A man pulied a bicycle from inside the truck, and left.
Ch’en recognized as he was getting on: Ma, one of the principal agitators. He was going to make a report of the situation to the Military Committee. A typographer, who had devoted his whole life, since the age of twelve, to creating Unions of printshop workers everywhere, with the hope of organizing all Chinese typographers; tried, condemned to death, a fugitive, still organizing. Shouts of joy: the men had recognized him at the same moment as Ch’en, and were acclaiming him. He looked at them. The world they were preparing condemned him-Ch’en-as much as did that of their enemies. What would he do in the factory of the future that lay hidden behind their blue blouses?
The officer distributed grenades, and ten men went up along the roofs to take position on the station-roof. They were going to give the police a dose of their own medicine, throw the explosives in through the windows: these commanded the street but not the roof, and only one was protected by a screen. The insurgents advanced from roof to roof, elongated silhouettes against the sky. The station kept up a steady fire. As if the dying alone had divined this approach, their cries suddenly changed, became moans. Now they could hardly be heard; they were the stifled cries of half-mutes. The silhouettes reached the ridge of the steep station-roof, slowly crawled do^; it was harder for Ch’en to make them out now that they no longer stood out against the sky. A guttural shriek, like that of a woman in the agony of childbirth, cut across the groans, which continued like an echo, and then died away.
Despite the general commotion the sudden cessation of cries gave the impression of a sinister silence: had the flames reached the wounded? Ch’en and the officer looked at each other, shut their eyes in order to hear better. Each, upon reopening his eyes, met the silent look of the other.
One of the men, clinging to an ornament of the cornice, raised his free over the street, threw his grenade towards the window of the second story just below him. Too low: it exploded on the sidewalk. He threw a second one: it landed in the room where the wounded were. Yells burst from the window that had been hit; no longer the same cries, but the piercing shrieks of men in the convulsions of death, the outbursts of inexhaustible suffering. The man threw his third grenade and again missed the window.
He was one of the men who had come in the truck. He had deftly thro^ himself back, through fear of the explosion. He was bending over again, his lifted arm holding a fourth grenade. Behind him one of Ch’en’s men was crawling down. The arm was never lowered: he was suddenly swept off the roof, and a moment later a violent explosion resounded on the sidewalk; through the smoke, a splash of blood a yard wide appeared on the' wall. The smoke lifted: the waH was spattered with blood and shreds of flesh. The second insurgent, losing his hold and sliding do^ the roof with his full weight, had knocked the first man off. Both had fallen on their o^ grenades, from which they had pulled the pins.
From the other side of the roof, at the left, men of the two groups-Kuomintang bourgeois and Communist workers-were cautiously approaching. When the faH occurred they had halted: now they were beginning again to crawl down. The February repression had been attended by too many to^rtures to allow the insurrection to fail through lack of resolute men. From the right, other men were approaching. “Make a chain!” Ch’en shouted from below. Insurgents close to the station re- ioo peated the order. The men held one another by the hand, the top one taking a strong hold with his left arm on a solid roof-ornament. The throwing of the grenades was resumed. The besieged could not fire back.
Within five minutes, three grenades entered through two of the windows aimed at; another blew up the iron- plate screen. Only the center one had not been hit. “Now to the center one!” shouted the cadet. Ch’en looked at him. For him commanding was a sport, and he gave himself over to it with a joyous enthusiasm. He scarcely protected himself. He was brave, beyond a doubt, but he was not attached to his men. Ch’en was attached to his, but not enough.
Not enough.
He left the cadet, crossed the street beyond the range of the police fire. He climbed up on the roof. The man who was holding on to the ridge was weakening: Ch’en took his place. Even there, with his wounded arm locked round the cement and plaster ornament, his right hand holding the hand of the first man on the chain, he did not escape his solitude. The weight of three sliding men was suspended from his it passed through his chest like an iron bar. The grenades were bursting inside the station, which had ceased firing. “We are protected by the attic,” he thought to himself, “but not for long. The roof will blow up.” In spite of the intimacy of death, in spite of that fraternal weight which was pulling him apart, he was not one of them. “Is even blood futile?” The cadet, down there, was looking at him without understanding. One of the men who had come up behind Ch’en offered to take his place.
“Al right. I’ll throw the grenades myself.”
He passed him the chain of bodies. In his stretched muscles rose a limitless despair. His hawk-like face with its narrow eyes was tense, absolutely motionless; with stupefaction he felt a tear roll down his nose. “Nervousness,” he thought. He pulled a grenade from his pocket, began to descend by hooking himself to the arms of the men forming the chain. But the chain was suspended from one of the ornaments which capped the roof at either end. From there it was almost impossible to reach the center window. Reaching the edge of the roof, Ch’en let go the arm of the grenade-thrower, clung to his leg, then to the eaves, swung over the edge and down by means of a drain-pipe: though he was too far from the window to reach it, he was near enough to throw. His comrades no longer stirred. Above the ground-floor a projection gave him footing. He was astonished that his wound hurt him so little. With his left hand holding on to one of the clamps which secured the drain-pipe, he gauged the weight of his first grenade: “If it falls in the street, under me, I’m as good as dead.” He hurled it with as much force as his position permitted: it.entered, exploded in the interior.
Below, the shooting began again.
Through the station doorway which had remained open, the policemen, driven from the last room, rushed out in a blind stampede, firing at random. From the roofs, from the porches, from the windows, the insurgents were shooting them down. The bodies fell one after another, numerous near the doorway, then more and more scattered.
The firing ceased. Ch’en climbed down, still clinging to his drain-pipe: he could not see his feet, and landed on a body.
The cadet was entering the station. He followed ^m, pulling from his pocket the grenade which he had not thrown. At each step he became more acutely conscious that the wails of the wounded had ceased. In the guardroom, nothing but corpses. The wounded were charred. On the second story, more dead, a few wounded.
“And now, to the South Station,” said the officer. “Let’s take all the guns: other groups will need them.” The arms were carried to the truck; when they had all beerr collected, the men hoisted themselves up on the machine, stood tightly packed, sat on the hood, cluster J on the running-boards, clung to tht: rear. Those who were unable to ride started off by way of the alley at a rapid pace. The great abandoned splotch of blood on the wall seemed inexplicable in the deserted street; at the corner the truck, bristling with men, with its accompaniment of rattling iron, vanished towards the South Station and the barracks.
It was soon forced to stop: the street was blocked by four dead horses, and three corpses, already disarmed. They were those of the cavalry men Ch’en had seen at the beginning of the day: the first armored car had arrived in time. On the ground, broken window- glass, but nothing living except an old Chinaman with a beard like a paint-brush, who was moaning. He spoke distinctly as soon as Ch'en approached: