overs. They drugged you, I kept telling myself. They drugged you with the fish. What have you told them? I didn’t think I could possibly have signed their damned paper, but I couldn’t remember. I felt ill and low and very worried.
Quite soon afterwards I was moved to Moscow and the Lubyanka. The guards were chatty and smiling as I left. This was a feature of Pinsk and Minsk, now Kharkov and later Moscow. The guards acted on my departure as if they were glad I was leaving. They talked freely, joked a little. Maybe it was their way of showing a sympathy in which earlier they could not indulge.
Conditions at the Lubyanka were a little easier. My reputation as a recalcitrant had obviously preceded me because I was very soon consigned to the
The interrogation team at the Lubyanka nevertheless tried out their special powers of persuasion on me. It was possibly a matter of metropolitan pride to try to succeed where the provincial boys had failed. There were the usual questions, the repeated demands for my signature, some manhandling, references to the filthy, spying Poles. But there was only one torture trick of which The Bull might have been envious.
They strapped me with my feet pulled stiffly out under the now familiar ‘operation table’. My arms were stretched out along the table surface, each hand tied and held separately. My body was arched in a straining bow around the table end and the pain grew into searing agony as they hauled taut on the straps. This, however, was preparatory stuff like climbing into the dentist’s chair with raging toothache. The operation was yet to come. Over the table was suspended an old-fashioned small cauldron fitted with a spout. It contained hot tar. There followed the usual pressing invitation to sign, with a promise that if I agreed I should be released immediately and returned to my cell. I think they would have been most disappointed if at that stage I had agreed to sign. The first drop of tar was hell. It burned savagely into the back of my hand and held its heat a long time on the puckered and livid skin. That first drop was the worst. It was the peak of pain. The rest were faintly anti-climax. I held on to consciousness and to my will to resist. When they said I should be glad to sign with my left hand at the end of the session, I proved them wrong. I had learned my fortitude in a very hard school.
That was the last major assault. I had been in the Lubyanka only about two weeks when I was led forth to my first and only experience of a Soviet court of justice.
2.
THE LIVELY buzz of conversation in the courtroom suddenly died down. Mischa, his snow-white collar and shirt and elegant grey silk tie eye-catching among the uniforms and the normal utilitarian Russian civilian dress, said brightly, ‘Well, I suppose we might as well make a start.’ I had been standing then for about half-an-hour and for the first time the members of the court looked at me. The guards behind thumped to attention. Sheaves of papers were handed round.
The central seat on the long table was taken by a quiet-voiced, white-haired Russian of about 60. He wore the customary long jacket over his buttoned-to-the-throat blouse, which was black, ornamented at the neck and cuffs with cross-stitching embroidery in green and red. Flanking him were two N.K.V.D. officers in their dark blue uniforms with red flashes on the collar and red hat-bands round their military peaked caps. Mischa’s seat was at the end of the table to my left. He, I was to learn, was the chief prosecutor, and as the court prepared to start work he sat coolly looking me over. I hitched my trousers and looked at a point just above the President’s head.
It was the President, who, after a whispered consultation with the officers beside him, started the proceedings. The opening gambit was one I now knew by heart. Name? Age? Date of birth? Where born? Parents’ names? Their nationality? Father’s occupation? Mother’s maiden name? And so on through the long catalogue lying before him, complete, I have no doubt, with the answers I had wearily repeated in all my encounters with the N.K.V.D. from my arrest in Pinsk to my arrival in Moscow. If by this repetition they hoped I might vary an occasional answer, it was poor psychology. So often had I answered that any one of these questions produced always the same reply because I had ceased to have to think. It had become habit, a reflex action. The same old questions, the same old answers…
The charges were read over to me. The President (this may not have been his title but it appeared to be his function) took a long time going through the indictment. It bristled with place-names, the names of alleged Polish ‘reactionaries’, and dates covering a period of years on which I was accused of having committed specific acts of espionage against the Soviet Union. Their scope was so sweeping that I have never ceased to marvel that they missed the occasions when, as a teen-ager looking for danger and adventure, I
As the questioning really got under way I found myself grudgingly admiring the resolute singleness of purpose of the official Russian mind. All this I had gone through before in a series of appalling nightmares. Now, in the light of day, having emerged from the twisting, horror-filled corridors of frustration and despair, I found the dream persisting. Shortly stated, the indictment might have read:
After two hours the guards behind me were replaced. I found that the changing of the escort every two hours was the regular procedure throughout the trial. I went on answering the President’s questions. They afforded me no difficulty because they were the long, routine preliminaries. I had not yet reached the point where I had to think, to recognize a flash of danger and avoid some carefully-baited trap. Although it must have been clearly stated many times in the documents before him that I spoke fluent Russian, the President had meticulously repeated the question ‘Do you understand and speak Russian?’ Thereafter all the proceedings were in Russian and most of the questions were tinged with the special distrust which all Russians seem to have for the foreigner who knows their language. The underlying suspicion is that no foreigner would learn Russian if he did not want to be a spy.
As I stood there I was shaping my plans. I decided it would be to my advantage not to antagonize the court. I freely admitted those facts which were undeniable. Where an accusation was manifestly false I refuted it but asked the court’s permission to explain why it was so. They let me talk quite a lot. I agreed with this, partially acknowledged that, denied most things and almost eagerly did my explaining. The atmosphere was hostile but faintly interested in my methods. The rigid nature of the questions left me under no illusion that I could change the official attitude, but at least I felt I was not worsening my position by appearing anxious to co-operate with the court.
The informality of the proceedings impressed me. The members of the court smoked cigarettes endlessly. The stream of visitors I had noted while I was waiting for things to start continued while the hearing was on. There was a constant mutter of behind-the-scenes talking, little murmured exchanges with the men on the long table, smiles, hands laid on shoulders in a friendly and confidential way. As I listened and talked I observed all the new sights and sounds. Like a man at a theatre, I tried to assess the importance and significance of each character in order of appearance.
Most intriguing was a distinguished-looking man in uniform, tall, with white-streaked hair, who strolled through one of the curtained doors when the trial had been in progress about three hours. The President was half-way through a question when one of his flanking N.K.V.D. officers nudged him and inclined his head towards the door. The newcomer, his hand still holding the curtain, was looking round the court. His glance took me in, paused on my two guards and swung to the judicial bench. The President leapt to his feet. All the officials stood with great haste. There was a great scraping of heavy chairs. He had a nervous look, this distinguished visitor, a tense jerky gait as he walked over towards the beaming President. There were polite murmurs as he passed all the way down the table, of which I picked out repeatedly the greeting ‘Comrade Colonel’. The President shook
