The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Susan Sontag, Victor Serge, Willard R. Trask Read Free Book Online

came to the door. “Hello, Kostia.”
    Romachkin’s domain was nine feet long by eight feet wide, just like Kostia’s. Paper flowers, carefully dusted, decorated the half-a-mantelpiece. His geraniums bordered the window sill with reddish purple. A cold glass of tea stood on the table, which was neatly covered with white paper. “I’m not interrupting, I hope? Were you reading?” The thirty books stood ranged on the double shelf over the bed.
    â€œNo, Kostia, I wasn’t reading. I was thinking.”
    The faded wall, the portraits of the four great men, the glass of tea, and Romachkin sitting there thinking with his coat buttoned. “What,” Kostia wondered, “does he do with his hands?” Romachkin never put his elbows on the table; when he spoke, his hands usually lay spread flat on his knees; he walked with his hands behind his back; he sometimes folded his arms over his chest, timidly raising his shoulders. His shoulders suggested the humble patience of a beast of burden.
    â€œWhat were you thinking about, Romachkin?”
    â€œInjustice.”
    A vast subject, you certainly didn’t exhaust it, my friend. Odd — it was chillier here than in his own room. “I came to borrow some books,” said Kostia. Romachkin’s hair was neatly brushed, his face was sallow and aging, his lips were thin, his eyes fastened on you, yet they looked afraid. What color were they? They didn’t seem to have any color. No more, indeed, did Romachkin — at first you thought gray, and then not even that. He studied his shelves for a moment, then took down an old paper-bound volume. “Read that, Kostia. It’s the stories of brave men.” It was issue Number 9 of Prison , “official organ of the Association of Former Convicts and Life-Exiles.” Thank you, good-by. Good-by, my friend. Would he go back to his thinking now, the poor creature?
    Their two tables exactly faced each other on the two sides of the partition. Kostia sat down, opened the magazine, and tried to read. Now and again he looked up at the miniature, each time with the happy certainty that he would find the greenish-blue eyes fixed on his. Spring skies, pale above the snow, had that light when the river ice went out and the earth began to live again. Romachkin, in his private desert on the other side of the partition, had sat down again with his head in his hands — solitary, absorbed, convinced that he was thinking. Perhaps he really was thinking.
    For a long time Romachkin had been living in solitary communion with a depressing thought. His job as assistant clerk in the wages department of the Moscow Clothing Trust would never be made permanent, since he was not a member of the Party. On the other hand, unless he should be arrested or die, he would never be replaced because, of all the 117 employees of the central office who, from nine to six, filled forty rooms under the Alcohol Trust and over the Karelian Furs Syndicate and next door to the Uzbekistan Cottons Agency, he alone knew every detail of the seventeen categories of wages and salaries, in addition to the seven types of remuneration for piecework, the possible combinations of basic wages with production bonuses, the art of reclassifications and paper raises which had no upsetting effect on the total salary budget. “Romachkin,” the order would come, “the director wants you to prepare the application of the new circular from the Plan Committee in conformity with the Central Committee’s circular of January 6, of course taking into consideration the decision of the Conference of Textile Trusts — you know the one?” He knew. The head of his office, former capmaker and member of the Party since last spring, knew nothing — he couldn’t even add. But he was said to be connected with the secret service (supervision of technical personnel and manual labor). He spoke with the voice of authority: