Chapter 6 six

"You probably thought I was going to tell now about the concentration camps where those loyal to our old Austria were kept, and how I was humiliated, tortured and tortured there, but that didn't happen. I was counted as another I was not imprisoned with those unfortunates, whose mind and body the Hitlerites exhausted all their means, and vented their accumulated rage on them. I was included in another category, The number of such people is very small, and the National Socialists count on extorting money or important information from them. Of course, the Gestapo has no interest in me, a trivial person, but they have probably heard that we are the property entrustment of their worst enemy. Guardians, guardians and confidantes. What they want to defraud from me is some incriminating material that can be used to prosecute the monastery for concealment of property; incriminating material that they can use against the royal family and everything that strives for and sacrifices for the royal family in Austria. The people, they estimated, and not without reason, that most of the funds we handled were well hidden, and it would be very difficult for them to seize them. Because of this, they arrested me on the first day, They counted on their tried and tested methods to get these secrets from me. Since they wanted to extort money or important materials from people like me, we were not sent to concentration camps, but were treated in a special way. You As you may recall, neither our Prime Minister nor Baron Rothschild (whose relatives the Nazis hoped to swindle millions of dollars from) were thrown into concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire, but seemed to be favorably placed in ' In the Metropolitan Hotel' - where the Gestapo's headquarters are also located - each person has a single room. Even me, an insignificant person, was given this kind of favorable treatment.

"Alone in a single room in a big hotel--sounds extremely humane, doesn't it? But believe me, they didn't cram us 'big people' into cold wooden sheds packed with twenty people , but let us live in a relatively warm single room in a big hotel. This is not a more humane treatment, but a more insidious method. They want to get the 'material' they need from us, not by brutal torture Or physical torture, but more elaborate, more sinister torture, the worst torture imaginable-complete isolation of a person. They didn't do anything to us-they just put us in In utter nothingness, for, as we all know, nothing in the world exerts such a pressure on the human mind as nothingness. They shut each of us separately into a complete vacuum, Shut up in an empty room tightly sealed off from the outside world, the pressure is not exerted on us from the outside by whipping and cold, but from the inside, and finally compels us to speak. At first glance, the room assigned to me does not seem to be What is uncomfortable: the room has a door, a bed, a small sofa, a washbasin, and a window with a grill. But the door is locked day and night; no books or newspapers are allowed on the table, Pencils and papers are forbidden; the window is a fire-brick wall; all around and on me is empty. All my things are taken: the watch is taken, lest I know the time: the pencil is taken, I couldn't write; the knife was taken away for fear that I would cut my arteries; I was denied even such a small comfort as cigarettes. I never saw a face of anyone except the guards, and even the guards were not allowed to speak to me. , do not answer my question. I have never heard anyone's voice. From morning to night, from night to dawn, my eyes, ears, and other senses are not nourished. I am in a shadow, all alone Silently, helplessly guarding my own body and four or five things that cannot speak, such as a table, bed, window, washbasin; like a diver in a diving ball, I am in the silent black sea, even Dimly aware that the lifeline to the outside world has been snapped and will never be pulled back to the surface from this silent depth. I have nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see. I There is nothingness around you, a timeless, spaceless nothingness, everywhere, all the time. You walk up and down the room, and your thoughts follow you back and forth, back and forth, all the time. .However, even seemingly formless thoughts need a support point, otherwise they will start to circle around themselves meaninglessly, and even thoughts cannot bear this empty nothingness. At night you keep expecting something, but nothing happens. Just wait and wait and nothing happens. Wait and wait and think and think and it hurts to think about it. Nothing happens, You are still alone, alone, alone.

"This went on for two weeks, during which I lived out of time, out of the world. If there had been a war, I would not have known it; my world was limited to tables, between the door, the bed, the washbasin, the small sofa, the window, and the wall. I kept looking at the same piece of wallpaper on the same wall, and I stared at it for so long that Every line of this zigzag pattern was carved like a chisel into the deepest folds of my brain. Finally the interrogation began. I was called out of the blue, not sure if it was day or night After being called, I was led through several corridors, and I didn't know where I was going; then, I waited somewhere, I don't know where; suddenly, I stood in front of a table again. There were a few people in military uniform sitting beside him. There was a stack of papers on the table—it was a file, I don’t know what was in it; Cover up, some set traps; when you answer the question, other people's vicious fingers are turning over the document, but you don't know what is written in it, other people's vicious hands are making records, but you don't know what it is writing What. But the most frightening thing for me in these interrogations was that I could never guess, nor could I have guessed, what the Gestapo already knew about the business of my firm, what did they really know? What else do you want to get out of my mouth? I have already told you that at the last moment I brought some incriminating documents to my uncle through my housekeeper. But he received these What about the papers, still not received? How many secrets has that employee of ours leaked? How many letters have they intercepted? From the German monasteries we acted for, or from some clumsy priest in the meantime? How many leads have been swindled? They questioned. What securities did I buy for such-and-such abbey? What banks did I do business with? Did I know a gentleman named such-and-such? Did the locals ever get a letter? Because I can't fathom how much they've found out, every answer I make bears an extremely serious responsibility. If I admit something they don't know, I may never Unnecessarily hurting others; and if I deny too many things, I end up hurting myself.

"But the interrogation wasn't the worst. The worst thing was going back to my void after the interrogation--to the same room. It was the same table, the same bed, the same washbasin, the same mess. wallpaper. Because when I'm alone, I try to go through the interrogation scene by scene, thinking about how I'd answer the smartest thing, thinking about what I'll have to say next time, so as to get over the embarrassment I might have caused by an inadvertent word. Doubt. I thought back and forth, mulled over, scrutinized every word of my statement to the judge, I recalled every question they asked, every answer I gave. I tried to weigh, what I said The words may have been recorded by them, but I know in my heart that I will never guess this kind of thing, and I will never know. But this kind of thinking, once it starts to operate in an empty room, keeps going Hovering in my mind, over and over again, arousing all kinds of other associations, I can’t even sleep peacefully. After each Gestapo interrogation, my own thoughts tortured me mercilessly, repeating interrogation, investigation, Torture of cruelty. It is perhaps more cruel than the torture of the interrogation, for the interrogation with the inquisitor always ends after an hour, but because of this solitary and sinister torment, the interrogation in my head never ends. Around me there are always only tables, cupboards, beds, wallpaper, windows. No distractions of any kind, no books, no newspapers, no faces of newcomers, no pencils to write on, no A matchstick to play with, nothing, nothing, nothing. Now I realize how vicious and psychologically damaging it is to keep people in solitary confinement in a big hotel room Deadly. In concentration camps, you probably had to push stones with a wheelbarrow until your hands were bloody and your feet froze in your shoes. You probably had to live with about twenty other people in a stinky, cold cell But there you can see faces, there are fields, there are carts, there are trees, there are stars, there is always something to look at. And here, the things around you never change, never change, That dreadful invariance. There is nothing here to distract me from my thoughts, my wild imaginations, and my morbid repetitions. And that is exactly what they want to achieve: they try to use my My own thoughts come to suffocate me until I can't breathe, at which point I have to pour out my thoughts, bring out the confession, bring out everything they want to know, give away people and materials, and there is no other way out.

"I gradually felt that my nerves were beginning to relax under the terrible pressure of this nothingness. Realizing the danger, I tensed my nerves with all my strength, and I was tense to the point of breaking. I tried desperately to find something. Or think about something to relax. In order to keep myself busy, I try to reproduce in my mind the things I have memorized in the past and recite them aloud, such as folk songs, nursery rhymes, and Homer's epic poems I learned in middle school. , and the provisions of the Civil Code. Then I tried to do arithmetic. I added and divided numbers in my head, but my memory couldn't catch anything in the void. I couldn't concentrate. On something. When I think about it, the same thought comes up, and it keeps coming: What do they know? What did I say yesterday? What should I say next time?

"This really indescribable situation lasted for four months. Four months—easy to write, but only three words! Easy to say: four months, only a few syllables in all. In quarters In a second, the lips utter these sounds: four months! But no one can describe, measure, and express how long a period of time stretches without space and without time. You can't explain it clearly to anyone, even to yourself. There is an emptiness around you, an emptiness, and all you see are tables, beds, washbasins, and wallpaper all day long, and there is always silence around you. It's the same guard who stuffs the food in without looking at you, and the same thoughts keep going around in your head in nothingness until you go crazy. You can't explain it to anyone, it's How it all broke down and ruined me. I realized with great disquiet from some small symptoms that my mind was in a state of confusion. At first, when I was interrogated, my mind was clear and I answered questions with poise , deliberate, that double train of thought is still at work, thinking of what to say and what not to say. And now, even the simplest sentences, I can only stammer, because I am trying to During the confession, I was obsessed, and my eyes were fixed on the pen that was sliding on the paper to record the confession, as if I wanted to keep up with what I said. I felt that my My strength is failing me, and I feel the moment approaching: I will tell all I know, and maybe more, to save myself, to escape this suffocating nothingness, I'll betray twelve men and their secrets, and I'll get nothing for myself but a moment's rest. One night, indeed, it came to this point: the guards came to bring me food just as I was about to suffocate , so I suddenly shouted at his back: "Take me to trial! I will tell you everything! I will tell them everything! I will tell them where the documents and money are! I will tell you everything! I will tell you everything!" Fortunately He didn't listen to me any more. Maybe he didn't want to listen to me either.