Darkness at Noon: The First Hearing: 9 Summary & Analysis

Rubashov thinks of a time, not long before his arrest, when he went to a picture gallery in a southern German town in order to meet a young man. It was 1933, and the Party had been outlawed there, its members hunted and killed. However, the Party continued to exist in small pockets of people who met in clubs, railway stations, and cellars to print pamphlets or write slogans on walls. Gradually these people started to put out feelers again: the Party was dead, but its hair and nails continued to grow.

Rubashov paces up and down his cell as he remembers sitting on the plush sofa in the art gallery. The young man, Richard, the leader of the Party in the town, came a few minutes late and noticed Goethe’s Faust on Rubashov’s lap. He sat down and Rubashov asked him about the list of his people. Richard said that he has the list in his head but that he also gave a list to his wife Anny, who was arrested last night. Rubashov saw the dull hope in Richard’s eyes that Rubashov might help him. Anny managed to pass the list to her sister-in-law in the flat, an ally, Richard said.

Richard told Rubashov about Anny’s arrest while Rubashov stared at a “Last Judgment” painting behind him. Then Rubashov had him recite the list of the Party’s members: Rubashov wrote down several addresses, then asked for Richard’s report on their activities, while a Virgin Mary stretched out her thin hands behind him. Of the 30 people, only 17 remained: two had killed themselves when the police came to get them, and some had left the Party in protest or had been arrested already. Richard didn’t know then that the Central Committee had their own man in the group who had long since informed Rubashov of all of this, or that this man had been having an affair with Anny. Of course Rubashov would have all this information in advance: the Intelligence and Control Department was the only part of the Party that still functioned well, and Rubashov was at its head.

Steps are approaching in the prison corridor: Rubashov sees a peasant with a swollen eye being locked into a cell. Rubashov thinks himself back to the gallery, where he told Richard that the pamphlets Richard had made were known to the Central Committee and they contained unacceptable phrases. He asked why Richard hadn’t distributed the Party’s material.

Increasingly distressed and stammering, Richard said that the tone of the Party’s propaganda material was wrong. Rubashov ordered him to calm down, as a uniformed man strutted in with his girlfriend. Rubashov instructed Richard to breathe slowly and deeply and told him that one must control oneself. Richard began frantically asking if Anny would be safe, as she was pregnant. Then the young officer turned to look at them, before turning back out, the girl giggling: Rubashov looked back to the Virgin painting, with her thin, meager arms raised.

Rubashov said that certain consequences would come from Richard’s decision. Reddening, Richard told Rubashov that he knew the material was full of nonsense, with its emphasis on the will to victory in a place where the Party was so beaten down. He must know that, Richard told Rubashov, but Rubashov drily told him not to ascribe to him an opinion not his own. Whoever is weak or spreads fear doesn’t belong with them, he said: the pamphlets were defeatist and demoralizing. Richard said he only knows that people must be told the truth.

But Rubashov ignored Richard, saying that the last Party congress announced that the Party didn’t suffer defeat, it merely retreated strategically. Richard exclaimed that this is rubbish, and then more calmly said that the Party leadership is simply mistaken. Rubashov replied that the Party can never be mistaken: it’s the embodiment of the “revolutionary idea” in history, and history makes no mistakes.

Rubashov listed the various wrong-headed elements written in Richard’s pamphlets, stating that one cannot lead politics in passion and despair, and that one false step would cause them to lose their way. Now tired, Richard said flatly that what he said is true, but he still knows that they’re beaten. After a silence, Richard asked what would happen to them now. Rubashov told Richard that he was no longer a member of the Party. Richard asked nervously if he should no longer live with his friend (the Central Committee member) and Rubashov said he had better not, then bid him good-bye. On the way out he realized that he’d forgotten to look closely at the Pietà: now he’d only remember the detail of the arms.

Richard raced outside as Rubashov was hailing a taxi, asking if that was a warning. Again beginning to stammer, Richard begged Rubashov not to denounce him to the Party. Rubashov didn’t answer, but instead got into the taxi and drove off, knowing Richard was standing there staring after him. At the end, the driver said the cost was nothing for people like Rubashov: he bid him good luck, holding out his hand and smiling sheepishly. Rubashov saw a porter leaning against a post, watching them: rather than take the driver’s hand, he put a coin into it and got out at the train station. During the trip he dreamed that Richard and the taxi-driver wanted to run him over: he’d cheated them of the fare. He woke up feeling nauseous, his tooth aching. He was arrested a week later.