“The deposed government was the embodiment of blood-thirsty illegality, unrestrained corruption, and willful treachery! We call upon citizens, students, peasants, and the esteemed intelligentsia to join with the workers in the struggle for the rights of the people! We call upon the army to unite with the people! We demand the abolition of concentration camps! We demand freedom of the press, a general amnesty, and a ruthless purge of the government.”
Once again the chorus uttered “That’s right!” Several times — a kind of liturgical “Amen, amen” in which the orator’s élan was lost.
“We demand the abolition of the power of capital over human labor. We demand that factories, railways, and mines be nationalized and transferred to collective ownership!”
“And the banks — banks — the banks, too!”
The sonorous voice rang out like a shot whose crystal clarity shattered the silence. The enflamed audience was saving its breath for new acclamations.
But whose voice was that? Who appended to industry, transport, and the mines, those cancer wounds of our domestic economy, that most malignant one of alclass="underline" banking? Or has the owner of that decisive voice disowned it? For these past twenty-seven years perhaps he’s been ashamed to think of it, or he’s decided that the voice must have been fortuitous; an automatic reflex which burst out of the speaker’s throat as an undisciplined offshoot of some inner soliloquy. Or is this the first false step that we’ve been looking for? Naturally the owner of that voice would gladly abandon this dangerous reconstruction and hurry on to Simonida, who anxiously awaits him.
That would be the best thing to do.
And afterward would you go back up to Kosančićev Venac, back into your ark of gopher wood, and seal it within and without, while outside those impenetrable walls of your beloved houses continue to be destroyed?
No, not for anything. That’s all over and done with.
If that’s really so, and I hope it is, if you really think that despite the passage of the years you can take over your own affairs again, why does it cause you such anguish to recall what made you give them up?
Because of what I shouted about the banks. Though it seemed as if it wasn’t really me shouting at all.
But it was.
Unfortunately.
I hated banks, I have always hated banks and bankers. I even hated bank notes. From the bottom of my owner’s heart I despised everything placed willfully between Possessed and Possessor, everything which transformed true possession into mere power over empty, hollow, emaciated figures.
So Arsénie Negovan, Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, sank so low as to settle accounts with the banks as part of a mob. And after he had been carried away by, let’s say, excitement, and had shouted stupidly, “And the banks — banks — the banks, too! — instead of coming to his senses and beating a retreat, he went on:
“It’s the fault of the Yiddisher banks!”
In such a senseless manner and quite without dignity — couldn’t he see what was going on around him? — he had caused the audience to focus, as if moved by a giant hand, on him. From everywhere came resounding echoes of his ridiculous exclamation (“That’s right!” “Down with the usurer banks!” “Let’s hear him!”). And those nearest him — above all the bovine suffragette in black and the veteran with a hook for an arm — took hold of him and, despite his resistance, raised him high onto someone’s shoulders as if into a saddle, his legs fast around someone’s neck, his unsteady fingers grasping hold of someone’s hair. He found himself face to face with the orator in the trench coat, who was awaiting him with encouraging approval in the shadow of the blazing sky.
As soon as I was more or less settled up there, I thought of my hat. I hoped now I’d be able to spot it. But of course it was nowhere to be seen; the rabble had demolished it.
Surely you felt an urgent need to do some explaining. Deceived by your unfortunate cry and your bedraggled appearance, they took you for one of them, a comrade as it were, and expected you to say something in the spirit of your first pronouncement. But the only thing that you should have said was that you had nothing to say to them, except that you disapproved of their barbarous behavior; that you wanted to be lowered to the ground; and that a path should be cleared for you to Kosmajska Street because you had more important business to attend to.
From the perspective of a promenade through more or less empty streets, dozing beneath a veil of slanting greenish light crisscrossed here and there by housewives sluggishly returning home from the market or by a civil servant hurrying to his office — from such a peaceful, leisurely perspective, that was truly all that Arsénie K. Negovan should have communicated to the people below him. But in the context of the rebellious mood of the streets, including the unpleasantness of losing my hat, the torn-off buttons, those evil placards, and especially the red banner beneath which, as under a royal canopy, the preceding orator was enthroned — not to mention my memories of Solovkino — any explanation of the kind suggested would have been devoid of reality. In that sense, my life had always differed from my work. Even if I had attempted some sort of explanation, they wouldn’t have heard me. No one would have heard me. It had already gone too far.
But couldn’t you have tried something else? Wasn’t there something behind your acceptance of the role of street orator?
Something behind it?
Stop and think for a moment. You’d listened to the whole speech, hadn’t you?
Yes. But I was looking at my watch the whole time, hoping that the crowd would disperse and let me reach Kosmajska Street. Indeed, I spent the whole time imagining the events at Niké: Stefan welcoming the buyers, serving them drinks, wondering why I’d failed to show up.
But you still listened to the speech — so carefully that even now, after many years, you can repeat it to the last detail.
Who knows if that’s what was really said!
Let’s suppose it was. Just as we accept without question everything else you remember. Yet at no other time had you felt called upon to intervene — even when he was talking about financial speculation. Why Arsénie? Why?
Well, there was truth in what N.N. was saying. Of course that business about our Czechoslovak brothers was all just street-corner rhetoric. But the part about our economic policy was true, primitively interpreted certainly, but the absolute truth just as I myself had preached it — and to which, incidentally, I’d dedicated my lecture to the Sisters of Serbia.