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PARTISAN REVIEW
intelligent man, you want to be a good comrade, the Party requires you to
make this confession, you understand the reasons for it. "
But when I did not understand the Bad Men reappeared and the cycle
began all over again. Rubber truncheons, gymnastic exercises, we don't
need your confession, no one will ever find out about you, you are nothing
but vermin whom the Party will squash. This was followed by long weeks in
the damp, cold basement cell with no blanket, my clothes in rags, the soles
of my shoes worn off, with stinking black mold covering my beaten, swollen
feet. I was allowed to sleep only on my back; when I shifted position a guard
would scream at me until I woke .
Endless weeks passed in the eternal light of that basement catacomb
and I knew at last that I was buried alive and that there would be no return
for me . Then finally, I was taken out of my cell and into a room and there
a Good Man said to me, in feigned astonishment, "What?
You
have no
blanket? But surely it must be very cold down there, I will get you one
immediately, and, if you want them, some books as well." I barely had time
to
let this sink in when he continued. "Don't you think it is about time to
cooperate with us and help unmask the enemies of the Party?
You
know the
dialectics, that well intentioned deeds, under certain conditions, can turn
into the opposite .
You
must have confidence in the Party, it can tell the
difference between those who were deliberate enemies and those who were
their victims."
Suddenly it became clear
to
me that the Party knows at last: I had been
a victim, misled by the enemies of the Party. I could trust the AVH because
it wanted only the truth from me. And I began
to
write, there in the sunlit
office sitting across from the Good Man .
I wrote that I had not been sufficiently vigilant in understanding the
class enemy, that in my bourgeois blindness I had not recognized Trotskyites
and spies who took advantage of my political immaturity, but that in my
case their plan had failed because the AVH had unmasked the conspirators
just in time, before any harm could be done. I was very proud of my un–
sparing self-criticism, convinced as I wrote, that while Szonyi was a Trotskyite
spy, my other friends from the Swiss Group were victims like myself, guilty
of walking guilelessly into the diabolical net spread by the agents of the
imperialist intelligence services .
I handed my papers
to
the Good Man. He read them carefully and then
said,
"You
are the most stubborn Trotskyite I have ever met.
You
have just
signed your own death sentence ."
However, I know it now and they knew it immediately, that was the
moment at which they broke me-I felt guilty, for the first time since my
arrest. I believed them that there was a crime committed against the Party
