—a Russian from the camps, a man at a crossroads, contemplating, choosing which path to follow.”
But he was not choosing a path; he was thinking.
During the course of his life, dozens of interrogators had understood that he was neither a monarchist, nor a Socialist Revolutionary, nor a Social Democrat; that he had never been part of either the Trotskyist or the Bukharinist opposition. He had never been an Orthodox Christian or an Old Believer; nor was he a Seventh-Day Adventist.
There in the station, thinking about the painful days he had just spent in Moscow and Leningrad, he remembered a conversation with a tsarist artillery general who had at one time slept next to him on the bedboards of a camp barrack. The old man had said, “I’m not leaving the camp to go anywhere else. It’s warm in here. There are people I know. Now and again someone gives me a lump of sugar, or a bit of pie from a food parcel.”