A new wave of applause came splashing in through the window, drowning out his remaining words.
Comrade Majoie lit a cigarette, paced the room in contemplation, and stood before the window. Down below, the square was obscured by the swarm of heads. A rally was underway. The ceremonial speakers climbed nimbly onto the sheer pediments of the eight symbolic virgin-cities and tossed handfuls of powerful and strident words like pills into the gaping mouths of the crowd, tickling their noses and spinning their heads.
A one-armed mustachioed man was speaking from the pedestal of the virgin symbolizing Strasbourg:
“Now, comrades, I would like to say a word about our comrades from the criminal profession. Among us there are around three thousand larcenous comrades who were released from prison with the rest of the proletariat. We do not intend, comrades, to drag them before a tribunal. Though they are criminals, as they say, we should view their crimes as having been committed against the old bourgeois order – and who then was not considered a criminal? Surely more than one of us has swiped a pound of sausage or a side of ham out of hunger, misery, or unemployment, haven’t we? Such a man, their courts chewed him up – and then off to the slammer! He’s a thief, end of story. But we do not intend, comrades, to bother ourselves with these details. A revolution’s a revolution. What I’m trying to say is: freedom for everyone, no ifs, ands, or buts. In other words, the old sins, whatever they were, never happened – you might say it’s amnesty, and that’s that. From this day forward, everything starts from scratch, our way. Bygones are bygones, know what I mean?
“But comrades – now that our thieving comrades have their civil rights restored and so forth, they should show us their proletarian roots. We had various scores to settle with the bourgeoisie, and we swallowed a lot of grief – but now everything’s been wiped clean. Now we’re all equal workers, proletarians, period. If someone’s stealing from the people – then beat it! We’ve got no time to be fooling around with the likes of them, comrades. The proletariat authority will unceremoniously punish every raid on communal property. Let all future comrade-thieves bear that in mind. What’s past is past, and from this day on – no mention of it! We have no need, comrades, for courts or trials. If we catch a thief stealing from our communal stores – up against the wall! No one plays policeman here!”
“Hear, hear!”
“We don’t have time to be keeping tabs on them!”
“It’s not our job to police them!”
“Well said!”
“If they want to play along – there’s plenty of work, enough for everybody. If not – it’s their choice. Up against the wall, and that’s the end of it.”
“Exactly, comrades, that’s just what I wanted to say. This is now a family affair, as they say. The Central Committee doesn’t need to get involved, they’ve got enough on their plate. We’re not going to put up notices or repeat ourselves. It’s been said and that’s it, right?”
The mustachioed speaker hopped down from the pedestal to a storm of applause.
Comrade Majoie smiled and walked away from the window with a lighter heart. A new eruption of applause and a thunderous “R-r-right!” drew him toward the last window. Comrade Majoie stole a glance back at the table. Duffy was still giving his report. Majoie tiptoed to the furthest window, leaned on the sill, and listened.
Down below, from a wooden crate that had appeared out of nowhere, a broad-shouldered farmhand with a pointy nose was bellowing away.
“Comrades! At this very moment our comrades in the Central Committee are deliberating on how to keep Paris for ourselves, to keep from handing it over to the bourgeoisie and the capitalists. The main hitch, comrades, is our provisions, mouths to feed. We’ve got a hell of a lot of them, and with food it’s the opposite. I don’t think we should bother our comrades from the Central Committee with this matter, comrades. We have starved, comrades, for the bourgeoisie of course, for their sake, and now we can starve for our own sake, for our workers’ soviets. But we won’t surrender Paris to the bourgeoisie!”
“Right you are!”
“We didn’t fight to get it just to give it up!”
“And what about us? Right back to the slammer? We’re no idiots! We’ll hang in there!”
“The people know how to starve!”
“Comrades, Soviet Russia faced worse starvation in the ring of the imperialist blockade, but it survived and went on to build the first socialist republic. Is the French proletariat any worse off than the Russians?”
“Everyone’s got the same stomachs.”
“And didn’t the Commune starve? They had to eat rats, but they didn’t give up.”
“Right!”
“No sense in idle talk, comrades. We’ll just hold out and that’s that. Just wait and see how the proletariat brings up the rear to help when they find out we’ve got Paris in the palm of our hands. We’ll wait a month, or a year if we have to. If we’re careful with our provisions, we can make it for a month or two. If necessary, we’ll hold out longer. I saw for myself, comrades, that the bourgeoisie left us quite a bit in the grain elevators. If we play our cards right and keep our hands off the grain, we should be able to stretch it out till spring – and after that, piece of cake. We’ve got as much free space as we need in the city. The soil isn’t all that bad. If we sow grain in the spring, by the end of summer we’ll have a whole new field of crops. We could hold out for as many years as we like that way. The bourgeoisie won’t lift a finger – they’ll chicken out, all they think about is the plague. And meanwhile, we’ll cause them so much trouble they won’t know which way’s up. The main thing to do here, comrades, is to hold strong.”
“Of course we’ll hold out, why shouldn’t we?”
“We survived on prison grub, now we’ll survive just as well on our own.”
“We’ll survive all right!”
“We haven’t let one master die just to give power to another!”
Comrade Majoie turned away from the window. His ear caught the calm voice of Comrade Courreau:
“…our armor of plague offers better protection from European intervention than any army we could have. The X-ray doesn’t exist that’s capable of telling from afar if the plague in Paris is eradicated, or if it’s raging as fiercely as ever…”
Thousands of excited voices roared in the square below.
Comrade Majoie flicked away his cigarette and hurried back to his spot at the table. He saw from the looks of concentration on his comrades’ faces that the final act was beginning. The face of the speaker wasn’t turned to him, but he could tell that the gravelly voice belonged to Maraq.
“Comrades, in a moment we’re going to put Comrade Courreau’s motion to a vote. The fate of the French proletariat, perhaps even the European proletariat, hangs on the outcome. Let each of us weigh his own conscience. Do we have the right to hand over our own lives, and those of thirty thousand of our comrades, to the hands of the industrialists and imperialists, in the hopes of mercy and amnesty? Do we have the right to squander this singular cataclysm in human history, this plague-broom that has swept Paris clean of the bourgeoisie and the magnates? Does fear of hunger, want, and isolation in the grip of the blockade give us the right to forego this opportunity to raise the foundations of a model commune in the heart of Europe, on the site of its former capital, the capital of bankers and prostitutes – a commune that will light the way for the proletariat of all countries like a pillar of fire, the first firebrand of the world revolution? Have we the right to forgo this historic mission, which our very circumstances have thrust upon us? Comrade Chairman, please put Courreau’s motion to a vote.”