Free The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Susan Sontag, Victor Serge, Willard R. Trask Page B

pipe from his pocket, put it between his teeth, and walked on. Now he was only thirty feet from Romachkin. Romachkin’s hand flew into his coat pocket, groping for the butt of the Colt. At that moment the Chief, still walking, drew out his tobacco pouch; less than six feet from Romachkin he stopped, daring him; his cat eyes shot a little cruel gleam in Romachkin’s direction. His mocking lips muttered something like, “You abject worm Romachkin,” with devastating scorn. And he passed by. Demolished, Romachkin stumbled over a stone, tottered, almost fell. Two men, sprung from nowhere, caught him in time. “Do you feel ill, citizen?” They must be members of the Chief’s secret-police escort. “Let me alone!” Romachkin shouted at them, beside himself with rage — but actually he barely breathed the words, or other words, in a despairing whisper. The two men, who were holding him by the elbows, let him go. “Don’t drink when you don’t know how, idiot,” muttered one. “Damned vegetarian!” Romachkin sank onto a bench beside a young couple. A voice of thunder — his own — rang in his head: “Coward, coward, coward, coward …” The couple, paying no attention to him, went on quarreling.
    â€œIf you see her again,” the woman said, “I …” (the next words were inaudible) “I’ve had enough. I’ve suffered too much, I …” (more inaudible words). “I beg you …”
    An anemic creature, hardly more than a girl — lifeless blond hair, a face covered with pink pimples. The fellow answered:
    â€œYou make me tired, Maria. Stop it. You make me tired.” And he stared into the distance.
    It was all relentlessly logical. Romachkin rose as if pushed up by a spring, looked at the couple implacably, and said:
    â€œWe are all cowards — do you hear me?”
    It was so obvious, that the tension of his despair snapped; he was able to get up, to walk as he had walked before, to reach the office without being a minute late, go back to his graphs, drink his glass of tea at four o’clock, answer questions, finish his day’s work, go home … Now, what should he do with the Colt? He could not bear to have the useless weapon in his room any longer.
    It was lying on the table, the blue-black steel gleaming with a coldness that was an insult, when Kostia came in and seemed to smile at him. Romachkin was sure he saw him smile. “Do you like it, Kostia?” he asked. Around them spread the peace of evening. Kostia, with the revolver in his hand and smiling at him quite openly, became a young warrior again. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said.
    â€œI have no use for it,” said Romachkin, torn with regret. “You can have it.”
    â€œBut it’s worth a lot,” the young man objected.
    â€œNot to me. And you know I can’t sell it. Take it, Kostia.” Romachkin was afraid to insist, because suddenly he so much wanted Kostia to take it. “Really?” Kostia spoke again. And Romachkin answered: “Yes, really. Take it.” Kostia carried away the Colt, put it on his own table, under the miniature, smiled once more at the faithful eyes that looked out of the frame, then at the clean weapon — mortally clean and proud it was! He did a few gymnastics for very joy. Romachkin enviously heard his joints crack.
    Almost every evening they talked for a few minutes before they went to bed — the one ponderously insidious, returning to the same ideas over and over, again and again, like a plow ox making one furrow, then beginning again, to plow one beside it, again and yet again; the other mocking, attracted despite himself, sometimes leaping out of the invisible circle that had been drawn around him, only to find himself unwittingly back in it again. “What do you think, Romachkin?” he asked at last. “Who is guilty, guilty of it