Almost all of us had been infected, but our group held out victoriously against the epidemic. From the beginning we had noticed that the disease only killed off the most miserable, the famished, the lice-infested. The Greeks, reduced for the most part to living off the administrative pittance, and whose hygiene was poor, had been the first to be touched. The Belgians and the Alsatians had been decimated. We Russians held out thanks to our solidarity. Our emergency fund provided just about enough extra provisions for even the least fortunate among us to keep the flame of life glowing, if only as an ember. We allowed no one to be carried off to the Morgue, while the others cleared their rooms of the feverish at the first opportunity. We went to bed, one after the other, teeth chattering, while the convalescents and those who had been spared watched over the sick. We continued to struggle, to think. To a comrade rolled up in his covers, his burning head buried in a pillow covered by an old dishrag, we had to bring the news of the day—dispatches from the front: the Château-Thierry “pocket,” the last big push of the Central Powers against Paris; dispatches from Russia: terror, exploits of the Czechoslovaks, “barbarism of the Chinese and Lett praetorians forming the People’s Commissars’ guard,” denial of the rumor of Trotsky’s assassination, Lenin’s recovery, nationalization of heavy industry—and the sick man would chuckle, think things over, want to argue: and this signaled the victory of life within him …
I’ll never forget the joy of a young lad who had really thought he was a goner for a while; he kept silent, but his eyes cried out his anguish. Every time we approached him, he would follow our movements with a sort of dread and a terrible cough would wrack his body. We finally understood that he was afraid we had come to tell him that it was necessary to move him to the infirmary. “As for me,” said Sonnenschein in an offhand way, standing in front of his bed, “I don’t let anybody go down there.” A morning came when the sick man felt saved. I could see it in his eyes as soon as I had crossed the threshold of Room II. He was lying in the back, only his head emerging from under the covers; but he greeted me from afar with such a spring like smile that I myself was refreshed, like a thirsty man who has just tossed off a big glass of spring water. What life-giving spring water flowed from him to me, from him to everyone! For several days he was radiant with his joy of living, too great to be expressed, and which he held in, besides, out of a kind of modesty; and this gave him the confused air of young lovers whose secret is discovered, who blush, betray themselves, smile, recover themselves … He had taken up but little place among us until then, but he became dear and close to us because of his happiness and the good that his happiness did us. The group was no longer complete without him. A new ardor made his limbs more supple. I don’t know what quality of nimbleness and frolicsomeness in the movements of this young man whom I had known and ignored as taciturn made me think of the delightful spontaneity, of young kittens … He would laugh gladly, and even when he wasn’t laughing, his eyes still laughed.
People continued to die around us, a little more slowly since the more helpless were now sleeping in the little Trécy cemetery behind a low church with a pointed spire; some of them with white wooden crosses, like those which were planted in such numbers at the Front, the others, more numerous, under a common mound. The life of the camp continued unchanged above the Morgue and those graves. Is it not as simple to die as to live?
Men had been killed during those days, somewhere, in commonplace trenches over which hope passed, like a putrefying breeze. They were the last dead of the war; and we thought about them, I don’t know why, with an even more indignant sadness. The Armistice exploded above us like a dazzling rocket, tracing a meteoric curve through the sky of our gray life. In the yard, radiant soldiers carrying newspapers mingled together with groups which would suddenly come together and then fly apart in an explosion of shouts: men began to run up and down the stairways, pursuing each other, pursued by their joy. Armistice, peace, the end of the nightmare, the end of captivity? We shared in that great joy, we too were carried away. The minutes which passed were henceforth no longer those of immense fratricide. But we were full of second thoughts:
“It’s a crushing victory,” said Krafft.
“Therefore: no revolution. Order, triumph, trophies, parades, the survivors’ pride guaranteeing that the sufferings and the deaths would be forgotten, apotheosis of the generals.”
“Here, yes,” resumed Fomine … “And for the moment. But over there it’s already the revolution, the true victory of the vanquished, born in defeat.”
Yes. Over there and here. Wherever it may be, this victory of the vanquished, lighting its torches now in Kiel, in Berlin, in Vienna, in Budapest, in the flames of red flags; proclaimed by Liebknecht, come out of prison to harangue the crowds from the Emperor’s balcony (“… he took to his heels, the Kaiser, like a rabbit”)—this victory is ours! What leaps it is making, from the Neva, from the Volga, to the Vistula, to the Rhine, to the Escaut! Will the old armies, heavy with their old, deadly victories, be able to stop it? We concluded, in turn, that it was impossible and that it was probable.
The Morgue had its contingent of half-dead men. They heard the Armistice being acclaimed. An excited group burst through the door of their cold and nauseating room. They were able to glimpse the upturned faces, the open arms calling to them; they could hear the vigorous voices calling to them:
“The grip can’t hold us any more! This time it’s peace! Get up!”
“Get up!” shouted another enthusiast before they dragged him off and the door was closed again over the tumultuous apparition, reflected without astonishment in the glassy eyes of the dying men.
One of them, benumbed by a feverish somnolence, would question me every time I went to see him. The effort he had to make in order to speak and understand dilated his pupils. “What’s happening?” he finally articulated. I leaned over to his ear and I said forcefully, but too loud not to trouble the silence of the room, “The Armistice!” But he couldn’t understand and would ask, an hour later, with the same effort: “What’s happening?” And I answered him, as best as I could, like a man trying to make himself understood through walls—but already there was nothing left for him.
The Baron was dying in a deserted room, on the second floor, along with another moribund. They had not been sent to the Morgue on account of their lucidity. The room was illuminated by bay windows full of a milky sky. These two men had dysentery or intestinal typhus. A horrible stench thickened the air around them. They were in the throes of death amid defecation, light, and calm.
We had seen the Baron go down slowly among us, step by step, on the invisible stairway to that level which was even more piteous than the grave in which his remains would soon be laid out. We had known him elegant, dressed in a gray hunting costume, his calves molded by leather leggings. He smoked a handsome meerschaum pipe: and his eyes, gray like his mustache, leveled a distant but good-natured glance at people. Months passed without letters, without hope, without money. Somewhere in Flanders a patriotic notary was looking after his estate and cheating him. He borrowed from Maerts in order to amble in the Bonne Fortune cabaret. We saw him wash his own linen, swap his hunting jacket for an old soldier’s tunic, and take his seat, his mustache drooping and his eye humiliated, next to Lamblin who would say to him, familiarly: “Willya ’ave a coffee, Baron.” He would borrow thirty centimes from people without returning them. “A moocher,” they said. His badly patched shoes became broken-down clodhoppers. He was a poor wretch. The Flemish used to call him Barontje. He had a yellow complexion, cheeks covered with an ashy brush, a lifeless gaze. He sold his bread to buy cigarettes. Now his tall body, thin and hairy, is being slowly drained of its blood, its strength, of everything. A pile of shapeless old clothes rests on a stool at his bedside. Faustin II, who had been taking care of him, has fallen sick as well. “There’s nothing left to do,” says Jean, the male nurse. “Let him be.” His cot, caked with defecations, is like a dung heap. He moans feebly, falls aslee
p, is delirious at moments, falls back into a torpor full of dreams … It is then he calls Charlie, his handsome intelligent setter, stuffs his pipe, and sets off on the Campine road, walking stick in hand, greeted by the people he passes; the road turns, lined with alder trees; cows watch this peaceful man go by; the animals belong to Jef van Daele, a sly chap who knows everything about breeds and prices, really a character out of Brueghel, that fat Jef, and a joker, but what a shot with a bow and arrow … He enters the Cabaret du Coq, but that’s not old Mother Mietje bringing him his gin at his usual seat near the window through which he can see the gray waters of the Nethe—it’s Maerts, a huge Maerts, whose bearded head, covered by a little dented hat, grows larger, puffs up, blocks the window, is about to crash through the ceiling and knock down the poster-covered walls. “You didn’t expect to find me here, eh Monsieur le Baron?” mocks that formidable disembodied head. “Ah! Bastard!” cries the Baron, and he strikes with all his strength, strikes that monstrous, fantastic head which bounces back flabbily under his blows without ceasing its mocking laughter …
That head is shouting. What is it shouting? “Vive la paix! Vive la France!” What peace? The room is white, invaded by sky. “This one’s croaking, that’s for sure …” From the second floor, through the glass door, the noisy progress of a wild farandole can be seen. The door opens and there stand Maerts, Lamblin, Arthur, Jean, and others; they enter, arm in arm, joyous, but repressing a shudder …
“Baron,” says Maerts, “gotta get better! There’s peace!”
“Get better, my poor fellow,” says Jean, his eyes humid, in the tone of voice in which he would have said, “better die.”
The Baron follows their more and more muddled group with his eyes. He was understood irrevocably: he no longer can feel his feet, which had been cold. His stomach is a stone. Tears gather in the corner of his eyes and roll down into his mustache.
THIRTY-ONE
Hostages
OUR FATE, HOWEVER, WAS BEING DECIDED THOUSANDS OF LEAGUES FROM there. Moscow was sleeping the tense and heavy sleep of cities where famine, fear, energy, and the unknown are at work. In a large apartment in the Hotel Metropole, furnished with Louis XVI consoles, glass-front cupboards for porcelains—now stuffed with files—and gilded chairs loaded down with papers, in which the disorder reigning was that of an old and slightly eccentric scholar, an old emigré, grizzled and hunchbacked, with the delicate gestures of a numismatist, was wearily moving papers around on his mahogany Empire desk ornamented at the corners by gilded lions’ heads. There were newspapers brought by courier from the borders, all of which had become battlefields, some of them marked with checks in red pencil, American books, tracts published in Paris by the Committee for the Third International, copies of a review from Geneva, decrees reproduced by typewriter, sealed envelopes bearing the stamp of the Central Committee and sheets of notepaper carrying only a few words followed by initials: “Reject the Swedish proposal,” or “Please have some canned foods given to Mr. Hastings.” And rough drafts of diplomatic notes on the backs of sheets from desk calendars … This particular paper had almost got lost between a glass of tea, the erotic correspondence (devoid of interest) seized on the person of a spy, and a stack of papers to be filed. If it had been lost, would not our fates have been lost too for a few days, enough for the rebellion or the epidemic? The old emigré read it with his habitual attention, the attention of an extremely conscientious functionary, interrupting his reading for a sip of detestable KINGDOM OF DENMARK tea (followed by an involuntary grimace: that lowest grade tea in hard tablets sent by the Kouznetzov brothers from Central Asia … ). Since it was six in the morning and this man was fighting against such great fatigue that his eyelids drooped irresistibly, heavy with sleep, his mind was no longer able to master the words entirely. He thought: “Elsinore … ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark …’ Who said that?” And, his eyes completely shut, remembered: “Marcellus, in the first act.” Red Cross. What’s this business all about? Another intercession for some executed bankers? This probability added weight to his fatigue. As if he could do anything about it! There was nothing to do, after all, but send an evasive answer … “The projected exchange of hostages could take place on the Finnish border …” Suddenly the man felt completely awake. Two lists of names were annexed to the letter. Generals, colonels, captains, ah! that little lieutenant who so stupidly let himself get arrested in that Yaroslav bridge business … and that general who was seen trembling right after the attempted assassination, when everyone still thought Lenin was dying, that general who said that “personally he had nothing to do with it …” Personally, by God! What a mess on this desk where a paper of such importance had been lost for two days. (“… I need a good secretary, but where can I find one?” Eyelids heavy.) Lets look at the other list. Civilian Internees: Potapenko, mechanic; Krafft, chemist; Fomine, commercial traveler; Levine, tailor, and his family, seven persons; Sonnenschein … Not a single recognizable name: no doubt, as usual, fifty per cent scoundrels and adventurers. That will give us a little more: a drop in the ocean … This business must be expedited rapidly. Let’s get rid of these generals whose precious skins are difficult to preserve in periods of plebeian terrorism …
Thus the exchange of hostages was decided, signed two days later. The city lay under a blue haze, brightened slightly by a layer of snow covering all things. The façade and the white columns a the Grand Theater looked out on a huge deserted square where the night lay over the whiteness, twinkling in places, without smothering it. A little black stone lay encrusted there in a dead flowerbed; one might have thought it the tip of a grotesque rock flowering there above the earth in the middle of the city. It was in fact a block of granite, the color of old blood, of rust and coral, bearing these words:
This
is the first stone
of the monument to be raised
to
KARL MARX
leader and guide of the proletariat
All of us did not leave. This sudden denouement disconcerted Fomine, who had been living in Paris for thirty years and who, for twelve years, had made a nook for himself in Fontenay-aux-Roses, peopled with voices and works dedicated to the revolution. The Revolution of ’89 gave his study its atmosphere. An autograph of Collot d’Herbois, under glass, hung alongside The Incorruptible’s profile, engraved, on the occasion of the Festivals of Reason, by a sycophant artist; a precious copy of Baboeuf’s Tribune of the People, dating from the good period—not the one when the Egalitarian was a Thermidorian but the one when he was repenting for having been one—was placed under beveled glass in one of the corners of the worktable. Memoirs of that period, along with Taine and Jaurès, filled a whole glassed-in cupboard; Marx and the Russians held another; Kropotkin and Sorel, the anarchists and syndicalists, a third. “All the explosives which will blow up the modern world are stored within these three panels,” Fomine would sometimes say. These three libraries looked out through a large bay window over the garden, between the thickets and the lilacs. The old man used to return there after his errands in Paris, disgusted by the world, pleased by his successful deals, despising himself a little for having pulled them off successfully, but looking forward with pleasure to the profits he had made (he had two ways of announcing that he was an insurance salesman: one full of dignity and spirit, with the squaring of the shoulders and the brow of a businessman confident of overcoming all objections—and the other, toneless, without any pride, in front of certain comrades). Back in his “lair” he recovered his real face, that of an exile who will never give in; his real step (muffled by slippers), that of a leader of men whose time is past or has not yet arrived; his real thoughts, the thoughts of a saboteur—and his confidence in the future. He trusted serenely in history, that abstract divinity which leads peoples, prosperous or impoverished, from catastrophes to revolutions; in good books; in correct theories; in comrades, whoever they might be, his hand forever open with welcome or aid, not in the least a dupe o
f their pettinesses, their stupidities and dishonesties, but certain that everything is settled in the long run and that the future makes its way, making use of petty rascals and thoroughgoing scoundrels, idiots and men of intelligence, cowards and brave men, errors and truth, all at the same time. They would come to ask him for articles (signed, out of prudence, with pseudonyms), addresses, advice, money. The Armistice signed, he had expectations of going back to his “old lady” with whom, for a third of a century, he had been living “in free union,” so that the whole neighborhood believed they were legally married. If the revolution should need his head one day, all right, on Sansom-Deibler’s machine or in any other way10—“it’s still good for taking, my head!”—he was ready at any moment (“after all it’s not my library that would weigh in that balance!”)—but to speak the truth, though he didn’t say so, he no longer felt strong enough to leave his lair forever and to plunge into the unknown at an age when Bakunin himself was retiring. In order to justify himself in front of us he searched for contradictory reasons; he would be more useful by staying. We voted our approval, for everyone does his task in his place, as long as he really wants to. Sam murmured with an equivocal smile:
“You will be the repository of our illusions.”
That question settled, Fomine considered us with a new sadness. Suddenly he felt himself old, bothered again by a rheumatic ache in the knee; he was on the point of sending his library, Fontenay-aux-Roses and the rest, to the Devil. “Well, too bad,” he said to himself. “My old lady can leave too …” But the thought that the two of them would be plunging into the great storm of clubs, “days” in the squares, red flags, firing squads—he, all white and suffering from his knee; she, hunched, enslaved for such a long time under the drudgeries of housework—was even worse than the pain of watching us leave.
Birth of Our Power Page 22