Night fell, and the thirty-two-thousand strong crowd, preferring to stay clear of the apartments with their stinking corpses, bivouacked on the streets, the tireless tentacles of their sentries probing into the night.
II
The following morning, a newly constituted Central Committee of the Party hastily convened in the grand hall of the former Ministry of War.
The day was sunny, and the air dripping with spring. Thirteen people in gray prison shirts sat at the long table, green as the ruffled turf after a picnic, with scraps of notes tossed here and there like eggshells. The windows were thrown open wide, and the sunshine and the hubbub of the mass gathered in Place de la Concorde drifted in unceremoniously. The blissful atmosphere of this pseudo-springtime ushered in memories of April, interspersed by the distant rumble of turmoil and the thick, rushing downpour of applause, which would suddenly pick up, only to subside with equal swiftness.
Courreau, Secretary of the Central Committee, took the floor:
“We cannot be sure if the plague hasn’t already managed to spread beyond the Paris city limits. Based on our current data, however, everything seems to indicate that Paris is still surrounded by tight military cordons, whose task is to isolate it from the rest of Europe. This would indicate that they have managed to contain the plague. As soon as the government and the surrounding armies discover that the epidemic has vanished from the capital, they will surely advance on the city the very next day and throw the proletariat back into prison. After all the suffering they’ve endured to free themselves, we cannot allow this to happen. Given that Paris has ended up in our hands after such tragic circumstances, we have no right to hand it back to the capitalists and the exploiters.”
“And how, if I may ask, do you intend to keep it?” cut in Comrade Majoie, anxiously scratching at his thin beard. “With thirty-thousand starving workers, we can’t even dream of standing up to a proper army surrounding Paris from all sides. We have no right to lead these miserable remnants of the Parisian proletariat to the slaughter.”
“Allow me to finish, comrade. We can hold onto Paris in a very simple way, without resorting to armed resistance, which is beyond our meager strength. At all costs we must keep France and the whole world under the delusion that the plague is raging through Paris just as before and is showing no signs of abating. All we need to do is put our people in the Eiffel radio station to send out worldwide bulletins every morning on the relentless devastation wrought by the infestation within the sealed confines of Paris. As long as the government and the army are convinced that the epidemic is going full force, they won’t dare set foot in the city.”
“It seems you’ve forgotten, comrade, that the population of Paris is limited in number, and that it can only die once,” smiled Comrade Majoie. “A simple calculation will tell them that every living soul in Paris should have been killed off long ago.”
“I think not. By gradually increasing the reports, knowledgeably and with moderation, we should be able to keep Europe in the dark for a very long time. We have to inculcate our country, drop by drop, with the belief that for months and months to come, and who knows, for perhaps even years, Paris will be no more than a dangerous epicenter of plague, that all of its infrastructure has been destroyed, and that returning it to its former state would require billions in investments and years of labor. I assure you that nothing works so effectively as getting people accustomed to the status quo. Those who were initially unable to imagine the World War lasting for more than four weeks had already stopped believing by the end of the fourth year that it could ever come to an end. They had grown so accustomed to this state of affairs that it came to be entirely natural, and no other way even seemed possible.”
“So, as I see it, you’d like to turn us into Robinson Crusoes on a desert island, condemned to fishing in the Seine and hunting monkeys in the Bois de Boulogne for years on end,” quipped Comrade Majoie. “I see no point in this deception.”
“Allow me, comrade,” suddenly piped up Comrade Maraq, a withered, bony man with a drooping, angular face, a champion hunger-striker in prison, who could best anyone even with a week’s head start.
Everyone turned to face him.
“I think I understand Comrade Courreau’s idea. Just today I was doing a check-up on the Eiffel radio station, and the same thought occurred to me: keep Europe believing that the plague is still in Paris for as long as possible. Meanwhile, we occupy the city and establish the ideal commune. In the middle of France, in the heart of Europe, we could change a world metropolis into a massive communist city, a hotbed and a cell, radiating our system across the whole continent. As soon as we are organized, and before our deception is unveiled, we’ll call out to the workers and peasants in France and the whole world behind the backs of the surrounding army. Let’s not forget that behind the army cordon stand the French proletarian masses. The call from the East may not have reached them, it may have been drowned out by the whistle, roar, and swing of the capitalist jazz orchestra, but when it comes from Paris, it will shake all of Europe. Do I understand you correctly, Comrade Courreau?”
Comrade Courreau nodded his head.
After a moment’s silence, Comrade Durail took the floor, having kept thus far to one side:
“Comrades Courreau and Maraq’s plan is quite elegant, but I fear it is unfeasible. Comrades Courreau and Maraq are not considering one real, though unfortunate, fact: It won’t be enough for Europe to leave us in peace if we want to survive for months behind the cordon. We also need something to fill our bellies. We have thirty-two thousand mouths to feed; they have already starved half to death in prison and cannot starve any longer. Comrade Duffy, who just today made a record of the provisions we found hidden around the city, is best able to inform us on the state of our rations and how long they might feed the whole commune.”
All eyes turned to Comrade Duffy.
Comrade Duffy, fiddling with a pencil and tapping a beat on the table, began to speak in a monotonous, pedantic voice, as if reciting a report he’d chiseled into his memory:
“We haven’t been able to record all the city’s provisions in a single day. We found substantial rations of flour and sugar at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Around four hundred tons in total. The grain elevators contained one thousand two hundred tons. Larger or smaller stocks of provisions, mainly canned goods and pasta, were found in the cellars of factories and meat-processing plants. In the cellars of many private homes in the districts of Étoile, Grands Boulevards, Saint-Germain, and Passy, we found large quantities of flour, rice, and sugar. The residents there were clearly hoarding these items in fear of starvation. We’ll need another thorough investigation to confirm the exact amount of these products. Roughly speaking, the total amount of foodstuffs unearthed over the course of the day can be set at two thousand tons. Considering the average human body requires a daily intake of 82g of protein, 100g of fats, 310g of carbohydrates and 26g of vitamins, this, when converted into numerals, tallies up to enough bread alone – in the absence of other substances – for at least 350g daily, meaning that the provisions discovered thus far should provide sustenance for thirty-two thousand people for four to five months at most. Of course, there is no way to tell how much food we still might find in the factory cellars and residential homes. Only a more thorough search will reveal…”