who forces the just to remember that their love of life alone justifies their
rebellion. Skouratov, on the other hand, is a Dostoevskian police chief who presents the case for the status quo with cunning and modulated force. He seeks to isolate Kaliayev, using the power of the concrete to break the almost religious tie that binds him to his comrades, thus constituting the community of his revolt. It is this quasi-mystical tie to them that alone allows him to support the weight of his own injustice—an injustice that, though shattering, he feels to be unavoidable in this world. Finally, the Grand Duchess, driven to distraction by the irredeemably unjust character of the world, finds the only hope for abject creatures to lie in prayer and forgiveness. Five key encounters frame the problem: between Stepan and Kaliayev before the first attempt; among the entire group after Kaliayev fails to throw the bomb upon seeing the children in the carriage; between Dora and Kaliayev before the second attempt; after the assassination, between Kaliayev and Skouratov in jail; and then between Kaliayev and the Duchess.
On Killing Children
The depth of Kaliayev’s moral commitment is made evident in his initial encounter with Stepan. If he fails in his mission, he says, he will kill himself. To this Stepan responds, “To commit suicide a man must have a great love for himself. A true revolutionary cannot love himself. . . . For me hatred is not just a game. . . . We have joined together to get something done” (CTOP, 243).
Revolution in the name of justice is evaluated by the efficacy with which it is carried out, Stepan believes. The cause alone has meaning. Hatred toward those who oppose it is justifiable, and nothing must be allowed to deflect the revolutionary from pursuit of the cause.
“I joined the revolution,” answers Kaliayev, “because I love life.” To Kaliayev’s search for an immanent meaning Stepan responds with a transcendent justification: “I do not love life; I love something higher, and that is justice.” “We consent to being criminals,” he concludes, “so that at last the innocent, and only they, will inherit the earth” (CTOP, 245). But can an idealized future justify the loss of the present? To what extent? Are there no limits?
Finding children in the carriage alongside the Grand Duke, Kaliayev fails to throw the bomb. Distraught, he returns to the group because “you were the only people who could judge me, could say if I was wrong or right, and I’d abide by your decision” (CTOP, 255).
Les Justes confront the problem of the limits of terrorism, but Stepan is not placated: “Not until the day comes when we stop sentimentalizing about children will the revolution triumph, and we be masters of the world. . . . Nothing that can serve our cause should be ruled out. . . . Just because Yanek couldn’t bring himself to kill, children will go on dying of starvation for years to come. . . . Don’t meddle with the revolution, for it’s task is to cure all sufferings present and to come.” To which Kaliayev responds, “I shall not strike my brothers on the face for the sake of some far-off city, which for all I know, may not exist. I refuse to add to the living injustice all around me for the sake of a dead justice. … I have chosen death so as to prevent murder from triumphing in the world. I’ve chosen to be innocent” (CTOP, 256—60, my italics).
Kaliayev’s position has been profoundly transformed. Confronted by Stepan’s justification of revolutionary activity, he realizes the force of Dora’s remarks: The future is not certain, and it can serve as the ground of justification only at the expense of a present whose felt meaning and denial have been the source of rebellion’s outrage. Yet is Kaliayev’s love for the unknown multitude who now walk the earth less abstract than Stepan’s others who are yet to come?
For Kaliayev, innocence is the demand to live in a world that insistently exacts guilt. For Rieux, Tarrou, Diego, Meursault, even Caligula, revolt is the reaction of innocence to such a world.
In demanding the right to live in a world obstinate in its opposition to innocence, however, such men are in danger of entering into complicity with evil in their very attempt to cleanse their life. Certainly that was the case with Caligula, as Tarrou had found out; and so it becomes with Les Justes. Tarrou had sought purity through withdrawal from such a world. Until, that is, The Plague had drawn him back from his solitude. Kaliayev, however, feeling his solidarity with others, yet recognizing that the world’s injustice exacts complicity, concludes that he must murder to purify the world and can be cleansed for complicity with evil only by sacrificing his life. The logic of such complicity is destruction. Meursault and Tarrou pose the problem differently: They both remain utterly pure, innocent, and, Camus asks, do they—can one—thus remain human?
In a sense, they are inhuman figures. This is crucial for an understanding
of the nature and force of revolt—and the limits it poses to itself. (The converse, the denial of innocence and its significance for revolt, will be met explicitly in The Tall.) This tragedy of lost innocence becomes clear in Kaliayev’s final dialogue with Dora, as does the price they must pay for their purity.
With Stepan insisting that “there is no alternative between total justice and utter despair,” Yanek resumes his mission to execute the Grand Duke, carrying “the bomb as if it were a cross” (CTOP, 274).
And the Deed Shall Be Paid For
And the deed shall be paid for. In jail Kaliayev encounters Foka, a murderer with no sense of guilt or demand for innocence, who has entered into complicity with the police, becoming the hangman, in order to shorten his sentence. And then there’s the chief of police. Skouratov has thought out the
problem and come to terms with the status quo. He is the opposite of the rebel in Camus’s sense. “One begins by wanting justice—and one ends by setting up a police force” (CTOP, 281). If his failure resides in his having given up the struggle and allied himself with the evil of the status quo, his arguments nonetheless carry weight and pose serious questions, which Kaliayev must meet. In the end he feels he can do so only with his own death.
Skouratov is a Stepan who has come to power, except that he shows a greater sensitivity to concrete living. “I won’t even say that your ideas are wrong. Except when they lead to murder” (CTOP, 281). Whether he is sincere or simply playing games—and it may well be the latter—he seeks to play upon Kaliayev’s need for innocence, emphasizing the concrete character of his act in order to bring him to break from his comrades. Certainly an idealized meaning, this cause of justice, but what of the actual human being?
“If you persist in talking about a ‘verdict,'” comments the police chief, “and asserting that it was the party . . . that tried and executed the victim— that, in short, the Grand Duke was killed not by a bomb but by an idea—well, in that case, you don’t need a pardon. Suppose, however, we say that it was you, Ivan Kaliayev, who blew the Grand Duke’s head to pieces—that puts a rather different complexion on the matter, doesn’t it? . . . I’m not interested in ideas, I’m interested in human beings. . . . Murder isn’t just an idea; it is something that takes place. And, obviously, so do its consequences. Which are repentance for the crime, and punishment. . . . You should not forget, or profess to forget, the Grand Duke’s head. If you took it into account, you would find that mere ideas lead nowhere” (CTOP, 282-3).
Enter the Grand Duchess—a woman who cannot bear the face of an unjust and suffering world, now robbed of her only “tranquilizer,” and who can only come to terms with her shattered life by appeal to a transcendent faith. But her faith needs the reassurance of Kaliayev’s admitted guilt—of his acceptance of complicity with a guilty world and acknowledgment of the consequent need for salvation. “In the old days when I was sad, he used to share my sorrow—and I did not mind suffering . . . then. But now … I cannot bear being alone and keeping silent any longer. But to whom am I to speak?” (CTOP, 286). More forcefully still, she suggests Kaliayev’s links with the man he murdered.
Their common humanity—or perhaps, through the exigency of the demand for justice, their common inhumanity; either way, their common humanness, is made manifest.
The Grand Duchess demands repentance and salvation—in a word, faith. The world is too much for her. She seeks to shore up her belief by exacting complicity, reducing Kaliayev to that abject condition that alone can support her life. But his sense of innocence is too strong. His honesty, and his comrades, are enough to sustain him, The complicity of the Grand Duchess’s faith—and by implication Skoura-tov’s justice—is made passionately clear by Kaliayev. At least, they both share his guilt.