26 “Let me begin by telling you I am pleased to meet you. I followed your work since I was a boy, and I hope we can be friends when this is over.” Alexei nodded in acknowledgement of the apparent compliment, thinking to himself: if he knows my work, why must he interrogate me? “The Captain tells me we have a little misunderstanding here. It seems that you have mistakenly decided not to sign your loyalty oath.” He pointed to the paper lying on the desk in front of him, “Is this true?” “I have decided not to sign.” “Good, we agree on something. That’s a start.” Hiding The Colonel came from behind the desk and leaned against the front of it. “I don’t understand why, with the feelings expressed in your poetry, you won’t sign a patriotic oath to country and people.” “That oath is not to my country or its people.” “It is to the party and that is the same thing.” Alexei was silent. The Colonel looked at him and chuckled, “What! A poet without words?” Silence speaks safely, Alexei thought to himself. He had a lifetime perfecting his words so that they would not provoke the party; he was not going to begin now. “This silence of yours puts your poetry in a new light,” the Colonel mused half to himself. He walked back behind the desk and sat down taking a cigar from the Captain’s humidor. He lit it thinking for a while, and filling the small room with smoke. “Tell me, how does a man of your intellect believe that he alone can make a difference? What makes you so important?” the Colonel said swinging one leg up on the desk. “I am only me.” “What do you mean: you are only you?” The Colonel gestured grandly, “Why are you such a great poet?” “I am really nobody. Apparently my work, which is not me, makes me seem great.” “Ah, I see. The individual doesn’t matter after all.” “Only to oneself. But without the individual there would be no poetry.” “But you just said you are nobody and it would seem that a nobody doesn’t matter, therefore what
CIRQUE
Lucy Tyrrell
difference does it make whether you sign or not.” “To sign would repudiate my existence.” “Even if it means the loss of that existence.” Alexei noticed that the Colonel’s voice was beginning to lose some of its friendliness. “My death will not erase what I have written.” The Colonel sat and stared at Alexei, trying to see where he could carry the conversation from there. He gave up and then stood up, throwing his cigar into the fireplace. “I ask you one final time, will you sign or are you ready to suffer the consequences?” he said leaning over the desk on his knuckles. “I am ready.” “As you have said, you are nobody and so that is what the party now considers you.” He pulled another sheet of paper from the desk drawer and thrust it in Alexei’s face. Alexei took the page from the Colonel’s hand and read: “I, Alexei Kerensky, openly and freely confess to being an enemy of my country and its people. My works have been devoted to the subversion of the principles of my government. In confession of my crimes, I repudiate all that I have written and ask forgiveness….” Before he finished reading it, he tore the paper up and threw it in the Colonel’s face. It was all he could do to force himself to sit back down and say nothing. “I hope you can remember what you have just read because you will be given time to contemplate your new decision. It might interest you to know that we have your wife in custody here in the prison.” With that he