The electricity burned bright in the print rooms of the workers’ daily; the linotypes clattered and the tar-covered typesetters galloped the equine fingers of their calloused hands across the tiny cobblestones of the keys like some strange virtuosi. The levers and scatterbrained letters now leapt up, now dropped, like soldiers instantly falling into line. And then, like divers from a springboard, the type thrust downward into the pool of liquid lead, a moment later emerging with the terse line of a sentence:
Today, at the hour of 12:00 noon, the first trans-
Again, letter chased letter, and, heated from their sprint, came out once more with another slender line:
port of arms and ammunition sent from Lyon to Poland
And further:
was held up 50 miles from the German border owing to a collective strike of railway workers, who refused to admit any kind of transport sent to fight the workers’ Soviet Union.
Period.
“Way to go, boys!” smiled the typesetter.
The fingers flashed once more across the steps of the keyboard. Again, one after another, the letters climbed like acrobats along the lines, along the scaffolding of the levers, and moments later plunged headfirst into the bubbling pool, and emerged once more in another inseparable chain:
At 3:00 p.m. a decree was sent to town to mobilize the railways.
Immediately followed by:
The Central Committee of the United Labor Unions has called a general strike for tomorrow.
“Comrade, set a call in pica from the Party C.C. to the working masses.”
Again the keyboard clattered:
Comrades! The bourgeois French government, under the beck and call of the English capitalists…
The roar of voices, the stamp of feet, and the rattle of machine guns came from the entrance to the print shop. The staircase was swarming with men in navy blue.
The police.
That evening the red stains of posters appeared on the walls of buildings: The Communist Party’s Central Committee was calling upon workers and soldiers.
Around seven o’clock special supplements bringing sensational news appeared on the boulevards of all the cities of Europe.
A British plane flying from London to Lyon lost its way in the thick fog over the Channel, flew off course, and unexpectedly found itself over Paris. It miraculously escaped being fired at and managed, in spite of a broken wing, to land beyond the cordon.
What the English pilot saw and reported was so unfathomable that even the tabloid press, which was not known for its adherence to scruples, conveyed it with a heavy dose of skepticism.
Wanting to establish where he was, the pilot had flown at only three hundred feet above the ground. By the time he had realized he was above Paris, it was too late – his curiosity had gotten the better of his caution.
He had flown from the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. There was a southerly wind blowing the fog from the city, so everything was clear as a bell. The Paris that sprawled before his eyes was not burned in the slightest. The buildings, palaces, and monuments – everything seemed to be standing where they had always been, and yet he was also struck by all the changes that had taken place. The first thing the pilot noticed were the countless radio towers soaring above the city. The air was sliced on all sides by an infinity of antenna wires.
Passing the Arc de Triomphe, the pilot flew along the Champs-Elysées. What he saw there defied all probability.
Where once the Place de la Concorde had stretched with a measureless sheet of polished asphalt, from La Madeleine to the Chambre des Députés, from Champs-Elysées to the Tuileries, a meadow of ripe grain now rippled in the gentle southerly wind. This grain was being gathered by mechanized harvesters driven by brawny, tanned men in white undershirts. Men and women dressed in the same light harvesting clothes were nimbly piling the ready sheaves onto a waiting truck. At the edges of the field on all sides, women rested and breast-fed their infants.
Seeing the airplane overhead, the harvesters stopped working, turned their heads upward, and gesticulated wildly.
Flying over the Tuileries Gardens the pilot noticed a colony of a few thousand children playing in identical clothing, smocks and small red caps, like a field of poppies right beside the fields of grain.
Where the Luxembourg Gardens had once sprawled were now rows of cauliflower growing white in the sun in a chessboard of colorful plots, a gigantic vegetable garden.
The pilot was so astonished by what he saw that he left further observations aside and flew a beeline over the city to hurry and share his discovery with his superiors.
Over the Seine, right where the Métro Bridge spans it with a breakneck leap, he saw a train running across the viaduct, hauling cargo wagons loaded with goods of some kind. There was almost no one on the streets, only in the fields and in the gardens – yet the slender streams of smoke coming from the factory chimneys indicated the area was pulsing with intense labor.
Flying over the southern suburbs, the pilot came under fire, and was forced to pull up. It was only through some skillful maneuvering that he was able to escape without greater harm.
The pilot maintained that Paris was surrounded by formidable fortifications, and swore that he had spotted long-range artillery on the bastions.
The pilot’s incredible story was heard on radios across the globe that very same day.
Before evening the sensation of the day all across France was the mysterious people harvesting grain on Place de la Concorde and breeding whole ranks of children. Frivolous songs were sung about them in all of Lyon’s cabarets.
V
The events of the following day occurred at a truly dizzying speed.
At nine in the morning a decree appeared in Lyon ordering a general mobilization. In spite of the martial law and the prohibition on assembly, the streets were bursting with an agitated crowd, pouring out in processions, fulminating against war. A patriotic fascist militia was organized ad hoc to help the police keep the city in line. Flocks of reserves cut through the streets, singing The Internationale. Three armored ships docked at Toulon floated out to sea, waving red flags. In the cities: unrest and disturbance. A regiment ordered to march barricaded themselves in their barracks, hanging red kerchiefs from their windows.
At noon, the newspapers reported that a British squadron had set sail for Leningrad. The German government declared that they would maintain absolute neutrality in the ensuing conflict.
The general strike blocked evening editions of newspapers all across Europe. The feverish crowds, hungry for information, started mobbing the loudspeakers hung outside of department stores, parks, and editorial offices to await the latest bulletins. At 7:15 sharp, the speakers coughed up the station’s first broadcast signals.
And then, unexpectedly, over the minor accompaniment of the monotonous litany of numbers, smothering it like the brass roar of a trumpet, a muted string orchestra suddenly sounded, and then a booming voice:
“Hello! Hello! Paris speaking!”
These words were so startling that the crowds surged and fell silent, uncertain if they hadn’t fallen victim to some kind of aural hallucination.
For a moment all you could hear from the speakers was a muddy echo, counting “eight, nine, ten…” The crowd leaned closer, feverish with anticipation. Then, through the sound of the countdown, the sonorous, metallic bass was heard once again:
“Hello! Paris speaking!”