THEY CAME AT LAST to the base, where Willie had a room of his own. The wish of the high command to extend the liberated areas had failed; everyone knew that. But in spite of the general gloom Willie was happy to be in a place where he had already been. He felt he had ceased to be flung into space; he felt he might once again come to possess himself. He liked the low clean thatched roof — so protecting, especially when he was on his string bed — where he could store small things between the thatch and the rafters; he liked the plastered beaten-earth floor, hollow-sounding below his feet.
Willie was hoping to see the section leader again, the man with the soft, educated manner. But he was not around. The news was that he had deserted, had surrendered to the police after elaborate negotiations. He had claimed the bounty that had been offered for his arrest; guerrillas who surrendered could claim this bounty. Then he had made his way back to the big city from which he had come. There, for some days, he had stalked his estranged wife before shooting her dead. No one knew where he was now. Perhaps he had killed himself; more likely, with the freedom of movement his bounty would have given him, he was at large in the immense country, using all his guerrilla’s skill for disguise and concealment, and was perhaps even now shedding his old personality and the pain he had carried for years.
The news would have made a greater stir if at about the same time the police hadn’t arrested Kandapalli. That was by far the bigger event, though Kandapalli had now lost most of his following and was so little a security risk that the police took no special precautions when they arrested him or when they took him to court. What was most notable about him was the clippings book he carried with him all the time. In this book he had pasted newspaper photographs of children. There was some profound cause for emotion there, in the photographs of children, but Kandapalli couldn’t say; his mind had gone; all that was left him was this great emotion. Willie was profoundly moved, more moved than he had been in Berlin when he had first heard of Kandapalli from Sarojini: his passion for humanity, his closeness to tears. There was no means of being in touch with her now, and for some days, in a helpless kind of grief, which held grief for himself and the world, and every person and every animal who had been wounded, Willie tried to enter the mind of the deranged man. He tried to imagine the small old schoolteacher choosing pictures from the newspapers and pasting them in his book. What pictures would have attracted him, and why? But the man eluded him, remained a prisoner of his mind, forever in solitary confinement. The thought of the derangement of the mind, where no one could now reach him, the unimaginable twists and turns from present to past, was more affecting than news of the death of the man would have been.
Even enemies of the man were moved. Einstein thought that the movement should make some gesture, to show solidarity with the old revolutionary. He brought the matter up at the formal meeting of the section.
He said, “His disgrace disgraces us all. We have quarrelled with him, but we owe it to him to do something. We owe it to him for reviving the movement at a bad time, when it had been crushed and was all but dead. I propose that we kidnap a minister of the central government or, if that is beyond us, a minister of the local state. We will make it clear that we are doing it as a gesture in support of Kandapalli. I volunteer myself for the action. I have done some research. I have a certain man in mind, and I know when it can be done. All I need are three men and three pistols and a car. I will need another man to stand at the traffic lights near the minister’s house and to stop the cross-traffic for three or four seconds while we are making our getaway. This man will make believe he is doing it for the minister. The action itself should take no more than two minutes. I have actually done a dry run, and that took one minute and fifty seconds.”
An important squad leader said, “We shouldn’t do anything more at the present time to encourage the police to come down harder on us. But please outline your plan.”
“The minister’s house is at Aziznagar. We need to be there a week in advance, or four days at least, to get used to the layout of the streets. We will need a car. We will hire it from somewhere else. Three of us will sit in the car in the morning just outside the gates. The minister’s house is hidden from the street by a high wall. Perfect for us. A guard will come and ask us what we are doing. We will mark this guard down as the man to deal with when the time comes. We will say we are students from college — I will find out which one to say — and we want to ask the minister to come and talk to us or something like that. I will judge when the crowd is thinning and the time is ripe. I will get out of the car and walk past the guard to the minister’s front door. As I walk one of the men with me will shoot the guard in the hand or the foot. I will now be in the minister’s house. I will shoot anyone who is in my way. I will burst into the minister’s office or greeting room with a great deal of noise and shouting. I will shoot at his hand, rapid fire, shouting all the time. He will be very frightened. As soon as he is wounded I will hustle him out of the front door to the car blocking the gate. I have studied his physique. I can do it. I can hustle him out. All this has to be done with coolness and precision and determination. There will be no hesitation at any stage. We drive past the traffic lights, which will be fixed for us. Two minutes. Two bold, cool minutes. The action will be good for us. It will tell people we are still around.”
The squad leader said, “It’s nice and simple. Perhaps too simple.”
Einstein said, “The most effective things are simple and direct.”
Keso said, “I am worried about the traffic lights. Wouldn’t it be better to put them out of action?”
Einstein said, “Too early, and they’ll fix them. Too late, and there’ll be a jam at the intersection. Better someone walking to the intersection, if the lights are against us when we appear, and this person, very cool, pulling on official-looking white gloves and stopping the cross-traffic. If the lights are with us we have to do nothing at all.”
The squad leader said, “Is there a policeman or a police box at the intersection?”
Einstein said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to do it if there was a police box. When we have passed, this person will walk calmly to the other side of the road, taking off his gloves, and will get into a car or a taxi, which will then leave the scene. So perhaps we will need a second car. If anyone at all notices they will think it’s another Indian street joker. Four men, two cars, three pistols.”
Keso said, “I feel you are determined to do this, whatever we say.”
Einstein said, “I think it will be a challenging thing to do. And it will be unexpected, since we have nothing against this particular minister. I like the unexpectedness. I think it will set an example to our people. Too many of us, when we plan a military action, can think only in the most banal way. So the other side are always waiting for us, and we fill the jails.”
Afterwards Einstein and Willie talked.
Einstein said, “I hear you had a rough time during that push into the interior. Extending the liberation area. The strategy was poor, and some people paid the price. We spread ourselves too thinly to do anything.”
“I know, I know.”
“The leaders are letting us down. Too much high living. Too many conferences in exotic places. Too much jostling to go abroad to do publicity and raise funds. By the way. You remember that weaver-caste fellow who betrayed us to the police a couple of years ago?”
Willie said, “The Bhoj Narayan business?”
“He wouldn’t be giving any evidence against anybody. I don’t think they would be booking Bhoj Narayan under Section 302.”