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list.”
    “No,” said Richard, “for my sister-in-law was in the flat when they came to fetch her, you know, and she managed to pass it to her. It is quite safe with my sister-in-law, you know; she is married to a police constable, but she is with us.”
    “Good,” said Rubashov. “Where were you when your wife was arrested?”
    “This is how it was,” said Richard. “I haven’t slept in my flat for three months, you know. I have a pal who is a cinema operator; I can go to him, and when the performance is over I can sleep in his cabin. One gets in straight from the street by the fire escape. And cinema for nothing. ...” He paused and swallowed. “Anny was always given free tickets by my pal, you know, and when it was dark she would look up to the projecting room. She couldn’t see me, but sometimes I could see her face quite well when there was a lot of light on the screen. ...”
    He stopped. Just opposite him hung a “Last Judgment”: curly-headed cherubs with rotund behinds flying up into a thunderstorm, blowing trumpets. To Richard’s left hung a pen drawing by a German master; Rubashov could only see a part of it—the rest was hidden by the plush back of the sofa and by Richard’s head: the Madonna’s thin hands, curved upwards, hollowed to the shape of a bowl, and a bit of empty sky covered with horizontal pen lines. More was not to be seen as, while speaking, Richard’s head persisted immovably in the same position on his slightly bowed, reddish neck.
    “Really?” said Rubashov. “How old is your wife?”
    “She is seventeen,” said Richard.
    “Really? And how old are you?”
    “Nineteen,” said Richard.
    “Any children?” asked Rubashov and stretched his head out a little, but he could not see more of the drawing.
    “The first one is on the way,” said Richard. He sat motionlessly, as if cast in lead.
    There was an interval and then Rubashov let him recite the list of the Party’s members. It consisted of about thirty names. He asked a few questions and wrote down several addresses in his order book for the Dutch firm’s dental instruments. He wrote them in the spaces he had left in a long list of local dentists and respectable citizens copied out of the telephone directory. When they had finished, Richard said:
    “Now I would like to give you a short report on our work, comrade.”
    “Good,” said Rubashov. “I’m listening.”
    Richard made his report. He sat slightly bent forward, a couple of feet away from Rubashov, on the narrow plush sofa, his big red hands on the knees of his Sunday suit; he did not change his position once while speaking. He spoke of the flags on the chimney stacks, the inscriptions on the walls and the pamphlets which were left in the factory latrines, stiffly and matter-of-factly as a book-keeper. Opposite him the trumpet-blowing angels flew into the thunderstorm, at the back of his head an invisible Virgin Mary stretched out her thin hands; from all around the walls colossal breasts, thighs and hips stared at them.
    Breasts fitting to champagne glasses came into Rubashov’s head. He stood still on the third black tile from the cell-window, to hear whether No. 402 was still tapping. There was no sound. Rubashov went to the spy-hole and looked over to No. 407, who had stretched out his hands for the bread. He saw the grey steel door of cell 407 with the small black Judas. Electric light was burning in the corridor as always; it was bleak and silent; one could hardly believe that human beings lived behind those doors.
    While the young man called Richard was giving his report, Rubashov did not interrupt him. Of the thirty men and women whom Richard had grouped together after the catastrophe, only seventeen remained. Two, a factory hand and his girl, had thrown themselves out of the window when they came to fetch them. One had deserted—had left the town, vanished. Two were suspected of being spies for the police, but this was not certain. Three had left