The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics)

by Victor Serge

A young doctor assigned to the investigation spent hours with the madwoman, stroking her hands and knees while he made her repeat: “I am innocent, I am innocent …” She repeated it perhaps two hundred times, gave a beatific smile, and said softly: “How sweet you are … I’ve known for a long time that you love me … But it was I, I, I who killed Comrade Tulayev … He loved me as you do.” The same evening the young doctor made his report to Fleischman. A sort of bewilderment clouded his eyes and troubled his speech. “Are you quite sure,” he asked at the end of the interview, with a strange seriousness, “that she has no connection with the case?” Fleischman angrily crushed out his cigarette. “Go take a shower, my boy — right away!” The young doctor was sent to rest his nerves in the forests of northern Pechora.