Wojciech Zukrowski - Stone Tablets

Then he had one interrogator — the one with the longest assignment to his case: a year and a half of investigation, if you could call it that. A year and a half of writing biographical data that achieved the scale of a novel, full of subtexts, implications, suspicions, of threats and pleas to induce him to denounce his partners. Depositions had been prepared long before. This investigator waited for a moment of weakness to obtain his signature, his confession of guilt.

“After several hours of fruitless effort, the investigating officer looked at me with such exasperation and disappointment that I was sorry for him,” Tibor told me in his throaty whisper, “because he must have been in such anguish, since he knew as well as I did that I was innocent. After all, they could have hanged me without my confession, but the appearance of justice was less important to them than breaking me down, destroying me psychologically. The investigator tore up the deposition papers without reading them and said in an impassive voice, ‘You are lying. You are lying. We know the whole truth. You are a traitor.’ He put a file of documents and a pencil in front of me and commanded, ‘Write from the beginning,’ and he himself broke into English, from time to time repeating the words mindlessly and looking at me with a face full of misery.

“‘Friend,’ he begged as dawn broke, ‘I must have your depositions. My future hangs on it. Look how my temples have gone gray. I do not sleep. I have disorders of the stomach.’

“‘And I?’ I ran my fingers over my whitened temples; my hair had not been cut for a long time and was coarse and brittle. ‘And I?’ I pulled aside my lip and showed my colorless, toothless gums. ‘What have you made of me? If I resist, it is only for your good, so you will know that not all men are worthless. So you will finally catch a glimpse of that unattainable level of development: human dignity.’”

The interrogator was not offended. In fact, an intimacy ensued between them. They knew each other so well, reached such a level of familiarity, that the officer asked the prisoner to quiz him when he was practicing his English.

Suddenly one day Tibor reached the end of his endurance; he had had enough. “I have made up my mind,” he declared to the astonished officer. “Call the clerk. I will give my deposition.”

“You will testify against your partners at last?” he asked incredulously.

“I will give one name. I will not be tormented any longer.”

“One — that is good,” the investigator said with zeal. “What is that name?”

“Yours. What are you gaping at? You are a traitor. I’m going to squeal on you.” Tibor jabbed him with a finger.

“But that is nonsense!”

“Not at all, because as I sat here, I recruited you into the intelligence service. You were getting five hundred dollars a month, and that tempted you. You were paid for the same set of interlocking investigations. And you were in contact with workers at the American embassy. You yourself handed the report over to me, did you not?”

“This is an insane lie!”

“Certainly not,” Tibor continued, maintaining his composure. “And what were you doing five months ago, November fourteenth, at seven in the evening?”

“How should I remember? Perhaps I was at the cinema. Perhaps I was working here.”

“Then I must remember. Because you told me that you were at the Beke cinema, at the last showing, and that you gave a box of matches to a strange man who asked you for a light. He gave you another box, because a warning was hidden in yours — a warning that someone was going to escape — and an excerpt from the documents in my case.”

“It’s all a fabrication. I wasn’t in any cinema. I never gave anyone a light.”

“You will remember. You will have time enough in a cell. And I will remind you of certain details you told me. You carried out everything according to my instructions. And perhaps you aren’t hiding a wad of dollars at home?”

“I have no dollars!”

“Your wife has already managed to clear them away? She will have to be grilled; she will let the cat out of the bag. Anything to give the investigators a start. We’ll see what she has to say about you.”

“But you have no evidence against me. Not a shred of evidence—” he beat his fist on the table. It seemed that he would collapse with a heart attack.

“You’re wrong. I have.” Tibor clutched a notebook with English words written in it to his chest. The officer leaped like a man demented. He was the stronger of the two; he snatched the glossary away.

And at that moment he understood the depths to which he had sunk. Indeed, he was at the prisoner’s mercy. This weak, ill-treated rag of a man could destroy him. It would be enough to give the deposition he had threatened. The investigator knew well that he had rivals who were only waiting for him to make a slip. He saw that he was trapped. Tibor could get revenge, take the officer down with him. Then he wept — a terrible sobbing without tears. He explained that he had a wife and child. He begged Tibor not to bring ruin on them.

“And I?” Tibor asked.

Then the man was forced to feel the cruelty of the machine in which he had been one of the cogs.

When Tibor declared that it had been a joke, that he was not thinking of giving a deposition in order to frame him — that it was only an object lesson — something in the other man gave way. He said that if Tibor would only hold out longer, they would not do anything to him. He even called Tibor’s wife and gave her the first information she had received about his health, ensuring anonymity by using a pay telephone on the street. Something in him had broken, and the interrogations became a mere formality.

Tibor was transferred to another prison where there were several others in his cell. His glasses were returned to him; he could read books. Then one day they heard the scream of factory sirens and the clanging of bells, and they thought that it was the alarm, that war had broken out. Only that night did the soldier patrolling the corridor — one of the chosen, the most worthy of trust — strike the metal-clad door with his fist to wake them and call, “Be brave; endure. Stalin has died. Soon Rakosi will go to the devil.” He wasn’t afraid to shout at the top of his voice, though there might have been an informer in the cell.

“Then,” Tibor said, “I felt a wave of love for that soldier from whom I was separated by that door with its metal fittings, for my prison guard. I was ready to die for him. The unity of the nation filled me with ecstasy. I was truly happy.”

A month later he was given teeth. He was force-fed. He even got a sun lamp; his skin was no longer the color of plaster. He thought they were grooming him for another trial. Meanwhile he was called to headquarters. They gave him a uniform, shook his hand, and sent him home. A member of the security police was occupying two rooms in his flat; he is still there, in fact, though he promised to leave. He asked Tibor to put in a word to help him get a flat, for they have to do something to oblige the one “unjustly sentenced.” This man, from the most powerful office, is looking to the former prisoner for patronage.

And Tibor remains in the army. He was given back his party card, which had been confiscated and attached to the indictment. It is on such people as Tibor that the kind of socialism we will have depends. Imagine: He said to me, “How fortunate that we still have comrades who have stood the test, faithful to the cause and to our people. Remember Janos Kádár; he is still in prison.” We talked openly in a coffee shop about his ordeals, feeling quite secure. Tibor mentioned you as well; your name was dropped during the investigation. He set you up as an example of loyalty, reliability, cooperation. He asked me if it were true that you had filed a deposition against him. I hotly denied it. He was very glad, for he is starving for people to trust.