THE INTERROGATION
Glasanov had a prediction. He was in a jaunty mood, close to humor. His life was filled with good cheer and possibility and with something as close to amusement as Lenny had ever seen on his face. They were walking through the prison toward the old man’s cell.
“He won’t sign a thing,” predicted Glasanov. “Not a thing. He’ll be intractable. You’ll pound your fists to pulp on his skull, Bolodin, before he confesses.” He was almost giddy.
“No,” he continued in his lecture-hall manner, “we shall have to break him down. Assault his illusions, dismantle his vanities, force him to see reality as it is. Brick by brick, we must disassemble his brain. Oh, it’ll be a test. It’ll be a struggle, Bolodin, as you’ve never seen. But what fun! Imagine, the old dog himself here, in our humble jail.”
Lenny nodded dumbly, as if he were the moron Glasanov clearly believed him to be, and then issued a grunt of imprecise meaning that Glasanov took to be stupefied agreement and enthusiasm. Yet, looking at Glasanov, he recognized a man caught in some vision of higher glory, some scheme of higher ambition: you saw it in Brooklyn all the time. A dreamer, full of fancy ideas of what tomorrow would bring.
“I want him sent back to Moscow split,” said Glasanov. “I want him confessed and repentant, not merely captured. Eh, Bolodin, how’s that for a challenge? It’s not old Comintern unionists we’re dealing with here, but the GRU’s best, a man of iron will, a legend.”
They had now reached the corridor that led to Levitsky’s cell.
“Get some water. It’s time to wake our charge from his baby sleep.”
Lenny fitted a bucket under a faucet set in the wall and filled it brimful with icy water.
It was dark and damp down here, as in fairy tales, all old cobwebs and ancient stone. The walls showed cruciforms where religious icons had been smashed down in the first crazed days of the July victory; a number of grotesque revolutionary admonitions had been painted on the stone and they stood out like wounds in the harsh glare of electric bulbs that hung crudely jerry-rigged from the ceiling. Glasanov produced a key, an ancient thing, and with some effort got the stiff old tumblers of the massive door open. Inside, the old man slept under a thin blanket on a straw mat under another raw cruciform denoting a smashed symbol of the untrue faith. The old man wheezed thinly. He looked vulnerable and pale and in the bad light his skin seemed like old parchment.
Glasanov studied the man for a second without emotion, then nodded to Lenny, who dashed the water on him. Levitsky sat up instantly with a howl of pain and a massive, marrow-deep shiver, all naked animal hurt and outrage. His eyes snapped instantly alert, displaying confusion and panic for just a second, but the man quickly controlled them, and as Lenny, standing just behind Glasanov, watched, they seemed to dilate down into something tightly focused.
“Stand up, old man,” Glasanov said with theatrical heartiness miles outside his character, “we’ve got work to do.”
The old man stood next to the bed, soaked, staring straight ahead. His eyes were fixed and blank.
“We’ll get you singing before long,” Glasanov said. “We’ll have you singing like a bird. We’ll have all the crimes out on the table.”
Levitsky looked up at his tormentor.
“Glasanov, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I’ll ask the questions, comrade,” said Glasanov.
“Nevertheless, it
“Old man, I’ll run things here. This comrade here is quite brutal and I haven’t time for you to impress me with your memory. I’ll have him beat you to turnip mash if you give me cause.”
“We both know how absurd that would be. Beat me to turnip mash and you’ll have nothing to ship back to Moscow ? except turnip mash.”
Lenny, watching the two Russians pick at each other, heard a sigh, perhaps even involuntary, escape from Glasanov’s lips.
“They said you’d be sly. The Devil Himself.”
“I’m not sly at all, Comrade Glasanov. I’m an old man without much in the way of strength or guile. I simply adhere to my beliefs exactly, and they give me a foundation that careerist scum can never shatter.”
“Oh, I’ll break you, Comrade Levitsky. I’ll split you for Moscow, don’t doubt it. Time, after all, is all on my side. Time, and the considerable skills of Comrade Bolodin here.”
“Your vanity, Glasanov, will kill you sooner than my idealism will kill me.”
“The ribs,” said Glasanov. “But not too bad yet.”
Lenny went to the old man, hit him hard, once, in the ribs, sending a spasm through him. As he twisted, Lenny put two more swift right hands into his solar plexus. He shrieked, falling. Trying to halt himself, he clung to Lenny, who brought his knee up quickly, catching him between the legs. The old man slipped loose and went to the floor. He lay there, wet and trembling. His lips were white. He coughed and heaved wordlessly, his face drawn in the pain.
“See how quickly the mighty Levitsky is reduced to nothingness,” said Glasanov. “Bolodin exposes you for what you are, Levitsky: pathetic. With your feeble, ancient disguise, which Comrade Bolodin penetrated with comical ease. Your pretend accent. You stink of the peppermint schnapps even now, you pitiful old fool.” Glasanov shook his head, as if in great disappointment. “I had expected so much more from the Devil Himself. Instead I get an obsolete comic actor from a nineteenth-century operetta. It actually disgusts me.”
He bent over Levitsky and spoke quickly into his ear.
“Now. I ask the questions and you give the answers. If I like the answer, we go on. If not, Comrade Bolodin here, with his American efficiency, will hit you in the ribs. He is inexhaustible and indefatigable and without a brain in his muscular head. Do you see, old man, how it is to be?”
Levitsky rolled over. His face was gray. His eyes would not focus on anything in the cell. Glasanov leaned close.
“Now,
Levitsky spat in his face.
In the evening, he lay against the gray cobbles of the cell floor, breathing raspily. He had been beaten expertly. The ribs were not broken yet the pain was extraordinary. Bolodin knew how to take him to the very edge, then bring him back. Bolodin knew how to inspire the thought that the future would forever and ever be pain.
He concentrated on not trembling. He tried to will the pain from the center of his body, tried to drive it out.
Come on, old Devil.
He laughed bitterly. Some devil. Old, infirm, lying beaten in a Spanish cell, attended by rats. And so this was how the great adventure ended; thus it was with all vain and foolish crusades. His plot came to an end as did his odd, perhaps senile quest, doomed from the beginning, he now saw, to play in life, in history, in flesh, what he had once played on the chessboard. The march of folly! the pyre of vanity! the absurdity of ego!
Too many enemies. You, Koba. And you, Glasanov, Koba’s minion. You, dreadful Amerikanski, with your thunderous fists and your murderous eyes. And you the English spy-catchers, somewhere lurking in the distance.
You all want me. You all want Castle.
Castle was doomed. He saw it now. In check. They were closing on him and would dog him down. Like me, he will cease to exist.
He felt the sweat running down his body, leaving icy tracks. He tried to sit up but the pain came instantly, seizing him. He tried again and managed to get himself up against the wall. A victory, a giant victory!
Why fight them? You’ll confess in the end, everybody does. Why not give Glasanov his moment of glory, his tiny triumph? He, too, is doomed, if not this year then the next. Koba will have him because he stinks of ambition. The better he does, the more arrests and executions, the more efficiency with which he routs Koba’s enemies, the more completely he dooms himself. So smart in so many things, Glasanov, can you not see this one thing?
Then he heard the approach of steps on the stones outside, the click of the old lock. The door swung open in the dark.
