Read Online Midnight in the Century (NYRB Classics) by Victor Serge - Free Book Online
Authors: Victor Serge
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out. Send me back to my cell, I need sleep. Anyway, I won’t answer you any more.”
Ponderously, he got to his feet, supporting himself on the edge of the table with both hands, unaware that he was reeling. Ah! Very good , he said with a kind of wild joy, as if he had just recognized the man seated opposite him, whose hand was softly caressing the holster of his revolver.
“Listen, esteemed Comrade Investigating Judge, to some lines of poetry I’m fond of:
In his heart there remained
one hundred twenty beats
one hundred twenty beats . . .
but the most extraordinary thing was that the man didn’t give a good goddam . . .
“Do you want,” said the inquisitor, “to request a visit from your wife?”
“No.”
* * *
The most sensible thing would be to die, and that’s probably what will happen to me (“. . . one hundred twenty beats . . .”) Farewell Ganna, Tamarochka. Ganna will remarry. That fat Bykov once wooed her; who knows if they’re not sleeping together already. How else could she live with her salary as a statistician? Bykov has oily skin and a pig-like expression; Ganna’s flesh is smooth and cool; her soul is like her flesh, only more defenceless. Let him penetrate that flesh and intrude on that soul. Farewell Ganna, the child must live.
Such nagging, base thoughts plunged the man on the cot into a state of unpleasant queasiness.
I’m not jealous, yet I feel nauseous as if I were seasick.
We were beaten in 1923, thanks to our faith. We still had confidence: it was already too late. Only a few thousand of us were left who wanted to continue the Revolution, which everyone had had enough of. The world was subsiding into inertia and nothing was finished. We were theorizing, searching for correct formulations, for explosive truths while the others—and there were a hundred of them for every one of us—only wanted to spend the summers at watering-places, bring home silk stockings for their wives, sleep with well-fleshed creatures. And you, too, Brother. You spent your Sundays playing cards and drinking the sweet wines of Crimea. Then you walked Masha home along the banks of the Moika—a laughing Masha with shining white teeth in a moon face. You didn’t love her, you knew you would never love her and you didn’t talk about love. She consulted you absent-mindedly about Party history, but she knew very well that once you reached the shade of the Summer Garden, you would grasp her elbows with determined hands and cover her face with moist kisses without speaking a word. She was waiting for that moment with all her being. Remember the sight of her head thrown back willingly, cool, closed lips, eyes shut. And then you would move on in silence and then, in the light of a first lamp, you would continue in a polite voice: After the Second Congress, Masha, the unity tendency . . .
You knew very well that you were breaking her heart. Now this pale memory is breaking your heart. For your life is over. You’re still attached to it since your flesh still remembers these feelings. Of no importance. You think you’re unique and that the universe would be empty without you. In reality you occupy in the world the place of an ant in the grass. The ant moves along carrying a louse-egg—a momentous task for which it was born. You crush it without knowing, without being aware of it. Without the ant itself being aware of it. Nothing changes. There will be ants until the end of the world who will bravely carry louse-eggs through the tunnels of the city. Don’t suffer on account of your nullity. Let it reassure you. You lose so little when you lose yourself—and the world loses nothing. You can see very well, from up in an aeroplane, that cities are anthills . . .
Tiflis, the Kazbek, the Elbrus, Rostov, Moscow from high in the air. The glaciers are stars smashed across the earth. Why did that other within you want so much to fall that day? You were scared and the other leaned toward the glaciers
Ponderously, he got to his feet, supporting himself on the edge of the table with both hands, unaware that he was reeling. Ah! Very good , he said with a kind of wild joy, as if he had just recognized the man seated opposite him, whose hand was softly caressing the holster of his revolver.
“Listen, esteemed Comrade Investigating Judge, to some lines of poetry I’m fond of:
In his heart there remained
one hundred twenty beats
one hundred twenty beats . . .
but the most extraordinary thing was that the man didn’t give a good goddam . . .
“Do you want,” said the inquisitor, “to request a visit from your wife?”
“No.”
* * *
The most sensible thing would be to die, and that’s probably what will happen to me (“. . . one hundred twenty beats . . .”) Farewell Ganna, Tamarochka. Ganna will remarry. That fat Bykov once wooed her; who knows if they’re not sleeping together already. How else could she live with her salary as a statistician? Bykov has oily skin and a pig-like expression; Ganna’s flesh is smooth and cool; her soul is like her flesh, only more defenceless. Let him penetrate that flesh and intrude on that soul. Farewell Ganna, the child must live.
Such nagging, base thoughts plunged the man on the cot into a state of unpleasant queasiness.
I’m not jealous, yet I feel nauseous as if I were seasick.
We were beaten in 1923, thanks to our faith. We still had confidence: it was already too late. Only a few thousand of us were left who wanted to continue the Revolution, which everyone had had enough of. The world was subsiding into inertia and nothing was finished. We were theorizing, searching for correct formulations, for explosive truths while the others—and there were a hundred of them for every one of us—only wanted to spend the summers at watering-places, bring home silk stockings for their wives, sleep with well-fleshed creatures. And you, too, Brother. You spent your Sundays playing cards and drinking the sweet wines of Crimea. Then you walked Masha home along the banks of the Moika—a laughing Masha with shining white teeth in a moon face. You didn’t love her, you knew you would never love her and you didn’t talk about love. She consulted you absent-mindedly about Party history, but she knew very well that once you reached the shade of the Summer Garden, you would grasp her elbows with determined hands and cover her face with moist kisses without speaking a word. She was waiting for that moment with all her being. Remember the sight of her head thrown back willingly, cool, closed lips, eyes shut. And then you would move on in silence and then, in the light of a first lamp, you would continue in a polite voice: After the Second Congress, Masha, the unity tendency . . .
You knew very well that you were breaking her heart. Now this pale memory is breaking your heart. For your life is over. You’re still attached to it since your flesh still remembers these feelings. Of no importance. You think you’re unique and that the universe would be empty without you. In reality you occupy in the world the place of an ant in the grass. The ant moves along carrying a louse-egg—a momentous task for which it was born. You crush it without knowing, without being aware of it. Without the ant itself being aware of it. Nothing changes. There will be ants until the end of the world who will bravely carry louse-eggs through the tunnels of the city. Don’t suffer on account of your nullity. Let it reassure you. You lose so little when you lose yourself—and the world loses nothing. You can see very well, from up in an aeroplane, that cities are anthills . . .
Tiflis, the Kazbek, the Elbrus, Rostov, Moscow from high in the air. The glaciers are stars smashed across the earth. Why did that other within you want so much to fall that day? You were scared and the other leaned toward the glaciers
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