Chiang Kai-shek has had strikers fired on-after taking a few precautions. ”
A ray of sunlight entered. The blue patch of sky grew larger. The street filled with sun. In spite of the volleys, the armored train seemed deserted in this light. It fired again. Kyo and Ch’en observed it less attentively now: perhaps the enemy was nearer to them. Greatly worried, Kyo was looking vaguely at the sidewalk, which was sparkling under the provisional sunlight. A great shadow fell upon it. He raised his head: Katov.
“Before a fortnight,” he went on, “the Kuomintang wil prohibit our assault sections. I have just seen some Blue officers, sent from the front to feel us out; they slyly insinuate that the firearms would be better off with them than with us. They want to disarm the workers’ guard: they wiU have the police, the Committee, the Prefect, the army and the ^arms. And we shall have made the insurrection for that. We must leave the Kuomintang, isolate the Communist Parry, and if possible give it the power. In this whole matter it’s not a question of playing chess, but of thinking seriously of the proletariat. What do we advise them to do?”
Ch’en was looking athis well-shaped dirty feet, naked in his clogs:
“The workers are right to strike. We order them to stop the strike. The peasants want to take the lands. They are right. We forbid them to.”
“Our slogans are those of the Blues,” said Kyo, “with a few more promises. But the Blues give the bourgeois what they promise them, whereas we do not give the workers what we promise them.”
“Enough,” said Ch’en without even raising his eyes. “First of all, Chiang Kai-shek must be killed.”
Katov listened in silence.
“That’s in the fut’re," he said finally. “At present they’re killing our comrades. Yes. And yet, Kyo, I’m not sure I agree with you, you know. At the b’ginning of the Rev’lution, when I was still a socialist-rev’lutionary, we were all against Lenin’s tactics in Ukraine. Antonov, the comm’ssar down there, had arrested the mine-owners and had given them ten years of hard labor for sab’tage. Without trial. On his own authority as Comm’ssar of the Cheka Lenin congrat’lated him; we all pr’tested. They were real exploiters, y’know, the owners, and several of us had gone into the mines as convicts; that’s why we thought we should be p’rticularly fair with them, to give the example. However, if we had let them go, the prol’tariat would not have understood. Lenin was right. Justice was on our side, but Lenin was right. And we were also against the extr’ordinary powers of the Cheka. We’ve got to think carefully. The present slogan is good: extend the Rev’lution, and afterwards deepen it. Lenin didn’t say right away: ‘The whole power to the Soviets.’ "
“But he never said: Power to the mensheviks. No situation can force us to surrender our arms to the Blues. None. Because then that means that the Revolution is lost, and we have only to. "
An officer of the Kuomintang entered, small, stif, almost Japanese. Bows.
“The army will be here in half an hour," he said. “We’re short of arms. How many can you let us have?"
Ch’en was walking back and forth. Katov was waiting.
“The-workers’ militias must remain armed," said Kyo.
“My request is made in agreement with the Hankow gove^rnment," the officer answered.
Kyo and Ch’en smiled.
“I beg you to find out for yourselves,” he went on.
Kyo worked the telephone.
“Even if the order. ” Ch’en began, in a rage.
“I’ve got them,” Kyo exclaimed.
He was listening. Katov seized the second receiver. They hung up.
“Very weU,” said Kyo. “But the men are still on the firing-line.”
“The artiUery will be here shortly,” said the officer. “We’ll clean up these things. ”
He pointed to the armored train, grounded in the sunlight.
“. ourselves. Can you hand over arms to the troops tomorrow evening? We need them urgently. We are continuing to march on Nanking.”
“I doubt if it will be possible to recover more than half the arms.”
“Why?”
“.Al the Communists won’t be willing to give them up.”
“Even on orders from Hankow?”
“Even on orders from Moscow. At least, not immediately.”
They felt the officer’s exasperation, although he did not show it.
“See what you can do,” he said. “I shall send someone about seven.”
He went out.
“Are you willing that we should give up the arms?” Kyo asked Katov.
“I'm trying to understand. Before anything else, we must go to Hankow, you see. What does the Int’mational want? First of all, use the army of the Kuomintang to
unify China. After that d’velop the Rev’lution by prop’-' ganda and the rest. It must change of its own accord from a dem’cratic Rev’lution into a socialist Rev’lution.” “Chiang Kai-shek must be killed,” said Ch’en.
“Chiang Kai-shek will no longer allow us to go as far as that,” answered Kyo, ignoring Ch’en’s remark. “He cannot. He can maintain himself here only by drawing on the customs and the contributions of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie won’t pay for nothing: he will have to pay them back with the corpses of Communists.” “Al that,” said Ch’en, “means nothing.”
“Leave us alone,” said Katov. “You don’t think you’re going to try to Chiang Kai-shek without the consent of the Central Committee, or at least the delegate of the Int’rnational?”
A distant rumble gradually filled the silence.
“You’re going to Hankow?” Ch’en asked Kyo. “Naturally.”
Ch’en was pacing back and forth in the room, beneath all the pendulums and balance-wheels of the various timepieces which went on ticking their measure.
“What I have said is very simple,” he said at last. “The essential. The only thing to do. Let them know.” “Will you wait?”
Kyo knew that if Ch'en hesitated instead of answering, it was not because Katov had convinced ^m. It was because none of the present orders of the International satisfied the profound passion which had made him a revolutionary; if he accepted them, through discipline, he would no longer be able to act. Kyo watched that hostile figure beneath the clocks: he had made the sacrifice of himself and of others to the Revolution, and now the Revolution would perhaps throw him back into
his solitude with his memories of assassinations. At once with him and against him, Kyo could no longer either join him nor break with him. Beneath the brotherhood of arms, at the very moment when he was looking at that armored train which they would perhaps attack together, he felt the possibility of a break as he would have felt the threat of an attack in a friend who was epileptic or insane, at the moment of his greatest lucidity.
Ch’en had resumed his pacing; he shook his head as in protest, said finaliy: “Good,” shrugging his shoulders as though he were saying this to gratify a childish whim of Kyo’s.
The rumble became audible again, louder, but so confused that they had to strain their ears in order to ' make out what it was. It seemed to rise from the eanh.
“No,” said Kyo, “they are shouts.”
They drew nearer, and became more distinct.
“Could they be taking the Russian church?. asked Katov.
Many govemmentals were entrenched there. But the cries were approaching, seeming to come from the outskirts towards the center. Louder and louder. Impossible to make out any words. Katov threw a glance towards the armored train.
“Could they be getting reenforcements?”
The shouts, still indistinguishable, were coming closer and closer, as though some capital news were being passed on from crowd to crowd. Vying with them, another sound was making itself heard, and finally became distinct: the rhythmic beating of footsteps on the ground.
“The army,” said Katov. “They’re our men.”