Darkness at Noon: The First Hearing: 14 Summary & Analysis

The warder comes to take Rubashov out of his cell. They pass a spiral staircase, cross a narrow, windowless courtyard, and enter through a door. When they enter, Rubashov immediately recognizes his friend from college and former battalion commander, Ivanov, who looks at him, smiling. They sit down and Rubashov glances at Ivanov’s right leg, an artificial leg. Ivanov offers Rubashov a cigarette, and Rubashov remembers his first visit to the military hospital after Ivanov’s leg was amputated. That afternoon Ivanov had tried to prove that all have a right to suicide.

Ivanov asks how Rubashov’s burn is, pointing at his hand, and Rubashov wonders how he knows that, feeling more ashamed than angry. Ivanov says slowly that he doesn’t want Rubashov to be shot. Rubashov sarcastically says that’s touching. After a few moments, Ivanov says he’s been repeating “you,” meaning State and Party, rather than “I.” The public needs a trial, he adds. Everything he’s ever believed in, the Party above all, washes over Rubashov. He looks at a faded white patch on the wall above Ivanov’s head: he realizes that this is where the photograph from the Party meeting used to hang.

Rubashov says that the “we” needs redefining today. Ivanov suggests that Rubashov believes that the Party, State, and masses no longer represent the interests of the Revolution (though Rubashov wants to leave the masses out). A spasm of pain goes through Rubashov’s teeth, and he thinks he’s now paying. To Ivanov, he says that neither of them understands the masses, though, formerly they had understood the masses better than anyone ever had. They were the first to discover the laws of history’s motion, he says—empirics, unlike Jacobin moralists. Their revolution succeeded because they knew as much as was ever known about mankind: now that’s all lost.

Rubashov says that “you” have killed the “We.” He asks if Ivanov really thinks the masses are behind them. They’ve sunk back into the depths: while the Party used to make history, now it makes politics. Rubashov says that one mathematician once called algebra the science for the lazy, since one works with x without needing to know what it stands for. To Rubashov, this is like politics, whereas to make history means to grapple with what x stands for.

Ivanov wants to return to more concrete facts: that Rubashov thinks that the Party and State no longer represent the interests of the Revolution (that is, of the masses). He asks how long Rubashov has felt this way, but Rubashov calls this a stupid question—it was gradual. Ivanov asks how long he’s belonged to the opposition: Rubashov says Ivanov knows well that Rubashov has never joined an oppositional organization.

Ivanov takes out a folder and recalls the tale of Rubashov’s foreign affairs projects in 1933. He asks why, after only a fortnight back home after his release, Rubashov wanted to leave again. Did he not appreciate the changes that had taken place? This was just after the first liquidation of the opposition, he says, which included intimate friends of Rubashov. Rubashov thinks back to the smell of the docks, and to the image of Little Loewy hanging and turning from an attic beam. Ivanov continues that six months after beginning to lead the Trade Delegation, two of Rubashov’s collaborators, including his secretary Arlova, were suspected of conspiracy and condemned, but Rubashov remained silent.

Arlova, at her trial, referred to Rubashov in order to be cleared. It was only when the Party sent Rubashov an ultimatum that Rubashov declared his loyalty and acquiesced to Arlova’s fate. Rubashov does know her fate, as well as Richard’s, Little Loewy’s, and his own. He wonders what the point of all this is. Flatly, he tells Ivanov to stop this comedy. But Ivanov says they’re only two years from the present now, when Rubashov had been named head of the State Aluminum Trust. A year ago, at another trial, his name was brought up again by the accused, making the Party more suspicious. Six months ago he made another statement swearing his devotion to the Leadership, but this seems untrue as Rubashov now says that he’s considered the Party’s policies harmful for some time.

Ivanov says that he’s not moralizing when he says Rubashov’s statements were just means to an end: they grew up in the same tradition, and he understands why Rubashov acted the way he did. But he doesn’t understand how Rubashov can now admit that he has been convinced for years that the Party was ruining the Revolution, while also denying that he is a member of the opposition— he really wouldn’t have fought for what he thought was right? Rubashov shrugs and says he was probably too old and used up. Ivanov doesn’t understand Rubashov: he just gave an impassioned speech against Party policy (treasonous in itself), but he denies the simple notion that he belonged to an oppositional group, especially since they have the proof. Rubashov asks why they need his confession, and what the proof is that Rubashov was, as Ivanov insists, involved in an attempt to kill No. 1. Rubashov asks Ivanov if he really believes such idiocy or if he only pretends to, but Ivanov repeats that they have proof (that is, confessions) from the man who was ordered by Rubashov to go through with the assassination.

Ivanov reminds Rubashov that it was Rubashov who convinced him that suicide was a petty bourgeois, romantic idea. Now it’s Ivanov’s turn to see that Rubashov doesn’t commit suicide himself. Rubashov is curious to know how Ivanov thinks he’ll save Rubashov, given everything Rubashov has just said. Ivanov beams and says that he had to let Rubashov explode once, or he would have exploded at the wrong time: there’s not even a stenographer here. They’re going to concoct a confession together, and that will be it. He’ll admit that he belonged to a certain opposition group but never organized an assassination—in fact, he left the group when they started planning such an attempt. Rubashov smiles and says if that’s the idea, he wants the meeting to stop immediately.

Ivanov says that he knew Rubashov would stall and that he won’t give away anyone from such a confession. Rubashov deduces from this that Ivanov must not believe the story of the assassination plot. Ivanov tells Rubashov to think his proposal over. It hasn’t yet been decided if the case is category A (administrative) or P (public trial). In category A, Rubashov would be out of Ivanov’s authority. Ivanov can help Rubashov if he’s put in category P, which could be achieved by giving a partial confession—otherwise X’s confession will finish him off. In category A, he’ll get twenty years (which means two or three before amnesty), and he will be back out in no time. Rubashov says that Ivanov may be right logically, but he’s sick of such logic. He asks to be taken back to his cell. Ivanov isn’t surprised that Rubashov refuses his proposal, but he quotes Rubashov back to himself as he leaves, from something Rubashov wrote in his last article: that the next decade would decide the world’s fate. Ivanov suggests that Rubashov should want to be present for that.